The Hour Men

The Scary Round VI was our Halloween-themed contest for 2011. It also marked six years of our writing group! My entry for that round wasn't really scary, or based on Halloween in any way, but it ended up being my favorite story of all the ones I had ever written! (Still true, by the way.) For the village of small, wooden men in this story, I had taken inspiration from a variety of sources, but the biggest one was a drawing by my 9 year old son. He was trying to draw a Cyberman from Doctor Who, but I mistook it for a person with an hour glass on their chest! We had a good laugh about that, but I was fortunate in that it provided me with a nice burst of creativity. Add to that the idea I had often entertained, of an alien being in the large pine tree of our backyard, and you have one strange story on your hands! I liked this story so much, in fact, that I have outlined an entire novel based on it. Now if I would just get it written! The Hour Menby Rusty Keele Who leaves the pine-tree,…