Bloody Parchment

2012 Bloody Parchment anthology winner and finalists announced

2012-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

After having navigated chaos, sickness and a festive season’s madness, I’m pleased to announce that the Bloody Parchment judges have finished reading the stories entered into last year’s competition, and that we have the results. We received more entries this year than before, and it was difficult narrowing down the stories for the final selection that went through to the judges—who were then tasked with choosing the winners.

In first place, we have Christina Vincent (Inferna). Congratulations, Christina. You have won a comprehensive round of edits for a novel-length work. Our runners-up are Brett R Bruton (Hidden things, Lost Things) and Jenny Robson (Healing Hands), who have each won an assessment of their first chapter of a novel or a short story.

Our other finalists are Mico Pisanti (Fluoride in the Water), Lee Mather (Masks), Stacey Larner (Duck Creek Road), Toby Bennett (A Few Withered Leaves), SL Schmitz (The Woman Who Sold the World), Benjamin Knox (Wither), Austin Malone (Excerpt for Bryan) and Joan De La Haye (Death Express).

We will now be entering the editing process with the aim of bringing out the anthology in a few months’ time (barring chaos). Release date to be announced!

Then, a big thank you to the Bloody Parchment judges, who contributed their time and expertise. This year the likes of Cat Hellisen (author, When the Sea is Rising Red), Joe Vaz (editor, Something Wicked magazine), Shaun Swingler (editor, Jungle Jim magazine), Sarah Lotz (author, The Mall – one half of SL Grey) and Carrie Clevenger (author, Crooked Fang) cast their beady eyes over the entrants.

Once again, I must thank Paul Blom and Sonja Ruppersberg-Blom, the organisers of the SA HorrorFest, for all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the fest. The SA HorrorFest is the only horror-focused event of its kind in South Africa, and each year it grows in scope, offering a variety of films, music, literature and more.

Bloody Parchment entries closed.

2011-11-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

And... Entries for this year's short fiction competition are closed. I'll be processing the stragglers next then spend November grading the stories. Our judges will receive the semi-finalists by the start of December. Once again, I'm overwhelmed by the range of authors who submitted. The judges are going to have their work cut out for them. It's not going to be easy to pick the winner this year.

Further to this, if you missed the actual Bloody Parchment event, you can read more about our evening of terror and thrills here.

Bloody Parchment event a roaring success

2011-10-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, that was the third annual Bloody Parchment event done and dusted. First off, I'd like to thank the Book Lounge, without whom we would not have the very atmospheric "basement" setting for the festivities. Then, of course, there's the SA HorrorFest organisers, Paul and Sonja, who are probably the most incredibly busy and creative couple I know. If you're in Cape Town and you love the horror genre in all its forms, then you're in for a treat this year. Thank you!

A big thanks to this year's authors and panel members. Our readers were Brett Bruton, SA Partridge, Maya Teresa Fowler, Carine Engelbrecht, Sarah Lotz and Lauren Beukes. You guys brought us a diverse offering.

This year we changed the evening slightly by adding a panel discussion so our audience could ask questions of some of the leading names of genre in Cape Town. Thank you to Joe Vaz (Something Wicked magazine), Ronnie Belcher and Thomas Dorman (BlackMilk Productions), Sarah Lotz and Lauren Beukes for sharing some of their fears with us.

Then a very, very special thanks goes to three of my friends: Cat, Marie and Andrew. You helped me prepare all the yummy snacks and distracted me from my impending doom of MCing the event.

So, folks, the next part of Bloody Parchment--the second anthology--is underway. There is still time to enter (closing date October 31) so go check out the submission guidelines here. If you want to see what last year's anthology looks like, stop by Goodreads. If you're in an absolute bind and you ABSOLUTELY MUST have an extra day or so to polish, please get hold of me to discuss a deadline extension. I don't have a lot of leeway but we can come to some sort of an arrangement. I don't bite. Much.

I've already received a lovely range of entries for this year. I'll be spending November reading them and the judges will receive their selection by the start of December. If all goes according to plan, we'll have our winners announced by mid-December (barring chaos).

Bloody Parchment event, 2011

2011-10-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

It’s October, which means it’s time to carve your pumpkins and stock up on sweet treats for Halloween. The South African HORRORFEST’s BLOODY PARCHMENT literary chapter will open the 7th annual instalment of Cape Town’s ultimate Halloween festival on October 26.

