WRiTE CLUB 2021 - Preliminary Bout #4

We're back with preliminary bout four. Remember, the voting for each bout remains open for an entire week, so if you missed one or two you can always go back and catch up.

Here's a reminder of what is happening. WRiTE CLUB (sponsored by Wild Lark Books) is a tournament-style contest that will run for nine weeks (which includes a week break for the holidays). It provides writers the opportunity to compete against one another for a chance to win a free publication package (along with other prizes). Here’s the kicker—it’s all done anonymously. Writers have submitted 500-word writing samples under pen names. The chosen (decided by a group of twelve slush pile readers) are paired off to go head-to-head in daily “bouts”, with the winner of each match determined by you the reader—by voting for your favorites. Bout winners keep advancing until there are only two remaining and that’s when a panel of celebrity judges, who include well know authors, agents, editors, and other publishing folks, choose the ultimate champion.

Anyone can vote (as long as you have a Google sign-in or verifiable email address), and when you do, we encourage you to leave a mini-critique for both writers. Oh, the voters can win a $50 Wild Lark Books gift card. Each time you vote in a bout your name will be placed into a hat and at the end of the contest, one name will be selected to receive the prize.

How this works—two anonymous (pen name only) writing samples are waiting in the ring below. Visitors to this blog (that’s you) should read both entries and then vote by leaving a comment for the one that resonates with you the most. We also ask that you leave a brief critique for both writers with your vote because that is one of the real values of this contest—FEEDBACK. Please be respectful with your remarks!

Even though there will be a different bout every day (M-F), the voting for each bout will remain open for seven days from the date I post it to give as many people as possible to have a say. Voting for today’s bout will close on Wed. Dec 15th (noon central time). To help keep up with which bouts are open, you can follow along on the WRiTE CLUB Scoreboard updated right HERE.

It’s that simple. The writing piece that garnishes the most votes will move on to the next round where they’ll face a different opponent. In case of a tie, I’m the deciding vote. I can do that because, like all of you, I do not know the real names of our contestants either (my wife processes all the submissions).

A few more rules –

1) One vote per visitor per bout.

2) Although our contestants are anonymous, voters cannot be. Anonymous votes will not count, so if you do not have a Google account and are voting as a guest, be sure to include your name and email address.

3) Using any method (email, social media, text, etc) to solicit votes for a specific contestant will cause that contestant's immediate disqualification. What is okay, in fact, encouraged, is to spread the word about the contest to get more people to vote, just not for a specific writer!

That’s enough of the fine print…here we go!

On one side of the ring stands Elettra Miller representing the Cozy Mystery genre.

As the two FBI agents lead Cherry off of the casino floor, Dot adjusts the elasticated waist of her trousers, flips out her cane with the flowers on the shaft, and catches up 

"What's going on?"

"Murder, probably." 

"You're a suspect?"

Cherry half smiles. "Let's hope not." 

The agents reach a fire door and open it. Brad is tall, but his chin is weak, and Carla bears the scars of teenage acne. They are, however, pretty darn fit. Dot follows them down the employee hallway, wondering if it's too late to start building her glutes.

"DAMN! What kind of asshole architect puts one step in a hallway?" 

Cherry has half fallen and is leaning on the wall. Dot rushes back. 

"Have you been drinking?"

"It's Vegas. Haven't you?"

Dot bites her lip. "No, Cherry, I haven't been. I wouldn't drink today any more than I'd drink if I was running a marathon."

Cherry glances at the cane, but seems to think better of commenting. 

It's too late, though. Dot feels the tips of her ears go warm. "The ladies out there and I have been training our brains to the limits for months. Mind palaces, mnemonics, all that stuff. Do you know how many decks were in that shoe on the table? Eight, these days. Then you waltz in and …"

"Everything okay?" It's Carla. She's come back to see why they aren't following.

Cherry pushes herself straight. "I don't suppose you got coffee?"

"I sent Brad for some. He'll meet us at the murder scene up those stairs." She holds out her hand. "He told me about your good work on the Pasadena highway killer last year."

Dot looks from Carla to Cherry and back again. "You consult for the FBI? That's what this is?"

"My assistant," Cherry says to Carla, "she's new."

Dot doesn't want to be Cherry's assistant, but she's not keen on explaining she's in Vegas to fleece casinos using math, so she follows them up the stairs. At the top, there is police tape and something gunky spilling out an open door. Carla goes to flag down Brad, and Cherry turns to Dot. 

