It’s time for the annual Halloweensie challenge for picture book writers created by Susanna Leonard Hill and I’m once again participating.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, you can check out her blog here.

This year’s challenge is as follows: write a 100 word Halloween story appropriate for children (title not included in the 100 words, children here defined as 12 and under), using the words spider, ghost, and moon.   Your story can be scary, funny or anything in between, poetry or prose, but it will only count for the contest if it includes those 3 words and is 100 words (you can go under, but not over!)  Get it?  Halloweensie – because it’s not very long and it’s for little people  (And yes, I know 100 words is short but that’s part of the fun and the challenge!  We got nearly 150 fantastic entries last year so I know you can do it!)  Also, you may use the words in any form – e.g. moon, moons, mooned, spidery, ghostly, whathaveyou  No illustration notes please!

NOT an easy challenge is it?  BUT I rather like my entry this year.  I’m in love with this character (an unexpected perk) and could see myself making this story a bit longer (than the 98 words here) in the future perhaps.  I share it below.

Glorious Gloria

Gloria was not your average spider. She wore pearls to dinner, tiaras to compliment the morning dew, and high heels to spin. Her webs were to die for!

Yet every year at Halloween, trick-or-treaters dressed up like ghosts or what-have-you trampled her web, which couldn’t be seen in the moonlight. What was she to do?

Offer candy? No, that would only attract more stompers. Put up a tp barrier? No, that couldn’t be seen either. Then Gloria had an idea!

She invited some friends over and voila! Gloria lit up her web with her cheerful firefly party guests!

I’m knee deep in Reading for Research Month but I’m still trying to produce my manuscripts for 12X12 (and myself).  That being said, there’s yet another contest going on and this one is quite the challenge.  Can you write a complete story in only 50 words?  Continue reading →

I’m diving into all the things this year and that includes all the writing opportunities I can find.  One such opportunity is the Valentiny contest found on Susanna Leonard Hill’s blog: http://susannahill.com/2016/02/08/be-still-my-heart-the-1st-annual-valentiny-writing-contest-is-here/  Continue reading →

I am always game for a good writing challenge.  I’ve been doing a writing prompt a day for a while now in order to keep the writing wheels greased (and sometimes they generate ideas for other stories).  The prompt I did yesterday was to write a “dialogue ONLY scene between two characters (NO narrative description allowed).”  I went one step further and picked a picture from my writing ideas picture board on Pinterest.  Continue reading →

A friend gave me this picture as a writing prompt.  I had many ideas that were inspired by it, but I will share this one: a short little piece of fiction I wrote up.  See what you think.  Continue reading →