WRiTE CLUB 2021 - Preliminary Bout #7

 

We're back with the next preliminary bout. Remember, the voting for each bout remains open for an entire week, so if you missed one or two you can always go back and catch up.

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 Mon, Dec 20th (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 WordMonger representing the General Fiction genre.

Showdown in Severance

The only residents left in Severance were empty buildings, tumbleweeds, and dust. Harry had spent the last three weeks chasing this one since the Montana border, through Wyoming, and into Colorado. The trail of bodies it left behind made tracking it easy.

He was tired and thirsty and was surprised to see a well along the main street. He twisted the water valve and was greeted with brown sludge. Did a fish die in it? He abandoned the faucet tapping his breast pocket where he kept a flask of whiskey. Once the job was done, he would treat himself to a swig.

Pulling on his mustache Harry scanned the buildings that tumbled along the empty street. The only movement came from the occasional breeze that blew up a bit of dust or fluttered the colored drapes from broken windows.

She was here somewhere. It was here, he reminded himself. He could smell its oily disregard that hung in the air. It, and cyborgs like it, were the Federal Conglomerate’s answer to an alien problem, until they, the cyborgs, became humanity’s worst nightmare. A glitch in their programing the F.C. said. Some glitch, Harry thought.

He was pulled aside. Caught with an arm wrapped around his neck and a weapon in his back.

“Hello Harry. Are you ready to die?”

Harry knew the velvet voice could only belong to Stark. “Don’t tempt me with death. It might be the easy way out of this Hell hole, but I’m not quite ready to leave.” He twisted out of its grasp and stepped back a few paces with his own gun in his hand.

She took his breath away, yet he had to remember he was looking at a cyborg, not the drop-dead gorgeous woman it portrayed. He glanced to Stark’s head. Above the left eye and across its metallic skull, the polished sheen was marred by deep gouges exposing the wiring beneath. “You don’t look so good Stark. Your brain feeling the breeze, or is your cardboard heart too stiff to connect to your Bot-brain to know it’s sprung a leak?”

“Half bot, Harry. Not that you could extrapolate anything with your human grey matter.”

He lifted his chin, his mouth turning into a crooked grin. He took a half step to the left and tilted his hat in front of his face just as the cyborg’s head exploded.

After a moment’s hesitation he lowered his hat and shook what gore he could from it. Looking up, the grin he had a moment ago grew into a full smile.

“Nice shot Josie!” he waved to the small woman holding a rifle who rose from the roof of a saloon down the road. She gave him a quick salute.

Harry stood over the cyborg and kicked its foot. A deep laugh rumbled from his chest. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his flask of whiskey raising it to the prone body in a toast.

“Extrapolate that, bitch.”

 #############################################################################

On the far side of the ring, we have Stardust Forager who represents the Literary Fiction genre.

“A New Page” 

Dusk had just turned the corner into night when an ambulance pulled up at my neighbor’s house. Well, neighbor was probably stretching it. I didn’t even know his name. When I’d moved here a year ago for the crown molding and the pine floors, he’d been raking leaves, looking like the grandpa I barely remembered. I’d walked over to say hello, but he didn’t speak first and my courage failed. And that’s a moment you can’t get back, the one where the most natural thing to do is open your world to someone else. This I’ve learned from a lifetime of letting hellos pass me by. So for a year I’ve watched him shuffle out to get his mail and he’s watched me water my petunias and we’ve never said a word. 

But in an emergency, that moment circles back. I ran into his yard as they brought him out on a stretcher, his white hair dissheveled, an oxygen mask over his face. His rheumy gray eyes locked onto mine and he pulled the mask down long enough to gasp, “My cat. Will you feed my–” before a paramedic secured it again. 

“Of course,” I said, watching them load him under spinning red lights. Then I ducked inside to the stench of dust and kitty litter. News buzzed from a corner of the den where a can of cold chicken noodle soup and a spoon had fallen to the floor. I picked them up, swallowing the prickle of fear that, give or take a few decades, this would be me. 

“Here, kitty,” I said, glancing at an envelope on a stack of bills that covered the counter. J. Merritt. I was that much closer to his name, at least. 

When no cat appeared, I stepped into the brown carpeted depths of the hall. “Kitty?”

A muffled bump answered. The cat. Just the cat. Still I grabbed for the light switch at the nearest door. Inset bulbs hummed on, reflecting off the last thing I expected. Glass cases. The nearest held an oversized yellowed volume, opened to Shakespeare’s Tempest. In the next, Marlowe’s Faustus stared up at me. A fluffy tabby materialized, twined around my legs. “What in the world, cat?” 

That’s when I felt someone watching me. I turned slow, hackles rising, to the portrait of a woman, elegant and accusing. Her blue-green eyes seemed to follow me out of the room as I fled back to the kitchen, grabbed a can of Purr Delight from the nearly empty pantry and dumped it in the bowl by the sink, trying to reel my imagination in. This was exactly why I never said hello. Still my thoughts kept drifting to that picture. Who was she? And who exactly was J. Merritt? 

None of my business, that’s who. 

On the way out, I snagged keys from the counter. I’d come back tomorrow, just to feed the cat and drop off some real food. 

Most definitely not to investigate.

#############################################################################

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 #8. 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!