Thursday, October 27, 2011

In Pictures: The 2011 Mr. Olympia Expo


"I can't remember which makes you bigger.  I'll go ask Alice."


Visiting the floor of the Mr. Olympia Expo was like being part of an organized tour to another planet; one where all food comes in powder or pill form, the water is electric blue and actually makes you thirsty, and all the natives have bodies straight out of comic books or the magazines I hide under my mattress.

Click "Read On" to see my full photo set from the expo

Saturday, October 15, 2011

In Pictures: Occupy Victoria


Today in Victoria, protesters came out in support of the Occupy Wall Street  movement.  My good friend Dan Eastabrook of Real Life, Real Light photography was on hand and has provided some of his photos for us here:


Monday, October 10, 2011

So You Think You Can Write


This year I decided to participate in the Victoria Times-Colonist's writing contest.  The first round was a free-form submission (poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction) of no more than 500 words, due by September 9.  From the pool of entrants, judges would select four finalists who would be given four assignments over the next month (1 per week).  Each batch of assignments would be judged weekly and the winning entry printed in the Sunday Edition of the Times-Colonist.

My entry was a story about two brothers growing up in rural Tennessee, a fictional piece I put together the night before deadline.  Fiction is new to me, so it was a challenge but the characters had been rolling around in my head for about a year so when I finally sat myself down to the work it wasn't as hard as I'd expected.

Almost immediately after this my trip down to the Olympia Weekend in Las Vegas (article forthcoming) and I more or less forgot about the contest.  Then, while at a truck stop in southern Nevada on my return journey I received a call from Denise Helm, acting Editor-in-Chief at the Times-Colonist, informing me I had been selected as a finalist!

My first assignment arrived immediately and so I began work while making my way home, using my voice recorder to take notes while driving during the day and transcribing those notes in motel rooms at night.

As of today the contest is two weeks in and my third assignment was submitted yesterday.  The judges notes will be sent back Thursday and I'll know by Sunday whether or not my piece was chosen out of the four on offer.

Readers are allowed to vote for their favorite piece on the newspaper's web site and the author deemed "Reader's Choice" wins an iPad classic.  Overall winner receives a trip to a writer's festival next year on the Sunshine Coast.

Read my submissions and vote for me (Brennan Storr, in case you were unsure) as "Reader's Choice" at www.timescolonist.com/writingcontest.