It’s time for
If you’ve been paying attention then you know it’s time to forget your fears and write your freakin’ head off.
challenge
ABC’s of Horror: Announcing E
Everybody explore your evil.
Time for B
It’s
time again!
Bring it, Bust it, Burn it down.
Make it dark, writers! Which one will you pick? Show me your writing chops, link here and share your masterpiece with the world.
This is what WriteRdie is all about
We are going to embark on our greatest challenge yet. Are you ready?
Announcing…
For all the year 2017 we are going to write dark stories–I say stories because feel free to make it nonfiction if you so choose– and the only caveat is that each story must revolve around some element starting with that week’s letter.
We’ll start with A, of course. So bring your stories about:
Or…
Axmurderers
Anthrax
Adder
Angel of death
Apocalypse
Atrocious
Awful
Ashes
Army of Darkness
Amputate
Aches
Anger
Autopsy
Alzheimers
Atheism
Have fun with it!
You’ll have two weeks to write it and send it in.
Mission Fantastical
I’m on a mission. I ran across the 40 Scariest Books of the Last 200 Years, and the 10 Best Horror Books You’ve Never Read and finally the Top 25 Women Horror Writers You Probably Haven’t Heard Of (But Should Know). Oh, and 9 Underrated Horror Books to Read Next. I browsed the comments section and was pointed to many more books and authors. From these sources I compiled the following list:
The Light at the End by John Skipp and Craig Spector
The Elementals by Michael McDowell
The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
City Infernal by Edward Lee
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Enter Night by Michael Rowe
Michael Slade
Rod Williams
Those Across the River Between Two Fires Christopher Buehlman
Graham Masterton
The Cipher Kathy Koja
Nightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
The Vampyre, by John William Polidori (1819)
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James (1898)
The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell (1924)
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
Psycho, by Robert Bloch (1959)
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (1966)
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
Harvest Home, by Thomas Tryon (1973)
Requiem For a Dream, by Hubert Selby Jr. (1978)
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler (1987)
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons (1991)
The Cipher, by Kathe Koja (1991)
House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver (2003)
Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill (2007)
Penpal, by Dathan Auerbach (2012)
Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes (2014)
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Horror Show by Greg Kihn
Spindrift by Jan Bryant Bartell
The Devil in Gray by Graham Masterton
Charlee Jacob – Dread in the Beast (Necro Publications)
Mary Sangiovanni – The Hollower
Lisa Tuttle – The Silver Bough (2006).
Catherynne M. Valente – The Labyrinth,
Margo Lanagan – Tender Morsels.
Melanie Tem – In Concert: Tales of the Fantastic, they’re an unstoppable force.
Kaaron Warren – All You Can Do is Breathe
Suzy McKee Charnas – The Vampire Tapestry
Kit Reed –
Marjorie Bowen – The Viper of Milan
Nalo Hopkinson
Tina Jens – The Blues Ain’t Nothin’
Tamara Thorne (aka Chris Curry) – Candle Bay and Bad Things.
Amanda Stevens – The Restorer
Deborah Leblanc – Family Inheritance and Water Witch .
Nina Kiriki Hoffman – The Thread that Binds the Bones
Dion Fortune – The Demon Lover
Gemma Files – A Book of Tongues.
I absolutely loved George RR martin’s Dangerous Women so I will check out these anthologies too:
- Women of Darkness I (ed. Kathryn Ptacek)
- Women of Darkness II (ed. Kathryn Ptacek)
- Witches’ Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Prinzini
- Women Who Run With the Werewolves: Tales of Blood, Lust and Metamorphosis edited by Pam Keesey (all links provided by hellnotes.com)
If a book or author from those sites didn’t make this list it’s because I have already read it or I was able to find it at my library (of those, I was only lucky enough to find 3-4—boo!)
My mission is this: I’m going to locate, purchase, and read as many of these as I can. Join me?
Half Price bookstore, here I come!
We Did It, Didn’t We?
I’m a very literal person and I’ve stuck to the literal depiction of most of these prompts. At times an idea would take me in a different direction and I would gladly follow–most times I was pleased with the results.
I hope that you were, too.
It’s been a crazy month and I probably couldn’t maintain this tempo every month but it was gratifying to find out that I had it in me to do at all. Every single last story was written within three days of posting the challenges. I prepared for none of them, and chose the pictures at random.
We grow by challenges, I hope that’s what you took from this. You don’t know what you can do until you do it.
I wrote twenty-five stories this month. How about you?
A big thank you for those of you that participated by linking your stories to my blog. And thanks to those of you that only lurked in the background and did your own thing. I hope you had a lot of fun and you were judicious with your use of the Like button and I thank you. Next time, join in. I (mostly) don’t bite.
And welcome to all the new folks. I’m glad you found your way here. I hope you visit often, and if you comment, I’ll comment back. We’ll have a conversation of sorts.
What’s next? Maybe twitter. Lots of writers and editors and agents on twitter, I hear. Definitely a Facebook Author page. Oh, and Nanowrimo. I’m going to work on either The Shadow Man or Dead Letters, or both. Both are more like novelettes in size and I need to finish them. On WriteRdieFiction I will post on Fridays again. Maybe mix in some book reviews. I might repost some old favorites so all you new folks can enjoy them too. I’m approaching a hundred posts and I’d bet none of you have wandered 100 deep in my blog to see the ‘old’ stuff.
Thanks again, it was a rush.
Horrorimo #18
A bridge. Or a transdimensional portal to hell? Your choice.
Post it, link it, you know the routine by now, right?
Horrorimo #17
A road to—- {fill in the blank}.
Then leave it in the comments or link back to my blog. One word, a whole story. Your choice.
Horrorimo #16
THE PUMPKINS ARE ATTACKING!!! RUN!!!
Or, maybe you have a different take on this seemingly innocuous scene of colorful pumpkins. Show me what it is, post in the comments, or link back to here.
Do eeeeeet!!!
Horrorimo #14
Yeah, somehow I think ‘here kitty, kitty’ would go over well with this one. What IS going on here? Cat? Alien? Cat Alien? Cat robot? So much possibility here.
Post your story in the comments, link it from your blog, just get it here cause I gotta know what this thing is, according to you.
Write R die Fiction 