This month, The Scottish Book Trust want 50 words about a fox, and offer an appropriately small prize. Thanks to Alyson for the reminder about that one. I know it's a regular thing, but keep forgetting both to mention it her, and to enter.
The Libraro Prize is somewhat bigger, being valued at £50,000 and including a publishing contract with Hatchette. They do want a whole book though - fiction or crossover YA, and you'd need to have finished it already as it's just about to close. Sorry for the late notice. I'm hoping late is better than never. There are reader prizes too, so it might be worth looking at even if your novel isn't quite ready (or not yet started) as it looks as though this is an annual competition.
The Jay Yes competition is for stories of 2,500 to 4,000 words, by unpublished writers. The prize is publication and publicity. There's plenty of time to get something written for this one.
Here's a romance novel writing competition for UK writers from a Black, Asian, mixed heritage and/or multiple ethnic background. The prize package includes £1,000 cash and help to get your book written and published.
Womag / competition news
Best have a new competition, this time with the theme of cosy crime. Thanks to Hazel (HB) for the picure with the details. Best take all writes for winning and runner up stories.
Thanks for the Valentine’s Day flowers and the reminder Patsy!
ReplyDeleteWas busy writing - having a go at the Verse and Voice competition that was listed a few weeks ago - stopped to make tea and clicked on to read the blog while the kettle boiled. Oh no - the 14th!
Have delved in the freezer and now have some heart-shaped biscuits in the air fryer (we don’t do cards).
So sending thanks on behalf of my other half who will appear in about an hour’s time! And thanks from me to you Patsy and everyone who’s shared the competition details today. Always appreciated.
Happy Valentines Day all & thanks for the flowers Patsy, the only ones I'll be getting today - doesn't believe in cut flowers!! Enjoy your travels & walks too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the competitions, not sure there is anything there for me but always good to know whats going on.
Ps Those biscuits sound lovely Fiona. If I play my cards right I might get a coffee and a heart shaped chocolate in a chocolatier in town later.
Thank you for the flowers Patsy, I hope you find some sunshine on your walk today.
ReplyDeleteThe cosy crime comp would definitely be a challenge, I may try that one. Thank you for the details HB (I enjoyed your Best story!)
Dee
Don't mention cosy crime :( My WM story is still awaiting... not sure what, but I've left it to percolate for at least a fortnight. Hmmm... Thank you for the lovely flowers, Patsy. I've seen daffs and snowdrops and a good few hellebores, so it must be happening :) Thank you and HB for all the opportunities.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the flowers. And for all the competition news. I wish I could write cosy crime. Perhaps I will try sometime. I seem to have got stuck in one particular type of story and it would probably do me good to try my hand at something else.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to HB on Best success.
I sent one to Fiction on the Web. No luck but the feedback was useful.
Thanks for the info Patsy.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know what the term 'cosy crime' means. I guess it's not a story with no excessive violence and the people in the story are not too distressed by the murder in it.
I can write edgy stories with an element of crime in them, such as a romance con, but I think competitions are looking for a detective /murder story, which I'm not very good at. So I'll be giving it a miss.
I haven't any news, other than a letter in a TV guide. I'm waiting for March, where results will come in from various projects.
If anyone is published by Fiction on the web, please let me know.
Sorry I meant a story with no excessive violence.
ReplyDeleteHappy Valentine's Day and hope you have a great getaway.
ReplyDeleteAlly27
ReplyDeleteThank you Patsy for the flowers and for all the info, as always. Some interesting opportunities there. The photos are fab and I'm envious that you're at Kingston Lacey today. I bet it looks beautiful. Enjoy your break and your travels. I have to say that Gary's hike sounds a bit too gruelling for me. I hope there will be tea and delicious cakes afterwards to compensate - or beforehand, to provide motivation:)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the flowers, Patsy! And for a great variety of opportunities this week. Enjoy your break and the walk!
Thanks to everyone re the Best competition, it has been lovely having a writing family to share it with. Out of interest, for those having a go at the cosy crime, I always try to get as close as possible to the 1200-word count, but noticed the published version had been cut to just over 1000. Probably my “waffly” writing!
