Writer Wednesday: Post Card Fiction Prizes

Making your mark in the world can be a tenuous thing; as long as the good will of others holds up or their indifference doesn't take over, you stand the chances of being forgotten within your lifetime. You may find fame and fortune, but the odds are against it. So don't be depressed by that! Make every day fun. Create something, anything. I made a lovely postcard for a friend this morning with my Tate Mod postcard book (a book of blank postcards of heavy paper stock) with my watercolour pencils and it sort of turned out like I imagined it.

As far as I'm concerned, that's success.

I got paid very well for a very short story: that's success, too. But it can't be the reason for doing it because writing takes so long even for a rather short story. The pleasure of creating, of figuring out the myriad puzzles that go into anything you make, that has to be its own reward -- often it will be the only one you get. Hey, I didn't say stop trying for more mundane success -- keep at it. As the lottery ads in NY say, "Hey, you never know." You stand a better chance at succeeding with your creativity that you do with the lottery anyway.

If you need a laugh, go read my silly poem "On Seeking a Place for a Picnic." If you want something more substantial, go read my reviews and whatnot over at A Knife & A Quill. Or go "like" our Burning Bridges book trailer: it's got a "dislike" -- I suspect our former publisher has found it.

All right, enough delay: let me announce the first annual Postcard Fiction Contest prize winners. First, let me thank everyone who entered. I was well pleased with your cards and stories -- some of you went all out and I have to say the postcards did enter into my deliberations. How could they not?

So I read and re-read and finally narrowed it down to three finalists. Because I promised a cash prize for the top winner, I decided I needed some other kind of prize, so it will be titles.

DICKINSON PRIZE (AKA second runner up)

"alessandra" for 'Amherst's Mad Pastoral' on postcard of Trastevere (I can almost taste the food)


MOORE PRIZE (AKA first runner up)

"mbilokur" for 'Better the devil you know' on postcard of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera & a giant papier maché demon



and the grand prize including cash in the current value of US$25 goes to --

[drum roll]

POSTCARD FICTION GRAND PRIZE

"shloobee" for 'Don't do it, Salvador!' on postcard of 'Salvador Dalí in jener fiktiven Position, die auf sein Gemälde La gare de perpignan übertragen wurde, assistiert von Dr. Soler-Roig in einem Helikopter' of which the text here follows:

'Don't do it, Salvador!' The lemur sounded more alarmed than she felt. Dalí was always up to some sort of ballbaggery and usually came out of it quite well. A token protest was always welcome to the artist's ears, however, and the lemur liked to please. 'Do not fear, my little one,' said Salvador, 'nothing can go wrong. This world is but an oyster in a jam jar ripe for the taking.' The lemur watched as Salvador pushed himself from the balustrade and swan dived out into the empty space. He hung there for a moment, or so it seemed...and then plummeted to earth. The lemur watched him hit the ground. 'Oh dear,' she said. 'Who does he suppose is going to clean that up?'

Congratulations, all!

Know-vember: Your Humble Narrator

I want to thank all the wonderful friends who took part in Know-vember. It was a delight to share. I think I may well make this an annual event. Yes, as promised, I will now turn the tables on myself. Don't you already know too much about me? You must be part of the Cult of Kaity or you wouldn't be coming by here, surely, so you must have heard me blather on and on for the--what?!--six years I have been blogging here. From Texas to New York to Galway. Where will I be next? What will I be doing? If I knew, would I tell you? Probably, but first I'd have to know. Wow, didn't the fabulous Queen of Everything make me look good here? This is one of the pictures that hung in her first gallery show. I am art!

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

I pick up my phone to see if I have any messages from my sweetie and then I check Twitter (and then Facebook and email and...) and then I finally get out of bed and make some tea (black with one sweetner. If there is no sweetener, I do not add sugar because I do not like sugar: never milk!). 

