A challenging November?

Good luck to any of you who are attempting NaNO this month. I'm not doing it, but I've challenged myself to write a few more short stories and enter lots more competitions this month than has been the case recently. That shouldn't be difficult as since starting my cosy mystery series I've done very little of either. The third book is now with my beta readers, so I've run out of excuses!

You're very welcome to join in my challenge if you'd like to, or to help me by finding interesting competitions for me to try.

Free entry competition news

(Some of these may have been mentioned in previous posts, but the challenge hadn't been issued then.)

Thank you to Fiona for telling me about this competition with a £1.000 prize. It's for unpublished and emerging authors over the age of 25, and open to fiction and non fiction. They want writers to 'grapple with the spirit of adventure'. We all do that, don't we? 

I do have an excuse not to enter that one, as I'm not eligible. Obviously I would if I could...

One I have entered is the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. You have to be a Commonwealth citizen to take part. My chances of landing the £5,000 are extremely low, but sending something in will have raised them just a little.

The Happiful Poetry Prize is for "poems that explore the topic of mental health and wellbeing in unique, engaging, and empowering ways." That will be a real challenge for me as poetry isn't a strong point, but I will at least try. First prize is £100 with book tokens for runners up.

Debut crime novelists could try this competition with a publishing contract with a $10,000 advance as the prize. I've previously had a novel published after winning a crime novel writing competition (even though it's a romance with just a hint of crime and now self published) so I'm not eligible.

This competition is for science fiction short stories and offers a prize package including paid publication. They want the stories to be realistic - my grasp of science isn't up to that!

Here's another one for crime novelists, (British, Irish and Channel Islandish) Sadly I don't think I'm eligible for that one.