Competition Results

Recently, I submitted two of my pieces into competitions. 13L was entered in The Southern Cross Literary Competition, ran by Ballarat Writers and A Visit from Santa was entered in the CAE Cut Short Flash Fiction Competition. It was a double blow to my ego when I found out the results, let me tell you. I had worked my arse of for months perfecting these stories. It pissed me off to not even get a mention.

However, upon further reflection, and when I got over it (which didn't take long) I came to the conclusion that I should be more careful of where I enter my stories. I am a genre writer and I always will be. After reading the judges' reports, I knew that the winners had written 'literary' pieces, not speculative fiction. It was a lack of judgement on my part and I should have known that speculative pieces simply don't fit into literary competitions. Literature is a whole different world - no offense to the gifted literature writers out there. So, I've vented, it's off my chest and now I can move on.

On a brighter note, work on The Devil's Number is moving along at a cracking pace. It now sits at 9,200 words - that's 36.8% of my target - nearly half way. I can now tell you how the novella is going to be constructed. As I've mentioned previously, it has a prologue. It will also have three parts. Each part will be divided up into mini chapters. The reason I am constructing it this way is because I feel that it suits the type of story I'm trying to tell and it will also read very quickly. My goal is to create a page-turner and I think this format will definitely work. The first draft of Part 1 is now complete. Now on to Part 2....

What I'm reading: Stephen King's The Cell