Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The DSD Christmas Noir Flash Challenge -Last Calls

By Jay Stringer

Hola.

You read about our flash fiction thingy, right? This would be the challenge we laid down, to send us your darkest, craziest, funniest or coolest Christmas stories. 600-1000 words of the best noir, transgressive, caper or hardboiled fiction you can throw at us.

We put the challenge out a couple weeks back now, and we've had a great response so far. I have to say that, as much fun as it is putting something up each week for you all to read, it's a whole other thing to get proof that you're out there in the form of really cool flash fiction.

Not that we're just asking for you to send stuff our way. Oh no. We're offering something in return.

FREE STUFF!!!

We're throwing out some free books to people. Everyone who sends us a story enters the draw for cooooooool things. Everyone who comments on each story also enters a draw. We would like for the comments to be about the story, or the writer, or issues inspired by the post. Sure, you can post links to your own fiction, and we'll all read it, but links won't count in the draw.

For those of you who've submitted already, big thanks and hugs. You'll have to imagine the hugs, because we're far away. Just go and hug yourself, and pretend it was DSD. Even better, go and hug a police officer and say we said it was alright. If you've not yet received an email from us thanking you for the story you will get one soon.

And let's get out an early congratulations to Chris Deal, who was the first entry and therefore is automatically made of win when it comes to the free stuff. More details about who else is made of win over the Christmas break as we post the stories.

So, hows this going to work?

I'm glad you asked.

DSD will run as normal up until this Sunday. Bryon will then officially kick off the flash goodness with his own story, and that'll be followed closely by the first of our guest stories. After that you can check back every day over the Christmas period for new content. We'll be mixing in our own contributions amongst the stories you folks have sent in, and I'm really excited at the quality of the fiction that we'll be hosting. It's going to be like an advent calendar of murder and mayhem. We'll be running stories right through new years, until normal service resumes on Monday the 4th of January.

So now's a good time to make sure your RSS settings are right, that we're linked on you iphones, your ipads and your iwhatnots, and that you have your kindle subscription all sorted out.

So here's one last call. You still have time to join in. We'll give you the space and the platform, we may even give you some free books, all we ask is that you entertain us. Submissions close this weekend, after which uncle DSD starts to eat the mail.

Small print.

Submissions should be sent to the email address up there at the top right. Every submission enters a draw for FREE STUFF. People leaving comments about the published stories will also enter the draw. The doors close on Sunday the 19th. Please send your story either in the body of the email or attached as a word file. Submitting to DSD gives us permission to post your story between 19/12/10 and 03/01/11. When submitting please include a brief bio and any links that you would like to go up with your story. Those of you who've already submitted, don't worry about your missing bio, the idiot Stringer will contact you for those details before your story goes live.



1 comment:

David Cranmer said...

I'm looking forward to the results of this one.