Thursday 24 May 2012

The Winner! (and ... The Winner!)

Hooray! The first winner is Sally Jenkins, who added comment number 11 (not counting mine or Nik's) on my competition post and was duly selected by the random number generator at Random.org.

Congratulations, Sally! Your copy of Nik Perring's Not So Perfect awaits. Once I have your address I will get the book sent out to you straight away. I've tried to contact you via your blog but it's not working for some reason. Please get in touch via danpurdue1 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thank you to everybody who took part in this and commiserations to those who didn't win. Better luck next time!

The other winner is ... me! Yes, I was very pleased to discover on Monday that I'd won Mark Billingham's Twitter Crime-Writing Competition. He ran it to promote his forthcoming novel, Rush of Blood, which will be released on 2nd August 2012, and it attracted a lot of entries. It was quite a challenge to pack a short story into a single tweet (140 characters, minus the hashtag #rushofblood).Most entrants described a murder - either the run-up or aftermath, or the deed itself - often in grisly detail, so I aimed to do something different. I tried a jokey entry first, then a day or two later found an image I really liked and (eventually) managed to get it to fit the strict character limit. I think it works because as well as a strong central image there are also a couple of implied layers to it. See what you think, HERE.

Mark picked that one as the winner, and my prize is an advance copy of Rush of Blood, which I'm very excited about. Intrigued by the blurb, I bought Mark's compelling first book, Sleepy Head, when it came out in paperback, and have been following DI Thorne ever since. I even got congratulated by another top crime writer, Val McDermid, who "threatened" to steal my idea - giving a wonderfully surreal slant to my morning.

I must say I like this competition business, as it seems to encourage good karma. Last time around, I gave away Amazon vouchers and won the same value in book tokens. This week I gave away a book and won a different book. Hmm...

My next competition will probably be a chance to win my car.

1 comment:

BettyMcFab said...

Brilliant stuff! Hope your car is a fancy one.