His great, rotund corpse
Hit the ground with full force.
Face-down on the floor…
Saint Nick was no more.
This is part seven of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part eight!
Category: Poem
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #6
The unhappy Nick wracked his old brain,
Until his breathing grew laboured and pained.
Somewhere, something deep down inside popped!
And with a groan and a gasp, his heart finally stopped.
This is part six of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part seven!
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #5
What should he do? Claus paced ‘cross the floor.
Pond’rously pondering, he pondered some more.
A lump of coal – mean! No presents – so sad!
They didn’t have the impact he knew they once had.
This is part five of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part six!
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #4
All the way through, to Z straight from A,
The miscreant imps caused chaos each day.
As the spark left his eyes, the cheer left his cheeks:
“I’ll find a solution in the upcoming weeks.”
This is part four of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part five!
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #3
First there was Armand, the mean little devil,
In the suffering of others, he surely did revel.
And then there was Amy, the hot-tempered scamp,
She loved to cause pain; good spirits made damp.
This is part three of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part four!
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #2
He tore through his list growing madder and madder,
The first time was bad, the second time sadder.
“What’s wrong with these kids?” he screamed at the wall,
His booming voice thundering through workshop and hall.
This is part two of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part three!
NaNoWriMo Success and a Very Bite-Sized Xmas!
NaNoWriMo
Well, hello there! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I know I’ve still kept my Reedsy short stories updated, but other than that I’ve been AWOL. The reason is that I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo throughout November! For those of you who don’t know what it is, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month. It’s a lot… but, as of last night, I officially completed the challenge!
I am super-proud of myself for having ‘won’ this year’s NaNoWriMo. I participated in the challenge once before, and came away with my tail between my legs. The first draft of my novel is now 3/4 complete! I aim to maintain the pace I set during November, and hope to have a fully-polished manuscript at some point next year.
For those of you who are stats nerds like me, I’ve included a screenshot of my November writing stats to give you a bit of a chuckle. I flew back home to the UK to attend my brother’s wedding in November — you can clearly see this in the dent in my progress! But, I managed to claw my way back, tooth and nail! It just goes to show, no matter how far ‘behind’ you feel you are, if you put the work in, you can still succeed.
A Very Bite-Sized Xmas
And on to my next project! Back in October I wrote a little piece for my Bite-Sized Horror section for Halloween, consisting of daily ‘bite-sized’ 99-word stories. Well, this Christmas, I’ve decided to do the same! The title of the series is Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Christmas, and every day I’ll be posting a little section of it — all the way up until the 25th!
Unlike my Bite-Sized Halloween story, Yule Be Sorry will be made up of daily stanzas, to form one large poem. I think I did the 99-word story idea to death, and wanted to try something new! I’m not much of a poet — I consider myself to be more of a storyteller… but the idea sounded fun, so we’ll see how it goes!
When I finished my Bite-Sized Halloween piece, I made a post commenting on my lack of preparation in advance, and how if I were to ever do such a thing again, I’d plan it out ahead of schedule… well, that didn’t work out. At all. Mainly due to time constraints and other commitments (i.e. NaNoWriMo). So, much like the Halloween piece, this Christmas piece will be written on the fly, and made up as I go along.
Well, that’s about it, guys! I’m glad to be back, after a month away, and I’m super-excited to see where Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Christmas will take me! (Part one was posted this morning!)
So, look out for a man in a red suit, and keep your ears open for the jingling of bells — it may not be the jolly fellow you are expecting…
Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas #1
Santa Claus sat in his grotto of old,
The ice dripping water and the biting wind cold.
“Bad, naughty, wicked and mean!”
These kids were the worst that there ever had been.
This is part one of a larger story for Christmas. All parts are in the form of a stanza of a poem. Check back tomorrow for part two!
joshuainsole.com 