Wednesday 7 April 2010

Crime Writing Opportunities

There are a couple of crime writing opportunities that came to my attention recently. One is for a short story competition, and the other is a publisher who is accepting crime novels.


Alibi Short Crime Story Competition

This is for a short crime story of between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Author Stuart MacBride has provided the opening sentence: ‘In my opinion, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it’. Closing date is 15th May 2010. Three finalists will win tickets to the famous Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, including accommodation.

The winner will be announced at the weekend. Overall prize is 100 crime books, a Sony e-reader and the winning story published as a special downloadable e-edition.

Full details are available online, where stories can also be submitted.

Crème De La Crime

This is a well known small independent publishing company which is looking for high quality crime novels – and they particularly encourage first time crime novelists. These can be set in modern times or in the past and should be 70,000 to 80,000 words.

They have a very comprehensive list of the kind of novels they do and don’t want on their website. Rather than advances, authors receive Royalties on their work and it’s encouraging to see that they target the UK and the US.

Send the first 10,000 words of the novel, plus a 1000 to 1500 word synopsis. Full details of their submission requirements can be found here.

Good luck,
Rosemary

4 comments:

Bill Kirton said...

A mine of information as usual Rosemary. I did actually know about these two but I'd forgotten them, so thanks for the memory jog.

Rosemary Gemmell said...

It's always a pleasure, Bill.

Chris Longmuir said...

I had a bad experience with Creme de la Crime after being one of the 20 winners in their first international competition when they started up. Less than half of the winners were actually published. Maybe they were too ambitious, I don't know. All I know is that it left a pretty bad taste in the mouth. However, the writers they did publish seem to have done quite well. Chris

Rosemary Gemmell said...

Thanks for mentioning that, Chris. Worth knowing the good and bad!