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

I will dance to nearly anything with a beat and a few things that have none. Anything from Vic Reeves' fantastic version of "Dizzy" to Fred Astaire's version of "Cheek to Cheek" -- particular faves include Tori's "Raspberry Swirl" and Dee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart." 

3. Where in the world do you live?

I live in lovely Galway and every day I stop to think how lucky I am to be here. Life is good and there are magpies outside my window on Eyre Square. I walk down by the bay and am filled with wonder to be in this wonderful world.

4. What's a great night out for you?

I am happiest with a good meal, some tasty drinks, maybe a little dancing or a concert with great music: essential -- good friends with lots of laughs (friends who make me laugh are the best gift of all). That said, an evening down the pub with my friends is aces.

5. What's a great night in?

A good movie and a cuddle in front of the fire with my sweetie. A real fire would be best, but at present I have a fake coal fire and he has no fireplace at all, so we have to make our own sparks. 

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world,where would you go?

Around the world I would go, for sure for sure. I have always wanted to go to Egypt and India, but as long as I were going there I'd want to go to New Zealand too and then why not Japan and China and then Russia and back through Scandinavia and to Finland again and Iceland too -- on and on. Macchu Picchu! Rio! Everywhere.

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

I would say Alice in Wonderland which people tend to know from movies rather than the real book and it is one of those lynchpins of my life, but I'd also want to get people to read Beowulf (in the original!) so I could just recite lines from it at random and be understood (well, I already recite lines at random, but people tend to stare at me). I should be smart and say one of my books...

8. What movie makes you cry?

Lots of movies make me cry! I'm a sap. Guaranteed tear-jerkers include Auntie Mame, Now Voyager, The Women, Dark Victory, An Affair to Remember, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility -- oh, the list goes on and on!

9. What makes you laugh?

Peter Cook, Peter Cook, Peter Cook! HAHAHA -- unexpected that, right? And Tony Hancock, the Goons, Pythons, Goodies, AbFab, Black Books, The Mighty Boosh, Blackadder, and all my witty friends.

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

I am the fairy at the bottom of the garden but I moved inside because my toes were cold.

Thank you all for a fantastic month of sharing.

Know-vember: Barry Leary

I should be in Dublin with Elena and Rod today, which is just as well considering my current guest here: Barry is shy. He's also an artist. We may have been standing next to each other at the big Rothko exhibit at the Tate Modern a few years back, both gazing in rapt awe, but not noticing one another. No, we had to run into each other on Twitter. Fortunately, we did. He's even put in a tentative foot into the Facebook world, though he tends to post a few pictures and then run off again. He can be coaxed out again with sweets, I have discovered.

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

Turn the computer on.

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

Dress - PJ Harvey.

3. Where in the world do you live?

Mainly but not exclusively in my head.

4. What's a great night out for you?

No such thing as a great night out at my age :-) (I might be lying)

5. What's a great night in?

A great night in of course means drawing and books and sweets and more books and more drawing and sweets and music. Did I mention sweets ? Hope so.

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Rajasthan.
 
7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

Proust.

8. What movie makes you cry?

Magnolia (but only once).

9. What makes you laugh?

I Heart Huckabees.

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

Not under that much concrete I should think.

Or they're suffering if they are o_O! Thank you for letting me bully you into this :-) Here's a lovely photo Barry took: beautiful. And hey, it's Peter Cook's birthday.

Know-vember: S. L. Johnson

Yes, it's herself -- fresh from a triumphant debut gallery show opening this past weekend, it's the Queen of Everything and fabulous artist, S. L. Johnson. I'm not just saying that because she designed the lovely Cult of Kaity logo or the cover of the forthcoming collection, Triumph of the Carpet Beetle, or made me look gorgeous in her art show :-) No! I love her work and I love her, she's amazing. I persuaded her to take a break from her furious working and socialising schedule to answer my questions (albeit somewhat enigmatically).

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?  

Open my eyes....   

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to? 

