Double Pimpage

First order of business...Happy Mother's Day to all of you ladies who fit into the category. I hope the day meets your vision of perfection.

Secondly...my flash story Thor's Hammer is up today at 52 Stitches. Umm...yes, it's a horror story and sadly no mother's appear in the story (perhaps that's a good thing). If it's any consolation, one is mentioned. Please check it out at some point this week.

Thirdly...Over at Not From Here, Are You? Michael J. Solender is kicking off his Canadian week starting tomorrow and running through Thursday. Carolyn 'Breeze' Parsons, follower of this blog will be appearing tomorrow and I will be sharing the stage on Wednesday with the talented Cathy Olliffe. My contribution to Canada week is a short essay Canada and America: The Great Divide about the relationship between us and our neighbours (yes, I spelled it correctly) to the south. He, he, he...and I apologise to my fine American friends in advance...

Finally, a link to a cool video on YouTube that was sent to me this week. The 10.4 million views indicates that it went viral, but just incase you missed it it's throws out a lot of facts and figures about the explosion of Infromation Technology in the past few years. Compelling stuff.

Again, Mother's Day greetings to you motherly types and I hope you get all of the...[select one]

• doughnuts


• bacon and eggs


• flowers and chocolates


• embroidered pillows


• peace and quiet

...that you deserve!

The Birth and Rebirth of Stories

I am new enough at the writing game to only now be noticing how much a story can change over time. It was only a week ago that I was whining about not getting information from EDF about the fate of a story I had sent them. Ask and thou shalt receive...shortly after that came their rejection letter.

I decided to take another short story that I had been working on and send it back at them the same day. Targeting Hunger and Blue Balloons was sent out under a different name and only 100 words long to Flashshot. It was rejected as it 'didn't fit any of their genres'. Fair enough. I took the story and fleshed it out, bringing it to 800 words. It works for me as a Literary/Fantasy piece and I hope that it works for them.

My second example of story rebirth is a literary piece called The Inscription that started out as a class project at about 500 words. I then expanded it to 1400 words and entered it in the Arts & Letters competition here last year (a provincially funded competition with 5 prizes of $1000). I would give you all the particulars of this, but it's only open to residents of Newfoundland and Labrador...anyway, the story didn't win me a cent. I did get some useful feedback from the judge and revised and expanded it again to just over 2000 words and sent it to a university publication called Paragon. It was rejected there as well. I have just found out about a new competition called The Cuffer Prize in the local newspaper, sponsored by a small publisher. The top prize is $2000, $1000 for second and $500 for third (again, must be a provincial resident). Plus some press coverage. I now am trying to cut is back to its bare essentials to meet the 1200 word maximum. Perhaps third time is the charm (if I may be allowed a cliche). Perhaps its death and rebirth was meant to be.