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Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry, thinks: “I wish I could be in Kim’s next book!”
The Eldritch Contest for Writers and Artists has a great new first prize to get you motivated. How would you like to have a character in the Eldritch sequel named after you?
If your story or artwork is drawn as the winner from the entries I receive by March 15, 2014, I will write you into the second Eldritch novel!
Literary immortality awaits! Get to work on your short story and/or illustration and send it in.
Contest details:
– open to all school-age kids!
– deadline: March 15, 2014
1. Write a Short Story (any length) about a Senior Citizen with a surprising past or a secret identity
OR
2. Illustrate a scene from the novel Eldritch Manor by Kim Thompson
OR, if you like, DO BOTH and be entered twice!
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Wow. What was that thing that just whooshed by? I couldn’t make it out, it was just a blur, but I think it was the Christmas holidays. How can it be January 6 already?
I hope you all survived the craziness. I think I did, but my clogged-sinus head cold is befuzzling my brain a little so I can’t be entirely sure.
Today is the first get-back-to-work day for me, as I bask in the silence of the first day of school. (Every parent is smiling today.) I’m sitting here making big plans and resolves for 2014, as well as catching up on emails and bills and appointments and so on and so forth.
Do you make new year’s resolutions? As usual I’m telling myself to write more, read more, think more… but the resolution that is impacting my writing the most at this moment is this one:
No more lying on the couch to write.
I’ve been having back pains and neck strains long enough. It’s time to exercise more and give up a posture I truly adore, that of lying on the sofa and typing with my laptop on my stomach. Bad habit! Bad bad bad habit!
Right now I’m sitting upright, extremely upright, in a simple wooden kitchen chair, working at my dining room table. Feeling all posture perfect and poised and full of vertebrate virtue. We’ll see how long that lasts, shall we?
Yours in spinal resolve,
k
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Snow day! Here on Salt Spring our first significant snowfall has occurred, on the first day of vacation! I decided to give the old car a break and not drive down the mountain into town for our last Writing Club meeting (awwww!). Here are the fun exercises we were going to do…
5-minute prompt: FUNNY(5-minute, stream-of-consciousness exercise, write whatever pops into your brain on the topic. Don’t bother with sentences, paragraphs, or punctuation. Just write.)
What’s funny? What makes you laugh? Who makes you laugh? How many different words for ‘laugh’ can you think of?
A little character-invention fun. For each of these faces answer the following: Continue reading
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I’m a Laurie Anderson fan from a way back when, and I was just listening to some old CDs when, as usual, O Superman gave me chills down the spine.
Laurie Anderson was a New York performance artist not well known outside art circles when this song became an unexpected #2 hit on the UK charts in 1981. Her live concerts were truly performance art pieces, using multi-media and plenty of (at the time) cutting edge electronic gadgetry. (I seem to recall she had a keyboard necktie that she could actually play…)
The song makes me think of dystopian science fiction, with the robot voice and cold, dispassionate lyrics. I just wanted to give you the audio file, but couldn’t figure out how to do that, so here it is via Youtube video. Enjoy!
P.S. A few months back I was surprised to hear this song coming over the PA system in my local grocery store. How perfect is that?
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Today we’re going to work with characters a a little more, and talk about how to introduce and describe them.
But first let’s warm up…
5-minute prompt: FACE(5-minute, stream-of-consciousness exercise, write whatever pops into your brain on the topic. Don’t bother with sentences, paragraphs, or punctuation. Just write.)
Sometimes we can go on and on with descriptions of someone’s clothes, hair and build, but neglect the most important feature of all, their face! Continue reading
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So my progress on the Eldritch sequel has been halted for the moment as I put together an outline proposal on another project. More on that to come, but it’s a novel and after much gnashing of teeth I finally came up with my Act III! Nothing like breaking through a mental barrier and solving plot problems all at once!
The secret to my breakthrough was both taking a break and indulging in a research-related movie. The story is to have a historical setting and watching newsreel footage from the time suddenly filled in the gaps for me. There is nothing more useful than being able to picture the setting, the people, the events…
A fresh blanket of snow outside, peace and quiet, and a roaring fire did their bit to contribute as well.
Yay me!
(Moments of satisfaction for writers are solitary and rather fleeting, therefore they must be enjoyed. I shall celebrate with egg nog and then take the garbage out.)
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Thursday means time for the Weekly Eldritch, your weekly uneasily creepy thing. This comes from my photo archives… from a secret location in Toronto…
Imagine you are walking down a street somewhere, a street of abandoned industrial buildings, warehouses with broken windows, concrete rubble and scrappy weeds. There’s nobody around, but you feel like someone’s watching you…
I love graffiti! Especially detailed, dead solemn children graffiti. With big eyes and weirdly jointed arms. In a party frock.
Writing Prompt: Tell me about this curious person. Name? Age? History?
Huzzah! I’ve been meaning to have a contest on this site for a while now, so here it finally is. A contest for all school-age Writers and Artists: write a short story (any length) about a Senior Citizen with a secret identity/amazing past OR illustrate any scene from Eldritch Manor. Or do both, if you’re super ambitious.
For all the details on prizes and where to send entries go here.
I can’t wait to see what you can do… just be sure to enter before March 15, 2014!
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Apologies for missing a couple of weeks there, I hope Hallowe’en filled in the creepy-things gap for you. Now back to it – my weekly offering of spooky tings, courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
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