The Contest
UPDATE: Both collections are now complete and each contain 14 Crime/Noir Flash Fiction stories, these stories ranging in length from 200-2000 words. Both collections will be available (free in all e-book formats via Smashwords) from Dec. 29th until Jan. 31st (2012) for Reading/Voting.
- 12-20 Crime/Noir authors (for details see the Challengers tab) will contribute Crime/Noir flash fiction pieces of their choosing to compile one collection.
- Pablo D’Stair will, in one consecutive 8 hour period, write a collection of approximate length (an equal number of stories, the lengths of which are up to D’Stair). This collection will be fully executed, from conception to finished product inside these 8 hours. NOTE: D’Stair is given one additional 2 hour period to make a run through to correct only superficial details such as typographical errors–no new material may be added, no material may be deleted or reworked
- These collections, labeled simply A and B, will be made available, free of charge, in nearly all e-reader formats, to any interested party for the duration of the contest time via Smashwords. NOTE: Neither collection will in any way identify authorship of the individual stories, nor will there be any indication which collection is multi-author and which is single author. Readers will approach both collections and vote on them, blind.
- Readers will decide (1) which collection they prefer and (2) from that preferred collection will pick their three favorite pieces, numbering these in order of quality (#1 is best, #2 is second best, #3 is third best)
NOTE: Readers will vote by e-mailing their choices to an address monitored by impartial parties–any vote not received through this channel will not be counted. Voting instructions will be prominently displayed in multiple places in both collections.
Once the voting period ends, a full listing of the Challenger Collection, with author names, will be made available on this site.
What you need to do:
Go over to the Out Of Bullets site, download the 2 free collections and read them. When you're ready, vote for your favourite collection and your favourite stories.
When Pablo is toasted, the money can be extracted from his pockes with tongs.
Go be democratic.
Nigel, cheers as always for keeping the folks updated. Just wanted to add a few notes, here, of some thing of interest to the contest.
ReplyDelete1. The good folks at Booked Podcast are, I believe starting this week, playing along and will each week take some time to comment on and discuss stories from each set--they don't know who wrote what, so it's pretty cool. They teaser-ed the thing last week and I may be a guest on there sometime, as well, so good times.
2. There will be an article about the contest coming up in an online paper in Sri Lanka, The Nation, and perhaps in the print pages of my usual gig down there, The Sunday Observer. I'll drop names and links to folks as much as I can.
3. Some upper-upper level Creative Writing classes in Las Vegas have been assigned participation in the contest (again, they know not who wrote what) so that's cool, an interesting, different response set.
4. A good number of folks missed the deadline to submit stories to challenge me, so depending on how this goes all month, I'm thinking there might be a round Two. Stay tuned.
Cheers and Happy New Year to all.