Ready. Steady, Write.

Every time I sit down to work on THE NOVEL, a bunch of really interesting short fiction challenges and contests and calls for submission seem to pop up.  Focus.  I struggle with it.  But in the meantime, here are some people who want to see short stories...some for glory, some for pay.

NPR is back with their three-minute fiction contest. Submissions are open until September 25 for stories no longer than 600 words. The theme this time--leaving town, arriving in town. Full details here

Chuck Wendig of Terrible Minds continues to entice with his weekly flash fiction challenge. (Last week's 100-word "Revenge" challenge scored triple digit numbers of submissions.) This week the challenge comes with a photo prompt. For details on "The Torch" go here

Then there's Paragraph Planet, a site that posts 75-word stories--one paragraph, one micro-story. I sent them a snippet story on a lark and they're publishing it Monday.  (Notice how I slipped in that bit of shameless self-promotion?)  Here's the site..

For Haruki Murakami fans, there's a really interesting fiction challenge being sponsored by his publisher to promote his latest book, 1Q84. The challenge is to use this sentence from the book as the opening line of a story of your own:. Carrying a single bag, the young man is travelling alone at his whim with no particular destination in mind.' Word limit is 1500.  The winning story will be published on Random House and Foyle's websites and a complete cache of the author's backlist.  Here are the details.

And finally, consider submitting to Omnium Gatherum's Detritus anthology. They want stories about your collections--your secret obsessions. Stories up to 5K, deadline is October 15. (The cover is very handsome.) More information here.


 




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Chicken Salad for Mayonnaise Haters

I know, that's not the most appetizing headline ever, but that's really the best way to describe this.  My friend and catering partner invented it on the spot one night when nibbles were running low and the cupboard was bare. It's great on crackers or bread, or even topping a salad.  Best of all, the mayonnaise is so minimal that even mayo-averse types like me can chow down.  Both my parents were from the south but split along culinary lines when it came to mayonnaise. My mother and brother ate it with impunity; my father, sister and I refused to touch it. (My sister's aversion was pathological and eating out with her was often a trial.)  And seriously, who invented coleslaw?  Raw cabbage soaked in mayonnaise.  Shudder.  Even Ina Garten's version with bleu cheese doesn't do it for me. But I digress.
Here's the recipe:

1 large can of chicken, drained and shredded with a fork
Lemon pepper to taste (don't be shy--shake it on)
1 forkful of mayonnaise (just enough to make everything sort of stick together)

That's it.  Enjoy.

Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

It is ungodly hot here in the Southland--triple digit weather on the 7th of September. I was out and about in it and decided to fight fire with fire by heading over to La Salsa for their taco salad. I am a huge fan of their thin avocado salsa and their smoky roasted tomato salsa and usually load up on both to add to the salad fixings. So imagine my disappointment when I turned the corner and found an empty storefront and a sign announcing La Salsa had moved to a mall several miles away.
Noooooooo.
I came home and immediately started searching for a roasted tomato salsa I could make myself to assuage my disappointment. I found this one at AllRecipe.com. It's pretty delicious but it's not La Salsa.
I was not consulted on this move and I do not approve.  And I really don't want to have to trek over to a mall (I hate malls) to get my salsa on.

Cats are not dogs

My family had cats as pets. My father wasn't a fan of the feline but there were five of us in the family and he was outvoted. (At the time of his death there were three cats in the household and we came home from his funeral to find all three of them lounging on his bed. "That's right," they seemed to be saying. "You're dead and we're still here. Neener, neener, neener.")
I've had roommates with dogs from time to time, mostly silly little dogs--a cockapoo, a Chihuahua--and I really like dog energy, but you don't have to walk cats when it's raining like ... you know what.  I leave dry cat food out overnight so my cats don't wake me up at the crack of dawn, begging to be fed. When I lived with the Chihuahua, she was up every morning at 5 a.m., ready to eat. And since I was the one awake, I was the one who fed and walked her. She got used to that and never bothered her actual owner.

The Sisters Brothers

has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The L.A. Times called Patrick De Witt's novel a "bawdy cowboy noir," which just about covers it. I read it in manuscript this January when it was called "The Warm Job." (The titular brothers are Eli and Charlie, hit men for a man they call "the Commodore" who wants a man named Hermann Kermit Warm dead.)

Here's what I said about it at the time:

There is a lot to like here.  The story is episodic and reminiscent in some ways of Little Big Man, only taking place in a more focused context.  Eli and Charlie seem to run across a whole cross-section of Western types (the diligent Chinese house boy, the luckless prospectors, the soiled doves and so forth) that Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) would recognize.  There’s also a tinge of superstition and the paranormal (the weird gypsy) that unsettles us a bit.  What the story mostly reminds us of is a graphic novel, even though this is a fully fleshed tale that doesn’t need illustrations.

A story for Labor Day

I don't write a lot of stories about work. I love what I do for a living and rarely fantasize about killing co-workers or wreaking havoc on my workplace.  I am fascinated by office politics though, and had a good time with this story based on the corporate culture of a now-defunct magazine I used to work for.

ZERO-SUM GAME

When she saw the binders piled on the conference room table Erin’s heart sank.  She could always predict the length of a meeting from the heft of the reference material compiled for everyone’s use.  Binders were not a good sign.

If there were just legal pads and cheap pens lined up at each seat, that meant only one person would be talking and the rest of them could zone out as long as they occasionally scribbled something on the legal pad. 

            Legal pads and manila folders weren’t so bad either.  The folders usually just held an agenda or a list of talking points and that usually meant there’d be some form of interaction, like brainstorming or maybe a Q and A.  Erin didn’t mind question-and- answer sessions. You could learn a lot about your colleagues from the questions they asked.  She usually just sat quietly and listened.  Her s.o.p. was to jot down random words and then underline them with a thoughtful nod in case someone above her pay grade was watching.  Sometimes she would draw a rectangle around a word.  Occasionally she would add an exclamation point to the mix and very occasionally, she would sketch a star in there somewhere. 

            Todd from marketing, who’d replaced Dave from marketing, usually sat next to her and copied her notes right down to the exclamation points and rectangles.  He drew the line at stars though.  He thought they were gay. 

The topic is Revenge...

Freelance penmonkey Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge this week is to write a story of revenge in just 100 words. He clearly struck a creative nerve and as of 9:48 PDT today, there were 62 responses and counting. Here's the link to see the stories.

Here's my story:

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Los Angeles is a desert, and transplants who want to replicate their lush East Coast-style gardens are frequently frustrated. I tried to explain to Mrs. Weston that in order to grow jack in the pulpits, she would have to transform her yard into a swamp. “Do your job,” she responded. So I have. And to give her garden a real East Coast ambience, I’ve also planted some poison sumac here and there. It normally grows only in very wet soil, so it’s never taken hold here in the southland. I expect it to thrive in Mrs. Weston’s garden.