Hello,

I've just received the following by mail from Fish Publishing :

"I'm writing to ask if you could please send another copy of the story you
entered for the Fish Very Short Story Prize. A fire completely destroyed
the office of Fish Publishing on Saturday and the entries to the competition
were lost in the blaze.

Thank you in advance and apologies for the inconvenience.

Best wishes.

Clem Cairn"

Sam,

Did you enter my snail mail or e-mail? Just wondering because i entered too but i haven't heard anything from them.

Louise

I entered by email, but haven't heard anything either. I wonder if it's worth resending it anyway, or if they just lost the ones they got on paper.
Sam

I've just sent them a quick e-mail to check if it's just paper entries. Will let you know the response.

Is this a serious post? Or are you just jumping on the pulp.net burglary bandwagon?! I entered, and have heard nothing... But maybe my writing isn't worth a light.

As far as I know it's serious, I'm not jumping on any bandwagon, why would I do that!?

I submitted via snail mail - so perhaps it only effected the paper based entries?

That's terrible for them, they might have lost all sorts of things. Could be a small publishing set-up starting out.
Becca.

I know, from personal experience, how devastating a fire can be… so my heart goes out to them.

If it destroyed the office, it will have destroyed their computers so, unless they had all their files backed up and stored in a fireproof safe, I think you can assume that all entries will have been lost.

Dee.

I experienced an office fire some years ago. It was dreadful to witness the damage that the fire and then the firemen had caused so I am 'with' Dee on this occasion.

Len

Thanks, Len.

Six years ago my partner and I woke up in the middle of the night to find ourselves trapped upstairs in a burning house. We found that pretty traumatic, as I’m sure you can imagine, but it’s understandable because it’s our home and we were in danger.

More recently, though, I heard that the premises of one of our suppliers had been destroyed by fire. One of our buyers went over there to assess the damage – only, as he thought, to our supply chain - and came back so traumatised he ended up in tears. He had gone to what he had thought would be (simply) a fire-damaged building and discovered a seriously distressed crowd of people.

The point I’m trying to make – in my clumsy way – is that fire and flood (been there too) affect people more deeply than anyone would believe unless they have experienced them – be it in their home or their workplace. Anyone writing a story involving a fire could bear this in mind. I would never have believed how far reaching the experience could be.

Dee.

I'd just like to say, my previous comment on this thread sounds quite selfish, but I just assumed that if they had sent out letters asking for entries to be resent, then the damage couldn't have been that bad. Maybe I was wrong.

Of course, my sympathy goes to everybody at Fish Publishing.

Sam

I assumed the same thing Sam. I imagined that if they still had contact deatils for certan people then not everything could have been damaged. Perhaps they had some information stored somewhere else.

Its a terrible thing to happen, lets hope they recover from it quickly.

Louise

A quick update for those who entered the competition.

Fish still have the stories from everyone that entered on-line, so you don't need to re-send them.

At least they were blessed enough to not lose everything.

Hey, and Sam, you didn't sound selfish saying what you said, I just wanted to present another possibility because often small publishers are writers themselves who love literature and struggle to keep mags going,(sometimes they are not, of course). From time to time on WW I refer to the fact because I think we should be supporting small publishers and they should be supporting us; we are almost the same people.
Becca.

Hi

I entered too. that is really strange....

If I was you I would ask this site if they know anything, the host's etc as if this is the case and business is affected they should not be taking money from people to enter their competition..

Tee.xx
ps let us know.