 The Waukegan Public Library is currently holding the 31st Annual Ray Bradbury Creative Contest. The genre is science fiction and fantasy. Age groups are divided into elementary, middle school, high school, and adult. Short stories, poetry, and visual art entries are accepted through May 15, 2015. Winners receive a certificate and publication on the library's website. Rules and an entry form are available at the library's website. Good luck!
Today's Friday Five is a guest post from Selene Castrovilla about her latest YA novel, Melt. I'm definitely adding this story to my to-read list!  Writing fiction is cool because you can make stuff up to fit with your plot. But it’s also scary, because you have to make stuff up to fit with your plot. It’s hard to be sure you’ve done the right thing. Melt is unique because it’s partly true. Joe, my boxing coach, told me stories about the violent upbringing he experienced. He looked me in the eye one night and said, “You’re gonna write my story. I know it.” And when I got home that night, I began. I knew the true things I needed to put in. All the violent scenes in the book really happened. But, I had to frame a love story around them! Here are five choices I made while writing Melt:  Using The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a backdrop: This was not an actual choice, at least consciously. A voice in my head told me to buy that book a few weeks prior, and I did. The night I started to write MELT, the voice told me to look at the book, and the passage I opened to fit perfectly with the theme of my story. The witch melting inspired the title, and there are so many ways to melt: good and bad. The book covers a wide range. I also found that the themes in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz matched themes I would be addressing in MELT, number one being: “There’s no place like home.”  I decided to make Joey’s father a cop, even though in real life he was a criminal. I felt it would be too complicated to address a life of crime in addition to the atrocities he committed on his family. I also thought there would be a great irony in someone committed to serving and protecting his community then coming home and being abusive. Finally, I liked the idea of his gun being readily available on his belt. This served a practical purpose for my story. On a side note, the real-life Joey hated that I made his dad a cop. But, as I told him, this was not a biography.  Joey meets Dorothy in Dunkin’ Donuts. I did this because teens often converge in whatever local coffee shops are conveniently located, and because it’s something the reader would likely be familiar with and immediately conjure. I also liked all the crazy, vivid colors and the loud sounds I could play with. Of course I loved the idea that Dunkin’ Donuts is indeed “Munchkin Land.” And, I based the town on my town--where there really isn’t much going on besides Dunkin’ Donuts. (Saved me the headache of creating a whole new universe for my characters.)  Dorothy’s parents are psychologists. I made this choice because it’s been my observation that psychologists (or any sort of therapists) are largely clueless when it comes to real-life situations. Don’t judge me: this has been my experience. So I thought it would be funny (in a black humor way) if Dorothy’s shrink parents failed to see the signs of a boy being abused, and simply judged him as “bad” as everyone else in the town did.  I chose to write the book in dual first person because it would be too painfully relentless to only show Joey’s point of view. He was the one who started talking when I sat down, so there was no choice about him. His words are scattered to reflect his broken state--and this was something that happened instinctively as well. The conscious choice was to add Dorothy’s view as the voice of reason--and hope. Plot description of Melt: Based on true events, Melt is both a chilling tale of abuse, and a timeless romance. Melt will hit you like a punch in the face, and also seep through the cracks in your soul. Melt, though not a retelling, is a brutal love story set against the backdrop of The Wizard of Oz. When sixteen year old Dorothy moves to the small town of Highland Park, she meets, and falls for Joey - a "bad boy" who tells no one about the catastrophic domestic violence he witnesses at home. Can these two lovers survive peer pressure, Joey's reputation, and his alcoholism? Joey's words are scattered on the page - reflecting his broken state. Dorothy is the voice of reason - until something so shattering happens that she, too, may lose her grip. Can their love endure, or will it melt away?  Selene Castrovilla is the award-winning author of six books: three young adult novels and three nonfiction picture books about The American Revolution. Her book Revolutionary Rogues, about Benedict Arnold’s treason, is currently under production. Signs of Life, the sequel to Melt, will be released next fall.
For updates, previews and general musings, read her blog. For daily inspirations and quotes, “like” her Facebook page. To witness her struggle to write cohesive haiku-like posts, follow her on Twitter: @SCastrovilla. To purchase Melt, visit major retailers, including Amazon. The National Federation of Press Women sponsors an annual communications contest for high school students. Categories include: Editorial, Opinion, News Story, Feature Story, Sports Story, Columns or Blogs, Feature Photo, Sports Photo, Cartooning, Review, Graphics/Photo Illustration, Single-Page Layout, Double-Truck Layout, Environment, Radio Prepared Report, Radio or Television Interview or Talk Show, Video News Story, Video Feature Story, Video Sports Story, Yearbook Layout, Yearbook Photo, and Yearbook Copywriting. 
