The First BeaconLit 500-word Competition Longlist

Following the results announcement of the final month’s entries, we are now in a position to share the longlist of 34 stories (in alphabetical order):

• A Dish Served Cold (October)
• Alive Again (November)
• A Pilgrimage (November)
• April’s Fool (April)
• Autumn Fair (September)
• Back to School (September)
• Black Friday (November)
• Changing the Clocks (October)
• Christmas is Coming (October)
• Dents de Lion (April)
• Edgar’s Last Stand (August)
• Festive Fayre (December)
• Gone but not forgotten (April)
• Happy New Year (January)
• Knickerbocker Holiday (July)
• Letter Home December 1915 (December)
• Love your Fete (May)
• Making Mother’s Day (March)
• ‘Mayday, Mayday’ (May)
• New Starters (January)
• New Year New Start (January)
• No Running! (February)
• Partition (August)
• Seek and Ye Shall Find (September)
• Spring Surveillance (March)
• Summer Escape (August)
• The Air That I Breathed (November)
• The Keeper of Time (March)
• The Wisdom of Scarecrows (May)
• War of the Roses (February)
• When Rambo Met Mitzy (February)
• Wishful Thinking (December)
• Wrongful Retribution (July)
• Zapped (July)

Congratulations to those authors and commiserations to those not making this list. The standard was incredibly high so don’t let this put you off from entering (with different stories) again, and just as importantly sending your original submissions elsewhere.

These stories will now go through to the final judging and the top ten prize-winning authors (not necessarily the same as the top ten stories as no author can win more than one prize) will be announced at the 2018 BeaconLit literary festival on Saturday 14th July.

The second BeaconLit 500-word competition will open on 1st August with specific rather than month-themed topics. As Morgen says, do try to make your stories as close to the theme as possible, so written around the theme rather than the topic slotted in as an afterthought. Even if it isn’t, you don’t want it to come across as such.