Strange New Writing Opportunities

I'm currently reading the second Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology. This is a pretty cool project, actually. Pocket Books regularly holds a contest inviting fans to send in their own Star Trek stories, and the best ones get published in the anthology (paid at the going rate), with the top three winners getting an additional cash prize. I think they've put out five of them so far. I keep thinking I should send something in for it. I mean, not to be immodest or anything, but having read the first anthology and having now gotten through the TOS section of the second one, I honestly think I can do at least as well as most of these. There are definitely exceptions[*], but for the most part, while they're all well written, I haven't found most of the stories to be terribly exciting or memorable or anything. Heck, I've read better fan fiction on the web. Of course, my tastes are apparently quite different from the judges', anyway. The stories in the first analogy that I thought were really excellent weren't the ones that won the big prizes. And the contest rules are very strict about what you can and can't do, such as the restriction against stories that "establish major facts about or make major changes in the life of a major character." Is it just me, or does that take a lot of the fun out of it? It's not too surprising, really, that a large number of stories in the first collection tended to focus on guest characters instead of the regulars...

The deadline for the next one is coming up in October, though, and I'm not feeling particularly inspired (or at least not in Star Trekish directions, anyway), so I kind of doubt whether I'll actually get off my fat ass and write anything for it...


[*] F'rinstance, just from the TOS section of #2, the prize-winning "City on the Edge of Forever" variant and the one with the (genuinely inspired) encounter between Dr. McCoy, Dr. Zimmerman, and Zimmerman's prototype EMH were both pretty cool. But the other three are just kinda... there.