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Writing Prompt: A Family Fear
Young Horror brings you writing prompts to energize your week with spooky idea inspiration. Are you writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade, or YA? Your next great idea could be sparked right here. Check back every first Monday of the month for inspiration. Share your ideas and discuss in the comments below. Look out for our September feature article: Found Footage Horror, on the third Thursday.
Parents can pass on their own fears to their children. Do you jump every time you see a spider in the house? Little Jimmy is picking up those cues, and he’ll …
Writing Prompt: Wicked Watermelon
Young Horror brings you writing prompts to energize your week with spooky idea inspiration. Are you writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade, or YA? Your next great idea could be sparked right here. Check back every Monday for new writing prompts. Share your ideas and discuss in the comments below.
In this final installment of summer treats, let’s twist a familiar tale for our wicked purposes: watermelon seeds growing plants in your belly.
It’s funny to picture at first, then absolutely horrifying. Reminds me of a rather hideous Garbage Pail Kid: Walter Melon.
Parents often tell this …
The CreEpy Catalog: Frozen Charlotte
In order to write great children’s horror, you must READ great children’s horror. To help you out with this, we’ve invited our very own middle school librarian to take you into the deepest, darkest corners of the stacks to see what frightening fiction kids are reading. Welcome to the CreEpy Catalog!
Everyone who knows me knows that I have a soft spot for dolls. Even the ones that look “creepy” find a home with me because I can’t bear to have a representation of someone’s childhood go abandoned and unloved. I love reading horror stories that feature creepy dolls, and …
The Seers’ Table August 2018
The Seers Table!
Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community
Hi, this is Kate Maruyama, on deck for the Seers’ Table this month. We’ve come up with some very tasty summer reading for you to round out your August.
Michael Gonzalez recommends
Rios de La Luz is a queer xicana/chapina sci-fi-loving writer living in El Paso. Her first book, The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert, is out now via Ladybox Books. Her debut novella, Itzá, is out now from Broken River Books. Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Entropy
Writing Prompt: Ice Cream Truck
Young Horror brings you writing prompts to energize your week with spooky idea inspiration. Are you writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade, or YA? Your next great idea could be sparked right here. Check back every Monday for new writing prompts. Share your ideas and discuss in the comments below.
Writing Prompt: The Ice Cream Truck
Last week we discussed beating the summer heat of these dog days by eating popsicles. Popsicles with dire consequences! Another source of scorching heat relief is the always creepy Ice Cream Truck.
Driven by a stranger. Driving slowly down residential streets. …
Writing Prompt: Dog Days of Summer
Young Horror brings you writing prompts to energize your week with spooky idea inspiration. Are you writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade, or YA? Your next great idea could be sparked right here.
Check back every Monday for new writing prompts. Share your ideas and discuss in the comments below.
Dog Days of Summer
For today’s writing prompt, turn on the sprinkler, because we’re in the dog days of summer. These “dog days” point to the rise of Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius ushers in the hottest 40 days in the Northern Hemisphere. Time to avoid heat …
A Flash of Fear: Why Write Short-form Horror
For many (if not most), the first introduction to horror doesn’t come from a book or movie, but from a brief scary story told to them, perhaps around a smoky campfire in lonely–or are you alone after all?–woods. Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories collections include many of the selfsame creepy jewels of storytelling’s oral tradition, and have inducted many a child into the ranks of the horror lovers.
Sometimes, what readers really need is unfiltered, filler-free horror delivered directly to the brain.
Short horror is also popular in amateur circles, via various user-driven websites and podcasts. So, even though word counts …
Writing Prompt: Knock on Wood
Young Horror brings you writing prompts to energize your week with spooky idea inspiration. Are you writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade, or YA? Your next great idea could be sparked right here.
Check back every Monday for new writing prompts. Share your ideas and discuss in the comments below.
“Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational–but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?” -Judith Viorst
Your superstitions are much older than you. If you take that moment to knock on wood, you’re joining in on an activity to ward off anger and …
Q&A for The Frightful Ride of Michael McMichael
It’s Friday the 13th–the perfect day to reach down into the grave dirt and resurrect the Young Horror (formerly YA Horror) blog and to talk about NEW BOOKS.
Hop aboard the Thirteen bus and drive through the brand new spooky picture book The Frightful Ride of Michael McMichael (Candlewick 2018). Author Bonny Becker and Illustrator Mark Fearing give all the gory details to HWA YH blogger Shanna Heath below.
Whether you write horror for young people, or want to share more horror stories with the kids in your life, check in every Monday for Young Horror Writing Prompts and every …
I Know Why the NyteBird Sings: An Interview with Linda D. Addison
I Know Why the NyteBird Sings: An Interview with Linda D. Addison
by David E. Cowen, Author of The Madness of Empty Rooms and The Seven Yards of Sorrow. Follow David at www.decowen.com.
I first experienced the work of Linda D. Addison in a volume of verse I still consider one of the great contemporary works of speculative poetry Four Elements (Bad Moon Books). Linda along with Marge Simon, Charlee Jacob and Rain Graves created what I consider one of the best examples of modern dark poetry. The HWA apparently did as well as it was awarded a …
The Seers’ Table July 2018
The Seers Table!
Linda Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community
July has Build a Scarecrow Day, so find something scary to read!
Michael Paul Gonzalez recommends
Mira Grant was born and raised in Northern California, where she has made a lifelong study of horror movies, horrible viruses, and the inevitable threat of the living dead. In her guise as mild-mannered urban fantasy author Seanan McGuire, Mira was the recipient of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Recommended reading: Into the Drowning Deep. The ocean is home to many myths, but some
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