It will once again take place at the Book Lounge – 71 Roeland Street, 5.30pm for 6pm. Dress up as your favourite ghoul, witch, wizard or monster and join us for a literary evening of chills and shivers as local authors such as Lauren Beukes, Sarah Lotz, SA Partridge, Carine Engelbrecht and Brett Bruton, share dark, macabre or downright spooky tales. In addition we also bring together the masterminds of local horror in a panel, so here’s your chance to hear what they have to say about what special brand of terror South Africans are bound to unleash in print and film. As if this isn’t enough incentive to attend, prizes will be awarded to the best costumes (including Penguin books and Phantom Sambuca).

The film chapter of the HORRORFEST and alternative market will be hosted at The Labia Theatre (Orange Street, Gardens). See www.HORRORFEST.com

For further enquiries, email nerinedorman@gmail.com or call 082 958 3631. Visit Bloody Parchment at: www.shadowrealminc.com/bloodyparchment

Free download of the first Bloody Parchment short story anthology at: www.goodreads.com/book/show/11973202-bloody-parchment-volume-1

RSVP with the Book Lounge on 021 462 2425.

Read more about short story competition here.

Bloody Parchment anthology volume 1

2011-07-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

The Bloody Parchment team is proud to announce the release of Bloody Parchment volume 1, which is available as a free electronic download.

If you missed the boat with regard to entering last year's short story competition, don't fear, as the entries for this year's Bloody Parchment short story competition are open.

The first prize includes one round of professional editing of a novella or novel-length work. Bloody Parchment will publish an anthology of the top 13 finalists, to be released in anticipation of the 2012 SA HORRORFEST.

Submission guidelines:

Email your entries to nerinedorman@gmail.com as attached .rtf or .doc files and place : “Submission: Bloody Parchment 2011 – [insert author name]” in the subject line. Standard manuscript format applies (Times New Roman, 12pt font; indented paragraphs; double spacing). Please include your contact details (full name, pen name, email address and telephone number if South African resident). This competition is open to South African and international entrants.

Please be a darling and read our rules and regulations for the finer details. The competition is open until October 31, 2011. Winners will be notified by e-mail, and announced on the HORRORFEST websites:

http://www.horrorfest.info/

http://www.shadowrealminc.com/

Submission guidelines:

Impress us. We do not claim to know what makes the perfect story, but as we are the judges and we get to choose the winner, it's only fair that we give some idea what we are looking for. In short, we are going to give the prize to the story that impresses us most and irritates us least. We don't think we're particularly irritable but with a stack of submissions to narrow down to a few winners, any small thing is likely to condemn a story to the larger pile. It's much easier to describe what will irritate us than what will impress us, so we've done that below.

Genre. As this is part of the SA HORRORFEST, we are looking for stories of horror or dark fantasy. We are not going to be prescriptive about what that means as our definitions are fairly broad. A horror story need not contain a supernatural element, nor must a dark fantasy story give us nightmares. All we really ask for is the sense that the story belongs on the dark side.

Having said that, simply inserting an element associated with the darker genres will not be enough. A romance story about a tall, dark handsome vampire is still a romance story. A crime story about a demonic detective is still a crime story. Which leads on to the list of things that will irritate us.

Things guaranteed to count against you...

Bad usage. We are not going to throw your story out for one spelling mistake but we are all in love with the English language and we don't like to see her abused. Besides, repeated mis-spellings and grammatical errors are guaranteed to irritate.

Fanfiction. Any characters or settings still under copyright are likely to get us sued if we publish them. The idea of being sued irritates us so much that if we're in any doubt, we're not going to touch it even if the story is brilliant. As a general guide, anything published by Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/) is in the public domain.

Bigotry. Your characters may be as bigoted as you like but we're all pale-livered liberals and will be irritated by the sense that a story is derogatory toward any particular group of human beings. We don't mind stories derogatory toward imaginary beings.

Derivative stories. Between us, we've read quite a few books and seen quite a few films, and if any of us think a story is a rehash of one of them with slightly different characters, we are likely to be irritated. That's not to say that a story can't share ideas with other stories or films, and in fact it's practically impossible not to, but retellings nearly always have the sense of being second rate.

Twilight knock-offs. Need we say more?

Things that may irritate us if not handled carefully.

