Thursday, December 2, 2010

The DSD Christmas Noir Flash Challenge

By Do Some Damage

STORIES!!! CONTESTS!!! FREE STUFF!!!

Everyone gets a little crazy over Christmas, and ol' uncle DSD is no exception. All year round we keep him locked in the basement giving the evil eye to unsuspecting authors, but this time of year we let him out for the holidays.

You know what he does? He starts throwing free books at people. Yes, that's right, free books.

He also starts trying to eat the postman's leg, but that's not important right now.

You want the free, right? There's some great crime titles included in our bag of stuff, but we don't want to give away all the details just yet.

And that's not all. We want to invite you guys into DSD towers for a poke around. We want to hand the site over to you, just for a little while. You can come on in, wipe your feet, take a seat, and use our little stage to shout at the world.

Here's the deal (free books! free books!) We're issuing a flash fiction challenge. We want 600-1000 words of the best Christmas noir, transgressive, caper or hardboiled fiction you can throw at us. The only stipulation is that it has to be a Christmas story. But hell, you wanna know how loose a stipulation that is? Uncle DSD's favourite Christmas film is DIE HARD. So you can see that just about anything goes, as long as it's Christmas.

Normally for a flash challenge everyone puts the stories on their own blogs. But we'd like to run your stories here, mixed in with our own. Run them at your own blog and post the links in comments here, sure, but if you want your free books you gotta send your story to us.

Anyone who submits to us enters the drawing for cool fun stuff. There will be other giveaways too, but that's a story for another time.

We'll be posting the stories starting Monday the 20th, and running right through until Monday the 4th of January, when we let Weddle back out of Gumbo's kennel.

Small print.

Send your stories 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. The first submission to us automatically gets FREE STUFF.





15 comments:

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

This is awesome and a great opportunity. Thanks for doing it!

Dana King said...

While I'm always attracted to free stuff, and this sounds like a lot of fun, the cynic in me says this is a transparent attempt for the regulars not to have to write any blog posts over the holidays. In fact, it borders on The Man finding yet another way to sit back and enjoy eggnog while scantily clad Santa's helpers lounge in his lap. (Or for The Woman to do the same, in Joelle's case.)

I better stop here. No point in giving away too much of a potential story idea.

(Word verification = terlent. An innate gift or ability. "He has a terlent for causing trouble.)

Kate Pilarcik ~ absolutely said...

Ah, nothing says "Ho Ho Ho" like shaking up the snowflakes at a wintry crime scene.

That Sean Patrick shadowy figure left posters around gritty WebCity, and when I tailed him, I found youse guys in this cool hideout.

Damn glad I did, as good old Uncle Ray the Chandler is in the post just below! Gotta go see him, but will be back with some noir ink for your Season's Readings.

~ Absolutely*Kate
AT THE BIJOU ... and on streetcorners named Desire

Ben said...

Found you guys on Twitter. I am SO in.

Joyce said...

There's no way I can pass this one up. I'm in.

Paul D Brazill said...

Okey dokey. I'm in.

Gerald So said...
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Gerald So said...
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Gerald So said...

I entered my story, "All Wrapped Up", yesterday and posted it on my blog today. I had trouble including the link in a comment, but it's one of the Links To This Post below. I welcome your feedback.

Anonymous said...

ooooh---books!

Kieran Shea said...

i'm a whore for free books, so i'm in.

B said...

I think I'm in - I just need to mull on the genre a little more.

Alan Griffiths said...

I think I'm in too!

Anonymous said...

Absolutely excellent.

Walt Hall said...

oh, yeah... I'm in:

Hark the Hellbent Demons Scream!