To celebrate the launch of my new writers guide
Kindle Kash - a comprehensive guide to devising, writing, editing, publishing and promoting your own e-book on the massively popular Amazon Kindle platform - we are holding another prize short-story contest.
As Kindle seems to represent the future of publishing, we thought it would be appropriate to make this a science-fiction contest. The rules are as follows...
1. Your story must be 1000 words or under. It should also have a title of up to 15 words (which do not count towards the 1000 word limit).
2. It must be set in the solar system, but not on Earth. Moonbase settlers, Mars explorers, asteroid miners, or marines on maneuvers near Jupiter are all welcome!
3. The story must include the word “kindle” (or “Kindle”) somewhere in it. This can be the e-book reading device or just a plain verb, but it must be in the story somewhere. Derived words such as "kindling" are not acceptable, however. Credit will be given to authors who incorporate the word in as natural a way as possible, without making it stand out.
The contest will be judged by MWC moderator and science-fiction fan/author Andrew Fairhurst ("Andrewf"). As well as following the rules above, Andrew says he will be looking for stories that demonstrate originality and quality of writing. He is also looking for science fiction with plausible science rather than outright fantasy, and says points will be deducted for making Titan a moon of Mars!
The prizes are as follows...
1st Prize - A copy of
Kindle Kash, my latest writers guide for WCCL (
see here for full details).
2nd Prize - An e-book copy of
Voices, a five-star-rated sci-fi/horror novel by UK author David Robinson
3rd Prize - An e-book copy of
The Festival on Lyris Five, my own illustrated science fantasy novella.
4th Prize - An e-book copy of
Coronallium Conundrum, a humorous sci-fi novella by David Robinson.
The runner-up prizes are all available in Amazon Kindle or other e-book formats (including HTML and plain text) via
Smashwords. Please note that
The Festival on Lyris Five includes illustrations in the Kindle version only.
Thank you to my publishers,
The WCCL Network, for donating the first prize, and to my colleague
David Robinson for his two e-books.
If the first prize-winner has
Kindle Kash already, or doesn’t want it for any reason, WCCL will be happy to substitute another from its writing range to the equivalent value (or less). See this blog post for a
complete list of all the WCCL writing courses.
Stories will need to be submitted in the form of a forum personal message (PM), as explained below. It is not possible to send attachments with PMs, so if you create your story in Word or another word-processing program, you will need to copy and paste it into the body of a message. Single spaced is fine, with an extra space between paragraphs recommended. Put the title of your story at the top, followed by the story itself. No other content should be needed within the message.
Submit your entry by PM to moderator Ma100 (Mairi), who will be forwarding all entries to Andrew for anonymous judging. You can send her a PM by
clicking here to visit her profile and clicking on the link "Send this member a personal message" near the bottom. Use the subject line
Kindle Kash Short Story Contest, and avoid including your name or any other identifying information in your entry (Mairi will keep a record of who has sent each story). You will, of course, need to be a registered member of the forum and logged in to be able to enter. A maximum of two stories per member, please!
The closing date for this contest is
Friday 2 September at 12.00 midday BST (British Summer Time). So you should have plenty of time to write and polish your story before submitting it!
Please do
NOT post your story as a reply here. If you do this, it will have to be disqualified as Andrew will not be able to judge it anonymously. On the other hand, if you have any queries, please post them as replies below, and either I or another moderator will do our best to answer them. It is best not to send queries by PM, as there may then be a delay in getting them answered.
Finally, copyright in all entries will (of course) remain the property of the author concerned. We do, however, reserve the right to publish the winning entries and runners-up on the forum and on my blog at
www.mywritingblog.com. Also, as is customary with contests on Mywriterscircle, all entries will be made available to MWC members in the form of a downloadable report, with the authors’ names not displayed. This is done in the interests of transparency, so that members can compare the other stories and see if they agree with the judge’s verdict.
I will post the results of the contest here and on my blog as soon as possible once it has been judged.
Good luck!
Nick
