One April Morning - Spring 2013 Story Challenge

Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Organizational: 

Contests: 

Audience Rating: 

One April Morning
A BigCloset/TopShelf Story Challenge Presented By
Erin Halfelven

house1frontlarge_0.jpg

The street sign pointed only one way, the little lane met the larger street but did not continue on the other side. A large Craftsman-style home occupied one corner, converted years ago into a sort of rooming-house-cum-residence-hotel-cum-bed-and-breakfast. A big squarish building with gables and porches, the one-time mansion bore its demotion to commercial property with the dignity of a bankrupt financier operating a hot dog wagon.

A woodlot sat on the other corner, a clutter of neat stacks of firewood and seemingly random piles of jumbled logs. The randomness, the owner would say, resulted from the necessary moving and turning of the piles of curing wood. A regular array would be less efficient at the task and would have to be unstacked and restacked to be sure the wood cured evenly. Simply moving the pile from one place to another once a week with an ancient forklift turned all the logs over and assured that each got enough sun and air to turn into perfect firewood.

The lane did not continue past the end of the woodlot or the small row of outbuildings behind the mansion. The house, being the only important building facing the street, bore a singular number and the name of the lane as its address. One April Morning.

On this particular morning, a resident of the former mansion woke to a life-changing discovery....


 

To enter the challenge, please either continue the story from this beginning or use it as an inspiration to create your own beginning with the theme of a life changing discovery. Post the story between now and April 30, 2013 (or even a little after) and include the One April Morning - Spring 2013 Story Challenge category.

Since it is a Challenge, not a Contest, the winners are going to be all the BCTS writers who enter and the readers who enjoy the stories. And me. :) Have fun and good luck. :)

- Erin

Comments

Oh yeah?

Andrea Lena's picture

...well I triple dog dare ya! What? Not that kind of challenge? Oh... Sounds like yet another way to have fun and grown and change at the same time! Thank you!

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

My submission...

...the resident then realized he'd just been dreaming, and went back to sleep. He slept through the day, into the night. It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! The man awoke to find he was now a girl named APRIL, and it was ONE in the MORNING.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, YOU ALL ARE TOO KIND

**Hallucinatory Sigh""

Words may be false and full of art;
Sighs are the natural language of the heart.
-Thomas Shadwell

Your submission

Was a little light on content, and perhaps resorted to a well-known trope in order to complete the challenge.... but I am all too familiar with that (hallucinatory/daydreaming) type of sigh.

:)

Actually that shot had hit

Actually that shot had hit her dog killing it. One April was in mourning...

Floorplan?

Since I am thinking you got that... graphic from a houseplan website, is the floorplan(s) available/can you point us to the link it came from?

Ellen, 22nd level Necromancer of Threads

Floor Plan

erin's picture

Here's the site where I got the image: http://www.builderhouseplans.com/timeless-craftsman-styling-... They do have floor plans but note that those are the original floor plans, this building is a conversion and has more bedrooms than the plan on the site. I also made a tiny alteration in the look of the house. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Now, where in the house can we

set up the servers and the game room at ? :D

I wanna room dedicated to be the library for our published books and manga ^^ And we also need the creative lab room with the Wacom tablets and color laser and poster printing xerox machines too!

The house that BCTS created...

Someone else can have control of the kitchen :)

Sephrena

It's got a bridge...

(2nd floor)
"Captain to the bridge!"

As for Sephrena's concerns/desires, I think that's why they invented the third (US) floor. Just clone the 2nd and voila!
Oooh, and then you have an auxiliary bridge!

Ellen, 22nd level Necromancer of Threads

Uh

I also made a tiny alteration in the look of the house. :)

By 'tiny alteration' I'm assuming you actually mean "got an entirely different house" ? 'Cause what showed up at that link looks nothing like what you posted... Or did they switch it on you?

Ellen, 22nd level Necromancer of Threads

You're right

erin's picture

I evidently copied the wrong page address, that's a similar house but not the same. I think this is the right page: http://www.builderhouseplans.com/luxury-master-suite-with-si... The conversion would take a lot of that extra space and make bedrooms of them. I figure change from four to eleven bedrooms, two of which could be suites.

But the change I made was to slightly horizontally stretch the image so the building looked larger.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

But there's no bridge...

*sighs* That was really cool.
Well, what you could do by telling people things, like that they were wanted on the bridge or similar, was the cool part. *sighs deeply* It's just not the same...

Though, when examined, this also would 'benefit' from cloning the 2nd (US) story as the third. You could take that master-bed/sitting/master-bath and, oh, change the sitting room to a master-bath and then redo the previous master-bath as a large bathroom for "Bedroom 2". And the third floor, take that 'open space' and make it into another bedroom, since the stairs don't go up. Put the 'staff' on the third floor. Yep yep yep...

Ellen, frustrated architect and 22nd level Necromancer of Threads

The Challenge looks as if it

can generate several great stories, can entrants use this as a part of their established universe or as a par of an established series like Whately, SRU, Bikini Beach?

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

It's a challenge, not a contest

erin's picture

The less rules, the more stories. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Oh, so

The less rules, the more stories. :)

Since this is a rule-less thing, I can put four stories of house? That'd be kick-ass.

Ellen, frustrated architect and 22nd level Necromancer of Threads

Put your shirt back on!

meme stolen from a pizza commercial of some kind :P

For once...

I've got an idea sketched out in my head and have started writing it. The intro has been slightly adapted (Tudor half-timbered pile about half a mile down the lane - seclusion's key to the story - and I've found a nice image on Wikimedia Commons (I just love the eccentricity of those buildings, which start off with verticals and horizontals but settle into a slightly different arrangement [uneven floors and walls] while still retaining structural integrity).

As I've booked the next week off work, I may actually be able to get it finished and posted (yay!), in addition to clearing up some of the Bike Wiki backlog and a chapter or two of a Whateley tale I'm intermittently working on.


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

The best laid plans...

Well, I didn't manage to make a start during that week, but I've made one now. 400 words so far, and my character's only just moved in...


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Um... the mansion totally

Um... the mansion totally doesn't fit the setting for my story idea, but the general idea works very well. You won't mind if I adapt it for my april fools day story, do you?

Not at all

erin's picture

The mansion was just my idea for a story and I offered it up as a possible setting for other stories. The challenge is to write about a surprise someone gets when they wake up one April morning. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.