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to watch you."

Dot sighs. Her team has earned so much money over the years, they don't need more. These days, they choose a GoFundMe to support. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. It wasn't an invite."

"My daughter needs the therapy. It's the only way she'll live a normal life."

"It's okay."

"And I could use some help now, actually. You're right. I'm pretty trashed."

Despite herself, Dot is curious. She's never seen a real crime scene. She figures the ladies can wait a bit. 

They walk down the hall, toward the tape. Brad is there with coffee, and he hands Dot one. She looks at the glistening globules of matter scattered across the floor, wondering if it's brains. 

"Meat feast pizza," Brad tells her. "Better drink up, ladies. The real show starts inside."

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On the far side of the ring, we have Lady Warbleon who represents the Gothic Horror genre.

House of Whispers

 

The house had outgrown them.

No, I have not misspoken: truly, the Château du Chuchote was bigger than when the family first arrived. Like a quiet cancer, it swelled and spread—stairwells unrolling from drywall, corridors sprouting from halls, porticos appearing where they hadn’t been the day before.

The youngest of them was the first to notice, one fog-softened afternoon in August. “We’ve a courtyard now, Mother,” she announced over tea.

“Of course, Nicolette.” The mother did not spare a glance from her cup or a care for the courtyard. Like all the house’s additions, it was easy enough to trivialize with reason or diagnose as imagination. It has always been that way, the adults would say, even as the foundation groaned beneath them.

Nicolette spent her day exploring the cour d’honneur all the same, delighted to find it trimmed with fieldstone and ripe roses. She tucked her dolls among the buds and armed their porcelain palms with thorns. For a perilous moment, she considered hiding herself in the roses, too, deep in the brambled shadows.

But she knew it would not matter. He would find her anyway.

Nicolette took a nascent hallway back to the nursery, so narrow she had to turn sideways to pass. There were tiny white flowers metastasizing down its length, and when she touched one, it rained petals at her feet as though this were the nave of a chapel and she the bride. It was both sad and beautiful, she thought, not unlike the house itself.

She did not tell the mother about the hallway. Or about the door that had begun to etch itself into the nursery wall. She knew it was not her imagination, because she would watch the door’s light inch closer each night—to the toy chest, to the chair, to the foot of the bed. She would watch the light whenever the yelling swelled below her, and the rumble of his voice grew closer.

The next morning, she ate peaches and regarded the new window in the parlor. She skipped through the rambling enfilades and sunk her dolls to the bottom of the new fountain. And that night, she found the new door in the nursery had cracked open, the light beyond it coaxing and warm. While other children might have been afraid, Nicolette knew there were bigger things to fear. Like the sound of his footsteps thundering down the hallway, her name a curse in his mouth.

When he arrived in the nursery that night, he did not find Nicolette. He found only a melting lantern, only an empty wall, only a new porcelain doll left in her stead.

The house had outgrown them, you see. It’s said the Château du Chuchote had once been home to many daughters. Now, the grounds are quiet, save for the occasional creak of a beam settling into place. It has always been that way, the adults would say.

But if you listened, the house would say different.

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Leave your votes and critiques in the comments below. Again, be respectful of your remarks and try to point out positives as well as detractions.

Before we sign off, I wanted to address the issue a few readers are having with not being able to post comments, or having those comments show up as UNKNOWN even though they have a Google Account.  There are several things at play here. First, if you are using the Safari or Chrome browsers they have a known problem with Blogger and you have two choices. Switch to Firefox as a browser (I've never had a problem using it), or change the setting on Safari as illustrated below.

The other problem is Blogger not recognizing you when adding a comment and therefore designating you as UNKNOWN. This could happen if the reader is a Blogger user themselves and they have not changed their settings since Google + went away.  To do this, follow these steps:

Go to Blogger dashboard.
SETTINGS
USER SETTINGS
Set User Profile = Blogger (instead of Google +)
Save

Hopefully, that will resolve everyone's issues and let the votes/comments reach our contestants.

Finally, in order to keep this contest going AND GROWING, I'm asking folks to donate to the cause on my Ko-fi account. Let me assure you, 100% of the donations will go towards the contest prizes for this year and next!

We’ll be back tomorrow with one last bout for the week. Please help all our writers out by telling everyone you know what is happening here and encouraging them to come vote.

This is WRiTE CLUB—the contest where the audience gets clobbered!