"Motorhead" by Motorhead 

3. Where in the world do you live?

My own little.   

4. What's a great night out for you?

Good friends, drinks, music, art.   

5. What's a great night in?

Good friends, good food, good chat or movies.  

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Iceland. 

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

Promethea or Alice In Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass.

8. What movie makes you cry?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Every damn time. 

9. What makes you laugh?

Wit. Slapstick.   

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

You need to ask? 

And you're a big fan of The Fall, right? [ducks] Hee hee hee! 

Snapshots of London

I got to play Sarah Angliss' theremin :-) I've hung out with the decadent aesthetes and enjoyed the summer in London and met up with friends and caught the Bard of Salford, too.

Rome: Street Art

One of the things I always find myself snapping while I travel is street art and graffiti. I know it doesn't appeal to everyone and some people find it destructive and annoying. A lot of it is truly ugly, but with the rise of artists like Banksy, Shepard Fairey and SWOON, people (sometimes grudgingly) give it credit. I saw an Invader mosaic as we were driving through Trastevere and I wondered if it were authentic.

From Rome

Turns out Invader had just had a show in Rome and had gone around putting up mosaics around the city. I didn't get a picture of the one by the Museum of Modern Art, but I did get this one at the top of the Spanish Steps.

From Rome

I love the mash-up nature of a lot of street art: you can combine anything and see the parts in a new whole. This artist uses the tag "hogre" it seems.

From Rome

In the ancient living history that is the Coliseum, people still want to leave their mark.

From Rome

We were intrigued by posters with enigmatic messages when we went out to dinner in Trastevere. I remembered to look for some clues online and found this was part of an exhibit by Jeremy Mende called "100 Years from Now" which looks back to the Italian Futurist movement about a century later. The Futurists fascinate me -- and always make me want to write manifestos. There was a terrific Futurist exhibit at the Tate Mod not long ago, which I really enjoyed.

From Rome

And of course I was welcomed to Rome with some very heartfelt art: Thanks, Edo!

From Rome

Whirlwind Travel

NYC on Thursday to see Lynda Barry and Maira Kalman and today I'm off to Connecticut for the final party at the Aloha Alcohula. So, in haste with the hope of more later:

My route: drive down to Poughkeepsie, Metro North to Grand Central, arriving after everyone's already stopped waltzing. Then off to the Met Museum. Many things to see there: the Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand exhibit, especially Stieglitz's photographs of Georgia O'Keefe (even bought the postcard set), loved Katrin Sigurdardottir's installations, and of course, I'm always a sucker for Rothko:

Afterward I had a lovely sushi dinner and then headed over to the 92nd St Y for the talk: Lynda Barry is just so utterly amazing. She said she was really nervous and so what was best was to do something really frightening (though she said it would be even better to eat a hotdog, but --) so she sang a song to the tune of "Coal Miner's Daughter" that explained her family (Norwegian and Filipino) and her difficulties growing up. I can't capture her madcap and inventive conversation. She talked about everything from trying to find tears for great art and instead finding them when she met Jeff Keane of Family Circus, because that comic had given her such hope as a child, a way to imagine a happy family through that little circle. Or her Filipino grandmother who told the most horrifying descriptions of the woman who was really a vampire who took her legs off and crawled across your ceiling and used her long tongue to suck your blood because you leave your clothes on the floor! Her new book Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book is a companion piece to her incredibly inspiring What it is, but aimed at drawing rather than writing. She describes it as like Highlights but for any age and so if you were stuck in JiffyLube waiting for your car, you could pick it up and be less tense and really enjoy yourself. For her, the power of drawing is plain: after working on Cruddy for ten years on a computer, she was overwhelmed by the awesome power of the Delete Key. Once she started using a brush to write the letters, she finished it in nine months.

