Signal boost: Bradbury minific contest · 3:10am Apr 19th, 2016
If you're a fan of Ray Bradbury (and if you like my writing, you either are or should be), here's something to keep an eye on: The Mid-Continent Public Library in Kansas City is sponsoring an open minifiction competition themed around Bradbury and his works. The prompt is to use at least one of a provided list of nouns (a block-breaking technique of his), and the story has to be 451 words or less. I don't think you get anything besides egoboo out of winning, but it's also smaller-than-Writeoff-sized, so if you want to flex your brain and write some tiny original fiction, it might be a good use of a few hours. Deadline is April 30; more information at the link.
(Speaking of the Writeoffs, there's going to be a competition this weekend while I'm off at Babscon. All of y'all who won't be at the con are going to go submit something, right? Now that Cold in Gardez has passed me on the scoreboard, he needs even more of you high-caliber authors competing to keep him honest.)
Sounds super neat! I'd guess I'd better get cracking if I want to have any hope of having something presentable done by the 30th. Thanks for the tip.
Interesting, I can only click that link using an American proxy, or I get a 404 error.
I'M RAY BRADBURY
There are writers that aren't a fan of Ray Bradbury? Or readers?
Seriously, people, go pick up 'R Is For Rocket', 'S Is for Space', 'The Illustrated Man' and the Martian Chronicles. Read "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed", "The Veldt", "The Small Assassin", "Hail and Farewell", "A Sound of Thunder", and "There Will Come Soft Rains".
Hell, here, listen to Leonard Nimoy read "There Will Come Soft Rains".
[youtube=LzhlU8rXgHc]
Believe me, his stories are worth it.
--arcum42
I've always wanted to do one of those, but never could work up the nerve to.
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Don't forget the one with the spooky skellington! Or the Halloween one! Or the one with the coffin! Seriously, he's as much horror as sci-fi, but he's amazing at short stories. There's a hundred-story omnibus of his that absolutely rocked my shit when I grabbed it from the library as a kid.
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Sorry about that. They may not have anticipated international interest. D: I don't remember exactly how I discovered the contest myself, but it was through a link on a writing-related site, so it might have spread further than they expected. That said, they're advertising it on their Twitter feed, so I have to assume that it's anything-goes as far as who can enter.
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I should re-read some of his stuff that I read as a kid. The Illustrated Man gnawed its way into my psyche at the tender age of ten (and given the way I write, is probably still bubbling up to the surface now), but I think I was too young to appreciate a lot of it properly.
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No time like the present! This is a pretty low-stakes competition.