WRiTE CLUB 2021 - Preliminary Bout #8

We're back with yet another 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 Tue, Dec 21st (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 Iradessa representing the Fantasy genre.

The king sat at his desk, weariness threatening to drag him into sleep. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. There were letters to answer. Problems to address. Double agents to recruit. He rubbed a hand across his forehead before unrolling the newest scroll in his stack of unread mail.

He had barely broken the seal when he heard it: a tiny little cough.

The king sighed and set the scroll aside. “How long have you been there?”

There was a pause, and then the form of a man in his mid-thirties flickered into existence by the door. He leaned against the mantle, arms crossed. Bright violet eyes peered out of a heavily scarred face. “I’m surprised you didn’t abandon your plan,” he remarked. “Dores is a wild card; nothing about him is certain.”

“His success—or failure—is a raindrop in a heavy thunderstorm, Ace,” the king replied.

Ace crossed the room and lowered himself into one of the chairs across from the king. His golden hair glinted strangely, almost unnaturally, in the dim torchlight. “Our enemy is close to achieving his goals.”

“We are close to achieving ours also. Have you Seen anything about the outcome?”

Ace frowned, opening his mouth as if to speak and then closing it again. He lifted the scroll off the top of the pile, the one with the broken seal. He unrolled it, his eyes skimming over it so briefly that there was no way he could have read it before he returned it to the top of the pile. “It’s all muddled,” he finally said. “I’ve tried focusing upon many different events and people. But none of them elicit a clear view.”

The king waved for Ace to continue.

The man sighed and stood, pacing back and forth. “I see…beasts of old,” he said after a moment. “Power bounces back and forth, but there’s no finality, no conclusion. The only clear thing is the opening of the sixth Vault. But I’ve been unable to identify if it is our enemy who opens it, or us.”

“Anything else?”

A pregnant pause filled the room.

“Ace?”

“No,” the other man finally said, but something about the way he said it made the king believe he wasn’t telling the truth. Yet there was no use pushing him. Time and again, he’d learned that Ace revealed only what he wanted to share, what he believed would be useful. If there was something else he was holding back, it wasn’t relevant, at least not yet.

“Very well,” the king said after a moment passed. “Thank you.”

Ace left through the door instead of whatever way he’d magically come, and the king watched him go with narrowed eyes. The man had been useful, far more useful than he could ever have imagined when he’d been approached decades earlier. But now the end was nearing. Would Ace stand with him when they’d defeated their shared enemy? Or would he become a new enemy?

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On the far side of the ring, we have Wheelock's Latin who represents the Realistic Fiction genre.

Hitting Home

Gary slid the key into the lock, making sure the rest didn’t rattle against the door.  Even though he pulled the door toward him, the hasp scraped before it gave.  Gary winced.  Taking a breath, he cracked the door.  Inside the darkened apartment, he relocked the door and hung the chain that Ellen had left undone.  As he let out his breath, the kitchen switch clicked behind him and light stretched into the hallway.  It was 3:30 a.m.

Always lie to your wife and to the cops – to everyone else you tell the truth.  That was Gary’s motto.  He smelled his armpits and hands and blew a quick breath into his palm and inhaled.  A little boozy but he had washed Gloria’s smell from him.  He had told Gloria it felt as if he’d wiped his nose with his marriage license yet again but the feeling would passed.  He certainly wasn’t going to make any rash promises to himself or God always to be a good boy and never stumble again.  Gloria laughed at this and tried to diddle him into shape for a second go, but he couldn’t outrun the whiskey.  Sorry, kid.

“Where have you been, mister?”  Ellen sat at the table in her blue robe, her hair a mess but her eyes dry.  Gary picked up the mug in front of her, swirled its remnants, and took a sip.  A fruity tea but no booze.

“Up with a sick friend.”  The lie that said it was none of her business.

“In a pig’s eye,” she said.  “Which whore this time?”

“Like I’d have to pay for it, sharp looking guy like me,” he said, chuckling with his back to her.  

“Get real.”  He rummaged a couple of tortillas from the fridge to soak up the booze.  He had married Ellen fourteen years before on a pregnancy scare, and he’d been faithful for the first four.  Since the twins, though, he wound up with someone every couple months.

“Maybe I ought to do some stepping out of my own,” she taunted.  “Show you what you’ve been missing.”

“The girls wrecked your body, kiddo.  Good luck with that.”

“There’s an ass for every chair,” she said, her voice a whisper.

He leaned back against the sink and nodded.  He body wasn’t what it had been, but she still had something.  He only ran that line to keep her options shut down.

“Go ahead,” he said, calling her bluff.

“I’ve done it before, smart man,” she said, twisting her wedding ring.  “Grab a couple of cold ones, and I’ll tell you all you want to know.”

He opened two bottles, placed one before her, and sat across the table.  As she began to talk, her eyes wide and defiant, he lifted his beer to drink, but his throat was too dry to swallow.

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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 #9. 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!