In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* A New Short Story
* Story Idea?
* A Couple of Reminders
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“We who write into the dark abstain from conscious mind revision and rewriting, not because our words and stories are precious, but because we prefer to present the character’s true, authentic story instead of our own ego-driven fabrication.”
You didn’t miss anything yesterday. I didn’t post an issue of TNDJ.
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Erin Donoho “Crazy for Pizza” 2800 contemporary
- Loyd Jenkins “Claws in the Shadows” 4260 Urban Fantasy
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Angel Fire” 3003 SyFy Fantasy
- Christopher Ridge “Toilet Bowl Crabs” B movie type horror 3252
- KC Riggs “Everything About Me” 1249 General Fiction
- Dave Taylor “The Graveyard of Time ” 3,349 Magical Realism
Additionally, former Bradbury Challenge participant Balázs Jámbor emailed to say he’s regularly writing over 1000 words of fiction per day now. “Soon, I will finish my 31 short stories challenge, and after that I will write novels.”
Congratulations to all of these writers.
A New Short Story
“Coralín” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
This mischievous little romance is probably one of my personal favorite short stories. It’s also part of The Marshal of Agua Perlado, the 17th novel in the overall Wes Crowley saga.
Miss Coralín, a very strong female character, makes her first dynamic appearance in the 16th novel of the saga, South to Mexico, which is also only the third novel I ever wrote. Great fun.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else. Gracias.
Story Idea?
This story starter could inform a story in literally any genre:
“Some parasites can use mind control on their hosts.” Quoted from 1440 Sunday, a free weekly digest
Of course, if you’re gonna write the story it would be a good idea to know
- which parasites can do that (article) and
- which parasites can survive the heat of the human body (video).
Happy writing!
A Couple of Reminders
in case you need them:
I most highly recommend a book by Dean Wesley Smith titled How to Write Fiction Sales Copy. Great for book descriptions and cover blurbs. Here’s the Amazon link. I also recommend buying the paper edition. Mine is dogeared.
The low-cost high-quality cover design place I mentioned awhile back is Get Covers.
Of Interest
Did Edgar Allan Poe Invent Detective Fiction?
BookBub Featured Deals: The Nuclear Option “For many self published authors, a Featured Deal is the biggest visibility event of their career.”
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Adolescence Mardy’s post served as a prompt for me to write a (partly) tongue-in-cheek essay on what I consider the only two major divisions of the human lifespan: Embryo-hood and Maturity. Great fun.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 530
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 530
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for February………………………. XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for February.…………………. 19360
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 38950
2026 consumable words………………… 38950
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29