Over To You

I think / hope that I've now made it possible for you to subscribe to this blog and get new posts sent to you by email. There's a purple box thingy on the top right of the page. Give it a try if you like! (You can also do the same thing with the blog on my website, if you happen to fancy that.)

UPATDE This does seem to work, although the email notifications don't arrive until several hours after the post goes live. 

Please share writing related news – successes and failures, details of free entry writing competitions, updates about the womags you submit to, any other publication opportunities, and raise any queries you may have. All these things will help other readers of the blog, and help me to keep it going!

It takes time to find new free competitions every single week and it's very difficult to keep track of markets I don't submit to. Your support through sharing information, and leaving comments, makes a big difference. (Never worry you're telling me something I know – reminders are welcome!)

Womag news

If you claim ALCS (money you're entitled to if you're a UK citizen who has work published in magazines) then make sure you update your claims before the end of the month, so you don't miss out on any payments.

Free entry competition

This is from Best. I don't think I can make the t&c's big enough to read, so the highlights are - only one entry per person. First prize £500, two runners up of £200. All rights are taken from prizewinning stories, but not on all entries.

Small and weird

No, I've not* eaten so many fruit slices, tattie scones, haggis breakfasts, Abernathy biscuits etc etc that I've grown - the Kelpies really have shrunk!

*Well... maybe I have eaten a lot, but I've walked loads too. 

 Free entry writing competitions

Thank you to Sharon Boothroyd for sending me the link to the Welkin Prize for micro fiction. There's a first prize of £75 for up to 100 words of narrative prose, fiction or non-fiction.

This Valentine's poetry competition was also found by Sharon. The first prize is a £100 gift voucher. Previous winners can be read on the site, to give you an idea of the sort of thing they're looking for.

And thanks to Fiona for this short story competition from the Hudson Review. It's open to anyone not previously published in that magazine (which I'm guessing is most of us?) The first prize is $1,000 plus publication.

Call for submission

Thanks to Marguerite for the link to this from Weird Christmas. This year, instead of a competition, there's to be an anthology of flash fiction. Around a dozen stories will be published. Each will earn $35.

More from Scotland

Apologies for half a post last week! Hopefully that was better than nothing. I'm still in Scotland. As you can see, there are plenty of distractions.

Free to enter writing competitions.

Thanks to Fiona for this poetry and spoken word competition. We're asked to write pieces using some of the items from 'the extraordinary collections of renowned British architect Sir John Soane' as prompts. As Fiona says 'it's a bit different, but might be of interest to some'. There's a total prize pot of £2,000 and shortlisted entrants get a digital certificate.

And here's the link to the Scottish castle retreat she mentioned in a comment to last week's post. It's currently closed to submissions. I'll do my best to post a link when it re-opens.

Calls for submissions

Thanks to Marguerite for sharing the link to Flame Tree Publishing. They regularly open to fantasy type submissions. Do check the website for details, as they're very specific and decidedly niche in their requirements.

The People's Friend are looking for more pocket novels. The requirements are – 

         37,000 - 38,000 words.

      Single or dual VPs.

Present or past tense.

Any genre, but PNs still to contain PF tone.

Payment is £300.

Email synopsis and first chapter to Tracey Steel: tsteel@dcthomson.co.uk

My news

All of my Slightly Spooky Stories short story ebook collections are currently on sale for 99p.

Half a post (see update!)

Free to enter writing competitions.

Other opportunities

Jerwood Arvon Writer residencies are offering  'a fully funded, self-directed development opportunity for 12 emerging writers. You need to have a current project in fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and playwriting - and of course to meet the requirements and be able to attend. It seems an excellent opportunity for the right people.

Update 26/10/25 - Sorry for half a post! We're still on our travels and I've not been able to keep up with everything. Still, it seems my plan of putting up what I can when I can and scheduling it is sort of working.

My news. I entered the Croydon Writers competition I posted about a few weeks ago and got this response - 'Although your entry did not reach the shortlist this time, it was commended by the judges and might well be successful elsewhere. Thank you for supporting our competition and well done!'
I thought it was very nice of them to take the trouble to say something encouraging. That turned the disappointment of not winning into a mildly positive experience.

Over to you

Please share writing related news – successes and failures, details of free entry writing competitions, updates about the womags you submit to, any other publication opportunities, and raise any queries you may have. All these things will help other readers of the blog, and help me to keep it going!

As always, feel free to use my photos as writing prompts. If you prefer words to images for that purpose, take a look here.

Free entry competition news

On the premises are back! To mark the occasion they're running a short story competition with a $250 top prize and lots of smaller prizes. They want 1,000 to 5,000 words about someone or something returning. Thanks to Alyson for letting me know.

