prizes | Sledgehammer Writing Contest

Mini Sledgehammer February 2014: Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese

Posted on February 25, 2014 by writer

Congratulations to this month’s winner, Pamela Russell Bejerano!

Character: A Good Samaritan

Action: Seeing something that wasn’t meant to be

Setting: The eye of the storm

Phrase: Well, that was unexpected

***

Eye of the Storm

Amber stood on the edge of the park, watching all of the happy people play and sled and run around in the snow. Her plan was to stand here long enough to erase the memory from her mind. She took in the huge Doug Firs, the happy dogs wagging their tails and chasing each other, the father bouncing off his inner tube and grasping at the jacket of his daughter who slid past him, laughing. The snow softly fell amidst the chaos. She closed her eyes and listened. She could almost hear the giant, fluffy flakes that changed the world around her.

Suddenly it was there. The image, again. When you see something that wasn’t meant to be it has a way of imprinting itself so deeply onto the brain that it actually makes a new ridge and settles itself in for life. His face. His deep, brown eyes. The tears welling on the rims, quivering, as if the fall would kill them.

“What are you doing here?”

It was all she could think to say.

“I had to see you.”

The storm had passed. Or so she thought. The weathermen always talk of the eye of the storm, that moment when you believe with false hope that it’s over. That you’ve survived. But then the other half of the storm rips through. This half, the one they always claim was unexpected, is the one that breaks down the fragile barrier that you thought would hold. But it never does. And when it falls, the Good Samaritan is nowhere to be found.

A loud screech pierced her vision, sending his face shattering into a million tiny pieces. She opened her eyes, too late. The toboggan slammed into her shins and sent her knees buckling in a direction that was not human. Another sound filled her ears. She realized it was her own scream.

“Don’t move!” a voice shouted in her ear.

It was the man, the father. His daughter sat by her side, her eyes filled with horror. Moving was not an option, so Amber stayed, the snow soaking through her pants, her jacket. It seemed hours before a medical crew arrived. Faces appeared in her line of vision, then disappeared, only to reappear again. A poke stung her arm. The world went black.

Seven months, three weeks and four days. That’s how long it took her to walk again. In that time she had been confined to a wheelchair, then crutches, and finally a simple cane. It was month eight when she stepped out into the sun and walked to the park. She stopped and turned in a 360 degree circle. It was all there, right where she’d left it. The happy people, the dogs playing, the Doug Firs swaying in the wind. It was the only thing she saw.

Pamela Russell Bejerano is a writer who works as a school administrator in Portland, Oregon. Pamela has published a poem and was invited to read a short story at the Cannon Beach Historical Society; this is her fourth Mini Sledgehammer win. Pam has lived abroad several times and weaves multicultural issues and the strength of women throughout her writing. She is currently working on her second novel about a young woman living in Nicaragua whose tenderly crafted life and community are shattered by an atrocity that she alone must find the strength to overcome.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: 36 minutes, 36-minute writing contest, Blackbird Wine, Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, Blackbird Wine Shop, free, Indigo Editing, Indigo Editing & Publications, Mini Sledgehammer, Pamela Russell Bejerano, Portland, prizes, publish, short story, writing contest | 1 Comment »

Mini Sledgehammer January 2014: Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese

Posted on January 28, 2014 by writer

We missed you, Mini Sledgehammer! In this first contest of 2014, two Sledgehammer veterans and two people new to the contest tackled the four prompts and the clock. Congratulations to this month’s winner, J.B. Kish.

Character: A reformed omnivore

Action: Choosing bananas

Setting: The bottom of the bowl

Phrase: Oh yes, I know the Muffin Man

***

The Difference Between Snow

He reached out, choosing bananas again. He always chose bananas on colder days, when the snow had drifted up against the front of his cabin like the lip of cake frosting. Jerking his massive wooden front door open, he welcomed a sharp, cutting breeze against his cheek and shook it off. Mother winter was kissing him awake. Kisses were always their brightest in the morning. Not like sundown.

