Hit the Bookstores Today

After checking with some booksellers, I found that you have to call their corporate office to get them to stock your book. Once I get Killer of Killers and The Vase on bookshelves, I'm confident browsers will be interested in checking them out. One reason, for Killer of Killers, at least, is the cover. I know for a fact that covers can spark interest in people who want to buy and read a book. And for anyone who enjoys martial arts stories, KOK is one book that they will enjoy. There really aren't too many out there in the first place. And even though I haven't read any, I'm sure KOK will hold up.

I wish there were writing contests for martial arts books. Just like there seems to be contests for other types of books. If there were, then I would think KOK would be good enough to place somewhere in the finalists for that category. Maybe I should be looking for contests as well as for bookstores. I think it's a good idea, actually. Time to get started then.

New Writing Contest

My favorite writing contests are held by Literary Agent Janet Reid because they are short, (100 words or fewer,) and must contain preselected words. This time the words were unforsaken, witch, ghost, deadly, slay, and decay, with an optional word which was "insalubrious." I don't believe I ever heard of that word, but I managed to use it. Hope I used it correctly.

So no, I don't expect to win, and I didn't enter the contest to win anything, but you know what? It was fun. It didn't take a lot of my time, and figuring a short little segment with those words was a minor challenge. OK. Now back to the WIP.

Contest Entry

I'm smack dab in the middle of my fourth novel. It's historical fiction, and my other three were fiction thrillers. Although none of them would be classified as humorous novels, I do incorporate humor into the storylines. All of them have scenes that are funny.

And I truly believe that's the way real life is. We've all had a good laugh that resulted from random events that happen now and then. And a great story really should have some lighter moments in it.

But I chose not to use any excerpts from my novels for the contest. I would have had to abridge them to meet Nathan's 350-word limit guideline. So I wrote a brand new scene which comes from no work I've ever done. It's just for the contest.

I want to clarify that my stories are nothing like this sample, btw. This could be a scene from a kind of 'Animal House' type story. But I figure it will qualify as humorous. So here is my sample:

Sample has been deleted.

Ok, that's it. It clocked in at 348 words. It's weird that several entries far exceeded that guideline. But most of the people who entered could count. So I made sure I could too. I don't expect to win. But it was fun. That's good enough for me.

So Many Writers

Sometimes it seems that there are more writers than there are readers. For instance there's about 200 people already who have entered that writing contest on Bransford's blog right now. I remember some contests he's held that drew over five hundred.

I'm still going to enter. But I just want to reread my sample first. I'll post my entry tomorrow. It's not a typical sample of my writing, but just a fun effort. Until then.

Entering Contest

I talked about that writing contest on Nathan Bransford's blog yesterday. I think I'll enter it. Not for any prize or even a chance of winning, which I put at near zero. But for the fun of it.

I mean if you can't write for fun, then maybe you shouldn't be writing. I've had a lot of fun doing a lot of things during my life. From all kinds of different sports to art, painting and drawing, sculpture, playing music, composing songs, sheesh, the list goes on.

And I can truly say I never earned any significant amount of money doing any of it. So now it's writing. Maybe I'll earn some money at that, but who really knows at this point. Time is going by so slowly since I signed that contract with Cogito, that it will probably be an eternity before I see my debut novel, THE VASE, in print.

That's OK. In the meantime, I'll just keep having fun writing. So I took the afternoon off from my WIP, and wrote an entirely new scene for the contest. The contest guidelines limit the piece to a mere 350 words. But I think that's just about right.

I know I was thinking about cutting and pasting an excerpt from one of my stories, but I decided against it and wrote something that is completely unlike anything I've written before. It had to be humorous. And so here's hoping I did a good job.

Perhaps tomorrow's post will be that sample. I'll see how it reads and if I still like it, I'll enter it into the contest and put it on my blog.

Writing Contests

I used to enjoy entering writing contests on various writing blogs. But I haven't entered any for a while now. I suppose I would still enjoy doing it, but I have been so preoccupied with writing my WIP, and editing THE VASE over the past year.

It takes time, you know. Throw in a high school aged son, and a younger son who's nine, and there goes most of your extra time, even over the summer vacation.

It doesn't mean I'll never do it again. For instance, right now on Nathan Bransford's blog he's running a writing contest. It's a humorous one. I'm no humor writer, but my stories do have humorous scenes in them. Maybe I'll just cut and paste an excerpt. I have until Thursday, so I'm thinking about it.

Writing Contest Again

I usually don't participate in these, but I mentioned before that I like to participate in the ones held by Literary Agent Janet Reid. I like hers, as I've said, because they are short ones. 100 words or less. I even like the part about requiring five preselected words. You have to use them in the paragraph and make them all tie in.

This time the words were Paris, Temple, Kids, Loathing, and Cullen. At first, my reaction was...WHAT?? They didn't grab me like some of the preselected words in her prior contests, but she hinted that they all had something in common, and whoever guessed what they were would get bonus points.