HB
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, and thank you for the flowers, Patsy - they are beautiful. I see The People's Friend has a bumper issue this coming week, to include a cosy crime mini-mag: this strikes me as an ideal opportunity for those of us who struggle to write cosy crime to read and learn from those whose work is being bought and published in this genre. I will certainly be reading these stories this week. Is anyone else EXHAUSTED, by the way? Is it the lack of sunlight this year, do you think? Sunshine or none, I think I need to take a leaf from your book, Patsy and get outdoors more.
ReplyDeleteI'm also feeling exhausted, Eirin. I made myself get out and go on a guided walk around our local cemetery (one of the big Victorian ones) which was on the theme of people connected with the music hall who are buried there. I definitely felt better for the fresh air and came home having learned something which could be useful for future writing. Thanks for the tip about next week's PF. Although I like to incorporate elements of mystery or crime in my longer stories, I haven't yet mastered cosy crime as such so definitely need to study successful examples.
DeleteThank you for the flowers Patsy, I hope you enjoy your break away. Thanks also to everyone for their contributions of advice and comp info. It's so good to have this lovely writing community.
ReplyDeleteI'm not exhausted, Erin , just very fed up and de-motivated. As I say, I can write stories with an element of crime, such as twist revenges ect but I don't think TPF will want that, and neither will the best crime comp.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the flowers, Patsy! I hope you had a good day at Kingston Lacey. I love hiking, and my husband and I do lots of it, so I hope you and Gary enjoyed that too.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of cosy crime... I'm going to have a book of my convict constable stories published later this year by Australia's Clan Destine Press. We signed contracts earlier this week. As some of you may recall, the convict constable began solving crimes in The People's Friend - they published three convict constable long reads between 2020 and 2022. These (with some changes) and four new stories will appear in Sentenced Beyond The Seas: The Convict Constable's Casebook. Patsy has kindly offered me an opportunity to blog about this closer to the publication date, but I hope it will encourage everyone that stories can have a second life with a trad publisher given some work and a bit of luck.
Brilliant news. Congratulations Liz!
DeleteCongratulations Liz!
DeleteHB
Congratulations Liz - I love the title of your forthcoming book!
DeleteWhat exciting news, Liz! Congratulations.
DeleteDee
Many congratulations Liz!
DeleteExcellent news, Liz. Hope the book is successful. I read the ones you had in TPF and know you were really fed up when DC Thomson began bringing out the long reads on Amazon and other platforms. I'm not sure they are doing that anymore.
DeleteAlyson
Brilliant news, well done Liz
DeleteCongratulations Liz! Great news.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the news, Patsy. Hope snowdrops were good. They seem to have been excellent this year where we've been. They must like damp...
ReplyDeleteAlyson
Thanks for all the comp info, Patsy. And the flowers. I particularly like the red poppies. I get plenty of yellow and orange wild poppies in my garden (the bees love them) but never red. Congrats HB on your runner up in Best. Just bought the magazine so I haven’t read it yet.
ReplyDeleteBusy with a short story that’s taking a while to get right. I blame the gloomy weather. (Putting a dampener on my creativity and messing with my literary head).
Well done to all who’ve had success already in 2026.
Michael
@ Fiona - Phew, glad you realised the date in time to do something! We don't exchange cards either, but still like to mark the occasion somehow.
ReplyDelete@ Sheelagh – I can see that mass produced hothouse flowers don't fit with eco gardening principles, Sheelagh. Coffee and cholcolate seems like a good alternative.
@ Dee - We were lucky and had dri weather for two days - and quite a bit of sunshine too.
@ Marguerite – I hope you work out what that story is waiting for and are able to add it.
@ Sue – I think it does do us good to try something different now and then, even if it's just to confirm we're writing what we want to write.
@ Sharon – Your definition of cosy crime is exactly right. Also they don't tend to have lots of technical or procedural details. You're right that they're generally told from the POV of a detective too - police, private or amateur.
