Welcome to Busytown, a suburb of Failureville. (Metacast)

If you have not noticed already, I am not doing so well at keeping up with things. I started the Great Hites, / News From Poughkeepsie challenge and promptly fell on my face. The first week of that was not bad, I didn't get any of the audio done but I was at least getting the stories written. I fell behind on the weekend, as I expected to do, so I started week two in a two story deficit, not a good thing. I was on a business trip so I had some time in a hotel to work on getting caught up. I
was doing better and I was mostly caught up by the time I came home. That is when it fell apart. I was so burned out from writing three stories in one day (good, bad and ugly) that I could not bring myself to write anything else. When I finally did get back to writing, I wrote Mr. Johnson - The Very minor god. That I hope was more up to the level of writing that you were used to. I know it was closer from my point of view. Since then I have been trying to deny that I had failed at the challenge that I had set forth for myself. Now, denial time is over. So I have been posting some of my 100 word stories that I had written for other sites for you while I try to figure out what is next.

So the plan moving forward. Right before I started the Great Hites, / The News From Poughkeepsie challenge I had laid out a plan to produce one story a week, based on a prompt that I would reveal at the beginning of the previous week. I would post the prompt on Monday for the story that would come out the following Monday, and invite everyone to write their own version of the story also to be posted on Monday. So instead of a direct challenge to my story, (no geeze I could do better than that,) just a challenge to you the readers and listeners to write a story based on the same prompt. You can send me the story and I will post it along with mine on Monday, and if you send me a recording of your story I will add it to my feed so long as the whole thing does not get too huge. Now this may sound familiar, for those of you who are coming from Laurence Simon's weekly 100 word challenge, you are right. I borrowed his idea. Laurence, since I didn't bother to check with you first, if you don't like me doing this send me an e-mail and we can work something out. One thing that I won't do is read and record your story for you. If you have ever listened to my my recordings, they are not that great, you should hear the first version. I don't know how I made it past the first grade with my oral reading skills. And to try to read end produce all the stories with the quality they deserve would take way too much of my time. In short, if you want the audio of your story to go on the feed, you need to send it to me.

One more thing. Keeping it PG. Here is the deal folks, I have kids, most of you probably do too, I want our kids to be able to read this site, if they have their own iPods I want them to be able to listen to the stories. I think, no, I know stories can be told with out graphic descriptions of things that frankly I don't want kids to be reading. There is enough garbage in the world that will corrupt our kids, this site / blog/ podcast WILL NOT be one of them. I don't want you to think that this means that you have to write Barney episodes, that is not the case. All I ask is that if you submit to me that you include no explicit language, do graphic descriptions of gore or activities that belong in the bedroom. And yes, it is my site I get the final say. If I reject your story for this reason I will e-mail you and let you know why. If you want to edit it and resubmit it that is fine but I will stick to my guns on this one.

So without further delay...

The Official Rules:

1. All stories submitted must be based on the weekly topic and in before Sunday at midnight.
E-mail the text story (pasted into the e-mail) to me at jeffrey[dot]hite[at]gmail[dot]com along with a recording if you want it added to the podcast.

2. Stores must have a maximum rating of PG. If you want examples of my strongest violence or most suggestive language read / listen to Run For your Life, Adam And Eve. or Going Down with the Ship And yes, I get the final say. Hey it's my site I make the rules.

3. Stories submitted should be between 100 -3000 words, any shorter will get lost in the fray, any longer and it will drown out the other works, and as I said in rule number 2: Hey it's my site I make the rules.

4. Protecting your hard work. I know some sites don't do this, but I will do my best to protect your work. My entire site is protected by creative commons, I think it is worth your time to license your work, head out to the creative commons site get a license and paste the html code at the end of your story in the e-mail and when it gets posted I will include that. This is the one rule that is not hard and fast I think if you have worked hard on something you should protect it, but it is your call.

That's it. Those are the rules. I will keep them posted on the side of the site over here <--- and will make changes or corrections as necessary. Everything else is up to you. I look forward to your stories and I hope you look forward to mine.

- Jeff Hite