Award News: Figment, Tote Bags, and Princesses

Summer isn't quite so boring when there's competition in the air - it's a heady scent, but it brightens up the monotony of constant rainstorms and humidity. Hosted by the masterminds of Figment.com, there were a great many memorable contests over the course of summer vacation. But I had tried to convince myself not to enter anymore. I figured that winning one was enough - my serial novel piece, Flour House - so I decided that I would sit the new contests out.

Yep. Didn't last.

The contest that did me in was called the Let Them Eat Figs contest. Basically, all entrants had to write a 1500 word story about princes and/or princesses. It could be set in any world and have original or preexisting royalty in it (literary or otherwise). I haven't completely grown up, in a way, so I'm still often charmed by stories of princes and princesses. I don't think that will ever change. I felt like this contest was calling me to the challenge - so I sucked in a deep breath and opened up a new Word document. And then the pieces of my story started to come together...

The Story:

The Princess & Her Shadow is the title of my entry, a little fairy tale about a princess who is determined to find out if her favorite story is really steeped in reality - or is it just a myth? She comes from an underground world where everyone is born with a talking shadow; her shadow, Prunella, is a bit of a troublemaker in crinoline. You can read the whole story here, but here's an excerpt:

Jane heard the story of the heartless prince countless times. Her nursemaids used to tell it to her while they rubbed tuberose lotion into her little pink toes and frail shoulders. She bathed in the lake, swimming in the licorice waters like a primordial fish, sending fallen stars and lost message-bottles bobbing on the surface in her wake.

“His older brothers were jealous,” she’d say, flipping onto her back. Her chest heaved and a pink star tickled her ear. The night sky hung above her, a cluster of tree roots and black soil. “They snuck into the prince’s room and cut out his heart with a sewing scissor. And then they hid the prince in a tiny room under a foxglove tree so the king and queen would never know.”

Jane paddled back to shore and gratefully took the silky-warm towel from her nursemaids. They combed her sable hair with delicate combs and plucked the lake-droplets off her eyelids. “How silly of those brothers,” Jane would say. “They didn’t get rid of the prince – they merely bottled him up and put him in a pantry.”

“Why do you say that?” the nursemaids asked, with smiles.

“Everyone knows that you need a heart to die. So the poor, dear prince is still alive. Just asleep under that tree.”

…

The Prize

I think I forgot to mention that this contest had been inspired by Shannon Hale whose new book, Book of a Thousand Days, was featured on the site. I love Hale's writing and how she makes fairy tales her own, creating new twists and turns but still following the path we love so much in each particular story. I first read Goose Girl - having loved the original tale - and wasn't disappointed. So since then, I've been plopping her books onto my pile every time I've found her in the library - but with this contest, I finally own two of her book now!

So, on a perfectly average day, the mysterious box arrived:

The coolest part about the box is that it's a Random House one. Which, when it comes down to it, simply means that the cardboard box is decorated with little houses. I'm easy to please, I think, because I had to keep turning the box over for last least five minutes before actually opening it. Call it house-hunting, if you will.

Once I jabbed at the seals with my handy scissor, I discovered a plethora of prizes. I started to read a little of Book of a Thousand Days (alas, between grading and writing) and I think I'm going to enjoy it. It's written in a diary format, and I like the main character - Dashti - already. There's also the Princess Academy which is, by far, my favorite of all Hale's books. So excited to finally have a copy.

I know this is side-tracking a bit, but I love the fact that I got paperback copies. Paperbacks are the best, haha. I used to hate them as a kid because the covers usually got torn off or irrevocably bent and that wasn't fun. But now the covers are made of nice material. They allow me more space on my bursting bookshelf and are awfully cuddly. Yes, I cuddle books. Sometimes. They don't jab me like hardcovers. And the best part is that, because paperbacks are lightweight, I never have to say no to bringing a book along with me when I venture out of my hermit cave (or school office).

Super digression! Haha! Anywho, I grinned so hard my cheeks hurt when I saw the tote bag. I mean, it' pretty epic. I can't wait to start using it and see what happens.

If those gifts were awesome enough, I found another surprise from the Figment team. They drew this wonderful picture, inspired by a scene in The Princess & Her Shadow. There's the foxglove tree with its mysterious hole - only revealed when Jane can prove that she's worthy of entering. I love this drawing so much; I've hung it up over my little desk where, when I'm not tempted by a couch, I sit and work on my writing. It's a wonderful reminder to keep going - even if you're scared to see what's at the bottom of a dark hole, even if you fear your favorite story's unraveling.

So, as I promised, I went out to run some errands and took my Figment tote with me. Surrounded by crackly old hardbacks in the local library, I couldn't help but feel at home with the tote on my shoulder. It made the pile of books I gathered much easier to get back to the car, in any event, haha.

Thanks for the lovely gifts, Figment!

Award News: Figment, Flour House, and Posters

Even though this did indeed happen a few weeks ago, I wanted to gather everything together to properly announce this awesome news: I won a writing contest! The contest was hosted by the teen writing website called Figment.com; anyone's who's been following me for a while already knows about it, haha.

The contest was called the serial contest. For anyone not familiar with the term "serial" in relation to fiction, I found a great quote from an article entitled "Writing Serial Fiction" by Icy Sedgwik:

"Serials have been part of fiction for decades. Newspapers and magazines regularly ran stories in installments, keeping readers hanging until the next issue continued the plot and spun out the story."

