Tomorrow Is The Day ...

The Cupid Prize Results....

Well, tomorrow, February 14th, is THE day! The results of the first annual Cupid Prize will be announced.

We've had 300 new subscribers and hundreds of new followers since I announced The Cupid Prize long and short lists and I’d like to explain a bit of what the Cupid Prize is for those who have recently joined the Micromance Community…

The Cupid Prize is an award of excellence in love literature - genre romance, love stories, women's fiction/chick lit and romantic poetry. It was founded by me - the EIC of Micromance Magazine - as a way to recognize flash romance writers and poets. There are several small press awards out there, but because it is difficult to place romance with most lit mags, the chances for romance writers to be nominated for, let alone win, those awards is slim. And so I started The Cupid Prize.

The nomination process was simple. I used Substack's engagement stats to choose 2 nominees from each of Micromance’s categories for each month… the 2 nominees represented a piece with the most likes and a piece with the most views in each category. These were the long list. The short list was narrowed down by choosing the top posts by likes - where there may have been a tie in likes, the post with the most views was chosen… these were then passed on to a judge for each category. So, the process was very much rooted in reader engagement - a reader's choice award to a point.

In the beginning, it was designed to be for contributors of MM only. But I thought about the random love stories and women’s fiction that do get accepted in other places. I thought of the handful of other lit mags that are love-centered - even though they focus on all love (friendship, familial, etc), they surely have some romance, and as flash romance writers, those writers deserve the chance to be recognized.

So I opened the Quickies and Short & Sweet categories to non-contributors, allowing, like the other prizes do, editors to nominate and celebrate their writers. But no one did. I considered that MM was only 3 months old when I first announced the Cupid Prize and people may have been uncertain - even leery - of participating with such a fledgling lit mag, novice editor. I also wondered if what I knew to be true about the difficulty of placing romance was worse than I thought. So, I opened nominations up to writers - they could nominate themselves or others. I received a fair response.

I then added an editor's choice category, choosing the stories that stood out most to me regardless of their stats.

As, I posted updates, reminders and long lists and short lists, interest in The Cupid Prize grew. More followers on X. More of those followers being other lit mags, other editors. More reposting. More excitement.

After tomorrow, I hope a lot more people learn about the prize, the upcoming anthology, and the winners… I hope excitement builds for next year.

I have plans for new categories next year - romance short story collections/novellas/novellas-in-flash (100 pages or less), both published and unpublished… more details will be coming soon. And I plan on The Cupid Prize being an anthology that writers strive to be a part of, much like any of the other industry awards.

So, tomorrow is the day. It will be a busy day full of emails and social media posting. Yes, there will be multiple emails throughout the day… most of you know that that's unusual, two emails in a day, 3 or 4 times a week, is the max. But this is a special occasion…

All times eastern

9am - The Welcome, special recognition awards, and Poetry results

10am - Sweet Nothing and Quickies results

11am - Series results and more special awards

12pm - Individual and Editor's Choice results

1pm - Short & Sweet results

Please join us.. please congratulate all the nominees and the winners and let's make this a really fun, really positive and exciting interactive experience - please like, comment, & share…definitely comment…remember, Micromance has a chat- by all means let’s start a chat and meet and greet the nominees and congratulate the winners… let's spread the love and romance on this Valentine's Day!!

Thanks,

Gail Lynn, EIC 🥰