Womag news

From Eirin Thompson - "Just wanted to let you know that The People's Friend has posted on Twitter/X inviting submissions of 3,000-word stories - any genre, any season. Hope this might be helpful to those not on Twitter/X." (Thanks to HB for also passing on that message.)

Fortunately I'd just had a rejection from TPF, so was able to submit something else to them. I super speedily wrote something fitting the requirements – and it was accepted two days later!

What a week!

Since my last post, Gary and I have celebrated twenty-five years together (although we've only been married about half of that) and our thousandth night in the mobile writing retreat (campervan). Photos are a random selection of those taken in that time.

We marked these occasions with nice dinners, coastal walks, castle visits, lots of tea, plenty of cake... OK, I know that sounds like we just carried on as usual, but we did make it different - honest.

Free entry competition news

The Wergle Flomp 'humor' poetry competition offers a $2,000 first prize, with quite a few cash prizes for runners up and honourable mentions.

For The Scottish Book Trust's 50 word competition this month, your story should include a bat. The image is of the flying kind, so I'm not sure if cricket stories would be OK.

The Commonwealth short story prize offers a £5,000 main prize, plus regional prizes. To enter you must be a commonwealth citizen aged over eighteen, and your story must be unpublished.

When womagwriters meet

After years of knowng her virtually, it was great to meet Alyson Hilbourne in person recently. If you read women's magazines you're very likely to be familiar with Alyson's lovely stories, and unless you're very new to this blog you'll know she often contributes links to competitions and comments as Ados123.

We had an informative guided tour around our meeting place. I wonder which of us will be the first to feature an archeologist in a story? 

(This might be a slightly easier 'guess where we are' challenge - but only if you concentrate on the top image. The others are random places we stopped on the way.)

Don't panic - contributing to this blog doesn't automatically mean I'll be heading off in your direction demanding a chat and cup of tea!

Free entry competition news

Thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for sending me the link to this novel writing competition. The prize is £5,000 and representation by Curtis Brown. There are runner up prizes of writing courses. To enter you must be female, resident of the UK, Republic of Ireland or the Channel Islands and not previously been traditionally published.

Thanks to Vivienne Moles for this ghost story competition. You have up to 5,000 words and until 21st December. The prize is publication and a small Amazon voucher.

And thanks to Suzan Lindsay for this poetry competition. It closes on Sunday night, so work quickly if you want to win the £50 of book tokens.

Big and small

Here I am, wandering around a stone circle. Anyone recognise it? I like the way the relatively large, man made circle is dwarfed by the natural landscape around it.

For those who were wondering, the avenue of trees in last week's post is growing on the site of Erddig castle (a motte and bailey) in Wales.

Free entry competitions

Here's a crime novel competition for authors who've not yet published a novel. The prize is publication and a $10,000 advance.

If a whole novel seems a bit daunting, how about a story in 50 words? The prizes are correspondingly smaller, but that's fair enough. This month's theme is quite appropriate for this blog.

Three for free

Free to enter writing competitions

Thanks to the anonymous person who left a link to these two competitions, as a comment to a previous post. There's a science fiction short story competition, with a £50 prize, plus a flash fiction class. Both are to be on the theme of Peace.

The same person also supplied the link to this short story competition from Jerry Jazz. The prize is $150 plus publication.

The Happiful Poetry Prize isn't just a great name - it's a pretty good competition. They wants poems on the topic of mental health and wellbeing and offer £100 for the winner and book tokens for the runners up.

Unless you've been to the place these photos were taken, I don't think you'll guess the location, but feel free to have a go anyway - and tell me which one represents a castle!

Cows, crime, Chirk, competitions...

Womag news

This post from The People's Friend was seen on Twitter by Alison and HB - thanks both of you.

"Sep 10 We're looking for fiction submissions from mid-January onwards for the weekly, and for late February onwards for the Special. We're also starting to think about Mother's Day and Easter stories."

Free entry writing competitions

There's £2,000 on offer for the winning story in the Tom Gallon Trust award competition - plus further cash prizes. Word count is up to 5,000 words. Entrants must have been previously published and be residents of the UK, Commonwealth or Ireland.

Here's a competition for a detective novella, with a $1,000 prize. (Writing a novella is on my list of things to try.)

Photos are from our visit to Chirk Castle in Wales. We're now back in England, but I'm no better at keeping up with the photography stuff than the writing and blogging stuff! The sun is shining today, so more photos will be taken.

Thursday talk time

Hello! This is another experimental chat, just like last week's attempt, but on a different day so it doesn't conflict with the chat which has been set up on Twitter as a replacement for TPF's writing hour. There's no time limit on these chats, although you're less likely to get a response once I put up a new post.

Everyone is welcome to join in and chat about writing related subjects, including but not limited to -

 Q 1 Do you like using punctuation such as ! and ... or do you prefer to keep things simple?

