Halloween 2015 Events, with Contest and Prizes!

                Now that Split the Party has hit shelves, digital and real, we can turn to what is truly the most important part of every October: Halloween! Those of you who have been around for a while will recall that this is my favorite holiday by a landslide. I celebrate every year without fail, and this time around will be no exception. So, let’s kick things off with the oldest running tradition:

Choose Your Spooky Outcome 3

                For those of you who are new to the site, every year I do a Choose Your Spooky Outcome story from October 19th-31st, aka the 13 Days of Halloween. These function pretty much exactly like the Choose Your Own Adventure books from childhood, only those people are very litigious so we’re not calling it that. You should check out CYSO: Year 1 and CYSO: Year 2 before the next one starts, since they do star the same characters.

                How it works is simple, I’ll put up the first chapter on Oct. 19th, and at the bottom you’ll all get to vote on what happens next. Polls close the next day at noon (CST) and I’ll have the next chapter up that evening. Rinse and repeat until the story reaches its end on Halloween. Now, some of the choices can kill your character, but don’t worry, if that happens I’ll just rewind to the most popular non-deadly choice and the story will go on.

                As a special treat, however, if you can make it all the way through the story without dying, you’ll get to vote on a free Bonus Chapter as your reward. Now there are stakes, so think your choices through when you see the telltale skulls!

2nd Annual Digital Halloween Party

                Once again, we are going to all be partying on Halloween together, and that means one of the most fun things you can do when screen and wires separate everyone at the party: Costume Contest! From today until October 29th, you can E-mail, Twitter, or Facebook me pictures of your favorite Halloween outfits. I’ll pick my favorite five based on criteria of awesomeness, humor, cleverness, and the elusive “Holt Shit!” factor, and then on October 30th we’ll let every see the submissions and vote from the top five to pick a winner.

                The Costume Contest Champ gets a free signed book mailed to them (sorry, but USA only on that) and all of the top five will get an e-book of their choice. Which venue you submit through is up to you, but here is what I will need for the submission to be complete:

Picture
Name of Costume
E-Mail Address

                That’s it, I’m keeping things simple, so start sending them in. You can see how the first party went here, to get an idea of what the competition was like. Looking forward to seeing the spooky outfits!

Scary Short Story Corner

                I was going to make this into a contest, but to be frank I didn’t know if I’d have A) Enough participants on such short notice, or B) Time to do adequate judging. So instead, I’m going to set up a short story corner on the site for the next two weeks. Got a good bone-chilling tale you want others to read? Send it on in. Be sure to include the name you want it attributed to, as well as any site you might like to plug if people enjoy your work.

                If this goes over really big, maybe next year we’ll make a real contest out of it. But for now, I’ve opening up my site as a platform, so do your best to quake us to our very bones.

                That’s it for the plans so far, but I think it will be plenty to keep us busy. Be sure to stop by Monday for the first installment of Choose Your Spooky Adventure! And yes, it’s continuing from last year, so be sure to check out the prior entries if you want to know who the hell these characters are.

                Oh, and most important of all, stay spooky!