Another aspect of the month is the inevitable saturation of Halloween/Samhain paraphernalia in shades of black and orange. It all comes to a climax on the 31st, of course, when literally all Hell break loose upon the world.
As we enter the final run-up to that festive occasion, I wish to help celebrate the depravity deep within us all by alerting you to an event that is truly keeping with the spirit of the evil spirits of the season.
Some of my fellow authors have written suitable fair for the season, while I have not. (OK, sure, I did write one story* that would be in the "urban fantasy" genre, something about a vampiress returning to save an ex-lover from certain death--written well before the Twilight phenomena.) But I digress...
The publisher of my novel AFTER ILIUM, Fantasy Island Book Publishing is having a "scary story" contest!
Whether your cup of tea includes blood and gore or silent, simple psychological thrills or brutal, torturous knock'em-off one-at-a-time stealthy mayhem, the story you submit to the contest must be able to scare the pants off readers. Because we love seeing people's pants fall down. It's a complicated fetish.
Digressing again!
Vampires, werewolves, zombies, serial killers and their cute pets, weird aliens and robotic machinery, psychopaths and their clones, or nefarious bugs and slithery snakes, colorful spiders and worrisome wraths, ghouls and ghosts, or that kid in third grade who you just knew would grow up to be trouble--anything is possible.
The only thing that is NOT possible is for Fantasy Island's own authors to enter the contest. That would be like cheating, of course, because we ARE authors! You can be too!
So dig out that story you crafted in school, the one you secretly want to publish, the one that caused your grandmother to say extra prayers for you, the one that you know will make our blood run icy and our brains melt inside our skulls.
Submit your story between October 22 and 30th following the instructions at the link:
*My story "Rendezvous" will be included in an anthology of stories produced by the editors of Fantasy Island Book Publishing.
And 'Rendezvous'is one of the more intriguing stories I have ever read! The name of the Anthology is tentatively "The Story Tellers' Anthology".
ReplyDeleteThanks, Connie! I am glad to know that--especially considering the story's awkward history: my attempt to write a vampire tale simply because my 'tween' daughter was such a "Twilight" fanatic.
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