OUR NEXT MEETING

Just a reminder to the Scribblers - there is no meeting tomorrow. Our next meeting is on Tuesday April 5th in the Room at the Top, Felixstowe Library. Start 7.30pm. Homework assignment 1,000 words on 'Chimney'.

Unbound Press Short Story Award Results

1st Place Samuel Wright Simple Present ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 2nd Place Laura Grace The Clockmaker’s Wife ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 3rd Place Richard Smyth The Trespasser’s Bible ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Shortlist Rico Craig – Skyrocket; Emily Munro – The Funeral Shroud; Thomas Woods – Suitably Framed ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Honorable Mention Colette Bernhardt – The Rail Enthusiast; Alex Cox – Sealed; Andrew Graham – And into the Summer; Ryan Hardgrove – The Other Side; W.F. Lantry – Saaki; James McIntyre – Glass Cow Town; Daniela Norris – In Search of a Hero. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ The winning and shortlisted entries will appear in our annual print anthology due for publication November, 2011. Honorable Mentions will appear in Spilling Ink Review: Issue 5 due June 1, 2011 (pending author agreement). Thank you to all who participated in the Short Story Award. This is a very happy day for me because I love being able to publically acknowledge talented writers and I love being able to deliver £425 in prizes. Amy Burns

Short story competition

Laurel House Creative Workshops
Short story competition

As an introduction to our work here at LHCW, we are running a short story competition.
Each story entered will receive a 400 word critique.
The winner will receive £100, a full and comprehensive LHCW critique with suggested markets, an online tutorial and publication in the first LHCW anthology.
First runner up will receive a full LHCW critique and publication.

Submission Guidelines
We’re looking for innovative fiction. Stories that make us sit up and take notice. Give us well-rounded characters, sharp dialogue and an ending that avoids cliché! Stories should be up to 4,000 words – double spaced, in a word document. Entries are judged anonymously so please include a cover sheet with your name, email address, home address and title of story.

Submit
Please email your stories to laurelhousepublishing@gmail.com
Entry fee £4.00 Payable via PayPal at above email address.
Deadline July 4th 2011
You can also sumbit by post to Laurel House Creative Workshops, Laurel House, Groesfaen, Rhondda Cynon Taff, CF72 8NS
We will respond to submissions by email.Website address: http://laurelhousecreativeworkshops.webs.com/index.htm
http://lyndanash.webs.com/

Hi Scribes

I hope all your 'Chimneys" are smoking with prose for the next meeting's homework, but put a slight damper on it for now as we have no meeting next Tuesday. The next one is due on the 5th of April, so enjoy the sunshine for now.

See you all on the 5th.

Barry.

And the Winners of PenTales "Borders" Contest Are...

It's been a long and difficult journey, but PenTales has finally selected the winners of our story contest on Borders. We received over a hundred innovative and inspiring takes on our theme. Submissions hailed from all over the world, making this a contest of truly international proportions.

PenTales would like to thank everyone who participated in the contest and extend a special thanks to comedian Seth Herzog who reviewed our first-place story "Border Crystal" by John Washington and to writer Dee Sulaitis who picked and ranked from a veritable treasure trove of stories the top five works.

Oh, and heads up! It's not too late to submit your photo or text to PenTales's latest story competition on travel, The IT.A.CÀ Contest.

Here's to Spring 2011,

Saskia, Stephanie and the entire PenTales Crew hailing from 20 cities around the world.

"Border Crystal" by John Washington of Tucson, Arizona

The piece that won PenTales’s inaugural story contest on “Borders” is part of a novel-in-progress by the author.

He said that he came to work, not to cross the wall this time, but just to work in some of the factories along the border, and I believed him.

He told me that he was religious, and I believed him about that, too. And he found a job, like he was looking for, in a factory within sight of the border-wall. His plan was to work for a few years, save up enough money to buy a house, and then get married. He was only in his twenties. He told me that some of the other men at the factory were better workers than he was, and that they were making more money because they were installing the circuits faster than he was. For awhile, he said, he thought that they were just better workers than he was, that he was used to farming and that they were used to machines, but then one day they told him their secret.

They showed him the crystal, which was a meth rock, and they showed him how to smoke it, and they admitted it was a drug but a drug, they said, that you could live with, a drug that you could work with, and they told him that they weren’t even addicted to it, that they were only smoking for a few years, to make money, to do their jobs better, and that they would stop and go back to their land, that they would return to their tierra, just the same as him. Continue reading...

