Deadline: open
Geographical Restrictions: no mention
Reading Fee: none
Accepts (genre): flash fiction
Prize/Payment: brand new Kindle
Spectra Magazine launches on the 1st of September on a huge range of digital reading platforms, and it’s looking damn sexy. We’re kicking off the launch with a flash fiction competition, and wanted to find a prize that was just as sexy as Spectra and its sexy readers. As fortuitous happenstance would have it, Amazon will release its sexy new Kindle redesign just a few days earlier. Can you see where we’re going with this?
So it’s not like we had much choice in the matter. Nail our flash fiction competition before September 24th, and you could bag yourself a brand new Kindle! All you need to do is visit the Spectra Magazine forums and start a new thread in the Flash Fiction section, completing a science fiction, horror or fantasy story in 60 words or less that begins with the sentence:
“A sudden echo from the corridor said this place wasn’t deserted after all.”
The word count doesn’t include this opener – you have 60 words all to yourself. We’ll select a winner, based both on the reactions in the forum replies (so please help out and give each other’s stories lots of feedback), and from our own random, skewed editorial opinions.
But that’s not all there is to this competition. For those who fail to win the top prize, we’re dedicating an entire section of the magazine to the the best of the rest. Ten entries will be published in Issue 2 of Spectra Magazine, so there’s a portfolio-building runner-up prize to be had, even if you don’t walk away with a sexy new Kindle on your arm.
The competition rules are as follow:
1. Be as awesome as you can, but please bear our writer’s guidelines in mind – in particular:
Go easy on the FTL travel (faster than light travel), time travel, swords & sorcery, elves and orcs, and gore-nography – if your story contains these elements, make sure they’re absolutely essential. Zombie stories are very welcome, but will need imagination in droves to rise above the tide, so make sure your undead tales are original. Also, take it easy on explicit sex, profanity and violence (the platform operators can be randomly obstructive when it comes to graphic, adult content).
2. If you’re going to offer criticism of another person’s submission, make sure it’s constructive. We’ll take into account entrants’ overall conduct in the competition and we won’t look kindly on anyone who belittles and berates their fellow flash fictioneers.
3. One entry per account and one account per person please. We can and will check so don’t try and and outsmart us – we are the evil that never sleeps, like Sauron, but with better dress sense (and two eyes).
4. Don’t plagiarize – make sure your submission is completely your own work and not cribbed from your favourite obscure Hungarian horror novelist.
5. Have fun with it – be as wildly imaginative as you like. Be funny, be sad, be scary or just downright weird, but do be sure to explore your mind’s most splintered and uniquely formed corners.
All there is left to do is wish all you lovely, lovely people the best of luck. May the best flash fiction fiend prevail!
More information here.
