Registration for the TL;DR Press 2K TERRORS short story Competition is now open!
Sign up through Eventbrite to participate in this week-long short story competition, with $150 top prize and a total prize pool worth $650 for the top 25 placing stories!
Register Here
Registration costs £12 or $15 USD to register + tax/fees.
Each entrant will receive 2 individual prompts at the beginning of the competition: A character and an object/situation. Each entrant must create a 2,000-word original short story horror story by the end of the competition and submit.
We are proud to offer each entrant guaranteed feedback on their story from their assigned judges. Offering writers a chance for feedback is one of the Press’ core missions, along with our philanthropic mission to create anthologies to benefit charities. This means we have to limit the spots available, so only 300 spots are available. First come, first served!
The top 25 spookiest, scariest stories will also be included in an e-book/physical collection, the proceeds of which will be donated to Scares That Care, an IRS approved, 501(c)(3) charity. Founded in 2006, “Scares That Care!” to date has raised and donated over $300,000 to organizations and families with a child affected by illness, burns or women fighting breast cancer.
Registration will close at 23:59 pm (UK), 9th November and the competition will begin at 00.01 on Sunday 17th November and will end at 23.59 Saturday, 23 November (UK)
You can find all of our rules and regulations on our website here. https://tldrpress.org/2k-terrors-rules/
Get to know the Judges!
Alex Laurel-Lanz
Alex Laurel Lanz is an author and artist living in the bay area, California. Their work can be found in Tales to Terrify, Scare Street and Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic (published by Cosmic Horror Monthly). When not writing, they are scrounging through train tracks and abandoned sewers with their partner and their dog named Pigeon. You can also track them down on most social media platforms such as Twitter and BlueSky at @alexlaurellanz.
Callum Rowland
Callum is a fiction writer, and co-founder of TL;DR Press. He writes across all genres; though science fiction, fantasy, and horror are closest to his heart. His short stories have featured in various magazines, anthologies, and zines, including Daily Science Fiction, Fictive Dream, and Bandit Fiction.
He is Director of Charity for TL;DR Press, and has also worked as either a curator or editor on a number of TL;DR releases, most recently as a curator on Growth.
It is also his third year as one of the judges and is often most impressed by stories that found unexpected and inventive ways to utilise the prompts.
Joe Butler
Joe lives and works in London, but dreams of living and working elsewhere. He is the author of two sci fi novels, Of All Possibilities and Strange Days in the House of August. His writing has been featured in Hexagon, Haunted Words, Story Bits, Bandit Fiction, New Orbit, Ghost Orchid, Second Chance Lit, and the Found anthology edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull. He can be found on twitter at @writelikeashark and on his website www.writelikeashark.com
He is one of the co-founders of TL;DR Press, and has been involved in all of the collections the press has published as either a curator or an editor as well as the marketing manager and cover artist for eight of the ten currently released collections. He was also one of the judges for the previous 1KWHC competitions, and loves reading stories where the prompts are used in ways you might not expect.
Penfold
Penfold is a writer, software security engineer, and semicolon enthusiast. He is a founding member of TL;DR Press and has served as curator and editor on various anthologies, as well as judge in the previous 1KWHC contests. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife, two kids, and a number of cats as ever-changing as the sea. He is currently writing a collection of stories about the slow-burning insanity of raising an international family in the lawless, feral suburbs of the midwest. His stories have appeared in previous TL;DR Press anthologies, and he can be found and interrogated at www.justpenfold.com or on Twitter at @justpenfold.
Jenna Harvie
Jenna Harvie is a writer, painter, and photographer from Atlantic Canada. She spends her days writing and editing technical documents for a cybersecurity company and her evenings working on her own fiction, editing, and reading anything she can get her hands on. Jenna is currently editing her first horror novel, writing a few more, and she always has a short story or two on the go. Jenna has been editing for TL;DR Press for three years and has worked on five publications. And when that’s not enough, she paints landscapes and abstractions and photographs the beautiful landscape around Nova Scotia.
Visit Jenna’s art gallery online at https://jennaharvie.com/ or find her on Instagram and Twitter with the handle @jennaharvie.
Hannah Hulbert
Hannah Hulbert is a full-time mum and part-time writer from the south coast of England. She enjoys looking for mushrooms, doing crafts, and drinking tea, especially when she is supposed to be writing.
You can find her stories in Metamorphosis, Hexagon and the anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, among others. Her story ‘Ruler of Waves, God of Trees’ from Growth (TL;DR Press, 2021), received a Pushcart nomination.
You can find her via her website, https://hannahhulbert.wordpress.com/
The Charity!
For the 2K TERRORS competition, we have again partnered with Scares That Care! Scares That Care
Here they are in their own words:
Scares That Care! is an all volunteer charity. Net proceeds from all organization events are provided to the recipients selected.
“Scares That Care!” Inc., is an IRS approved, 501(c)(3) charity. Founded in 2006, “Scares That Care!” to date has raised and donated over $300,000 to organizations and families with a child affected by illness, burns or women fighting breast cancer.
Each of these families receive $10,000 from events and direct donations.
“Scares That Care!” is also proud of the fact that we are an all volunteer organization, with no salaries or paychecks issued to any staff member involved with the charity.
So, what are you waiting for? There are only 300 slots open, and we can’t wait to see what horrors you guys can conjure up from the deep!