Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Tag: fiction (page 1 of 17)

Flash Fiction Challenge: Scary Story In Three Sentences

Last week’s challenge — “Five Titles Make A Challenge” — exists for your perusal. Oh, and a quick housekeeping note: still reading through the last Epic Game of Aspects stories to determine my favorite! Gimme time. You guys did some awesome stuff and there’s a good amount to go through. Soon!

Today is easy.

Er, easy to describe, difficult to do.

This is another “write a story in three sentences” challenge except —

Drum roll please, make it scary. (Meaning: horror.)

And please, under 100 words.

This one’s a little different from all the others in that, I don’t want you to post at your respective online spaces. I want you to post here, in the comments. I’ll pick a favorite of the stories and send that person something scary. Er, “scary,” maybe, I dunno.

Remember: a story is not a vignette.

It has a beginning, middle and an end. It is not merely a snapshot in time.

You have, as usual, one week. Due by October 19th, noon EST. Though, note — I’ll be in Los Angeles that day at Storyworld and the Writer’s Digest West conference giving a talk and doing some panels (so if you’re out that way, do come say “hi”). So I’ll get to the stories after the weekend is over and I’ve flown home, drunk and filled with the glittery dream poison that is Los Angeles.

Flash Fiction Challenge: A Game Of Aspects

Last week’s challenge: Sci-Fi/ Fantasy Open Swim.

A couple days ago I said something hasty and insane about “killing genre,” and in there I hit on something I really quite liked — giving fiction aspects or elements instead of genres. So, instead of searching for “epic fantasy,” you can search for stories that have “fantasy” and “politics” together. Or “jetpacks.” Or “detective / mythology / death in the family.” Whatever.

So, that’s (er, kinda) what I’m doing here, today.

I’m going to give you three columns.

You have to pick one from each column.

And from that, write a 1000-word story.

In addition, I’ll pick three random winners from this pile of participants and give away some free e-books. I don’t know what, yet, so let’s just say it’ll be a surprise. Kay? Kay.

As always, the details remain the same. You’ve got one week (due by noon EST, Friday the 14th). Post at your blog, and link back here so we can all swing by and have a look-see.

(If you really want to get crazy, roll a d10 or pick random number between 1 and 10 from this Random Number Generator. In other words, let fate pick your choices in each category!)

The three columns (pick one from each) are:

One (Subgenre)

Noir

Erotica

Dystopian

Steampunk

Mythology

Detective

Sword & Sorcery

“Weird”

Body Horror

Romantic Comedy

Two (Element To Include)

Dinosaurs

Serial Killer

Gladiators

Insects

Climate Change

Hotel Bar

Geology

Graveyard

Surgery

Terrorism

Three (Theme / Motif / Conflict)

Love Triangle

Revenge

Divorce

Childbirth

On The Run

Fated To Die

Man Versus Himself

Addiction

Imprisoned

Ticking Clock

Things I Learned While Writing Mockingbird

(Be advised: I’m doing another Reddit AMA all day today, so swing by and ask me, well, anything.)

I’ll dispense with the self-promo bloggerel right now:

HOLY CRAP MOCKINGBIRD IS OUT

*jumps up and down, froths at the mouth, kicks computer monitor through the window, throws up on self*

Available for in print and e-book at:

Amazon (US)

Amazon (UK)

Barnes & Noble

Indiebound

Now, on with the post.

The Second In A Series Is Tricksy Business

Staring down the barrel of a “next in the series” is some tricky shit, hoss. You can feel the Sword of Expectations dangling above your head, held there by a little length of underwear elastic, the blade bobbing and swaying and ever-ready to fall. People who read the first one have certain parameters in mind. You want to deliver on the promises made in the first book but you want to exceed them, punching and kicking the walls of your self-built box so you can deliver something bigger, stranger, different without being too different, the same without being too much the same.