Jack Shadowsong stepped out into the high-desert sunlight and carefully peeled one of his bananas from the bottom up. He took an enormous bite, and carefully wedged the rest of his fruit lunch into his parka. The others stuck out from his belly like lumpy tentacles, giving him a queer look. He chewed complacently, staring at the fruit in his pocket. He had a long day ahead of him. Longer now since he’d become a—what did his daughter call him?—a reformed omnivore. 75 years of sugars and elk and hamburgers down at the gas station had made him sluggish and slow.

“You’re an old buffalo,” his daughter Suzy told him. “You’ll die in these mountains an old buffalo, papa. You have to start eating better.”

And so, much to his chagrin, Jack Shadowsong had banana lunches and fruit dinners, and fruit breakfast, and fruit, fruit—

“Fruit,” Jack muttered. “God I hate fruit.” He spit the rest of his banana and it disappeared into the snow at his feet. And then he was off, to the bottom of the bowl, to watch the young skiers get in fistfights with snowboards and drink until they were red in the face.

“That was Justin Jackson new hit single, ‘Oh Yes, I Know the Muffin Man,’ and you heard it first, right here on KRSMACK Radio.”

The radio DJ’s voice blared through the speakers at the base of the ski slope near the ticket booth. The line was down to the parking lot. And the children were already screaming. Jack hadn’t even made it into the lodge for coffee yet before his boss was waving him to the chair lift for a quick relief shift. That’s what he called them. “Relief shifts.” The only smoke break that took forty-five minutes, Jack thought to himself. But there he was, standing in line and checking tickets and thinking to himself about the coming night.

Jack could stand for hours at a time. He didn’t mind his job. He didn’t mind standing, and pressing the button when a child fell down onto its face. He liked picking them up, brushing the snow of their noses and helping them onto the lift. He didn’t mind all the money, and the white people, and the radio DJ, or the lack of coffee. What Jack minded was the snow. What Jack minded, was the spirit of the mountains.

“You’ll die in these mountains, papa. An old stubborn buffalo,” his daughter told him. And maybe she was right. There was no fruit for stubbornness. And so maybe he would die in these mountains. Hell, Jack thought to himself. Maybe I’ll die right here in line, taking tickets and listening to radio DJs. Maybe I’ll turn into a Popsicle and they put a flashlight in my hand. But he wouldn’t leave his mountains. He wouldn’t leave mother winter.

What Jack minded was the snow. The white snow. The perfect, white reclaimed snow that they made in machines so the money would come and the music would play and the snowboarders would fight. Jack hated the snow because he couldn’t tell what of it was new and what of it was old. He couldn’t tell what mother winter had brought him and what the lawyers made with their documents and their paper and their signatures.

Jack missed the days when he was a boy, and he didn’t have to think about the people on his mountain. When snow was snow. And winter was winter. And the cold was—

“Hey asshole, are you paying attention?”

Jack’s eye’s fluttered to life and landed on the boy holding out his ticket. Jack narrowed his focus, and then his expression fell. He feigned a smile, scanned the ticket, and the boy got on the lift.

When the sun dropped down, and the temperatures reached their lowest, the mountain emptied, and Jack found himself still standing at the bottom of the bowl. Mother winters kisses were at their darkest, and there was no shaking that kind of cold. Not until he was home and in his bed. But that night, Jack decided to stay a little while longer and stand in line. With no tickets to scan and no little children to help to their feet. Jack stood in the bowl and remembered the time when he was little. When the snow was really snow and there was no reason to think other wise.

“You’ll die in these mountains, papa,” his daughter told him. “An old stubborn buffalo.” And maybe she was right. Maybe he would.

J.B. Kish

Originally from the Southwest, J.B. Kish moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2012. He spends his weekends in a walk-in closet turned office working on his newest novel, A Wall for Teeth and Stingers, and other works. He can be reached at jbkwriting@gmail.com.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: 36 minutes, 36-minute writing contest, Blackbird Wine, Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, Blackbird Wine Shop, free, Indigo Editing, Indigo Editing & Publications, j.b. kish, Mini Sledgehammer, Portland, prizes, publish, short story, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer December 2013: Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese

Posted on November 21, 2013 by writer

It’s the time of year for thinking about, well, time. This month’s prompts speak to that. Congratulations to this month’s winner, Daniel Granias, who wrote in memory of Elissa Nelson.

