Yo! Writers! Contests Galore!

I was just going to ramble a bit about certain contests I keep coming across, but decided that was WAY too much work on my end. So I'm doing the whole copy/paste thing from their blogs. First up...
*************

The ladies at Shooting Stars are holding a contest. All you have to do is leave a comment on their blog, become a follower, or talk about this contest to enter.

The Prizes:

Two query critiques
Two first five page critiques
A signed copy of The Dark Divine by Bree Despain.

But wait . . . there's more!

*************************************************
This is from the blog, Wordplay, Swordplay, The Magic of Writing: For the Love of Books! She is hosting this contest.

The Rules:

Like any good contest, you must be a follower in order to win.

You must comment on this post.

In that comment, you need to give me your favorite piece of writerly advice and your favorite resource for writing, whether that be a book or a website. Hey, I'm just starting out and I need to learn more! ;)
That's it! Easy, right?

So onto the fun! First prize is a $25 gift certificate at amazon.com! For the love of books! Second prize is a random assortment of books I have in the house. Okay, honesty time. James and I bought each other duplicate copies of some books (we obviously need to coordinate better) so our loss is your gain. It doesn't get better than that!

The books are: Jim Butcher's Captain's Fury and books 1 and 2 of Michael Buckley's The Sisters Grimm series.

And there's one more contest (that I know of)...
********************
Welcome to the 12th Clarity of Night Contest!! Before the post-holiday doldrums gain a foothold, let's get a little juiced up, shall we?

Here's how the contest works. Using the photograph above for inspiration, compose a short fiction (or poetry) piece of no more than 250 words in any genre or style. Send your entry to me by email at jevanswriter at yahoo dot com before 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 13th (Eastern Time, United States). I'd prefer attachments formatted in Microsoft Word (please see the format request below), but if you have something more exotic, you can paste the text into the body of an email (no docx formats, please). Each entry will be posted and indexed.

Now for the goodies. The following prizes are up for grabs:

1st Place: $50 Amazon gift certificate
2nd Place: $30 Amazon gift certificate
3rd Place: $25 Amazon gift certificate
4th Place: $20 Amazon gift certificate
5th Place: $15 Amazon gift certificate
Readers' Choice Award 1st Place: $25 Amazon Gift certificate

But this is about more than prizes. I hope you take advantage of the opportunity to meet and interact with your fellow writers. Our different perspectives, styles, and skills shine when we all start at the same place. It's a great opportunity to learn from each other.

Rules:

250 words maximum.

Titles are optional, but encouraged. Titles do not count toward your word count.

One entry per person.

Any genre or style is welcome. If you choose to submit poetry, you must have narrative movement within the poem if you wish to compete with the prose pieces for the prizes.

The copyright remains with you, the author; however, you grant me worldwide first electronic publishing rights to post your entry on this blog indefinitely.

Judging will be conducted by me, Jason Evans. For an explanation of the judging criteria and scoring system, see A Note on Judging. You can also read the winning entries from past contests.

Please provide a name for your byline. If you have a website or a blog, I'd be happy to link your site to your byline. If you don't have a website or blog, feel free to include a short bio. A bio does not count towards your word count.

At the close of the contest, I will give the date and time for the announcement of winners.

After the winners are announced, I will post what I liked most about each entry in the comments.

The Readers' Choice Award is awarded by vote of the contest participants. The entry with the highest number of votes wins. The rules for this portion of the contest will be posted after the entry period closes.

Public critiques in comments are encouraged, but must remain respectful. I reserve the right to delete comments and ban participants who do not abide by the collegial spirit of Clarity of Night contests.

Visit Jason's site for additional information on how to submit.

Fractured Fairytales: Rapunzel - The Weave Stylist

The word is Beauty Technician, not “stylist.” Get it right.

Sure, I shampoo hair and place in highlights. But so do dog groomers. Please give this sista her proper respect. I am a BEAUTY TECHNICIAN. How else do you think I can weave my hair into a braid long and strong enough to let Dame Gothel up here into this tower with no stairs or doors?

