Poetry by the Iguana, and Other Stories

Many people have unexpected gifts, and the Iguana surprised everyone by telling his view of the galaxy in poetry. Everyone but me, that is. I've always known he speaks in lyrics!

Hi! Zantippy Skiphop here! I tell the tales of my adventures in the galaxy with my friends! Iguana likes to stay in his Earth swamp, so his book got written while I was trapped in an extraterrestrial jail. Don't worry, I escaped, so we are all about to tell you lots more stories!
Love,
Zantippy

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Halloween Short Stories: Contest and eBook!


Cover of the soon-to-be-available short story anthology, All Hallows Eve: Hear the Whispering Voices.



Hi, everybody! Halloween and short stories are two of my favorite things! At Sharon van Orman's blog, Always to the Unknown Friend, there are dozens of scary/creepy/otherworldly/touching stories that have been submitted to Sharon's Halloween flash fiction contest. This one is mine - Iguana at Halloween.

My story started outside of the Zantippy/Iguana universe, but it totally morphed into Iguana telling the story :D I love Iguana! He's one of the most peaceful souls I know, despite being a samurai warrior. I'm not sure how Iguana's style fits into the whole collection of stories, since most of them are horror or paranormal with pretty much NO happy endings! :D Well, maybe a couple, including one from last week, Unlucky, which became one of my favorites, about the journey of a Halloween pumpkin from pumpkin patch to jackolantern.

A lot of incredibly good writers have their stories in this contest. This is the fourth entry week, then next week the four winners will write another short story for the prize! (Oh, by the way - I'm so sorry I didn't mention this before - I know a lot of writers who would have loved to enter a story, and I did post about it on Facebook but forgot to tweet it! So I feel bad that some of you may be disappointed to not enter it this year - the next contest I find out about, I'll let you all know right away!)

Voting for this week starts tomorrow, Monday 10/22, at 9am CDT, 10am EST (those times are U.S.) and goes till midnight Wednesday night. Each entry is given a letter and number, and this week's entries are the ones beginning with "C", on the right-hand side of the page. To vote for a story, just leave a comment under that story. You can only vote one time, so please be sure to read as many of the "C" stories as you can before choosing the one you like the best!  :)

I hope you enjoy all these short stories! This has been so much fun and I've met some truly wonderful people. Again, here is the general link to the Halloween Flash Fiction contest. The list of entries are on the right. Oh, and - the person who wrote Unlucky is compiling most of the stories into a Halloween ebook anthology! I'll let you know when it's available!

Edited to say: I decided to tell you which story is mine so you don't need to go searching, like Speedy and his Mom had to do yesterday - but please read the other stories before voting, there are lots of wonderful Halloween tales in there! Thanks!!! :) Mine is #C7

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Still on the Planet!

Hi! It's been a while since I lasted posted, and I just wanted to tell you that hopefully I'll be posting again soon! I've had some trouble with migraines, and when I feel good, I've been scrambling to get stuff done around home, be with critters, write some articles, beta-read a friend's book, and work on my own fiction. Meanwhile you can see a few new articles at Active Astronomy, about the Mars rover, Curiosity, and at Astronomy Wise, which is a monthly zine. My articles at Astronomy Wise are more social-oriented than detailed science :) See you soon and thanks for dropping by!