Character: Timekeeper

Action: Pencil it in

Setting: Calendar sales rack

Phrase: Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana

***

Untitled

Dedicated to Elissa Nelson, beloved friend and former Mini Sledgehammer facilitator, who first introduced me to the series.

In my dreams, my father rides on the back of a whooping crane. It flies through an amber sunset, its neck undulating in a long S. Together they splash and patter in the high tide while the rhino burrows its great iron horn in the glittering sand searching for nematodes. The crane takes my father’s belt in its long beak and throws him into the dusty lavender thickets, where he rolls across their dense beds under the cattail reeds that tower eight stories high. The king of the nematodes carries an hourglass with three bulbs; one for red sand, one for yellow, and one for green. When he turns the glass, the sky turns grey and my father and I are sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for the nematode secretary to call our name.

“Bastille! Bastille! I’ve been calling you for the past century! Where have you been? You’ve missed your bicentennial treatment again, now we must pencil you in for the next millennium, and we’re booked through Julaugustary!”

The day-by-day calendar on the desk curls its pages into lips that say, “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana!”

With a flourish, my father throws on a lime green doctor’s coat and lifts me in its folds. He takes me to the bookshop he owned, to the corner where my mother quilted the pillows and blankets in so many shades of violet, plum, and indigo.

It is there I wake, beneath the cherry-cedar rocking chair where he’d take me in his lap and read me tales of places near and far, while I stared at the pictures of birds and mammals on the calendars we sold on the rack by the register. The pillows still smell and feel like my mother’s bosom; it was so long ago I fit in the linen nest of her apron before her cancer took hold for the year that followed, each day feeling like a month, each visitation hour like a second.

Now I’ll sort and stack the pillows, activate the register, and flip the paper clock in the window back and unlock the doors as parents and children visit our rows of pop-ups, pictures, and puppets, and I’ll assume my place in the cherry-cedar rocking chair and read the next tale to this afternoon’s visitors just as my mother and father did.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: 36 minutes, 36-minute writing contest, Blackbird Wine, Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, Blackbird Wine Shop, daniel granias, free, Indigo Editing, Indigo Editing & Publications, Mini Sledgehammer, Portland, prizes, publish, short story, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer: Burning Man 2013

Posted on October 21, 2013 by writer

For the first time ever, Sledgehammer had a presence at Burning Man! To see a write-up on the event, click here. Congratulations to Fran Hewison, who took home the golden sledgehammer, and to Alexis Martin-Vegue and Suze Campagna, aka Scout, who both took home writing-quill pendants as prizes. Here are their stories.

Prompts:
Jane Austen clones
burlesque

***

Untitled

By Fran Hewison

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the larger a lady is in sense and sensibility land, the more husbands she can hope to attract. For a large woman is always in need of several undersized men to satisfy her needs.

Yes, sadly all the men in this society are born with one small, and I use the word advisedly, yet telling defect. Although the yare all six feet tall or more, the yare possessed of a penis roughly the size of your common or garden matchbox.

Thus those females of greater dimensions are deemed to need more men to satisfy them. Smaller women, however, are judged to be less in need of stimulation and must therefore make do with onelly one or two husbands.

This society may seem strange to us, as a civilized, patriarchal world. Indeed, sense and sensibility land is a result of a failed 20^th century social experiment which aimed to promote the idea of society described in Jane Austin’s novels by forcing randomly selected test subjects to endure endless reruns of the film pride and prejudice, whilst they were under the influence of McDonalds and LSD. The idea was that a group of overly compliant women would develop as a result, for the benefit and enjoyment of men, who were beginning to get dissatisfied with all the uppity feminists cluttering the place up.

Sadly, something somewhere must have gone terribly wrong. Instead of the desired outcome, the experiment produced a group of plus-sized, overly fertile and entitled women and weak, underequipped men. Observers speculate that this may be due to secret gene therapy carried out on the subjects, as well as the extremely kinky burlesque shows which both male and female participants had to watch.

