My zombie-apocalypse story “A Bone to Pick” has tied for second place in Toasted Cheese’s 2011 Dead of Winter Contest! This year’s theme was “Skull and Bones.”

It was funny how this all happened—I hadn’t planned on submitting to their contest this year; I hadn’t in a few years, actually. But suddenly the entire story popped into my head one morning, and it just happened to fit their theme. So I wrote it up and figured I’d give it a shot. It was a great little early birthday present to find out the story had placed!

“A Bone to Pick” is set at Robert Frost’s farm in New Hampshire and asks the question: what would happen if the one person in the world you both loved and hated was the only other person alive?

The winners are:

First place: “The Red Scarf,” Anitha Murthy

Second place: “Skin and Bones,” Jake Gogats

Second place: “A Bone to Pick,” Kristi Petersen Schoonover

Honorable Mention: “Osteophthisis,” John-Michael Gariepy

The first and second place stories will be printed in Toasted Cheese’s March issue, so I’ll keep you posted about when that’s available. I’m really looking forward to reading the other winners’ pieces. The Toasted Cheese Dead of Winter contest, which runs every year between November and December and specifies that the story must be horror, written to that year’s theme and set in winter, is always a lot of fun. All entries are judged blind.

For more information on Toasted Cheese—they run other contests throughout the year and put out a great little mag four times per year—you can visit their website: http://www.toasted-cheese.com/