So, OK. My entry is as follows:

Paris, 2099. Two decades since the Eiffel Tower fell. Matt Cullen viewed the temple that replaced it, and he barely remembered the once-great, metal-laced landmark. Kids threw rocks in the pits where studded concrete bared ambition, greed, and glorified decadence. He considered the good times when people cared, but those days were done. Now, just a loathing of anything capital drew societal nods. In a few short years, the world had plunged from the heights of private self-sufficiency to the lower depths of state-run depravity. But the reavers in the street didn’t mind. Their time had come.

No, I don't expect to win, but that's OK. My satisfaction comes from putting the five words into a paragraph that, to me, anyway, tells a great story in one hundred words or less.

Reasons for Entering Writing Contests

The reason for entering writing contests is because it's fun. It's challenging. And it's practice. The more you do something, the better you get, no matter what it is. It was my driving force with Art. The more I drew, painted, or sculpted, the better I got. And I got real good just from practice. Then, as I chronicled in an earlier post, I actually learned the science of art from Professor Stewart at San Jose State. Yeah, believe it or not, there is a science to drawing and painting. It was developed by Leonardo da Vinci, and it's no secret to anyone in the know.

As for writing, there are formulas, like you learn from Donald Maass in his book Writing the Breakout Novel, and many others, and there is countless advice on how to write well, but I'm not sure it's a science. It's such a subjective thing. How many times have we heard that? That's the difference between Art and Writing. Sure, in art, there is the abstract movement, and all the variations of it in today's modern art world. (Actually, modern art dates back to the Nineteenth Century, but it has evolved in many subjective ways of its own.) But so many rules are broken in writing, that the subective nature of writing is way over the top. You know...you can have sentence fragments, you can use bad grammar, you don't even have to use punctuation...etc., etc...

But for the most part...the more you write the better you get. And as far as entering writing contests, even if you never win, you will still become a better writer for doing it. And, like I said...it's fun.

Writing Contest Again

I hated missing Janet Reid's last writing contest. But she has one today and I just put in a paragraph. Again, what I like about her contests is that she limits them to just one hundred words. So you don't have to spend a lot of time writing a full page or more. Just one paragraph or so. Takes hardly any time.

Another thing I like is that she requires five preselected words. That inhibits the use of a pre-written paragraph from someone's already in-existence writing. I suppose someone could get an already written paragraph and just substitute the words she requires. But overall, I think, it forces people to come up with something on the spot, and I think, mostly that's what happens.

Sadly, she said this is the last one of the Summer. I hope she has more in the Fall, and Winter, etc. We'll see. I've only had the opportunity to enter once until now, and this is my second try. It's my own fault. I should be more consistent in reading her blog.

Her five words today are: Java, Labrador, Miracle, Devotion, and Serve.

They didn't reach out and grab me like the five words of the first contest I entered. But still, I wanted to play. Here's what I came up with:

It was a long day in Java when the cuckoo failed to fly. But that’s what happened when the Labrador got loose. No one expected a miracle. Every time Lanier escaped, another bird would disappear. Still, the king had just arrived and nothing stopped the show. He loved his royal animals. The lions, trained to sit and stare, always had it easy, but the dogs would leap through rings to serve with absolute devotion. The young monarch loved just one thing more than his pack of dancing canines – his flock of feathered friends, and the cuckoo was his favorite.

Writing Contests

Janet Reid's blog has what I think is the perfect writing contest. It's a 100 words or less writing contest, and she requires the use of five preselected words. I never entered one until yesterday. The five words she required in yesterday's contest compelled me to enter. They were absolutely perfect words: Headgear, Nemesis, Sinister, Minion, and Heinous. I mean, how could you not enter a contest with those words?

And with only 100 words or less, it's not something that would take you all day. It was only a matter of minutes of my time. So I wrote a paragraph and revised it a bit, and here's what I submitted:

The man in blue crunched the headgear and strapped it tight. He ignored the wails. I was but a minion watching from afar, and the cries were unbearable. Mothers cradled infants, and soldiers, pummeled into soulless husks, dropped to their knees like wheat scythed in spring. Our nemesis, an overreaching bloc of sinister origins, snared an unlikely victory, and the only one who stood for a cause awaited his end. But we should have expected it. Once the bridge to our homeworld collapsed, nothing short of nuclear war would have stemmed the heinous tides of crawling encroachment and dark transformation.

The man in blue is a government official, like an executioner. I considered that executioners usually wear black, but this is not a typical earthlike setting, as "...the bridge to our homeworld..." suggested. Besides, I thought "man in blue" sounded better than "man in black" or just, "the executioner." When I write I want the words to sing, and it seemed to sing better that way. I'm hoping that the scenario was explained sufficiently when I wrote, "...and the only one who stood for a cause awaited his end..."

So, what we have in this paragraph is an impending execution by a force of otherworlders who have recently taken over another society. No, it's not a WIP, or an excerpt of anything I have on the table. It's just something that came to me as inspired by the five words. It was fun.