Patrick King has placed in the top three spots of the Couriers fiction contest four times. How many times has he entered?
Four, he said. Ive placed every time.
King won top spot last year by skillfully weaving the sentence They thought the beef jerky would sink, into his short story about a self-described outcast whos embittered by technology depleting face-to-face interactions. In his story, titled Beef Jerky, a graffiti artist sprays it on a wall. Its what King envisioned as soon as he read the sentence. He says he often pulls stories from the air.
Especially with the novels, its like an un-popped popcorn kernel. I know its all there, its just a matter of popping it, King said. Its not like things dont change, new insights come in, but I generally have an idea of where its going.
Kings narrators are often defiant underdogs, sometimes broken characters. It just makes what Im writing about all that more real because were all fractured, he said. We all carry baggage with us. Some carry a trunk, some carry an overnight bag.
King, manager of the Employment Resource Centre at the YWCA, taught high school English in Newfoundland for seven years before moving to Vancouver, wanting to devote time to his passion: writing.
The man who reads a book a weekauthors William Faulkner, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.K. Rowling are favouritesenjoyed writing in high school and university but didnt get serious about his craft until the 1990s.
King rises before 6 a.m. each weekday to write, squeezes more time in the evening, and writes more on Saturday. Hes completed three unpublished novels. His first, Upon This Rock, was one of 100 semi-finalists for the Chapters/Robertson Davies first novel award in 1999. His most recent, 52 Dates, about a guy who goes on an Internet date each week of the year, was long-listed from 5,000 worldwide entries to 1,000 for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award last year. King submits his work to every competition he finds.
His debut entry to the Courier, which won third place, was his first published story.
The deadline for the 16th annual Vancouver Courier Fiction Contest is Oct. 24. The winner will receive $1,250, second place $500, and third $250. This years sentence is She pointed to the clouds and said, It looks like you. Entry costs $15 and manuscripts must be delivered to the Couriers office at 1574 West 6th Ave. between 8:30 and 4:30 p.m. Winning entries will be posted online and published in the Courier starting Nov. 25. For full details, see vancourier.com.
crossi@vancourier.com
Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi
