Spook Season, Engage!

Image converted to text by Tesseract; forgive any errors!

Spook season, engage!

WebEater

Way back when we were young and innocent, before the plague, Kristy and I

started recording our little "write club" sessions. Friends would join

on an ad hoc basis. The Lotus had taken a hiatus at this point to focus

on the challenges of a new school year.

Then, covid hit. We wrote remotely, honping online to share our stories

on Thursday nights. The remote format afforded Murnh the opportunity to

join us. it the height of the March/April isolation, we had seven peOple

writing along with us every week. We took more than two hours to read and

discuss our work, so we wound up picking a prompt at the end of our writing

sessions. We'd take the week to write our stories.

To keep it interesting, we selected monsters as prompts every week. The

expanded nrompts allowed us to write longer stories, adding to the comfort

provided by our writing at a time when very few things provided relief

from the global anxiety. (Seriously, it was basically just our Write Club

and "Wine with Dewine." Ohioans know what I mean.)

Our Operative definition of monster was then, as now, lose and maliable.

We had traditional fare— zombies, Godzilla, etc.— criptids— Bigfoot, the

Jersey Devil- and not—quite monsters like Tommy knockers and the will 0'

the wisp.

We had fun with it. Stories randged from silly to horrifying. They're

all recorded; perhaps we'll release them some day as a monster mask on

Patreon (if we ever get that far:) or polish them to create our own

monster book of monsters. Regardless, I can hold those stories in my hand

and reflect on fond memories from a dark time.

So, I raise my glass of fresh-pressed apple cider to B52, Mr. Bicycle,

Potato/Tater, and the other writers who haven't yet rejoined us on the

podcast. I raise my toast to you as well, dear reader. May you don a

flannel, find a spot beneath a mighty tsree, and write along with us as

the leaves fall around you.

If you do write along; or draw along; or create along in any way, do

let us know. We'd love to see it. radiofreewrite@gmail.com, or

@radiofreewrite wherever media is socialized.

Adios, folks.