The 1Z Quiz

As some of you may know, I've been running a daily quiz blog called "Infinite Zounds". It's been exactly a year since the blog began, and so, to mark this milestone, I'm also running a trivia contest for about a week.

If this sort of thing interests you, head here to know more.

"Touchstone" - my SF story at the Scientific Indian

You can, if you so choose, read my story Touchstone at The Scientific Indian blog. This story received a special mention in this year's Scientific Indian Story Contest. (I happened to win the contest last year.)

As always, feedback will be much appreciated.

Quick Tales writing contest - Results

The Caferati-LiveJournal Quick Tales contest results came in on the 18th (the announcement here). This story of mine was placed 4th.

As it turns out, this story and three others tied for the top spot. The tie-breaker left me in the last spot (apply clichés about cookie crumbling'/'biscuit breaking'/'shrewsbury slicing' :-)).

Congratulations to all the winners (quite a few of them). Pats on back to organisers for seeing this through, and for making judging comments available.

One judge mentioned some trouble interpreting the 2nd last sentence, which I didn't realise at the time of writing (I meant one wife and two girlfriends only, present company included. The implication of who hired the man was intentionally open-ended, but in my mind, it was the wife.). I wish I had had another 50-100 words, because I had to skip past a few binding agents to fit it in.

The 2008 Scientific Indian Story Contest - results

The results of this year's Scientific Indian Story Contest have been announced here. Unlike last time, I didn't win anything :-), but I did get an honourable mention.

Many congratulations to the winners and other selected participants.

I was able to send in a little story this time based on thinking about isolation and human beings. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, so I grope my way in the dark when it comes to such topics. Hopefully, the process and output has shown improvement since last time.

Selva, who's kind enough to organise this contest, has also collected some thoughts on what should be there in a creative science writer's toolkit.

Quick Tales writing contest shortlist

Caferati and LiveJournal are running a 1000 word flash fiction writing contest called "Quick Tales". The (longish) shortlist was recently announced (here), pruning the initial set of 1024 to 134 entries.

I have two stories in this list. These are entries 639 and 823 (both untitled - no words to spare for titles :-)). The former is about a cop who has to read someone's journals, while the latter is about a bored man in a local train.

The theme of the submissions was "Journal" (in part, this exercise is also aimed at promoting LiveJournal among Indian netizens). I struggled to come up with ideas for this topic, and somehow managed a few.

Anyway, all the stories have been put up because there is a "Community Choice Winner" prize based on public voting (public == LiveJournal account holders). I'm more keen on receiving feedback, so if you get a chance, please read the two stories linked above. If you are so inclined (== sufficiently jobless), you could numerically evaluate it using a score between 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) or textually by leaving a comment. But you'd need an LJ account to do either. So if all you want is to let me know how you felt, emailing me or leaving a comment here is just as fine.

You can also read the other stories (an index by entry id is here). Of the few that I've read, I thought #618 titled "The Quack" was very imaginative.

Caferate LiveJournal contest

Caferati and LiveJournal have come together to present a flash fiction writing contest, which you can read about here. There are some big prizes (and quite a few of them), which should get even the more lazier writing hounds to push a pen or a key.