Yo! Writers! Contests Galore!

I was just going to ramble a bit about certain contests I keep coming across, but decided that was WAY too much work on my end. So I'm doing the whole copy/paste thing from their blogs. First up...
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The ladies at Shooting Stars are holding a contest. All you have to do is leave a comment on their blog, become a follower, or talk about this contest to enter.

The Prizes:

Two query critiques
Two first five page critiques
A signed copy of The Dark Divine by Bree Despain.

Update! Those wonderful gals decided to throw in TWO more critiques as prizes. Whoo-hoo!
But wait . . . there's more!

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This is from the blog, Wordplay, Swordplay, The Magic of Writing: For the Love of Books! She is hosting this contest.

The Rules:

Like any good contest, you must be a follower in order to win.

You must comment on this post.

In that comment, you need to give me your favorite piece of writerly advice and your favorite resource for writing, whether that be a book or a website. Hey, I'm just starting out and I need to learn more! ;)
That's it! Easy, right?

So onto the fun! First prize is a $25 gift certificate at amazon.com! For the love of books! Second prize is a random assortment of books I have in the house. Okay, honesty time. James and I bought each other duplicate copies of some books (we obviously need to coordinate better) so our loss is your gain. It doesn't get better than that!

The books are: Jim Butcher's Captain's Fury and books 1 and 2 of Michael Buckley's The Sisters Grimm series.

And there's one more contest (that I know of)...
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Welcome to the 12th Clarity of Night Contest!! Before the post-holiday doldrums gain a foothold, let's get a little juiced up, shall we?

Here's how the contest works. Using the photograph above for inspiration, compose a short fiction (or poetry) piece of no more than 250 words in any genre or style. Send your entry to me by email at jevanswriter at yahoo dot com before 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 13th (Eastern Time, United States). I'd prefer attachments formatted in Microsoft Word (please see the format request below), but if you have something more exotic, you can paste the text into the body of an email (no docx formats, please). Each entry will be posted and indexed.

Now for the goodies. The following prizes are up for grabs:

1st Place: $50 Amazon gift certificate
2nd Place: $30 Amazon gift certificate
3rd Place: $25 Amazon gift certificate
4th Place: $20 Amazon gift certificate
5th Place: $15 Amazon gift certificate
Readers' Choice Award 1st Place: $25 Amazon Gift certificate

But this is about more than prizes. I hope you take advantage of the opportunity to meet and interact with your fellow writers. Our different perspectives, styles, and skills shine when we all start at the same place. It's a great opportunity to learn from each other.

Rules:

250 words maximum.

Titles are optional, but encouraged. Titles do not count toward your word count.

One entry per person.

Any genre or style is welcome. If you choose to submit poetry, you must have narrative movement within the poem if you wish to compete with the prose pieces for the prizes.

The copyright remains with you, the author; however, you grant me worldwide first electronic publishing rights to post your entry on this blog indefinitely.

Judging will be conducted by me, Jason Evans. For an explanation of the judging criteria and scoring system, see A Note on Judging. You can also read the winning entries from past contests.

Please provide a name for your byline. If you have a website or a blog, I'd be happy to link your site to your byline. If you don't have a website or blog, feel free to include a short bio. A bio does not count towards your word count.

At the close of the contest, I will give the date and time for the announcement of winners.

After the winners are announced, I will post what I liked most about each entry in the comments.

The Readers' Choice Award is awarded by vote of the contest participants. The entry with the highest number of votes wins. The rules for this portion of the contest will be posted after the entry period closes.

Public critiques in comments are encouraged, but must remain respectful. I reserve the right to delete comments and ban participants who do not abide by the collegial spirit of Clarity of Night contests.

Visit Jason's site for additional information on how to submit.