There are gifs that perfectly sum up an emotion or experience, and there are gifs that defy reality and beg for explanation.
These will be the basis of W.P.G., The Writing Prompt Gif Game.
I want people to send each other the world’s best and worst gifs as writing prompts. The gif can appear at any point in the story. End the story and tag another person with a new gif, invite them to build on the story, whatever you like.
This is all just an excuse for me to collect my favorite gifs for posterity and pretend I’m being productive, but that’s not important.
I’ll go first, with a musical tale I call…
LOSE YOURSELF
B-Rabbit stood on the stage, trembling, mouth dry, about to lose the most important rap battle of his life before it even began. He stared into the lights to blur the vision of his swaggering rival and jeering crowd, to burn away everything except for the beat. His fingers were clenched around the cheap mic, knuckles turning white as he tried to hold onto the words that were vanishing, unborn, from the tip of his tongue.
He dug deep inside and dredged up all of his anger, fear, passion and pain. It threatened to choke him or tumble from his mouth as sobs and shrieks, but he forced it, through sheer will, to come out as truth.
“Look If you had One shot Or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted In one moment Would you capture it Or just let it slip?
Yo His palms are sweaty,
knees weak, arms are heavy There’s vomit on his sweater already,
…crab spaghetti!”
The End
And there you have it, the first of doubtless millions of WPGs.
With the convergence of Black Mirror’s interactive movie BANDERSNATCH and the reboot of MARY POPPINS, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to post my interactive Mary Poppins inspired ‘choose thine own adventure’ game.
To celebrate season 3 of Voltron on Netflix (and to make my pal Dave Wein happy) I am cracking open the old webcomic vault. Enjoy this vintage edition of Robot! VS Ninja!
I’ve neglected to mention that I have a new podcast!
Soon we will all be pod-people
It’s called The Six Demon Bag, and if you get that reference you’ll dig our show. If you don’t get the reference, we’ll surely win you over with our healthy recipesflirty fashions political discourse grab bag of topics guaranteed to include things like science, writing, movies, comics, games, anime, true tales, ponderables…all that kind of thing!
Here’s another 13 songs for your Halloween party. The theme for this year’s mix is Horror Movies, featuring songs from scary movies or about movie monsters. While there are many throat-shredding, head-banging heavy metal bands that write nothing but monster odes, this list will even appeal to mullet-challenged individuals.
If you think a song is missing from this list, you may find it included on a previous list here, here, here and here.
Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula – The Diamonds
There are many songs about B-Movies from the 50s and 60s, but I like this one because it’s about a girl who can only be amorous when watching monster movies.
Beware of the Blob! – The Five Blobs
I don’t know what else Burt Bacharach and his band The Five Blobs sang about, but this is the definitive song about blobs.
Human Fly – The Cramps
Bzzzz bzzzz bzzzzzz!
The Creature From the Black Lagoon – Dave Edmunds
I like how simply the love story is laid bare in this catchy tune.
The Howling – Babel
This entire song is performed live several times in The Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf.
Big Bad Wolf – Bunny and the Wolf Sisters
This is the song from the prom at Teen Wolf to which the Teen Wolf dance is choreographed. Dear God I love this movie.
Pet Cemetery – the Ramones
Sometimes Ramones is bettah. For bonus horror movie music, checkout ‘Chainsaw’ about a certain massacreeee.
Drinkenstein – Dolly Parton & Sylvester Stallone
Not from a horror movie, not a classic monster, not stopping me from putting it on the list. The album has a bigger sound, but the outfit from the movie is not to be missed:
I Still Believe – Tim Cappello
This song was performed live in Lost Boys, and the saxophone player really brings the heat.
He’s Back (the Man Behind the Mask) – Alice Cooper
This movie is written about Jason Voorhees for Friday the 13th part 6. Not only does the music video have Cooper in a hockey mask running around a theater showing the movie, Jason himself makes a cameo.
Dream Warriors – Dokken
Not to be outdone, Dokken made a music video for Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3 where they rock out so hard they give Freddy Krueger a nightmare.
Do the Freddy – The Elm Street Group with Freddy Krueger
Did somebody say FREDDY? Two rap songs weren’t enough, so Freddy cut an album with The Elm Street Group that will definitely give you nightmares. Other highlights include ‘Dance or Else’ and ‘Down in the Boiler Room’.
Feel free to suggest more songs in the comments. I hope you enjoy the music and have a Happy Halloween!
My short horror story TOOTH AND BONE will appear in Short Sips, the second volume of Coffee House Flash Fiction from Wicked East Press. The story details the unfortunate meeting of an unscrupulous dentist and a patient in dire need of the dental arts.
I’ve spent a lot of time in dentist chairs, and that is where this story was conceived. I was going through a particularly vigorous deep gum cleaning when I thought, “How strange it must be to put your hands into a total stranger’s mouth?” The story came back to me recently as I was having a root canal performed (for a second time). I kept the thinking about it when I lost
the crown on the fresh root canal. By the time I went back for the new crown I owed nearly $2,000.
The dentist had a long list of other things that needed to be done. And things that needed to be redone. This may have colored the tone of the final story a bit. It’s not a happy story, but I hope you’ll think it’s a fun one.
My dentist says that if you ignore your teeth they’ll go away. I say watch where you put your fingers.
Jeff C. Carter’s stories have been featured in dozens of anthologies, translated for international markets and adapted for podcasts.
His love of science, adventure and Halloween continue to inspire his science fiction, action and horror writing. He lives in Southern California with a cat, a dog and a human.