ANOTHER HALLOWEENSIE TALE!

I'm having so much fun with 100 word stories for Susanna Leonard Hill's Halloweensie Contest. Three of those words have to be Monster, Shadow and Candy Corn.

Here we go again. Entry number two!

You Just Never Know!

We three went out one Halloween to play a game of “Dare”.

Tom was a monster. He had to jump out of the shadows as our teacher cycled by.

Lucy had to hang her grinning pumpkin from the top of a tree.

I had to Trick or Treat at the creepy house they said belonged to a witch.

I almost ran as a wrinkled old woman slowly opened the door.  

Thank you, child.” She smiled tearfully as she held out some candy corn. “I’ve waited so many years for a Trick or Treat. You’re the first one who ever came!”

SUSANNA'S HALLOWEENSIE CONTEST!

Here it is! Children's author and blogger extraordinaire Susanna Leonard Hill's 7th Annual Halloweensie Contest. This is the first time I've entered, but here goes.

The challenge is to write a Halloween-themed story for children using no more than 100 words. Three of those words have to be MONSTER, SHADOW and CANDY CORN, or derivatives of.

WHO SCARED WHO?

Said  Mother Owl to little Wowee,

“You had better stay home with me.

‘There are Halloweenish things out tonight,

'creep-about things that might give you a fright.”

Wowee peeped from his hole in a tree,

to see what scary things he could see.

There were witchetty, monsterish, shadow-loom things,

black cat and bat things on scratch-scraggle wings.

Then came a sound soooo ghooostly and weird,

 they all cried eeek! and disappeared.

Safe in his bed, munching candy corn,

Little Wowee said with a yawn,

 “They were frightened away by The Great  Whooo-ooo”

   Said Mother Owl “Dearest, that Whooo-ooo was you!”

WHERE WILL THE SMIFFIES TAKE US?

An Adventure in Creativity

The YES! Factor. Everyone with the faintest hint of creativity in their DNA knows it. Whether it’s writing, painting, composing, designing, whatever, the moment comes.

It’s the time when a glimmer of an idea, an unformed possibility, suddenly throws off its haziness and leaps off the back burner, demanding to become real. From a vague ‘maybe’, it wants to become a ‘Yes, let’s do it’. Or at least a ‘Let’s give it our best’.

Suddenly we are faced with something that demands everything we can give it, and maybe more. But what can we say, except ‘Yes’?

So it is with me and the Smiffies and friends. But let me explain. One of the things I care about most in this world is children who suffer because of wars. They don’t deserve it. It isn’t their fault. Yet so often they suffer the most. I do all I can to help them. One way is to fundraise for organizations that care for them as much as I do. I have a stall at our local market selling pre-loved books. People are very good and kind. They donate books and they buy books. My stall does well and I know that the money I raise makes a difference to the lives of refugee children all over the world. But I want to do more. I hope to do that as a children’s author.

The Smiffies and friends live in Auntie Tia’s garden. They have adventures that will delight small children and I plan to share them through a series of hand-crafted books and cards for the very young. I can spin the stories, but I am no artist. For that I turn to my lovely 17 year-old grand-daughter, Tia, a gifted photographer. Together we will bring Smiffies and friends vividly and joyfully to life. Proceeds will go to refugee children. Please stay with us, because we need you.  And thank you, so much!

The Dartmoor Donkey

The first chilly days of winter have arrived here at the Hooting Owl. What better way to spend a grey, drizzly afternoon than in front of the fire in the snug? And while we’re cosy inside, what better time for a story about a bleak and wintry, windswept place?

Dartmoor is a vast area of moorland in Devon, England. Sometimes desolate, sometimes lonely, yet often beautiful in its own way, Dartmoor, has many myths and legends going back to ancient times. But the story I am going to tell you is true.

Many years ago I visited some friends who lived in a small village on the edge of Dartmoor. As we sat together by a warm fire, much like the one we are gathered around now, my friends told me of something that had happened only a year or two before.

It had been a long, harsh winter in Devon, the worst they could remember. Day and night heavy snowstorms swept across the moors, piling into drifts higher than a human being and burying every road and pathway, so that everything became one huge white wilderness.

Even though the villagers managed to clear the snow from their doorways, there was no way they could get out of the village. And there was no way that any kind of vehicle could get in. Children couldn’t go to school, nobody could get to work. There were no shops in the village, but usually everyone drove into the town, about ten miles away, or rode on the bus. But now they were completely cut off from the rest of the world.

At first that wasn’t so bad. Everyone had food in their larder and wood for their fire. But that was only for a while. Food and all the other items that everyone usually bought in the town began to run out. Worse perhaps, medicines that sick people needed couldn’t be bought either. Things were getting very grim.

There was one farmer who owned a donkey. It was a tough, sturdy little creature and the farmer had an idea. From odds and ends of timber that he had in his shed, he built a large sleigh. Then he harnessed the donkey to the sleigh, climbed aboard himself and set off across the snow-covered landscape. Neither he nor the donkey could trace where the road was supposed to be. They just had to trust that they could find their way to the town.

