WRiTE CLUB 2021 - Preliminary Bout #11

We're back!

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday break, but now it's time to get back to business — and that business is selecting another bout winner.

We have five remaining preliminary matches this week, beginning with today. Remember, the voting for each bout remains open for an entire week.

Here's a reminder of what is happening. WRiTE CLUB (sponsored by Wild Lark Books) is a tournament-style contest that will run for nine weeks (which includes a week break for the holidays). It provides writers the opportunity to compete against one another for a chance to win a free publication package (along with other prizes). Here’s the kicker—it’s all done anonymously. Writers have submitted 500-word writing samples under pen names. The chosen (decided by a group of twelve slush pile readers) are paired off to go head-to-head in daily “bouts”, with the winner of each match determined by you the reader—by voting for your favorites. Bout winners keep advancing until there are only two remaining and that’s when a panel of celebrity judges, who include well know authors, agents, editors, and other publishing folks, choose the ultimate champion.

Anyone can vote (as long as you have a Google sign-in or verifiable email address), and when you do, we encourage you to leave a mini-critique for both writers. Oh, the voters can win a $50 Wild Lark Books gift card. Each time you vote in a bout your name will be placed into a hat and at the end of the contest, one name will be selected to receive the prize.

How this works—two anonymous (pen name only) writing samples are waiting in the ring below. Visitors to this blog (that’s you) should read both entries and then vote by leaving a comment for the one that resonates with you the most. We also ask that you leave a brief critique for both writers with your vote because that is one of the real values of this contest—FEEDBACK. Please be respectful with your remarks!

Even though there will be a different bout every day (M-F), the voting for each bout will remain open for seven days from the date I post it to give as many people as possible to have a say. Voting for today’s bout will close on Sun, Jan 2nd (noon central time). To help keep up with which bouts are open, you can follow along on the WRiTE CLUB Scoreboard updated right HERE.

It’s that simple. The writing piece that garnishes the most votes will move on to the next round where they’ll face a different opponent. In case of a tie, I’m the deciding vote. I can do that because, like all of you, I do not know the real names of our contestants either (my wife processes all the submissions).

A few more rules –

1) One vote per visitor per bout.

2) Although our contestants are anonymous, voters cannot be. Anonymous votes will not count, so if you do not have a Google account and are voting as a guest, be sure to include your name and email address.

3) Using any method (email, social media, text, etc) to solicit votes for a specific contestant will cause that contestant's immediate disqualification. What is okay, in fact, encouraged, is to spread the word about the contest to get more people to vote, just not for a specific writer!

That’s enough of the fine print…here we go!

On one side of the ring stands The Sparky One representing the Contemporary genre.

I sat on the cold concrete floor in shock.  Had Iris hit me?  I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked by the violence with which she’d touched me or the words she’d flung my way. 

 “I’m sorry,” she stammered and reached out a hand to help me up from the puddle I’d collapsed into on the floor.

 I ignored the hand.  Did she really think a gesture like that was enough?  Pain sliced through me, so acute I couldn’t even tell if it was real, physical pain from falling, or the agony her words had caused.  How could I have been so foolish?  I wanted to kick myself for thinking I could change her mind.

 “Juliet…. Please?”  She looked at me and I could see the pain and confusion in her eyes.  The longing and the fear.

 I climbed to my feet, a little shaky, but uninjured.  Except for my soul that felt as if it had been torn into a thousand tiny scraps and left to blow in the wind.  Pieces of myself seemed to drift away as I stood there.  “What?”  I asked finally.

 “This…  Whatever this is between us.  We can’t keep doing it.  It has to stop.”  The words felt dragged from Iris’s lips.  As if she didn’t want to say them any more than I wanted to hear them.  They felt heavy as they hung between us, tangible enough I could reach out and touch them.  I wished that was real.  I wanted to pick them up and fling them back at her.  I wanted them to wound her as deeply as they had wounded me.

 I swallowed hard.  I was not going to cry.  Not here, not now.  She could break my heart, but no way was I letting her have the satisfaction of seeing it, of knowing it. 

 I pushed past her and left the alcove.  Left her behind in the space that had once felt like the only safe place in a cruel and ignorant world.  A place where love had triumphed over bigotry and intolerance and willful misunderstanding.  A place that gave me far more solace than the church ever had.  God had never felt as present or tangible to me as he had when Iris and I squeezed together in that cramped alcove and showed each other the truth.

