Call for Essay Submissions

Writer’s Thought for the Week: I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. ~ Flannery O'Connor
 

Morning smile

While helping bag my groceries at the supermarket last Monday morning, I noticed a sign in the next cashier aisle: “Register broken. Thank Management.”

I couldn’t help but smile. It was a slow morning and no customers were behind me in line. The cashier noticed me smiling and asked if she could help with anything.

I gestured toward the sign. “I was just noticing the sign. Did management really break the register?”

The cashier looked and grinned. Nothing like getting both one up on your boss and a reason to smile on a Monday morning.

THE WATERMAN FUND
http://www.watermanfund.org/EnterEssayContest.shtml

 

Deadline: April 15, 2012

Top prize: $1,500.

Honorable mention: $500
No entry fee; limit of one entry per author.

The Waterman Fund seeks essays about life in the mountains of the northeastern U.S. for its annual Waterman Fund Alpine Essay Contest held in partnership with Appalachia Journal. They want personal essays about stewardship of wild places. Essays must be original works at least 2000 words long.

Nail Your Query/Blackbird Literary Journal

Apropos to the query/rejection process: Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Don't sabotage your writing by submitting a poorly written query. The best queries are targeted for a specific market, but first you need to get the basics down. Marla Miller has about 90 “quick query” analysis samples on her web site: http://www.marlamiller.com/quick-query-critiques/.  Various genres are included from children’s to romance to memoir to suspense. Just scroll down the list and click one to start the YouTube video.

Marla is an author, founder of Marketing the Muse, and past Assistant Director of Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Her video series “Critique My Query” is available at theWriterMag.com.

Blackbird

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/

This online journal of literature and the arts is open to submissions until April 15, 2012. Considers poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. Pays after publication.

Writing Short/New Mystery Imprint

Writing Short

“Short” is in. Two weeks ago, I wrote about flash novels and shared a flash novel contest. Novella markets are growing. Flash fiction now has more paying markets than it did four years ago. For the beginning writer or for the writer short (pun intended) on time, writing “short” is a great option. You may not earn a lot per piece, but the rate per word is often very good.

Pamelyn Casto publishes a free monthly newsletter devoted to flash fiction and flash markets. To subscribe to her free e-mail newsletter, send an e-mail to FlashFictionFlash-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries is an imprint of Penguin that publishes modern crime and detective fiction between ten thousand and fifty thousand words. The imprint is being relaunched in 2012 as a yearlong special imprint and will publish crime short stories and novellas as eBooks.

Writer’s Thought for the Week: If you get one good line a day, you’re doing well. ~  Billy Roche, Irish playwright

Flashbacks and a Poetry Contest

FLASH BACK/FORWARD

Flashbacks and flash forwards can be effective when used properly. If your “flash” is not triggered by something in your story’s present and does not provide something essential to your reader’s understanding of the story, it is a distraction that takes your reader out of the story. This short article gives some examples.

BIRDS AND BLOOM BACKYARD BLUNDER CONTEST

No entry fee.  Deadline: March 15, 2012

Do you have a funny birding or gardening story to share from your backyard? We want to hear it! Send us your best "backyard blunder," and the winning story will receive $500. To enter, email your true story (no more than 400 words) to contests@birdsandblooms.com. Put "backyard blunder contest" in the subject line.

Thought for the week: If at first you don't succeed, have a cup of tea. ~ Peter Scott

Flash Novels and a Contest

Flash Book Review: The covers of this book are too far apart. ~Ambrose Bierce

Flash Novels

The length of a flash novel, like the length of flash fiction, varies. A good general definition is a novel of 75 to 150 pages. Also like flash fiction, the flash novel may have leave some things open to interpretation by the reader.

Examples of flash novels include

-                       Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman tells of a young woman facing the ghosts of her past.

-                       The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom traces four generations of women in the Deep South.

-                       Emily Avenue, a coming-of-age story by Jeff Landon, won Flash Forward Press’ 2010 Flash Novel Contest.

-                       The Underneath by Kathi Appelt is a young adult flash novel.

Here is a flash novel contest to try:

KAZKA PRESS

Deadline: April 30, 2012

Looking for fantasy and sci-fi flash novels between 35,000 and 50,000 words. First Place receives a $250 advance. Second Place receives a $100 advance. Both will receive 35% royalties on the cover price

Eric Hoffer Short Prose Award

ERIC HOFFER SHORT PROSE AWARD

Deadline: March 31, 2012. No entry fee. $250 grand prize. 10,000-word limit. Your submission must be previously unpublished, or published with a circulation of less than 500.

This award honors the memory of American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. The winning stories and essays are published in the annual anthology, Best New Writing.

Writer’s Thought for the Week: A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation. ~ Joseph Addison

Accents and Novel/Novella/Nonfiction Contest

ACCENTS

What kind of American accent do you or your characters have? A friend of mine and I both tried this quiz which correctly identified where each of us grew up. Something to think about when we’re writing dialogue.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl3/american-accent-quiz.html

TARCHER/PENGUIN NOVEL/NOVELLA/NONFICTION CONTEST
 
Deadline: March 2, 2012. No entry fee.

Writers residing in the USA are invited to submit an unpublished novel, novella, or narrative nonfiction. (Limit one entry per person.) The top prize is $5,000 and a manuscript review by a Penguin editor.

Thought for the week: The question is not what you look at -- but how you look and whether you see.  ~ Thoreau