The contest rules are too long to post here, so please visit the NFPW contest website for more information. The entry fee is $10 and the national first place winners receive $100. The deadline for entry is February 28, 2015. Good luck! Next Tuesday: another contest for teen writers
 Are you up for the challenge? Would you like to join me and hundreds of other bloggers this April for the A to Z challenge? It's a great way to make blogging a regular habit, find some fun new blogs to read, increase your readership, and feel a sense of community. Visit the A to Z site for instructions and signup information.  Last year my theme was Writing Inspiration. Below are links to my 2014 A to Z posts, plus my reflection on the process. I'll reveal my theme for 2015 in March. Let me know in the comments if you plan on participating -- I'll be sure to visit your blog in April. Writing Inspiration from A to Z A is for Adventure
B is for Butt-in-Chair C is for Color D is for Dryer Sheets (and Other Scents) E is for Emotion F is for F Scott Fitzgerald G is for Goldberg H is for Heartbreaker I is for Inspiration Sandwich J is for Jealousy K is for King L is for Lectures M is for the Mundane: N is for Napping: O is for One-Star Reviews P is for Pandemic Q is for Quotations R is for Routine and Regular Habits S is for SCBWI T is for The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu U is for Unwritten V is for Visualization W is for Writing Prompts X is for Xenocryst Y is for Yes: Z is for Zig Ziglar Reflections on the #AtoZChallenge During 2014, I profiled several websites for teen writers and journals that publish teen writing. To start off 2015, here are some updates:  Teens Can Write, Too has recently partnered with the teen writing conference, Ch1Con, and they've added several teenage guest writers. More information is available at the TCWT website. Thanks to John Hansen for the update. You can read my original interview with John at Teen Tuesday: Avoid Condescending Advice.  Macklemore visits Pongo Ann Teplick let me know that Pongo "is in a new stage of growth with many wonderful things happening." You can visit the Pongo website for more information. You can also check my previous post at Teen Tuesday: The Time is Now for Pongo Teen Poetry.  One Teen Story news: Patrick Ryan, Editor-in-Chief says, "Our contest judge this year was Tara Altebrando -- author of The Battle of Darcy Lane and The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life -- and our winner is 16-year-old Lily Dodd, who's written an awesome confessional story called 'Eulogy for Pretzel' (which we'll be publishing in May). We'll also be publishing more teen authors in the near future, so stay tuned!" Patrick provides writing advice at Teen Tuesday: Write Like a Rabbit, Revise Like a Turtle.  YARN (Young Adult Review Network) news: 2015 brings a new Spring edition and their first ever Summer edition. YARN is also celebrating its 5th anniversary this year. To read an interview with Kerri Majors, YARN's Editor, visit Teen Tuesday: Get Published in YARN Literary Journal. Next Tuesday: Upcoming contest for teen writers.
Today's Friday Five is a guest post from Wildfire author, Mary Pauline Lowry. Wildfire is one of the few non-YA stories I read last year and I'm in awe of Mary' s courageous personal experiences and how she translated them into a novel.  5 Fun Facts about Wildland Firefighting By Mary Pauline Lowry Before I wrote my novel Wildfire I spent two years working as a wildland firefighter. Here are five facts about my experiences.  Fire Fact #1: I worked on what is officially known as a “hotshot” crew. The name of the crew is apt, because hotshots are some of the most highly trained firefighters and are often put on the hottest, most dangerous part of wildfires.  Fire Fact #2: As a wildland firefighter, I traveled all over the American West fighting wildfires with my crew.  Fire Fact #3: When it was too smoky for helicopters to drop off our sleeping bags and a hot meal, we would eat military-issue MREs (meals ready to eat) for dinner and sleep on the ground with nothing but an emergency blanket made of aluminum. It was always so cold I couldn’t sleep!  Fire Fact #4: My crew often fought fire with inmate firefighters working on what are commonly known as “prison crews.” These low level offenders make just $2 a day battling wildfires.  Fire Fact #5: In Wildfire, the main character Julie is in an impromptu eating contest with two inmate firefighters. This scene was inspired by a night when I was on a fire in Idaho and witnessed a girl from the Logan Hotshot Crew go up against two inmates in a nut roll eating contest. The girl won, and all three of them threw up. Wildfire, the official description: Julie has an obsession with fire that began after her parents died when she was twelve years old. Her pyromania leads her to take an unlikely job as a forest firefighter on an elite, Type 1 “Hotshot” crew of forest firefighters who travel the American West battling wildfires. The only woman on the twenty person crew, Julie struggles both to prove her worth and find a place of belonging in the dangerous, insular, and very masculine world of fire (while also fighting against an eating disorder she's had since her teens). As her season “on the line” progresses so do her relationships with the strange and varied cast of characters that make up her hotshots team—and she learns what it means to put your life on the line for someone else. Wildfire is a tough, gritty, and fascinating story from an exciting new voice in American fiction. Fans of the movie Backdraft or Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild will enjoy this fast paced debut.  