#HumpDayChallenge Week 15 - Winner!

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!!

Winner

Chris Blanchard (@blanchardauthor) - This one is great. It uses the given words, though not in a predictable way for the story. I really liked that. I'm also a huge fan of alluding to something but allowing the reader to fill in the blanks. In this case, John and Alejandro's relationship and how it comes to an end.

Runner's Up

Sarah E. Olson (@saraheolson) - Another great non-predictable use of the key words. Quite touching, too.

@tinaofbord - I found this one humorous, mainly because the beginning sounded almost exactly like how I came up with using "Deray" for the challenge.

Sarah and Tina - drop me an e:mail d.ryanleask@gmail.com for a coupon for a free copy of "Counting Down the Storm"


Chris - Send me your address and I will mail you a signed copy of my novella!

Thanks so much B.C Young for reading all of the stories and trying to figure out which of these great tales was the winner.  I know it must have been a tough choice!

Also thanks Tracey for letting me look after your baby while your on your cruise.  Next time I'll take the cruise and you run the challenge!

===========================================

Tracey (@THansenWrites) generally runs this show over at her blog Tracey Hansen Will Write For Food but this week she is enjoying a cruise (the boat, not the Tom) to celebrate her 30th birthday!  She so kindly asked me to take the helm of the good ship #HumpDayChallenge!

B.C Young is our guest judge today!  He has recently released Unspoken Stories Volume 1, an awesome collection of five short stories.  You can also buy All My Fiction which contains and will contain all of B.C. Young's writing!  What an opportunity to get your foot in the door and buy all his writing which gets updated every time he writes something new!  Cool concept.  Check out everything he does over at The Time Capsule. And follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Now for the technical stuff:
Contest Opens at noon on Wednesday and closes promptly at 8pm (est).
Use all five words below in your story of no more than 100 words which you post directly into the comments section below.  (If you have issues with posting in the comments you can send me your story via e:mail D.RyanLeask@gmail.com.)
Please leave your Twitter handle or e-mail address below your post!
B.C. Young will chose his favourite story as well as a couple that stand out for various random reasons.

The winner will receive a #HumpDayChallenge Winner badge to post on his or her site as well as recognition via Twitter and Facebook. Each contestant also agrees to lavish kudos upon said winner!

As well as these wonderful prizes they will also receive an autographed hardcopy of my novella Counting Down the Storm with the runners up each receiving it in e-book format!

Now, usually there is a part where Tracey says she encourages offensive language and profanity, this week's guest judge has issued a further challenge along with the usual five words and that is to keep your story fairly clean!  Now THAT just might be the real challenge!

So, here are this weeks words:
Omnipotent
Voodoo
Gringo
Alarm
(Any form of these words are fine)
And the judges super extra-special word is:
Deray (n. meaning: disorder; merriment)
Free your mind, empty your bladder and get at'er!
-WTYM
(WTF does that mean anyway?)

DON'T FORGET, TODAY IS TRACEY'S BIRTHDAY

I Hope You Get To Meet A Nice Fireman!

One more announcement!  Starting Tomorrow I am kicking off an ALL NEW flash fiction contest called:

3 For Thursday

Find Out All About It

Finding my Writing Vice. A Journey to Addiction

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

---Homer

 

Write Drunk, Edit Sober

---Ernest Hemingway

 

 

I need a vice.  It always seems that the most creative people have addictions of some sort, even Robert Munsch admitted to a drug addiction (No, not the zany random Robert Munsch).  Two of my favourite literary figures, Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway are both notoriously known for their life's excesses, it played heavily into their writing and without it they likely would not have been as successful as they were.

I doubt I can ever be taken seriously as a writer.  Who wants to read a story from someone who is happily married, never been to rehab or jail and doesn't even have a tattoo (I'm glad so few read this blog otherwise I would be so embarrassed).  For Christ's sakes the skeletons in my closet came with the house and I have the documentation to prove it!

I think the best sounding addiction for a writer is a sex addiction, the problem with that is (at least for male writers) is that an unsuccessful man does not make a very good bedfellow and being able to bed enough woman to be able to fulfill the necessary criteria for an addiction for someone who would have difficulty finding willing partners would really cut into writing time.

I used to smoke pot occasionally as a youth but, with the side effect of getting a good nights sleep and it's inability to be a gateway drug for me, it was almost the anti-drug.  At one time I could drink a 26 of rye (that's 26 oz of Canadian Whiskey for those that may not know) but that was before I owned a computer.  Have you ever tried using a typewriter drunk?  On a side note, they're a bitch to clean up when you puke on them!  That level of alcohol use was completely impractical when you lived at home and by the time I could afford, both time wise and dollar wise, to maintain a 26oz a day drinking habit my body couldn't handle it.  When it comes to hangovers I am a big baby and it's incredibly hard to find sympathy for hangovers (apparently it can be found in the dictionary between shit and syphilis but I've never bothered looking).

I found that I am way too much of a cheap bastard to be able to afford the "good drugs."  If I was making enough money to buy coke or heroine that would likely mean that I was already successful, see the loop?  I couldn't really imagine snorting cocaine off a designer coffee table with a $100 bill, first of all that coffee table could likely buy me a Macbook and the $100 bill would go a long ways to some really awesome writing software never mind the cost of the blow.

I used to have cigarettes.  God bless cigarettes, just bad ass enough for some legitimacy but not overly interfering with your day to day life, or so I always thought.  It turns out that when you have kids and a wife, who doesn't smoke, it's quite frowned upon.  It's not that enjoyable to stand outside at -30° shivering with your wife standing at the door giving you a dirty look and trying to keep the kids from seeing you for fear that they may start the same dirty habit.  It turned from a love of smoking (I really did love to smoke despite the known health risks) to smoking a butt in 3 minutes to keep me from freaking out.  I decided it was time to quit.  It's been four months. UPDATE: Apparently I am not a quitter… good for somethings, this, not so much

Image by Bortwein

What does that leave me with coffee?  Coffee? Who ever heard of a great artist dying from a coffee overdose.

D. Ryan Leask, celebrated author known for his excessive lifestyle and gritty real novels died today of an apparent coffee overdose, he was 36.  He had struggled with addiction his entire life and had recently been released from the Juan Valdez Clinic in Bogota, where he had been seeking treatment for caffeine over the last three months.  He is survived by his Three Ex-Wives, Elizabeth, Brittany and Kiki as well as numerous children.

I do have a coffee addiction but that is about as shocking as discovering dogs have a propensity for ballsack licking.  As far as vices go coffee is a weak one (but if you take my coffee away I swear to the almighty that I will rip out your gullet and shove it up a lion's ass!)

So in an effort to legitimize my future writing career and with much research and consultation with my family, my physician and numerous other people in my life I have decided to pursue an addiction, although not as lethal as Meth or as satisfying as Tequila but:

 

My god I love Shoestring licorice!

Thanks for Reading

D. Ryan Leask

Keeping Focus, Smoking and Stuff I've Started and Never Finished.

My wife thinks that I may suffer from ADHD, she's an elementary school teacher so she knows it when she sees it.  I have been thinking the same thing over the past several months.  I especially have been seeing it since I quit smoking.

I started smoking when I was 14.  It was like a "Where have you been all my life?"  Most people coughed and hacked and nearly died with their first cigarette, I wish that had been me, I tend to not do things that make me feel terrible more than once (like eating Lentil soup).

More than 20 years and several attempts later I think I have kicked the habit.  Not sure how long it will take me to give up the gummy ---insert animal here--- addiction will take to kick but that is a problem for another time.

Anyway, I digress (which really should be tattooed on my forehead)

Cigarettes gave me a break, a chance to focus on one thing, smoking, glorious wonderful opening the blood vessels slowing the heart rate smoking.  When I smoked my mind was able to wander freely which then allowed me to focus when I returned to my task.  My mind now wanders freely whenever the hell it feels like it.  Perhaps I was self medicating with cigarettes, a diagnosis I was given for a related disorder I suffer from, depression which, incidentally enough is also a symptom of ADHD!

So as I am not going to start smoking again perhaps I should talk to my doctor.  I think if I was able to focus I would be a much better writer, perhaps even an author, and not just a starter.

which is a segway into the next part.  Stuff I started and never finished:

To Beat the Band
A story about a small town band that gets discovered years after they gave up making music and went their own ways.
-About 200 typed pages completed
-I kind of got to the meaty part of the story then the ending popped into my head, I wrote it down and that seemed to end my interest in the story.

Untitled Group of Related Stories
I just wanted to write a number of stories about very sick people from their points of view.  I used the Ten Commandments and Seven Deadly Sins as a rough concept of what people could and would do but did not focus on these.  I started several stories as well as the underlying theme, characters and setting which was a beautiful and secluded spot I spent a few weeks in north of Pheonix.
-About 50 pages

Framed: The Story of Henry James Smith (A Killer)
Terrible Title but I'm sure something better will arise.
A story of a serial framer.  He goes around killing people so he can watch others be blamed and prosecuted for their deaths.
-About 100 pages written
-I'm having issues with POV and the character that is required to pull the whole thing together I just can't relate to.  The murder scenes are wicked fun to write and I have a whole vault of them written I just need to tie them all together with a stronger story.

Too Dumb To Dance - (A Blogged Story)
The world of Mens Pairs Competitive Throw Dancing
-Three postings.  I have a bunch more written in some notebook somewhere.

Richard Babcock and the Case of the Disappearing Startlette
A Hollywood Film Noir type book
-Written inside a couple of notebooks somewhere
.....
-------
My ADHD his kicked in again

I found my notebooks!  I really need to spend some time digitizing them.  I have some stuff in there that I forgot I even wrote!

I won't bore you readers with anymore of what I have started and perhaps just say that I'm going to add some pages someday of short stories.  I need motivating and I think looking over something I have worked on previously will keep me from starting on a new idea almost everyday.

D.

Social Media can Really Suck, and Suck you in

I hate Facebook, I really do. It's funny how many people come out of the woodwork and how many of them you wish would have stayed in there. At first I thought it was cool getting in touch with old friends and seeing what they were up to but as time went on I realized that:

A) I had nothing to say to most of them

and

B) People became addicted to finding everyone they ever knew and as time went on I would fall into these categories. Unfortunately I was far too polite to decline friend requests from people I knew.



I started a new facebook account under a false name and told only those closest to me where I was. The trouble is that now I want to have a Facebook page more directed towards me as a writer. I tried to revive my old one but it was so full of crap that I gave up, then I tried to just start a new one but without redoing all of my contact information (as my writing e-mail is associated with my old account) I can't seem to. WTF? I'm making (hopefully) some contacts on Twitter which is good and I would like to carry this over onto Facebook but not onto my personal one.



Speaking of Twitter, I need to cut back, man it's stupidly addicting, why? Maybe it's just me, I do get addicted to things, I just quit smoking, I used to spend an abnormally huge amount of time in chatrooms at one time, I'm a bit of a Threadless T-Shirt Forum junkie and I can watch TV for hours if not for the intervention of my "Can't get addicted to anything ever" wife. Now if only I could revive my writing addiction without any kind of interuption.



D



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