My Second Published Story

Source: KazkaPress.Net

KazkaPress.Net selected my story for publication for a second month in a row! KazkaPress does offer some amazing prompts for their speculative flash fiction requests. I've enjoyed it immensely! And, have reveled in the fact I've been published...TWICE!

Drake's Hoard is now live!

Here's what KazkaPress wanted for the November Contest:

The November 2011 issue of National Geographic featured an article on the Staffordshire Gold Hoard. If you don’t know, this hoard of gold is an treasure trove of Anglo-Saxon…well, treasures…from 1,300 years ago. It was discovered in 2009 by a bloke with a metal detector. However, no one knows why it was buried in this ground 1,300 years ago. Here’s a tidbit from the article, which you really want to read all of: 

Much plunder was carried away—possibly down the old Roman road Watling Street, which leads past the site where the Staffordshire Hoard was found. Event and place are commemorated in the Welsh poem “Marwnad Cynddylan—The Death Song of Cynddylan”:

Grandeur in battle! Extensive spoils
Morial bore off from in front of Lichfield.
Fifteen hundred cattle from the front of battle;
four twenties of stallions and equal harness.
The chief bishop wretched in his four-cornered
house, the book-keeping monks did not protect.

A retinue of 80 horses and spoils from a “wretched” bishop (a detail that conjures the gold inscription and crosses): The poem offers a tempting explanation for the hoard, an explanation, alas, built from slender, circumstantial evidence that has happened to survive from an era from which most evidence was lost. We can conjure other teasing theories. Our unknown travelers may have chosen the burial spot because it was obscure—or because it was conspicuous. The burial might have had a marker for rediscovery, or it might have been intended as an offering hidden forever to all but their gods. The hoard may have been ransom, or booty, or a votive thanks. It may have been a collection of Anglo-Saxon heirlooms buried at a later time. [by Caroline Alexander in NatGeo] 

We at Kazka Press want to know: What’s the story of this treasure? Why was it buried? In 713 words exactly, excluding title, write a piece of flash fiction that tells the story of this treasure. And your story must have a speculative fiction backbone to it–fantasy, sci-fi, slipstream, cyberpunk, steampunk, etc. We’ll be especially pleased to see a strong, fantastical historical fiction element to this month’s entries. 

That’s the theme, the whole sum and total of it.

You can read the whole Staffordshire Gold Hoard story if you wish, and then my published speculative fictional piece about it. Let me know what you think. I hope you like it! If you do, please vote for it as well! The ones with the most votes get a chance to be published in their print anthology! Thanks!