The now fully official Author’s Hangout Halloween 2025 competition support thread

[Voboy]

Slllloooooowww start.

But I loved writing this.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Slllloooooowww start.

But I loved writing this.

On my reading list

 

[StrangeLife]

As I’ve said before, the best advice for wining a comp is, “Try to avoid being hated.”

Well, it's way too much fun screwing with the reader's expectations. I think I'll just keep my day job then...

 

[EmilyMiller]

Well, it's way too much fun screwing with the reader's expectations. I think I'll just keep my day job then...

It’s not the readers you need to worry about.

 

[Actingup]

It might be more challenging, but I wonder if you've considered like an alt-fantasy setting that could rhyme with Australian history and the themes that you're thinking about without directly using real cultures and peoples?

Thanks @PennyThompson. I think that this is the way to approach it if there’s a way to make it work. I’m a huge fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, who uses this approach in his alternative histories (for example for the brilliant Sailing to Sarantium, which got me inspired to read up on Byzantium years ago). The issues that I’m struggling with here are that we’ve tied the Mothman story to a particular place (which I don’t regret), and that the issue of who speaks to that particular place is in dispute. I was less worried about those things in the Mothman story because we structured it around two white, ‘wokey’ young characters blundering way out of their depth, which to me at least felt quite authentic .

My take would be write it - it's so obscure that no-one even knows about it and your story may well encourage people to do a bit more reading on the actual real history. Australian aboriginal history is quite fascinating - The oldest living continuous art tradition in the worldn amongst other things, dating all the way back to 65,000 years ago. It’s as if the culture that created the Altamira Cave paintings (35,000 BCE) and Lascaux Paintings (17,000 BCE – recent stuff, really) was still with us, alive and maintaining a continuous artistic tradition dating all the way back to the first humans in Australia and maybe even prior to that. When you look at Australian aboriginal culture, you’re looking at the oldest continuously existing culture in the world. A culture that makes ancient Sumer and Mohenjo-daro / Harappa look positively modern.

And hardly anyone knows anything about it. I'd say whatever you write is going to be a plus so do it!!!!! Please. Even if its just for me LOL.

I actually have something a little but related where I was diving into Australian aborginal history - “Dead Heart: On the Trail of Thylarctos Plummetus” - a monster hunting story of course, set in Australia, and the team ends up in the Northern Territory taking on a monster crocodile from the Dreamtime (Dungalaba - it's from, I think, the Larrakia people in Djarrtjuntjun, I'd have to look up all my notes but I was going thru what little I could find on their culture and myths to use in the story).

Anyhow, most people don't read obscure history, and by including something like you're doing, you're spreading the awareness, probably far more so than some obscure history text is EVER going to do.

Like, if I didn't mention Albert Namatjira's art here, who here would even have heard of the guy.

View attachment 2568709

And thank you, @ChloeTzang. I do think that there’s a lot of merit in this argument too, although of course lots of art lovers (particularly Australians) know about Namatjira and also contemporary Aboriginal art. The closest that I’ve felt able to approach this in a story was to have a group of twenty-somethings visit a community art shop near Kakadu in my ‘Monsoon Coming’ (and personally I loved writing the scene).

I just haven’t been able to make it work for this story though. I haven’t quite given up, but at the moment I’m thinking that I won’t force it.

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

[BryanRichardson]

As I’ve said before, the best advice for wining a comp is, “Try to avoid being hated.”

This is good advice for your whole life, not just contests and competitions.

 

[EmilyMiller]

This is good advice for your whole life, not just contests and competitions.

Problem is, it’s dependent on other people.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'm afraid I came up with an idea too late with too much on my plate. But I'll have this queued up for next year.
https://forum.literotica.com/threads/halloween-2025.1637731/post-101628184

 

[StrangeLife]

It’s not the readers you need to worry about.

Oh, now I get it. You are referring to trolls?

Unfortunately I wrote a story in back 2013 about a cheating wife who was way smarter than her husband and got everything she wanted, and then I went ahead and posted it in Loving Wives. Such an infraction carries a minimum sentence of 25 years before parole is even possible.

So I fear that your excellent advice came too late for me.

