This year’s writing contest, put on by Museo de la Palabra, had over 35,000 entrants from 149 countries. I am honored to have made the long list, and, consequently, the book–yours free to download here.
Happy 100
In honor of reaching 100 followers today, I’m going to eat 100 kernels of popcorn, read 100 words from a Dutch dictionary and engage in other raucous centennial shenanigans.
Finishing Someone Else’s Sentences
I’m working today on finishing fiction that’s not mine. It’s a contest to complete a Shirley Jackson short story–if you think you’re up to task, try your own hand here. What strikes me is that it’s a story about stealing, and though Shirley died in 1965 and her family is sponsoring the contest, something sits strangely. Sitting and reading and knowing someone thought that every word, every comma, every space on this page spoke just right. And she had a plan or she didn’t. And the reader in you might like it or she might not, but the writer in you yields, for a moment, to another.
The Year-Ago You
My latest piece is up online in the Fall issue of Tethered by Letters where it won first place in their flash fiction contest! It’s a quick read, which is what I’m always looking for on a Monday.
Photo taken near Groningen, NL on a recent wadlopen trip.
There’s a body at the bottom of the lake. Probably many.
“The opening line of Christine Stocke’s ‘Plan for Paradise’ drew me right in…And so did the second one, and the next as I was drawn along by a disjointed narrative that is quirky, wavering, and yet so very personal, as if the narrator is talking directly to you.” –Robert Vaughan
“Plan for Paradise” was originally published in the magazine Wisconsin People and Ideas, and in case you missed it in stores, the Winter 2013 issue is now for sale online. Buy your copy of the magazine HERE. Or purchase an author-signed copy of the story HERE.
p.s. The photo above was shot onsite at the lake that inspired the story.
christine PS stocke 