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Minkly Writing Contest 2026

Mystery or Thriller Writing Contest

Enter the Minkly Mystery or Thriller Writing Contest 2026! Compete for $3,000 in prizes. Submit your mystery or thriller story from March 1, 2026 to May 31, 2026.

March 1 - May 31, 2026
Winners announced July 2026

Daily Pick

New Arrivals

The Aberration
0
MATURE
Horror
Mystery
Paranormal

+7

As a young man struggling with motivation, Andrew Coffey took many things for granted until a fateful journey to find a supposed UFO in the Black Forest changed the course of his life forever. Having been robbed of his eyesight, he must adapt to his new circumstances while something cosmic awakens within him. Andrew must use his newfound gifts to find out what happened to his missing best friend while an ungodly creature that dwells within that same forest closes in on its next target... himself. Whatever is will be...

2 ch·3·0
Ongoing

Water Children
1
Water Children

Kappahater

MATURE
Post-Apocalyptic
Science Fiction / Sci-Fi
Action

Kai wakes up in the middle of the ocean. There’s no sky, no sun — just water, strange platforms, and the heavy sense that something went deeply wrong. However, he’s not alone. They don’t know why they’re here, but survival demands they find out fast. Among them, the Water Children thrive — survivors, fighters, wanderers — and Kai, whether he likes it or not, started walking a path that will drag him into the center of this place’s buried truths. Between collapsing cities with fake interiors, monstrous remnants of past wars, and strange figures who seem to know too much, Kai, forced, begins to unravel a world where even the ruins feel staged.

3 ch·29·2
Ongoing

Nocturnal
2
Nocturnal

Deadman

MATURE
Horror
Mystery
Psychological

+3

A message arrives in a group chat at nine forty-seven on a Tuesday night. Four words and a date. Three weeks away. Jessica, Grace, Gerald and Kate don't know each other well — just well enough. Their kids walk home together. That's all. But now someone called MM knows their names, knows their children, and wants them to know that a debt is owed. What starts as a mystery — who is MM, what does she want, how did she get in the chat — slowly becomes something else entirely. Something older. Something that has been sitting in a dark house at the end of a quiet street for a very long time, waiting for someone to come and find it.

15 ch·42·1
Complete

Fragments left behind
1
Psychological
Slice of Life
Psychological

+1

Arin is a normal school boy.Everyone loves him because he is funny and cracks jokes.They all love him and want to be near him.But there is a bitter truth.He is suffering from depression.The jokes were a way to cope with the situation.But everything changes when he has an accidents and loses his memory making everyone realize what he has been going through

1 ch·48·0
Complete

A Dream or Reality
5.0
2
A Dream or Reality

Phoenixfly_Steller

Mystery
Young Adult (YA)
Supernatural

+1

Crushed by exam anxiety, Atharv is pushed to his breaking point until a mysterious woman woven from glowing blue mist appears, silencing his panic. He passes the test, but his relief turns to obsession as she visits his nights, drawing him into a surreal world where hours stretch into days. When Atharv begins drifting from reality, the faceless entity delivers an ultimatum: she lives far away, and they can only connect if he thrives in his own world. Driven to find her, Atharv transforms into a massive success, conquering reality while remaining a citizen of the dream.

1 ch·61·1
Complete

At the Edge of the World
2
MATURE
Psychological
Thriller
Mystery

+1

Some postings are punishment. Some are traps. Mae Lilliana Crow is starting to think hers might be both. Twelve miles offshore, where the sea refuses to behave, Sable Firth Lighthouse has outlasted every keeper who ever tended it. When the last three of the assistant keepers just disappeared, in thin air, Mae Calloway is a classified field investigator running on four months of broken sleep and a grief she can't outrun, is sent to investigate the only keeper that has been there when the other keepers disappeared. Her director calls this a recovery assignment. The keeper is quiet, careful. He tends the light like a devotion and watches the sea like a confession he's still listening to. Mae is supposed to be observing him, but as days go by, she is finding it harder than it should be. And then there are the other things, the knocking beneath the foundation at three in the morning, the lighthouse logs with days that simply don't exist, the scratches on the walls in a script no one can read, and on certain nights, when the sea goes glassy and the moon is wrong, something on the horizon that isn't on any chart. Something is not right about this place. Something is not right about him. And something, the part of Mae that has never been wrong, is beginning to suspect that those two things are the same secret. ___ A gothic psychological thriller with a dark romance at its heart. For readers of Mexican Gothic, The Silent Patient and The Hunting Party.

2 ch·89·2
Ongoing