A quick drop in to talk about shit other than me

So I thought I'd do a quick pop in before I finished up working on a few re-writes to share a some cool links. (Yes, I am avoiding the dreaded re-writes, and trust me when I say I have a shitload of them right now, but seriously, I am going to make this quick because I actually want to finish up this group of current stories so I can move on down the line of the to be written pile.)

First link comes in the form of a reminder from Neil Smith

(And  from Frank Bill) that the good folks of storySouth, have opened up the polls for the Million Writer's Award. Now the award is open to any web based story and both readers and editors are eligible to vote for the story of their choice. But here's the deal, as a reader, you can only vote once, and the story you are nominating had to go through some type of editorial process. No self published folks, so if you posted the story on your blog, and it only saw time on your blog, your ineligible. What's so cool about Million Writer's (at least for me.) is that I discovered a buttload of stories I hadn't read before, and even better, I discovered a ton of markets I'd never heard of either. So if you know of a story you feel would benefit from the exposure (Not to mention the $500 1st prize swag.) stop in and do some nominating and check out the 60 or so stories already nominated.

Also, in case you you weren't aware of it, Chris Grant over at A Twist of Noir  is running the first ever Twist of Noir writing competition. The first place prize is 25 bucks. (And, yes, my entry happens to be one of the rewrites.) The comp also has a theme, which is Alienation. The deal is that the submission can be up 5000 words and an original work. And intead of copying and pasting the piece--which Chris normally has you do--send it as a Word .Doc or as RTF file. The deadline for the comp is March 30th, so if you've got a piece of short trash about love lorn losers or something along those lines, you might want to consider sending it along.

And last but far from least, my man Paul Brazil made his Twist of Noir debut on Sunday and also got himself into Beat to A Pulp as well for one of the June stories. If you haven't read Paul's stuff yet, the Twist of Noir story might be the place to start. Think of him as a Noir Bukowski, yeah, he's one funny ass dude, who happens to think dead bodies are hilarious (and who can blame him.) I'm raising a can of the black stuff to you, brother!

Anyway, see you in a couple of days.