Q 2 How many notebooks do you have?

As always, feel free to use the photo as a writing prompt if you like that kind of thing. And if you'd enjoy more opportunities to talk virtually with other writers, you might like Writing Chat on Facebook. It's a public group. To take part you'll need to request to join and say what you write - just a word or two to show you realise it's a writing group.

Gone adventuring

We're currently adventuring in the mobile writing retreat (campervan) so apologies if blog posts are even more sketchy and cobbled together than usual! There's also a strong possibility of LOADS of travel photos, but I'm not apologising for that.

Free entry writing competitions

Irish Country Magazine run a monthly themed competition. The prize is publication and a year's subscription. (We're not in Ireland - hopefully that will be next year's big trip.)

For those who were wondering, the weird things in the phot on my last post were the 'knees' of swamp cypress trees. They're protrusions from the roots and, as far as I can tell, nobody is exactly sure about their purpose. 

Tuesday talk time

Hi!

This blog post is an experiment to see if people would like a chance to chat about writing here. It's partly prompted by the ending of The People's Friend writing hour on twitter, but is open to other writers too.

If you're new, then welcome! I'm Patsy. If you're not new, hello again!

Those who don't know how to comment on this blog can find all the details here. Whether or not you participate in chats on this group, you may like to join the Facebook writingchat group. It's a public group. To take part you'll need to request to join and say what you write - just a word or two to show you realise it's a writing group.

Fell free to chat about writing here, ask writing related questions, share info, encourage others etc. Please also make suggestions for how you'd like these chats to work, or share any other ideas of ways this blog can be useful. I'll ask a couple of questions to maybe get you started, but as I said at the start, this is an experiment. Depending on results, I'll carry on in this vague rambling fashion, make changes, or discontinue the whole thing and pretend it never happened!

Q1 What have you written recently?

Q2 Care to guess what's in the photo - it's nothing nasty, I promise. 

Q3 Could you use the image as a story prompt?

Q4 Which is your favourite font?

Over to you

 

Please share writing related news – successes and failures, details of free entry writing competitions, updates about the womags you submit to, any other publication opportunities, and raise any queries you may have. All these things will help other readers of the blog, and help me to keep it going!

As always, feel free to use my photos as writing prompts. If you prefer words to images for that purpose take a look here.

Womag / free entry competition news

From Sharon Boothroyd "Prima are running a crime story comp that's free to enter. The CD is 27th October. You are given an opening to start the story (written by a published novelist)  then the writer has to finish it. I think they take all rights to the winner.

They have a normal, ongoing story comp as well that's 800 words.  

It's free to enter but again, they take all rights to the winning story."

From Alyson Hilbourne "Best have just announced their Halloween/spooky competition. 1200 words - something that will leave readers with goosebumps by 28th September."

Thank you, ladies!

Womag news

Also from Alyson, are a couple of tweets she spotted from The People's Friend.

Here's a shout out from Fiction Ed Lucy! We're now looking for stories from mid-January onwards for the weekly, and from spring onwards for our specials.

We're also looking for 3500 word stories of any genre. Please remember seasonal stories must be sent in six months in advance.

Loads of money!

The photos are a random selection of dahlias, seen at a garden I visited If I ever have loads of money to spare, I'll spend quite a lot of it on dahlias – but not as much as I'll spend on tulips!

What would you treat yourself to if you won a big cash prize?

Free to enter writing competitions.

Thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for sending me the link to the Commonwealth short story prize, which opens 1st September. To enter you must be a commonwealth citizen. There are regional cash prizes and a grand prize of £5,000.

I think I previously mentioned the mysterious murders competition, but when Sharon reminded me of it I wasn't sure.

Sharon says of these competitions "The cash prizes are very high, which kind of puts me off. I'd rather try and win £50 than £3,000, as I'd stand a better chance."

I'm sure she's right that the bigger competitions will attract more entries, but personally that doesn't put me off. I'll have a go at any competition where I think I can come up with an entry which fits the requirements. Lack of time is my most usual reason for not entering.

How about you? Do you like to try for the bigger prizes, and well known competitions, or keep it more low key? 

 Womag news

Thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for sharing the the updated People's Friend word counts, in a comment to last week's post. Sharon was able to access the info via a saved link. At time of writing this post I, and others, couldn't access everything on their website. Hopefully that's all sorted now, but just in case, here they are –

For the weekly:
1, 200, 2000, & 3,000
For the PF special:
1000, 1, 500, 2,500 & 3, 500 & 4,000
Can go 10 % under, but not over.

Other magazines do allow leeway in both directions, but keep in mind that going over means the story is likely to be cut. You might prefer to do that yourself, than have the editor take out the 'wrong' bits.