A Review of "Border Crystal" by Seth Herzog

I’ve never done meth (as far as I know), but after reading John Washington’s “Border Crystal”, I think it’s time. I find myself tending toward the lazy end of the spectrum at times and yes, I’m not afraid of a little procrastination, but now I see all I need is a little dose of some good ol’ fashion meth. I could be getting a lot more done, and without all that messy “sleeping” or “eating” to distract me.

Our story is told secondhand from someone who heard from the source (allegedly…) about a young man (I’m assuming who lives in Michigan and is working in a factory in Canada) who longs to make some money so he can provide for his future wife, future kids, and make payments on his future farm. He seems so sure of this “future family,” like he saw them as an apparition, as one might in a Christmas-themed movie wherein our hero then has to change his ways to make sure he achieves the suburban dream Hollywood urges us to aspire to. (But I digress.) In our hero’s zest for making money he wants to work harder and his colleagues introduce him to crystal meth. Continue reading...

Other Winning Stories

"The Border Crossing" by Dee Turbon of Scotland "Borders" by Pia Swainer of London "Alice" by Sarah Volkmann of Langley, British Columbia "The Ballerina" by Shydel James of New Jersey

Created in New York City by two childhood friends who loved to swap tales, PenTales empowers people to share stories (in photography, illustration, and writing) on the topics that unite us all.

Monday again..

March 21 issue of WritingRaw.com is now online!

New in this issue:

FICTION:
Contest by Housten T. Hale IV
I Got You Babe by Ralph Bland
Keeping Time Stephen Black w/ Ronnie See
Letters by Christina Murphy
Seeing Things Rick Maloy
Support Ken Sieben
The Boy and the Peach Trevor Hackley
The Great Planetary Shower by Andrew Vastag
The New Balkan Empire by Tom Sheehan
Vegas I by Jon Cass

SERIAL:
really BAD Shakespeare - Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8
Toy Soldiers: Chapter 25 by Peter Neville

POETRY:
Arcades and Freedom by Ron Koppelberger
Condemned to Write by David Clarke
End Of Times by Una Clarke
Good Bye My Angle by Tyler W. Stinson
Like In Ramallah by Elaine Rosenberg Miller
The Spectacled Scrum by David Clarke
Tinnitus On The Shortwave by Andrea Broxton
Untitled by Anna Noneya
What Are You Thinking Now by G David Schwartz
Words For A Dead Daughter by Jorge Salavert
Women by Barbara R. DuBois
Worthy by Ariel Bell

ASSORTED:
Silence with the Storm, 4: A Life's History by Rattan Mann
The Seduction of a “High" Society by Amita Murray

INTERVIEWS:
Matthew Gallaway
Olen Steinhauer

ART:
Tanner Smitt

REVIEWS:
Allbooks Review
Between the Sheets: The Manticore by Robertson Davies
FLASH REVIEW by Ditch: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Rib Reads

Now, some announcements:

· really BAD Shakespeare starts with repeats this week - starting with Season 1. Two expanded episodes will appear in each issue for 12 weeks... building to the start of Season 3.

WritingRaw also supports other sites that help writers: www.WritingRaw.com believes in reaching out to other sites, writing groups, forums, and organizations. Contact us on how you can place a FREE banner, announcement or link on our site! Or, perhaps you would like to partner in some way with WritingRaw (column, monthly essay, writing tips, etc.). We are open to ideas…

Or, use the Writing Raw Book Store to promote your novel or poetry collection: If you have a novel or collection that you would like to place in our store, we would be more than happy to do so – for FREE. Just send us a copy of the cover of the book (jpeg, bmp, etc. – please don’t send pdf), a brief synopsis, and a link as to where the material can be purchased.

We are also looking for people to write weekly columns, such as – book and publishing news, exercise and tips, or… well, we are always open to suggestions to help make the site one of the most informative and innovative out there. Let us know if you would like to help in this aspect. All columns will have your byline, your bio information (with hot links to your site), and you will retain all copyright.

The archive has been somewhat purged (after 2 years of material, we needed to clean up some) but, if your material was on WritingRaw.com before the purge and is no longer listed in the archive, we will be more than happy to place it back. Just contact me at weeb@writingraw.com and let me know.

So, what are you waiting for? Stop in and discover a new and emerging voice today.

Weeb
www.WritingRaw.com

Congratulations

Our Beryl is being published in Spilling Ink, Volume 1 'A Collection of Fiction, Nonfiction and Prose Poetry. Available soon....
(see next post for details of how to pre-order your copy)