THE RUNNING DEAD

by Barbara Poelle

(From Paula: Wow. You guys are in for a treat today. Welcome back to Working Stiffs, Barbara!)

Yay! Fall is here! October brings two of my favorite things: excellent running weather and Halloween. I seem to be able to be faster when running around Halloween, mostly because of all the lurching, emaciated undead in the streets, But enough about the fashion district (RIM SHOT!) did anyone watch the premiere of THE WALKING DEAD this weekend? I am very interested to hear what people thought. 

I have always been a fan of horror, and am totally on the hunt for a Young Adult horror novel. (Remember Christopher Pike? Yeah, baby.)  I have read pretty much everything Stephen King has written- I mean if that dude jotted down the recipe for ice, I would read it for hours. Sadly, I haven’t been able to dip into as much horror this season as I would have liked. The good news is that so many of the mysteries and thrillers I have been reading have at least something horrifying in them, so I am not reduced to rubbing my gums and standing in a dark alleyway saying, “Scare me for 10 bucks, Mr.?” (Uh, Ew. Let’s never have THAT happen.)

That being said, what I caaaaan do is resort to a little bribery to scratch my spooky itch. I smell CONTEST! And PRIZES! And HOLLY ROOT! (Oddly enough, she smells like vanilla extract and rage. Sort of like really angry cookies.)

Let’s do a little cross-blog pollination with this one, so this contest will start on the 21st over on agent Janet Reid's blog.  Read this carefully to note when and where to post your entry:

Write a Halloween themed story in 100 words or fewer using the words:

UNFORSAKEN

DEADLY

WITCH

GHOST

SLAY

DECAY

(Bonus points if you can also use the word INSALUBRIOUS)

Post the story in the comments section of Janet’s Reid’s re-post of this contest at http://www.jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/ .  Contest will open on 10/21 at noon and closes at 10/22 at noon. All times are Eastern Standard.

ONE winner will receive a critique of the first thirty pages of your manuscript (any genre) from Barbara Poelle

ONE random winner will receive copies of UNFORSAKEN by Sophie Littlefield  

ONE random winner will receive a copy of DEADLY COOL by Gemma Halliday

ONE random winner will receive a copy of THE NEAR WITCH by Victoria Schwab

ONE random winner will receive a copy of GHOST COUNTRY by Patrick Lee

Barbara Poelle and Holly Root will review the entries.

Janet Reid will be the tie-breaking vote!

If you need a mulligan, delete your entry and repost. One Entry Per Person

All decisions are entirely subjective.

Oh my gosh, this is gonna be soooo fun! I can’t wait until Holly and Janet hear that they are doing this. Someone should tell them. Good thing with all of my training I can outrun both of them.

Also, if you win the critique but want to give it to a friend in the spirit of Halloween (dude, witches share newt eyeballs all the time) that is allowed!

Other than that, if any of you watched THE WALKING DEAD, love to hear from you in the comments on this blog. Otherwise, see you and your 100 word spooky tale, over on Janet’s on October 21st!

Revisions and Titles and Contests, Oh My!

by Joyce

I'm about halfway through my revisions and I'm pleasantly surprised that this manuscript is actually in pretty good shape. It seems like I've been working on it forever. I tend to edit and revise as I go along, so maybe that's why.

I have a couple of chapters that I'm going to switch. I think they would work better if the second one comes first. I've done that with scenes, but never with an entire chapter, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

I have one scene that I really like where my protagonist is out with the hunky new guy, but it may have to go unless I can squeeze some little plot tidbit into it. The scene is basically these characters getting to know each other a little but I think it needs more. If anyone has a suggestion, let me know. Even if I don't come up with anything, I might leave it in for now and see what my beta readers think (ahem. Annette).

I also had to add a few clues to the early chapters because when I wrote them I had no idea who the murderer was. And I definitely need to flesh out the climax and the denouement because I kind of rushed through them because I wanted to get the f***ing book finished.

Which leads me to another dilemma--I don't have a title. Although Annette has suggested several times that I keep calling it The F***ing Book, something tells me it might give people the wrong idea. I thought for sure that a title would come to me by the time I wrote The End, but it didn't. So here's where I ask for help.

I'd like to run a little contest. I'm going to give a prize to whoever comes up with the best title for the book. Since I don't have anything to give away, I thought of a prize that won't cost me a dime: I'll name a character in my next book after the winner. You can have your pick whether it will be a good guy, a villain, a farm animal, whatever.