What serial fiction usually means nowadays is that you, as the writer, are periodically posting new chapters and the readers are following along with you as it happens. Very exciting. At least, I find it exciting. So when I found out that Figment created a contest revolving around this concept, I definitely wanted to take a shot at it.

The rules were simple:

1. Create a new story and write for four weeks straight.

2. Post at least two chapters each week (minimum of eight chapters in all).

3. One post each week must address the given writing prompt - and there was one prompt for each week.

The prompts were pretty tricky; you couldn't just write your story all at once and be done. So the prompts ensured that everyone entered was writing and creating as they went along - something that really gives me a thrill with the challenge of keeping pace and giving my characters something to worry about. The prompts were:

Week 1: Someone has to buy something from a toy store.

Week 2: Something made out of glass breaks

Week 3: Someone must be dancing or must witness dancing (of any kind).

Week 4: Someone or something (not necessarily human) must die or be dead.

The Prize: A Poster

The prize I won was a free poster from a company called PosterText. What they do is pretty cool - they take the classics (like The Portrait of Dorian Gray or Alice in Wonderland) and print the text of the book on the poster. Yes, it's like hanging a book on the wall. They choose a memorable scene, use the text from the book, and create a neat silhouette picture in the middle of the negative space. I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted, but in the end I stuck with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Here are some pictures of its arrival, followed by what I did after the happy delivery:

The poster arrives!

Ah, the poster is successfully unwrapped and up on a wall! It looks good, haha.

When you look at it up close, you can see the text! This one is the text next to Elizabeth's face.

My dog, Misty, and I eating cotton candy Italian ice. Delicious - and it helped cool my brain off after all that writing.

The Story: Flour House

From this contest, I came up with my entry: Flour House. I listed the prompts because, if you do decide to read it, you might be interested to see how I used them to fit the story each week. It's a story filled with baking sweets, teacup bathes, handsome tiny boys, and a lot of flour. I've posted the first chapter here:

Measuring Spoons

It was late November when Lettice Morris stood outside the toy shop. She was seventeen, a small girl with small feet. She had her brown hair tied back in two braids, her smart green pea coat buttoned up to the neck, and she watched her breath fog the darkened windows and drew hearts and stars with her gloved fingers until they faded away.

A thin layer of frost covered the city street. People walked carefully in big, slow strides with their arms out like tight-rope walkers. Lettice checked her watch out of habit, but she knew what time the toy shop opened.

8:03 am

The lights turned on.

The old man who ran the toy shop was called Duncan. He unlocked the door and popped his head out, smiling down at the young woman. “Good morning, Letty,” he said. His eyes glittered behind his gold-rimmed peepers. His bowtie was blue.

She greeted him with a smile that split apart her chapped lips. She forgot again to rub on her vanilla chapstick; it always got lost in her purse, no matter how small and how few pockets were inside. For this reason, Lettuce believed that all purses were hungry monsters – a notion she had held onto since she was a child. But more importantly, for this reason, her lips were chapped and aching.

When Duncan let her inside, she darted past the train set display and the mobiles of butterflies and space ships to the cash register. She pawed around in one of the small fishbowls filled with tiny, inexpensive trinkets and found a tiny, round container of chapstick. The cover was decorated with swirls like a melting candy cane but it smelled like roses when she opened it. She quickly swiped an un-gloved finger across its smooth, sticky surface and flinched as she carefully dotted her lips.

“Did you come out here for just that?” Duncan said, looking at her over the display of rag dolls. He gently adjusted a fallen teddy bear.

“Not at all. But I’ve forgotten to put it on again. Or my bag ate it. I can’t tell which is true yet,” Lettice said. She took out her wallet and pulled plucked out two crisp bills. “That’s for the sweet relief. I can feel my lips healing already.”

“So what are you looking for?”

“A measuring spoon set.”

“There are kitchen stores for that…”

“No. I mean, I want a tiny one. Dollhouse-sized.”

Duncan laughed. “Well, that’s different. Follow me.”

They walked down one of the cluttered aisles, stuffed with train wheels, menageries, broken china dolls and faded scraps of clothing. The labels on each wooden shelf were faded by the years. Some peeled off and joined the dust on the floor. Duncan stopped at a shelf lined with tiny couches, paintings from Picasso and O’Keeffe on bigger than a thumb, and a bathtub realistic enough to have a ring. He extracted a small box, and from that box, amongst forks, brushes, and necklaces, he offered Lettice a flower-painted measuring spoon set. She held it prudently in her hands.

“I gather you’ve wanted to add to your mother’s dollhouse,” he said, watching Lettice gently turn the set in her hands, hearing it jingle. “It’s a worthy cause. It’s almost like building a real home, from the ground up. You’re lucky your mother boxed away most of her collection so that, when she passed, they would belong to you.”

He spoke easily about this because it had been five years since her mother died. Lettice was comfortable with it. She thought of her mother often, but not sadly; she had her cheerful, older brothers always making her feel safe. But although she did have a keen interest in putting her mother’s dollhouse back together, there was another reason why she had started to spend her money on the tiny delicacies. So without hesitating, Lettice said, “There’s that, Duncan. Yes. But my boyfriend is living in the dollhouse, and he’d really like to bake a cake.”

(Original cover art found on We Heart It)