Tag Archives: short story competition

The Box – SpecFicNZ Shorts

31 Oct

A month or so ago I wrote a post about the spooky bookshop short story competition, run by SpecFicNZ to coincide with NZ Bookshop Day and Halloween – both falling on the same day this year, that day being this very one (Happy Halloween!). I decided to enter the competition myself, and was chuffed to find out that my story The Box came third place. Piper Mejia came first with her story The Shelver, followed by Jane Percival with her story The Bookshop – and you can read all about it here.

SpecFicNZ+Shorts-+-The+Shelver-+by+Piper+Mejia,+-The+Bookshop-+by+Jane+Percival,+and+-The+Box-+by+I.K.+Paterson-Harkness

The three stories have been packaged up into a free e-book. Apparently Amazon haven’t actually quite set it to $0.00 just yet, but Kobo has.  If, like me, you don’t have an actual real-life e-book reader, they are easy to download. The free e-book reader I downloaded makes everything look a bit naff, but it does the job.

Each story is less than 2000 words. Click on either of the links above to download your free (or not quite free) copy.

Tags: , , , , ,

Short Story Competition

13 Aug

SpecFicNZ, for those who don’t know, is an association for New Zealand writers, creators, and fans of speculative fiction. I found them a few years back, after having been told (by a respectable member of the New Zealand literary community) that there wasn’t really a market for speculative fiction in NZ, that no one published it, and that I’d have a near-to-impossible time going down that road at all. (Doh!) Really, all it took was a quick search on-line, and I found a whole community of not only NZ speculative fiction writers, but publishers too. It does exist, thank you very much.

I’ve been a member of the organisation pretty much since I learned about it, and as of last month am now also a member of the core committee, and the current treasurer. (You gotta love a good spreadsheet.) Writing can be a rather lonely journey – just you and your characters (who sometimes aren’t that nice) – and so being part of an organisation with other like-minded people can make you feel a little less like the straggly, dried leaf-in-your-tangled-hair outsider that you really are. Plus, you get to hang out an conventions, learn about writing opportunities, and receive info about competitions such as:

COMPETITION

SpecFicNZ’s Spooky Bookshop Challenge.

Halloween this year falls on NZ Bookshop Day, so the aim of this competition is to write a 1000-2000 word story that both incorporates Halloween (or general spookiness) and bookshops. There’s a small cash prize, and the three winners’ stories will be published together as an e-book.

Deadline: September 30th.

To enter, you’ll need to be / become a member.

Tags: , , , ,