This book is that, for me — it takes Miriam, throws her into a more active role regarding her dread psychic ability of touching people and seeing how and when they’re going to die. She’s been trying for the last year to live a normal life and, well, that’s like dressing up a wolverine in a chef’s coat and hoping he’ll cook you dinner instead of biting your face. But Miriam finds herself on a slippery slope that starts with a teacher suffering from powerful hypochondria and ends with a serial killer of young girls. Miriam must race against the clock and her own worst instincts to solve murders before they happen, lest these girls die. In the first book, it was all about Miriam deciding if she even wanted to tackle fate one last time to save the life of Louis. In the second book, she’s armed with one more rule. She knows how to divert the waters of fate, and that means throwing into the stream one big motherfucking rock.

But can she do that? Will she? Is that really who she is, and if so, what the hell does that mean?

With the second book you want to take the questions asked in the first and bring them forward. You’ve answered some of those questions but in fiction, answers just breed more questions. That’s what a second book must really become: the natural evolution of our Q&A regarding the character and her story.

So, in Mockingbird it’s a question of, who is Miriam Black? What does she want to become? Can she try to live a normal life? (Short answer: no.) Is she a drifter? A thief? A problem-solver? A killer?

Not Everybody Knows It’s The Second In A Series

Some people are just going to pick the book up, blissfully unaware that there exists a “book one.” And so there’s another tricksy part of the “next in the series” equation — you want to write for all the people who read the first one, but you also want to give enough in the book that it stands on its own. (Ideally, Mockingbird does. I hope?) You want to make it so reading the first book isn’t a chore, isn’t a necessity, but instead offers the reward of backtracking through a story. You find this in television, or in comics — jump in late, you get the pleasure of one day starting at the beginning to see how everything got to be the way it is.

But you also can’t write only for those people.

It’s a balance. It’s the “episodic” versus “serialized” thing — some books, shows, comics get that right.

Many do not.

It’s a tightrope walk.

The Outline’s The Thing

The first book took me way too many years to write.

The sequel took me 30 days.

And it’s longer. Mockingbird is a bigger book — bigger in all ways. Page count. Character. Plot.

I attribute the swiftness of the writing to a couple things.

One of those things is THE BLUE METH.

Wait, no, I mean — one of those things is the outline. I’ve long said that I am a pantser by heart but a plotter by necessity and this book is proof of that. I scrawled an incomprehensible-to-anyone-but-me roadmap of the novel from Point A to Point Holy Fuck What’s Wrong With You, and man, having that map was so freeing. I didn’t have to follow it every day, but on most days I merely had to look at the map and say, “Here’s where I am, and here’s where I need to go,” and boom, the day of writing was easy-breezy. Given that I don’t write fiction on weekends, that means I was pretty easily churning out 3-4k words a day.

For me, outlines are like vitamins. Nobody wants to take ’em.

But when I do, I feel better. So, I do.

Know Thy Character

The other thing I attribute the ease of writing this book is THE BLUE M… er, sorry, is “knowing thy character.” Miriam Black, for better or for worse, is a character who has roosted in the eaves of my brain-barn. She’s up there. I can’t get her out, not with a shock-rod and a catch-pole. She’s sitting there, smoking and cursing at me and telling me all the inventive ways people suck the pipe.

My characters don’t always take up permanent real estate inside my mind. Some do. Others don’t. (Atlanta Burns has, for instance.) But she has. I always know which way Miriam will jump. The things she says — which are usually horrible — pour out without any effort. I know things about her and her life that may one day show up in books — or maybe they don’t.

But knowing her through and through makes her very, very easy to write.

Which is probably a bad thing, in retrospect.

Softening Hard Edges, Sharpening Round Corners

I continue to submit that likability is not a meaningful trait in fiction. We must like spending time with the character, but that doesn’t mean we need to like them personally. I don’t need to get a beer with my president or my protagonist. That being said, you do want to advance a character somewhat, to evolve her story and her persona, and for Miriam that was a two-fold path.

