Very busy at present updating short stories and novels for competitions. Sent ‘…sans Merci’ to the Bridport prize after a quick polish, and did a big rewrite on ‘Halfway House’ which I’ve never felt happy with, thought it was too predictable. Much better ambiguous last half now. Sent that to the Yeovill Literary Prize short story comp.
Also wanted to enter the novel category at Yeovill, but what to enter? ‘Green Magic’, probably the most commercial of my novels, is already out with the Lucy Cavendish competition. Eventually decided on the incomplete ‘Goddess’ and had to stick with its working title. Of course, the computer started hanging and freezing when trying to copy and paste it in, and in hurrying up to submit it during a brief interlude when the ***** machine seemed to be working, I completely forgot to copy in the synopsis. As soon as I switched back to Word and saw it there – grrrr. Not sure if that is £11 down the tubes as without a synopsis it will be disqualified and they don’t allow you to correct entries. Can only hope email plea to the organisers will be successful.
Update – Good news! The nice people at Yeovill said to email them the synopsis, which I’ve done, so all is well.
Not so good is that an email just came in to say ‘Green Magic’ did not make it through to the final five in the Lucy Cavendish competition. Still, it was nice of them to email, which at least frees up the novel for another competition I have in mind. Most comps don’t tell you, and you have to wait till the deadline for annnouncing the winners has passed, which usually means missing some good comps in the meantime.