Category: Untidy Heap

I remember, when I was a kid, riding in a car with green, leathery seats that got very hot in the sun. The car was green as well, although a different shade, and it seems to the me of my memories that most of the cars back then were that color. It was a popular trend, or maybe my child perception was skewed.

At any rate, the car was green, the seats were green, it was summer, the sun was hot, and the seats were hotter. We had the windows open to let the air in and my mom was driving to town on an errand.

The road was a winding black hardtop that looked down into sharp ravines between the hills; drops that seemed (to me) to go down and down farther than anything in the whole world. Every drive, I would look down and out from the tiny back windows of the two-door and think about what it would be like to go sailing off the road and into the ravines, tumbling over and over and finally exploding at the bottom, like on TV. A little morbid, but we lived a long way from any other kids my age — I had to make my own fun.

So, with the sun beating down and my boredom rising, when I saw a goblin shambling along the bottom of a ravine with an old, rusted sword balanced across his shoulders like an oxen yoke, I didn’t bother mentioning it to my mom. Even at that age, I assumed I’d imagined it.

I believed that for the next 23 years.

— Vayland Rd.

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I think it’s time for another HIDDEN THINGS giveaway, don’t you?

(By the way, the Hidden Things giveaway at Goodreads is still going on, so check that out if you haven’t.)

But enough about that, let’s talk about this giveaway.

This contest.

So, two things I enjoy quite a lot:

• Weird things, happening in normal surroundings.
• Microfiction.

Seems to me we can combine them.

Here’s What You Need to Do

Write a little microfiction story set in the same basic ‘world’ as Hidden Things. That’s it.

Well, no, that’s not it. There are rules.

• Your story, if posted on g+ or Twitter, must contain the hashtag #hiddenthings.
• You are permitted to stretch the story out over a luxurious five tweets, if needed, but each of those tweets must be numbered. ([1/5], [2/5], [3/5], et cetera) Each tweet in that sequence needs the hashtag.
• I admire spare use of words (shut up, I do), so while you are permitted to use multiple tweets, understand that a story that is five tweets long should strive to be five times more awesome than a one-tweet story.
• You have one week from the moment this post goes up. Next Wednesday, there will be a reckoning.
• You can enter (that is, write stories) as many times as you like. All of the above rules apply equally to each story.

But… I don’t know anything about Hidden Things, or the setting.

Sure you do. Look to the excerpt from Vayland Rd. for some inspiration, or check out the back cover copy on the Hidden Things page. We’re looking for weird Things hiding in various ways in what we think of as the normal world. Dragons concealed in cornfields. Coy elves running bowling alleys. Bogeymen lurking in abandoned rest stops. A vodnik peering at the neighborhood kids from the slit of a storm drain.

I have more questions!

You do? Okay, ask them in the comments. Regardless, spread the word, because while the prize for this activity is a shiny ARC of Hidden Things, the point is to make some cool stuff and share it with everyone.