Maira Kalman is quite amazing too: though more reserved than Barry, she was equally inspiring and surprising. Her work shows the power of just keeping your eyes and mind open (what Russell Hoban calls "being a friend with your head"). Everything from a hilarious letter from Proust, a dead Swiss writer in the snow on a newspaper wrapping a parcel, the three hole punch at the Pentagon that puts holes in the paper on which top secret documents written: all of it can blend together in your head and come out interesting art. She even played the clip from WC Fields in The Man in the Flying Trapeze where they make fun of a pseudo-Gertrude Stein-ish piece.

Glad I made the trip down; fortunately Robert was able to give me a refuge halfway home from the train station as I got into Poughkeepsie about midnight. Of course he made me sleep on this:

Off to Connecticut today for my joint birthday party with Marko: it will apparently be the last party at the Aloha Alcohula before its make-over. Should be fun! I had my own make-over already:

It's actually purple not blue (note how washed out my eye color is), but nice and bright :-) Might wear my purple tiara, too.

Publications: High Plains Lazarus / Fear and Loathing in Deptford

I'm pleased to let you know that the zombie anthology, Rotting Tales, is now available from Pill Hill Press and it features my short story "High Plains Lazarus" -- obviously influenced by spaghetti Westerns as well as Joe R. Lansdale his own self, but with a mystical twist.

The book will be available on Amazon soon, but until Thanksgiving, Pill Hill will be selling the collection for a discounted rate of $15.49 so if you're thinking of picking it up, that's a great reason.

The story has a funny history, having been written at the last minute as I headed off to Trinoc-con one year and hated everything I'd ever written (it happens) and so started writing something just for fun. It was a big hit, with one exception: I'd only got half the story written. People were ready to kill me for stopping in the middle, but that's all I had. I finished (and read the rest the following year at Trinoc-con) and sold it to an anthology, who then proceeded to slowly reel out the days while contributors waited, and waited, and were reassured that it was coming, it was coming -- and then after two years, they just stopped responding. Sigh. Unfortunately, that's the life of small publishers. I'm glad it's got a home at last.

Over at the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, where the first issue of the journal is available for a mere 99¢ (such a bargain!), you can get the lowdown this week on our design director, Stephanie Johnson AKA the Queen of Everything, editor Vicky Squid and, er, me. We'll be getting to know many of the contributors to the first issue throughout the month. Enjoy!

Filament @ EMPAC

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Nippertown! I was planning to see some events at Filament, the weekend long fest at EMPAC, AKA the finest performing arts center in the region, but thanks to the free pass I won, I got to see a LOT. It was a gorgeous weekend -- inside and out. Cool but sunny and the big wooden ball inside the glass case looked lovely. That's the thing about EMPAC, it's aesthetically appealing but also amazingly and intricately functional. Each performance space can be endlessly rearranged to accommodate sound, lighting, screens and so on. The small studio spaces have mobile seating as well.

Things we saw: Early Morning Opera's ABACUS performance in the main concert hall, presented by Early Morning Opera, directed by Lars Jan and performed by Paul Abacus. It was inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, he of the geodesic dome, whom I learned about from the inner sleeves of Harry Nilsson albums. The multimedia presentation, was a combination of Abacus' exhortations, video screens, music, the steadicam dancers and -- briefly -- a giant panda. It was meant to be a melding of Powerpoint business lectures, stadium church preaching and genuine appeal. Much of it worked well, although I thought the final shooting in the hallway tried too hard to connect the radical notion of a world without borders to the fates of leaders who had been assassinated for their radical views. The Q&A after was hampered by Abacus appearing in one of the studios in another performance and for me, because Jan looks disconcertingly like David Baddiel but talks Californian. We went to the installation afterward, which happened in the same space but for one person at a time. We each went in for our encounter with Dr. Hieronymus Yang, "the world's first accredited giant panda" which involved touch screen control of images projected on the six giant screens (although not all the bugs had been worked out).

