In the spirit of the Halloween season and in an effort to get out of my comfort zone, I just entered some titles in a competition with Narrative magazine. Called “The Haunted Title Challenge,” the question is “Can you craft the perfect title that will put your reader in suspense before the story even begins?”
(A big shout out to my brother-in-law who proposed a former Waffle House menu item slogan: “Diced, Smothered, Covered, and Scattered.” 100% guarantee this is real, I remember it.)
I write about a variety of things, but I’ve never written about something creepy on purpose. The titles I submitted are listed below. If you have time, please vote for your favorite, and I may end up writing a short story about it. Some of these titles are downright disturbing even to me, but that’s what happens sometimes when I wake up with my mind running in the middle of the night.
Never fear, the Forces of Goodness and Light will be back next week!
Happy Halloween from Esse Diem:
- The Scraping
- Blood and Cockroaches
- Mary Elizabeth’s Strangled Doll
- Evil Candies
- The Devil’s Dark Soil
- The Resurrection of Hattie’s Leg
- The Rabid Ghouls Turning Station
- On Capturing the Souls of the Tiny
- How to Swallow Swarms
- The Vengeance of John Henry: A Ghost Story
Image credit: Elizabeth Gaucher
Esse Diem 
Hmmm… hard to pick. I like a lot of them. I’m going to go with “How to Swallow Swarms,” as long as there is a sequel, “A Belly Full of Spiders.”
I’m intrigued by The Scraping.
I vote for The Scraping- I immediately got chills and weirded out!
Not even close- The Devil’s Dark Soil.
I really appeciate the comments! I got a few by Facebook and Twitter, too. Fascinating how there was no consistent winner. I think it will be 3 stories, “Swarms”, “Soil”, and “Scraping.” During a nap today I actually had a vision of how they connect. Naturally, if one of the titles wins anything I will let you know here!
Well, none of these brilliant suggestions took the prize, but I consider this even more motivation to write the stories! To see the winners, click here: http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/59209