Tag: Writers of the Future contest

Five Things

Five things that are new with me:

1. I just found out my short story REVERSAL OF FORTUNE was a semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest.

2. I’ve started reading a new book that I can’t bear to put down — the DARWIN ELEVATOR by Jason Hough.

3. Drafting progress on PROJECT AWESOME falls into the “not too shabby” category this week. I’m about 52K in, so a little more than halfway there.

4. I watched the pilot episode of Agents of SHIELD. Aside from some pretty painful ‘as you know, Bob’ crap near the beginning, it was fun. Am I the only one with a little crush on Agent Coulson?

5. One of our friends has found a way (totally legal, I’m sure) for us to watch the new series of Downton Abbey as it airs in the UK. We watched the first episode last night. To avoid being a Spoily-McSpoilerson for my friends here in the US, all I’ll say is: “Oh, Lady Mary, really?” and (with maximum exasperation) “Oh, Cora. For the love of God!”

And, that’s all from here, folks. What’s new with you?

A day made of awesome

So.  All sorts of exciting things happened around the Suri household in the last 24 hours.

First, I finally finished the second draft of ABSENT.  It needs a light edit, but it is DONE and should be in the hands of readers by the weekend — all of whom I fully expect to eviscerate it so I can put it back together again in the third draft.  Still, a momentous occasion and one I celebrated with a burger and milkshake.  As one does.

Second, I  just got word that my short story DISCARDED was awarded Honorable Mention in the 1st Quarter Writers of the Future contest, which is not as nice as winning but still quite nice 🙂

And, finally, in the category of Now it Can be Told, I’d also like to share the thrilling news that the upheaval has resolved itself in the best and most awesome way possible.  A few months back it became rather abruptly clear that my husband, Sid, was going to have to say goodbye to Yahoo! and seek his fortunes elsewhere.  This was sad because he had a really wonderful and productive four years there, loved his research team, and (depressingly) the search for a new job looked like it would take us away from our beloved NYC.

Well, it turns out that Sid and his colleagues at Yahoo! Research NYC are so deeply and fabulously fabulous that Microsoft decided to hire the lot of them and open a brand-new shiny lab in New York.  Just for them.  Because they are awesome.  The coolest thing about all of this, in my opinion, is that despite each member of the team having several quite tempting individual offers at other companies, they chose to turn them down and go, as a unit, to Microsoft.  Speaks to how special their collaboration is, and makes me so happy they’ll be able to continue it.  For those who are interested, here’s an article on the whole thing from the New York Times, and another from Microsoft themselves.  *beams with pride*

So, the title of the post really says it all:  it’s a day made of awesome.

May I briefly mention…

…that one of my short stories, Ark in a Sea of Stars, won Honorable Mention in the 3rd Quarter Writers of the Future contest.  Still looking for a permanent home for this one, though, so back out into the fray it goes.  Nevertheless, I’ll take any positive feedback that comes my way, so the Honorable Mention was quite nice!

Other writer friends who got WotF nods this quarter: Lou Berger (semi-finalist! W00t!), Colton Goodrich (Honorable Mention), and Amy Sundberg (Honorable Mention).  Congrats to all!