This year’s October fiction project is a short middle-grade horror novel. The working title is “Turning Leaves,” but that will probably change.
Here are the rules (which I am making up as I go along!):
- Write every day.
- Write about a thousand words every day.
- Write words the same day the characters would be writing them, for the most part (that is, Oct 1 words in the story = Oct 1 words in real life).
- Don’t plan ahead.
- Don’t quit.
I don’t have an outline or even a plan.
It’s been a while since I wrote middle-grade fiction. This should be fun.
…
October Fiction Projects to Date:
2017 – October Nights – General flash fiction short horror-ish stories.
Website – Ebook
2018 – Tales of the Normal – Twilight Zone-style surreal stories.
2019 – Crime du Jour – Short crime stories.
2023 – Turning Leaves – Middle-grade horror.
Website – And sign up for the newsletter to get updates about the final ebook!
Turning Leaves (Working Title): October 5 - Icky; Learning How to Take Care of Yourself for Once
October 5 – Lola
I feel bad today.
I stayed up after midnight reading The Stepford Wives. I didn’t finish it yet. It’s a weird book. It doesn’t seem like horror? But Jayla said it was horror. And she is the expert on horror.
What am I an expert on?
Nothing?
I am reading The Stepford Wives very slowly, for me that is, because I have to stop, and think, and reread, and think again.
Let me get the book out of my bag.
The Welcome Wagon lady, sixty if she was a day but working at youth and vivacity (ginger hair, red lips, a sunshine-yellow dress), twinkled her eyes and teeth at Joanna and said, “You’re really going to like it here! It’s a nice town with nice people! You couldn’t have made a better choice!”
If I am an expert at anything at all, I am an expert at looking at small things.
Mom rolls her eyes and says I take things too seriously, and I say, “How dare you accuse me of being serious!?! I even wore my sparkly unicorn shirt today!!!”
I had to look up what a Welcome Wagon lady was: women who were friendly and knowledgeable about their neighborhoods, who delivered welcome gifts.
Call me too serious, but that sounds like something racist people would do? Let people know whether they were going to be welcome or not? What if you moved into a neighborhood and nobody came to say hi? Then you would know that you were not welcome.
When I read the first sentence of Stepford Wives I thought, “It’s me. I am working at youth and vivacity” and I felt icky, like someone had watched me picking my nose when I thought I was alone.
I almost dressed in boring clothes today, but then I thought, “I don’t want anyone to figure out that I’m not sparkly on the inside.” And then I felt even ickier.
I’m sitting behind Jayla and she is wearing a black hoodie, and under her hoodie she is wearing a plain black t-shirt with the word NO stenciled right across her flat no-boob area in white fabric paint.
I hate how I feel. I feel icky. I feel like everyone is staring at me today. I feel like I want to be mean to people.
I watch the Pop-U-Lar girls in the front of the classroom passing notes to each other. Later, they’ll find someone to be mean to and make fun of them over lunch.
And they won’t feel bad at all.
😢
October 5 - Jayla
Note:
This page was originally folded over. A long crease runs down the middle.
When I turned around to tell Lola about not being able to destroy the gray bookmark, she had her head down on her desk.
She wasn’t crying but she was sad. I can tell.
After a second of me looking at her, she looked up from her arm and whispered, “The Stepford book is weird. I like it and I don’t like it.”
I nodded and turned back around.
After a few seconds she poked me in the back with her pen.
I turned around again.
“Do you feel icky all the time?”
The back of my neck and the backs of my hands prickled. “What?”
“I feel icky all the time? Or I think I do? Why did I just figure it out today, though?”
I tried to write some more on my journal entry, but it all sounded stupid. So I tore out the page crushed it up into a ball.
Everyone in the class turned around and stared at me.
Lola said, “Mr. Henderson?”
Mr. Henderson took this long breath and said, “Yes, Lola?”
I admire how easily Lola can annoy people. Even when she annoys me I’m impressed.
“I just wanted to say that I don’t like Creepypastas and I don’t like horror movies and I don’t like zombies and I don’t like being scared, but I like this book.”
She held the copy of The Stepford Wives that she got at the library over her head.
Mr. Henderson said, “Thank you, Lola, but please just write down your commentary in your journal. Right now it’s time to be quiet.”
“Okay, Mr. Henderson. Sorry, Mr. Henderson.”
I bent down over my notebook and tried really hard not to laugh.
Note:
This page was not folded.
So yesterday after school Stepdad Dave was waiting for me at the front door.
He was standing behind the door and I yelped when I started opening the door and he jerked the handle out of my hand.
And then he was standing over me, looking down at me through his square glasses with his eyes, which always are a little too wide and show a little too much white at the pupils.
I feel like Stepdad Dave is an alien invader who replaced my mom with a pod person.
Stepdad Dave said, “I’m going to be gone for the weekend, Jayla. Please check up on your mom for me and make sure she eats and showers and goes to bed. I left sixty dollars for groceries on the counter in the kitchen. Don’t just order GrubHub every day. Walk to the grocery store and get some frozen food. You need to learn how to take care of yourself for once.”
I stared at him.
He raised a hand slowly. I thought he was going to hit me but it was just a wave.
“Excuse me,” he said.
I got out of the way.
He bent over, picked up a blue gym bag off the floor, walked over to his big black pickup truck, got in, and drove away.
I walked to the grocery store and got frozen pizza, frozen lasagna, and frozen mac’n’cheese, some milk and some cereal and some of the small pot pies because mom will eat them sometimes and they’re not terrible, some protein bars and a package of frosted cookies, the soft sugar cookie kind with orange pumpkins on top.
What happens if he doesn’t come back?
It felt like he might not come back.
If he doesn’t come back, what will we eat? I’m going to look up the ingredients we have in the kitchen and find out what I can make.
What if something happens to mom?
Jayla’s Spell for Making a Friend
– I don’t know.
– Talk about books.
– Think they’re more scared of you than you are of them.
– Check on your mom but she’s not in her room so go downstairs and find her in front of the TV, still watching black and white movies and think She looks like she has cancer and almost throw up.
– Lean against your mom and doomscroll through Tumblr while you’re waiting for the lasagna to bake.
– Try to get her to come upstairs with you.
– Eat downstairs in the basement and feel crazy happy when your mom eats, too.
– Do dishes while your mom sneaks upstairs and closes her door softly.
– Feel someone watching you.
– Look everywhere, see nothing.
– Think about going downstairs with a plate of tuna for the ghost cat.
– Instead poke strange gray bookmark, start doing homework, discover sketch of bat dressed as a ghost inside English journal, lay on the living room couch by the front door and doomscroll while thinking Question: Do I feel icky all the time? Answer: yes.
– Feel the ghost cat sit on me anyway, fall asleep and wake up upstairs in my bed again.
– Sketch is stuck to the wall with little pieces of gray tacky stuff that looks like it came from the gray bookmark, but the gray bookmark doesn’t have chunks ripped out.
– Was it mom?
– Probably not.
