Mike Ripley writes in his Getting Away with Murder Newsletter , April 2012
Bloomsbury Publishing, in association with the Writers and Artists Yearbook, have just launched Short Sentence, a competition for crime stories of 1000 words or less, although perhaps‘challenge’ is a better word than competition as every other month, one of Bloomsbury’s crime authors will set a theme for the story. The first author involved is Parker Bilal and his challenge is to write a 1,000 crime story onthe theme of deception.
Every other month (up to November), a winner will be chosen and all winning short stories will be published as a Short Sentence eBook in 2013, which will be made available free from all online book retailers. One overall winner will be selected and receive a prize of a place at the Writers and Artists Yearbook conference and a week-end Rover Ticket for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Writing festival in 2013.
Now I am sure that there are many young people of the Twitter generation who would baulk at the challenge of writing 1,000 characters let alone 1,000 words; and on the other hand, there are long-winded old fogeys like myself who would find it daunting to get a catchy title into 1,000 words. Either way, I do not think this is an easy challenge, and I will be interested to see the outcome.
In the meantime, if you are not of a competitive bent, why not just sit back and enjoy Bloomsbury’s latest crime offerings.
Already out is the new Chicago-based thriller from Michael Harvey, We All Fall Down, which I for one am looking forward to having thoroughly enjoyed his last novel to feature ex-cop-turned-private eye Michael Kelly, The Third Rail. I have a theory that there is a blossoming‘Chicago school’ of American crime writing, of which Marcus Sakey and Michael Harvey are the leading lights.