A winner is YOU! And also these three stories!

Hello again, Faye here to talk to you about our smutty merch store, which doesn't actually exist in a literal sense but... oh drat, my blasted phone is going off. I hope Friedman wasn't in a bad mood when he received that invoice for lingerie and rose petals, I barely even touch my discretionary spending account...

Ok thank merciful Eros, the judges are finally ready to announce who won the contest! Not a moment too soon, I was going to go down there and throw another bucket full of mop water through the bars to get them working again. Wah wah, I had a medical emergency, wah. I'm the one who gets all the admittedly very polite notes about how long it's taking!

Enough about our internal CHYOA trials and tribulations and how much you have to (cattle) prod authors to do anything on a deadline, we have some happy news and congratulations to give out! There were MANY excellent stories this year, from high concept sci-fi with smoking hot sex to tender romance with gentle hand/tentacle holding! You all outdid yourselves. The judges all said the scoring was tighter than a home-schooled freshman co-ed in a chastity belt... a metaphor I did not quite get but I think they are getting a bit loopy after spending so long under lock and key.

Third place: A Hot Date at Hecksworld by MidbossMan
You get stood up by your date and end up moping around an amusement park by yourself, being all lonesome until a hot goth babe (note: are there non-hot goth babes? I say no) takes it upon herself to intrude on your brooding. A roller coaster ride, both literal and figurative, follows. Judges praised the story for the hot sex and the tinge of genuine creepiness, which we all know makes the spice hit harder.

Second place: The Things We Lost In Summer by Dansak
If you ever wondered "What would it be like if the Gilmore Girls had excellent sex scenes to go with the interesting character dynamics?" then don't worry Dansak also wondered that and then answered the question. I dare not say more about this story in case some of you have not read it yet.

First place: Artificial Submission by newbeforeold
Maria, a stressed-out journalist, dabbles with using a dangerously capable AI tool to help her with a crushing workload. Simply wonderful, a clever and very spicy story with something to say about the encroachment of AI into the creative fields, all the judges thought it was excellent.

Honourable mentions go to some wonderful stories, Playing With Fire...A Sexy Wager Between Two Political Rivals from ErosApostasia has the reader decide whether the young, brash political upstart wins his bet against his fierce, older political rival and her confident, sensual experience. And there is spanking, because that's how real politics actually works I understand.

In Scapegoat, bartolimieu07 has a young woman named Anna experience a very special kind religious service. It seems the pastor and his flock need to choose a scapegoat, a kind of sin eater. Or sin-being-filled-er I suppose. That kind of church would get me in the pews every Sunday!

You can always count on Ben Rosewood to deliver the sexy goods wrapped in pitch perfect prose, and The Masterpiece is yet another example of the master of his craft fashioning an objet d'art for us. As Mr Rosewood is a couple of dozen of chapters away from his 2000th (!!) on this site we should all tip our glasses.

It can be very tricky to inject wry humour into a naughty story and not skimp on the naughty or the funny, but menoetes did exactly that with Sally the Succubus and the College Coven. An honest-to-badness succubus is summoned by a coven (barely) of wholly incompetent university nerds.

And finally a special mention from the judges: The Fisherman and the Octopus by Azulblade received praise for its unique concept, sweet romance, and heart. Also, the sheer courage it takes to write an erotic story with no sex!

Sincerely, it felt like it would be easier to list the stories that didn't thrill, entertain, or arouse us than choose a top three from the ones that did. From all of the team from the CHYOA administrators and tech wizards to the judges, the talent and energy on display was inspiring. Truly. Thank you all!

• Faye