Competition News...

You may have been fortunate in not getting the heavy prolonged rain that I've experienced this week, but if you have, and you've had to go out in it- as I did, you have my sympathy.

So to cheer you up, I've got a few competition details you might like.

• Words with Jam First Page Competition 2012.

"What are we looking for: the most gripping, read-on-able first page of up to 400 words. Any genre, but as always we're looking for The Best First Page."

Entry cost: £6 for one entry or £10 for two but the winner receives £500, while 2nd and 3rd get £100/£50 respectively. And the three winning entries will be published in the August 2012 issue of Words with JAM.
It will be judged by the author of '22 Britannia Road', Amanda Hodgkinson.

Details here and here.

• Grazia and Orange’s ‘First Chapter’ Competition.

Best-selling author Rosamund Lupton has written the opening paragraph which leaves you to complete the chapter in 800-1,000 words.

Sadly this appears to be a UK entrants only- if you look at the general rules and conditions. It is free to enter, but you must include with your entry a brief bio and a passport photograph of yourself, with your date of birth and occupation included on your contact information sheet.

The winner is awarded £1,000 and attends a party (invitation only) at The Royal Festival Hall on the 30th May- presentation on stage. There are two runner-up prizes of £500 each. The winner's story will appear in Grazia, while the runners-up will see their story on the website. All will receive the short-listed books for this year's Orange Prize.

This may be one to avoid if you're well over the target age range for the magazine's readership- but that's my personal opinion only.

Details here

• If you're interested in Crime-writing not doing- here's an ongoing competition opportunity.

"Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, in association with Bloomsbury Publishing and The Crime Writers’ Association, have launched the Short Sentencecrime writing competition."

"Tell a tale of dastardly deeds in 1000 words or less. A new theme will be set every two months and we will select a winner for each theme. Entries will be collected throughout the year and we will also announce one overall winner during National Short Story Week in November."

One of the best bits about the prizes is a ticket for the Harrogate Crime Festival 2013.

For full details see here.

There's lots of competitions around at the moment, so you'll be sure to find something you like and if you know anyone who might be interested please direct them here. :-)

Scarred Baddies Are a Stereotype...

Late last week there was an item in a few of the newspapers about stereotyping in movies of those with facial disfigurement- scars indicate a baddie.

If you are interested in the campaign to change this attitude, then you'll find the BBC News article here and the Changing Faces website here, where you can watch their short film that is being shown in 750 cinemas across the UK.

But it got me thinking about how disfigured people are viewed in romantic fiction.

In the classic, Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester is injured and blinded in a fire. Apart from his intention to commit bigamy by marrying Jane, while his first wife is still alive and locked up for her own safety, he's not seen as a baddy, he's just a man in an impossible situation.

In an historical romance context there are going to be scarred heroes and minor villains...

Before guns, men used swords, and in a fight or a battle if you didn't die from the vicious sword wound you'd probably die from blood poisoning. And if you did survive there would be scars- yes they would fade a little in time, but they would still be visible.
Wounds would be sewn with a needle and thread, and the neatness of the scar would depend on how good the doctor (or whoever was doing the stitching up) was with their stitches...

No doubt there were people in past times who turned away from those who suffered disfigurement, or heavy scarring, just as many still do now days.

Certainly in some of the American historical romances I've read over the years, the heroine drags the scarred and/or disabled hero back into the light, and back into society by the healing power of her love.

The baddies in these stories often lack scars, in fact they look just like anyone else- they can even be women!

So no cinema stereotypes there, quite the opposite in fact...