Mark Budman has found critical success with the publication of his debut novel, “My Life at First Try,” which came out from Counterpoint Press in November 2008. This novel-in-flashes (every chapter is a stand-alone but interlinked story, most no longer than 2-3 pages) was well received, with interviews being published in variety of publications, from People Magazine to Time Out Chicago. “My Life at First Try” is what Budman defines as a “semi-autobiographical” fiction.

All you have to do to enter to win a personalized signed copy of "My Life at First Try" and $50 in cash is to send an e-mail to this address with the subject line of “My Life at First Try contest,” along with your contact info* and a ONE-SENTENCE SEMI-BIOGRAPHY (a biography based on a true story, but fictionalized) pasted in the body of the e-mail (no attachments, please!) and you will be entered to win. Please enter only once.  Bear in mind that Publishers Weekly called this novel “blazingly fast and funny,” so write your entry accordingly.

The winning entry will be printed on Mark Budman's website.

You have to be 18 or over and reside in the United States or Canada to enter. Offer void where prohibited by law.

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Putting my entire life into a single sentence makes me uneasy, like just before you throw up and your mouth starts to water and you have to take deep breaths and think of fresh mint in a cool stream so as not to yak all over yourself or even worse, someone else nearby who is probably aware of your discomfort and asks if you need to sit down and take a deep breath—deep, deep breath—ok, my life; I can do this—let me begin at a time I cannot remember, a time when I gurgled and burped, ate and shat, napped and giggled; but not the kind of giggling I would later do when I’d see a cute boy, or even after admitting it in a drunken stupor one Marathon Monday, a cute girl...oh dear, how revealing of me; let’s continue so that the mint images do not leave my head and this saliva; forgive me for spitting but the waterworks are spewing and it ain’t gonna be pretty if I don’t get that out, so moving on, I grew up in a small town all of my life, went to a kindergarten reminiscent of a prison where no one could read and my teacher would try and instruct us in phonics by showing inflatable alphabet figures, like a koala bear for the Letter K, which always angered me because if these kids don’t know how to read, then it’s pretty doubtful some slow-moving marsupial from a foreign country will be of any inspiration; no, inspiration comes from something deeper, and I wish I could tell you where and how I received mine when I became so enthralled in the prospect of not eating, of sliding raisins up my bathrobe and stuffing turkey sandwiches into my sock, doing jumping-jacks in the bathroom at recess, and spending weeks hooked up to feeding tubes, petrified of the fluids and fats running through my arm, into my stomach, my ever-expanding source of worry and anxiety; the kind of anxiety that stays with you for life, not the kind that goes away after your treatment, after your ‘recovery’, no, this nervousness would simply manifest itself in different forms over the years, like when I went abroad to study in Venice and couldn’t stand the slow pace, where everything was “Va bene!” and “Don’t worry!”, and breaks lasted longer than working hours, people just ingesting time like it was some fudgy delicacy, or when I would stay up nights on end studying, working, writing, painting, so as not to receive one of those disgusting horizontal dashes after an A, or when a sudden onset of adult acne at the age of twenty sent me into isolation from my peers, put me on a diet of nothing but water and raw vegetables and zinc pills and bags and bags of creams and lotions and band aids to seal the air out, or when my pelvic region hurt so bad the summer my mom had breast cancer, how people told me the pains were psychosomatic and I should just get over it, because look at what others have to deal with, or the night my boyfriend of five years admitted to cheating on me with a pregnant girl, but it didn’t mean anything because they just accidentally fell asleep next to each other, and the kissing was only consolatory —I could have breathed into brown bags until I used up all the air in New England, but I got over it, became stronger, learned that dating in college doesn’t exist and that when boys want you to come to their room to ‘watch a movie’, they may very well not even have a TV, and yet these realizations were all made better by the friends around me and their abilities to show me the true meaning of not life, but rather just plain fun, where I could leave the inner reserves of my mind for periods long enough to make that anxiety vacate the stomach and sometimes the whole body, making room for liveliness: for dance parties at 3am, for laying outside with a dirty palette and stacks of brushes itching for the light to be just so, for running in the cool spring air to hear the calming pitter patter of your own two feet, for the failed cooking experiments of broccoli and cream cheese with ketchup, for the strength to search for a religion that soothes rather than scares me…these are the things I take with me as I spring forward, and I am ready to breathe life into a new era; breathe in such a way that does not require me to envision minty streams of paradise and hock loogies thanks to those nervous salivary glands, but rather inhale with the confidence and the courage of a young woman who has been through a lot—not so much as to be preachy, and not so little as to fall victim to street scammers (well, not more than once)—but just enough to value what I have, wonder about the things I don’t, and always strive for more; so if you don’t mind, move over and make some room for the new girl in town; I’ll do my best not to blow chunks.