Cafe Doom's Fifth Annual Writing Competition Rules and info

[Ed]

This year's fifth annual, free to enter, Cafedoom Writing Competition is looking like being the best ever, despite the generally gloomy economic outlook. Recession – what recession?

This year we've teamed up with James Beach of Dark Discoveries, and Matt Schwartz of Shocklines to offer a very nice prize fund for the best stories. James will be judging three winners from the top ten. He is stumping up the cash to pay the first place author five cents a word and will publish their tale in Dark Discoveries Magazine during the 2010 print run.

In addition, Matt has again, very kindly, split the cost of the runner's up prizes with me 50/50, so second place gets $100 of Shocklines vouchers, and third place gets $50 of Shocklines vouchers, to spend on anything from signed special editions to horror DVDs.

To sweeten the pot a little more, I'm going to give a year's subscription of Dark Discoveries Magazine to the authors of my three favourite stories. James needs to sell 75 subscriptions by the end of the year to help fund a pay rise for contributing authors next year, so please follow my example and grab a subscription yourself, maybe buy one for a friend's, Mom's, Dads, brother's, sister's, son's, daughter's, lover's birthday present, Halloween or even Christmas gift – they're only twenty-two bucks a pop for a year's subscription, and well worth every penny. One of those gifts that keeps giving, too.

Stories should be at the very least dark, and may have elements of anything from sci-fi to pulp fiction. It's wide open, so just send us your best story. Word limit is 3,500 and the closing date is 30th October 09. For a full list of details please read on:


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We're sticking with the same format as last year, and the year before, which is a fairly unusual way to run a comp, because all the entrants get to have their say about the stories and pick their favourites.

What happens is each entrant has to join the Cafe Doom forum (if they're not already a member), then send their entry to blunted (at) cafedoom.com via an e-mail attachment in .rtf or .txt format, single spaced, line breaks instead of indents to denote paragraphs, and use BB Code to format any italics, etc. In the body of the e-mail, they must state their forum name and the title of their story.

On 31st October, the day following the closing date of the competition, all the stories will be posted anonymously on one forum thread by the forum admin. Thereafter, and for the following seven days (may be extended to fourteen if we're swamped with submissions), the entrants must read the entries, and vote for their top three favourite stories on another forum thread. Failure to vote will result in the entrant being disqualified and their story being stripped of its points. James Beach will choose the winning stories from the top ten entries.

To summarise –

Prizes as follows:

1st place - Pro rate of pay, plus publication in a 2010 edition of Dark Discoveries.

2nd place - $100 Shocklines voucher.

3rd place - $50 Shocklines voucher.

In addition to this I will give a year long Dark Discoveries subscription to the authors of my three favourite stories.

Theme – open, but dark.

Word limit - 3,500

Closing date – 30th October 2009


Be aware that Dark Discoveries may require the author of the winning story to make changes to it in order to meet their editorial standards. As with any other market, the magazine will sometimes ask their authors to make a few edits and additions to keep the editor happy.


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You can find the story thread here - http://www.cafedoom.com/forum/index.php?topic=2207.0

You can find the voting thread here - http://www.cafedoom.com/forum/index.php?topic=2208.0

Both threads are locked for the time being and are off limits to guests - you must join the forum to view them.

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Please feel free to ask questions and comment on this thread.

Finally - good luck, everybody

[elay2433]

Sweet. Thanks for putting this together, Ed. 

[Ed]

Glad you like it. I hope everybody enjoys it as much as last year's - that one was a blast

[delboy]

Great stuff, Ed!

Looks like it's going to be a classic. Thanks for all your efforts and unselfishness - it doesn't go unnoticed.

Regards,

Del

[Rev. Austin]

Nice one, Ed! 

[SteveJ]

Thanks very much - for this contest, and all the 'short story competition/markets' info on the other board.

[rsmccoy]

I can participate this year, yeah me! Now what the heck am I going to submit?

I also followed your example and got a 1 year subscription.

[Angelica_raene]

Sounds great, Ed!  Thanks so much for your generosity and unselfishness.  BTW greetings to everyone 

[LadyBorgia]

Hi. I just had a question about the submissions.  Can they have been previously submitted to another contest?

[Ed]

Thanks for all the kind words.

Scott - good on you for taking up a subscription.  

Hi. I just had a question about the submissions.  Can they have been previously submitted to another contest?

Hi, and welcome to the forum. I don't see why not, as long as they haven't been previously published, it's your own work, and you still hold all the rights. It doesn't make any difference to me, but I'm thinking James isn't likely to want any reprints for Dark Discoveries. I'll check with him and let you know if it's any different from what I've already said.

[LadyBorgia]

Thanks!  I have one that I won't know if it won anything till october 17th so if it doesn't, then I should still have time to submit it here. :-)

[Ed]

We've had a couple of entries already, folks. Don't forget, the sooner you get your story in, the earlier in the story thread it will appear, so the less chance it will have of falling foul of reader fatigue

[delph_ambi]

Good grief! I must start scribbling.

[Caz]

I believe I've spotted a missing word.

Forth paragraph down, "to the authors of my three favourite stories." Looks like "of" is missing. Just thought I'd mention it. Hope you don't mind, Ed.

Thanks for running this comp

[Ed]

Well spotted, Caz - thanks