Friday, September 16, 2011

What's the opposite of a Master of the Macabre?

I keep meaning to mention it on the show, but over at the Horror Addicts website, they had a writing contest somewhat-recently, and I entered it.  It was called "the Masters of the Macabre." The fun of the contest (and I hesitate to put "fun" in quotation marks, though I did consider it) is that only after you volunteered to participate did they tell you the exact specifications of the contest. Plus, everybody's specs were different. 

Basically, every contestant was given a phobia, a location, and an activity, and a story was to be written about it. It's quite clever, actually, though I could see a writer saddled with diarrheaphobia/Cleveland/wedding rehearsal throwing his hands in the air in frustration.

Regardless, my trio of requisites were: Entomophobia (fear of insects), luau, and hang gliding. It wasn't hard to come up with a story featuring those three things, but coming up with a GOOD story . . . well, that remains to be seen.Because I'm feeling melancholy today, I wonder if I really am much of a writer, and if not, if losing a contest or three is the best use of my time. I'm a person that's made a lot of mistakes (as opposed to the armies of perfect folks out there, I know), and because of my sunny personality, I dwell on those mistakes a lot.

Regardless, the webmaster and show host, Emerian Rich, has done a bang-up job with the contest, and you can check out my entry at this link. There are other contestants, who recorded their stories, and posted them here. Apparently, you can vote for your favorite. Enjoy?

Rish

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