AHMM Novella Contest

Word comes over the transom that _Alfred Hitchcock’s

Mystery Magazine_ and The Wolfe Pack, the official Nero Wolfe society,

will sponsor a new annual writing prize, the Black Orchid Novella Award. The contest will offer a prize

of $1,000 and publication in AHMM. Submission guidelines are available here, and the deadline to submit an entry is May 31, 2007.

The contest will honor an unpublished work of mystery fiction written in the tradition of the Nero Wolfe mystery stories: this tradition emphasizes the deductive skills of the story’s sleuth and eschews overt sex and violence. The contest will not consider stories that use characters from Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories, which are protected by copyright.  Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length. Submissions will be screened by members of The Wolfe Pack, and the winner will be selected by AHMM editor Linda Landrigan and announced at the Wolfe Pack Dinner in December 2007.