Before we move on to something entirely Vortex, I want to mention the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.
CreateSpace still sends me notification about the annual event. If you have a full-length novel to offer up to public onions and orchids and your skin is thick, entries are accepted between 1/24 and 2/6 or until the 5,000 entries cap is reached. You can find my take on the contest
here. Maybe we were all feeling our way its inaugural year-2007-but I don't think the inter-dynamics of the entrants have changed much. It is the nature of competition's beast and a months-long testimony to the drying up of lucrative publishing opportunities. It's not always a genre-friendly contest, so it's important to look at this year's panel of
general fiction and
young adult judges to see what writing realm they hail from.
Now for this guy....
Does he look familiar? Has he ever once walked through your dream world? Sat down at the next table in an outdoor cafe? Passed you on the street as you walked to work in your bathrobe?
According to
thisman.org, the goal of the site is, "to help those who have seen this man in their dreams and to foster communication among them; to understand who this man is and why he appears in an apparently pattern-less array of situations in the dreams of such diverse human subjects."
Some
theorize he's a dream surfer, able to enter people's dreams through heightened psychological skills. Others subscribe to Jung's theory that he is an archetype that emerges in times of stress and hardship. Me? I'm sure it'll end up being some type of social experiment in some psychologist student's doctoral thesis. It
is fun to read the testimonials, though. If you can speed read past the jokesters to the legit ones, it can get creepy.
What's your theory on this man?
3
Have never dreamed him. Probably if I did he'd have gotten eaten by some of the monsters in there too.
UHHHH I don't submit my novels to anyone for anything and I do not enter REM sleep ergo I do not dream but he does have a police sketch artists look about him.