WELCOME TO THE 2024 LOVECRAFTIAN MICRO FICTION CONTEST

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO AUGUST 16TH!

Please read the rules, terms, and conditions before submitting your entry!

What is it?

Micro Fiction is very short prose fiction. Smaller than Flash Fiction but bigger than a haiku. Usually 500 words or less. There are some famous short short stories, including Hemingway’s - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Lovecraftian fiction usually takes the form of Cosmic Horror, Weird Fiction, or Speculative or Science Fiction with a Horror twist, as well as horror or ghost stories with an uncanny tone.

According to Lovecraft, “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

Why Lovecraftian Micro Fiction?

Lovecraft himself wrote some extremely short fiction. "Memory," "What the Moon Brings," and "Ex Oblivione" are examples. Micro Fiction is a fun way to explore a genre or topic in a challenging way. Can you write a complete story in this limited amount of space? By complete story, we mean a character, situation, beginning, middle, and end. Not a vignette, not a character study, but a story.

What do I get if I win?

• The winning authors will be published in a book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond! Winning authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book.

• The overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2024 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project with some of the finest modern Lovecraftian Authors! (Past authors include Molly Tanzer, Joseph Pulver, Sr., Wilum Pugmire, Nick Mamatas, Ross Lockhart, Cody Goodfellow, Pete Rawlik, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Gemma Files, Lee Zumpe, Selena Chambers, Nadia Bulkin, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Tim Pratt.) Participation is not mandatory if you win.

• The overall winner, if planning to attend the Portland H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, will have an author reading slot reserved for them so they can read their story at the festival! (this is optional)

How to Submit

You can submit up to 5 entries. Submission fee is $5.00 for the first story, with discounts for multiple entries (3 for $13, 4 for $15, 5 for $18). If you are submitting more than one entry, please create one file with a line break and ### between each story, and upload it by clicking the "choose file" button above (.rtf or .txt only, .doc files will not be accepted because we can't open them). We will read the number of stories that correspond to the number of entries you chose. For example, if you select 3 entries, but include 5 stories in your file, we will only read the first 3 stories. Once your entry has been completed, you will receive a download link with a pdf of the previous year's Daily Lurker Program.

Why is there a submission fee?

We have done our best to keep submission fees modest and affordable, and while these stories may be short, even the shortest fiction takes time to read. In many cases, multiple people will read each submission many times. Having a submission fee also tells us that you are serious about the competition and your writing, and it ensures that the time and effort we spend reading is devoted to serious entrants. Charging a modest submission fee also helps us defray the costs associated with producing a contest.

Rules, Terms and Conditions

• Stories must be 500 words or less. Entries of more than 500 words will be disqualified with no refund and will not be read. Please check your word count before submitting! Most word processing programs have a built in word counter. There are also web sites for this, like wordcounter.net

• All entries must be English language.

• Stories should not require any special formatting besides normal paragraph breaks. We're looking for content, not visual formatting.

• All entries must be written by you. You may not submit another author’s work. Your original stories only, please.

• Your entry must contain your legal name, your author name (if different), and story title.
  
  
• FILE FORMAT should be a text file (.txt) or rich text format (.rtf)

• Your file name should be "your name-MFC2024-#of entries". For example if you submit 2 stories, your file name should look like this: JaneDoe-MFC2024-2.rtf

• Deadline for entries is AUGUST 16, 2024 (extended from the 9th). Winning entries will be notified no later than SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

• The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival^® & CthulhuCon^TM reserves the right to publish the winning entries in a limited edition book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond, which may be sold to cover printing costs. All submissions may be used for promotional purposes. Authors of the top 10 entries will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book, for which shipping in the US is free, and outside the US may incur a small shipping fee. Additional copies will be available for purchase.

• Overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2025 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project, which will take place in summer 2025.