The 2023 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.

The 2023 Hugo finalists were also accidentally announced for about an hour on Sunday night, but since the list was not yet final and posted in error, I guess we’ll go back to waiting for the finalists, which is currently turning into Waiting for Godot, while I will go back writing a story a day. For, as already mentioned, 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, 2021 and 2022.

Because I’ve already done the July short story challenge eight years in a row now and always found the experience very rewarding, I’m aiming for a repeat this year. Though I’m only committing to one week for now.

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, 2021 and 2022. 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, 2023: “Bodies Are My Business”, dark fantasy, 2240 words

Shaezius is a graverobber, dealing in artefacts, body parts and entire bodies. Even though there is a lot of demand for his wares, Shaezius and his fellow graverobbers are locked in a steadily escalating arms race with the guardians of the city’s cemeteries. The latest round of escalating security measures may be the worst yet, because it involves magical barriers that no human being may cross without having the soul ripped from their body…

The inspiration for this story was twofold. The immediate inspiration was seeing a photo of a tripwire activated cannon that was supposed to deter graverobbers in the eighteenth century. The other inspiration that I occasionally do translation work for a company that sells preserved human bodies and body parts to medical schools, museums and the like. And there is a lot of rigmarole involved in the export of preserved dead bodies as well as a lot of hypocrisy.

July 2, 2023: “Grandmother”, crime fiction, 1533 words

Enrique’s life was turned upside down, when his adoptive parents were arrested for supposedly stealing him and Enrique was reunited with his biological grandmother, a woman who cannot let go of the past. With his parents on trial, Enrique goes to see his grandmother to try to persuade her not to testify and drop all charges one last time…

The inspiration for this story was reading an article about babies born in Argentinian prison during the military dictatorship. The parents were usually murdered and the babies given up for adoption and often ended up with military families. Decades later, these now grown children learned the truth about their origins and were reunited with their grandparents, while many of the adoptive parents were put on trial.

It was harrowing reading, but as I read the article, I also wondered how those children would feel to see the only parents they ever knew hauled off to jail and suddenly find themselves faced with grandparents who were complete strangers. Especially since not all of the adoptive parents were actively involved with the military dictatorship, but were just people desperate to have a baby who didn’t ask the questions they probably should have asked. And indeed, of the various cases presented in the article, at least two, both of them men, were extremely ambiguous about the whole situation and protective of their adoptive parents. One man had completely broken off contact with his biological family and another was irritated by the fact that his biological grandmother insisted that he change his name.

Not sure if this story will ever be published, because it’s dark and not very politically correct. However, it cried out to be written.

July 3, 2023: “The Night of the New Moon”, sword and sorcery, 2178 words

Syltja is a girl from a small farming village nestled among dense woods, where the shadow demons roam. When Syltja is caught out in the woods on the night of the new moon, she is saved from the shadow demons by Kaltak, a wandering warrior. Kaltak spends a few weeks in the village, recuperating from a battle injury, and Syltja falls in love with him. Yet Kaltak’s destiny lies elsewhere and Syltja knows that eventually he’ll leave…

This is a sword and sorcery story about a wandering barbarian warrior saving a young woman from some terrible danger. However, the story is told from the POV of Syltja, the woman left behind, when Kaltak leaves to seek his fortunes elsewhere. The idea was to take one of the many women a typical sword and sorcery hero in the Conan mold meets (and beds) on his travels and tell the story from her perspective as one of many women left behind, as the barbarian hero drifts in and out of her life.

I’m really happy with this one.

July 4, 2023: “Refuge”, cozy fantasy (sort of), 2494 words

Jory is an exiled prince, king now in theory, who has spent the past twelve years living in the Citadel of Shadow in the Valley of Rocks, where his father and the remaining defenders of the realm withdrew, after the Dark Legions of Zarkoz swept across the land. To Jory and young sister Melly, the secluded valley and the citadel are the only home they’ve ever known. But when his father doesn’t return from a raid, Jory finds himself king of a land he has never even seen. So he ventures out of the Valley of Rocks on a scouting mission to see the terrors of the Dark Legions for himself. He also gets a kiss from a girl selling cherries by the roadside. But he can’t wait to return home to the Citadel of Shadows, even though he knows that he will have to leave eventually to take back his kingdom and free his people.

The inspiration for this story were two pieces of fantasy art by Nele Diel, this one and this one. I wondered who the person heading through that lonely valley and towards that sinister looking fortress might be and finally thought that maybe the forsaken valley and sinister fortress were just someone’s home.

As for why it’s cozy fantasy in spite of some terrible things happening, it’s basically the story of a boy and his horse who just want to go home, see his little sister and get a hug from his mentor.

July 5, 2023: “Bowl” (The Culinary Assassin), crime fiction, 1488 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson eats a poke bowl and kills a corrupt civil servant who also mispronounces “chicken  satay”.

Inspired by having a poke bowl for lunch as well as by a recent scandal about a corrupt civil servant.

I really need to collect those Culinary Assassin stories, since I have about twenty of them by now.