Wednesday, June 15, 2005

SFFWorld Short Story Contest

This may be old news to some but we at SFFWorld are running a short story contest:

Entry is open to anyone. We don’t care if we’ve never met you before, or if we can’t get away from you for a second - we want to see what you can do!

We’re looking for all and any previously unpublished short stories on a speculative fiction theme. To help preserve the sight of the poor souls who have ‘volunteered’ to read all your fab entries, we ask that you keep to a maximum of 3000 words. In order to help preserve their souls, we ask that you steer away from gratuitous violence, or too much erotic content.

Our favourite three stories will be published on the site, with big shiny links letting everyone know where to find them, and telling everyone how great you are. The overall winner will also be sent a signed copy of ‘The Twins’, the first book in the fantastic new GemQuest series by Gary Wassner, kindly donated by Gary himself.

Closing date is August 31, 2005
Winners announced September 30, 2005.


The Full release and rules are here

Last week I finished my ARC of John Twelve Hawks's The Traveler, a fascinating novel that, like the best FSF, begged me to look at the world around me and question the reality I live in. Good stuff here, it kept me awake beyond my normal sleep time when I finished it on Thursday night. This is not to say the book was perfect, but still a very engaging novel. The book will be publishing on June 28th and I'll post a formal review closer to that date. Until then, check out the book's Web site: http://www.traveler-book.com or my previous blog entry about the book.

I read C.L. Moore's pulp classic Jirel of Joiry over the past weekend and, for the most part enjoyed them. Moore has a descriptive style that doesn't ramble too much and pits her heroine against seemingly insurmountable odds. Jirel braves depths of hellish caverns and tunnels, confronts demons and sorceresses, in attempts to avenge past wrongings by evil wizards and generals. Fun stuff I have to say.

Right now I'm reading Tale of the Thunderbolt, the third of EE Knight's Vampire Earth novels. I'm really enjoying this one at about 2/3 of the way through. Knight has managed to weave enough of the backstory of the previous two novels into the story so new readers will not be put off by the fact that this is the third book in the saga - new readers can pick this up without having read the other two. It has been a year since I read the previous book, Choice of the Cat, so it works pretty well as a refresher, too. I think the earlier two were a tad bit stronger on the whole, but this is still an entertaining read. A good sign is that it is a book I don't like putting down when my lunch break ends and when I need to retire for the night. My interview from last month with Mr. Knight is over on my sidebar.

No comments: