Another Contest Courtesy of The Swivet

A new contest held over at literary agent Colleen Lindsay’s blog challenges you to write your query in haiku format.

That’s right: the traditional five-seven-five syllable pattern.

I have to admit I love these contests even though my attempts are pretty poor at best. But it’s still fun to take part and strech the mind muscles a bit.

The winner gets a query critique. The deadline is Friday. More details are on her blog.

Anyway, just give it a try, even if your query isn’t really ready yet (mine is just a scattering of things put together, so if by God’s sense of humor I win, I’ll really have to work at editing it). It’s a fun exercise and really interesting to read all the other entries.

Here’s my poor attempt 😛

She of two cultures
Past shadowed in secrecy
True terror unknown

Query in 140 Characters or Less

There’s a little contest being held over at The Swivet’s blog until midnight tonight. The challenge is to convey your book in 140 characters or less–the amount that you could post on a Twitter update. Yes, that’s 140 characters–and spaces count.

I spent over a half an hour trying to pare mine down–I was always just over by two or three characters. This is the one I finally came up with, and it’s still not all that great:

Kaiyo despises her unknown father. But hate will change to fear when confronted with the truth behind his detachment.

I suppose that’s the essence of the story, even though there’s much more…like her struggling to find it in her heart to accept who her father really is, as well as overcoming being a young woman born from questionable circumstances in a time when such was frowned upon…especially when she is of two different ethnicities, which is definitely viewed with little favor back in Japan in 1890 (or anywhere in the world really). And then there’s the romance side to the story, which isn’t a major part, but a sidestory.

It all came down to what the story was about, and it’s really about Kaiyo overcoming the bitterness mixed with fear concerning her father. Eh, it’s not that great, I know, but it was a fun little exercise.

If you’re interested, head on over to The Swivet’s blog to read more details about the contest as well as some of the queries submitted.