 I sob caught in my throat as I dashed up the stairs.  How had it ended like this?  I’d been so happy.  I hadn’t felt like that since middle school.  I thought I’d found my soulmate again, the person who made me complete.

But here I was, wrong.  And once again, I was alone.

 The bell rang and people drifted into the hallways, chattering and laughing as they hurried to class.  I drifted with them even though I couldn’t even remember what class I had next.  It didn’t seem important.  How could I focus on math or literature or French or biology when Iris had torn my heart to pieces?

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On the far side of the ring, we have Turin Turambar who represents the Romance genre.

Christianne jumped out as soon as the towtruck had pulled up before the garage. She didn’t wait to see which bay the driver dragged her useless car into but headed straight for the office door.

The sign on the frosted glass indicated the place would be closing in ten minutes. The streets were deserted. She was the only fool still out in Geneva’s old town this late on a weekday.

A tiny box of a lobby led directly onto a wide staircase. There was just space for a spindle-legged table holding a bowl of business cards and an umbrella stand perched by the bottom step. The place looked more like her oncologist’s than a mechanic’s entrance.

Both were equally unpleasant places at this hour. Of all the nights to be stranded by the roadside, the end of an exhausting day of testing was hardest to deal with. And there were still days of waiting to come, before she received her results.

“There is no luck,” she muttered, and trudged up the steps. “I’ll make my own way.”

At the top, she squared her shoulders and pushed into the office, perhaps more forcefully than she’d intended. The frosted glass rattled in its frame as the door swung shut behind her.

# # #

Here was something new.

Rory looked up from unpacking his takeaway Thai and studied the latest arrival. He stayed open late on Wednesdays because he couldn’t very well go to the gym every night and being the only garage available brought in enough additional income to make it worth his while. Nothing on at home, in any case, since the divorce. He might as well eat his takeaway here as plonked on his sofa in front of the TV.

And the clients were marginally more interesting.

He stopped crinkling the plastic bag, still clutching a clump of chili sauce packets, and pretended to frown down at his phone as he studied the newcomer from under lowered lids. Tall – she was nearly half a foot taller than his wee receptionist Melisande – and about his age. Though as he neared 40, everyone had begun to look the same age, except for socialites – like his ex – stretched taut by facelifts. Anyone younger than 30 seemed like a kid. When had he gotten so middle-aged?

This woman didn’t look as dowdy as he felt. Her shoulders sagged as she leaned over to fill out the form Melisande handed over, and her hair had that end-of-day draggliness, but her mouth was soft, and turned up at the corners – life hadn’t given her a permanent frown. She was trim, too, though it was hard to tell under layers of winter clothing. But her legs were slim, long and tapering into lace-up calf boots with a slight heel. He had a sudden image of her striding up to him in those boots – and only those boots – and pushing him back into his chair.

“I’ve been a very bad boy, aye.”

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Leave your votes and critiques in the comments below. Again, be respectful of your remarks and try to point out positives as well as detractions.

Before we sign off, I wanted to address the issue a few readers are having with not being able to post comments, or having those comments show up as UNKNOWN even though they have a Google Account.  There are several things at play here. First, if you are using the Safari or Chrome browsers they have a known problem with Blogger and you have two choices. Switch to Firefox as a browser (I've never had a problem using it), or change the setting on Safari as illustrated below.

The other problem is Blogger not recognizing you when adding a comment and therefore designating you as UNKNOWN. This could happen if the reader is a Blogger user themselves and they have not changed their settings since Google + went away.  To do this, follow these steps:

Go to Blogger dashboard.
SETTINGS
USER SETTINGS
Set User Profile = Blogger (instead of Google +)
Save

Hopefully, that will resolve everyone's issues and let the votes/comments reach our contestants.

Finally, in order to keep this contest going AND GROWING, I'm asking folks to donate to the cause on my Ko-fi account. Let me assure you, 100% of the donations will go towards the contest prizes for this year and next!

We’ll be back tomorrow with bout #12. Please help all our writers out by telling everyone you know what is happening here and encouraging them to come vote.

This is WRiTE CLUB—the contest where the audience gets clobbered!