Month: May 2012

Week 19 Flash Fiction Challenge: Fate 101

Photo by K. S. Brooks

The guy on the bike did not notice the girl with the backpack, nor did she see him. It’s not the first time. He didn’t see her at the movies. She didn’t see him in line at the bank. He didn’t see her going down the escalator at the mall as he went up.

In truth, they have crossed paths with each other a hundred times. Today is the hundredth time. The next time they meet, they will remember it always.

The next time they meet something big will happen that changes both their lives forever. The next time will be the 101st time they have met, but the first time either will know it, and the first they will remember.

In 250 words or less, tell me a story incorporating the elements in the picture. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced.

Please keep language and subject matter to a PG-13 level.

Use the comment section below to submit your entry. Entries will be accepted until 5:00 PM Pacific Time on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012.

On Wednesday morning, we will open voting to the public with an online poll for the best writing entry accompanying the photo. Voting will be open until 5:00 PM Thursday.

On Friday morning, the winner will be recognized as we post the winning entry along with the picture as a feature. Best of luck to you all in your writing!

Entries only in the comment section. Other comments will be deleted.

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Photograph by K.S. Brooks, used here with the photographer’s permission. Copying or reproduction of any kind without express consent is prohibited. All rights reserved.

For a more detailed explanation of the contest & its workings, please see the post called “Writing Exercises Return with a Twist” from 12/24/11.

By participating in this exercise the contestants agree to the rules of the contest and waive any and all further considerations or permissions otherwise required for any winning entries to be published by Indies Unlimited as an e-book, showcasing all the photos and with the winning expositions credited appropriately and accordingly.

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Spotlight on…The Home Team Part 2

Reviewer Cathy Speight

A few weeks ago I featured three books written by members of our illustrious team (see here). Our team is now made up of many members and lots of books, so here are another three. (I’m trying to keep up, team, I’m trying really hard!).

This week I would like to draw your attention to Joe Café, by J D Mader, The Joke’s On Me by Laurie Boris and Bad Book, by Mader, K S Brooks and Stephen Hise. Three different books, three very good reads.

Continue reading “Spotlight on…The Home Team Part 2”

Southern Sin Creative Nonfiction Contest

Creative Nonfiction and the Oxford Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference & Workshop are looking for essays that capture the South in all its steamy sinfulness. Your essay can channel William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, Alice Walker or Rick Bragg; it can be serious, humorous, or somewhere in between, but all essays must tell true stories, and must incorporate both sin and the South in some way. The selected essays will be published in Creative Nonfiction #47, and CNF and Oxford will be awarding $5000 for Best Essay. Essays must be unpublished, 4,000 words maximum.

There is a $20 reading fee; multiple entries are welcome ($20/essay) as are entries from outside the U.S.  The deadline is July 31, 2012.

For more information, please visit the website.

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Indies Unlimited is pleased to provide this contest information for the convenience of our readers. We do not, however, endorse this or any contest/competition. Entrants should always research a competition prior to entering.[subscribe2]

The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” © The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1966

I’ve discovered a potentially fatal flaw in my personality. I mean, outside the more obvious ones (no need to point them out in the comments section, folks). Put simply, I like genre and I like literary. In musical terms, I like teen pop and modern classical, Spears and Stockhausen, Avril and Arvo. But this post is neither a demonstration of my “amazing” pop cultural eclecticism nor a reflection of my mental health anxieties; we like what we like, after all. No, this post is an attempt to reconcile two apparently opposing impulses in the world of writing; the aforementioned (alleged) impasse between genre and literary fiction.

For anyone who has attended a university-level creative writing course, even a single workshop, this dichotomy might already have raised its slightly distorted head. I majored in English literature and I’ve also attended a one-year certificate course in creative writing at a local university, and I don’t regret either of them. My purpose here is certainly not to trash the rarefied air of academia. Far from it. Because I genuinely learned a great deal about writing—about what works and what doesn’t work, about the inner alchemy and the outer pragmatism of this eccentric world—from those two experiences. Not to mention the confidence boost of sharing your work among motivated and engaged peers as deeply in love with the written word as you, alongside the equally essential practice of reading in front of an audience so you don’t forget that word’s spoken nature either. Continue reading “The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent”