The Lodestar Contest

Delaware. Thursday morning.

Forty-something mom kisses husband and high school-aged son good-bye and excitedly heads north on the I-95 to pay a surprise visit to the twins, a son and a daughter, who are third-year college students in Massachusetts.

When she arrives, the mom finds her daughter frantic and torn over what to do about the apparent disappearance of her twin brother. The daughter hopes her brother is just being irresponsible, or maybe pranking her, but (a) that's not like him, and (b) her gut is telling her he's in some kind of trouble.

The mom tries to calm her daughter down, but she can't. Her daughter is ignoring her - as if she isn't there.
AND THAT'S BECAUSE SHE ISN'T.

The mom was involved in a car crash on her way to MA, and she crossed over immediately. It all happened so fast she didn't realize she had made the transition. She only figured it out when her already frantic daughter got the call with the tragic news from her dad.

The daughter didn't tell her father about her missing brother. She just didn't have the heart. Now she's on her own to straighten things out and find her brother - and to add to her building hysteria, time is of the essence because their father needs them.

Now that the mom realizes she's entered another dimension, she senses immediately the knowledge that is at her disposal. She clearly sees exactly where her son is, and he is indeed in danger.

The mom has to reach out to her daughter somehow in order to to help her find her brother -- and keep them both safe, while at the same time comforting her grieving husband and younger son.

1. This story is set during the depression years. A man with a large family has lost his job along with thousands of others. He needs to make money. There is a car race being advertised with prize money. Joe, the father is a good driver. He doesn’t have a car but agrees to drive in the race for the owner of a racing car. The race is dangerous and many drivers have been killed and Joe’s wife pleads to him to not enter the race. (What happens next?)

2. This story is set in China. The year 2019. The main character, a woman, works in a wet market where different sorts of animals are sold for human consumption. Her husband catches bats and she cooks them to sell at the market.
She knows bats carry a virus but believes the cooking process will kill off any virus. Her cat jumps on the kitchen table and eats scraps of raw bat. The cat becomes ill and bites the woman from the market. (What happens next?)

A man is drawn through space and time to the bedside of an unconscious woman. She barely seems to breathe. He decides to do the princely thing and kisses her. She wakes up and slaps him. From there they try to discover how and why he was transported to her kingdom.

A man lives in a sealed habitat on a desolate planet, leaving it only for short walks in his spacesuit. He’s been there a long time, clinging to formal routine and scraps of his sanity. He starts seeing things: old colleagues come to visit him, people he buried years ago. Then unsuited strangers start coming to his base. Tired and desperate, he succumbs to his madness: he opens his airlock door, depressurizing it, and steps outside. He can breathe. Strangers are real.

A possible reveal ▼

Story Idea # 1 THE CYLINDER
Making an instant decision, Captain Robinet yelled, "We have to move now. Get the damn thing into the elevator. Emergency packs and weapons. Let's go."
The six military Specialists crowded into the freight elevator with the stainless steel cylinder, still on its wheeled rack, the life-monitor lights blinking orange on the power indicator. The elevator lurched and settled into a lifting grind. Jason, his eyes wide, said, "I came in the tunnel shuttle, I've never been topside. What's up there?"


Story Idea #2 FROM THE SKY
The Arranger signaled for the two dirt-encrusted farmers to come forward, instructing them to bring the shiny, spherical shape, embroidered with elaborate grooves and patterns, and carry it to the hall of the Gods. “Place it exactly in the center of the Offering Altar. I will follow to provide my protection.” The farmers had told him it fell from the sky with a strange whistling noise, landing soft as a feather in their field of white vegetable plants.

Writer's Island -
In a galaxy far, far away there is a planet where the inhabitants never write anything down, ever. On this planet the written word becomes reality. On one of the islands a haven has been created to house a writer in order that the writer can "live" their novels in hopes of becoming better writers. If they survive to the end of their story they are guaranteed a publishing contract.

The rules are as follows:
1. Only one writer (person) at a time.
2. Forcefield will be in place at all times when the island is inhabited.
3. Writer will wear emergency button at all times (to be used when novel is finished, if writer chooses to quit, or if injury occurs).
4. Curator, located on an island nearby, will monitor Writer's vital signs at all times and terminate the novel if said writer should die.
5. At the end of the novel, whether by intention or not, all creations will be "erased" and island made ready for the next writer.

As all writer's know, when you create your characters things tend to take on a life of their own, not always the way you expected. In this atmosphere even a romance novel can take a strange turn.

