Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Alexandra Duncan Takes the Dare + Short Story Winners

I promise to get around to embarrassing myself in a minute, but first, some important business: the winners of our short story contest. (Drumroll, please!)

The grand prize goes to. . . Leigh!

And our runners-up are. . . Silverpool and Christina.

Congratulations, guys! Thank you so much for playing. E-mail us at fridaythethirteeners[at]gmail[dot]com to claim your prizes.

And now, on to the humiliation. . .

The last time I played Truth or Dare was at my friend Nicole's birthday party during my senior year of high school. Most of our truths involved boys, and I don't think there was a single dare in the mix. What had happened to the halcyon days of mixing together weird things from the fridge and then making each other eat them? Or sneaking out of the house to jump on the trampoline at midnight? So, when I heard about the idea of the Thirteeners, I knew immediately I had to play, and I knew I wanted to start with a really good dare.


Amy Conroy sent in a perfect one:


Read a bit of a story from when you were younger (child to teenager, the youngest piece that you can find).

I'm not sure about the wisdom of letting my 11 year-old self's writing out into the world when I'm trying to have a career convincing people to read the things I write now, but it wouldn't be a dare if it didn't hurt a little, right?





Thanks for the awesome dare, Amy. Since this is my first time playing, you get to choose a prize - a $13 gift certificate or a copy of Booklife, by Jeff Vandermeer (my favorite guide to the writing life). E-mail me at fridaythethirteeners[at]gmail[dot]come and let me know which you'd like.


Thanks again for playing! Check back with us this coming Friday, May 4th, for a post by the lovely and talented Mindy McGinnis.
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Alexandra Duncan is a writer and librarian. Her first novel, Salvage, is due to be released by Greenwillow Books/Harper Collins in Fall 2013. You can find her online at Twitter, Goodreads, and her personal blog.

12 comments:

  1. LOL! That was fantastic! I loved your subtle use of direction and action for your characters... Okay, seriously, you are awesome for reading that to us. I haven't looked at any of my early novel attempts in forever, so I'm sure they are atrocious as well.

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  2. Hilarious! And much better than my early attempts at writing :) I love how you needed to clarify that the story was about aliens. And spelling words backwards as character names...I'm totally going to use that.

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  3. Wow, that was REALLY good for an eleven year old. Seriously. My favorite part had to be where Saduj went through the steps he was going to take to convice Sarah she was crazy. Very subtle.

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    1. Well, Saduj DID like to be subtle. When he could.

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  4. Chucky murder mystery. Awesome. Dragons on Mars. Awesome.

    Man, you girls who wrote entire novels before you even hit high school--you shame me. The only things I wrote were murder mystery plays that I made my siblings act out with me. Todd had to play a girl sometimes. I think he's still mad at me for this.

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    1. Murder mystery plays! I want to see that. We should revisit this dare later on. It's an awesome one.

      And I had no social life when I was in 6th and 7th grade. (Except maybe the Star Wars fan club I tried to get my friends to form.)

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  5. I agree with Leigh. The whole time I was watching I just kept thinking, 'She was 11 when she wrote this?!?' That's awesome for an 11 year old. But it was also very funny. :)

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  6. I think I was still sucking my thumb at 11, so count me in for being in awe, Alexandra!!

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  7. Haha, I love it! Eleven-year-old-writing = sheer genius. :) I was still figuring out I liked reading at that point...let alone writing. ;-) Awesome!

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