March 30, 2010

• The Ultimate Library and other writing contests

  In honor of National Library week, starting April 12th, Laurie R King, author of the Beekeeper’s Apprentice and other Holmsian fiction, is running a contest. Describe your perfect library and send it to her for fabulous prizes for yourself, and more importantly, whatever local library is near and dear to your heart in this blighted age of library cutbacks and closings.

  Here’s my entry:

  For a bibliophile such as myself only an entire house would suffice for a library: one room for my bedroom, also containing shelves for books yet to be read, and of course a small kitchen and bathroom. However, every other room of the house would be filled with books and shelves for books, from attic to basement, books of every description. Every room would have it’s theme, perhaps religion in the attic, history on the floor below, fiction on the first floor, with children‘s books, poetry, and various non-fiction in the cellar.

  Only a few cushy chairs and perhaps a few small tables would inhabit each room, for casual reading and books yet to be shelved. Though plush carpeting has its allure, patterned wood floors with occasional throw carpets would be more visually satisfying. Being of an eclectic nature and moderate (currently nonexistent) income, I have cobbled my collection together over a long period of time. No doubt if I had the opportunity to make an entire house into a library, the style would remain eclectic. Lacking the floor space for all my bookshelves, I have taken to stacking them, one on another, like some literary game of Tetris. If I had an entire house to myself, I would continue in this style, buying shelves of various size and design at yard sales and stacking and bolting them against the walls with room left only for large windows full of lush greenery. For if there’s one thing I love almost as much as books, it’s windows full of happy plants.

  People talk about the “crazy cat lady” but for me, it’s books. As Erasmus said, When I have a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. I will spend my life accumulating books. Whether or not I ever manage to fill an entire house with them, well that remains to be seen. Someday when I die, some small library (the smallest my family can find… I‘ve left orders) will greatly benefit from my book mania, though I wouldn‘t mind if my home became a shrine for booklovers throughout the world, a place to which they could bequeath their own best beloved tomes.
  

  
  

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  I also entered a Haiku contest at Haiku Now. There are three categories with $100 prize for each. Deadline is tomorrow, so if you want to enter, whip out your pen and get to work.

  traditional
  salty breath whispered
  over endless golden flecks
  the sea murmurs sleep

  __

  contemporary
  lost and found secrets
  history’s puzzle pieces
  scattered by Dewey

  __

  innovative
  red cape in flight
  little red or superman
  Grandmother’s not on Krypton
  

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  Only 8 more entries in chapter seven of the webnovel. Chapter eight begins the last week of April. In the meantime, I am trying to finish up the novel I started writing last year for Nanowrimo. I hope I don’t sound too biased when I say it’s REALLY GOOD. heh I’ll keep you guys posted.

  • 6:39 pm
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