Now of course, the story I broke ground on today is not called <Working Title>*. It’s a Halloween story I’m writing for the annual Halloween contest of my online writer’s group Codex. Each year, one of the Codex members comes up with a novel way to inspire a story. Two years ago, I participated in the context and failed miserably to produce a halfway decent story based on the list of items to include (for details, read my entry on the subject).

In 2006, I skipped the contest, which was seeded that year by selecting one of a collection of odd and bizarre photographs provided by Codex members. But this year, the seeding method was just too tempting to resist. Every participant in the contest seeds the next writer on the list by providing him with a spooky, odd, bizarre or otherwise inspiring character, described in less than 100 words. Fellow Codexian Gray gave me wonderful character, that spurred the first 700 words today.

*I do call it by a real working title, of course, but I can’t post that here, because working titles have a way of becoming final titles for my stories, and the Contest is judged anonymously…