While I've been neck deep in the heavy rewrites and revisions of my current WIP (work in progress for all you not yet in the know), I've also been throwing my proverbial hat into the ring by submitting short stories all over the place.
1) My short story "The Resurrectionist" won 2nd place in the 2013 Vegas Valley Book Festival Flash Fiction contest. (I'll be reading my winning entry at the VVBF on Saturday Nov 2nd at noon in the small courtyard of the old 5th street schoolhouse in downtown Las Vegas)
2) My short story "Rainmaker" was just picked up by Dark Fuse for their Horror d'oeuvres flash fiction outlet. Fun stuff. Rainmaker was my entry in the Killercon 2013 Creative Fiction contest, judged by the peerless Ellen Datlow and Christopher Rice (a rising star to watch).
Both stories were written on the same day (within a few hours of one another) in two timed contests. The first contest allowed 90 minutes to write, edit and submit, the second only 20 minutes.
Most of you know that I have a super-duper writers group. The Illiterati.
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| Watch out, better hide your kids, hide your wife. |
In September the Illiterati as a group entered two short story contests in a row: The Killercon 2013 Creative Fiction contest and the 2013 Vegas Valley Book Festival Flash Fiction contest.
We won both.
(Congrats to Matt Czarnowski for his Illiterati-representing Killercon win!)
I credit as much to our own (growing) writing ability as I do to the sense of friendly competition of "outwriting" one another. I admire and enjoy the unique writing voice and style of each member of my group, and to go head-to-head with them is both an honor and a real challenge.
What are you waiting for? Find some like-minded writers and start yourself a writers group. You won't know what you're doing at first, but you'll learn.
