Winners of the #NoirFire microfic writing contest and giveaway

Our lovely judges Valeria and Fábio have picked the winners of the speculative noir micro-fiction contest. Here to shock us, thrill us and chill us, are the prize-winning stories.

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The Winner

The winning story is this lovely, paranormal crime vignette from @Sarah_I_Jackson, who receive two FFN anthologies in paperback plus an e-book of Dan Grace’s Winter from Unsung Stories:

The Runners-up:

In no particular order, the two runners up, who each win e-books of three FFN anthologies plus Winter, are…

This horror-noir with a funebrous twist from @cj_dots:

And this fierce cyber-rebellion moment from @snowysil:

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All these micro-stories are worthy of the Noir Fire title, and we loved reading them and all the other entries! If this has whetted your appetite for more of this sort of thing, why not pick up the anthology…?

Noir Fire contest and giveaway

To celebrate Noir Fire, a gritty speculative fiction anthology that combines the spirit of Noir with the fantastical, futuristic and progressive genres that we love, we are running a micro-fiction writing contest and book giveaway.

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The rules:

To enter the writing contest, write a micro-fiction in the Noir genre, as inspired by the aesthetic and tropes of Noir crime and thriller, from black & white Hollywood classics to cyberpunk novels, which should be both complete and short enough to include in a single tweet with the addition of the hashtag #firenoir. Bonus points if the story has speculative and progressive elements, in addition to traditional noir.

Eligible stories must be tweeted to the hashtag by midnight (any time zone) on Sunday June 19, 2022.

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The prizes:

All entries will be read by the contest judges, Valeria Vitale and Fábio Fernandes, who will pick one winner to receive paperback and e-book copies of the Noir Fire anthology, any one other Futurefire.net Publishing paperback of their choice, and e-book of Dan Grace’s mythical dystopian novella Winter, and up to two runners-up to receive e-books of the Noir Fire anthology, two other FFN anthologies of their choice, and Dan Grace’s Winter.

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(Editors and authors of the anthology, and staff of Futurefire.net Publishing, may post micro-fiction to the hashtag, but will not be entered into the giveaway.)

Trending: Tiny Tales

Trending: Tiny Tales

Guest post by Fiona Jones

Micro-literature is a big trend right now. Something to do with the glimpsiness of screen-scrolling and the needle-sharp joy of haiku, mixed in a shot glass and taken at a gulp.

I’m not dissing full-length novels. They’ll always be in, forever, because a good novel is like a holiday abroad: immersive, luxurious, refreshing. But, by destiny or gnatlike attention span, I’m a micro writer. Most of what I’ve written is under 500 words. I’ve got micro-fiction and micro-CNF scattered halfway round the Internet, plus now and then on paper. And I’m touting these anthologies because some of my work’s inside:

• Trickster’s Treats #4
• Nano Nightmares, edited by Shirley Dee and others
• Teach.Write Fall/Winter 2020
• Prepositionally Challenged volume 1

Where to send your own finely-cut gemstones? I started with Friday Flash Fiction (they publish shedloads of drabbles a week, plus occasional longer flashes). From there I went on to The Drabble, Dribble Drabble, 50-Word Stories, 101 Words, Montana Mouthful, Tiger Moth Review and actually anywhere that doesn’t stipulate a minimum wordcount. The number of publishers asking for micros seems to grow every year. Most venues don’t pay for micro-stories, but Longleaf Review did, Mothers Always Write and All Guts No Glory did too, and Folded Word used to.

It’s hard to choose a favourite among my own micro-pieces—either the stories or the essays. I think the one that’s travelled the farthest is my speculative fiction about the inventor of the wheel, who watches his invention progressing down through the centuries. This story appeared first on 50-Word Fiction, then a second website, and finally someone requested to republish it in Arabic.

Or maybe it’s not finally. Maybe it’s still got places to go, people to meet. The best thing about stories is that sometimes they just keep going.

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Fiona M. Jones’s poem “Oak Tree” can be found in TFF #55.