Perhaps foolishly, I have decided at the last minute to do a daily fiction project this year. I’ve done them before but I wrote flash fiction stories. This year, I started with my (relatively newfound) tradition of rereading Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October and went, “I am…totally jealous of that.”
So.
I sat down and wrote, and this is what’s coming out, a middle-grade short horror novel!
I think. I have no idea where it’s going! The working title is “Turning Leaves.” (Update, it’s now called The Witch House and it’s available for preorder here.)
The plan is to update this story daily with about a thousand words of fiction, mostly written and posted on the day it “happens”–October 1 events in the story on October 1.
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!
UPDATE: Preorders are live! Click here to be redirected to your favorite ebookstore.
Turning Leaves (Working Title): October 1 - Librarians, Goth Crocs, and Ghost Cats
This is a children’s story, which means that I can get away with saying things that I couldn’t say to adults, but not a young children’s story, which means I can get away without having too many pictures.
Some of the things which I am about to describe would not be bearable, if you were forced to look at pictures of them.
The story I am about to tell you is both disgusting and terrifying.
At least, I think so.
But who am I?
I am…a witch.
And also a librarian.
It’s not required for all librarians to become witches, by the way. It just so happens that I am both. The other librarians I work with know all about this, but they think it means that I am merely odd. (Librarians are fine with odd people, because they are almost always more than a little odd themselves.)
The other witches I work with know that I am a librarian and are always asking silly questions. I try to explain that I can answer almost any question, as long as the answer has been recorded somewhere other than a magical text, but do they listen? No!
“Oh, Emma, what is the best way to lure non-local mermaids? I don’t want to speak to a local mermaid, but one from Atlantis.”
“Oh, Emma, how expensive is a full-body wig made of Sasquatch fur?”
“Oh, Emma, how much weight can a phoenix carry? And will it start on fire, or will the magical flames not burn it?”
If you were to come to my library and see someone at the reference desk asking me a question, and my face is turning red, then that is your first to as to whether the person speaking to me is an ordinary person, or a witch.
Ordinary people just want answers to their questions.
Witches are a bit different.
You will see.
But this isn’t a story about me, Emily the librarian-witch.
This is a story about Jayla, who is one of the library kids at my library. I won’t tell you exactly which library it is—for reasons that you will understand very shortly!—but I can tell you that it is in a medium-sized city where the leaves turn orange and red and yellow and brown in the fall, and where it doesn’t often snow on Halloween, but sometimes it does.
This means that every October the library, which is on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the city, is surrounded by the sounds of rustling leaves, which the wind carries all around the hill and piles up pleasantly in corners, where children and dogs like to jump and play.
And that every October, houses are decorated with carved pumpkins on their front porches, and orange and green and purple Halloween lights, and plastic skeletons: some of them small, some life-sized, and some very large indeed.
Jayla is one of my favorite young patrons at the library. Someday, she may become a witch. I say she may become a witch, not because she doesn’t have the talent for witchcraft. She does! But, sadly, sometimes a talent for witchcraft is not enough.
It takes talent to become a witch, that is true.
It takes skill and dedication, too.
It even takes luck! For if you wish to become a witch, then you must know that it is possible to become one, and how can one learn that it is possible to become a witch without having met one?
You might be able to learn witchcraft from books. But, unless you have met a witch, how will you know which books are the right ones to learn witchcraft from?
Many books claim to be magical.
But only a few actually are.
And I haven’t even told you about the hardest part of becoming a witch yet!
You can have talent, skill, dedication, and the good luck to meet a witch, and still not become a witch.
There is one more thing that you need, one more ingredient to the magic spell for making witches, so to speak.
I cannot tell you what it is.
It is a terrible, terrible secret.
October 1 – Jayla
Some names and locations have been changed to protect our privacy!–Emily
My name is Jayla Jackson, and I am twelve years old.
I am a sixth-grader at Chaney Middle School, where over five hundred other kids, including two hundred in sixth grade, all battle continuously over who gets the best seat at recess, who has the coolest locker, and who has kissed the most popular boy in class.
I am not like that. I paint my fingernails black and hiss when people try to talk to me. I wear a large gray hoodie every day to class and I never take it off, no matter how hot it gets in August or September. I wear black Crocs decorated with steel spikes, skulls, scorpions, and spiders.
I do this to warn people away from me.
If people think I am weird, then they won’t try to become friends with me.
People who become friends with me are in danger.
Because I can do magic. I am a witch.
I am only writing this down in my English class journal because no one will believe me, and I have to write something, or Mr. Henderson will give me a bad grade in the class.
He says it’s okay if I pretend that I am a witch.
He says that exercising our imaginations is an important part of being an adolescent, and that the more we act out in our imaginations, the less likely we are to make poor choices in our real lives.
I feel bad for Mr. Henderson. He must not have met many bad people in his life.
Or else he wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t think Mr. Henderson is a bad person. I just think he’s naive, that is, “showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.”
My first entry is due first thing tomorrow morning. We shall see whether Mr. Henderson respects the way I exorcise my imagination, or if I am merely being naive.
Jayla’s Spell for Warding Off Sunday Sadness
– Find one horror movie, the gorier the better, that you have never seen before.
– Finish all your homework and use the toilet first.
– Then go downstairs into the basement, all alone, to watch the movie.
– Bring treats: something hot and sweet to drink, popcorn with butter and spicy chili powder, and a plate with half a can of tuna.
– Put the plate on the floor by the far end of the big couch with the itchy old blankets on it.
– Wrap yourself in the least itchy of the blankets.
– Start watching the movie.
– When the ghost cat eats the tuna, don’t look. And when he climbs on top of you and starts purring, don’t move, or he will BITE.
P.S. To treat the bite of a ghost cat, place one hand over the bite, close your eyes, and say, “Send this death to the leaves, not the children. Send this death to the leaves, not the children. Send this death to the leaves, not the children.”
Make sure you are only thinking of leaves this time, and not any children.
