Digital Imprints/Short Story Contest

Writer's Thought for the Week: Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal. ~ Lenore Hershey

RANDOM HOUSE has three new digital imprints in addition to Loveswept:

        Loveswept  romance and women’s fiction

Alibi     mystery and suspense

Hydra   sci-fi, fantasy and horror 

Flirt     new adult

Although there is no official word count limit, the editors are interested in short submissions (15,000 to 30,000 words) and full-length works (40,000 to 60,000 words.)

ANDERBO SHORT STORY CONTEST

Deadline: December 31, 2012

Award:    $500, trophy, and publication on Anderbo.com

For an unpublished short story 3,500 to 5,000 words

No fee; limit of one submission per author.

Free Writing Analyzer/Fantasy Story Competition

Writer's Thought for the Week: God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much, the reader ceases to get under the bed. ~ Mark Twain

Free Manuscript Analyzer from Christopher Park

In my critique group, we often comment that a manuscript repeats a certain word or words. A free program that you can run online or download to run under Windows analyzes your writing and list all words and their corresponding count. It also flags “FOs” or “frequent offenders”: words like “just” and “that” and phrases such as “old as the hills.” You can customize the list of words and phrases that the program flags so it captures your own personal nemeses - or Twain’s thunder and lightning.

ANNUAL SCIENCE FICTION-FANTASY-HORROR WRITER'S COMPETITION

5,000 to 20,000 words

This free competition runs until May 5, 2012 but they accept submissions year-round. Entries received after May 5 will be considered for the upcoming year's competition.   

The Zharmae Publishing Press (TZPP) holds the competition as one way of recruiting qualified authors to work with for full-length books. Many of the winning writers, especially those in the Top 5, get offers to work with TZPP on future works. In addition to cash prizes, all winners receive publication in their annual anthology plus three free copies of that anthology.

Cash prizes: 1st Place $400, 2nd Place $350, 3rd Place $300, 4th Place $250, 5th Place $200

GROANOLOGY 2: MONSTERS, MADNESS, AND MAYHEM

http://libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com/2010/07/01/groanology-2-a-horror-comedy-submissions-now-open/

Deadline: September 30, 2010
Word count: 1,200 to 3,200
Payment is one cent per word and one contributor copy.
No reprints.

The editors of this horror/comedy anthology say, "Send us your neurotic nightmares, your Freudian fiends, your tortured soulless souls. We want to read about the heartache, the headache, and most of all that pain in your funny bone that occur when monsters are plagued with psychiatric illnesses …Don't feel limited to depression and anxiety…We'd like to see some submissions that really go whole-hog (like you’d expect from a zombie pig with delusions of grandeur…you know, just for example)." Submit via e-mail. Here's a list of psychiatric disorders to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders_as_defined_by_the_DSM_and_ICD