Challenge Accepted: A 30-day short story project

by R.J. Amos

A magical cat. A contract signed in blood. A key to every door in the city. A challenge for the imagination. In January 2019, author R. J. Amos challenged herself to write a short story every day for thirty days. Using prompts found online, R. J. pushed her creative powers to the limit, writing a full story with a beginning, middle, and end, every day. Here, for you, is the collection of weird and wide-ranging, fun and fantastic stories. Also included are the story prompts that R. J. used so that you too can stretch your imagination. A challenge for you, should you choose to accept it. R. J. Amos is the author of the Deadly Miss series. She left her academic career in chemistry behind in 2018, choosing to concentrate instead on writing novels. She loves to walk on the beach with her husband, read cosy mysteries in front of the fire, eat chocolate, and drink coffee (though it’s mostly decaf these days). She has two grown-up kids and she lives in Tasmania — the best place in God’s good earth.

158 pages, Paperback

Published June 21, 2019

About the author

RJ (Ruth) Amos has a PhD in Chemistry and has taught and researched chemistry for about ten years at two Australian universities, meeting some fascinating people and hearing almost-incredible stories. She decided to start writing those stories in novel form because she feels that others would enjoy hearing about them just as much as she does. She’s added a murder or two because that makes the story that much more fun.
Ruth loves reading a good mystery in front of an open fire, walking along the beach with her husband in both winter and summer, and chatting with her two grown-up children, and she is convinced that Tasmania, where she lives, is the best place on God’s good earth.

Reviews

[Underground Writers]

This review was first published on the Underground Writer's website: http://underground-writers.org/review...

One of the most difficult aspects of being a writer is remaining consistent with your writing, and pushing through the all-too-common writer’s block. One of the ways that we can combat this is challenging ourselves to write every day, even if it’s just for a month at a time. That’s what author Ruth Amos did, and she published her results in the book Challenge Accepted.
While I attempted to undertake this challenge (and failed, miserably!), I enjoyed reading Amos’ results and seeing how she interpreted each prompt.
Challenge Accepted is a series of 30 short stories, inspired by prompts that the author found on Reddit. The prompts are mostly based on sci-fi or magical elements, and some have a wider scope than others. I think one of the reasons I personally failed this challenge was the fact that the prompts were in a genre I wasn’t used to writing in, but Amos takes these themes in her stride and makes them her own. It’s also incredibly brave to put your writing out into the world in a book like this, and Amos does acknowledge that some stories turned out better than others. I can be such a perfectionist that the idea of putting my creative writing on the Internet sends a shiver down my spine!
Overall, I found the stories to be entertaining and interesting to read. Most of them have a clear vision and direction when it came to addressing the theme/prompt, and a few really stood out to me. Some favourites include: Care for Your Human, A Case of Identity, and Fun Weekend for all the Family.
If you’re looking to take up a challenge to test your creative writing skills, I highly recommend picking up Challenge Accepted! A great way to tackle these prompts is to write your own story, and then read the author’s story, and see how you both addressed the prompt. I really like that the author listed all of the prompts at the beginning of the book, so that you can try for yourself before reading her results.

Challenge Accepted can be purchased from the author’s website: https://rjamos.com/about/