SHORT STORY COMPETITION
WINNER: “Always a Price”, Joanne Anderton
HONOURABLE MENTION: “Life, Death and Customer Service”, Nicholas Stella

FLASH COMPETITION:
WINNER: “Blood Lilies”, Shauna O’Meara
HONOURABLE MENTION: “Fragments of a Botanical Journal”, Matthew J Morrison

(more info here http://australianhorror.com/index.php?view=57)

Congrats to the winners, and well done to all who entered. I was especially chuffed to see Jo win the short story contest – all entries were blind-judged, so we had no idea who the authors were until we’d made our decision. Jo is going great guns with her writing, and her story in Midnight Echo #6 was top-shelf.

Many thanks to fellow judges Alan Baxter and Felicity Dowker, and huge high-fives to Martin Livings for wrangling this thing, and keeping it together when we judges got all Battle Royale on each other. I have it on good authority that the winners will be getting the plague through the post soon. Erm, I meant their plaques, of course :-)

First time I’ve competed in this level of singing, and I quickly learnt a couple of things. It’s SOP to have a change of costume between your songs (serious!). It’s also a bad idea to stick to only the one artist/group. Variety and versitility can have an effect on your final score. One kind soul also suggested not looking at the screen so often, and learning all of the words. True, and a quick squiz at the offical KWC Youtube clips (world champions at the international finals) proves that these folks are more or less singing as pros – entertaining the crowd, dancing, and belting it out with full confidence. Turns out it’s serious business!

Next, the State Finals await. Bring it on

So after returning to the Author Services building turning in our 24-hour stories, John Goodwin (President of Galaxy Press) dropped by to give our class a bit of a talk about media, self-promotion, and interviewing skills.  This was really invaluable stuff – I’ve done other writing courses/camps/retreats before, and not once has anyone ever told me about how to conduct myself in an interview situation.  Here’s a great example:  If someone says to you “so, what’s your story about?” can you neatly summarise your tale in thirty seconds or so?  Pretty much every time I’ve been asked this question, I come out with “there’s this guy, you see, and he lives in this land where so-and-so happens, and he has the ability to so-and-so, and then…” by which time the other person has a glazed look in their eyes and you’ve officially lost their interest.

Now change this into an interview setting with the media.  You’ve got thirty seconds to sell yourself and your new product, to an interviewer who is probably not interested in the genre and who will unconsciously attempt to derail the conversation to more familiar territory.  We were taught how to be concise, how to present ourselves, how to stick to the topic and answer the question we really want to answer (much as politicians do in interviews).

We were put into practice with our “twins” (person you’re sat next to for the workshop), and did dry-runs of our interviewing skills until we were blue in the face.  This was invaluable, as later on we first prize winners did film and radio interviews, and all the contestants did film and taped interviews with the folks from Author Services after the awards ceremony.  At some stage a filmed interview with us will appear at neverendingpanel.com, and we each did a spot for XM Radio.  I’m sure glad we had a bit of practice first!

All books published by WOTF winners are kept in a very cool library, and I too have a book here!  It’s the skinny one next to The Jane Austen Book Club. 

Later on that evening, we gents were fitted for our tuxedos, and then there was a BBQ held down by the pool in the Roosevelt.  We writers and illustrators got to mingle together, and meet most of the contest Judges, which was an incredibly cool moment.  There I am, my hamburger dripping condiments everywhere, grinning like an idiot as I chat to legendary writers such as Mike Resnick, Kevin J Anderson, Nina Kiriki Hoffmann (the FIRST ever quarterly winner of the Contest and now a Judge)  and Rob J Sawyer.  The whole time I was remembering the advice given to me by many well-meaning folks back home “Don’t you dare tell puns to the judges, Fisch!”  I…definitely failed on that one.  By that stage I had consumed my own weight in sweet American Coca-Cola, and I was at terminal caffeine velocity.  I do believe I was matched pun for pun by quite a few folks (including punning dark-horse Eric James Stone) and none of my anecdotes held up to anything that Mike Resnick said.

