Tag Archives: prizes

Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Contest #1Tall Tale

Rodeo #1: Modern Tall Tale

22 Replies

It’s October again. That means it’s time for the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo. This year it is being run a little differently but everyone still has a chance to join in. The first contest is now open for your entries and the prompt is ‘Tall Tales’. Pop over to the Ranch for details, and read Charli’s previous post with suggestions to support your writing: Get Ready to Rodeo Like It’s 2019!

During the contest, I won’t be posting my usual mid-week flash fiction post but will reblog Charli’s prompt post on the weekend to keep you up-to-date.
I wish you all success. What a fun rodeo with lots of great prizes!

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Out west where I grew up, to tell a tall tale was to tell a whopper of a lie so big no one would ever believe it. Someone would start the storytelling, and the next person would try to out-exaggerate the last one. Some told tall tales as a joke, especially if an inexperienced newbie might believe it. Wild Bill Hickok’s biographer, Joseph Rosa, suspected that Bill magnified the truth for fun.

Tall tales are the stuff of dime-store novels and pulp fiction.

What is a tall tale? One that openly exaggerates and magnifies the truth to the point of being unbelievable. The story itself is hyperbole. But we want to believe it because it’s humorous, melodramatic, or sensational.

This contest asks you to give a tall tale a modern bent. Don’t rely on the stories of Pecos Bill or 19th-century dime-store westerns. Go past the early sci-fi and…

View original post 379 more words

Bonus contest advertisement for the Continental Fire Company

Bonus Rodeo: Old Time Radio

5 Replies

Fancy yourself as an advertiser? Now’s your chance to try it out for free with a Bonus Contest at the Carrot Ranch for the Continental Fire Company. There are prizes for the three best entries. Time to get those fires lit!

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Waves surged relentlessly against the craggy rocks of Eagle Harbor where I went to write for a few days as a guest of Keweenaw historian, Barb Koski. It was mid-October, and the gales of November had come even earlier than when the Edmond’s Fitzgerald went down. Barb’s expertise in maritime history focuses on the heroics of the surfmen — those who went out into the wind-driven swells in small boats to rescue the crews of large ships.

Like Barb, many who live, work or attend secondary education on the Keweenaw Peninsula fall in love with the area’s natural beauty and endless outdoor activities. Barb showed me many natural wonders and historic structures during our getaway. If you spend any time outdoors on the Keweenaw, you can’t escape the area’s bold history of industrial copper mining.

In 1885, Michigan Tech University founded Michigan Mining School. From 1886 to 1889…

View original post 1,132 more words

All You Need to Know to Rodeo

11 Replies

Are you saddled up ready to write in the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo 2018? The contests get underway this week and continue throughout October with plenty of opportunities to join in and the chance of winning a prize.
Who will be among the TUFF 5 writers? Did you enter? Could one be you.? Or maybe me? Charli reveals all on 1 October. Not long to wait!

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Weekly Flash Fiction Challenges are on hiatus until November 1. Just like hands on a ranch, we’re going to take a break from our regular chores to challenge and show off our skills. We’re going to have us a rodeo! A flash fiction rodeo.

THE TUFFEST RIDE

Judging for TUFF began after the final September Free-Write. These writers were in it to win it. A free-write is a scary contest to enter because it makes a writer feel vulnerable, but vulnerability is exactly what a writer has to push past to write deep, to meet the muse, to follow gut instinct. Drafting is all about trusting the spark of creativity.

We will post a video on October 1 (right here in the blog feed) to announce the five writers who will advance to compete every Monday. They will write a new story to a fresh prompt, then each week revise…

View original post 739 more words

Flash Fiction Rodeo Contest #7

5 Replies

Got murder on your mind? Here’s a chance to work it out; in fiction anyway – contest #7 in the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo #FFRODEO.

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Murderous Musings:

When Good Folk Turn Bad At The Rodeo

By Sherri Matthews

Saddle up, tighten your reins and pull on your riding boots. And while you’re about it, watch your back, because wicked wranglings are afoot at the Rodeo. Western or English? Doesn’t matter. Thrown off a few times? Never mind. Devious, deadly or just plain dangerous, it’s time for some murderous musings.

Long fascinated with the dark side of the human heart, I read a lot of True Crime. Not for the gory details, neither for the whodunit: I want to understand the why.

