Short Story Contest 3 - Horror Theme, $25 Prize

BookCloseOuts has decided to sponsor another short story contest on this website! The prize is a $25 gift certificate to BookCloseOuts again. More than a prize, I expect this to be a lot of fun. The theme is horror, but please keep it PG-13 at worst.

The deadline for submitting a story is March 20th. That is two months from the time of this announcement, which gives more than enough time for the word to get out and for you all to write your stories at your convenience. Any stories not submitting on or before March 20th (EST) will not be accepted.

Rules and Guidelines:

• must be between 400 and 5,000 words
• must be fiction
• no poetry, no essays allowed
• must be original, not published elsewhere, not written by someone else
• only one submission per person
• correct spelling and grammar required
• you must have a post count of 10 or higher at the time of the deadline (April 20th)*
• To ensure fair judging, you must privately PM your story to me and not make it known that it is your story until the results are in
• You can't be a judge and submit a story; if you volunteer as a judge and submit a story, we will accept the story and remove you as a judge

In addition to judging the stories in a general way, the judges may consider how well the story makes use of the horror theme.

I will give the judges until the end of April to read and rate all the stories. Once all the ratings are in, I will post the results and declare the winner.

*If you are not a member of our Book and Reading Forums, you will need to register which is quick and free. You will also need to have a post count of at least 25 by the contest deadline, which will be easy to do by then. A great way to jump in to our interesting discussions is the Most Popular Topics Page.

Submit Your Completed Story

To submit your finished story, please send the story as a private message to Scott. Please note, any special markup (e.g. bold, italic) will need to written using BBCode as it would otherwise be lost when you copy & paste from your word processor.

Want to Judge?

Not a writer? Do you want to be a judge instead? Please send a private message to Scott ASAP to let him know you want to volunteer as a judge. Each judge will be asked to read all the stories and rate each one. The story with the best average rating will be the winner.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, you can post them in this topic or private message to Scott. Remember, if you are not already a member of our forums, the first step is to join the forums by registering which is quick and free.

Thanks!

That's about it. Thank you for participating and thank BookCloseOuts for generously providing the prize!