There’s a cool contest in progress based on romance writing and I thought you might get a kick out of it. If you’ve read any travel magazines, you might have seen this ad:
From Rosetta Stone comes the following:
Ever wonder what happened to that hard-working farm boy who knew he would have just one chance to impress that particular Italian supermodel?
Rosetta Stone Inc., a leading provider of technology-based language-learning solutions, today announced a contest seeking entries from language-loving fans to use their imaginations to tell the next chapter of the Farm Boy and Italian supermodel’s love story. Five lucky winners will be chosen out of the top 10 ranked stories and will win a full year subscription to Rosetta Stone® TOTALe™, the Company’s most innovative and comprehensive online language-learning solution.
Be creative in your submissions! Is he going to marry his Italian supermodel and settle into a quiet life outside Venice? Does he leave his supermodel after learning Italian and go back to life on the farm? Do they have a long distance love affair that will never be fulfilled? Has learning a language changed his world and is he now becoming a doctor?
Entering the contest is easy but winning is partly up to you. Make your story the fan favorite by urging family, friends and even strangers to vote for your story online as soon as you post it! All submissions will be voted on by the general public. Visit http://www.rosettastone.com/farmboy to submit your video, photos or written story. The contest will run January 8th – January 29th and all submissions must be received by 5:00 p.m. EST on January 29th.
So you write the happy ending for the farm boy and the Italian supermodel, and you could win a year’s worth of online language instruction. That is very, very cool.
Do you think the farmboy deserves a happy ending (or at the very least a better Photoshop job to put that box under his arm)? What would it be in your ideal imagination?
I get such a kick out of contests like this one – if you enter, I hope your happy ending is the happiest endingest bestest one and you win a full year of whatever language you want. But I really hope it’s Basque.
I keep remembering Natalia Vodianova who went from sellling fruit in the street to becoming a famous fashion model and wife to the brother of an English viscount. So the farm boy should reaaaly make an effort to impress the model! :))
I love the fact that it never even occurs to the Rosetta Stone people that she should give up her Supermodeling ways and settle down on the farm with him.
One of the major reasons I gave up on Harlequins in the early ‘00s was the seeming insistence that women who had worked hard to reach the top of their professions should just chuck it all to make babies and run a craft empire out of Hunky Hero’s family ranch.
That farm boy looks like a young Walter Mathau. I’m thinking he’s going to need more than speaking Italian.
Does this remind anyone else of the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder ad from Anne of Avonlea? I’m hoping someone submits a story where the characters names are Percival and Averil.
My husband works for them. I keep telling him that Farmboy should be eaten by fire ants, but nobody will listen to me.
Didn’t the folks at Rosetta stone see Ian Frazier’s recent send-up of this very ad? I predict they’ll get not a few entries in this vein…
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/04/13/090413sh_shouts_frazier
I wish I was a better creative writer. I’d love to win this prize.
Lina, that link officially made my morning.
I will have to think about entering that contest. How long/how much detail should there be?
@Jennifer Spiller – Fireants? LOL! You officially made my morning. Thank you.
Sadly, if I wrote this it wouldn’t be a happy ending. Supermodel would turn out to be a supernaturally powered serial killer. Farmboy would either be sacrificed to keep her black magic alive, or he’d have to kill her himself. Either way, someone would die a horribly painful death and all those Italian lessons would go to waste.
BTW – Is anyone besides me tempted to write the story where it turns out the “Italian Supermodel” is a 300 pound man – and canibal?
@Alyssa—I know!! I study Italian and when I Frazier’s piece, I gave myself a stomach-ache laughing so hard. My favorite is in “Lesson Three”: “Milk! (imp.)—Mungi! (s.) Mungete! (pl.)” Don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing whenever I read that.
More thanks for Lina! That link was particularly side-splitting since my hubby was born in the Quad Cities.
Oh, I can’t find the link now, but this reminds me an awful lot of the One Semester of Spanish Love Song.
@Ros
http://www.youtube.com/user/runawaybox