Category Archives: Fiction

I stood at the gas station today, pumping gas through a tube into my vehicle and realized that the gas tanks haven’t changed much in years and years.  Yes, you can pay differently, but the system of pumping is just the same.

In fact, the propulsion is the same – fossil-fueled.  When will the future be here?

I have been waiting since I was little – 40 or more years already!  We dreamed up such a different future back then.

Yes, sure – things have changed at a breakneck pace.  Smartphones, Google, world culture meshing – gone are the days of Encyclopedias and typewriters.  Gone are the days when world travelers were few and far between.

But.

But.

We still are hobbled by so many things.  Where is easy space travel?  Where is silent commuting on safe, guided tracks?  Where are iris checkers or thumb-print machines so you don’t have to carry credit/debit cards?

With a HUGE tip of my hat to Julie Powell, I’ve decided to challenge myself in a similar way.

The Contest:

NYC Midnight Madness Short Story Contest

660 crazy writers took on this truly mad contest in January – the organizers divided us into 30 heats and assigned each heat a genre (mystery, sci-fi, etc) and a topic (photography, a chess game, etc) at midnight on a Friday.  We all wrote like mad and submitted our 2500 word story by midnight the next Friday – one week of writing like mad.

The Contender

Wannabe writer, blocked blogger, passionate reader by day and night.  Looking for a way to produce some finished work – needing to learn, learn, learn.  365 days, 30 genre-topic assignments.

Can she do it? 

Rules:

• Start at heat 1, no skipping or changing genre or topic for that heat – except heat 19, my original heat. (if you’re curious, click here to see the heat assignments – then click on each number at the top)
• One week only for each short story – this means some weeks OFF to recuperate.

Participating in the NYC Midnight Madness taught me so much about genre and short stories – writing my own story under pressure, getting feedback from fellow contestants, reading others’ stories & trying to express to them what worked and what didn’t – wow. 

Email me if you’d like the password to any story.  Comments welcome – and let me know if you want to join the challenge!