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

[Soixenta]

Sounds intriguing - good luck with it

Thank you!

 

[MelissaBaby]

 

[EmilyMiller]

View attachment 2565832

Intriguing…

 

[M_K_Babalon]

For those of yall that like horror, like @lovecraft68, yall should check out Lighthouse Horror on Youtube. Dudes been slowly working on his own world. A lot of it makes me wanna stay out of Ohio.

This might gimme a chance to work on one of those Appalachian stories.

 

[KindredFlame]

Never done this before and I am thinking of entering. I am not sure if the story I was thinking of entering a story about the preparation for a college Halloween party would qualify for this event?

 

[Voboy]

Never done this before and I am thinking of entering. I am not sure if the story I was thinking of entering a story about the preparation for a college Halloween party would qualify for this event?

Sure it would.

Whether a story will "qualify" for a contest here is not a tough threshold to meet; literally a single mention of the word Halloween, a setting in October, or a spooky milieu will do it. I think first-timers sometimes overthink that part; there's no real gatekeeping for entry. The "is it on-theme" question probably matters in terms of the readers' voting patterns, based on comments I've gotten over the years, but they're pretty reasonable about it.

Submit it! I'm sure it'll find an audience and be entertaining.

 

[KindredFlame]

Sure it would.

Whether a story will "qualify" for a contest here is not a tough threshold to meet; literally a single mention of the word Halloween, a setting in October, or a spooky milieu will do it. I think first-timers sometimes overthink that part; there's no real gatekeeping for entry. The "is it on-theme" question probably matters in terms of the readers' voting patterns, based on comments I've gotten over the years, but they're pretty reasonable about it.

Submit it! I'm sure it'll find an audience and be entertaining.

Thanks I started a story line but it got boring just students doing functional jobs to get the party on very difficult to get much emotional content into it let alone sex.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Thanks I started a story line but it got boring just students doing functional jobs to get the party on very difficult to get much emotional content into it let alone sex.

Make them nude while doing the functional jobs

 

[SmilingLez]

Erotic horror (separately no problem) is definitely a challenge when it comes to writing prose. Hopefully I will get mine done in time

 

[KindredFlame]

Make them nude while doing the functional jobs

I have added in that the cheerleaders and the jocks are often found holding a fuck fest party. And that the occasional bit of sexual release was occasionally apparent but no one took any notice at the screams of passion coming from a corner of a room where others are working on the background for the stage but it all seems generic.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I have added in that the cheerleaders and the jocks are often found holding a fuck fest party. And that the occasional bit of sexual release was occasionally apparent but no one took any notice at the screams of passion coming from a corner of a room where others are working on the background for the stage but it all seems generic.

Mine is set in a 1995 high school (for reasons). But the school kids aren’t what they seem .

 

[EmilyMiller]

Erotic horror (separately no problem) is definitely a challenge when it comes to writing prose. Hopefully I will get mine done in time

I seem to gravitate to Erotic / Comedic Horror

 

[KindredFlame]

Mine is set in a 1995 high school (for reasons). But the school kids aren’t what they seem .

Sound ghostly. I did think of a ghost human sex story. Where the female ghost stays on this astral plane as she has fallen in love with a boy she grew up with. Using as much knowledge she was able to obtain and her spiritual power as she could she started to work out how to make her thought into feelings in the alive world and soon she was sucking his cock and he was responding

 

[EmilyMiller]

Sound ghostly. I did think of a ghost human sex story. Where the female ghost stays on this astral plane as she has fallen in love with a boy she grew up with. Using as much knowledge she was able to obtain and her spiritual power as she could she started to work out how to make her thought into feelings in the alive world and soon she was sucking his cock and he was responding

Does it involve pottery?

 

[KindredFlame]

Does it involve pottery?

No and it’s the girl who is the ghost. I was thinking not in modern day Victorian era maybe but yes ghost did sort of set the town for it and she want to fuck him in the end.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I have to ask. I never understood this themed 'competition'. Authors here seem intrigued by it. It encompasses all categories. What gets me are how SO many here will claim in one breath, "I write for myself! I don't care what others think of my stories! Anybody who doesn't like it is a TROLL who wouldn;t know a good story if it bit them on the ass!!!"
Then they join a contest hoping to get kudos for their efforts.

Perhaps this should be like the Academy awards. The public has no say. Only those within 'the membership' should decide.

 

[EmilyMiller]

No and it’s the girl who is the ghost. I was thinking not in modern day Victorian era maybe but yes ghost did sort of set the town for it and she want to fuck him in the end.

You have time to write it

 

[PennyThompson]

I have to ask. I never understood this themed 'competition'. Authors here seem intrigued by it. It encompasses all categories. What gets me are how SO many here will claim in one breath, "I write for myself! I don't care what others think of my stories! Anybody who doesn't like it is a TROLL who wouldn;t know a good story if it bit them on the ass!!!"
Then they join a contest hoping to get kudos for their efforts.

Perhaps this should be like the Academy awards. The public has no say. Only those within 'the membership' should decide.

Seems like a bit of a strawman argument to me, and I find the whiff of bitter cynicism to be very unbecoming

I've only entered one contest so far, but it seems to have nabbed me about fifty new followers, plus a number of really great comments from people that probably would not have read my work otherwise.

I'm hoping to get something finished in time for the Halloween contest, because the engagement from the last one was so nice and because it's my favorite holiday.

I also participate in some of the non-prize writing events for the same reasons, and because it's fun to write within a shared theme in a (mostly) supportive community!

 

[Voboy]

I have to ask. I never understood this themed 'competition'. Authors here seem intrigued by it. It encompasses all categories. What gets me are how SO many here will claim in one breath, "I write for myself! I don't care what others think of my stories! Anybody who doesn't like it is a TROLL who wouldn;t know a good story if it bit them on the ass!!!"
Then they join a contest hoping to get kudos for their efforts.

Perhaps this should be like the Academy awards. The public has no say. Only those within 'the membership' should decide.

Write what you want to write. Others will write what they want to write. Then, everyone will be happy. Nobody owes you an explanation.

The best thing about these support threads is that they are SUPPORTING the people who've chosen to enter the contests. If you're not choosing to enter, your support is still appreciated. But if you're neither entering nor supporting...

...why post here?

 

[EmilyMiller]

People are strange. Fucking strange.

Anyway…

 

[KindredFlame]

People are strange. Fucking strange.

Anyway…it would be strange if we were all the same.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Got an idea involving a local haunted hotel. Also trying to think of something using a zombie.

 

[KindredFlame]

Got an idea involving a local haunted hotel. Also trying to think of something using a zombie.

Waiters

 

[KindredFlame]

I just thought of something flight 727 has an accident mid air no one dies but everyone has a story how a hostess helped them in some way. The only problem is that the person they all say helped them had died on the plain 5 years earlier in a hostage situation.

 

[KindredFlame]

Adding a bit of meat to the bones.

Though Flight 727's mid-air calamity left its passengers shaken and scarred, it was nothing short of a miracle that every soul on board survived the harrowing descent. Yet, as the tales of survival unfolded, a peculiar commonality emerged: each passenger, regardless of their position or state of consciousness, vividly recounted being aided by a specific flight attendant—a kind-eyed woman with a calming demeanor, who offered a steadying hand, a comforting word, or even miraculously shielded them from flying debris. The unnerving problem, however, lay in her identity: the compassionate hostess they all universally described, down to intricate details, was Sarah Jenkins, a beloved crew member who had tragically died five years earlier aboard that very same aircraft during a brutal hostage situation.