The 2022 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day

For starters, Smashwords is currently having its annual summer sale, where you can get plenty of e-books at reduced prices or for free, including several of mine.

In other news, blogging will be light this month, because I’m currently doing the July Short Story Challenge again.

What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next. If you want to read my post-mortems of the previous July short story challenges, here are the posts for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Because I’ve already done the July short story challenge seven years in a row now and always found the experience very rewarding, I’m aiming for a repeat this year. This July is a very busy month for me, never mind that I caught a persistent and annoying cold (not covid, I did a test). Therefore I initially only committed to doing this for a single week, which is already finished, and now I’m going for the second week. Then, if things are going well, I’ll keep going.

In previous years, I’ve always done a post-mortem post about the July Short Story Challenge in August. In 2019, I also started keeping a running tally of all stories written to date right here on this blog to hold myself accountable. It worked well and so I did it again in 2020 and 2021. I will do it again this year as well and will update this post with every new story. This tally will be very basic, listing just the date, title, word count, genre, series, if any, and maybe a one or two sentence summary/comment.

Most of these stories will become longer in editing. Many will eventually change their titles and some may never see the light of day at all.

If you want to follow along with the challenge, bookmark this post. And if you want to play along or cheer me on, feel free to do so in the comments.

And now, let’s take a look at the stories:

July 1, 2022: The Offering, fantasy, 2344 words

Every twenty years, the people of the fishing village of Thesipha at the edge of the Bay of Ambirosi, make an offering to Sabeana, goddess of the sea and patron of fishermen, hoping for rich fishing in the bay.

The young fisherman Pelinas is chosen to present the offering to the goddess. But as he waits at the edge of the pier for the goddess to claim her offering, he realises that the offering is not what he thought it was…

Like many of the stories from this challenge, this story was inspired by a piece of fantasy art, namely this one by Richard Hescox.

July 2, 2022: Sanctuary, historical fantasy, 2435 words

Deep in the woods that surround the town of Immergrün in Medieval Germany, there is a place called Sanctuary, where the women in trouble can escape from the men who pursue them.

One of those women is Katharina who finds herself pregnant by a man who wants nothing to do with her and accuses her of being a witch and bearing the devil’s child. But before Katharina can be burned at the stake, an unexpected ally frees her…

This story was partly inspired by this piece of fantasy art by Nele Diel and by discussing the 2022 Hugo Finalists for Best Short Story on the Hugos There! podcast, since two of the stories in question feature dryads, so they were on my mind.

July 3, 2022: Silverthorn, fantasy, 1467 words

Silverthorn is a magical sword. Her last wielder, the knight Vultorf, retired into the woods to become a hermit. After he died, Silverthorn is looking for a new wielder. But she had high standards and won’t just let anyone wield her. No, she will only pledge herself to a worthy cause.

Finally, after two hundred years of waiting, a worthy wielder finally stumbles upon Silverthorn, though he is not at all what she expected.

This story was inspired by this piece of fantasy art by Nele Diel, which sparked the idea to write a story about a magical sword from the point of view of the sword.

July 4, 2022: Buttercup, crime fiction (The Culinary Assassin), 2116 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson shoots a con woman in a hipster cupcake shop.

Yes, it’s another Culinary Assassin story. Somehow, I find these easy to write, when I’m stressed out, because it’s basically “Pick a locations, a dish and a target and start writing”.

I wrote a Culinary Assassin story during last year’s challenge, which basically retells the famous final scene of The Sopranos from the POV of the assassin. Now the Culinary Assassin takes aim at another HBO prestige show (TM), Sex and the City, and shoots a Carrie Bradshaw stand-in at the Buttercup Bakery, which is a stand-in for the Magnolia Bakery from the show. The brief scene at the Magnolia Bakery, which brought tourist crowds to what had been a quiet neighbourhood, also set off the gentrification of the area and pretty much destroyed it as chronicled here.

July 5, 2022: Rum Ball, crime fiction (The Culinary Assassin), 1684 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson heads to rural Northern Germany to eat rum balls in the best bakery in the region and takes out a pedophile priest as well.

