I am lost for words...

Maybe not. This is absolutely ridiculous. The article, over on writersweekly.com, has the full details, but the basic jist of it is that Amazon.com is about to make a whole bunch of authors eat some serious shit just so their books can remain available to order. As far as I'm concerned it's a complete load of bullshit, and I will never buy anything from them again.

"So bad it's brilliant..."

That was Tiffany's assessment of my Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry, so I thought I would share it:

Dick’s face paled – like the face of a corpse that has lain on its back for hours and is well into the first stages of rigor, and the blood, having stopped circulating a good while before, has now settled to the bottom, the way the pulp settles to the bottom in a carton of extra-pulp orange juice – as the woman he'd been wooing for most of the evening smiled, revealing what, on closer inspection, turned out to be fangs, and he had just enough time to hear her say, “I want to suck your– ” before he passed out cold.

I don't suffer from insanity...

Yeah, right. Who am I kidding?

Every year since 2004 I have tortured myself with, and failed miserably at, NaNoWriMo, and yet, every year, I keep right on doing it. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The idea behind the challenge is that in order to make that word count, you have to turn off your inner editor and give yourself permission to write crap (the theory being that it may be crap, but at least it's finished crap and you can always edit it later). I know it's doable. I have friends who've done it. But no matter how detailed my plan of attack, no matter how revved up I am beforehand, I can never turn off my inner editor enough to churn out the amount of words per day that are required to win. And when it gets right down to it, I'm okay with that. Because at least a part of me believes that if you start with crap, then crap is what you're going to end up with. So, I torture myself strictly for the fun of it.

This year I'll be torturing myself twice. Not only will I be participating in NaNo in November, but starting April 1st I will also be taking part in Script Frenzy. I find there's something vaguely suspect about a contest that begins on April Fool's Day, but whatever. The challenge here is to write a 100-page script (your choice of movie screenplay, television script, or stage play) in 30 days. So far I have a main character and a vague idea of what I'm going to do with him. That's it. But somehow 100 pages seems a lot more doable than 50,000 words, and it can't hurt to give it a shot. What the hell. Even if I don't win, insanity can still fun.

I challenge YOU, and you and you and you...

I don't think there are actually that many yous reading this, but I've always believed that it's the thought that counts, so here goes...

Go here and you will find The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. It is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the dude responsible for writing the now infamous words, "It was a dark and stormy night...", and the challenge is to see who can come up with the best worst first line to an imaginary novel. The official contest deadline is April 15, and you may submit as many entries as you'd like.

So I have a new blog...

And I have absolutely nothing to say.