‘Tis the season of midwinter, and whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or a time of celebration of your own making, we here at Parliament want to share the holidays with you!
In the spirit of creating tradition, we are drawing from our Halloween Hearth Stories event to bring you Holiday Hearth Stories over the month of December. This will be another flash fiction event with an accompanying giveaway, however things will work a bit differently this time around.
As this is a season of giving, we will be opening up this holiday story writing event for submissions! Whether you are a Parliament author, or an aspiring author—someone who has submitted to us before, or one who is submitting for the first time—we welcome you to participate for your story to be featured on our blog.
Theme:
Keep things ghostly! In the spirit of Victorian tradition, and because Parliament House is most certainly haunted, we want to bring back the spectral stories of old. Let’s huddle together on the longest night of the year and whisper tales of haunts and harrows! Any type of ghost story will do! Do you have a personal encounter you would like to share? Challenge yourself to write a creative nonfiction piece. Or, do you have a fictional narrative just dying (see what I did there?) to get out? Then, as this is a flash fiction event, you are obviously welcome here too! Whether you have or haven't had a ghostly encounter, we want you to let your imagination run wild. See what ghostly tale tumbles from your mind and onto the page.
Important information to note:
Your story must be 750 words (or less).
Submissions open on Monday, November 16th at 12 AM EST, and they close on Monday, December 7th at 11:59 PM EST. To submit, email your story—ensuring you have followed the guidelines listed below—to blogdirector (at) ParliamentHousePress (dot) com.
Five days, five stories, five unique giveaways! This event will take place over the course of five days—you have heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas...well, now we have the Five Days of Flash Fiction! Stories will be posted and giveaway winners will be announced December 14th, 16th, 18th, 21st, and 23rd). Each feature will include five stories and announce a giveaway winner.
The giveaway will be run through a raffle which will be posted on November 16th. The timeframe for entering the giveaway will extend over the course of submissions and close on December 7th! Details of prizes forthcoming, so be sure to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for sneak peaks into what we have in store for our winners!
This is not a story competition, so no voting will occur on submitted stories. We will read every story submitted and feature the 25 stories selected by our submissions team to be published to the blog. The giveaway is also not dependent upon voting!
Please remember: this is open to EVERYONE!
Submission Guidelines:
All submissions must be follow these formatting guidelines...
Word document, or .docx file
Cover page that includes story title, author name, word count, and email address
Header that includes story title and page number (do not include author name so that the stories can be read anonymously)
Double spaced
Times New Roman (12 pt, black)
Left justified
Paragraphs indented 1/2 inch (no additional spaces between paragraphs)
***Any questions or inquiries regarding this event should be directed to blog director (at) parliament house press (dot) com (no spaces, all lower case).***