Short Story Competition List and Erotica Opportunities...

Over the weekend I started the search for a new potential home for my short story, and I made some interesting discoveries along the way which I intend to share with you today.

Starting out with Sally Quilford's Writing Calendar I clicked onto the heading Other Writing Comp Listings and from there another link reached the website for the Booktrust ( they have a lot of interesting pages that are worth spending some time with). They have a list of organisations running short story competitions, and include a clickable link to find out more.

So with 3 clicks of my mouse I found a couple of potential competitions that might suit my story. And others to inspire the creation of more stories. :-)

Hope you find something to interest you too...

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Erotica is now mainstream. The big name publishers have embraced the genre with relish. (This does relate to short stories too.)


If you've never attempted erotica, or you're developing your style within the genre, an article from yesterday's  Mail on Sunday, You Magazine may be of interest. (Thanks to Viv on the Writers News/Writing Magazine, Talkback Forum, for sharing the information).

(The article also contains the booking information for the workshop, and the competition details mentioned. See link to article below.)

"Gillian Green, Eden Bradley and Rachel Blowes. Gillian is editorial director for commercial fiction at Ebury Publishing, which this month is relaunching its erotic imprint Black Lace, with five sexy titles, including The Dark Garden written by Eden. Rachel is a member of a book group at one of Ebury’s sister companies, which is asked to read and comment on books pre-publication, including erotic novels." (John Koski, You Magazine)

They share their 10 basic rules.

There's details of a workshop being held on the 6th November, from 6 to 8.45pm - at Ebury Publishing in London- there's only 35 places and you need to book tickets asap; They cost £10 per person, but you do get "drinks and canapés and a goody bag to take home."

Phone number and times for booking by phone are given in the article.

Finally, there is also a a short story competition.

The winning entry will be published by Black Lace Books as part of an e-book collection.

The judges are: Gillian Green, Editorial Director, and authors Portia Da Costa and Kristina Lloyd.

Closing date for receipt of entries (of approximately 4,000 words) is 31st October. Include your name, address and full contact details with your entry, whether you send by e-mail, or by post.

(Details of where to send your competition entry is included in the article- see the link above.)

IMPORTANT: Do read the terms and condition at the bottom of the article as there are specific word counts boundaries for the story, and for the synopsis.

 A shortlist of 10 entrants will be contacted by the Publisher by the 1st December, and the winner announced by the 14th January.

Even if you don't win and only get into the shortlist, the T&C's state "shortlisted entrants may also be offered publishing deals with the Publisher."

If you enter, fingers crossed for your story to be successful.

Updated to add some information: The current edition of Writers' Forum magazine (October) has an article 'How To Break Into Erotica', and talks to three writers, Fran Tracey, Elizabeth Coldwell and Eden Bradley who share their insights.




It Was Going So Well...

You may remember that back in May I finally sent my short story off to Woman's Weekly. It had been a lot of hard work to get it to a stage that I felt it was finally good enough - and ready- for sending out for consideration.

Woman's Weekly say they take about four months, so each month that went by without a rejection letter was a good sign. Previous submissions had been rejected earlier.

As I was a week off the four month point I was hopeful that I stood a good chance of success this time.

But it was not to be.

Thursday morning my SAE dropped through the letterbox, and attached to my manuscript was the standard rejection letter.

I was gutted. Four months and then rejection.

Sadly it's common currency for writers, and after a few hours disappointment (and sympathy from writer friends) my rationality returned and I decided that next week I'll look at the story again, and if I'm still happy, then I'll be looking for a new home for it.

But it's frustrating too. Unlike a novel that can be submitted to more than one place at the same time, you really can't do that with a short story, so you have to wait for a yes or no.

For writers trying to get their first woman's magazine acceptance- to a paying market- it's getting harder. Over the past two to three years the number of magazines accepting submissions has fallen rapidly.

My Weekly and Candis have moved to accepting stories only from writers from whom they've bought from before. Others have dropped fiction completely.

Only this week on Womag's blog, it was mentioned that the Australian magazine Woman's Day was no longer publishing fiction. You only need to look at the list of magazines in the sidebar of her blog to see how few are left.

Obviously magazine editors get hundreds of submissions each week and can't comment on each one; writers understand that.

In an ideal world, those fiction departments which have readers first, would do something as simple as mark an 'x' or a '√', so the rejected writer knows how far along the system their story has actually gone.

Something as simple as that would help both the writer, and the fiction department.

No writer wants to waste either their own time, or an editor's, submitting stories that aren't of publishable standard, so it remains hit and miss until that first acceptance.

So finding a new home for my story is now on my to do list. And find one I will...