“THE LIPPINCOTT DINNER” HAS NOW FINISHED!
You can download the finished collection of mystery stories here…
The Lippincott Dinner (PDF version)
The Lippincott Dinner (ePUB version)
You can also download the Scrivener (v3) project file which also contains the macOS compile formats used to create the book within the file as Project Formats.
A massive thank you to everyone who took part – it was awesome!
THE ORIGINAL POST AND INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW…
This March we’re hosting a different kind of writing event… again!
Last October we wrote a book of short stories together. It was awesome, and you wanted to do it again. So…
In the summer of 1889, JM Stoddart organised a dinner party in the Langham Hotel in London. His aim was to wine, dine and generally schmooze members of the London literary scene in the hope of securing submissions from this side of the Atlantic Ocean for his literary periodical, the Philadelphia-based Lippincott Monthly Magazine.
It was, by all accounts, a successful evening. Although Rudyard Kipling failed to show up, Arthur Conan Doyle described it as a “golden evening”, and was said to have been thrilled by fellow invitee Oscar Wilde’s effusive praise for one of his earlier works. Stoddart, too, left happy, having secured agreements from both authors to write stories for his magazine. Doyle decided to dust off and revisit a character he’d previously written a story about, and produced his second ever Sherlock Holmes story: The Sign of the Four. Wilde, for his contribution, produced his one and only novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray…
The Lippincott Dinner
Different from our usual NiaD approach, we’re running an event inspired by what may be the most successful dinner party in the history of literature (Rudyard Kipling did, it turns out, also submit a story to the magazine despite not getting to enjoy the Langham’s hospitality that evening).
Participants will submit an original short story which we’ll be publishing in a collection that will be released in the usual formats — ePub, PDF and, of course, as a Scrivener project.
You won’t be following a set brief (other than the genre – see below!), although we have pulled together a list of prompts and suggestions in the event Welcome Pack that you can use for idea generation if you wish… or ignore if you don’t!
What’s the genre?
It’s a mystery!! OoooOOOOooOOOHHH !?!?!?!?
No, seriously. It’s “mystery”. And to be clear — by “mystery”, we mean literally anything inspired by that prompt, be it funny, fearful, fantastic or felonious; terrifying, treacherous, touching or, erm… t-absurd. In other words, you can explore the full spectrum of the word “mystery”, and (like Oscar Wilde) by no means do you need to restrict yourself to detective fiction, or crime.
When is this taking place?
We are open for submissions NOW (opened Saturday 1st March), and the deadline for submissions is 11:59pm UK time on the evening of Sunday 23rd March. We’ll make a bit of a community event around the deadline weekend (22/23rd) in much the same way that we normally do on “NiaD Saturday”, whether you’re spending that weekend drafting, or just using it to give your story one last edit (although, feel free to submit any time before the deadline weekend and simply heckle!).
The completed collection will then be given a generous dose of Scrivener magic to create a lovely finished product that we’ll publish right here (in this very post) later that week.
How do I sign up?
The event is live, RIGHT NOW. You can start planning and writing immediately. All that we ask is that you sign up for a forum account (if you’re not already a member), and post here to let us know that you’re taking part so we can add your name to the list. And remember: the normal rules of NiaD plot secrecy don’t apply, so you’re encouraged to share how things are going and make a bit of a community around the event throughout the month!
Any other rules / guidelines?
You will retain all the copyright in your submission and are free to use it elsewhere as you see fit. By submitting you are confirming that you are the author of the work and hold the copyright and that you grant an irrevocable perpetual licence to Literature and Latte and Novel in a Day to include the work in the Villa Diodati publications.
The maximum word count is a generous 3,000 words. There is no minimum word count; if you can tell a unique and original mystery story in just a haiku — that’s absolutely fine by us!
More details on submission formats and where to send your finished piece are in the official event Welcome Pack linked here but basically you’ll be emailing your story to Pigfender (his email address is in the Welcome Pack, but not put here because that generates ridiculous amounts of spam) along with confirmation of your forum name.
AB17
ClaireWoodier
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