OG's BLOG

The third installment of the Hazelwild story is done and polished. I’m calling it Sycamore. It’s the story of four friends on a campout and what happens when they encounter something strange in the middle of a forest hike.

I am really happy with the way the three parts went together, and I’m really anxious for you to read it. I think a lot of people are going to get creeped out by it, and hopefully, will enjoy it.

It was the longest chapter so far, clocking in at 2900 words, so I know I did the right thing by breaking the story up into thirds. All together, it’s almost 6000 words, around 21 pages.

Here is a sample:

We set out on a hike to work up an appetite for dinner. We got away from some of the well-traveled paths used by the campers, and set off through the less familiar ridges of Fredericksburg, upon which many battles were fought during the Civil War. We were well aware that many men had died in those woods, and to thirteen-year-old boys that love campfires and scary stories at night, it seemed the perfect place to hike.

Clearing one ridge, we came upon a little area we took to be an old garden, surrounded by a decrepit wrought-iron fence, inexplicably in the middle of the forest. On further inspection, we realized it was not a garden. Through the tall weeds, we could see small white granite or marble blocks, maybe a foot wide, six inches deep and maybe two feet high, with names and dates inscribed on them. There, miles from the nearest house, was a tiny graveyard.

That’s it for now. Have a great Sunday!

Thirty-One for October: 10 of 33 chapters written. Wordcount: 18,010.

Tonight, I polished up a good, solid second draft for the second part of the Hazelwild three parter. I love how these three chapters fit together.

Here’s today’s clip:

There was something in the basement. Most of the bottom layer of our scary old house was a pretty typical basement for houses of its type. Normal, nonthreatening. Kid-friendly. Aunt Sis even ran a pre-school out of it until she built a separate building for that in the 1980s. But there was this one part in the back, which we only used for storage, and it was off-limits to the pre-schoolers.

It was a narrow room with a very old door. In the rest of the basement, there was a nice, flat, cement floor, but in that storage room, it was basically a dirt floor with thick blocks unevenly laid in an undulating state of decay. It smelled like death in there.

Til next time!

Thirty-One for October: 9 of 33 chapters written. Wordcount: 15,082.