{"id":444,"date":"2012-10-23T22:18:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T05:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/?p=444"},"modified":"2012-10-23T22:18:36","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T05:18:36","slug":"short-stories-and-long-contests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Short Stories and Long Contests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I didn&#8217;t expect to be returning to Calgary so soon, but I was invited for another book signing at the CrossIron Mills Indigo for their Christmas kickoff. The staff there are fantastic to work with; I&#8217;m really excited to be returning! Barring any major changes, the book signing will be on November 16th from 6:30 &#8211; 9:30 P.M.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=Indigo+Crossiron+Mills,+Calgary,+AB&amp;aq=1&amp;oq=indigo+cross&amp;sll=54.112352,-126.555646&amp;sspn=26.17375,67.631836&amp;t=m&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=Indigo+Crossiron+Mills,&amp;hnear=Calgary,+Division+No.+6,+Alberta&amp;cid=6562206083907323326&amp;ll=51.203657,-113.994141&amp;spn=0.103253,0.219727&amp;z=12&amp;iwloc=A&amp;output=embed\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<small><a style=\"color: #0000ff; text-align: left;\" href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps?f=q&amp;source=embed&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=Indigo+Crossiron+Mills,+Calgary,+AB&amp;aq=1&amp;oq=indigo+cross&amp;sll=54.112352,-126.555646&amp;sspn=26.17375,67.631836&amp;t=m&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=Indigo+Crossiron+Mills,&amp;hnear=Calgary,+Division+No.+6,+Alberta&amp;cid=6562206083907323326&amp;ll=51.203657,-113.994141&amp;spn=0.103253,0.219727&amp;z=12&amp;iwloc=A\">View Larger Map<\/a><\/small> &#8211; in case you&#8217;re wondering where it is. Google Maps got it right this time instead of telling me that the store was smack dab in the middle of <a title=\"My hometown\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Airdrie,_Alberta\" target=\"_blank\">Airdrie<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"National Novel Writing Month\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nanowrimo.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">NaNoWriMo<\/a>\u00a0(National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who think I&#8217;m having keyboard problems) is starting up right after Halloween, and I&#8217;d highly recommend it to anyone who has ever considered writing a novel but isn&#8217;t sure how to begin. Personally I had more success writing a big chunk of words on a manuscript in the month of January with<em>\u00a0<\/em>the now-defunct (but still all great friends!) community of <em>Vicious Writers<\/em>, but the process is the exact same. NaNoWriMo is really big now, drawing hundreds of thousands of novelist-hopefuls across the world, and they have a big community of support (and a great website, to boot!). It&#8217;s kind of like the slogan from Ratatouille:<\/p>\n<p>httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-JPOoFkrh94&amp;feature=related<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Anyone can cook&#8217;. Or, in this case, anyone can write. The point of NaNoWriMo isn&#8217;t to create a masterpiece in a month &#8211; the idea is to develop the\u00a0<em>habit<\/em> of producing regular work. It could take you places. <em>Crystal Promise\u00a0<\/em>started out as a fifty-thousand word manuscript for a novel-writing contest.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of writing contests, my good friend Jessica reminded me about <a title=\"CBC Short Story Competition\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/books\/canadawrites\/literaryprizes\/shortstory\/\" target=\"_blank\">CBC&#8217;s short story competition<\/a>. The deadline is November 1st, so you still have a week to submit something! There&#8217;s a $6000 grand prize (including publication) if that&#8217;s any incentive. Plus, 1500 words is a lot less daunting than 50,000, I&#8217;d say.<\/p>\n<p>Switching gears, I received my very first fan-art a while back, and I&#8217;m excited to share it with everyone. It might not seem like a big deal to some people, but for an &#8216;indie&#8217; author, it&#8217;s quite the ego-boost. This is Racquela and Timori, drawn by the talented Amanda Myers:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_448\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/imagejpeg_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-448\" class=\"size-full wp-image-448\" title=\"Racquela and Timori\" src=\"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/imagejpeg_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/imagejpeg_2.jpg 360w, https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/imagejpeg_2-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-448\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cute couple<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I didn&#8217;t expect to be returning to Calgary so soon, but I was invited for another book signing at the CrossIron Mills Indigo for their Christmas kickoff. The staff there are fantastic to work with; I&#8217;m really excited to be returning! Barring any major changes, the book signing will be on November 16th from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo","category-news","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesfunfer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}