%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
Please join Carol St.Ann   and Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  in congratulating the    January 2025 Winners of   (tie)
Thanks, too, to everyone who entered. All of the stories deserved an award, but we only had three to give out. |
| Congratulations 🎉🎉 |
Reply
| Well done. |
Reply
Thank you all!  And congrats to Allan Charles and Amethyst Snow Angel |
Reply
| January 2025 Contest Open for entries!! It's easy to enter.  Choose one of three prompts Write a story of 3000 words or less that uses the prompt Enter the story Win  fame,  fortune, and  honor. Prizes include up to 50K GPS, awardicons, and merit badges. You can choose from the following three prompts:  your story involves horror or supernatural elements; OR your story uses the words ethereal, numinous, and glimmer; OR your protagonist is either delusional or dissociative. The contest accepts only ten entries, so reserve your place early.
|
| I, on the other hand, don't think I am delusional. As I was saying to Muhammed Ali the other day while we were enjoying a pinot noir in a nice little French Restaurant in Buenos Aires, "My life is pretty boring." And then I went and won the Monaco Grand Prix on a skateboard after accepting my Nobel Prize for Penguin Eradication. So, really, I am not sure I could write delusional. |
| I don't see anyone asking me if I know anything about delusions. Anyway, Max Griffin 🏳️🌈, I have a question about entering your contest. The survey questions seem to be aimed at people who are already deep into writing their story. Do you accept surveys from people who like your prompt, have a concept of a story, and would like to give it a whirl? |
🐕GeminiGem🎁  - I have no problem with you reserving a place in the contest before actually writing a story. I do need at least a link to the file where you PLAN to write a story. It's been years since I've had ten people enter the contest, so it's not like you'd be taking away a slot someone else could use if you decide not to actually write your story. |
Oklahoma Science FIction Writers meets on Friday, so of course I baked a cake.  It had perfect corners, but I smudged them when I put the snowflakces on it. It's a "confetti cake" since the cake itself has confetti sprinkles scattered in the batter. |
| January 2025 Contest Open for entries!! It's easy to enter. Choose one of three prompts Write a story of 3000 words or less that uses the prompt Enter the story Win fame, fortune, and honor. Prizes include up to 50K GPS, awardicons, and merit badges. You can choose from the following three prompts: your story involves horror or supernatural elements; OR your story uses the words ethereal, numinous, and glimmer; OR your protagonist is either delusional or dissociative. The contest accepts only ten entries, so reserve your place early.
|
| January 2025 Contest Open for entries!! It's easy to enter. Choose one of three prompts Write a story of 3000 words or less that uses the prompt Enter the story Win fame, fortune, and honor. Prizes include up to 50K GPS, awardicons, and merit badges. You can choose from the following three prompts: your story involves horror or supernatural elements; OR your story uses the words ethereal, numinous, and glimmer; OR your protagonist is either delusional or dissociative. The contest accepts only ten entries, so reserve your place early.
|
Instead of being, you know, productive, I spent today in the kitchen baking a cake for my writing group's holiday party tomorrow. It's a black walnut cake with butter cream cheese frosting.  |
| Tales from the Crosstimbers is open for submissions for the Spring, 2025 issue, due out in March of 2025. We're eager to read your speculative fiction of less than 2500 words. Payment is at least $10 and up to $25 per story based on word count. Writing.Com members and yet-to-be published authors are especially invited to submit. Contact information and more details on the links below. Link to publication: https://theCrosstimbers.online Link to open call: https://thecrosstimbers.online/open-call/ Link to submission guidelines: https://thecrosstimbers.online/submission-requirements/  |
| Pretty awesome Max. Into the library world as a publisher. Website is very professional. Best of luck. I will have to give it a shot. |
Damon Nomad  - Website is a time sink, but fun, too. Every so often I need to feed the analytic side. Since I don't prove theorems any more, I write computer code. I'm like Gene Kelley, except he's gotta dance and I've gotta code. |
The winter issue of Tales from the Crosstimbers released today! It includes at least one story from a writing.com member.   |
| Continuing to mess with Creative.Microsoft.com. I wanted an image of events in the first chapter of the linked novel--two runaway teens witness a mysterious airplane dumping something in the desert. I wasn't happy with images where I asked for a 'blue Saturn" in the sky. They all looked really crappy, with HUGE planets with off-center rings. So I left out the request for a blue Saturn used the daytime image it gave me, and used Photoshop to put in a Saturn I'd previously created with Photoshop. Additional Photoshop tweaks included changing the left-hand guy's hair to blonde, using a day-to-night filter, bluring the Saturn and putting a glow around it, and replacing the sky with an AI-generated sky. This is turning into an enormous time sink.  |
Sounds like AI isn't quite ready for real work, or at least anything complex. Humans may still be better doing it.  |
Wordsmitty ✍️  - Humans are certainly better at it. I can't draw, though, so this is better than I'd ever be able to do. I'm sure the publisher will have a real artist draw a great cover for this book...assuming I (a) get around to submitting it; and (b) find a publihsher. |
| One of my few attempts at a microfiction. It's HARD writing a story that's only 227 words. https://medium.com/@mathguytulsa/sweetwater-oklahoma-9bf72867ee0c |
| Just don't use Nowhere Oklahoma because that actually exists too. LOL Oklahoma definitely has some interesting town names. I live in Oklahoma City and grew up here in Oklahoma. You can find a lot of interesting stories and places about this state. |
| I changed the town to Bathsheba. That's a ghost town with an interesting history...it was founded for women, and men were banned from the place. Even male livestock were banned...might make another story... |
| I changed this yet again, to Lone Star, Oklahoma. "Lone Star" was a town in SE Oklahoma that was inundated by Wister Lake. https://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ok/lonestar.html It seemed better to use a ghost town for the name, and this one doesn't have much in the way of connoatations. Bathsheba's unique history potentially complicates this otherwise simple story. |
| I've spent the last couple of days posting some shorter fiction to Medium.com. This is a place where--apparently--you can get paid for your fiction, based on the number and duration of views. It's too early to assess how effective this might be--if anyone else has experience with this site, I'd be interested in learning about it. My "portfolio" on the site is at https://medium.com/@mathguytulsa |
It's recently come to my attention that people may not be aware of the Crosstimbers Novel Workshop or how to join it.
If you have a novel-in-progress and want to exchange reviews with other novelists, this is the place for you. Note that this a place to exchange peer reviews, so you're expected to give reviews as well as get them. There's also a forum for short fiction:
|
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
