Writers' & Artists' Yearbook Comp

The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook short story competition is open to everyone. They want unpublished stories, for adults, up to a maximum of 2,000 words.

The theme this year is 'Compulsion'

Prize:
£500
Plus a place on an Arvon Foundation residential writing course of your choice
plus publication of your story on the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook website

Deadline for entries is 14 February 2011.

Full rules on their website.
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100 Stories for Queensland

100 Stories for Queensland is a charity anthology looking for short stories of 500 – 1,000 words. All profits raised will be donated to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal to aid victims of the recent devastating flooding in Queensland, Australia.

And just like with 100 Stories for Haiti and 50 Stories for Pakistan, the organisers, readers, editors and designers working behind the scenes on this anthology are all volunteers.

The 100 Stories for Queensland project is headed by Brisbane resident, writer and co-owner of eMergent Publishing, Jodi Cleghorn, and UK author, Trevor Belshaw. The management team is made up of David W Robinson, Nick Daws and myself – each of us having worked on the Haiti and Pakistan anthologies. We are joined by around thirty wonderful readers and editors, all willing to give their time to this great cause.

But we still NEED your stories! Any genre and for any age group will be considered and can be submitted electronically at Submishmash.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, 28 January 2011. The book is due for release late February/early March.

Be part of it - and join us on Facebook too!
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Winners and Losers!

I’ve just made my annual manifestation in the February addition of Writing Magazine. It’s kind of ironic that the yearly claim to fame this time around should concern my lack of it.

Lorraine Mace, my writing buddy and co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, writes a fab humour column for WM, Notes from the Margin. This month it’s all about writers who’ve been on the receiving end of put-downs from their peers – which is where I came in.



The good news is, if you’re a writer and have a funny, cruel or daft put-down story, Lorraine asks that you email it to her. Her favourites will make an appearance in a future Notes from the Margin column and the author of the best one will receive a copy of The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

Being a loser isn’t all bad!
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