Posted on behalf of Casey:
I have two things to say in this post; one anyone at last Saturday's Adamastor meeting would have heard about already (but now I'm including the link), the other I only found out about after the meeting myself.
First of all; there is a monthly flash fiction contest run on the Aphelion webzine site. May's contest (started last Friday) can be found be following this link:
The contest started last Friday, and any entries need to be in by Sunday, May 22. (Note that the contest is run in a different timezone).
Full details on the requirements, how to enter, and anything else can be found by clicking on the above link. As a summary, though; the task is to write a story, of under 1000 words, on the subject of a simple, mundane, current-day real-world task that then becomes a science fiction story, without using aliens or time travel. The setting and characters should be new and fictional
(Devil in the Details, the story I asked for comment on at the last meeting, was disqualified for
using a non-fictional character prominently; the rules about historical characters were made a lot less ambiguous after that contest. This happens every now and then, so there's quite a few
important rules to look through).
After the entries close, the stories are placed on the page and all the authors, together with whoever else wants to do so, have a week to vote on the stories; after a week, the voting results are released and everyone can see which story wins.
The second thing I have to say relates to the first. You may recall that a while back I presented a book that I'd been one of the authors in; a book of stories from previous entries into this same flash contest. It's now available as an ebook on the iPad as well:
It hasn't sold anything on the iPad yet, as far as I know, but then again it's only been there for one weekend. I am quite excited about this development.
