Upcoming Clarity of Night flash fiction contest

Anyone out there enjoy writing flash fiction? Ever wanted to experiment with short-short stories? Here's a great opportunity!

The Clarity of Night blog, run by Jason Evans, is hosting the 14th flash fiction contest. Each contest has writers submitting flash fiction pieces inspired by specific photos. Here's the one for the next contest, titled "Elemental."

The rules are pretty simple. Your flash fiction story cannot exceed 250 words. Beyond that, content and genre are pretty much up for grabs. There are some great prizes too, including a $50 Amazon gift certificate and print of the photo.

For the upcoming contest, Evans has a couple key posts about how he rates entries, and suggestions on what you can do to improve your chances of winning. Definitely check these out to get an edge over other contestants.

Because of the increased popularity of the contest and the number of past submissions, Evans is also putting a limit on entries--somewhere in the low-to-mid one hundreds. The contest officially starts in a few weeks, so start developing your flash fiction now, so it can be polished and ready to submit as soon as possible to ensure your piece is eligible.

Here also is the link to the last contest, where my entry, The Care and Feeding of Angels, had the good fortune to place 1st in both the general judging and Reader's Choice Award.

See you there! Good luck, everyone!

BookSwim - A Netflix for books?

Not sure how long BookSwim has been around, but I just discovered it. Basically you pay a monthly fee to have a certain amount of books delivered to your door. You then read them and return them in exchange for new books, etc. 

Subscriptions run anywhere from $9.95 a month (plus shipping) for a single book to $59.95 if you're ambitious enough to tackle 11 books a month. 


My initial reaction is this:

1. Are you kidding me?

2. Go to a library.

3. I'll be extremely surprised if this lasts long or is profitable in any way.

4. The price points are way off. If you're paying $9.95 a month for just 1 book, why not just buy the freakin' book in paperback?

5. Oh, how I love my Kindle (insert e-reader of your choice here). 

5. And seriously. Libraries. Check 'em out.

Don't mess with my dedicated e-reader device

I don't want my Kindle connected to the internet (except when getting ebooks wireless delivered). In fact, I don't really want an e-reader that does anything but store and display ebooks in a handy fashion. I don't want email on my Kindle. I don't want a browser or chat or music (Okay, maybe music, but that's it!) or social networks or photos (except cover art!) or apps or games. None of that. Get away from my Kindle or whatever future ebook reading device I'll purchase in the years to come.

Now, don't take me for a Kindle purist or devotee. I'm not about to give the Kindle a tongue-bath or duel someone to the death because they prefer the Nook. We're not talking slavish devotion here.

I enjoy my Kindle. It does what needs doing to give me my reading fix. Especially when I'm on the go and don't want to heft a ton of books around. Trust me, I've gone through enough house and apartment movies with boxes of books to endure that particular back pain.

The thing is, I'm also easily distracted, especially when there's an internet connection lurking about. When I've got a device hooked up to WiFi or cable, then my reading focus tends to take a sudden plunge. There's email to be read/written, Twitter and Facebook to be checked and updated, blogs to be browsed, forums to comment on...etc...

So as e-readers evolve, I can already see more features being slapped on. Plenty of people also predict that All-In-One device like it's some sort of technological Singularity. That one device that will do everything that our computers and phones and pads and pods and piddles and paddles (does Apple make those last two yet?) and whatever other gewgaws we lug around that have power buttons and flashy lights.

The reality is, though, I don't want my ebooks caught up in all that tangled mess of electrons. I want them to remain in a nice virtual To-Read pile that is separate from the rest.

Mainly this is because reading, for me, has always been a way to disconnect from the stress and whirl of the world. It's my way of checking out and enjoying the adventure that a good fantasy or science fiction novel offers. The joy of shucking off a few banal responsibilities until tomorrow while I let an evening slip by, lost in another world.

And so, if those other worlds, even in ebook form, are connected to all the other virtual scapes that I'm trying to get away from in the first place, I know the borders will get worn down eventually. The books will slip a bit on the priority list as there'd always be some other distraction offering itself. Another blinking light to attend to, or a bleeping update to silence.

