Cold House Pool Drabble Challenge

Come play in my sandbox!

Did any of y’all read Thieves’ World (some of the best sword&sorcery fantasy ever) and absolutely love it?

As aspiring writers did any of y’all wish to write in a shared world like Robert Aspirin and his writerly buddies?

When you tried it did it seem like there was a lot more to it than what you saw as a reader?

Then the Cold House Pool Drabble Challenge is for you!

Here’s how it works—

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• Write a drabble (exactly 100-word microfiction) set in my Cold House Pool or broader Tallatippah County setting. Come on! I’ve given you a ton of staring points and everyone has a measly 100 words in their head.

• My stories are typically southern gothic or magical realism and lean into the nostalgic, unexplainable, and eerie. You can do that sort of thing too, or you can bend the tone, voice and genre however you like.

• Post your 100-word story on substack, tag me so I can read it, and link back to this post.

• You may use any of my established characters or set pieces — or those of anyone participating in this Cold House Pool Challenge.

• If you play with other people’s characters and settings and you break them or burn them down, it ought to make for a really great story.

• If your story spawns a drastically different continuity, maybe leave a short footnote on your post.

• If you want to, tag 1-2 writers who you think would enjoy writing a Cold House Pool Drabble and butter them up — really slather on the flattery so that they will play along. Alternately you may bribe, coax, or cajole people into playing along but maybe try the flattery first.

• That’s enough rules. The world already has too many rules. Basically just take my stuff and have fun with it however you like and let me see what you come up with.

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The Super-Short Setting Bible—

These stories are set in the fictional county of Tallatippah Mississippi in the 1970s and early 1980s. The only town is the county seat of Cold House. Tallatippah is also the location of the ghost town of Winsome, a town that was destroyed when the Winsome Flood Control Dam was destroyed by a hurricane in 1965. The unincorporated settlement of Skuna Fork is also mentioned.

The central feature of Tallatippah County is Winsome Creek and the surrounding woods, where it often seems that anything can happen.

Many of my stories take place at the public swimming pool in Cold House, which also seems to be a convergence point for all sorts of eerie, unsettling, or downright unsavory characters, creatures, and cryptids.

Major named players include —

Luther — the gruff and pragmatic Cold House Pool Caretaker.

Billy Ray Pettis — a high school student who torments Luther.

The Rougarou — a Louisiana/Mississippi version of a werewolf.

…and a whole assortment of ghosts, lost kids, and a folks who ended up on the wrong side of dead.

My Cold House Pool drabbles for reference—

And some longer pieces—