Muse on Monday – January 15, 2024

Happy Monday everyone and if you are in the United States, Happy Martin Luther King Day. This holiday is on a Monday, which means if you are lucky to get the day off, you get a long weekend. Personally, I usually don’t do anything special on a long weekend, but it is a good chance…

Muse on Monday – January 8, 2024

Happy Monday everyone. It’s a cold, wet sort of day here, so it’s a good day to be inside, hopefully with a warm drink wrapped up with a blanket. If possible. Story Prompt: January 8, 2024 Write a story based on the picture below This picture is one I took in Bogota, Colombia when I…

Muse on Monday – January 1, 2024

Happy New Year everyone! It is a brand-new year and usually that is a time for new beginnings and for thinking about things in a new way. Here at the Green-Walled Treehouse, our mission has always been to create a place where young writers from every part of the world can express their unique perspectives…

Muse on Monday – December 18, 2023

It’s the week before Christmas, and this is the time when many people are concentrated on gifts: either buying them for people or looking forward to getting them. Gifts are usually good (at least, we hope so). We might say that someone has a gift for languages or public speaking. Or anything, really. Of course,…

Muse on Monday – December 11, 2023

In North America, at least, December is often a crazy time of year. Christmas and New Year’s dominate the month and there are all kinds of holiday celebrations and end of year events. There can be pressure to layer on traditions, so that there is a lot to plan for. Each tradition and event has…

Muse on Monday – December 4, 2023

Happy Monday and welcome to the last month of the year. One of my hobbies is geography, and I like to find out the origins of place names. Sometimes it is obvious, such as places named after a famous person (e.g. Lincoln, Nebraska) or from geographical features (e.g. Grand Rapids, Michigan). But then there are…

Muse on Monday – November 27, 2023

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but of course, that is the whole point of the cover. Every day, artists in publishing companies try to design covers that will help you judge the book inside positively. As someone who occasionally self-publishes books and makes my own cover art, it is interesting…

Muse on Monday – November 20, 2023

Stories are all about conflict and microcosm of conflict is in games. Usually games are just for fun but sometimes, like the Hunger Games (or Squid Game), they have life or death stakes. This week, the challenge is to write a story about a game. It could silly or serious; epic or very small. Whatever…

Muse on Monday – November 13, 2023

Sometimes when I need inspiration, I look at stock images. There are various random image generators online where you can see random stock photos. The trick is to find a picture with a story. There are a lot of nice pictures online but a picture of a flower, for example, doesn’t have much of a…

Shoppers from Elsewhere

Shoppers from Elsewhere Our tables were ready when the Others stepped through the Door, otherworldly eyes wide and curious. They circulated the flea market, buying goods before returning to wherever they came from. No one knew. Or cared. They liked plastic, and they paid in platinum, making every 37th day a jackpot. A woman (probably)…