Writing Contests: The BillyBuc Fiction Writing Contest

I think it’s about time to give all of you exceptional writers a chance to show what you are made of. Do you have some serious game in this writing business or not? Do you have what it takes to succeed? Well now is the time to find out, don’t you think?

Welcome to the first ever Billybuc Fiction Writing Contest. Simmer down; I know you are excited, but let me explain before you just start writing without directions.

Yes, you have a chance to win the highly-coveted Billybuc Fiction Writing Contest, a contest, I might add, that is soon to become a worldwide phenomena. Literary scholars far and wide will be talking about this award, and you have the opportunity to be the first to win….the first name inscribed on the virtual trophy! How cool is that?

Deadline for entries is January 31, 2013, so you have three weeks to finish your entry.

Entries must be 1000 words or less.

All entries must be fictional, and all must follow the photo prompts provided in this article.

Entries must be sent to the following email address: holland1145@yahoo.com

All entries must have the words ‘writing contest’ in the subject line of the email

All entries must come as an attachment and a Word Doc.

Oh, this is the exciting part, so hold onto your hats. There will be only one winner, and that lucky soul will win an autographed copy of my novel “The 12/59 Shuttle From Yesterday To Today.” In addition, your winning entry will be posted in one of my Hubs in February and will be seen by an audience of between 1 and 150,000 people.

You might need to sit down right now and take a deep breath. I don’t want you hyper-ventilating from too much excitement.

Below you will find part of a short story I have written, and on the right you will see the photos that prompted the story.

SAM'S LEGACY

He died at the age of one hundred and eight years. On the bone-chilling afternoon of December 17, 1970 they found his body. A belt was cinched around his neck and the other end attached to a light fixture on the ceiling of his bedroom. His feet dangled a mere two inches from the Oriental rug that always guarded the end of his bed. Directly to the right of his body was the stool he had stood on, now toppled on its side, a piece of notebook paper pinned to it.

The bedroom was unremarkable in appearance; it had served as the sleeping chamber of Sam and Delores Conrad for thirty-seven years, since the day the house had been completed and they had moved their belongings into the modest, brick, Depression-era home in north Tacoma. Two dressers, a footlocker, a sewing machine, and a make-up table joined the four poster bed to complete the furnishings. Memories of their lifetime hung from every available space on the walls: a smiling young couple with two small children in hand; a Model T Ford with waving hands sprouting from the windows; fountains and bare legs; a picnic by a seashore; lunch at a lakefront cabin. And many, many more, proof that this family, all now finally departed, had once been vibrant, dynamic and happy.

One hundred and eight years. Sam had been born on October 13^th in the year 1862, a year before Henry Ford entered this world and President Lincoln dedicated a cemetery in Pennsylvania. His family had been Iowa corn farmers and had moved west on the Oregon Trail when Sam was six; a brother and sister had died of cholera making that passage, leaving Sam as the only Conrad offspring. Along the path of his life he had been a logger, fisherman, trapper, mill worker, and twenty-five other jobs sprinkled through his life. The last thirty years of employment were spent longshoring on the docks of Tacoma, retiring when he reached sixty-five. A small party, some cards, handshakes and a gold anchor key chain ushered him into the life of retirement. Nothing ostentatious, just like Sam. At his retirement party his handshake had still been firm, for he was a big man, honed by years of physical labor in the weather of the Northwest. At his apex he had been 6'2” and a rock-hard 230 pounds. The body hanging from the ceiling had lost several inches and eighty of those pounds.

But all of that was just background, window-dressing for the larger story, insignificant unless viewed from the perspective of what Sam considered of central importance in his life.

Her name was Delores Fleming and he had first met her in the little town of Morton, Washington, in 1895. He was thirty-three, she twenty-seven. It was late afternoon on a day in May; he was bone-tired from working twelve hours of felling trees and bucking limbs and was trudging along Main Street towards the boarding house where he ate and slept. She, the daughter of the general store owner, was sweeping the wooden steps that led to the store. Not seeing Sam she swept a cloud of dust squarely into his face and their lives together had commenced.

So there you have it. Your quest is clearly outlined for you to follow. Are you up for it? If so, the picture prompts for your fictional short story can be found below. They must be used in the order that they appear, from top to bottom.

I wish you all luck, and I hope you have fun accepting the challenge.

2013 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)