Aswiebe’s Market List announces the 2008 Spec the Halls contest, which will be open from 1 November to 18 December 2008. Spec the Hall is “a contest for speculative winter holiday-themed fiction, artwork, and poetry. The holiday may be fictional or real; it may be Christmas as we know and love it, or it may be something much stranger.”
Submissions must be posted somewhere on the web, and remain publicly accessible throughout the run of the contest. Fiction, poetry, art, and music are all acceptable, but there are some limits. “Fiction may be of any length, from short-short to novella, but if it runs past 10,000 words it better be pretty amazing. Artwork may be in any medium, so long as it fits the theme. The image size must be reasonable for online display, but no more than 1000 pixels wide and no more than 800 pixels high. Poetry may be in any style, from medieval traditional to free-form.”
First prize is $42, with an honorable mention of $5 also available. Full instructions, including how to submit links to posted entries, are available on this page.
In addition to the contest, host Abra Staffin Wiebe also provides a speculative fiction market list for writers (as a downloadable spreadsheet), as well as her own fiction and photography on her web site.