Week four already! I had to check my calendar just to see if that was right. The weeks just seem to fly by. I hope you've all been keeping to your New Year's resolutions! No? Me neither.
A big thank you to everyone who found the time to join-in with the "Crime" genre - or who added a story of their own inspiration. We had a whole spectrum of crimes over the week-end: from cookie-theft to kidnapping, robbery and a crow of murders. And we had some wonderful ideas that would make great crime novels too: Who investigates a crime in a city with no crime? And a body hidden inside a snowman!
I did particularly like "The Cookie Thief" from 
https://steemit.com/fiftywords/@pyrowngs/my-fifty-words-story-weekend-genre-crime
I also though that the story "Cemetery" by 
https://steemit.com/fiftywords/@whitewizard/cemetery-my-entry-for-miniature-tiger-s-fifty-words-contest
But there were many great stories - I really was spoilt for choice!
Our numbers have swelled again over the week-end. Please welcome the following authors to our ranks:
Visit their blogs to see what they're about or catch their stories on the fiftywords tag.
And as always a congratulatory round of applause and pat on the back for all of you who have joined in so far. At the end of weekend three we’ve now stormed up to one hundred and sixty-six original stories and we've been joined by fifty-five amazing authors - past the half century mark!
As we move onwards through time, I'll drop off authors who haven't written for a couple of weeks. No slight is meant, I'm just trying to tread the line between making it easy for you to find each other and annoying people endlessly by referencing their username. So here's the revised list if you want to visit your fellow fiftyworders!
I've generated this list automatically - although I do believe I've read every story!
If I've missed you off, sorry! It's no slight, you're just sneaking through the cracks in my query - I didn’t get any complaints last week so hopefully it’s working Just let me know if it isn’t; it would be helpful to me too.
The new fiftywords theme for weekdays four is "ZOO". Plenty of scope here, whether you want to go literally or laterally - I look forward to seeing what your imaginations come up with!
I'll round up again on Friday with the weekend theme (No I will! I will! Getting this train back on track!) I will also be happily resteeming one of the stories I like best and no doubt I will be offering some of my small upvotes as encouragement.
Thanks for reading everyone and good luck with your stories!
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If you would like to join in, particularly if you're new to the platform, or recently returned, and looking for somewhere to start, please do! Just post your story with the "fiftywords" tag. You can follow the theme or simply take your inspiration where you find it. The only unbreakable(!) rule is to keep it to fifty words - ideally fifty on the nose - and also try and produce a complete and contained scene, moment, or story. In a future post I'll try and put some thoughts together as to what I think makes a good fiftywords story. But everyone will have their own ideas and all are welcome!