Five on Friday, plus Facebook freebies.

Today I have five ways for you to earn money from your writing – and a way to promote special offers on your books.

There's £400 plus publication of offer to the winner of this short story competition. You have up to 2,500 words to write about how language evolves. 

I've set up a new Facebook group. It's somewhere readers can find free and bargain books which are offered as promotions by the authors, rather getting them from pirate sites – and where authors can promote their free and discounted book offers.

For this competition, you're asked to write a story of 25-50 words, using the word monitor. There's a $25 prize.

Thanks to Liz Filleul for bringing this call for submissions to my attention. Improbable Press want stories of dark cheer about cryptids (no, I didn't know either, but there's a full explantation on the website). You've got up to 5,000 words, and until May to submit. All stories used will be paid for at a flat rate.

For this competition, you may write either a 500 word story or a poem, using the word 'course' as a prompt. There's a £10 prize.

The winner of this competition will get $100,000. First they have to write up to 3,000 words on what it's like to be young in an ageing world. Then they'll get all that cash in return for expanding their ideas into a short book.

Sorry, I've had to switch on comment moderation. When I logged on this morning, I found over 100 spam comments from the same person. I cleared those but they've just started again. (I'm hoping it's stoped now and switching moderation back off.)