Nice Writing Karma

You probably won’t believe me if I say that when I posted 5 reasons why you should be entering Writing Competitions last week, I had no idea that I’d just been shortlisted for the RTE Today Show / New Island Books ‘Get Your Book Published’ competition. Talk about some gorgeous irony, eh?

But that’s what happened. A few hours after pressing “Publish” on the old WordPress, I opened my e-mail, and there it was. A rather lovely missive telling me I was one of 10 finalists in this novel competition, with my novel In June.

So I immediately went up a mountain in Donegal with some other writers to get stared at by some sheep – and no, it’s not a new fad, necessarily, being stared at by sheep – where I spent the majority of my time deleting thousands of bad commas and inserting a million more supposedly better ones into the full manuscript of In June, before it’s sent for final judgement. I hope they’re gentle with it.

But this is turning out to be a SPIFFING 2014 so far. I had a wild theory that encouraging other people – most likely ridiculously talented people – to enter competitions might bring some half decent karma back on myself. (Well, actually I didn’t really, I wasn’t thinking very much at all, but it makes for a much better story angle this way, doesn’t it?)

Anyway, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish all the other finalists the very very very best of luck. And perhaps if I wish all the luck away upon other people, I might get some sort of ricochet effect, meaning that in fact, I will get all the luck, and then I could… oh, never mind. Let’s keep that one to ourselves…

Here we are, listed for the ‘Get Your Book Published’ Competition:

Joanna Binchy ‘Deadly Nightshade’

Tara Sparling ‘In June’

Valerie Whelan ‘The Spaces Between Lies’

Sheena Lambert ‘A Village Drowned’ 

Don Cameron ‘Marked Off’

Brian Kirk ‘Winter Journey’

Stephen Murray ‘The First Born Bastard of a Battered Wife’

Bernadette Murphy ‘The Minimalist’

Susie G. Murphy ‘Summer at the Manor’

Jessica Traynor ‘Old Souls’

The results are announced at the end of March. At which point I will be either loudly proclaiming my win, or somewhat more quietly proclaiming somebody else’s win, whilst more loudly proclaiming the fact that I was still shortlisted.

It’s the way forward. I told you.