To start with, apologies for the double up in winner announcements. A brief holiday to Japan where I caught up with NiTH powerhouse Ash Warren followed by the sad passing of a relative left me a little behind schedule, but […]
It’s said that melancholy is the strongest emotion. In Cam Dang’s All The Dead Lovers we are taken on a journey back in memory, time and place. The narrator recounts the story of their uncle migrating across the ocean. Who […]
In between our new Patreon sponsored awards we’re keeping things alive with serial fiction awards. Let’s recap and find out who won first place. 1332 BC | Mhairi Campbell Mhairi Campbell lends her speedy pen and quick wit to ancient […]
Recap “His fingers crawled across the keys, spiders weaving webs. Following suit. It beat yesterday’s article on the most recent celebrity to get butt implants or the one after that about which couple is now in splitsville. He also wrote […]
Winner Announcement by Ash Warren And so we come to the last part of our each of our serial quartets for The Queen’s Cryptographer Award. The final installments of this award were the most closely contested from the judge’s point […]
One of the most important parts of any serial is the cliffhanger and each of our writers has been asked to make sure this element is present in the first three parts of their quartet for The Queen’s Cryptographer. The […]
The Queen’s Cryptographer Part 2 Winner Announcement By Ash Warren The craft of story writing is just that, a craft. A writer gets better at it by honing their writing skills in the development of certain key elements that are fundamental […]
Can you ever really tell if a specific moment in time is the end of something, or the start of something else? Is it ever that simple? In the same way, one story’s final sentence can quickly become the opening line […]
With Nabokov we saw a high watermark of entries, which necessitated a broad shortlist. December represents a holiday period for many around the world, a time of celebration, new ideas and challenges. This year was no different. First let’s welcome […]
By award creator Ash Warren. When I was thinking up this award I had, I confess, rather specific ideas in my own mind as to where the type of brief I was making was likely to end up going, what […]
Is it more prudent to examine the past and learn from your mistakes, or to pre-empt your errors and try to prevent them from happening in the first place? In other words, does hindsight provide more clarity than foresight? The […]
The To Pant Or Not To Pant Award is a one shot contest that asked writers to “create a piece of flash fiction that looks at some kind of real life paradox and use it as the catalyst for conflict […]
Sometimes, memories are blurry, out of focus. Emotions are dulled and senses muted. Often, pieces of the puzzle are missing entirely – especially as we age – or new, fabricated scenes are implanted over painful ones to protect us […]
Happy holidays everyone. What an exciting quartet of stories we saw in the 21C Mega Death Award. I received an email this week encouraging NiTH to keep the single awards going. The writer thought that they were a great introduction […]
Our guest announcer this week is contest creator and author Tobias Madden.
After a series of serials we’re heading into 2017 with a few more one shot awards. Focusing on brevity, these contests give authors the opportunity to enter regular contests without the full on commitment of a serial award. We’ve already […]
From lycanthropy to mystery WOLVES was a serial award that pushed writers on sometimes opposite yet complimentary directions. We’re always on the lookout for that lone wolf who stands out from the competition, but it was clear from the outset […]
The winner announcement this week was inspired by Lavinia Simson’s 10 Seconds 6 The number of stories on the shortlist 5 The number of authors on the shortlist. John Falconer was among them, an author who has been plying his […]
Hello All, It is with great pleasure that I, Nick Lachmund, competitor and reader, have the opportunity to present the final winner announcement for this competition. The series has presented us with a wonderful variety of stories across a spectrum […]
Between the final chapters of Flintlocks & Folly and To The Nines we were treated to the penultimate serials for WOLVES. Authors were asked to consider love of self and love of others with an opportunity to bare one’s teeth […]
The third and final act for Flintlocks and Folly saw three authors conclude three different yet thematically exciting awards. We’ve already seen both Norrish and Seymour take a win apiece. Can Mills square it up with a win for part […]
Sorry for the late Winner’s Announcement this week. I had a big article in mind talking about various things to do judging etc but wasn’t really happy with it. The core point is that I’ve been looking for ways to […]
At NiTH, were always keen to explore new genres. For example, we were the first website to put together a Climate Fiction Short Story List, a page that is ranked top in Google’s search rankings, and includes some great authors, […]
Hello lovely lupines. Today we find out who won Part 2 of the WOLVES Award.
Let’s get straight to it shall we, a tie for first place in the To The Nines Award: Part 7, sees one likely lad and one wolfish writer share top spot in this week’s winner announcement. No it wasn’t Sophie […]
The Everything Is Everything Award was a chance for authors to showcase what they can do away from the restrictions of writing prompts and word counts. We threw the doors open and said “Show us what you’ve got.”
I was really excited with last week’s Flintlock & Folly Award shortlist. Whenever we try something with strict genre requirements there’s always a risk we won’t get enough entries, or that the stories might miss the mark, particularly when it’s […]
Last week we kicked off the Wolves Serial Award, an opportunity for authors to write multi-part stories about loners, changelings, packs, territory, and all things lupine.
If you’ve had a chance to check out the recent interviews with former NiTH writers Adrian Collins and Clarissa Goenawan, you’ve probably noticed a trend. A lot of writers who have come through Needle In The Hay tend to go […]
The Eighth Wonder Award was an opportunity for authors take readers on an adventure somewhere new, to break out of the interior focus and look out to what is grand, wonderful, frightening and epic in scope. Let’s recap: