Monday, May 17, 2010

A Cornucopia of Contests

Ah, what a great time to be a writer! Yes, achieving publication seems more challenging than ever, but there are also plenty of opportunities to hone one's narrative chops. Consider the following three writing contests.

Lady Glamis (aka Michelle Davidson Argyle) of The Innocent Flower
is soliciting submissions of up to 7,500 words from basically any genre "except erotica." Manuscripts should be sent to annie [dot] louden [at] gmail [dot] com, who will strip all biographical data from them to ensure anonymous judging. For new readers, Michelle was one of the judges for The Literary Lab's Genre Wars anthology. Deadline for entry is June 1, and prizes include getting published to her blog and generous gift certificates to Amazon.com.

B. Nagel wears many hats, including those of librarian, MS Paint artiste and -- dream analyst? It seems B. is turning a night of interrupted sleep into a writing prompt, and
he'd like the rest of us to join him. The image he can't get out of his mind is of
a hooded man's twisted, snarling face staring at me while a woman in evening dress drank something dark and viscous from a spiked iron chalice, her fingers and palms pierced by the vicious points. Then the hooded man winked at me as the woman fainted, presumably poisoned.
Read more about the nightmare here, and be sure to email him at bnagelblog [at] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to participate. Stories inspired by the prompt should be posted to your blog on June 4. The winner (obscure allusion alert!) will be given a white stone, and on it B.'s full first name will be written, and no one shall know it except him who receives it.

If you aren't up for longer projects as we near the start of summer, you may consider
the Chicago-based Seminary Co-op Bookstores' 350-word flash-fiction contest. The setting? A bookstore, of course. The crime? A heist. The protagonist? Richard Stark's Parker, main character of The Hunter, The Man With the Getaway Face and The Outfit. Got it? Good. Now get to writing.

(Picture: CC 2010 by
takomabibelot; Hat Tip: The Violent World of Parker)

6 comments:

Michelle D. Argyle said...

Thanks for the shout out! I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to do B's prompt or not. Nothing is coming to mind, but I will keep at it and see if something emerges.

Oh, my cash prizes are for anywhere, not just Amazon.com. Yay!

Loren Eaton said...

Yes, I'm seeing if anything will percolate up for B.'s prompt. Think I've got something, although it's pretty nebulous now.

Cash prizes, folks! Go write!

B. Nagel said...

Yeah, thanks for the mention!

Now I've got to figure out how to steal one of those white stones before the veil is lifted. That beast with seven heads and seven crowns makes a really good guard dog.

Loren Eaton said...

Ah, I see you guessed the obscure allusion.

B. Nagel said...

I did. :) But I wanted to preserve the mystery.

Loren Eaton said...

Well, between the two of us and Google someone ought to be able to figure it out.