Okay, yeah. I’m a prisoner in this tower. As far as I understand it, my parents are to blame. See, when my real mother got pregnant, she had a major case of the munchies. Yet instead of eating simple things like peanut butter-covered pickles, she wanted these rampion radishes located in a walled garden owned by their next door neighbor, Dame Gothel. So instead of the old man asking for some, or at least slipping the neighbor some cash, he climbed the wall and stole the radishes.

On the third night, Dame Gothel busted his sorry ass for theft.

The old man pleaded for mercy since he didn’t want to go back into the state pen again. He went through some incident that dealt with dropped soap in the shower. Anyway, Dame Gothel decided she won’t call THE MAN if he gave over his unborn child as her ward. Desperate, my father agreed. When I was born, the enchantress took me away, named me Rapunzel (I think it relates to those rampion radishes - like a cruel inside joke) and when I got older she locked me in this tower.

That’s about how everything went down.

Now, I spend my days singing and working on my hair to get my beautician’s license. Nothing much else for me to do. During the day, Dame Gothel stops by with food. She calls up to me:

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair so that I may climb up your golden stair.”

Look, I know it’s corny. But the tower is high and I can’t hear much when people shout from the ground. Dame Gothel is a witch (actually, I could substitute another word in there easily) and she placed a spell on those words so I can hear them. I drape my hair down to the ground and the woman climbs up.

No, I don’t know why the witch just doesn’t ride her broom up here. Believe me; I get awful breakage along the roots with her tugging and yanking. Leaves me with a headache every time. And do you now how much cream relaxer I have to put in to get my hair long enough to the ground? Stinks, too.

Anyhow, late one night, I hear the magic words. It seems strange, the old woman doesn’t usually come at night, but I’m half asleep and thinking maybe she’s bringing desserts for a special occasion. I toss out my hair and the person climbs up.

Oh . . . MY! This is definitely not Dame Gothel.

Sweet! Let me tell you something. This man is looking fine. Tight sculpted butt. Six pack chest. Beautiful puppy dog eyes. And did I say he had one fine-looking backside? Hey, so nice I have to say it twice.

So we start getting along and checking each other out. He has this fetish for long-haired singers. He says he heard me a few nights back yet couldn’t get into the tower until he overheard Dame Gothel shouting the magic words. We talk throughout most of the night. When it’s almost sunrise, this gorgeous prince promises to help me escape by coming back each night with silk to weave into a ladder.

I ask him why he just doesn’t bring a rope next time, but he says there is none in the entire kingdom. It has to do with the rope factory workers going on a three-year strike or something.

During the day, Dame Gothel comes by with the food. At night, the prince comes by with the silk. I hide the silk under the bed. Then, one night, the prince brings more than just the silk.

Come on! I haven’t been with a man since . . . never! I have those urges like anyone else. Also, the way the moonlight comes in through the window, lighting him up like a Greek god, you can’t blame us for this.

So there we are up against the wall, knocking boots, when suddenly he curses out.

“What is it?” I ask between breaths.

He begins stuttering. “Oh, SNAP! I didn’t know this was going to happen. Damn. Hey, girl? I think the condom broke.”

“Are you for real?”

The prince acts all sheepish. “Yeah, I ain’t playing with you on this. It should be all right though. We did it while standing. Everyone knows it’s harder for a girl to get pregnant like that.”

I frown. “You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. No worries, Boo. You know I love you and all. We’ll get married right after we get you out this tower. I ain’t no player,” he says.

Not much I can do but take his word for it. He leaves before Dame Gothel stops by. She acts all suspicious though. She picks up something from the floor. “What’s this?” She holds it out for me to get a good long look.

The condom wrapper.

Can’t really say much about it. The afterglow on my face gives me away. Dame Gothel threatens to toss me from the window, yet I tell her that I might be pregnant from the broken condom. Well, she isn’t going to do anything life-threatening to me now. Instead, she cuts off my hair and tells me to climb down and fend for myself in the wilderness. I hightail it out of there.

But what now? I forgot to ask my prince for his crib address, and I can’t wait for him around the tower without Dame Gothel getting angry. She might cast a spell over me. I wander around for several days until, hungry and exhausted, I collapse outside a house.

