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Ripley Patton is setting up a club called SpecFicNZ, for people interesting in writing speculative fiction (an umbrella term incorporating Science Fiction, Fantasy, and similar genres). This promises to be a very cool organization, and I’m looking forward to seeing it develop.

Ripley and Helen organized a second informal meeting of SpecFicNZ members (the first being held after Elizabeth Knox’s talk) at Cafe NG today. Nine of us were there, and it was a good fun couple of hours with good coffee and good food, and lots of writerly conversation. We’ve decided to make it a regular thing.

Tonight I went to the announcement of the winners of the one-day short story competition. It was held in the Philip Carter auditorium at the art gallery, a place I hadn’t been to before. It’s a nice space, with comfortable steeply-raked seating, pleasant muted colours, and that rarest of things: an effective sound system.

The place seats around 200, and was completely full, with people sitting in the aisles. More and more people kept coming in, well after things got underway. I just don’t get people – why would you even consider arriving 25 minutes late to a 90-minute event???

The event was compered by Sarah from the art gallery. She started by saying how pleased the organizers were with the event: 190 people registered on the day, and of those 170 turned in short stories at the end of the day.

Then she introduced the three judges:  Sally Blundell, Kate De Goldi, and Gavin Bishop. In the first part of the evening the three judges read snippets of their favourite short stories from around the world, and quotes from various writers about the nature of short stories. The most dramatic moment came when Bishop reached a crucial point in the story he was reading and snapped the book shut in mid-sentence, leaving the story unfinished.

Then they moved on to the competition winners. Each judge talked about one (in the case of the kids’ division) or three (in the case of the adults’ division) of the stories from the competition that they really liked, reading snippets here and there. There was clearly a big range of approaches to the challenge, and even the kids’ stories seemed very sophisticated. At one stage De Goldi took a swipe at Fantasy writers, and then in the next breath she praised a story which featured a peacock from the Peacock Fountain coming alive and going for a walk. A classic case of “Fantasy is bad and this is good therefore it’s not Fantasy” I guess.

Finally the winners were announced. The winner of the kids’ division was there in person to pick up her $250, but the winner of the adults’ division was up in Wellington attending his graduation, and so wasn’t there to pick up his $750. De Goldi gushed about the winning entry, saying that it was the clear winner in the eyes of all three judges. She then read it out and… to be honest I didn’t really ‘get’ it. I’ll give it another go when it is published in the Press, but on first hearing I couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

Today was the day for the one-day short story competition organized by the NZ Society of Authors and the Christchurch Art Gallery. It was quite fun arriving at the Art Gallery in the morning to pick up my registration pack – there was a much larger queue of hopefuls than I was expecting, with people striding across the plaza towards the queue with alacrity, while others left the front of the queue walking slowly, thoughtful looks on their faces, each reading the details of the challenge. The competition required you to write a 1500-word story incorporating at least four out of twelve things from central Christchurch. Here is the list:

I had an idea for a story on the way home, and quickly pounded out 900 words. But then I couldn’t think of an ending, and when I went back I decided that the story was crap anyway, so I didn’t submit anything in the end.

The announcement of the winners will be made at the Art Gallery in a couple of weeks time.

Now this sounds like fun! The Art Gallery is for some reason sponsoring a one-day short story competition: pick up the story requirements at 9:30am, return your story to them by 4:30pm. The prizes are none too shabby either: publication in The Press plus $750!

The rules unfortunately contradict themselves on what requirements are placed on the story (in one place they say you get given four elements that have to be incorporated into your story, in another place they say that you get twelve elements, and have to chose four). Still, should be a bit of fun.

One thing cracks me up; something from the “how things have changed” department: one of the things you get in your rego pack is a blank CD onto which to burn your submission!