@ Alex- Thank you, we did.
@ Ally27 - Actually the looking at flowers was probably the most arduous as we were on our feet most of the day. There were of course tea and cake breaks!
@ HB - It's odd that they set a word count higher than they want. Perhaps there's a reason that makes perfect sense?
@ Eirin – Yes, that issue would be great research material for anyone wanting to sell cosy crime to TPF. Reading several stories of the same genre all at once helps give a good idea of the tone they want - and with TPF I suspect that's as important as the plot.
I'm not exhausted, but I've definitely had enough rainy days for now.
@ Suzan – It's odd, but getting out and doing something physical is sometimes a better way to regain energy than staying in to rest. And maybe you got some ideas or details which will work their way into future stories?
@ Elizabeth – I so agree about the community feel here. I love the way people chat and encourage, congratulate, commiserate and help each other.
@ Sharon – No, I don't think TPF generally like revenge stories.
@ Liz – We did enjoy our hike, which didn't end up being as hard as I'd anticipated.
I'm looking forward to your blog post. Although I've self published some of my former womag stories in collections it hadn't occurred to me to approach a publisher. It's very encouraging to know there are markets, and readers, for womag style stories in places other than actual magazines.
@ Alyson – They were good. This year snowdrops seem to have been good everywhere - unlike last year, which was the worst I can recall. I believe the damp is a major factor, especially how much rain they got after flowering the previous year. If it's dry then, they go over quickly and don't build up such big bulbs for the following year.
(This blog seems to be developing a side theme of gardening!)
@ Micheal - Your comment must have arrived as I was writing mine, as I hadn't seen it before.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that your yellow and orange poppies ar Welsh poppies, or Meconopsis Cambrica. I love them, but haven't yet managed to get them established in my garden.
I think the weather is getting to a lot of us at the moment. I quite like rain to write by, but not when it feels relentless.
Thank you for the competition updates. I’m going to have a go at the cosy crime. I’ve never managed one yet, but I suppose there’s always a first time.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to Eirin’s question, yes I am feeling exhausted too! I did have a cold that lingered and that hasn’t helped, but everything just looks so grey!
Thanks so much, everyone. To say I'm stoked about it is an understatement!
ReplyDeleteCrime - cosy or otherwise, but with a preference for historical - is very much my genre. I struggle with romance. I sometimes include romantic elements in my cosy crime stories, and I've had a couple of meet-cutes accepted by TPF, but overall I'm just not a romance writer. I think we all have genres we find easier and others that are more challenging.
I have a story in the cosy crime minimag Eirin mentioned. It's set in 1917, in the early days of women's Australian Rules football, and features a recently appointed policewoman in Perth, Western Australia.
Oh, Liz, that's great news! Perhaps you are the one to write the "How To" book on cosy crime I so desperately need! ;)
DeleteI think it was Gore Vidal who supposedly said that when one of his friends succeeded, a little piece of him died - I think we're genuinely the opposite of that on here! When one of us gets some good news, we all bask a little in the hope this presents to us all, so it's great to hear of your Convict Constable success, Liz, and I find your success really motivating. Congratulations and thanks for sharing!
DeleteFor people like me who struggle with the idea of writing 3000 words or more, here's a nice competition where they only want 25-50 words...
ReplyDeletehttps://onthepremises.com/current-contest/
It's so lovely to read of everyone's successes. It does give me a boost to read about them. I (blush) even found myself showing my daughter Hazel's story in 'Best' the other day, saying "I know her!"
I'll be giving Best's cosy crime story a go, based on something that happened to me the other day. While very annoying at the time, I did think "ah, there could be a story there..."
I bet we all do that as we go about our days.
Love that!
DeleteHB
@ Marian – There is indeed always a first time for everything!
ReplyDelete@ Eirin – I agree, we're the opposite of that here. Of course we'd like success for ourselves, but we also like to hear of our friends doing well.
@ Ruth – I'm guessing we're on the same mailing list, as I saw that too. I'll add it into my next post.
I have been known to console myself over annoyances by making a note to write a story about it!