Later on, I was telling someone that, once everything had been organised, most of my anxieties regarding this trip had vanished.  Jerry Pournelle overheard part of this, and inserting himself into the conversation, bellowed “A WRITER WITHOUT ANXIETY?  I DON’T BELIEVE IT!” and proceeded to steer the conversation into Awesome-Land.  It sure was cool to meet Dr. Pournelle and Larry Niven, two living legends of science fiction.

WOTF week may have a packed schedule, but we were far from doing it tough.  Here is the pool at the Roosevelt hotel, surrounded by palm trees, a bar, little coal fires, the works.  Apparently Marilyn Munroe lived in one of the pool-side apartments for a few years, and posed for photos here at some stage. 

The next day we were slated to visit Delta Printing, where we were going to see our book on the printing presses!  Very exciting stuff.  Well, it would have been, had I not finally succumbed to the various bugs and lack of sleep that had plagued me since arrival in the USA.  Short version, got really bad gastro and had to miss the trip.  Blergh.  I was quite disappointed, but a couple of folks (Jordan and Alex) grabbed me some copies of my story from the presses, as well as the cover itself.  Awesome stuff dudes, not sure if I thanked you at the time but it really meant a lot.

Later that day, caught up on a bit of sleep and dosed up on various traveller’s medicine, I rejoined my classmates to hear the contest Judges address our class.  Oodles of awesome career-changing advice, including:

• Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s “popcorn theory” of writing success.
• Rob J Sawyer’s enthusiastic presentation – the use of Big Ideas to make fiction resonant.
• Jerry Pournelle did not deliver his usual speech (claiming that recent events in publishing have made the whole thing redundant), and spoke of new publishing formats, and showed off his new I-Pad.
• Ken Scholes and Steve Savile gave the perspective of recent Contest winners made good, and their subsequent writing careers.
• Mike Resnick spoke of his various collaborations and how he goes about working with other folks.
• Eric Flint spoke about having won the contest, what it was like to join the ranks of the Judges, and a bit about Baen books (?)

Here my memory starts to get a bit fuzzy, which simply proves that you should blog this sort of thing while it’s fresh in your mind.  Keep in mind that I was very sick, and I’m surprised that I remembered as much as I did.  One thing that I will most definitely never forget was the traditional unveiling of the illustrations.  We writers were led into the illustrator’s workshop, where we were confronted by twelve framed pictures, unlabelled and sitting on easels.  We were then asked to wander around, looking at the pictures until we found the one that we thought matched our story.

I spotted my story illustration a mile off, and could not have been happier with the end result.  “Awesome!” I screamed.  “DUDE, YOU COMPLETELY NAILED IT!”  I met my illustrator, Seth J Rowanwood, an extremely talented Canadian polymath – this guy is a flipping genius.  His picture is an amazing collage of enormous brooding ships, half-seen godly figures, a spine-tingling pic of a brooding minotaur (my protagonist), and the titular House of Nameless.  This was one of my favourite moments of the week, and a great WOTF tradition to be a part of. 

Here I am with the artist Seth J Rowanwood, with his depiction of “The House of Nameless”. 

Friday night we had a rehearsal of the awards ceremony, where we were given a quick briefing of what to expect and had a trial run at our speeches.  VERY glad to have done this – it definitely helped with the nerves to stand on the half-assembled stage, looking out onto empty rows of chairs, and to know that this was as scary as it would get.  Saturday morning was the final stretch of our workshop, and (I may be wrong in my memory of what happened when) was when we ran through the critiques of the 24-hour story.  Mine was one of the three stories selected for evisceration (the criteria for selection apparently being which stories landed furthest down the stairs) and it fared quite well.  One of my post WOTF tasks is to get this little ripper into good shape, and find it a good home…and thus the workshop ended, which was inevitable but a bit of a shame.  Tim and KD deserve a standing ovation for the effort they put into this week, and I walked away feeling as drained and full of knowledge as when I did six weeks of Clarion.  It was quite an action-packed week!

The rest of Saturday passed in a blur of last minute tux refittings (the neck of my shirt was too tight) and a quick session in make-up (where I may or may not have sung the Muppets theme song).  Before dinner time we did the group photo shoots, where everyone was dressed up, holding their awards (so we got a sneak peek at the things before officially receiving them, which was cool).  It made sense to do the shoot then, as trying to round up errant Judges and contestants post-ceremony sounded like a Herculean task.  Most interesting moment?  Teetering at the back of the stage, standing on a chair behind two rows of people, holding an enormous glass spear above someone’s head.  The lights were warm, my hands were sweaty, and those awards are damn hefty….it could have ended badly, but didn’t.

