On September 8th, I published “Scarecrow Road” on Amazon Kindle as a gift to myself for reaching the ripe old age of 50 this year.

“Scarecrow Road” is a short story that takes less than 10 minutes to read.

I wrote it as a campfire tale.

You know, like a story you could tell around a crackling fire in the middle of the woods.

“Scarecrow Road” is the first story I ever submitted to a writing competition.

Surprisingly, it won the WriterWriter 2018 International Halloween Themed Short Story Competition: All Hallows’ Prose.

As I wrote in the introduction of “Scarecrow Road,” I didn’t win any money or a publishing deal; WriterWriter simply published it on their website.

I think the website may be defunct now and is for sale, so “Scarecrow Road” is no longer available to read there.

I’ve had my stories published in more than a dozen books, but those are anthologies, and my stories are among many other awesome authors’ stories.

I’ve been wanting to publish something this year to celebrate hitting the half-century mark that’s just me, but I didn’t want to worry about the pressures of marketing and sales.

So I took a crash course on Amazon Kindle, made a quick cover, and published “Scarecrow Road” as a standalone short story.

I chose “Scarecrow Road” as the one because it seemed like it was the story that is most “me.”

So many of my favorite spooky elements are in it.

It’s Halloween night. There’s a creepy cornfield, an even creepier scarecrow, and the legend of a haunted graveyard.

Ultimately, “Scarecrow Road” is just an old-fashioned scary story.

I guess now that I’m 50, I’m old-fashioned, too.