Brett O'Reilly's Blog, page 2

A Month of Horizons

October 2020 is shaping up to be an interesting month for me writing-wise.

Starting on Thursday, I submitted two stories to online publishers, The Dark, and Dark Moon Digest. The former sent a rejection which was very friendly and invited me to submit in future (which is definitely a good sign); I won't know about the latter until between now and end of December, but hoping they like my story about a late night excursion to the Othello Tunnels. (Out by Hope- First Blood was actually shot througho...

Challenged

This past weekend, I finished writing and submitting my story for the second round of NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge 2020. The contest concept is, you have 24 hours to write a story of 1,000 words or less, based on the assigned criteria of a genre, location, and object. Participants are placed in heats of thirty; there are two scoring rounds before elimination begins. 1st place in a round (within one’s heat) is awarded fifteen points, 2nd place is awarded fourteen points, etc., with anyo...

A Forgotten Path

I love to write. I always have. I still have stories I wrote as a child, from My Life as a Shoe (~1978), to my first ghost story, The Haunted Mill (~1980). My teens -- the 80's -- were full of stories and poems, and I will always be thankful for the encouragement of my grade 9/10 English teacher, Mrs. Margaret Kreter, who saw something special in me. She saw a writer.
 
My family, however, did not. I think any artist coming from blue collar roots understands this. "Writing" meant journalism, not s...