Mary Pauline Lowry worked for two years as a forest firefighter on the elite Pike Interagency Hotshot Crew based on the Pike National Forest in Colorado. “Hotshots are the best-trained and best-equipped wildland firefighters, sometimes referred to as the Navy SEALs of their profession” (Rolling Stone Magazine). As a Hotshot, Lowry traveled all over the American West with her crew fighting wildfires ranging in size from single tree lightening strikes to 20,000 acre blazes. Hotshot crews are “hand crews” that do not use water to fight blazes. Instead they dig a firebreak or “fireline” around the fire to deprive it of fuel. With her crew, Lowry hiked or was helicoptered in to fires and dug fireline for 15 hours or more a day. During fire season, she and her crew would work 21 days at a time fighting fire and camping out. Lowry has written essays for The New York Times Magazine, xoJane, the Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, among others. Last year, I profiled several websites for teen writers and journals that publish teen writing. I'm starting 2015 with updates to those interviews. (Last Tuesday featured Canvas Literary Journal in case you missed it.) This week's update is for Cicada Magazine, which is currently hosting a contest with a January 31st deadline. (Details below.)  Cicada Magazine is a paying market that publishes teen writers. You can read a previous Q&A with the Associate Editor at Teen Tuesday: Interview with Anna Neher of Cicada Magazine. Anna had these Cicada updates to share: "January's a crazy exciting time at CicadaHQ. Our annual Best of The Slam is out, featuring top poetry & fiction from our online writing forum for ages 14-23. On right now at The Slam: our Into the Woods fairy tale zine project. Folks looking for fairy tale story ideas can play with our Fairy Tale Plot Machine. It's completely addictive. If you love animals (and who doesn't??), you should submit to our Call for Creative Endeavors: Animals contest. Deadline: January 31. We'll be launching a new Creative Endeavors theme on February 2, so check back! I can tell you a thousand things about how smart, passionate, kind, nerdy, and fun the confederacy of Cicadaphiles is, but I'm going to let a couple of the Slammers do it for me: 'Welcome to ze slam! *squints owlishly* we're all mad here …' --Nick 'We are many, but we are strong, and we enjoy writing down the things that other people are scared to think about.' --kimmie66" Thanks, Anna, for sharing Cicada's news!
Teen writers -- check back next Tuesday for more writing updates.  I usually feature teen writing posts on Tuesdays, but I came across this contest from the Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation with an upcoming deadline of February 1st. This contest is for students in grades 6-12 and the main requirement is that the story be *exactly* 1000 words. First prize is $1000 and publication in their literary journal, Bluefire. More details are available on the Bluefire website.
If you can't make the deadline or have a story that doesn't meet the 1000-word requirement, consider submitting to the Bluefire blog, which accepts submissions all yearlong. Good luck and happy writing! Today's blog features a guest post from one of my critique partners, author C. Lee McKenzie, about her latest young adult novel, Sudden Secrets.  5 Secrets about Sudden Secrets by C. Lee McKenzie First, I love Secrets, so this post about Secrets has been fun to write. Thanks, Yvonne, for your idea and the chance to be on your blog today. Thanks also for being one heck of a good crit partner. Secret #1 Some of my critique group are cameo characters in this book. Secret #2 My first draft was told from alternating points of view. Secret #3 I gave up on finishing this book two times before I did finish it. Secret #4 After I had a solid draft, I discovered a huge mistake in how old one character had to be, so I had to do some “clever” re-writing. I added a whole new character. But, Shhhh! Don’t tell. If you read the book, see if you can guess which one I added. Secret #5 This book had three different titles before the final one: Beauty, Hidden Secrets (terrible one), Secrets (overused), and then Sudden Secrets.  C. Lee McKenzie is a native Californian. She’s lived in a lot of different places: New York, Laos, Hong Kong, but she always thinks of herself as a California girl. She lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains at the edge of a redwood forest where she likes to hike. When she’s not writing she’s in the woods, in her garden or on her yoga mat. She travels whenever she can. Her favorite destinations are Turkey, Nicaragua, and Southeast Asia, but because she has family in England, Switzerland, and Spain she goes there when she can.
In her books she takes on modern issues that today's teens face in their daily lives. Her first young adult novel, Sliding on the Edge, which dealt with cutting and suicide was published in 2009. Her second, titled The Princess of Las Pulgas, dealing with a family who loses everything and must rebuild their lives came out in 2010. Evernight Teen published two of her latest books, Double Negative (this book turned her into a literacy advocate) and Sudden Secrets. Her first middle grade novel titled Alligators Overhead got a thumbs up review from Kirkus and will soon have a sequel, The Great Time Lock Disaster. To learn more about Lee, visit her website and her blog. You can buy Sudden Secrets here: KINDLE PRINT: CreateSpace or Amazon EVERNIGHT TEEN  Canvas Literary Journal Last January, I featured an interview with Canvas Literary Journal, a market that publishes teens. I checked in with them to see what's new and they are currently running a comedy writing contest with two cash prizes ($20 for first and $10 for second) along with publication in their spring issue. The deadline is February 24. Here's what their literary board has to say about the contest: "From the publication of the Winter issue until the submission cutoff for the Spring issue, Canvas Literary Journal will be running a contest for humorous literature. Any kind of humor (wordplay, satire, just plain absurdity, etc.) and any medium (story, poem, play, etc.) will be accepted. Pieces awarded first place, second place, and any honorable mentions will be published in the Spring 2014 issue of Canvas." Check the Canvas website for more information about entry details and contest prizes. Thank you to Canvas Literary Journal for the update. Good luck and happy writing!
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