The story is out there.

gday gentle reader 

I've been experiment with Twitter and story telling but except for the briefest flash fictions, the medium sucks. My much published (online an in print by Antipodean SF) 500 word story "Trojans" took 12 post and had to be massaged, not just to fit, but for each tweet to end on a cliff-hanger so readers would return.

In my considered opinion nobody, not even my 5 Followers, read it. So now I tweet links to stories.

I'm preparing an anthology, titled Colony Worlds, (a theme I like) all Honorable (USA spelling as per certificate) Mentions I've received from my submissions to  

L. Ron Hubbard's
Writers of the Future Contest

I'll begin with the first 2 chapters of The Descent of the Kestrel now up on my website https://www.rob.bleckly.com, with more chapters and further stories to come. Why 2 Chapters? It's told from two alternating POV's (points of view). Constructive Criticism is always welcome, no story is ever so finished it can't be improved.

 The Descent of the Kestrel 

9,300 words written 2011 won me an HM in the 3rd quarter 2017 exactly 20 years after my first HM in the 3rd quarter 1997.

In between I wrote the oft mentioned still unpublished 600,000-word trilogy which obviously improved my skills because 20 years on the competition quality is a lot stiffer, the award categories expanded, and an HM is no longer a finalist.

The story is a prequel, the first of five set in my trilogy world "The Restoration Legends."

Doing this now was promoted by my latest HM, the fourth in a row, which means my Silver Honorable Mention and the Semi-Finalist can be left out of the anthology. As posted earlier these two form the opening and concluding parts of a Novel (yet another colony world) It's the sagging middle part that needs work.

until my next post (might post about why I like writing colony worlds)

ooroo Rob

A Fascination with Numbers

 

gday gentle reader,  

Me and WotF

On further analysis (see my previous post) of my eight (8) award-winning stories over 4 years of consecutive submissions to L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest, I  have yet to get a mention in the second Quarter that runs from January 1 to March 31.

As Spok would say: Fascinating. Is it that I slack off during our southern hemisphere Summer, or does the northern hemisphere Winter put more northern hemisphere bums on writing seats for longer periods? I shall turn up the aircon and try harder this quarter.

Word Counts

And one more fascinating thing about my most recent Silver Honourable Mention The Starbuck Chronicles, but let me digress a moment.  

Back in 1999 I won 2^nd prize in the 1st Aurealis Millennium competition for a story that was and had to be exactly 1000 words not including the title. But wait there's more, most of my early submissions to Antipodean SF, under the mistaken impressions that Ion wanted no more than 500 words, were close to and often exactly 500 words. By now you're starting to get the picture. 

The Starbuck Chronicles,  

my Silver Honourable Mention has exactly 750 words (not including Chapter# and title) in each of its 17 chapters. 

 I am now left to wonder if unbeknown to the judges, the pattern (the rhythm if you will) of the chapters, played part in the win.  Did it lift it up to Silver H M or lower its chances of attaining higher or did it not make a scrap of difference. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the challenge of making a longer story hold together despite the self-imposed artificial strictures.    

 ooroo Rob

Writing Aids & Awards

g'day gentle reader

The result of all my wailing and gnashing of teeth over writing programs is I decided to buy Scrivener, to organise big projects like my 600,000 word trilogy and an anthology of my Writers of the Future awards,

speaking of which, 2020 was another good year for me.  4 submissions to WotF returned 2 Honourable Mentions and a Silver Honourable Mention. 3/4 ain't bad. Ain't good either. Only 1st 2nd or 3rd count.  I did the same only better in 2018. 3/4 and one was a Semi-Finalist.

The awards however are asymmetric. The Table shows awards given for the Quarter.  My Silver HM Qtr.4 was equal 134th. if it had been in Qtr.3 it would have been equal 67th. Conversely my HM ranked better for being in Qtr.3 equal 330th, rather than Qtr.4 where it would've been equal 458th. As the contest grows the competition get stiffer, I am happy to still be winning awards, I must be improving.  

I also decided to buy ProWritingAid (Black Friday sale) for checking grammar and style and everything else chapter by chapter since with anything more than a chapter the incredibly detailed checks it does will slow you down. For example: Part 1 of Book 1 in the trilogy (90,000 words) took 9 mins and gave me 1473 errors and I accidentally hit the [Realtime] button instead of the an [issues] button. It restarted and wasted another 9 mins. And if you don't correct (or ignore?) the errors then save, it restarts next time you open.  

The error count was a lot bigger first time around but I had corrected the spelling issues, (again almost exclusively my Character Names) and saves the story 

The firsts lesson: don't open a whole book in PWA, do a chapter at time.

These comments subject to change without notice, I'm on a steep learning curve.    

I practiced with a couple of paragraphs (326 words) from my next sub to WotF, fixed all the issues and then sent it back to gold fashioned,  to format ready to submit. Word found a grammatical error PWA  missed.

ooroo