 

[TheDok]

This is good advice for your whole life, not just contests and competitions.

It's good advice in principle, but in practice, it's impossible. If you are an honest individual with principles and stand up for what you believe in, not everybody will like you, and some may hate you. It goes with the territory, unless you are a hermit. I can't believe many start to write, hoping to be hated

 

[NuclearFairy]

My story seems to be on a roller coaster. It finally made it up to a hot status, and just two votes later has almost lost it again. I almost feel like getting some popcorn and watching the numbers.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It's good advice in principle, but in practice, it's impossible. If you are an honest individual with principles and stand up for what you believe in, not everybody will like you, and some may hate you. It goes with the territory, unless you are a hermit. I can't believe many start to write, hoping to be hated

Yeah, this and yet here we are

 

[caleb35]

If anyone's interested (and it's perfectly fine if you're not)... my draft story for the contest is titled "Aphrodite's Law." I'm going to wait a week or so before polishing it and aim to submit it about a week before the deadline.

 

[caleb35]

My story seems to be on a roller coaster. It finally made it up to a hot status, and just two votes later has almost lost it again. I almost feel like getting some popcorn and watching the numbers.

One of us, one of us...

 

[DEFCOM5]

Soixante-neuf

Tres rigolo. Parfait!

 

[dreams_in_words]

Submitted. Now we play the Literotica waiting game.

It's like waiting anywhere else, but with more pervs. And I don't mind them here.

 

[Statius]

I'm afraid I came up with an idea too late with too much on my plate. But I'll have this queued up for next year.
https://forum.literotica.com/threads/halloween-2025.1637731/post-101628184

Look at it this way you got a whole year to write it!

 

[Jorunn]

Catch me if you can!

A team of Bigfoot researchers from Alabama travel to Norway looking for the seductive forest spirit known as the Huldra! My story, “She Sure Ain’t No Squatch!”, pays homage to her sexy lore over spookiness, mixing the natural beauty of Norway with the fall tradition of “the hunt”.

 

[nymphic]

Just submitted my entry, a silly little horror about four friends in a haunted manor. This is the first time I'm submitting for a competition!
I'm not 100% happy with it, but better to be imperfectly finished rather than trapped in an infinite editing spiral.

 

[Jorunn]

Just submitted my entry, a silly little horror about four friends in a haunted manor. This is the first time I'm submitting for a competition!
I'm not 100% happy with it, but better to be imperfectly finished rather than trapped in an infinite editing spiral.

Best of luck with your story!

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

Having Hayley for Halloween is up today. His best mate's trans little sister gives him a treat.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Just submitted my story. Fingers crossed it goes through. "A Good Year for the Roses" - a romantic gardening story set around Halloween. And amazingly for me, submitted waaaaaaaay before the deadline (mostly becaue I wrote it for Crime and Punishment and then moved it because it got hung up in the submission process and got stuck in pending - very cloud has a silver lining.

All I will say about the story beforehand is, my husband read it before I submitted it and now he says he refuses to buy me a woodchipper for Christmas! Wuss!

 

[Aoife_from_Ulster]

Well, this is a first, my story was rejected citing:

We appreciate the effort you put into your work. Using Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Quillbot or similar software (including Microsoft Word grammar check) to check punctuation and spellcheck is fine. If you are allowing a grammar check program to “rewrite” your words or rephrase your text, that may cross the line into AI generated text/stories (since substantial parts of the final draft may not be written by you). We've checked this work several times and it is still coming back as being composed largely of AI-generated prose. Please review your drafts to make sure you are not inadvertently allowing the software to add or change words or phrasing. Please see this FAQ for more information:

While I do admit to using MS Word for spell check and Grammerly for punctuation, I have a volunteer editor who reads each of my stories and makes edit recommendations. I guess it is back to the drawing boards.

 

[dreams_in_words]

Yay! Mine will be published 10-04.

Be on the lookout for "Night of the Plot Bunnies."

It's a short one, put it together in about 6 hours.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Yay! Mine will be published 10-04.

Be on the lookout for "Night of the Plot Bunnies."

It's a short one, put it together in about 6 hours.

Mine too! Yaaaaaaay