Wonderful Year Ender: Nominated for the Pushcart Prize!!

Truly an honor. I don't really care if I win or not. I feel like all my hard work has paid off already!!

Reposting this blog post by Ms. Rhonda Parrish, publisher and editor of Niteblade:

Nominating for the Pushcart Prize is always difficult. Picking six works from all Niteblade has published over the year? It’s freaking tough. If you think I’m exaggerating, take a look over our archives and try to choose the six works you’d nominate from four issues. See? Hard.

This year it was made even more tricksy by the fact I was nominating not only from Niteblade, but also A is for Apocalypse. Luckily for me, I had back-up.

Poetry editor Alexandra Seidel helped me out with the nominations this year. And when I say helped me out I mean she was invaluable and pivotal when it came to making our poem-based decisions. So with no further ado… this year the Niteblade nominations for the Pushcart Prize are:

• The Bitter Gourd’s Fate by Anne Carly Abad (June 2014)
• Godfather by Megan Arkenberg (March 2014)
• Bird Girl by Beth Cato (March 2014)

Congratulations ladies, and good luck!

More Cool Things

I realized I'm doing things without really thinking about a goal. Really, I'm just doing this eat, sleep, write, run thing. While a "now" mentality is useful for stress-reduction (and is very Zen), seems like I'm going nowhere. From now on, I'll set my mind on these things: my own property in the next five years and three books published in print (and maybe a big writing award).

And maybe I'm closer to that award than I think. I happened to earn a "Special Recognition" prize in the Fujisan Haiku Competition 2013. Here's my winning piece:

peeling oranges
what little is left of snow
on a sunlit peak

I've also received some more pleasant news in the area of publishing. My poem "I'll Take the Farthest Room" will appear in the 7th issue of the Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, a little irreverent place for irreverent writes. Thanks so much to Robin Wyatt Dunn, the cool editor of this joint.

Dear Anne,

I'll take "Farthest Room" for LAROLA 7, and feel free to send along a
few more poems if you wish.

Yours,
Robin Wyatt Dunn

"Haze" earned an honorable mention in On The Premises' 20th short story contest

This is a good year indeed. I'm starting to try out joining writing contests (mostly the ones with no fees since I don't have money hehe). While looking for places to submit, I discovered that On The Premises Magazine holds quarterly short story contests. The magazine was accepting submissions for their Contest #20 at the time I submitted. After waiting a few months, I got an email telling me that out of 295 entries, my story, "Haze" had been shortlisted.

To me that was good enough. I mean, I've never won a writing award in my life. I'm just happy doing what I do.

And then a few weeks later, the organizers contacted me, telling me that "Haze" made an Honorable Mention! What's great about this is that there's a cash prize, so it literally pays off my hard work.

"Haze" will be out in a few weeks, will post about it soon. We're currently in the process of making a few edits so the piece will be in tip-top shape.


The premise for Contest #20:

INNER WORKINGS

One or more characters must examine the inner workings of something important to the story. The “something” can be a physical object, a person’s mindset, a relationship, an idea... anything so long as the concept of “inner workings” can be applied to it literally or metaphorically.