Flash Monster 2023

Flash Monster 2023 is now closed.

Check back October 30th at noon
Pacific Time for results.
Issue drops on Halloween!

Slacker Special
keeps late entries open until Oct. 17th.

“I yearn for the darkness.”

– Cormac McCarthy

Submit to Flash Monster 2023

We’re baaaack! After a six-plus month hiatus from our usual quarterly contests, to deal with some scary health issues (stupid bodies), we’re gearing up for another round of the contest that started it all. In 2014, we kicked off our first Flash Monster contest and since then we’ve hosted over 30 flash contests (and even a handful of poetry as well), and this year will mark our 10th Flash Monster.

So, as usual, we want to see your nasties, the dark entities you conjure up and the ghouls you stitch together. Make them brutal, make them sympathetic, make them impossible to define.

We like literary approaches, but we also dig genre and pulpy takes as well. Art house or grindhouse. Subvert the usual monster tropes or create something nobody’s ever seen before.

You can check out some past Flash Monster issues here, here, or here for inspiration or simply for an idea of the kind of stuff we like to publish.

The top three entries will win cold, hard cash (sent electronically).

$300 for Flash Monster 2023 winner

$200 for 2nd place

$100 for 3rd place

We also give mad props to 4th-10th place,
publishing them in our Flash Monster mega-issue.

Submit to Flash Monster 2023

Follow these guidelines, and you just might have some extra coin in your pocket, and some bragging rights as the Flash Monster 2023 winner.

– All submissions must absolutely be no more than 1,000 words, and we tend to look more kindly on 750 or fewer because… 50-FOOT SQUIRREL!

– All contest submissions will be read with authors’ names concealed, so we won’t be playing favorites.

– Please paste your submission into the corresponding field. Do not list your name anywhere in your submission or we’ll assume that you don’t know how to read.

– Entry fee of ~~$10~~ $12 during Slacker Special. (Sorry, no refunds.)

– We reserve the right to extend deadlines if necessary (and you can expect our usual week-ish Slacker Special—with corresponding increase in submission fee for you procrastinators).

– Submissions must be previously unpublished work, and you will retain copyright. By entering this contest you give us permission to publish your work if it’s selected for our Top 10

– 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.

– Contest ~~soft deadline is end of day (PST) Monday, October 9th, 2023~~ final deadline is end of day (Pacific Time) Tuesday, October 17th, 2023. Winners announced on October 30th, and we’ll unleash the Flash Monster X mega-issue on Halloween!

– And, most importantly, this is a FLASH MONSTER contest, so you must include some sort of literal or figurative monster. But again, this can be in any form imaginable.

So that means you can do something like this…