Dwarf Ralph’s Styling Shop.

The owner, Ralph, carries me inside. He used to be the eighth dwarf living with his brothers out by the mountains. Yet when this homeless waif came a-knocking, they had to make room for her. Since he wasn’t into the whole ‘mining for gold’ thing, he left to start his own hair stylist business.

Er, I mean BEAUTY TECHNICIAN business.

He learned about my skills and I stayed with him, paying my way by using my braid weaving skills while giving birth to my son. Then, one day, by the stream to get rinse water while singing to myself, a blind man appears.

My prince.

Crying, I rush over. I hold him close, and wouldn’t you know it? My tears heal his eyes. My prince tells me that he returned to the tower and called out the magic words. The braid came down, he climbed up, and the witch stood there. She went all psycho on him. They struggled and he fell out the window while holding the braid. He landed into the thorn bushes, getting blind. He wandered away while leaving the witch trapped up in her tower. He was passing along the road when he heard me singing and recognized the voice.

My son comes out and his father holds him close. I have my man, my son, my beautician’s license, and revenge on the trapped Dame Gothel. Life can’t get any better than this.

Just buy the cow: Blogger Idol Competition: Round 1

We all have our moments when ingenuity takes a backseat to downright stupidity futility. That being said, there comes a time when we have to sit back and say, “What the Hell?”

Er . . . I mean, “We should applaud that person for their efforts!”

The person in question was a young Swedish man by the name of Ragnar Bengtsson. Back in September, he pledged to bust out a breast pump daily in three-hour intervals until December in an effort to produce breast milk.

Let’s all take a moment to comprehend this. Man... breast pump... 4 months straight.

The reason? He was quoted as saying, “Anything that doesn't do any harm is worth trying out, and if it works it could prove very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage.”

Um, yeah. Okay. I can almost buy that explanation.

One Swedish endocrinologist said that if this man stuck to his plan, he may be able to produce enough of the hormone prolactin to cause lactation. However, she suggested that perhaps he and other men like him could instead offer their children a breast just for comfort...

"Men often have trouble finding things if the mother is out, the child is screaming, and they can't find the pacifier. I'm sure there are a lot of men who give their baby their breasts.”

Shall I take another moment of silence or just go right into my piece now? Okay. I’ll wait while the image of a mother coming home and finding her baby up at her husband’s chest as he’s watching the show, “Nip/Tuck,” runs through your mind.

Well, that wasn’t a pleasant image. Sorry.

Sufficed to say, he gave up on his . . . experiment . . . last month. All I have to say is, too bad.

Can you imagine what would have happened if this had actually worked? The benefits would be astounding. In one fell swoop, or overflowing breast, this man would have accomplished the unthinkable: World Peace.

No terrorist/dictator would get it into his fool head to invade another country if they had to breast feed their children. Think about that conversation:

Two terrorists sitting at a table diagraming their plans...

“Come, Omar. Let me put this explosive up your butt so you can set it off in the plaza.”
“Not right now, Punji. I’m lactating.”

You see there? It’s a known fact that men cannot concentrate on making plans for world domination, or anything else, when all they have to think about are breasts (and this was true WAY before Ragnar Bengtsson’s efforts). There would also be a drastic dip in violence and crimes nationwide. With men now obligated to lend a “breast” hand in the child-rearing role, such criminal thoughts would never enter their minds.

A robber walking into a bank while holding a gun in one hand and a pump in the other? It would never happen. No way he could slip the bank teller a note.

And if men could breast feed, this would also give women more time to do those important household chores like grocery shopping, driving the older kids to soccer practice, and brain surgery. Of course, I would be careful if the man breast-fed during the football game and decided to spike the baby during a touchdown.

Oh well. A failed endeavor. Maybe another man would like to try a different experiment in an effort to understand women more and the hassles we face during our lives.

I’m all for them having menstruation.

Moo!

 Make sure to cast your vote at Knucklehead's place. And please stop in at the other people's sites (links are up at Knucklehead) to read their posts and cast your votes. Your Opinion Matters!

Get Blitzed!

Have one on me!

And have a Happy New Year!