The first rule of “Fright Club” is that budding fiction writers 10-18 years old must craft a spooky story of 100 words or fewer to enter into a nationwide contest.

The second rule of “Fright Club” is that if you succeed in writing a spine-tingling mini saga that captures the attention of the “Fright Club” book editors, your story will be published in a book.

Thanks to their vivid imaginations and skill at writing extremely short stories, three Junior High students, Zoey Hoffman, Kevin Speakman and Holly Lange, are now published authors featured in this year’s “Fright Club: In the Shadows” anthology. The contest, which is sponsored by Young Writers USA, encouraged young writers to dream up an original tale told in fewer than 100 words that highlights tension, suspense and atmosphere. Using prompts to kickstart their imaginations, such as “my friends dared me to knock,” or “I didn’t believe in ghosts until…” Kevin’s story, “The Abandoned Shadow,” tells the tale of two boys exploring an abandoned factory near their school, while Zoey’s story, The Dyatlov Pass,” grips the reader as an unknown creature chases nine men from a tent in the snow, ripping out the eyes and tongues of those it captures. Holly’s story, “Happi’s Carnival,” details the narrator’s capture at a carnival as she’s thrown into a cobweb-strewn room.

All three students wrote their stories outsides of class time and entered the contest on their own after seeing a poster hung outside of Mrs. Cheryl Larson’s classroom. All three students say they enjoy creative projects, and were inspired to enter based on their own interests outside of school. “I have a passion for writing, especially historical fiction” said Kevin, 8th grade, as he described a new piece about a zombie plague set in 1899 in southwest America that he’s currently writing. Zoey, also in 8th grade, was inspired by her fascination of real-life events and based her fictional story on the account of the real Dyatlov Pass incident in the Soviet Union during the late 1950s. Holly, 7th grade, an aspiring story writer, lyricist and singer, said her idea for the carnival just popped into her head–which was the easy part, she said with a laugh. The real challenge was trimming her story down to 100 words, but “it was worth it in the end” as her mom bought several books for her to sign and give away to friends and family.

Young Writers USA says it has engaged students in more than 20,000 schools across the US with its writing contests and says that they are meant to turn young authors into confident and passionate writers by seeing their stories in print. Mrs. Larson said that, plus the intrigue of the 100-word limit, are what prompted her to advertise the contest to her students: “All of the stories (in the book) are very, very short, and I think when students are accelerated writers they have a lot to say, so it’s a task in and of itself to keep it short,” she said. Because of this, she said that it was really an “honor” to have three Exeter students selected to be published in the book, which was just released on April 7th, and will be available online at www.youngwritersusa.com. Congratulations Zoey, Kevin and Holly!