My short story has been published on Vocal for their $10,000 challenge (there’s a $5000 second place prize too, so it’s not chump change). Even if it doesn’t win, I think it is a pretty solid story. Let me know what you think in the comments here, or in the comments on Vocal, if the site allows you to do so without being a member. Not sure how that works.
Every entry has to begin with the exact same line: “There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.” So you end up with hundreds and hundreds of different stories that go all kinds of directions. The second criteria is to write a story as an introduction to a novel that doesn’t exist yet. Which is harder to do (convincingly) than it sounds.
https://vocal.media/fiction/the-wyrmtongue-chronicles
JM Hauser 