The Open Novella Contest is back for 2026! Join fellow storytellers and plant the seed of a tale that will blossom into a 20,000+ word novella within 12 weeks! Your epic quest begins February 1st, 2026, so mark your calendars with this date!

All that once glittered was gold until it turned to bitter ash and ruin. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Life has never been kind to the likes of Juliette Laurant. Tortured by flowers with each failure that arises, and a voice or two spewing poison into her ears, she's more well known for her oddities than she is as an artist, but if she had her way, she would seclude herself to the forest and create paintings till the end of her days. But when an eccentric earl comes calling for a well seasoned artist, it's hard for Juliette not to leap into the unknown without questioning his motives first. With years of trauma and a dash of magic lurking beneath the surface, Juliette has plenty of secrets of her own that she'd rather have stay buried, but will the ever persuasive Cole Roswell convince her to leave the past behind? Or will she bury herself along with the life she thought she'd live? Only Fate will tell.

HE JUST DOESN'T KNOW WHEN TO STOP After falling asleep to a video of the "nihilist penguin", Lian Min wakes at 3 a.m. to wet footprints and melting snow in his studio apartment in a country of perennial summer. On tracing the footprints to the corridor, he discovers a world in stasis where he is the only one who can still move. That's the least of his worries, however. Various flowers begin sprouting in his living room and the footprints change trails without warning, leading him to discover things about his neighbourhood that he never knew and perhaps should not know. Then the trail goes cold.

[[ONC 2026 Honorable Mention]] 25-year old Lee still hasn't figured out why they could not form any long-lasting relationships, even friendships for that matter. Aside from family members, which they are obligated to talk to, there is no one else Lee had even come close to calling a friend. Well, maybe except for one. -------- Submitted for ONC 2026 @OpenNovellaContest Using the following prompts : 29. You will meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some will leave footprints in your heart. 104. While wandering in the woods, you dismiss the rustling behind you as nothing more than wind through the trees until you turn around and realize it isn't the wind at all. 106. After waking at 3AM to a freezing room and a door you're certain you closed, you find wet footprints and melting snow leading from your bedroom into the hall. Realizing someone or something is inside your home, you follow the trail to uncover the truth. ------------- © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. All rights reserved. Cover design © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. Images used in this work belong to their respective copyright holders and are used under license or in accordance with applicable Creative Commons terms. Edited or altered images are copyrighted by the author in their final form.

For Centuries Grim has been collecting souls. It's what he does, it's his purpose. One day, while collecting a soul in the park, he comes across a lost puppy. For reasons he can't explain, the urge to return the small dog to his owner is overwhelming. He soon finds the animal's owner, a woman in her mid-twenties named Maria. He is struck down by her beauty and realizes that he had once claimed the soul of someone she loved. He becomes even more conflicted when he realizes he has just one year to claim her soul.

🏆 ONC 2026 Ambassador Pick 🏆 Dead men tell no tales. Or so they say... Having survived a series of catastrophes, disgraced detective Penny Dubois is thinking of retirement. After all, she sees no reason to come back. However, everything changes when her best friend, Irma Hale, is framed for the murder of renowned heiress Charity Payne, and all the clues point towards her. The victim's ghost is summoned from the dead and says she's guilty. As a necromancer, Penny instantly recognises that the seance had been rehearsed, but she must keep it a secret, because if she gets found out, it could be her awaiting the final sentence. As the clock ticks, Penny must start a new investigation and find out who the real killer is before it's too late. *** Based on Prompt 72.

Santa Claus is an old man in a tattered red coat, limping through a world whose failure to believe in him has caused him to vanish limb by limb. But before he disappears entirely, he has one last round to make - not with gifts, but with letters of apology, delivered to the people whose lives were derailed by a single, cold lump of coal. The greatest burden he ever carried was never the toys. It was his memories of the coal. This is one of my entries in the 2026 Wattpad Open Novella Contest. It is in response to Prompt 79: "A letter arrives addressed to you, written by someone who shouldn't exist."