“Remember When” Choice Award Winners, A Look Back, And Hints of the Future

Today we celebrate two fabulous authors who have chosen to share their talents with the world through Havok. Our authors are a special breed that share a taste for adventure and short stories with impact. We appreciate every one of you. Because your belief in us empowers us to express our belief in you. Over and over again.

Every contest season has pushed the boundaries of what traditional publication looks like. We were reborn in 2019 as an ezine, leaving behind the printed quarterlies of our original existence. We operate in a shimmering space between publisher and contest runner. Through the fierce devotion of our volunteer staff, we have not missed a publication day since our rebirth. We have published eleven anthologies in six years. Through the generosity of our supporters on Patreon, through fundraisers and memberships, we have the joy of awarding our winners — authors and readers both! — monetary prizes. Our gratitude for our community knows no bounds.

Now let’s peek at the seasons leading up to 2024 and the ground-breaking eleventh season that lasted all year long.

“Remember When”

Each Havok contest season challenged authors to polish an element of their craft. Over the years, we have seen authors grow and excel and land book contracts, publish books of their own, and win prestigious industry awards. Those who participate in our contests always benefit from “the Havok school of flash fiction,” as we like to think of it.

• Rebirth = An introduction to our novel approach to publishing and a challenge to write to themed prompts.
• Stories That Sing = Giving authors a chance to write the stories sparked by great lyrics.
• Bingeworthy = Practice capturing the essence of an entire trope in less than one thousand words.
• Sensational = Write a narrative in such a way that readers can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell the story–and even sense that eerie extra something.
• Prismatic = Wield the power of color to give stories a mood and a memorable visual punch that lingers in the mind.
• Casting Call = Bring to life characters that epitomize the archetypes that resonate with readers.
• Animal Kingdom = Provoke in readers the wide spectrum of emotion that humanity feels for the creatures we encounter–or wish we could.
• Vice & Virtue = Illustrate in one thousand words the best and worst that humanity has to offer.
• World Tour = Immerse readers in a place and time, making the setting of a story integral to the experience of it.
• Legendary = Celebrate the great myths and epic events of history–or create one of your own.
• Remember When = Develop a unique, compelling narrative voice that immediately connects with a reader.

The Remember When anthology is a fabulous gift book, offering stories themed for each month of the year. We had so many excellent submissions that it was often a challenge to choose just one from each genre, each month. And that posed quite the challenge for us when it came to selecting our Editors’ Choice winner.

It was already hard enough during a SIX month season to pick a single story that stood head and shoulders above the rest. Now we were supposed to pick from twelve months worth? Impossible. Or so we thought at first.

Editors’ Choice & Most Prolific Author of 2024

I met J.M. Allison at a writers conference a couple of years ago. This spring, I had the pleasure of seeing her again at the same conference. I congratulated her on having six stories in Remember When, tying with Hannah Carter (in World Tour) for the most stories published by one author in one of our anthologies. She shared with me more about her 2024 publication journey, and I was floored. She submitted forty-nine stories over the year-long season! Our editors selected twenty-three of those for publication. And then six were selected for the anthology.

There is little doubt that J.M. Allison has been our editors’ choice over and over again during the Remember When season. Those twenty-three publications also make her our Most Prolific author of 2024, by a mile. Congratulations, J.M.! We’ll be in touch to deliver your $100 Amazon gift card, a hardcover copy of Remember When, and you’ll have your choice of Havok t-shirt (or other merch up to $25 value).

Check out all of J.M. Allison’s stories on Havok!

Readers’ Choice

The tallying of our Readers’ Choice winner is a complex process that requires seven rocket scientists, six pots of coffee, a Ph.D in Excel spreadsheets, and an algorithm in a pear tree. We are pleased as pear punch to announce that our Remember When audience engagement was highest for “Ivy & Frost” by H.L. Davis! We’ll be in touch to deliver your $100 Amazon gift card and hardcover copy of Remember When.

Check out all of H.L. Davis’s stories on Havok!

Hints of the Future

We hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane and celebration of two of our stellar Havok authors. Our Remember When merch shop is still open for a little while longer, and we hope you’ll take advantage of a chance to help us fund author payments and grab some beautiful Havok merch inspired by the anthology cover.

Our current Multiversal season is a chance to practice writing to a character prompt, and we hope you will submit some fresh tales about Dorian Gray, Ebenezer Scrooge, or our contest winning characters Harmony Star, animal lover, and Luke James (aka Therrus), an alien living undercover on Earth.

And then, after that… Havok Season 13 is looming just around the corner. We hope to announce the details at the end of July or beginning of August, to give you plenty of time to write your best work ever. Because this season-the-13th is going to be a banger.

We can’t say much more, because we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. But everything is adding up to make our 2026 season quite the auspicious moment in Havok’s history. Even the numbers are adding up: 13 + 13 = 26. Not that we’re superstitious or anything. Feel free to drop a comment below with your ideas for Season 13 themes!