50 word Beer Bet

A few months ago, I had a bet with a friend... who can write a better story in exactly 50 words (the title doesn't add to the word count). But how on earth would we judge the winner? Easy, we asked members on a couple of forums to vote.

Here are the two stories...

THE INFINITE MONKEY THEOREM

I’d heard that, given typewriters and enough time, monkeys would eventually produce Hamlet... verbatim.

To prove it, I got a government grant and twenty thousand monkeys.

After nineteen years, one did it, but with ‘Help Me’ as the title. Close, but I’ll keep trying until one gets it totally right.

TEXAS DEATH ROOM

I leave this.

Life brought me here and here will take my life.

They follow a procedure that allows two elements of choice. A last meal. Any last words on earth. I’ve declined both. No appetite or desire to perform.

These words will do.

I’m sorry. I’m paying my dues.

They are very different types of story, but the members accepted the challenge and voted! My story was THE INFINITE MONKEY THEOREM... it lost! My friend got his beer, but I enjoyed the experience.

PS Comments left here in the form of votes may be taken into account... if they vote for me!

10 Reasons to buy a book

It is not easy for an author to know what will make his or her book a bestseller. The hope is that it will mainly be down to the fantastically well written story, the thrilling plot and the marvellous characters. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than that.

While I was wandering through various posts, forums and blogs, I collected a selection of reasons why readers buy books. I thought it would be interesting to place ten of them in a poll and see which one came out on top. I reckoned it would be a great help to authors, and me, if they could check if they hit the spot with their respective books.

The polls ran on a UK forum and on one which is mainly inhabited by American readers. Here are the results of the poll. Interestingly, the top four points in the UK and US are the same, albeit in a slightly different order

   US                                       UK
 Blurb                                                Read others by the author
 Genre                                               Blurb
 Read others by the author      Recommendations
 Recommendations                     Genre
 Cover design                                 First few paragraphs
 Price                                                 Price not included in poll
 Independent reviews                 Forum buzz
 First few paragraphs                  Independent reviews
 Title                                                  Cover design
 Forum buzz                                    Title
 Advertising                                    Advertising

There are a number of points worth noting, for example, Cover Design seems to be more important in the US. Also, readers don't rate advertising and title turned out to be a lot less important than i had imagined.

What do you think?

Six word stories

In a previous post I extolled the virtues of conciseness. That was a 50 word story. The question is, how short can you make a story, for example, is it possible to have a six word story? Well, maybe not a story as such, but it is possible to evoke a lot of thought with only six words... and some very famous writers have done it. Here are a few examples:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Ernest Hemingway

Longed for him. Got him. Sh*t. Margaret Atwood

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly. Orson Scott Card

Kirby had never eaten toes before. Kevin Smith

Steve ignores editor's word limit and... Steven Meretzky

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time Alan Moore

Every one of them makes you think... you make up the story in your head. I think it’s magical. But could the ordinary man or woman in the street do it? Of course they could. I started a post on the KINDLERS CRAFTING, HOBBIES AND GENERAL INTEREST FORUM and invited folk there to post their stories. Here are a few brilliant examples:

Joined a craft forum... made friends. Ken.

I Came, I Saw, I Conquered. Julius Caesar (Submitted by Maria - and to be fair Julius actually said ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’ which would have been disqualified for over-brevity)

Heart available again: One broken owner. Kaska

All these were super, but the best of all, in my opinion, was from BJT whose story followed on from Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’...

For sale: baby - already have several.

I tried the same thing on the KindleUsersForum and again I was amazed by the variety and inventiveness of the entries. Here are some that caught my eye.

Were-hamster goes on small rampage.  Lexi Revellian
Died of hay fever. No flowers.  B J Burton
Footprints pointed away from abandoned crutches.  Jennie Lee
Why kiss my neck? Ouch. Oh.  Amanda Leigh Cowley (do you believe in vampires?)

Brilliant!

Can anyone do better?

Collective Nouns

It is amazing just how many collective nouns there are in the English language. We have a murder of crows, a belt of asteroids, a flight of stairs and a den of thieves. However, there are a lot that we don't have... officially.

Here are a few suggestions to fill the some of the gaps:

• A blaze of firemen
• A smothering of Social Workers
• A gathering of combine harvesters
• A shoal of nudists
• A collection of philatelists
• A camp of bell-ringers
• A herd of listeners
• A number of mathematicians
• A drift of castaways

Any more for any more? For example, what is the above group of collective nouns called?

Joo's Book Reviews: Interrogating Ken Magee

Joo's Book Reviews has just published an interview with me. Here's the first question and answer... go to Joo's Book Reviews for the full interrogation.

How do you strike the balance between writing something you want to write and writing something that people want to read, in terms of the compromises you make, if any?

I write fantasy and people who read that genre don’t place too many restrictions on the writer. There was one scene that I was writing for the Dark Tidings sequel that involved a naked wizard and a couple who had snuck off to be alone in a secluded tavern (don’t ask how that all came about!)... I had a lot of fun writing it, but when I read it again, I decided it needed to be toned down a bit. I may ask Joo to read the revised scene to make sure it now qualifies as ‘decent’.

As I said, please check out the whole interview at Joo's Book Reviews.

PETE McCARTHY’S RULES OF TRAVEL

I did a short review of Pete McCarthy's great book 'McCarthy's Bar' in which I mentioned a couple of his rules for the traveller. Here's the full list of those which are included in the book.  You'll notice there are a few numbers missing, so that's the challenge for everyone... fill in the gaps!

1. On arrival, buy a local paper and go for a drink.
2. The more bright the primary colours and ancient Celtic symbols outside the {Irish} pub, the more phony the interior.
3. Never bang on about how wonderful some unspoiled place is, because next time you go there, you won’t be able to get in.
7. Never eat in a restaurant with laminated menus.
8. Never pass a bar that has your name on it.
13. Never ask a British Airways stewardess for another glass of wine until she’s good and ready.
16. However exotic the country, the local radio phone-in quiz induces the traveller with a sudden and dramatic downturn in the will to live.
17. Never try to score dope from Hasidic Jews while under the impression they’re Rastafarians.
19. When perusing a menu, never consider anything containing the words “goujon”, “platter” or “cheesy.”
26. Any Italian travelling abroad will be accompanied by an even more glamorous person of the opposite gender.
28. Never get drunk with soldiers.

Anyone up for the challenge? We might even accept great new rules even if they aren't from the original list.

Mini Saga - it doesn't take many words to make a brilliant story!

Does anyone remember the UK Daily Telegraph 50-word sagas? Each story had to be exactly 50 words... here's a wonderful example called Targets by Gaynor Derbishire.

Every night he pretended to shoot himself in front of her. He enjoyed her pleas and screams of terror as the blanks went off.

Time for change, she decided wearily, swapping live bullets for the blanks.

Time for change, he decided jauntily; tonight I will pretend to shoot the baby.

Classic or what?