Rate each entry below in three categories: literary merit, heat and originality. Each month's highest-ranked entry will proceed to the year-end competition
Hmm... difficult. Difficult to judge a piece out of context. And much easier to say 'I didn't like this one' (on account of my standards are so high, or I'm not that sort of person) than to say 'I did like this one' (risk of everyone thinking you are a weirdo). On the whole though they seem a fairly joyless bunch. Words like 'seeping' I do not want to read in this context.
But sticking my neck out I think 'Don't tell me the truth about love' is a good title, and the extract from it was good (though 'he was sitting on the fridge'? WTF? and I laughed when her hat fell off). The extract from 'Utterly monkey' was quite down to earth and pleasantly written. That means I liked the scenes written by men better than the ones written by women. Odd.
Anyway, thankfully the evidence from this award is that sex writing has improved since Henry Miller in that it doesn't consist entirely of misogyny and misery.