A young boy, fifteen years of age dares his fourteen-year-old cousin to jump off Craggy Rock, a dangerous place they are all warned about. Rocks lie below in several places; raging waters from a waterfall close by make currents strong enough to suck a person under and drown.
After some persuading, the boy's cousin decides to go for it, but after jumping he disappears:

1. Is he dead?
2. Has he been washed downstream and pulled out by someone?
3. Has he time jumped partway down?
4. Has he disappeared into an alternate reality?

Your main character in your story is either a female caregiver or nurse working at a long term memory care facility, which cares for those in the later stages of dementia.. One particular patient, Mr. Thompson, has a diagnosis of stage four Alzheimer's. He exabits what appears to be hallucinations, where he is talking to people he imagines in the room. Knowing hallucinations often are a part of the disease and since it doesn't appear to cause Mr. Thomson any distress, she doesn't pay much attention to the conversations he is having with the imaginary person or people. That is until, he looks at her one day and says "He's angry you wore the red dress for that man."

This statement is significant because the night before she had a date with a man and wore a red dress.

1. What is the significance of the red dress?
2. Who is the "he" Mr. Thomson is referring to?
3. Is Mr. Thomson's friend here to help, or is he malevolent?

Jacob has been diagnosed with Katsaridaphobia. A new neighbor is moving in next door and he notices them carrying in their belongings in large cardboard boxes. Knowing cardboard boxes are haven's for roaches, he is terrified, especially when he thinks he sees a large hissing cockroach peak between the cardboard lid flaps.

When he runs back into his apartment, shaking, his imagination fills in the details of the roach he thought he saw. His paranoid mind gives the roach humanistic characteristics, such as a menacing smile.

To armor his apartment against the roaches entry, he puts poison in every crevice within his apartment. Feeling properly protected from the filthy bug, he relaxes into his sofa and flips on the television. Just when he has allowed nerves to settle, he believes he hears the roach hiss somewhere in his apartment While he is frozen in terror, he imagines the roach talking. The roach is making threats of invading his space and even worse, it says it has friends.

While Jacob is in his apartment, facing consequences to his fears, his new neighbor's open the box, Jacob thought he saw the roach in. An amber colored marble trapped within the lid flaps makes a clanking noise when it falls onto the floor.

Wealthy French woman with too much of everything and fulfillment in nothing rents a cabin on an international space craft heading on a mystery trip, destination withheld from guests. During the "flight" she falls into an unexplained deep sleep and when she awakes, only she and one of the crew are still on board, and said crew member was also in a mysterious deep sleep and doesn't know anymore about the how or why than Frenchie does.

1. A woman is at a diner when she sees herself sitting at the counter from the outside of the building. Then her POV switches back to her own head. She turns to see a woman standing outside looking at her reflection in the window glass, straightening her pantyhose. Over the next few days, she finds herself in this woman’s head more and more often, and for longer periods of time. Then she sees the woman committing a crime—theft or assault or both. She needs to know how to find her, and she doesn’t know if the woman knows that our heroine has been inside her mind. And where has the woman’s mind been?

2. A musician finds a musical instrument with a person’s consciousness within it, probably a guitar or piano. When he plays the instrument, the person’s emotions come out through the music. His solos are awe-inspiring, heartbreaking, beyond that which anyone else has ever achieved. He learns to speak to the person within and finds himself sympathetic to them, perhaps falling in love with them. He wants to free this person, but knows that his art will suffer. He must search for the cure, and then decide whether to use it.

I hope these are valid. I don’t like telling someone EXACTLY what they have to write from beginning to end.

In a world ravaged by a global ice age, one land survives as a lush tropic paradise -- through the secret use of magics that have long been publicly forbidden. The society of mages who maintain this delicate web of magics have insinuated themselves within each of the disparate city-states of this land, subtly guiding each in whatever way they deem necessary to maintain the balance of all.

One such mage, acting as advisor to his city-state's ruler, ensured the young heir's protection after an assassination attempt and sent the child to live in secret in the near-frigid outskirts of the land with only the mage, whenever he stopped by, and a local nobody as the child's companions.

Years later, a messenger arrives with disturbing news: the heir's father has died and his uncle now summons him back to the city-state for an official summit. With the mage currently absent and unable to advise him, the heir makes his own decision and returns with the messenger -- but when he arrives to meet with his uncle privately, he witnesses the mage kill the man.

The mage claims he just saved the heir from the one who had tried to eliminate him so many years ago; accustomed to trusting the man, the heir believes him. But as he, now the sole and rightful leader of his city-state, prepares for the official summit with the mage's guidance, he begins to realize the mage might have secrets of his own. Secrets which, perhaps, his uncle died for.

Can this young heir will discover those secrets and, for good or ill, unite the other city-states against the secret mage society and their forbidden magics?