Our photos done, it was time for dinner, and what a dinner!  We got to eat some really fancy tucker, in the hastily rearranged hotel lobby.  Keep in mind that the scene below was transformed into a massive booksigning less than three hours later, and you’ll appreciate just how organised these guys are – a tremendous effort.  It was nice to sit with my writer homies, and it felt like we’d known each other much longer than the week we’d spent together.  It was a little sad to know that it would soon all be over, but this was our moment, this whole event happening because of our creative talents.  A steak has never tasted so good!

Can’t have a fancy awards ceremony without a fancy dinner – here are several of the Writers of the Future winners, enjoying the pre-ceremony feast in the lobby of the Roosevelt.  This is about two courses and twenty puns in.  Puns may have included “the steaks are high” and “the United Steaks of America”.  I can attest to the endless patience and forbearance of my fellow contestants. 

Then, our repast completed, it was time to file into the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt, the actual venue of the first ever Oscars.  Our seats were assigned (winners were either side of the central aisle, max. of two seats in – clever way to avoid trampling feet when your name is called) and we waited.  The lights dimmed, and we were treated to an elaborate interpretative dance.  We’d heard rumours that the dance was based on stories from the anthology, and we recognised a few of the stories based on what was going on.  A champion effort.

I won’t go into the ceremony too much (you can watch the whole thing online) but it was surreal.  A moving speech by June Scobee Rogers, wife of the Challenger shuttle pilot – an inspirational person, and a truly lovely human being.  Some of the guest presenters included Martin Kove (the evil dojo master from the Karate Kid movies) and Marisol Nichols, a gorgeous actress of “24″ fame, and most importantly one of the Griswolds in National Lampoons Vegas Vacation.  Classic.  So each writer and illustrator was announced, received their awards and gave a brief speech.  I eventually realised that they were doing the whole thing in the order of appearance in the anthology – and mine was the last story.  Talk about suspense!

When it was my turn, I picked up my gorgeous trophy, shook my new idol Tim Powers and the lovely Marisol Nichols by the hand, and somehow managed to thank everyone important to me.  My wife, inlaws and parents were all watching the internet feed back in Australia, and it was nice to say hello to those I love.  Later on, I was told that my bow-tie was crooked and that it drove my poor mother nuts!  Somehow, this seems appropriate I’ve never been that fancy.

Shortly after this, the winners of the Gold Awards were announced – to my great joy I learned that my illustrator Seth had won!  It was an absolutely perfect interpretation of my story, and it STILL gives me chills to look at his artwork.  High five, my talented friend.  The Gold Writer award went to Laurie Tom for her gorgeous fantasy story “Living Rooms”, and it was lovely to see many of her family and friends were there in the audience to share in her great achievement.  Many congrats, Laurie, and hopefully this is the start of a wonderful writing career for you :-)

Here is my trophy, and it’s a) gorgeous and b) enormous.  This is currently being posted to me, because the airlines frown upon one taking a foot long solid glass spearhead into your carry-on luggage.  When all of the awards were sitting on the table together, it actually looked a little like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.  Words cannot accurately convey the epic heft of this statue, and I already have a spot ready for it on the brag shelf.

In the next instalment of this retrospective I’ll talk about:

• The after-party, and book-signing
• The official booksigning at the Pasadena Borders store
• A wee bit of Ye Olde Theatre!
• A minute of tourism

(Part 3 of course can be found via this link: http://jasonfischer.com.au/?p=214)

Without further ado, the winners are:

And a bonus winner, because it’s just too awesome, and captures perfectly the true angst of zombie haiku composition:

Your zombielicious copies of “After the World: Gravesend” will be in the post shortly.  Congratulations!

ETA:  Because he’s a classy haiku-loving kind of guy, Peter M Ball has donated his prize back into the contest.  Here’s a poem that narrowly missed out on a spot in the top 3, which I’m now pleased to add to the winner’s circle.