Congrats to our winners, and thanks to everyone who participated. (I'm sorry that I wasn't able to enter this this time, but life got in the way.

)
I enjoyed reading this batch of stories! Still, I must have been in a grumpy mood because I didn't happen to award any tens. Still, one of the few nines that I awarded happened to be: "the New Neighbor" by our AustCarr!
In most of our Challenges the winning scores group fairly closely, with only a few votes separating the six "chosen ones". This contest was unusual in that there is a 178 point gap between second and third place. So those top two stories somehow really stood out. I will be re-reading those two to see what this author can learn from them!
As Flopsy says, "Well done everyone."