When you tell a story, you are the authority figure. It's your people, your prose, your pace and your plot. No one else will ever know this fictional world as well as you. And every sentence must reflect your mastery over the domain.

So sit up straight, stick out your chest and sweep timidity from your prose. These words are dead weight and make you sound unsure of your world.

DEADLINE: April 15, 2008!

When storytellers give us good guys, bad guys and at least one conflict, we’re happy. But when storytellers also give us a surprise—when they twist suspenseful plots like salt-water taffy—we hit our foreheads in awe. “Holy cow! I didn’t see that coming!”

It’s a thrill readers never outgrow.

So tilt your perspective, shake your plot and stretch your imagination. Give us a thriller that highlights your skill with the element of surprise.

Entry Fee: Zip

Prize: $100, publication in The VERB and a signed copy of Lee Child's thriller, Persuader

Complete details at the Contest Cafe.

  
   Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily Bart at once—he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come to his lips sooner—that he had let her pass from him the evening before without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.

   Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish—and that behind her, in an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.

   "Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get here so quickly?"—and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to close about his heart...

   In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her. Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.