The 2024 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day

Blogging is light right now, because I’m getting ready for Worldcon and I’m also 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, 2022 and 2023.

Initially I was unsure whether I was going to do the challenge this year, because I caught some nasty cold/flu bug (not covid according to a test) in June, which knocked me out for a week, and was also busy with translation work, taxes and preparations for Worldcon in Glasgow. But then I decided to give it a try and see I could make it work. And since I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to do the challenge, I also held off posting the day by day post.

Initially, I committed to the challenge only for a week, but when the first week was over, I kept going. And now we’re already at the two week mark, so I might as well post the day by day overview.

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, 2022 and 2023. 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, 2024: “So You Want to Be a Cozy Witch…”, cozy fantasy, 1069 words

Basically, this story is a summary of every witch cozy mystery series ever. The inspiration was compiling the end-of-the-month new release round-up for the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene. One type of book I unfailingly have in the round-up every month are witch cozies. And having read so many blurbs for witch cozies, it’s hard not to notice that these series have a lot of similarities. So I set out to write a ultimate guide to every witch cozy series ever.

July 2, 2024: “Hansemann’s Bakery” (The Culinary Assassin), crime fiction, 1366 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson goes to a bakery, buys a caraway breadstick and kills an abusive husband.

Yeah, it’s another Culinary Assassin story. I really need to collect these, since I have a bunch of them by now. The inspiration for this story was heading to a local bakery when they open at five AM and it was just getting light outside. And yes, the bakery is real.

July 3, 2024: “The Restaurant at the End of the World”, post-apocalyptic, 3182 words

Steve is fourteen, when the nukes fall. He survives inside an abandoned Cold War era bunker in the woods. When his supplies finally run out after four years, Steve is forced to leave his bunker in search of other survivors. But all he finds are burned out ruins, until he comes across an almost intact restaurant by a crossroads – and it’s owner, Ruth…

The inspiration for this story was this piece of concept art by Alariko. Steve is named for Steve Guttenberg, who was in The Day After, while Ruth is named for the closest thing to a protagonist that Threads has.

July 4, 2024: “Limbo”, crime fiction, 774 words

Sam is in prison, awaiting execution. But there is an unexpected delay…

The inspiration for this one was Punk Noir Magazine‘s flash fiction writing prompt “Limbo”. Of course, I missed the deadline to actually submit the story, but nonetheless, I suddenly had the idea of writing a story about someone in prison, awaiting execution.

July 5, 2024: “The Watcher on the Heath”, historical fiction, 1407 words

Millennia of history are told from the POV of a glacial erratic deposited on the heath.

The inspiration for this one was visiting a neolithic grave mound and assembly of glacial erratics in the village of Anderlingen.

July 6, 2024: “The Night The Thing Attacked Harbour Town”, cosmic horror, 1590 words

Prohibition era gangsters versus Cthulhu, ’nuff said.

The inspiration for this one were these three pieces of fantasy art by Richard Wright.

July 7, 2024: “Revenge of the Black Gargoyle”, pulp fiction, 2469 words

Thomas DeVane a.k.a. the vigilante the Black Gargoyle has finally found the man who murdered his parents, industrialist Atlas Snow. So DeVane infiltrates Snow’s skyscraper headquarters to take out the man himself.

The inspiration for this story was this piece of artwork by Christophe Vacher. It appealed because of the pulpy vibes and so I wrote a pulp vigilante story. Of course, I already have a pulp vigilante character in Richard Blakemore a.k.a. The Silencer, but he wouldn’t have worked for this story because of the revenge angle. So I created a new character who is somewhat inspired by Batman.

July 8, 2024: “The Whispering Stone”, time travel, 1102 words

In a small town about an hour inland from the North Sea there stands a stone stele that emits eerie whispers. The stele is very old and mentioned in the writings of Roman historians, Frakish missionaries and medieval chronists. Once recording equipment becomes available, scientists examine the stele and record the whispers and finally realise that they are message transmitted through time. And then they receive a terrifying warning…

The inspiration for this story is a sculpture in the city park of the town of Zeven named the Time Whisperer. I came across the sculpture during a stroll through the city park, though I can’t find any info about it online. The name intrigued me, so I wondered what if that sculpture really could transmit whispered through time. The story grew from there.

July 9, 2024:  “Meg’s First Day of School”, post-apocalyptic, 541 words

Meg lives in a mountain hut and today is her first day of school in the valley. But getting there requires crossing a field full of fallen mechas left over from the robot uprising…

The inspiration for this story was a piece of science fiction art of a little girl in a meadow full of fallen and overgrown robots. Unfortunately, I forgot to bookmark the artwork and I can’t find it right now. This is more of a vignette than a story, but I was tired.

July 10, 2024: “Fairy Doors”, fantasy, 1937 words

Fairy doors suddenly appear in the trunks of tree all over the neighbourhood of Shady Grove. The people believe it’s a prank or an art project, though no one ever comes forward to confess being responsible. Nonetheless, everybody is delighted. But then a cat goes missing and then other pets. And finally, children go missing…

The inspiration for this story was an article about fairy doors appearing in Brooklyn Heights. This story starts off quite cosily and then takes a turn into darkness…

July 11, 2024: “Home Story”, horror, 911 words

A TV journalist arrives at the country home of Secretary of the Interior Jeremiah Rice-Smythe. However, all is very much not as it seems…

The inspiration for this story was a news headline that the former British conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg would star in reality about himself and his family, which prompted plenty of jokes on Twitter about how Rees-Mogg was a vampire or some Lovecraftian entity. So I thought, what if he really was a vampire. What would happen to that TV team?

July 12, 2024: “King of the Raven”, horror, 572 words

Ravens are gatherine in the town of Fog Haven, watching and waiting for their king to arrive…

The inspiration for this story was this piece of horror art by Denis Loebner and the book and movie The Birds. Another quick flash piece, because I was tired.

July 13, 2024: “The Skull Mace”, dark fantasy, 697 words

The skull mace is a prized museum exhibit, a rare artefact of the Vilkor people who used the body parts of their slain enemies to fashion their weapons. But intern Kitty Chan questions whether it’s ethical to display a weapon made from a human skull. The skull, meanwhile, has ideas of its own…

The inspiration for this story was this drawing by Alexander Trufanov of a mace made from a skull, paired with a recent Twitter thread about museum exhibitions, warning labels and exhibits removed from display or not. Kitty Chan is also the name of the doomed museum intern from my story Paris Green.

July 14, 2o24: “Revenge Served Hot”, crime fiction, 428 words

The unnamed protagonist has had enough and decides to take revege on a greedy law firm. So the protagonist heads to the law firm’s office, a can of gasoline hidden in their briefcase…

The inspiration for this one was a report about an lethal arson attack on a club in Munich in 1984, which I had never heard of before. The real arsonists were far right fundamentalist Catholics intent on exterminating supposed “sinners”, but I changed the target and motivation of the arsonist.

This is the shortest story yet, but it didn’t any more space and I’m quite happy with how it came out.