Hour after hour, mile after mile, the donkey plodded through the snowdrifts, pulling the sleigh behind him. Somehow his little hooves and strong legs kept going, even in places where a man would have sunk in.

At last they reached the place where a road had been cleared into the town. The farmer was able to load up his sleigh with food, medicine and all the other things that the trapped villagers needed. Then the donkey turned around and began to pull his even heavier load back home. It must have taken all the strength and courage he had, but that donkey finally made it back to the village. There he went around all the houses and the farmer delivered the much-needed goods to the whole community.

At last signs of spring began to appear. The sun shone, the snow slowly melted and once again the villagers could begin to go about their normal lives. But they didn’t forget the donkey and what he had done for them.

On a bright, sunny day in early summer, the children made a flower crown for the donkey. The farmer led him down the street and everyone came out to cheer their four-legged hero. It was the donkey’s day and he deserved it.

True story!

Why Do I Blog?

Why Do It?

Why blog? There must be as many blogs as there are stars in the sky (well, nearly). Bloggers post about the joys and dismays of their  life in a country cottage, a yurt, a converted chicken house  or on the thirtieth floor of a city skyscraper, They blog about their travels, their kids, their crafts, their politics and what they like to cook and/or eat. Whatever floats your boat, somebody somewhere is writing an exciting, knowledgeable, witty and entertaining blog about it and you can find it and follow it. More importantly, you can respond with your own bits. It's a 21st century  phenomenon,this totally open and accessible sharing of each others lives, indeed, the innermost essence of who we are,  and mostly it's good.

Writers are told that they certainly should blog and they do. I follow several and I savour the wisdom, wit and experience that my peers are so generously willing to share.But this old duck of thirty five years writing for children is very much of a pre-blog era and not sure that she is able to compete for her share of bloggery following. In my day, dear readers and writers, it was your bum on a chair and a pen in your hand, or a typewriter and endless cups of coffee (dare I say fags?). You could try talking to somebody  who was interested, if you could find one, but mostly it was a solitary, lonesome and scary occupation.  Dammit, writing was meant to be in a garret, alone and freezing cold, trying to type with those fingerless mitten thingies and not knowing if your latest story would cover  the arrears in the rent.

Now we have World Wide  Web! We have online writers' support groups, communities and conferences. We have writers' blogs! It's all so much cosier and friendlier; most of all supportive, and I love it! I guess I can give some advice to emerging writers based on my own experience and philosophy, From time to time I will do so. But guys, essentially I'm a story-teller. We're a breed that's  been around  pretty much since time began, which might  make us the second oldest profession in the world after you-know-what. Goodness knows where we come from, but we're born this way. Inns, hillsides, hearthsides, baronial halls, songs, operas, poems, books, films, and the multiple way we access them, TV, we've forever had our place to gather folk together to experience stories. It has been proven that stories are essential to human existence and so  story-tellers have this huge, brilliant, inescapable (we sometimes  try to, but we can't) responsibility to turn the whole meaning of life, love, pain, evil, goodness, mystery, laughter and beauty into something we can mirror back to you.

So, that's what I do. Mainly, but not always, my stories are for children and young people. They have been published as novels, early readers and picture books. So, I ask again, why blog? I don't think the average follower would be interested in my latest op shop find or what I had for breakfast, so never mind about me.

My  blog is another way to tell stories. If I'd lived in my homeland of England five centuries ago, which my ancestors did, I would still have been a story-teller, probably in the tap room of an inn. But today in 2017, by the miracle of IT, I am able to create my own virtual inn, The Hooting Owl. We have a cosy, fire warmed and fire-lit snug for chilly days and storm-ridden nights , a sun-speckled, leafy woodland for lazy summer wandering and yarning and a clifftop vista over the bay where we can sit  to spin and share our stories. I shall tell mine and I invite you to tell yours. This blog is not about reality, or at least only reality as told through stories. Please come and share my stories and send me your own. Poems and illustrations are a welcome story-telling vehicle.  Send to a.p.martin@bigpond.com and become a part of the Hooting Owl story-telling community.

The Stories I Tell

Ok, so my name is Carol Ann Martin and I hang out with a couple of ghosts (three if you count Ernie, The Ghost Horse) in a five hundred year-old inn called The Hooting Owl. What goes on at the Hooting Owl, apart from owl hoots at night and ghostly hauntings pretty much any time? Stories, that's what. My stories, your stories, ghost stories, funny stories, creepy stories, fantasies and true stories, poem stories - this is the place to come if you love stories.

Do my stories ever get published? Yes, they do. I write them and my wonderful agent, Jane Novak at the Jane Novak Literary Agency finds them a loving home with a publisher.

Working with an illustrator and a publishing team to create a book is one of the most exciting things that anyone could hope to do. This is storytelling that can go everywhere, from tree house to bedtime, from secret little reading nook to bus, story time at school, holiday on the beach, quiet time at the library. Anytime anywhere is the right time to dive into a book! Or even to write a book!!