Our Flash Felon mega-issue is full of sinister figures lurking in the shadows.
Two of our Top 3 stories in this contest come from writers were who honorable mentions in previous contests. Always good to see.
Don’t forget to check out our results page to take a peek at the coveted close-but-no-cigar shout-outs. Our next quarterly contest theme will be Flash Icon and will require an iconic person, place or thing. Details within a week or two. And keep those dark and offbeat poetry submissions rolling in for the Shadow Awardpoetry contest. Soft deadline 5/31.
And now, on to the goods.
“Say ‘hello’ to my little friend.”
– The Editor
Flash Felon Winner
The London Umbrella Company
by Jan Kaneen
2nd Place
Postmaster
by Henry Whittier-Ferguson
3rd Place
Blood Feather and Soft Feather
by Melissa Monks
Honorable Mentions:
4th – Everything Must Go
by Emily Livingstone
5th – Beyond the Briars
by Joshua Patterson
6th – The Sitting Room
by Aeryn Rudel
7th – Jokers to the Right
by Rich Larson
8th – Libertas
by Warren Buchanan
9th – The Noose on the Roof
by Charles Scott
10th – Space Monkey Mafia
by Allison Spector
That’s all she wrote.
The Flash Felon contest has ended. Check back May 14th for results.
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“The criminal is the creative artist;
the detective only the critic.”
— G.K. Chesterton
Time to get nefarious. For our next quarterly flash fiction contest, we want stories that slink in the shadows, that mastermind twisted schemes, that lurk on the fringes and rise the top of unsavory empires. Simply put, we want crime stories.
Now for our Flash Felon contest, we don’t want to see dozens of Sam Spades. We want you to concoct some of the most creatively bizarre crime stories ever put to print. Your entry must contain a criminal element, but we want you to push boundaries and let your imaginations run wild:
- Pyramid schemes involving the actual Pyramids
- high speed fan boat chases
- baseball diamond heists
- Sudoku-obsessed serial killers
- cock fight clubs
- Space Shuttle hijackings
- gumshoes who own neither gum nor shoes
- exotic pet dancers
- kids kidnapping adults
- pyrophobic arsonists
- blood bank robberies
- Gobstopper-gobbling mobsters
- spies with glass eyes
- grave robbers who make lampshades out of conventional lampshade-making materials
- jaywalking gigolos
- mics being rocked like vandals—all fair game!
The top three entries will win cold, hard cash.
$200 for Flash Felon winner
$100 for runner-up
$50 for second runner-up
(We also give mad props to 4th-10th place, publishing them as
Honorable Mentions in our Flash Felon mega-issue and annual print anthology!)
Follow these guidelines, and you could have some extra coin in your pocket, and some bragging rights as the Flash Felon winner:
– All submissions must absolutely be under 1,000 words, and we tend to look more kindly on 750 or fewer because… SQUIRREL!
– All contest submissions will be read blind, so we won’t be playing favorites. Sorry, Mom.
– Please paste your submission into the corresponding field. Do not list your name anywhere in your submission or we’ll assume you don’t know how to read.
– Costs $6 to enter before our early-bird deadline. After that, it’s $7, $9 during the Procrastinator’s Special, because, you know, gotta fund the prize money somehow. (Sorry, no refunds.)
– We reserve the right to extend deadlines if necessary (and you can expect our patented several-day Procrastinator’s Special, with corresponding increase in submission fee so it’s still fair and all).
– Submissions must be previously unpublished work, and you will retain copyright (duh). If accepted, your piece will be published online and in our print anthology.
– No limit on how many entries you can submit, but you must submit them one at a time. Don’t just mash them all in there.
– Early bird deadline is April 1st, 2016. Contest deadline is April 30th, 2016 at 11:59 PST. Winners announced by May 14th and we’ll unleash the Flash Felon prize-winners mega-issue on May 15th.
– And, most importantly, this is a FLASH FELON contest, therefore your story must include some type of criminal element. (A word of advice, though: we’re not interested in reading about overt sexual crimes, so keep that kind of stuff in your literary pants.)
So that means you can go all…
or all…
or all…
or all…
or even all…
Send us an entry we can’t refuse.
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The Molotov Cocktail 