Tag: Contest

Life, Writing Process

State of the Quarterly

Posted on by Desmond White

 

Originally, my friend and co-editor, Stuart Warren, was to lead Rune Bear‘s Quarterly Contest, but he didn’t know what he was doing and our visions for the magazine clashed (Stu saw this journal as an opportunity to publish only his and my work, while I wanted Rune Bear to follow a less narcissistic path).

After letting Stu go, I took over the defunct effort and implemented a drabble series with a $10 prize. One year later, so far, so good. We’ve completed four seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter) without any complications and are now cycling back into spring. Last season was our most successful submission period; the Quarterly received 53 drabbles.

My Oregon-bound friend Robin Stranahan has been creating the art to accompany our prompts, with the exception of the first contest, which featured a dragon and cowboy by Hari Nezumi.

Wanting a more consistent style, and after receiving fifteen stories about dragons snatching horses, we opted for Robin’s simpler, vaguer, and deeper imagery.

Here is her collection so far.

Summer 2020
Prompt: Apocalypse

Fall 2020
Prompt: Things that Live in Holes

Winter 2020
Prompt: Dead of Winter

Spring 2021
Prompt: Patch Notes Version 2.0

And, in accordance with our last prompt about scifi transhumanism, here’s to a weird, wonderful, unpredictable future!

Life, Writing Process

Behind-the-Quarterly

Posted on by Desmond White

For a long time I’ve envisioned Rune Bear Magazine divided between Weekly and Quarterly. We would publish weekly stories under 300 words, but we would also have a seasonal writing contest.

Unfortunately, the Quarterly page on our website has looked like this for two years:

The guy we put in charge of Quarterly turned out to be a dud, so we let him go and I took over the contest. Instead of long-form writing, I decided to pull back to the flashiest flash fiction — the Drabble. Stories of 100 words exactly.

With $10 rewarded to the winner.

My editors came up with a list of prompts, democratically selected one, we hired an artist, and boom—I’m proud to announce that Rune Bear Quarterly is open for submissions until April 30, 2020. May will be a reading & selection period with the winner announced on May 31st.

The Spring 2020 prompt is “Weird Wild West” and the inspirational image (by no means the only interpretation of the prompt) is a dragon stealing a cowboy’s horse. This piece was made by the very talented Hari Nezumi, although in the future we will be relying on in-house artist Robin Stranahan.

 

Fantasy, Life

ZeroFlash — “There Would be Warmth”

Posted on by Desmond White

Zeroflash, a flash fiction magazine that features many, many great interviews with writers and publishers alike, has a monthly competition series. The winner receives an original illustration of their winning entry, ten pounds, an interview with Uprising Review, etc., etc.

I submitted a story to the February competition (judged by Alex L. Williams) and lost. My story didn’t even make it to second or third. It wasn’t featured on the list of honorees.

S’all good, though. I did better than my wife. She submitted a piece which was so bad that it never materialized among the February entries. (Just kidding, it was probably buried in the slush.)

Again, it’s all good. Rejection is a step toward success. Sometimes rejection’s a success all by its lonesome. And if that’s even remotely true, I’ve made it.

The February prompt was this draconic kaleidoscope with granite blues and pinks and a hidden zero. And it was the caption: “I’m asking for the trippiest, freakiest, most surreal piece of prose you can concoct. Let your mind roam and your words dance.” 300 words minimum.

by Jon Stubbington (2018)

So here’s my loser’s piece. I went for Paracelsus meets the goblins in Twilight Eyes meets skin made out of asbestos. You be the judge if it works or not.

There Would be Warmth

by Desmond White

Now the mediæval men knew a thing about doomsday. They scribbled its steps in codices long-brown, although none of them were excited about cityside basilisks and resurrected gods, content with pulling gold from menstrual blood. Not me. All my years I burned to clear the crust of life from this planet. (Humans, dogs, the yellow cities, trees, all that color.) So I studied the works recounting the Vulcani, those lizards that grow in fire like fishes in water, what some call salamanders. If you grow them big enough they’ll survive outside their element—bigger and they’ll turn the elements into char.

I get a fire going until the flicker-roots are blue and the smoke thick enough to climb, then I step between logs glimmering like sticks in a stomach. The lizards see me and run and die in the cold, so maybe, I think, I must accustom the new hatches to my scent. The eggs are easy. I find a clump of black logs glowing with a thousand eyes and there I find them, small, angry. I raise one to see if the fetus is kicking in the ash, but I take the egg too close to the air element, or maybe wind blows out of jealousy, and the egg turns to coal in my boiled fingers. The fire is kind enough to lift my tears. The next egg I push down my throat, placing it by the heat of my liver, wrapped motherly in blood-web, and now I’m running out the tipi, running for the lake to wash the blackened scale of my skin, to feel the living stone inside my belly, to finish what the mystics never started.

An edited variant of this published at Rune Bear Weekly on April 25th, 2019.