The Great American Sentence
Perusing Facebook, as sadly I waste too much time doing on an almost daily basis, one of my friends posted a link to Easy Street: A Magazine of Books and Culture. To celebrate the launch of their magazine, the publishers are hosting The Great American Sentence: A Contest. To participate, you need to send up to five sentences to easysubmissions@gmail.com. If one, or more than one, of your sentences is lucky enough to be selected, Easy Street will pay you $5 a word. You’ll earn $10 a word if you post the contest to a social media site, such as a blog. (Do you see my evil plan now?)
When you click on the contest link above, make sure to read the “Anticipated Questions” section. I laughed more than once. If that section represents the voice of the magazine, I will become a regular reader. Amusing and intelligent.
The deadline is the end of February. Don’t miss out on this creative dare!!! I thought of my first sentence last night as I was making dinner. Tell me what you think:
Tears streamed down my face, as I chopped the onions, one by one, though the root vegetable was not the cause of my pain.
I will work on four more today and send them in. A break from the formation of my book helps keep my creative juices flowing, making it much easier to continue to type away at the keyboard.
Yes, it seems I’m having a love affair with the creative genius that is Kevin J. Anderson. I recently finished Captain Nemo: The Fantastic Adventures of a Dark Genius. Anderson connected Jules Verne with his most famous protagonist making them childhood friends who shared a love interest with an independent woman in mid-19th century France. Andre Nemo recorded his misadventures including being deserted on an island attacked by pirates, traveling to the center of the earth, attempting to shoot men to the moon, exploring Africa in a balloon. Do any of these sound familiar? Exactly. Anderson proposed that Verne’s fictional stories were inspired by the real life adventures of his best friend. Most interestingly, Anderson managed to create the love story that Verne never could stomach.
My 13 year old, Xander, read the book before I did. We were talking at the dinner table about the originators of science fiction. (Believe it or not, this is a pretty typical discussion for us around the dinner table.) Naturally, Jules Verne’s name came up. He dropped his fork at the revelation that Jules Verne was an ACTUAL author. Anderson wove the story so masterfully, Xander thought the entire tale was invented. We were all amused. And then we realized the lack in our son’s proper education and scheduled a trip to the library to fix the gap.
If you still have not picked up a Kevin J. Anderson book, make this one your first. It will not be your last.
Read more books!