Maybe it's a stance I'll adjust on later, once we've got contacts beaming text straight into our optic nerves. Until then, I'll enjoy the benefits e-readers offer so far as the book-reading experience goes; but when all the frills and add-ons start edging in my ability to simply enjoy a good story (and write one, once a decent keyboard and word processor is developed) then I'm gonna have to dig in my heels.

What about you? Do you feel the need to keep your e-reader and ebooks sectioned off from the rest of your gadgets, or are you eagerly awaiting being able to do everything and anything with a unified device?

Digging up past manuscripts - A writing exercise

So I've been pondering a little experiment, and want to toss it out there to see if anyone would be interested if I actually went forward with it.

Over the years, as I've pursued this whole writing career thingamabob, I've written a lot of words. I've got a good handful of novels trunked--ones that will never be published, and for good reason. Despite being relegated to a virtual drawer, each of these novels did serve as a stepping stone. Each one taught me something about being a writer and gave me a few more tools to use in future stories. Each one served as a milestone on my ongoing writing adventure.

Here's the idea then. Would folks be interested if I dug up one or two of these old manuscripts and posted a series of chapters/scenes from them, which I would then comment on with a good measure of hindsight? The things that didn't work. Maybe something that did. The evolution of the writing style, the story concept, characters, etc. Basically whatever comes to mind as I go back over the text with an older (and hopefully wiser) eye.

It could be fun, we might all learn a little something, and hopefully some other writers might avoid a few prose pitfalls by virtue of "Don't do this!" Besides, you'd at least get a chuckle or two seeing some of my early awkward attempts.

Yay/Nay?

When I review a book I didn't enjoy

If you've dropped by this blog from time-to-time or follow me on Twitter, you've seen the occasional review posted on my Speculative Fiction Examiner. I get a general influx of review copies from publishers such as Tor, Pyr, Night Shade Books, and a few others, both in the mail and for my Kindle. These then get read and reviewed, often with as much praise as I can heap on it and the author. Besides writing, a great love of mine is reading a wonderful story and introducing it to as many others as I can.

But what happens when I get a review copy, and end up not enjoying the story or characters?

Here's the thing: I want to enjoy the book. I want to be hooked hard and unable to put it down until I've finished the last chapter. I want to rave to my friends about how much they'll enjoy it, until they put in restraining orders.

But sometimes, I can't.

Now, this doesn't always mean the book is bad, per se. Sometimes it just means the book isn't written in a style I enjoy, or I'm just not the target audience. That happens. That's why there are genres and all that in the first place. Everyone has different tastes.

Sometimes, though, there are some definite things I dislike in a story. Things that hamper the reading experience for me, and I believe will do so for others. See, for instance, two of my more recent reviews, both of books I couldn't make myself finish. When it comes time to review these books, I hesitate. Mainly this is because I know how negative reviews affect writers. As an aspiring author myself, I certainly wouldn't want a new release panned.

What then?

Well, there are a couple options. Two easy paths to take include:

A. Ignore the book and not review it.
B. Lie and praise the book despite the flaws I perceive.

But I can't only ever review just the books that I deem amazing. There has to be a balance. And I'm not going to lie, because I want people who read my reviews to trust that I'm being straight up with them about what I thought of the book. That's kind of the whole point, right?

So my tactic ends up being similar to what I do when I'm critiquing a fellow writer's story through the Online Writing Workshop, or in the local writing group I attend. I first point out the things that I enjoyed about the story. If you look hard enough, you can find something positive to say, right? Even if you have to look extremely long and hard in some cases. Maybe the writing is clever. Maybe the world is imaginative.

The next step is pointing out the negative aspects as diplomatically as possible. No need to bash the author over the head. No need to do name-calling or finger-pointing. I try to remain as objective as possible and provide solid reasons for why I can't recommend the read. Is it the characters? The lack of tension or slow pacing? Too many plot holes? If I can point out, even to myself, several examples of the book's particular shortcomings, it at least reinforces my belief that I'm not just imagining things.

And then I move on to the next one, hoping it will be one I can be enthusiastic about. After all, there's always another book, and that To-Read pile never gets any smaller.