recruitHi recruit,
I know the feeling. This is just the second competition that I have been in and I was really surprised by the outcome. I read and graded the entries in the two competitions before the ones that I contributed to and I had the same experience; none of the stories that I liked ended up on top and a couple that was not at all to my liking won, so I didn't have my hopes up high, but my fingers itched to give it a try anyway. I guess that people just have different taste, but sometimes it overlaps, so apparently many favors my stories even though they differ from what they would usually go for. F/M for example seems to be a gigantic seller here, but I don't have it in me to write such a story and if I tried I am pretty certain that it would come out exceptionally silly. I have no idea what the winning formula may be for a story that appeals to as many as possible, but I'll try to do "more of the same" for as long as people seem to enjoy what I write and hopefully it also encourages other people to start writing so I get more to read as well.
And I just wanted to add that I am exceptionally bad at getting around on this page, which explains why it took until now before I saw this list of kind comments.

Cheers!
Gloup