Push Contest

Last year I picked up a novel at my local library - Hail Caesar by Thu-Huong Ha - and let me be honest: the only reason I picked it up was because the author wrote it after winning a PUSH contest at the age of fourteen. It's a bit off-putting for me that all the novels published by PUSH- a division of Scholastic - revolve around high school kids with realistic plots. That means: nothing I've written fits into that. I tried thinking of something good to submit for their 2009 contest - might as well try it, the only thing I can lose is some postage on sending it - and came up with a stand-alone vampire novel. I guess that means I always have to spice something up in my writing. Not to suggest that high school stories are boring, but how many times can the boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl thing be done? And the vampire thing might be a strange side-effect of getting annoyed by hearing girls talk about how perfect Edward Cullen is for too long. Otherwise, I know I never would have tried anything with vampires in it - I think the literary world is far too full of them already. But I did write a synopsis - a requirement of the contest - and I think I've got something decent on my hands. Not that anyone will get overly obsessed with male vampire Fletcher Munroe, but that was never my plan. As long as he gets to have expressive dark brown eyes, I'm happy. Huh. I got so caught up with Fletcher's appearance that I never even thought about what the girl - Sakina Evergreen - should look like, even though she's the protagonist.