The result was sense and sensibility land, a place where proper values are turned on their head. As a moral, upstanding anthropologist, I can only condemn such goings-on.

However, one good thing came from this terrible, terrible mistake. Our own society abandoned its dangerous slide towards female empowerment, and once again embraced the inequality of the sexes, not to mention the status of women as objects who only achieve validation through marriage.

But why bother telling you, my gentle readers, of such horrible things? Because I, the intrepid Dayle Darcy, am about to undertake a voyage to this distant, dangerous place. Despite the fact that I feel nothing but disdain for the women of the society, and to some extent the men, I admit to a certain curiousity about these people and their ways. Especially the intriguing Eliza, head of the family with whom I shall stay.

But enough – here I must break off, as my transport is now arrived. I shall write further of this matter when I am safely installed within the bosom of my host family, the Bennets.

***

Untitled

By Alexis Martin-Vegue

It is not quite as it appears when you look out on this oppressive landscape. It looks like 19^th century England, but what I know now is that it’s just a projection implanted in my brain by the beings of this planet. How I ended up here is a story too long to tell. It’s irrelevant now anyway. What is relevant is the steps I’ve made towards my escape.

I’m contained here by a force field encapsulating the planet. I know it’s lowered once ever y 36 hours to let trash ships leave its atmosphere. If I am able to further the rocky alliance I’ve made with one of the trash barge captains, I may garner a ride for my pod in the barge’s trash bay.

The other thing I’ve done is attempt to blend in. Luckily, I bear enough resemblance to Jane Austin that it seems to be working. All of the labor on this faceade(??) planet is done by clones of Jane Austin. How or why that came to be I don’t know. The native residents of this place remain concealed to me. I stumble around in my bustle and try to keep a tenuous grip on my sanity.

I woke this morning screaming again, realizing the desperateness of my situation. The only things keeping my spirit are focus on my plan to escape and memories of my life before this. I get a grip on my outburst and turn my focus once again to the plan, knowing today is the day.

I dress in my drabbest dress and most comfortable shoes. Very unlike some of the ornate Victorian things I have been donning. I hope to slip into the garage housing my bod unnoticed. It’s Friday and all of the clones will be at the theater preparing for the burlesque show they perform each week, broadcasted to who knows where for the natives to watch.

I sneak out of my townhouse through the alley door and head down to the industrial district where I know my pod is being kept. My footsteps sound so real and hollow echoing on what I know isn’t really a cobbled street. I reach the garage unwatched and pay my bribe to the Jane who lets me enter. She helps me push the pod off the loading dock into the trash bin. I await my friendly captain to pick me up. It smells musty in my pod from what I can only estimate as a year of storage.

Finally, after a white knuckled half hour of waiting, the barge rolls in. The trash and I are loaded into the ship, the ship’s skeleton crew pretends not to notice me inside the pod, as promised by my friend Jane. I am grateful. The ship has a few more stops, the new are headed up.

I watch London shrink away beneath me, hoping I’ll never see it again. W break out of the atmosphere and my vision is flooded with relief of blackness. My pod and I are expelled from the barge’s bowels and as I float into space I drift into sleep, hoping to dream of my next adventure.

***

Untitled

By Suze Campagna, aka Scout

I have visited many planets in my lifetime and met many interesting beings, and experienced many wonderments, oddities, amazements. But nothing as wonderful, odd or amazing as the time I crash landed on the Planet Licklepish.

I was on my way to my home planet when my fuel tank failed to tell me it was near empty. I was searching for a place to stop when I accidentally caught the strong gravitational pull of the planet.

Luckily, I landed in a bed of soft, green sand. As I set out to seek help I saw the landscape was covered with florescent pink, green and orange flowers.

As I walked through a field of flowers they started dancing with the beat of my steps, so I stopped to dance with them. I tried the funky chicken, they didn’t like that much. I tried a waltz, but flowers don’t make good waltz partners. I tried a celi dance I learned on the Planet Green. That was fun. Then when I tried a burlesque dance the flowers (? liked?) that.

