Well, the list of winners is
up. I'm runner-up. Does this mean they don't do podium places? I'm not second or third, I'm just a runner-up. I'm being picky here. Runner-up sounds like also-ran. Didn't final in the Unsinkable category either, only got one perfect score, not two. Oh yeah, my scoresheets came through. 93 & 95 for the first round, 98 & 86 for the second. That's out of 100. Still amazes me how one judge can give it an almost perfect score (people use condoms every day and they're only like 97% effective. 98% looks pretty good to me) and one can find stuff to pick at.
Although I have to say the judges here were sensible. I got the same entry back from one contest (and I actually can't remember which one) and the judge had said things like, "I found it hard to know which of the guys she was going to end up with. Is Luke a good or a bad guy? You should make this clearer." Perhaps she'd missed the definition of 'mystery'. Also she told me there were too many secondary characters (thus leading to her confusion over which of the men Sophie barely knew in the first thirty pages was going to be the love of her life by the end of three hundred pages) and I should take them all out. I shouldn't mention Sophie's colleagues, her friends, the passengers at the airport, or her family.
(One day I'll write the book she wants, and it will go like this:
Sophie sees a man with shifty looking eyes and a beard, holding a gun. "Oh no," she cries, "that's Shifty McMurder! He's going to kill us all! I must call Luke, my burly protector, and he will save the day because he's a Good Guy!" Sophie screams, Luke bursts in with an even bigger gun, snarls something like, "I'm taking out the trash," and shoots Shifty while Sophie stands by thinking pitying thoughts about the blackness of Shifty's heart. Then she and Luke make out, and probably get married or something. Have a few kids. And a dog. If you ever see this book on a shelf, burn it. And kill me. No, kill the contest judge.)
Oh, and while we're on the subject of the airport, I finally had a judge who thought it was a great setting and was interested in the details of Sophie's job. Finally! I was actually told explicitly by one person that the airport wasn't a good setting, as people think of them as transitory places and don't really like them. Well, no, they don't (flight delays will do that to a person), but there are plenty of books set in France, and everyone hates the French. Possibly I'm horribly wrong in thinking that a person who sees the ins and outs of a London airport might be an interesting character, and that the many and varied people, as passengers and professionals, criminals and law-enforcers, might be further interesting characters.
But since no one reads books about such things, then they must be unpopular (no one reads them because no one publishes them, and no one publishes them because 'no one reads them'). It's like the one about why romance heroes aren't allowed to be rock stars or actors. People don't want to read about them. Which explains why MTV is the most unwatched channel across the globe.
In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. I'm done now. I don't actually care about it any more. Either I can believe people who tell me my book is rubbish, and stop trying to get it published, in which case it will never see the light of day. Or I can ignore them and try anyway, and then it might get published. And
might is better than
not, right?
I'm going to go and eat some crisps.
