Writing Contest Challenge

I cannot wait to see readers' reaction

I will enter a writing contest, I still have a couple of days to finish my story.

Contestants are allowed to write about any subject, and there is no word limit. The deadline is December 31, right now I am busy with polishing the story.

Initially I had two stories to submit: one was written ten years earlier, and it is frightening how prescient it is today. It is happening in the future, and it includes ugly consequences of climate change; abortion bans; overpopulation; epidemics; fundamentalist Islam countries’ nuclear attacks against America, triggered by a despot in Imperial Russia. In my story, American Secretary of State Miranda Lennox sends a friend, a relentless journalist, to Russia, for a mission to take down the tyrant. The two main characters are inspired by the amazing Meryl Streep and Glenn Close. The first, also by Mama Hillary.

I need to change minor technicalities, for example, details about DNA evidence: hair that was cut off contains mitochondrial DNA and not nuclear DNA, the latter is there in skin cells, blood etc. and the latter is the best for identifying a person. But the disasters that were predicted years ago are already there in my story.

It is sad and alarming that today many of the threats are very real. They were all but unthinkable back in 2013. Probably not totally unthinkable if you followed news and listened to scientist who were sounding the alarm.

It feels a bit like Stephen King’s short story whose protagonist has a strange typewriter - whatever fiction he is writing comes true in real life.

However, in the end, I selected another story: a simple crime fiction about a girl who disappeared from a Manhattan bar after a fun night with friends. It is inspired by real-life events.