As we got into it, I saw a bunch of women in full length dresses approaching quickly and angrily. As the y got closer, I noticed that though they were all different sizes, they all had pretty much the same face. The chubbiest one of them all came at me and yelled.

STOP! Don’t encourage them!

What? I asked. We were just having fun.

“When they cance too much they release a strange liquid.”

Just as she said that, the plants let out what sounded like a fart, and a liquid oozed out of their leaves. It was odd(?).

“Too late,” said a skinny one, who I realized had the face of an old Earth writer, Jane Austin.

The smell was familiar. As I put it to my nose, I knew instantly it was the fuel I needed. I explaned my predicament to the Jane Austin clones. All started dancing and helped me gather enough hfuel to get me home.

They also asked that I never reveal the coordinates of their planet. But if I ever run out of fuel in that quadrant, I now know where to go.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Alexis Martin-Vegue, Burning Man, Fran Hewison, free, prizes, Sledgehammer, Suze Campagna, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Sledgehammer at Burning Man

Posted on October 21, 2013 by writer

We’re very excited that Sledgehammer was represented at Burning Man this year. 2012 Individual Winner Courtney Sherwood attended the annual arts festival with golden sledgehammers as prizes for the first-ever Burning Man Mini-Sledgehammers. Here’s her report.

***

Nothing at Burning Man ever goes quite as planned, and my attempt to bring two 36-minute Sledgehammer contests to the Nevada desert this year proved no exception. I made plans with organizers of two different camps to hold different competitions over the course of the week.

The first 1,000 or so events submitted to the official guide are included in print listed distributed to everyone in attendance, and organizers of the rest have to hope and pray that their events find an audience. Somehow, one of the contests made it to the guide and the other didn’t. It’s no coincidence, then, that dozens of people showed up for the first contest, and nobody made it to the second.

The official meet and greet for the first-ever Get Lit(erary) at Burning Man collaboration took place immediately before the Sledgehammer competition, so I had to run to get to the contest site on time, and when I arrived there were at least 40-50 people already waiting to go. Some had started writing without any direction from me, and one person spoke up to say that they had agreed to write about Jane Austin clones.

Rather than halt the action that was already under way, I decided to go with the flow. So I stepped to the microphone and asked everyone to take a quick break from writing while I introduced myself and explained how Sledgehammer works in the real world. I told everyone that they had 36 minutes to write a story that incorporated the prompt they had chosen together — Jane Austin clones — and two prompts of my own — burlesque and the phrase “mental floss.” Then I stepped back and turned on the timer.

When time ran out, I invited anybody who was interested to step up and read. So many people raised their hands that I imposed a three-minute time limit. According to my notes, at least 19 people opted to share their stories, and plenty of other people wrote but did not read outloud.

Within 1-2 stories, it became clear that nobody had heard me say “mental floss.” Not a single story incorporated that phrase. So I judged according to these criteria:

1- use of the other two prompts.

2- beginning, middle and end.

3- originality (a few stories that seemed original at first came to seem less original when other people stepped to the mic with very similar plots and phrasing)

4- audience reaction.

5- arbitrary caprice.

By the time everyone had read, we had been there for close to two hours, and we were running out of stage time — musicians were scheduled to perform in the space we occupied. There were so many entertaining and bizarre stories that I knew it would be impossible to go through my notes and give a completely fair and just ruling, so I quickly chose three people as winners who had scored well during the reading, but I also emphasized before the audience that I could not vouch for the fairness of my judgment, and that many, many people had told excellent stories.

After we wrapped up the event, the manager of the stage — the event was at the Lost Penguin Cafe — came up to tell me that we’d drawn one of the biggest crowds of the day, and said he’d loved to host Sledgehammer again next year. I thanked him for hosting, and promised to get there early and to be better prepared if we do it again.

***

Thanks for hosting it, Courtney and Lost Penguin Cafe! We look forward to seeing what comes up next year.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Burning Man, Courtney Sherwood, free, Get Lit(erary), prizes, Sledgehammer, writing contest | Leave a comment »

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Mini Sledgehammer: Burning Man 2013

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