"I know how you like news."

There is no excuse for my recent inactivity (sans book giveaways) on this blog. I could whine and apologize and excuse myself a lot. But the main point of the affair is, I have not been writing fiction lately. Sorry! The reasons for this are mostly psychological, compounded by academic, and I'm not going to go into it.

BUT! But but but! I have an exciting piece of news!

At the end of that fiction class I took last fall, our instructor encouraged us to submit one of our finalized pieces to a local writing contest. The League for Innovation Student Literary Competition is the full-name, and is a nationwide league of accredited colleges. I entered the fiction division of the LOCAL level of this competition. The winners of each local level are entered into the national one.

Anyways, I got a letter from my college yesterday, saying my story got third place! So win! On a stick! :D It was pretty hilarious because I picked up the letter, all disgruntled and betting it was either a "We noticed you're not enrolled with us this term" (I transferred this term to uni) or a "Oh btw we have your degree" sort of letter. So it took me several moments to comprehend the actual letter, and then I started squealing and dancing around the house. ^_^ My dog woke up and was very grumpy.

The amount of excitement I expressed was definitely excessive for third place in a county contest, BUT please understand this is really the only time I've submitted anything anywhere, and I wasn't expecting to place at all. :D

I'm pretty calm now....I purposely didn't blog yesterday because I knew it would be all caps and acronyms. :P

SO! The result of all this, is that I get a prize (I'm not sure what, because I didn't really pay attention to any of the info our instructor gave us), and I'm not sure if I go to the national level, because I'm not sure if "winners" mean people who placed, or just the 1st-place people.

Also, my friend who is in the graphic design program said that her class is working on a "book" and apparently I have a "page," but I have no further info on that at this time. ^_^ My college is hosting the national level this year, so I'm thinking I will only be in said book if I'm actually in the national level part. :P

Also-also, the letter I received told me to contact Denali, my college's lit magazine, because even though their deadline was past, they wanted to include the winners' stories. I emailed them, but they said the mag was on the way to the printers, despite their hope to include us. ^_^ They encouraged me to submit work to a future issue. Which is impossible, because I no longer go to that school, and is also hilariously ironic because I DID submit something LAST year, and was rejected, and now they're REQUESTING my presence?

I dunno. Funny.