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Micro Sledgehammer: Write to Publish 2011

We love to do on-the-spot writing contests at our fair and trade show booths, and last weekend was no exception. We had a great time chatting with everyone at the Ooligan Press’s Write to Publish industry mingle and reading your Micro Sledgehammer 36-Word Writing Contest entries!

Prompt: Revolution

Congratulations to Judith Arcana, who penned the winning piece and won fame (umm, here, of course!) and $10 off her registration fee for September’s main event. Our judge said of her entry, “I liked the part about the rising revolution. I also thought it was clever that they came up with a carousel from ‘revolution.'”

We keep turning around, round the turn, going round and round and round as if we were riding carefully carved and brightly painted giraffes, ponies, tigers and greyhounds, rising into the blue sky of white-clouded revolution.

© 2011 Judith Arcana

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Micro Sledgehammer: Writers Resource Fair 2011

We love to do on-the-spot writing contests at our fair and trade show booths, and last weekend was no exception. We had a great time chatting with everyone at the Multnomah County Library’s Writers Resource Fair and reading your Micro Sledgehammer 36-Word Writing Contest entries!

Prompt: Marigolds

Congratulations to Bonni, who penned the winning piece and won $10 off her registration fee for September’s main event.

“If you don’t do it, someone else will.”
“I know.”
She turned away and looked first at her withered mother and then at the pot of marigolds beside her bed. Gently, she removed the oxygen mask.

© 2011 Bonni

Wordstock 2010 Flash Sledgehammer

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Indigo Editing & Publications booth and threw their hat in for the

Photo by Joseph Thiebes

Flash Sledgehammer 36-Word Writing Contest. We had some great entries–as always–and are proud to announce Daphna the winner!

prompt: stolen

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It’s sad to lose it, sure, but if I hadn’t hocked it, it wouldn’t have known the seedy glory of hanging out with unloved diamonds and sordidly stolen goods. Sometimes I think it’s better off.

***

Daphna writes, plays, and practices ferociously in Portland, Oregon, and everywhere.

Flash Sledgehammer: The Self-Publishing Edition

As Q&A during Ali’s presentation took us to the end of the most recent meeting of the Northwest Association of Book Publishers, we handed out a fun homework assignment: write a story in no more than 36 words and prompted by “I wrote my book because…” Congratulations to Paul Gerhards for his winning piece! He will receive a free copy of Ink-Filled Page Red Anthology and The Self-Publishing Manual.

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I held the mug under the spigot poking out of the bladder-filled box. What would happen if I sloshed wine into the cup? It would not be the day I stopped drinking. I didn’t. It was.
© 2010 Paul Gerhards

Paul Gerhards is owner of Parami Press, LLC, publishing books from a Buddhist point of view. He is author of Mapping the Dharma: A Concise Guide to the Middle Way of the Buddha. He also is author of a series of six woodworking books published, in a previous lifetime, by Stackpole Books.

Flash Sledgehammer

We got creative with our 36-themed writing contests at the Write to Publish conference May 22-23 and offered Flash Sledgehammer, a 36-word contest. Fifteen writers submitted flash stories, and we found them all inventive and fun. Truth be told, we deliberated for quite a while and finally came to the conclusion that this contest and its submissions warranted three winners. Each will receive a free copy of Ink-Filled Page Red Anthology and a 30 percent discount on entering the Sledgehammer 36-Hour Writing Contest in September. Congratulations!

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Date number three.

She looked up at me from flat on her back.

“Close your eyes,” I said. “Imagine hippos.”

A peach-scented breeze carried us from the banks of Savannah to the waters of the Nile.

© 2010 Vinnie Kinsella

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Off on the savanna, out there one lion among lions, chewing satisfactory fills of suffered tasty meat once more, contented, he sighed, rolled over, hands lifted–little paws holding pieces of–something, something like…Jeannie.

“Jeannie!”

© 2010 Paula Friedman

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The closeness of tanned skin holding the scent of coconut oil ignited our starving young passions. A balmy night and warm ocean breeze blessed the joining.

We smile when asked, “Why is her name Savannah?”

© 2010 Bob Ferguson