I had a busy day today and did not feel all that great, so here’s another Culinary Assassin tale.

Since yesterday’s story was about a hit in a trendy hipster cupcake shop, today I sent the culinary assassin to one of my favourite bakeries, which is the complete opposite of hip. And yes, the bakery is a real place and occasionally shows up in my fiction, e.g. tuckerised as the name of a planet in the In Love and War series.  The rum balls are real, too, though both the assassin and their target are fictional.

July 6, 2022: The Message of the Runes, horror, 1504 words

A student of archaeology falls into a hole and stumbles upon a rune stone in what appears to be an ancient burial chamber and decides to decipher it. This turns out to be a very bad idea…

The inspiration for this story was this piece of fantasy artwork by Nele Diel. For the setting, I chose the famous neolithic tomb known as “The Visbek Bride”, which is a popular tourist site around here. Plus, the setting and particularly the proximity to the Autobahn A1 also gave me a brilliant way to dispose of the monster my idiotic archaeology student has accidentally unleashed. Let’s just say say in a contest between an ancient monster from the dawn of time and a Dutch truck carrying cucumbers, the truck wins.

July 7, 2022: Adventurer’s Rest, cozy fantasy, 1336 words

After a lifetime of adventuring, Dankar has grown old and opened an inn called Adventurer’s Rest, together with his found family: his daughter Talia, deposed prince Cadwyn, Ghuk the golem and Ughiwyn the wizard.

This is a cozy slice of life piece about an aged adventurer who has found a place to rest for himself and the people he loves. The inspiration was a simple “What if an aging warrior opened a roadside inn for others like him.

July 8, 2022: Just Another Snake Cult, sword and sorcery, 1429 words

Killing their king Enzummu was supposed to end the reign of terror of the serpent men, but instead it set off a new problem, when every single surviving serpent coucillor, general, dignity or priest set up their own cult, until there was a snake cult on every street corner.

The unnamed protagonist is a Warrior of the Light sworn to wipe out the serpent men and smite their snake cults with extreme prejudice. But this mission is his most difficult yet, for he must stop Zuanzi, former right-hand man of Enzummu, from opening a portal on the night of the blood moon to raise the Great Snake God Nergai, who will devour the entire world…

The inspiration for this one comes from a discussion about the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian. In the movie, a character says that until recently, Thulsa Doom’s sect was “just another snake cults”, which begets the question of exactly how many snake cults are there in the Hyborian Age. I then had the idea of a holy warrior sworn to take down snake cults and being frustrated that snake cults are like the Hydra, take out one and two more pop up in its wake.

July 9, 2022: Wrong Turn, fantasy/fairy tale, 1903 words

On her way to grandma’s house, Little Red Riding Hood – who’s not so little and only known as Red in this story – takes a wrong turn and stumbles upon a group of witches frolicking naked in the woods.  This leads to a much happier ending for Red, though poor grandma still gets eaten.

The initial inspiration for this story was this piece of fantasy art by Ilya Gorbunov. Also, this is the second story about lesbian wood nymphs I have written during this challenge. I’m beginning to sense a theme here.

July 10, 2022: The Horror in the Cathedral, dark fantasy, 1108 words

The cathedral Notre Dame de Desmarais has been infested by an ancient evil, a demon who is rising the dead buried inside the cathedral to attack the living. So far, the ghoulds have already lsain two priests, a Dominican friar, two exorcists and the most feared witchhunter in all of France. So the bishop seeks a knight who will venture into the cathedral and deal with the ghoul problem. But only the female knight Ghislaine la Véridique is willing to go…

This story was inspired by this piece of fantasy art by Adam Barker. I’m not happy with the title, since it’s too generic and will probably change it.

July 11, 2022: Pasta all’Ortolana, crime fiction (The Culinary Assassin), 968 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson goes to a restaurant in the non-touristy part of Rome, eats pasta and shoots a local mafioso.

I was busy and tired today, so all I could manage was a very short Culinary Assassin story. The inspiration was the fact that I actually made this dish two days ago, based on Rachel Roddy’s recipe from the Guardian.