Entries for the ninth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest will be accepted beginning February 1, 2022 at 12:01 a.m. Eastern. Full guidelines at the link.
What We Want to See
Adventure fantasy with heroes you want to root for. Warriors either modern or medieval, who solve problems with their wits or with their weapons—and we have nothing against dragons, elves, dwarves, castles under siege, urban fantasy, damsels in distress, or damsels who inflict distress.
What We Don’t Want to See
Political drama with no action, angst-ridden teens pining over vampire lovers, religious allegory, novel segments, your gaming adventure transcript, anything set in any universe not your own, “it was all a dream” endings, or screenplays.
The contest closes for submissions April 30, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. The winners will be officially announced during the Baen Traveling Roadshow at Dragon Con, which is scheduled for September 1-5, 2022, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Each entry is limited to an original short story in the English language of no more than 8,000 words, and only one entry per author. Complete guidelines here. Entries will be judged by Baen editors
- The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at industry-standard rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive an engraved award and a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
- SECOND place winner will receive a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
- THIRD place winner will receive a prize package containing $300 of free Baen Books.
Finalists will be announced no later than July 1, 2022
Winners will be notified no later than July 21, 2022.
Since its beginning the contest has received thousands of entries of fantasy stories from all over the globe.
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Sadly tosses away the notes from my TRPG campaign featuring Leon Trotsky falling in love with Vampire Frida Khalo and living happily ever after in my dream universe. T’was not to be.
I suspect I won’t be entering either. I had hopes of writing a political and religious allegory with or without the dream. Of course, it would be in screenplay format.
My story of heroic elvish anarchists fighting landlords and the police, on the other hand, should be just fine.
Eh, I think my multiverse story featuring a plucky time-traveling woman and her husband trying to stop slavery and the Civil War might not be what they’re looking for, either. C’est la vie.
Are these collected into an anthology each year?
Rick Robinson: No, they’re not. They only buy the winner and post it on their website.
@ Joyce RW
I’d like to read that.
I think all of the above stories should be collected in an anthology.
I note that they didn’t forbid entries about zombies falling in love with castles under siege written in epic poetic form of strict iambic pentameter.
I think I have just the thing.
@Msb–thanks! The story should start going up on Kindle Vella in April, KU sometime in the summer, and wide in the fall. Into the Vortex is the title.
There’s a story about their son up on Vella right now, and I’ll be releasing it on Kindle Unlimited at the end of February, which means it’ll go wide in June. That one is called Bearing Witness, but it’s set after Vortex.
@Melanie Stormm
Readers of Girl Genius know that it is perfectly possible to fall in love with a castle, but that it may be unwise. For certain castles being a zombie would be an advantage since death is no longer an issue.
@Nancy Sauer I wasn’t aware! That’s good to know then that this particular story would be doing something kind of new.
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Adds “Girl Genius” to shopping cart.