Let a Thousand Black Orchids Bloom

Can there ever be enough commendations for crime-fiction writing? Apparently not. As Sarah Weinman reports today:

Word comes over the transom that Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and The Wolfe Pack, the official Nero Wolfe society, will sponsor a new annual writing prize, the Black Orchid Novella Award. The contest will offer a prize of $1,000 and publication in AHMM. Submission guidelines are available here, and the deadline to submit an entry is May 31, 2007.

The contest will honor an unpublished work of mystery fiction written in the tradition of the Nero Wolfe mystery stories: this tradition emphasizes the deductive skills of the story’s sleuth and eschews overt sex and violence. The contest will not consider stories that use characters from Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories, which are protected by copyright. Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length. Submissions will be screened by members of The Wolfe Pack, and the winner will be selected by AHMM editor Linda Landrigan and announced at the Wolfe Pack Dinner in December 2007.

With no history of winners to review and learn from, prospective entrants to this novella competition might look to Mr. Wolfe himself for advice on what will best attract the judges. As he told his legman, Archie Goodwin, in In the Best Families (1950): “You are to act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence.”