Happy 2009, folks. This has to be my favorite way to ring in the new year: my short short story The Other James Buchanan won a first prize in Geist Magazine’s first annual short long-distance fiction contest. It will also be in print in the next issue of Geist. It’s my first publication, so I’m psyched.
Enjoy!
Over at the guardian, Sam Jordison asks if brilliant writing is what separates sf from litritcha.
As soon as someone writes a really good sci-fi book it nearly always seems to get reclassified as something else. It’s a bit like the way members of the Ireland cricket team become English once they reach a certain level.
The Road, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Slaughterhouse Five, Never Let Me Go… and those are just off the top of my head. So yeah. Why is it that when we suck, we’re writing sf, but when we rule, suddenly we’re sitting at the cool kids’ table? And by we I mean you. And occasionally me.
Just something I found and liked. An excerpt:
The trouble: You want Thing A but are stuck with Thing B.
Shit, you say, turning Thing B around in your hands. Look at this thing, you say. It’s as dull as a bucket of dirt. It’s not half as interesting as a sculpture of a dog pissing on a dead man’s shoe in the rain, and you don’t have one of those. You don’t have Thing A, either.
I can relate. From the now defunct Backwards City Review.
Last year Amazon and the Penguin Group (USA) unveiled an interesting new contest, the Breakthrough Novel Award. They accepted 10,000 manuscripts, largely from unpublished authors, and over a period of several months whittled down this list to a group of 2,000. Amazon Vine users were encouraged to vote on excerpts from this batch, narrowing it down to a group of 500 novels.
The 500 were evaluated by Publishers Weekly editors, and Penguin’s editors used those evaluations to pick a group of 100 semi-finalists, which were voted on by the hoi polloi to choose three finalists. A panel of guest editors picked the winner, the mystery novel Fresh Kills, by Bill Loehfelm. Last year TWS alumna Gurjinder Basran made it to the semi-finals.
Amazon just announced that they’re doing it again. The prize is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $25,000 advance. The submission deadline in February 2009. Here’s what you need to enter:
Entrants must provide a full Manuscript (Between 50,000 and 150,000 words), an Excerpt from the beginning of your novel (Between 3,000 and 5,000 words), a novel Pitch of up to 300 words and accompanying contest and biographic information such as title, genre, book description, and contact information. (as well as an optional author photo).
So polish that novel that’s been wedged between Fallout 3 and that folder of Facebook messages to your ex- that you write but never send because she won’t accept your friend requests.
And then check out how to enter for more information. Be warned that submissions are rolling and they only accept the first 10,000, so the earlier the better.
Ack! I just stumbled across Narrative Magazine’s Fall Fiction contest, deadline November 30. If you’ve got something ready to rock, why not send it in? Submissions are electronic, you’re already sitting at your computer… I’m just saying.
As always, we look for works that have a strong narrative drive, with characters we can respond to as human beings—works in which the effects of language, situation, and insight are intense and total, and whose authors have the ambition of enlarging our view of ourselves and the world.
Cash moves everything around me, is what you’re thinking. And you wouldn’t be wrong. The prizes:
First Prize is $3,000, Second Prize is $1,500, and Third Prize is $750. The prize winners will be announced in Narrative and will be eligible for publication. Additionally, ten finalists will receive $100 each. We’ll announce finalists in the magazine as well. All entries will be considered for publication.
See the contest page for submission details. Entry fee is $20. Dolla-dolla bill y’all.
This interview with Yann Martell from the Sydney Morning Herald has been sitting in the queue for a while. It’s a good one. He talks about Life of Pi, Stephen Harper and why we need more Holocaust comedies.
Like a lot of guys who were pushing thirty when it came out, I had a slightly embarrassing obsession* with Fight Club, and the homo-erotic, visually stunning piece of awesome that was Fincher’s movie.
Well, say what you want about the book, you have to respect Chuck Palahniuk for really, really embracing the web. Check out that site! He’s got paid memberships, author news, a staff of contributors and ads by American Apparel. That’s not just an author site. That’s not just a brand. That’s a cult. In a good way.
Worth a look to see one way of doing it, though probably too extreme for me. I reserve the right to change my mind if I ever become a best-selling multimillionaire.
* C’mon, I know I’m not the only guy out there who wanted to punch out my boss and bang Helena Bonham Carter. (I left out the bit about having a falling-down house in an industrial wasteland because in 1999, I’d already achieved that impressive milestone, thank you Mr Kawakami.)
Never mind the declining sales of books and depressing statistics that show North Americans are reading less than ever before. Editors Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian see all kinds of silver linings in the gloom, or more accurately, silicon linings.
(Ed: Please forgive me for thinking of, and writing down “silicon linings”. I need my coffee. Moving on…)
“This is a revolutionary period,” says Jenks, 57, who has held fiction editor positions at Esquire, GQ and Scribner’s. “And as with all revolutionary periods, it’s one of enormous opportunity – I don’t think there’s ever been a greater period of opportunity for writers, for literary work.”
The couple put their beliefs to the test when they founded Narrative Magazine, a non-profit literary magazine that is completely online. Within its first year, the site had 12,000 registered users, and is currently above 40,000. Undoubtedly helped by their long-time friends and connections in the literary world, including Jane Smiley, Tobias Wolff and Joyce Carol Oates (hallowed be thy name), not to mention stellar reputations for editing, the site has outstanding fiction, poetry, essays and journalism.
And for the litfarmers, they accept simultaneous electronic submissions, and you can check the status of your submission on their site.
It’s an amazing volunteer effort, with the kind of quality normally associated with venerable la-de-da magazines like The New Yorker. Read more here.
(thx, bn!)
Robert Harris, author of the bestselling historical novels Fatherland, Archangel and Pompeii has some advice in the Guardian on how to write fiction.
Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you’ve yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company – it’s a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there.
Not to worry, the article has plenty of ideas on how to get through something he admits is pretty much a mysterious process that’s different every time. Some advice from John Irving about planning, EL Doctorow about your approach, and Phillip Roth on “belief in your own crap”.