Here's what my current book is about:

Irma Jean Bennett, secretary for the tiny Spite, West Virginia police department knows it's not her day when the chief drops dead in her office. Her efforts to find out who poisoned him are hindered by the mayor who wants to keep the murder under wraps because he's afraid of scaring off the non-existent tourists, the new acting chief who happens to be her ex-husband, her pink Cadillac-driving mother hiding out from her fifth husband, and the hunky guy renovating the downtown hotel. When one of her suspects ends up dead and Irma Jean is fired for breaking into a tool shed, she knows she's on her own.

And that's all I got. I'm still working on the blurb. I haven't figured out how to end it yet. That's harder to write than the f***ing book.

Anyway, thanks for your help!

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

By Paula Matter


As some of you know, I along with fellow Stiffs Pat Remick and Ramona Long attended the Crime Bake conference in Dedham, MA. Awesome conference and I hope to see a couple more Stiffs attend next year. Hint, hint.

Two highlights for me came on Sunday when I won prizes. A new event this year was the Scavenger Hunt which I believe was sponsored by the New England SinC chapter. Attendees were given a sheet of paper and had to go around collecting signatures from people who matched the description. Such as: First Time At Crime Bake which Ramona signed; NE SinC Board Member which Pat signed. Twenty-five blocks and I had a ball meeting new people and talking with others I already knew. Hank Philippi Ryan signed Anthony Winner, and the bookseller signed Grandfather. A great way to interact with other attendees.

To top it off, I won a book by Margaret Maron!

The other prize I won Sunday morning was as one of four winners of the Flashwords contest.

Contest Description: Use at least ten of the listed “Title Words” from novels by Charlaine Harris in a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words. Include a crime or suggestion of a crime. Keep it clean. Write in English.

Title Words: Bedroom, Bone, Club, Corpse, Counselor, Dark, Dead, Family, Fool, Grave, Heels, Ice, Landlord, Living, Pick, Scene, Secret, Surprise, Trollop, Worse

Dead to Me and Worse, I Paid for Law School

I didn’t have to pick the lock, thanks to the foolish landlord. Grateful he didn’t know about Vinnie recently dumping me for that trollop at the VFW club, I moved quickly through my ex-fiancé’s living room and into the bedroom. I grabbed Vinnie’s revolver, then hurried to the VFW.

Now, crouched over her corpse, the gun resting against my hip bone, I pictured the scene outside my cramped, dark hiding place. Vinnie’s family--the rotten heels--had decided to go through with the unnecessary-but-paid-for bachelor party. An excuse to celebrate Vinnie winning his first case.

I had five bullets left. One for each of them.

I waited for the secret signal--what would’ve been Trollop’s cue to jump out of the cake.

“Grave situation, Counselor, we’re out of ice!”

I put a smile on my face, my finger on the trigger, pushed the hinged lid up and yelled, “Surprise!”

Mo Walsh, the woman in charge of the Flashwords contest, read the story beautifully, perfectly. Winning this prize two years in a row tells me I need to stick with short stories! My prize was a bottle of Vampire wine, a nice Merlot. Other choices were mugs or T-shirts.

 And with Crime Bake over, so is the 2010 conference season for me. I'm thinking of attending Malice Domestic and Pennwriters next year. And Crime Bake, of course.

How about you? What will you be attending? Do you have a favorite annual conference or writerly event you can't miss? What do you look for when attending these events? What's your most memorable moment?

Flash Fiction Contest

We moved this post to the top to encourage more entries to our contest. Two readers have posted their stories in the comments and both are awesome! Please read below and enter your own stories. (Note that the first contest to guess the Working Stiff is over.)



We Working Stiffs have a little surprise for you in February. We're calling this month February Shorts, or Flash Fiction February if you prefer alliteration. Either way, we think it'll be lots of fun!

In addition to fantastic guest bloggers Hank Phillippi Ryan on Thursday, February 4th, and Nancy Martin on Thursday, February 18th, we'll be blogging about shorts. No, not the ones you wear! (Although knowing this gang, that's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.) Since February is the shortest month, we thought we'd have some short story themed posts throughout the month.

And that's not all.

We have not one, but TWO contests. Jennie Bentley and Wilfred Bereswill have generously offered to donate a book to the winner. One winner will get Jennie's book, the other will get Will's.

The first contest will be on Friday February 5th. On Jennie's post that day, there will be 200 word stories that begin, "If you have to die, February is the best month for it." The catch? The stories will be anonymous. You won't know who wrote them! Your job will be to figure out which Stiff wrote what story. The reader who gets the most right, wins a book! In case of a tie, Jennie will pick the winner at random from those who tied.

We also have a second contest. Using the same opening sentence, "If you have to die, February is the best month for it," post your own 200 word story in the Comments. (Stories may be less than 200 words, but any that are over will be disqualified.) We'll gather them throughout the month, and Working Stiffs will pick a winner.

POST YOUR 200 WORD STORY IN THE COMMENT SECTION OF THIS POST.