Thanks to everyone who has entered our 28th Award so far. We’re getting busy with just two and a half weeks to go until the deadline of Sunday 6th October. Matt Kendrick our judge will read the longlist and select a short list and the top five by the end of October. £1460 in prizes. We’re looking for stories 300 words or under on any subject or theme.

A few more thoughts about themes and subject matter. We receive many very good, yet sad stories about contemporary life, fewer historical stories and fewer humourous or uplifting stories. So if you submit an entry with a great title that is humourous, historical and not trqgic it certainly might catch the attention of our initial readers and cheer them up.

Flashback Fiction, (the magazine that publishes historical fiction, which is not currently open) has an interesting historical timeline of their published stories https://flashbackfiction.com/index.php/timeline/. It’s worth reading some of the stories linked. I have a couple in there. They are tragic, however. Many of us default to tragic in our stories. But we don’t always need to. Here is picture that might prompt a last minute submission. It’s early morning on an autumn day. There’s a hot air balloon in the sky. Maybe locate the story in a different century and keep it light, like the balloon. No crash landings!

Jude
September 2024