As a memoir writer, I need to explore the true motives driving the story. I wonder how many of us ask ourselves, if truly honest, what might we be capable of if pushed too far? What would be our not so perfect storm?

But it never occurred to me that I could explore this…

View original post 1,009 more words

Flash Fiction Rodeo #6

15 Replies

Another contest in the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo. This time it’s a lot of bull. Are you in?

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Bucking Bull Go-Round

By D. Avery

Luck of the Draw, Resilience of the Rider

Bull riders are “today’s gladiators,” willing to risk injury and death for their ride to fame. Can you imagine straddling an angry, snorting 1800-pound animal that wants nothing more than to shake you off and perhaps gore and trample you, too? What must it be like to prepare for that, to face down fear as you approach the chute and settle atop this beast that you will dance with in the arena? What are people’s motivations to confront such a challenge, to set upon it and not only hang on for dear life, but to ride it with as much grace and finesse as possible, showing courage and skill in equal measure? Carrot Ranch’s Bucking Bull Go-Round event is a flash fiction approximation of rodeo’s most dangerous event, bull riding.

At the Professional Bull Riders’ (PBR)…

View original post 1,177 more words

Flash Fiction Rodeo Contest #2

10 Replies

My Contest #1 in the Carrot Ranch #FFRODEO is now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered. I’ll be able to start reading tomorrow. Yippee!
Today the second of the contests kicks off. You are required to make the judges laugh in 300 words! And you have only until Friday (13th) to do it! I hope you enter. Get those laughing pens ready! Good luck!

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Little and Laugh

By Geoff Le Pard

My father was a man of many aphorisms, epithets, old saws and clichés. A know-all, really.

But one quote he shared with us that not only stuck but resonated was from an American poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Laugh and the world laughs with you

Weep and you weep alone.

Laughter, in all its forms has taken centre stage in nearly every phase of my life, from irony to farce, pratfalls to priceless, life-enhancing fits of giggles. Whether it was as a defensive mechanism or merely because I enjoyed it, I don’t now remember but I’ve always wanted to make people laugh. Over the years I’ve tailored my delivery, become sensitive to my audience and played everything and anything for a laugh. I’m one of those people who you can always trust with a secret…unless it’s genuinely too funny not to be shared. In…

View original post 652 more words

Flash Fiction Rodeo Contest #1

29 Replies

Today I am honoured, and very excited to be leading the very first of the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo events. My challenge is the first of eight to be held each Tuesday and Thursday throughout the month of October. Each challenge is different, with a different leader and different rules of participation. Participation is free, but the winner of each challenge scores a US$25 prize! I do hope you will join in. Pop over to the Carrot Ranch for full details including how to submit, and information about other contests.

 

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

When I Grow Up

BY NORAH COLVIN

Do you remember being asked this question as a child? Or contemplating it, even if you weren’t asked? Do you recall your childhood thoughts? 

I remember having no aspiration prior to the age of ten when I decided I wanted to be a teacher. Although I loved writing, creating stories, songs, poetry and plays; writing was a part of who I was, an integral part of me, I didn’t consider a writer as something I might be. 

It is often mooted that we are educating today’s children for a future of which we have no knowledge, a future we can’t begin to imagine. But hasn’t that always been so? Has any generation known exactly what life will be like for those following? While the rate of change may be increasing, change has always been. 

Though it may sometimes appear otherwise…

View original post 616 more words

Get Ready to Rodeo!

20 Replies

Come, join in the Flash Fiction writing rodeo. Eight different challenges, eight prizes, tons of fun! Starts next week at the Carrot Ranch.

Carrot Ranch Literary Community

Norah Colvin writes in the upcoming The Congress of Rough Writers Flash Fiction Anthology, Vol. 1:

“Flash fiction is a form of short writing. In its various forms, it may be known as, for example, micro fiction, sudden fiction, or six-word stories; the length may vary from as few as six to as many as 1,000 words. Brevity is a constraint, and writers attempt to pack as much story as they can into few words. Each word must count. There is no room for ‘darlings’, let alone a need for them to be killed.”

Carrot Ranch is hosting a Flash Fiction Rodeo with eight different contests throughout the month of October. It’s free and includes first place prizes in each category of $25. The best of all eight winning entries will be dubbed the All-Around Best Writer of 2017 Flash Fiction Rodeo and win an extra $50. You can enter…

View original post 909 more words