First, I wanted to make her more understandable. More sympathetic by dint of her being wholly active and in control of her destiny (in a book where, quite literally, few can say the same thing). In this book Miriam isn’t just serving her own selfish whims — though those are, erm, still there — but she’s actively trying to change something she has no right or reason to change. She’s trying to help save girls who will one day be murdered. Girls she doesn’t much like. (Girls who remind Miriam of Miriam, truth be told.)

But I also wanted to take that sympathy and turn it on its ear. A “more active Miriam” is fucking scary. Because a determined Miriam is no longer a bear trap you step into, but rather, a bullet coming at your face.

So, on one hand, I’m softening Miriam.

On the other hand, I’m just softening the metal so she can be turned into a sharper blade.

Serial Killers Are People, Too

This book features a serial killer. I’ll say no more about the plot details of that — because it gets a little twisty, as the identity of said killer is an OMG QUESTION MARK THE RIDDLER’S BEEN HERE OH NOES. What I will say is, the serial killer is deeply fucked. The killer does things that freaked me out. And I wrote it. It came from my own head.

And yet, I always know that the danger of a serial killer is that they’re woefully redundant and that the horrible things that they do are meaningless (and even cartoonish) if done poorly.

You have to remember that serial killers are people, too.

They come from somewhere. They have mothers and fathers and people they love.

They likely have some super-tangled brain-wires, but they’re still people. They have an agenda. They’re not just killing because they like pain and death and blah blah blah. That may be true in real life, but in fiction, you need more. You need meat on dem bones, and that was my goal here: to make the serial killer, well, not sympathetic, but to put in place a plan, a plot, a scary-ass WTF motive.

How To Get Twisty

Twists, man. Another thing that can go dreadfully wrong in a story.

Mockingbird has a couple notable twists in it.

I’m always wary of doing that and yet, at the same time, I fucking love doing that. Twists are great. Fiction works best when you can subvert the expectations of the reader. When you can show them something they didn’t expect but on retrospect, should have. Right? That last part is key. You’ve set up the pieces and shown them what is a kind of narrative optical llusion that things seem like they’ll turn right but all along you’ve been showing them why the story needs to turn left. Tricks don’t work when they come flying out of nowhere (“Oh no! The serial killer is the monkey butler! Though we’ve never seen nor heard of a monkey butler before! I guess I just have to take it on good faith! Damn you, monkey butler!”).

It’s a lot of fun hijacking the reader’s brain.

Twists are a part of that, I think. Small twists and big twists.

Three Things I Want To Do With Fiction

First, I want to make you feel something. Emotion. I want you invested. I want you happy and sad, hurt and healed. I don’t mean in the larger scope — I don’t expect to be gut-punching you five years after you put the book down. But I do want, whilst caught in the throes of reading, for you to feel something. Anything at all. (Er, anything except the urge to throw the book in the toilet where you will then urinate upon it.)

Second, I want you to think. For me, these two books break my noodle in certain ways — soon as you start getting into lofty notions like fate and free will, I get excited. My gears start turning immediately. And I want your gears to turn, too. Mockingbird I think ups the ante a bit by incorporating bits about poetry and mythology into the story. More grist for the thought mill.

Third, I want to shock and surprise you. I don’t mean “shock” as in “gross you out” — though that’s one viable option. I like stories that surprise, that do things I’d never expect. I think a good story takes risks. It fucks with your head a little; it presents you with two doors and then goes out a window, instead. My favorite fiction has always surprised me. So I aim to do the same.

Something Is Wrong With Me

That’s the last thing I learned.

Something isn’t right with my noggin.

But that’s okay.

Because I’m hoping something isn’t right with your noggin, either, for reading the book and — hopefully! — liking it. I think writers are all a little goofy in the head, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Hopefully you’ll check out Mockingbird today (and if you’re looking for an incentive to check out Blackbirds, it’s under five bucks for your Kindlemaschine). If you do check out either book, I hope you dig it and that it’s a book worthy of you telling a friend or three or maybe writing a review. We authors live and die by your recommendations and your love of the books you read, so for that, thank you.