Gratuitous sex. There's nothing wrong with a bit of sex in a story, but the competition is part of the Horrorfest, not the Sexpo, and we are not looking for erotica.

Gratuitous violence. As with sex, violence may be an essential part of the story and we enjoy a good punch-up as much as the next reader, but pornographic descriptions of violence get boring very quickly.

Excessive gore. We are not particularly squeamish and we are asking for horror stories, but gore is another element that gets boring when overdone.

Exposition. There are probably things that we need to know in order to care about the characters and understand the setting, but conveying information is a way that makes us feel we are being given an orientation briefing by the author is not conducive to a good narrative.

Tropes such as vampires, werewolves, serial killers, etc. These are staples of horror and dark fiction and we believe they have a lot of life in them yet. However, the fact of their being tropes also means that a lot has been done with them so a story that uses them will need to do something new.

Trying to shock us. We believe we are immune to being shocked. It may be interesting to be proved wrong, but depending on shock value to the exclusion of narrative and characters will not give us the impression that we are reading a good story.

* * * *

Rules and regulations:

1. The entrant confirms that s/he is the original author of the work and has full copyright of the submitted work and that it is not subject any publication restrictions as a result of prior obligations (including, but not limited to previous publication) or disputes.

2. The entrant confirms that the work s/he submitted does not violate the trademarks, copyright, and/or rights of others and that any liability that may arise from their work will be solely theirs.

3. The entrant accepts that by entering this contest no obligation (direct or implied) exists for the submitted work to be published and/or any compensation accruing to the entrant.

4. The entrant will retain copyright of the submitted work. In the event that the work should be selected as a finalist in the contest, the entrant agrees upon submission that the contest organisers may publish in hardcover and electronic format an anthology containing their work (properly attributed to the author).

5. The entrant accepts without reservation that the decision of the contest judges are final and that no further correspondence will be entered into.

6. The contest is open for submissions from midnight on (July 7, 2011) until midnight on (October 31, 2011).

7. The contest is for short original fictional work written in UK or SA English within the theme of Halloween, horror, urban fantasy or dark fantasy. No fan fiction will be accepted. Work that is not narrative-driven and/or containing explicit and gratuitous violence, sex or any form of bigotry will be rejected.

8. The submitted work must not exceed (3 500) words in length and must be a complete work, not an extract from a longer piece.

9. A submission must be in the following format (or it will be rejected without correspondence to the entrant): an email attachment, saved as a rich text file (.rtf), only the title (without the author’s name, which will be recorded according to rule 10 below) and the text, no images or graphics, Times New Roman, 12pt font, double line-spacing, with page numbers in the right bottom corner of each page. The author's name should not appear in the attachment since the judging process relies on the majority of the judges not being aware of the author’s identity—those works that are selected as finalists will be reunited with the correct author name before the finalists are announced.

10. Submissions must be sent to the following address only: nerinedorman@gmail.com with the subject line: “Submission: Bloody Parchment 2011 – [insert author name]”.

11. The entrant accepts that once a work has been submitted it cannot be updated/edited in any way whatsoever by the entrant, other than changes that may be recommended by the judges of the contest. Resubmissions of works already submitted will be ignored.

12. The entrant undertakes not to withdraw a work once it has been selected as a finalist (barring cases where the contest organisers become aware of a violation of these rules or any other serious transgression involving the submitted work).

13. The contest organisers do not have the administrative capacity to enter into correspondence with entrants and will not confirm receipt of entries; entrants are advised to utilise the “request delivery receipt” function available with many email applications.

14. The entrant acknowledges that any violation of the letter or spirit of the above contest rules will lead to the immediate disqualification of his/her submission.

2011-01-31T03:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

The favourite dark tales entered into the South African HORRORFEST's first Bloody Parchment short story competition have been selected. The top 3 will appear on www.SomethingWicked.co.za, and we'll be in contact about compiling the Top 9 as an electronic anthology soon.

Thanks you so much to everyone sending in their stories. We foresee this to become a notable platform for dark/horror/fantasy writers.

