EXCITEMENT is building as this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival approaches.
With its popularity growing every year, organisers are now offering a chance to win a full weekend pass to the 2009 festival with the new 10-word crime story competition.
The prize includes accommodation for the weekend, as well as all books from this year’s longlist for crime novel of the year and a crate of Theakstons Old Peculier.

The new competition also marks the National Year of Reading, launched by Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, and will have a separate category for under 18s, who can win books from Random House.
Best-selling author Simon Kernick, who will be programming chairman of this year’s festival and launched the competition, said:

“We are looking for all kinds of story, funny, peculiar or evocative, it just has to involve crime! I had great fun writing mine and hope everyone else has as much fun with theirs! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the 2008 National Year of Reading and can’t wait to read the entries.”

The title is not included in the word count and the story can take any crime-related theme.
To inspire entrants, some of the authors taking part in this year’s crime festival have been trying their hand at their own 10-word crime stories:

Stuart MacBride - The Cold Embrace
The dead never leave you. That's why I love them...

Simon Kernick - Dark House
Picked off one by one. Four… Three… Two… It’s You!

Simon Beckett - The Case of the Killer Cliché
"Good grief!" exclaimed Bertie. "The butler really did do it!"

Jill Paton Walsh - Susannah and the Elders
Daniel asked: under what tree? Oak? Mastic? Disagreement. Girl Innocent.

Meanwhile, the short crime story competition is in full flow as ambitious writers attempt to pen a 300-word thriller. There is just a week to go until the competition closes and stories must follow on from this sentence:

“Next to the body lay a bottle of Theakstons Old Peculier and an upturned book; it was a crime novel and the already lurid jacket was spattered with real blood.”

The prize for the winning story is a free ticket to Creative Thursday at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate, on July 17 from 9am to 5pm.
The closing date for entries is 5pm on Friday, June 13. The winner will be announced on Friday, June 27.

Send your short story competition entries to ackrill.news@ypn.co.uk with Crime Writing Competition as the title, or post to Crime Writing Competition, Ackrill Media Group, 1 Cardale Park, Beckwith Head Road, Harrogate, HG3 1RZ. Please include your full name, address and telephone number.
www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/crime