ENTER NOW!

You probably know that Masterchef - or as it is known in my world, #masterchef - has entered "Finals Week", the week when we get down to the nitty-gritty, come to the crunch, and are struck about the head and shoulders by the rubber on its way through to the road.

For a poignant description of the opening of Finals Week, check out my Sunday night recap here.

But in addition to that piece of - yes, no false modesty here - genius, I am also celebrating Finals Week with a COMPETITION!

A competition I tried to run before, but nobody entered so it didn't really work out. Hopefully it will work out this time.

The competition revolves around my sort-of-a-hit book, Superchef!



Specifically, it revolves around the recipes contained in the book: recipes like Myst's Apple and Cabbage Puree; Esther's Stress Water; Steve's Cyanide Noisettes; Tenielle's Suburban Parma, and many more.

What I want YOU, my faithful readers, to do is:

1. Choose a recipe from the book.

2. Make that recipe.

3. Take a photo of the results.

4. Send that photo to pobjie.ben@gmail.com

All photos sent in will be published on this very blog, and the BEST efforts - as judged by an expert panel comprising me, my wife, my son and maybe my friend Cam - will receive a very special prize: a SIGNED COPY of my anthology Handy Latin Phrases, known among "fans" who I just made up as "the Pobjie bootlegs".



This early opus of mine contains such works as "The Black Cat", "The Man Who Looked Like a Fish From Certain Angles", and "Franz Kafka, Grocery Boy", and is a rarity in Me-lore.

So there is the contest, and it is just waiting for you eager beavers to get in the kitchen and start entering. Here is an example of the sort of thing you might submit, a beautiful example of Tenielle's Suburban Parma:




So what are you waiting for? Get cooking, and you are in with a chance of not only fabulous prizes, but GLORY!

It Is Very Exciting

Do you like to read books? Do you like to laugh? Do you like to support struggling semi-writers? Do you like to make me feel good about myself?

Do you like to do ALL OF THESE THINGS AT ONCE?

Amazingly, YOU CAN. And you can do it SOON!

Because my first book, Surveying the Wreckage, which collects the best of my work for New Matilda from 2008-2010, is available for pre-order NOW! Published by Aduki Press:



Is this not thrilling? You can buy the actual physical artefact as kings did in days of old, or you can get it as eBook. The LUXURY OF CHOICE!

Also, on Aduki's homepage, see how you could win a FREE copy of Surveying the Wreckage, by nominating your favourite or least favourite piece of wreckage from the Rudd Years. Either use the tag #surveyingthewreckage on Twitter, or comment on Aduki's Facebook page. The best five win a free copy!

Survey with me today!

I'm so excited!

Exclamation mark!

My Life As A Fabulous Prize

If you are an aspiring writer or a lover of writing looking to make a contribution to recovery efforts for the Queensland floods, Writers On Rafts is the Queensland Writers' Centre's initiative to pull together a collective of writers and wandering publishing-folk to chip in.

Head to the site to check it out - essentially you buy a ticket for $5 and thereby gain a chance to win a writerly prize in one of four categories.

The categories:

Author Visit - where you have a writer of your choice visit your writers' group, book club or school.

Writer Support - a one-on-one workshop, writing session or manuscript assessment from the writer or industry bod of your choice.

Character Name - have your chosen writer name a character in their next book after you.

Book Pack - Win a stack of books from your chosen author, personally signed.

And then there's the Super Special Prize Draw!

All the details of the competition are on the site, and it is raising money for a very, very good cause - all money goes to the Queensland Premier's Flood Relief Appeal. You can enter as many times as you like in as many categories as you choose - the more you enter the more chance you have to win.

As you may have surmised, I am myself a prize in this competition, but there are loads and loads of other high-class slabs of writer up for grabs - like Benjamin Law, Emily Maguire, First Dog On The Moon, Nick Earls, Markus Zusak, Morris Gleitzman, Peter Fitzsimons, Tara Moss, Jessica Rudd (!), Marianne de Pierres, Bec Sparrow, Mem Fox, Kathy Lette, Toni Jordan, and oh so many many more. Tons to choose from.

So do check it out, it's kinda cool.

Sexy, In His Own Special Way

So anyway a while back I was encouraged to enter a competition. It was a competition I didn't really understand and for which I considered myself horribly unqualified, but the encouragement from dear friends caused me to enter, and it is rather a good one. It is the "Most Mentally Sexy Dad" competition, and what it is, it transpires, is a competition to recognise those fathers who make make themselves sexy through being exemplars of family commitment. Or something like that. Putting in the effort with the wife and kids, basically. So after much prodding and hesitancy, I took some big gulps of air, took a photo of myself with my kids, and wrote a little screed about why I thought I might be Mentally Sexy.

Find that here.

Now, you may or may not find me mentally sexy after seeing/reading that. However, you must admit that someone who is that unsexy physically probably has some redeeming features.

Nevertheless, whatever your opinions on my sexiness of various types, hopefully you do think I'm quite nice, and you're willing to vote for me so I can win something. So click on the five stars - make sure you're filling up the five so I get a five-star vote, boosting my total and my average (this is assuming you WANT me to get a five-star score).

You can also vote for other Mentally Sexy Dads who are competing against me on the http://www.reservoirdad.com site. Particularly "Murph" who seems to be the frontrunner. I'm sure he, and all the others, are lovely fellows. But without in any way wanting to encourage rum do or shenigans of a disreputable nature, my chances of winning the "People's Choice" award will increase the more high scores I get, and the more low scores they do. So, you know, go with your heart.

Of course, the main prize is not voted on by the public, but decided by a panel of judges. So feel free to bribe them discreetly. Ha ha! Just kidding, Mentally Sexy Scrutineers!