Congrats, Honeygloom!!!! Your piece was worthy of the prize. I love where you took this one. Keep up the great work, and I look forward to working with you in the future. Again, Congrats.

I've got to agree with Shadowman. I looked today and didn't find any starts with icons at all. Also, once someone writes a follow up to the start, does that end it? Will follow ups to follow ups qualify? Maybe it would be a good idea to allow start chapters to be done for maybe a week. Then put icons on these and begin the contest from that point with about 20 starts. Only those starts would be used for the contest. Just a thought.

Pretty pathetic that someone would do something like that. I mean, it's not like the prize is a lot of money or anything. This chapter deserved to win, and I've also read some others that should be up at the top but aren't. Too bad. This could be a really good site if they can get this kind of thing fixed. Wish I could vote twice, Honeygloom

Pretty darn good, Psycho. This is going to be a little more challenging than I thought it would. I'll give it a shot though. Give me a little time so I can "shift gears". LOL Hey, this could be fun.

Thanks for the comment and vote. I had a million ideas for how to continue but I was really interested in Hanging Cloud. After reading about her on the internet, it was impossible to not include a character like her in this line. I only hope that her strength can be put into words that do her justice. Thanks for the reads too.

Great job. Love the research you put into this. I tried to continue it, I only hope I'm taking it in the general direction you had in mind. Please let me know what you think. I missed one typo toward the end of my chapter. Too late to make the correction.

You are so right regarding these legends being similar to each other. Found a number of variations the Cry Baby story. Oh well, we're writers, we should be able to take a little artistic license, right? LOL The series idea sounds like something that could really be interesting to take on. Best of luck with that.

Hey Psycho. Well, I've done a little research about our urban legends. It's not a big deal but we might be mixing two stories together. Cry Baby Bridge and the Children of San Antonio. Apparently a baby died on a bridge and you can hear the baby cry at night when you stop there. The San Antonio story is the bus stopping on railroad tracks and getting hit by the train. I'm sure someone is going to call us on it. Maybe we could say we didn't want to infringe on someone elses copyright. LOL I'm waiting to see where you go with this one. It's got a lot of possibilities.

Pretty cool, Psycho. I've heard this urban legend too. I gave it a 5. Also tried my hand at a mash for it. Hope you don't mind. Let me know it you like it.

The only concern I have is that during a contest, the author should not need to make a requirement for readers to leave comments when they vote, it should already be required, period. If the writer makes it required, some readers will just pass the chapter by and not vote, comment or anything else. Giving the writer the ability to opt out of a contest is fine, but contests should require comments with every vote.

I really enjoy StoryMash and would love to continue to participate. It's great that you have taken the time to ask the users how to improve things. I like the ideas of alerting someone when their chapter is commented on, and when a chapter is added to. There are a number of good writers here and I, personally, value their opinions and input.

In the future it seems something needs to be done on how new material is listed. I, too, have noticed that the new material is submitted, it goes to the end of the list. Not many folks seem to venture beyond the first few pages of the rating list. I'm not sure what can be done about this one, but I can see that a number of pretty good chapters will get "lost" in the list and never see the light of day. It's also understandable that you cannot give everyones' material top billing.

Keep up the great work, and thanks again for allowing us to make these comments.