Shared Storytelling: Advent Ghosts 2013

The world blanches before winter, and every year, solstice stretches out it hand to wring the azure from the sky and the emerald from verdant hills, stripping the trees to charcoal bark and swaddling the horizon in toneless grays. What a miser winter is to keep all the colors for itself. It certainly doesn't share them with the nameless creatures that slink from their chill dens in search of something to satiate their unending hunger. So as you spite the season with green-leaved holly, golden ornaments of glass, and a ruddy fire leaping in the hearth, pause for a moment by your barred door. Hear them outside, their claws crunching through the crusted drifts of snow? The things in that outer darkness know blood flows bright in any season. Now listen just a bit longer. Hear it? The blood once spilled still cries out from the ground.

Won't you tell us what it said?

Welcome to Advent Ghosts 2013, the fifth annual shared storytelling event at ISLF. For the uninitiated, Advent Ghosts seeks to recreate the classic British tradition of swapping spooky stories at Yuletide. However, instead of penning longer pieces, we post bite-sized pieces of flash fiction for everyone to enjoy. It's an open call for anyone interested, so why not join us? The details are as follows ...

1) Email me at ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know you'll be contributing.
2) Pen a creepy piece of flash fiction that's exactly 100-words long.
3) Post your story to your blog on Friday, December 20 and email the link to me. Hosting can be arranged for those without blogs of their own.

One final clarification, if I may: Though the word "ghost" appears in the event's title, you don't need to write a ghost story per se. Try straight-up horror or eerie SF, poignant noir or an unexpected twist on a traditional religious tale. Tone matters more than content. (Please note that while we never censor around here, I reserve the right to mark individual stories with a content warning if they get extreme.) Why not check out our events from 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009 to see how people shaded stories in prior years? Bring some color into these dark days, because winter won't soon loosen its grasp.

(Picture: CC 2010 by Kara Harms)