Old Newspaper Clippings of the Writing Contests I Won

Originally posted HERE

For the longest time I've been telling people that I won the first writing contest I had ever entered, which was the 2004 Writers Weekly contest (I won $300 for a story I wrote and edited in a matter of hours). Well... I've been going through some of my old things and found some newspaper clippings of me when I was in 8th grade. Looks like my comment of winning the first contest I had ever entered was a true statement, but the Writers Weekly contest wasn't the first contest I had entered.

I had totally forgotten this, but I had entered and won a few contests back in 1989/1990 when I was in 8th grade. That's when I started writing my first book "The Sorcerer's Wand" (which I never completed) and later "Parallel Worlds" (which ended up becoming "Paraworld Zero"). Here are the newspaper clippings. Click on each of them to see the whole article.

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Writers Digest Honorable Mention -- Twice!

Originally posted HERE

Two of my stories were awarded Honorable Mentions in the WritersDigest.com 76th Annual Short Story competition. "Letting Go" was awarded an honorable mention for the Inspiration category and "Playing with Rings" was awarded an honorable mention in the Genre category. They're going to publish my name and story title on their site and in a book.

I actually sent in a few more stories in other categories, but I haven't received a response on those yet. It feels weird to get two honorable mentions in the same contest. There were over 19,000 entries, but it seems too good to be true -- like it's a marketing scheme to get me to buy the book or something.

I'm just a little pessimistic about this because it reminds me of a contest I entered in high school for a poem I wrote. I "won" and they wanted me to buy a $45 book so I could see my "winning" entry published. I realized it was a scheme. Everyone probably "won," and that's how they sold their books. WritersDigest.com has more credibility, but they did include an order form for me to buy the $8 book . . . which popped up warning bells in my head. Regardless, I'm happy my stories did so well.