Three Things: The Salt Machine Edition

Happy Monday, dear writers! And welcome to the start of Worth Your Salt: A Fiction Contest!

Beginning today, you have until Friday, January 31st to submit your contest entry: up to 2,000 words of fiction based on one of three prompts (below), each an excerpt from Jeff Smieding’s serial ebook, And In Their Passing, A Darkness: The Salt Machine (Red Sofa Books).

Winning submissions (up to three) will be chosen by judges David Oppegaard (author of The Ragged Mountains), and Esther Porter (Revolver editor). Entry is free!

More contest information, and submission form can be found here.

This week, I’ve paired each contest prompt with a piece of art. Makes you wanna write, no?

One night, near the end of an unusually cool and cloudy summer, it was George’s turn to cry.

Andrew Wyeth, Airborne, 1996. Tempera on panel. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. 

She was tall and thin, with watery eyes and fishbelly white skin.

John Batho, effacés 06, 1998. Photograph. www.johnbatho.com

“Vera?” he called out again. All he could hear was the ratatatat of rain on the leaves and the ground.

Cole Rise, Iceland, 2012. Photograph. Via flickr.

Remember, up to 2,000 words of fiction, submitted before the end of Friday, January 31!