In February, we challenged you to submit a 400-word excerpt from your NaNoWriMo novels. From over 650 fantastic entries, we chose two Grand Prize Winners and four Runners-Up. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did! (For more excerpts, check out this forum thread.)

The headlights of a lone car flashed through the trees. Morgan drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and accelerated up the incline smoothly. A full-bellied moon dripped pale white light across the forest, but it would still be too dark out under the trees for human eyes. Not that it would matter, she had brought a flashlight this time. The truck leveled out on the desolate road and Morgan checked the rearview mirror compulsively. There was no way he was still following her.

The blue truck rumbled gently across the pavement. The hazy yellow lights cut through the night sharply, blacking out the rest of the view and leaving the shadowed forest cut out of the world entirely, as if the things out there wouldn’t exist until you looked right at them.

Morgan kept her eyes trained on keeping the dotted yellow line in check.

The car rocked as something slammed onto the bed of her truck. Morgan screamed, and the car jerked as her foot pressed down on the brakes. The tires shrieked as the car lurched to a slow crawl. Morgan stopped the car, hearing the engine rumble over the sound of her shocked heartbeat.

Something akin to footfalls thudded over her roof, tapping and scratching where long nails clawed into the paint. The footsteps came to rest above Morgan’s seat, and the metal roof creaked as clawed fingers found temporary handholds.

An inhuman face slowly lowered itself in front of the windshield. A wide pair of torchlight yellow eyes glared brightly through the window. Morgan crossed her arms and scowled challengingly at the creature’s upside down head. It’s face split open in a grin framed by long needle-pointed teeth.

“You are very bad at running away, human filth,” he gloated with a muffled voice.

Morgan fought against the urge to stick her tongue out at the gleeful monster. “You could have made me crash, moron!” she yelled through the windshield.

Puck smiled. “If it was that easy then it was a mistake for your pitiful species to award you the flimsy driving’s license!” he roared back, the glass between them fogging up under his breath.

Morgan slammed her hand into the center of the steering wheel, sending the blaring horn resounding through the trees. Puck startled as he lost his grip on the roof and tumbled down the front of her windshield with a muffled screech.

Izzi H. is an aspiring fantasy writer who loves reading, music, hot tea, and stalking the local great horned owls. She is about to graduate high school and is both thrilled and terrified to become a freshman at college! Often, she can be caught pilfering chocolates from around the house, or scribbling out another plot line in one of her notebooks. Though she has yet to publish one of her stories, Izzi is fiercely determined to bring her ideas to the printed page!