This marks the third year in a row that one of our short stories has won an award at the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. Now in its 91st season, the contest offers prizes in a variety of categories, from poetry and plays to short fiction of all kinds, and our story Redemption Blues was awarded an honorable mention this year in the genre category! Redemption Blues is a western which essentially reimagines Jesus Christ Superstar in a frontier silver mining town. Considering they receive several thousand entries each year, becoming four-time award winners is a considerable feat! A list of all the stories recognized in the 91st Annual Writing Competition can be found here, and further information about the contest is available here.

Redemption Blues was also named a quarterfinalist in ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Short Story Competition. ScreenCraft is a platform that promotes both writers and screenwriters through contests, development opportunities, and annual showcases in a variety of genres. The list of all the quarterfinalists for this year’s contest can be found here.

For long fiction, our manuscript Still Life was among the finalists for the 2022 Claymore Awards! The Claymore Awards are conducted as part of Killer Nashville, a writing conference which supports and promotes authors of mystery, suspense, and thriller stories at all stages of their careers. One of the ways they achieve this is through their annual award for unpublished manuscripts. Now in its fourteenth year, the Claymores recognize manuscripts in a variety of subgenres, and Still Life was named a finalist in the Best Investigator category. The entire list of finalists is available here, along with information about the annual competition and conference.

The only other thing to include is the annual graphic that WD Magazine gives out to their contest winners, and is happily displayed below!