I tripped over a different kind of contest. If you have a "crime fiction" short story, and it has (or you can give it) a New England setting—or if you're a New England writer—you can enter the 2008 Al Blanchard Award. The prize is $100 and publication in an anthology, the time frame is an April 30 deadline, the word limit is 5,00 words, and the story must be previously unpublished. Click here for more details.

My emoticon below is set to annoyed because tomorrow is the deadline for hearing whether or not I made the cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. I checked my mailbox, and there was a message from Amazon!

Guess what? LCD TVs are on sale on Amazon!