The 2010 Bloody Parchment top 5 choices include :

1st choice: New Lease On Life by Liam Kruger
Tied at 2nd: The Depths by Carol Hone, and Strange Fruit by Rachel Green
3rd choice: Apartment 415 by SA Partridge
4th choice: 1301 by Chris Miller

Further commendable stories (in no particular order) include:
Clear Black Glass by Carine Engelbrecht
Regrets, Sunday Afternoon by Rachel Green
Burden In My Hand by Damon Yeld
The Night Walkers by Wendy Cockcroft

This notification is also posted at: http://www.SHADOWREALMinc.com/bloodyparchment

Feel free to spread the news far & wide.

We're looking forward to reading the 2011 entries! (submissions will be open in August – see website for details http://www.SHADOWREALMinc.com/bloodyparchment
or
http://www.bloodyparchment.blogspot.com/2010/05/bloody-parchment-short-story.html )

We have our finalists!

2010-12-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

Amid the year-end chaos I'm happy to announce that the finalists for the short story competition have been selected and mailed to the judges. We'll keep you up to speed with results but for now, the task remains to notify those who'll be going through to the next round, and notifying those who didn't quite make the grade.

There is often a misconception that writing a short story is easy because, well, it's so short. Nothing could be further from the truth. A short story is tricky precisely because you've got fewer words. It needs to grab readers' attention, drag them along for a ride and engage them, then twist the knife with a snappy denouement, all within the space of a few hundred or thousand words.

One must be adept at showing without losing readers with needless exposition. Apart from being conservative in word choice, a clear direction must be cut and considerations taken for the impact each paragraph delivers. Are transitions smooth? Are characteres well developed? Is dialogue succinct? Is the author building suitable tension?

Anyhow, watch this space for further news. We're working hard to put together this collection and hope to offer you a selection of tales that will communicate some of the strangeness and darkness that lurks in the recesses of authors' imaginations.

Currently reading submissions

2010-11-18T23:46:00.000-08:00

Just dropping a note to offer my apologies for not having gotten round to sorting the submissions sooner, but I'm only now sifting through the entries for the short story competition. I really did mean to get to it sooner but unfortunately a very close friend of mine passed away recently, so it's been a bit rough, especially since the MacJob has also been demanding of my time. I'll probably need another week or two after vetting entries before I mail the judges, but we're working on it.

Any questions, please feel free to email me at nerinedorman@gmail.com. Please put "Query: Bloody Parchment" in the subject line.

Bloody Parchment at The Book Lounge

2010-09-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

The South African HORRORFEST proudly brings you the second annual BLOODY PARCHMENT event, set to take place at THE BOOK LOUNGE on Wednesday, October 27, from 6pm to 8.30pm at 71 Roeland Street. Hear some of Cape Town’s best authors share their snippets of horror and dress up as your favourite creature, spook, witch or wizard to celebrate Halloween, with prizes for the best dressed.

RSVP at booklounge@gmail.com

For further information about the event, email nerinedorman@gmail.com or visit http://bloodyparchment.blogspot.com/ (Bloody Parchment blog) or see http://www.horrorfest.info/ (Official S.A. HORRORFEST site).

Bloody Parchment: short story competition

2010-05-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

BLOODY PARCHMENT, under the auspices of the South African HORRORFEST, would like to invite all published and unpublished writers of dark fantasy and horror fiction to submit their short fiction (no more than 3 500 words), flash fiction (no more than 1 000 words) and drabbles (no more than 100) words, within the horror and dark fantasy genres, as part of this year’s SA HORRORFEST.

The first prize includes one round of professional editing of a novella or novel-length work, with prize-hampers for best runners-up in the short story, flash or drabble categories. Bloody Parchment will publish an anthology of the top 13 finalists, to be released in anticipation of the 2011 SA HORRORFEST.

Submission guidelines:
Email your entries to nerinedorman@gmail.com as attached .rtf or .doc files and place : “Submission: Bloody Parchment 2010 – [insert author name]” in the subject line. Standard manuscript format applies (Times New Roman, 12pt font; indented paragraphs; double spacing). Please include your contact details (full name, pen name, email address and telephone number if South African resident). This competition is open to South African and international entrants.

Please be a darling and read our rules and regulations for the finer details. The competition is open until August 31, 2010. Winners will be notified by e-mail, and announced on the HORRORFEST websites:
http://www.horrorfest.info/
http://www.shadowrealminc.com/

Submission guidelines:

Impress us. We do not claim to know what makes the perfect story, but as we are the judges and we get to choose the winner, it's only fair that we give some idea what we are looking for. In short, we are going to give the prize to the story that impresses us most and irritates us least. We don't think we're particularly irritable but with a stack of submissions to narrow down to a few winners, any small thing is likely to condemn a story to the larger pile. It's much easier to describe what will irritate us than what will impress us, so we've done that below.

More importantly, what will impress us is a narrative-based story with strong characters and an interesting plot. We know that's what everyone says and that desspite the huge amount that has been written on the subject, it still defies definition. We're not going to try to define it here because we're looking forward to reading entries that show us what it means. If you're looking for a concise description no more than a click away, we recommend http://www.internet-resources.com/stash/weirdtales-1.html

Genre. As this is part of the SA HORRORFEST, we are looking for stories of horror or dark fantasy. We are not going to be prescriptive about what that means as our definitions are fairly broad. A horror story need not contain a supernatural element, nor must a dark fantasy story give us nightmares. All we really ask for is the sense that the story belongs on the dark side.
Having said that, simply inserting an element associated with the darker genres will not be enough. A romance story about a tall, dark handsome vampire is still a romance story. A crime story about a demonic detective is still a crime story. Which leads on to the list of things that will irritate us.

Things guaranteed to count against you...

Bad usage. We are not going to throw your story out for one spelling mistake but we are all in love with the English language and we don't like to see her abused. Besides, repeated mis-spellings and grammatical errors are guaranteed to irritate.

Fanfiction. Any characters or settings still under copyright are likely to get us sued if we publish them. The idea of being sued irritates us so much that if we're in any doubt, we're not going to touch it even if the story is brilliant. As a general guide, anything published by Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/) is in the public domain.

Bigotry. Your characters may be as bigoted as you like but we're all pale-livered liberals and will be irritated by the sense that a story is derogatory toward any particular group of human beings. We don't mind stories derogatory toward imaginary beings.

Derivative stories. Between us, we've read quite a few books and seen quite a few films, and if any of us think a story is a rehash of one of them with slightly different characters, we are likely to be irritated. That's not to say that a story can't share ideas with other stories or films, and in fact it's practically impossible not to, but retellings nearly always have the sense of being second rate.

Twilight knock-offs. Need we say more?

Things that may irritate us if not handled carefully.
Gratuitous sex. There's nothing wrong with a bit of sex in a story, but the competition is part of the Horrorfest, not the Sexpo, and we are not looking for erotica.

Gratuitous violence. As with sex, violence may be an essential part of the story and we enjoy a good punch-up as much as the next reader, but pornographic descriptions of violence get boring very quickly.

Excessive gore. We are not particularly squeamish and we are asking for horror stories, but gore is another element that gets boring when overdone.

Exposition. There are probably things that we need to know in order to care about the characters and understand the setting, but conveying information is a way that makes us feel we are being given an orientation briefing by the author is not conducive to a good narrative.

Tropes such as vampires, werewolves, serial killers, etc. These are staples of horror and dark fiction and we believe they have a lot of life in them yet. However, the fact of their being tropes also means that a lot has been done with them so a story that uses them will need to do something new.

Trying to shock us. We believe we are immune to being shocked. It may be interesting to be proved wrong, but depending on shock value to the exclusion of narrative and characters will not give us the impression that we are reading a good story.

* * * *

Rules and regulations:
1. The entrant confirms that s/he is the original author of the work and has full copyright of the submitted work and that it is not subject any publication restrictions as a result of prior obligations (including, but not limited to previous publication) or disputes.

2. The entrant confirms that the work s/he submitted does not violate the trademarks, copyright, and/or rights of others and that any liability that may arise from their work will be solely theirs.

3. The entrant accepts that by entering this contest no obligation (direct or implied) exists for the submitted work to be published and/or any compensation accruing to the entrant.

5. The entrant accepts without reservation that the decision of the contest judges are final and that no further correspondence will be entered into.

6. The contest is open for submissions from midnight on (June 1, 2010) until midnight on (August 31, 2010).

8. The submitted work must not exceed (3 500) words in length and must be a complete work, not an extract from a longer piece.

10. Submissions must be sent to the following address only: nerinedorman@gmail.com with the subject line: “Submission: Bloody Parchment 2010 – [insert author name]”.

14. The entrant acknowledges that any violation of the letter or spirit of the above contest rules will lead to the immediate disqualification of his/her submission.