Take our MINI Mysteries CHALLENGE!

It's challenging to write a mystery, but doing so well in less than 100 words is nearly impossible.

Write a mystery story in 100-words or less or a poem in less than 20 lines, and submit it to our Mini Mysteries Challenge by emailing it during the month of November to choeofpleirnpress@gmail.com along with a 100-word bio. Stories and poems sent during any other month, unless it is for a different contest being held that month, will be disqualified.

Eight stories and/or poems will be chosen as winners, two each week for the month of December. 

If your story or poem is chosen, it will be turned into a story-meme or poem-meme and shared on Facebook, so that everyone can share your brilliance with their pals online.

See our sample Mystery story-memes and the winning story-memes below.

Below are the winning story-memes for 2025. Posted every Friday during the month of December.

About the Authors

Colleen Addison completed a PhD in health information and then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes, and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver Canada where there are ravens, squirrels, skunks, and lots of deer to keep her company. Her work, not always about such natural beings, has been featured in Painted Pebble Lit Mag, River Teeth, and Flash Fiction Friday, among others, and she is a recent winner of Third Wednesday’s George Dila Memorial Fiction contest. She is currently writing a novella, several short stories, and a novel, rather stupidly at the same time. 

Nwefuru Godstime Chiadikobi is a Nigerian writer, poet, and final-year clinical medicine student whose work moves between observation, memory, and the subtleties of lived experience. His poems have appeared in Penrose Poetry Journal, Haiku Shacku Literary Magazine, Wordpeace Journal, Formidable Woman Sanctuary Poetry Journal, and Shared Drafts. He is one of the winners of the 2025 Sejong International Poetry Competition. His creative work often examines the tension between the human body, the land, and quiet personal change. Outside writing, he coaches a university debate team and creates educational videos that simplify complex medical concepts for wider audiences.

Jim Elledge has won two Lambda Literary Awards, one for his book-length poem A History of My Tattoo, the other forWho’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners co-edited with David Groff. His most recent collection is Bonfire of the Sodomites, poems about the arson of the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in the French Quarter. His nonfiction includes the biography Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy; The Boys of Fairy Town, a history of gay life in Chicago's first century; and An Angel in Sodom, the biography of gay rights activist Henry Gerber. 

Roger Heineken hales from rural Atchison County, Kansas. His adult life has been based in Emporia, his home today, glowing tombstones and all. He writes mostly creative nonfiction. He has been published in 105 Meadowlark Reader: A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction and his work has received recognition in past Kansas Authors Club contests. He enjoys hanging out with his creative friends, part of the informal Emporia Writers Group. 

Topher Shields is a poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand. His work appears or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, The Bangalore Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Tangled Locks Journal, The Dewdrop, Half and One, and the Canary Winter 2025–26 anthology from Hip Pocket Press. His writing explores lineage, erasure, memory, and the shifting architectures of silence. 

Shirley Smothers is an amateur, Writer, Poet and Artist. She mostly writes short stories. Some of her short stories can be viewed at Shirleysmothers@storystar.com. Last year she self-published her second book, found at ShirleysmothersSolasta@poth.com. She was chosen Artist of the Month, June 2025, Glomag Submissions, Facebook. Her art “Butterflies on Flowers” graced the online cover of Glomag Magazine, June 2025. Her artwork, “Rainbow of Madness” was chosen for the online cover of The Cultural Reverence Magazine.

Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash (Iron Faerie Publishing), SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de. 

Brigitta Scheib lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with her husband, daughter and 3 orange cats. She just recently got back to writing, a hobby she last pursued in high school and college.