At the very least, I’d sure like it if you spread the word.

Because I loved writing this book and I hope people love reading it.

You can read the first 50+ pages of Mockingbird here, for free:

NSFW: The Collected Profanity Of Blackbirds And Mockingbird (Book Trailer)

Fuck. Fuck off. Fuck it. Fuck you. Some Podunk fuckwit country tune. We shall not be fucking. Fuck this. Shit that. My fair fuckin’ lady. God-fucked motel. You fuckin’ whore. A rust-fucked pickup. Eat a dick and die, fuckpie. Frat-fucks. Dumb fucker. I fucking love Google. Hoity-fucking-toity. Bugfuck nuts. Fuckin’ prick. The sun can go fuck itself. The Sunshine Café can go fuck itself equally. Dog-fucker of a mother. Fucking dickwipe. Ass-fuck, New Mexico. The motherfucking mongoose. The motherfucking apocalypse. “Mother cock sucker and fucker.” We’re fucked. Everybody’s fucked. Basehead tweaker fuckface. You fucking shitcock asshole. Hairless Fucker. Jumping Fucking Jesus. Froo-froo piece-of-shit donkey-fucker skinhead. Bullshit. Apeshit. Chickenshit. No shit. Shithead. Shit-canned. Baby shit yellow. Batshit highway witch. The Holy Shit I’m Dead Express. Shits blood and dies. Shitbird Lane. Shithouse spider. Cut the ‘little girl’ shit, paleface. I’mma squeeze the dogshit out of you. You’ll be shitting legal papers till the stars burn out. Slicker than gooseshit on a glass window. This emo shit gives me a rash. Neither shit nor shinola. Shit Creek. Shit River. I don’t want to ingest particles of cat shit. Shit-ton of lighthouses. Shitload of squirrels. Shithole party. Hammered shit. Favorite little shithead! Rock out with your cock out. His cock in his hand. Syphilis is rotting your cock off. Cocksucker. Cat piss. Piss and Doritos. Piss in your Wheaties. Piss-shivers. He might as well have a couple vaginas in his pocket. I did you with my vagina. Two noses and a vagina for a mouth. An unguent for your rashy vagina. Stapled my vagina shut. Sand-encrusted vagina. Tall, Dark and Asshole. Stuff the rabbit’s foot up your asshole. Somewhere in the approximate middle of New Jersey’s sandy asshole. A moist dirt pucker like a cancerous asshole. A nun’s asshole. C-U-Next-Tuesday. Dangling by a delicate cunt hair. Crafty little cunt. Bitchy cunt whore mother. Twat-cunt. Worm-choked cunt. Twat bitch axe-wound. Lippy bitch! Bitches be crazy. The slag-whore bitches in Dracula’s brothel. Sonofabitch. Boobies. Titties. Tits in a bear-trap. Whipped cream on my tits, broccoli up his ass.

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Opening Lines, Revealed”

Ahem, ahem.

Hear ye, hear ye.

Here are the three opening lines I’ve chosen:

Brendan Gannon: “Everyone else remembers it as the day the saucers came, but I remember it as the day a man in a suit shot my father.”

Joe Parrino: “Three truths will I tell you and one lie.”

Delilah Dawson: “Thursday was out to get me.”

This was, as so many contests here are anymore, a tough one to pick. Nearly 200 entries (!) and many of them good. (Though, pro-tip: bad spelling and/or typos will never help you win here.)

Here’s roughly what I ended up looking for:

I wanted lines that told multiple potential stories. Meaning, a writer could read it and find a world of stories coming out of that one line — not just the one obvious one, say. Some lines were very specific to a genre or to an event and so I hesitated using them, despite their inherent awesomeness. The exception here might be the “saucer” one, but it was so cool I had to use it. Don’t judge me.

