Season Eight Starts Now: Beep Boop Boop Bop Edition!
Join a community, write, submit and be recognized.
Today marks the start of Lunar Awards season eight! We’ll be accepting submissions for the Short Story and First Chapter category this season, and our sponsor is me! That’s right, I’ve published a collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories and I’ll be giving away an eBook copy to the winner of each category. I’ve got more than one robot gracing the pages of the book and thought a Beep Boop Boop Bop Edition made perfect sense.
Sponsor
The final EPUB will be emailed to the winners or provided via a download link from BookFunnel. You can find out more about the book by reading the launch post.
Season Details
Please read the FAQ, which contains the complete rules, including word limits. Ask in the comments if you have questions. The judging period is 7-14 days after the deadline before a winner is announced.
Short Story Submission Period:
Short stories must be published on Substack after Tuesday, September 3, 2024, 12:00am UTC (season start), and before Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 11:59am UTC (season end). A total of 21 days. All times are UTC so there is no confusion on time differences.
First Chapter Submission Period:
First chapters can have any publication date on Substack, so long as it is before Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 11:59am UTC (season end).
Award Season Six Judge:
Prizes
A six-month paid comp to the Lunar Awards, which grants you 7-day early access notification for the next award season.
An EPUB email attachment or download of the Voices from the Deep eBook, written by Brian Reindel.
A permanent link on the Past Winners page, including a high-resolution badge to display on your Substack.
Short Story Entry
Post a link to your short story in the comments of this post. The entry will be verified with a confirmed ✅ response comment. If it violates a rule, it will be considered temporarily declined until a correction is made.
First Chapter Entry
Post a link to your first chapter in the comments of this post and specify that it is a first chapter entry. The entry will be verified with a confirmed ✅ response comment. If it violates a rule, it will be considered temporarily declined until a correction is made.
First chapter, started in May: https://whowillsaveher.substack.com/p/0 publishing a few new scenes each week, at Scene 64 out of 207 as of this writing. 88K words in total (a typical novel) the ending is already written. Sci-fi, mystery, psych-thriller, romance with action written in a unique POV and a succinct, fast-paced style.
Well, I decided to make a quick decision. I've only done two lunar awards so far and got two honourable mentions, and the next short story I thought of is probably too experimental for the lunar awards, as the narrative is a little disjointed.
In which case, given that as Brian says this is partly a means for mutual discovery on Substack, and I haven't had the opportunity to do a first chapter entry yet, I shall take that option, please.
So, here is the first instalment/chapter of the serialisation which kind of forms the centrepiece to my Substack, featuring the (mis)adventures of the main character Katrina who says she's from a parallel world: https://inadifferentplace.substack.com/p/what-to-do-about-katrina-episode?r=2s9hod
This first chapter runs to around 2.2k words. Hopefully it's a good enough hook for people to keep reading. Especially as the second instalment has some intriguing parallel world stuff.
Anyway, this is an ongoing serial and so I can't say how long the whole thing is because I haven't finished it yet, but will surely be enough to keep me and readers occupied for years. At the current time of posting we're up to scene 22 which is about 35k words in.
I hope you enjoy it.