By far my favourite pieces were the live shorts, which were in Studio 1 (in various configurations). Standouts included "The Golden Veil: A Cautionary Entertainment" by the National Theater of the United States of America who offered a spookily creepy, fairytale-like narrative. "Sheepspace" by Sue-C and Laetitia Sonami offered a video projection into the secret world of sheepwomen who live between the boundaries of known worlds. "Intervention #2" by Wally Cardona + Heidi Jo Newberg, professor of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy at RPI, featured an interview with Newberg to which Cardona creates a choreography. Items that seemed like random things strewn across the space
ended up being part of the tools by which Newberg helped students understand infinity and the vastness of space. Cardona's amazing movements created an extra layer of wonder. It's been so long since I've seen a dance performance, I had forgotten just how amazing the human body can be.

MTAA did a twitter performance called "You Don't Know What You're Talking About" which allowed the audience to tweet things that they would read. Of course I was pleased that several of my tweets got read :-) It was great to see people tweeting ways to involve the whole audience, too. Despite the short time (10 minutes) it was wonderful to see how the performance innovated. I liked the ideas behind Trouble's performance "A Narrow Vehicle" but their attempt to utilize ritual elements for a kind of spiritual performance fell a little flat because the ritual didn't go anywhere, it certainly wasn't (as they claimed) shamanistic in any way and wow, people are not observant. A lot of people just walked off the path. The ballet-centric piece "Another Circle" by Jen DeNike and Rose Kallal likewise tried to call on the power of ritual magic, but didn't quite come together. The hypnotic pirouettes of the dancer on screen and live did offer a sort of abstract meditative energy, but the assaultive soundscape undercut any meditative impulse. A real crowd-pleaser was "Amazingland in Troy EMagicPAC" by Steve Cuiffo, Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, which used the practices of popular magic and showmanship.

We finished Saturday night with BalletLab's Miracle, "a triumphant onslaught of choreographic hysteria performed against repetitive mantra, movement, and hym-like voices." It was cathartic, emotional -- I think I felt exhausted just watching the dancers perform. It was remarkable how they evoked scenes of religious and social hysteria, cult behaviour and terrible emotional suffering. Near the end the sound became almost too much for me to bear (high sharp tones at high volume always bother me), but it was an arresting performance that left the audience simply limp by the end.

There was more -- installations, performances, the crowds roosting in the trees surrounding the site, lots of conversation and a gorgeous weekend of weather. I'm exhausted just typing all this and it's taken me all day to finally sit down to do it, so this will have to do for now. But if you haven't got yourself up to EMPAC, you need to do so with all due speed. Amazing and beautiful. My head is humming with ideas and inspirations -- and that's what it's all about.

Reminder: WLoAD needs women!

Call for Submissions

"Passion. Vision. Daring. Humour. Any alone will be intriguing--but to have them all is to be sublime."

That is the mandate of the new journal for the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, for which I am editor. We seek only work that meets these criteria, the output of creative women who may feel that their vision and passion has been overlooked elsewhere, that their daring has brought only disapproving stares, that their humour has met with stony silence. We delight in work that crosses traditional genres. We do not ask for your credentials, awards or publications. We ask for your heartfelt work.

The inaugural issue will be out for Halloween. The full colour PDF format will be a showcase of talented women.


DEADLINE
September 21, 2010

FORMAT

Writing: fiction, drama, humour or non-fiction up to 5k; poems up to 100 lines total; submit as RTFs (or paste into an email).

Images: scans of paintings, drawings, multimedia, etc. or photos of handicrafts, sculptures, etc. or original digital designs in JPGs (resolution of 300dpi).

Music, Sound and Video: via links to your site or host site (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

And if we select your work for WLoAD, we ask that you wear the badge proudly -- link to our site and your fellow artists, promote the journal assiduously and celebrate this forum (i.e. comment on the issue and your colleagues).

Submissions should be sent to VICTORIASQUID@GMAIL.COM

Be sure to include links to your website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc., in the email with your submission. Thank you!