So, the three who won:

Contact me, I shall hook you up with a copy of Bait Dog.

(Bait Dog is now available, by the way. Just $2.99 until next Wednesday. Plug, plug, hint, hint.)

Everybody else:

You’ve got 1000 words.

Write a story using one of the above opening lines.

Due by Friday, Aug 17th, at noon EST. Post online, link in the comments.

You know the drill.

Bait Dog Is Scratching At The Door, Waiting To Be Let In

Bait Dog is here.

After a successful Kickstarter, the book is out and ready to be gobbled up by everyone else. Right now, the price is $2.99, but that’s just for one week — next Wednesday, price goes up by a buck, maybe two.

Let’s just get your procurement options out on the table.

Amazon (US).

Amazon (UK).

Barnes & Noble.

Or, buy direct using the link below. I’ll send you the files directly if you buy in this fashion, and you’ll get all three versions — PDF, MOBI, and EPUB. I try to send quickly, but PayPal can be slow to send out notifications, so give me  24 hours before you come knocking at my digital door. (But, if you don’t get the files by then, do come knocking. Contact form above will do you right.)


Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…

The Book Itself

“If you like very human protagonists who kick ass, if you want to see true evil punished, if you love your pets, Bait Dog is for you. Know going in that it’s going to hurt. Remember that the hurt will be worth it. Take a deep breath, and dive in.” — from Josh Loomis’ review at his blog (click here to read the rest).

This book contains both the novella Shotgun Gravy as well as the follow-up novel, Bait Dog. Total size, if that’s a thing that matters to you, is around 90k — 25k for the novella, 65k for the novel.

The novel features the continuing adventures of our troubled teen protagonist — a little bit vigilante, a little bit detective — Atlanta Burns. It’s about how, by trying to avoid solving her friend’s murder, she runs head-first into it. It’s about how looking into the death of a sweet little dog she exposes a dog-fighting ring. It’s about companionship and sacrifice. It’s about the wrong way to a right thing.

It was a hard book to write.

Not hard in the day-to-day. In that, the words came fast and plentiful. But the subject matter is tough stuff. I don’t know much about the value of trigger warnings, but this book probably has ’em, so be warned.

It tackles rough stuff. Dog-fighting ain’t pretty. Bullying is awful. White supremacy is an epidemic. Gay rights and being a teen and being a girl and violence and abuse and —

Well. It’s a kettle set to boil over.

Though, I tried to find hope in here, too. And humor. Always humor. I think a book like this needs that lightness. Flinty humor and awkward situations. From Shane and his flea market katana to Atlanta’s mother trying to cook when she damn well shouldn’t to Whitey and his — well, I guess I’ll let you meet Whitey all on your own. But I love Whitey. I love Whitey with all my heart.

This is a book I love deeply, featuring characters I feel strongly about for good and for bad. I don’t know that it’s a good book but it’s the book I wrote and I’m damn glad I wrote it.

This is also my first attempt at putting novel-length fiction up in the self-publishing space. The book was, to my mind, a raging success on Kickstarter — it was 100% funded in under 10 hours, and ended up scoring over 200% in its funding by the end of its run. I hope it’ll do well out there. We’ll see, I guess.

Point is, I hope you’ll take a look.

If You’re Not Gonna Nab It

…then, no worries.

I’d still appreciate you boosting the signal a bit, letting people know.

Further, given that this is a book orbiting a lot of issues, maybe consider donating to an appropriate charity?

Maybe donate to your local animal shelter. Or a rescue group. Or the Humane Society or ASPCA. Or Dogs for the Deaf. Or Guide Dogs of America. Or HALO Animal Rescue. Or the Millan Foundation.

Or, if you prefer something a little more people-focused…

The It Gets Better Project, or the Trevor Project.

Bait Dog is a fictional tale, but it focuses on some very real issues. Charity helps.

At the very least, hug your pets and be good to your friends.

Thanks, everybody. Hope you check out the book and enjoy.