Brendan P. Myers

Final Fenway Fiction

2012-01-23T08:26:00.007-05:00

Received some uplifting news over the weekend, that just in time for Fenway Park’s 100th anniversary, the third and final “Fenway Fiction” volume has been published and is now available for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all your favorite online retailers.

Published by Cornerstone Books and titled “Final Fenway Fiction,” included in this anthology is my own “A Truck Story,” a tale of two young men and their uncle who become trapped inside the Red Sox equipment truck just as it leaves Fenway Park for spring training in Florida.

Thanks to editor Adam Pachter for both including me in this volume, as well as his longtime efforts to find a worthy publisher for this anthology.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-21T11:43:00.011-05:00

Didn’t want the year to end without wishing a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays / Happy New Year to anyone and everyone who (probably mistakenly) finds their way here.

A special thanks to the more than 5,000 of you who have taken a chance and downloaded my free suspense thriller "Hope Town" from Amazon, Smashwords, or other retail outlet. I’ll keep that free into the new year, in the hope that folks who like it might give a shot to some of my other works.

Slated for next year is another tale of Nate and Parker (the two lead protagonists of "Hope Town") as well as the next volume in the "Applewood" series, along with a few new short stories.

And if the "Hope Town" download brought you here, here’s a taste of what’s to come:

His friend stared at him for a long moment before he began to speak.

"Near as I can remember, Parker, we had a little problem with the rules last time around. You do remember the rules, don't you?"

Parker had trouble keeping the smile off his face. He had indeed broken all his friends carefully delivered rules the last time around.

His inner smile disappeared moments later when his friend spoke again and reminded him what had become of that.

"Damn fool near got his own leg shot off. That’s what."

Parker felt Nate's stare bore into him through the darkness, strangely grateful that it camouflaged his own red face. He turned to look his friend in the eye and nodded.

Nate held Parker’s stare another long moment before turning and beginning to walk, while muttering something else beneath his breath.

"Got me damn near pretend killed, too."

Merry Christmas!

My Amazon "Bestseller."

2011-12-05T14:43:00.004-05:00

My computer went out on Thanksgiving night and I’ve been off the grid ever since. I won’t share with you the nightmare it was trying to find a new video card for the thing. Frankly, I suspect time offline was probably good for me. What I was most concerned about was having a few bills coming due, and I forget entirely how to pay bills offline.

In addition, a few days before Thanksgiving, I decided to offer my suspense novel "Hope Town" for free on Smashwords. I suppose in the back of my mind, I knew that Amazon reserved the right to offer it for free too, however I’ve never had any success offering work for free on Amazon. For example, my short story "The Intersection" has been free on Smashwords for months and months, however Amazon has deigned not to make it free there for whatever reason.

So I logged in a few minutes ago for the first time since Thanksgiving night to find that not only has Amazon made "Hope Town" free, but it is currently in the Top Ten (no. 8, as I type this) on the Amazon "free" bestseller list in the category of Suspense. I know such things are illusory, but it feels pretty good.

The only other news I have is it appears the final "Fenway Fiction" volume may indeed have found a home, and it will feature my Red Sox tale "A Truck Story." More on that later.

I'm off to find out what Nate and Parker have been up to these past few years. I suspect they have at least a few more stories to tell . . .

The Five

2011-10-26T11:05:00.012-04:00

Nominally about a band of touring rock musicians hoping for a break, what The Five is really about is music, how it speaks to us and touches our lives, about how sometimes, a song lyric seems to have been written with only us in mind, and about how sometimes, it is.

The Five are an Austin-based rock and roll band on the “knife and gun” circuit that takes them from city to city, playing boxlike structures that now all look the same, to drunk and unruly crowds. All five have been in the business a while, playing in dozens and dozens of bands before finding each other.

But after years of looking for their big break, of driving their van (affectionately known as the Scumbucket) throughout the southwest, of setting up MySpace pages and selling T-shirts and CDs at the back of the room, a couple of band members are tired and want out. This doesn’t sit well with John Charles, AKA Nomad, the volatile and often angry tacit leader of the group.

Still, he can’t really blame them, wondering himself just how long he can chase the dream before either giving up or checking out. But he has hope that their new song and video, an anti-war anthem called "When The Storm Breaks," might be the thing to put them on the map. On a swing through Texas, the band stops and does an interview with a sleazy car salesman who also has a music-based late night cable show.

Unfortunately, when the show runs and plays their video, showing American soldiers fighting in Iraq, it is seen by a drifting-toward-psychosis Iraqi war veteran, who becomes more than offended by what he thinks he sees in the interview and finds himself with a new calling: Killing The Five. All of them.

I'll confess while reading it and learning that an Iraqi war veteran was going to be "the bad guy" that my toes curled a little, wondering a) if that didn't border on cliche, and b) wondering if even I (a pretty anti-war guy) might be offended by it. I should have known better. McCammon does his usual excellent job in humanizing even someone engaging in horrific acts, and somehow giving him his own quiet dignity.

But I think the chase that comes afterward, the supernatural girl in the field, the story of Stone Church, the insertion of the FBI, all of that is simply a mechanism to delve into what the book is really about: music, the love of music, the sometimes heroic things people go through to write and perform music, and the transcendence -- the magic -- that can sometimes occur during live performances when musicians and audience become one.

I’ve heard too that this book has been on the shelf for a while, that McCammon had a difficult time finding a publisher for it. After reading it, I can’t say I’m surprised, for The Five is truly a "novel" in that it’s novel; something new and different and hard to categorize.

In fact, there’s a scene in the book where The Five face the corporate suits in the music industry, who only understand dollars and cents and not the music. In my imagination, McCammon himself faced some of those same people when trying to get this published, people who didn’t understand what they had, who didn’t smell the sweat coming off every page, people who didn’t hear the music contained in this book.

For what The Five really is, is a rollicking rock opera, and a stupendous achievement.

The Best of Necrotic Tissue

2011-10-18T10:55:00.008-04:00

I'm pleased to report that Stygian Publications has released their Necrotic Tissue: Best of Anthology featuring my story Ohrwurm:

Regulars here will recall that after completing four novels and having them go nowhere, I tried my hand at short stories and was delighted to have Ohrwurm published in Malpractice: An Anthology of Bedside Terror. They later published another short of mine titled Adagio in Necrotic Tissue Issue 9. I blogged at length about Necrotic Tissue here and here.

If you enjoyed Ohrwurm (and if you'd like to read it, it's available for free on Smashwords by clicking the link on the right) then you're sure to enjoy this collection from some of the best up and coming horror writers working today.

Thanks again to R. Scott McCoy, Head Editor at Necrotic Tissue, and all the other folks that assisted him over the years, for putting out one of the best horror magazines out there; truly, The Horror Writers' Magazine.

You can buy your copy today at Amazon and Smashwords, and discover what you missed.

The Most Wanted Book

2011-09-23T11:44:00.012-04:00

Years ago, avant-garde artists Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid, and David Soldier, set out on an experiment to find "The Most Wanted Art" and "The Most Unwanted Art." They conducted scientific surveys to determine what people liked in their art, what they didn’t, and then set out to create that art.

They did the same thing to far more hilarious results with "The Most Wanted Song" and "The Most Unwanted Song." For example, people disliked harps, bagpipes, dissonance, cowpoke music, operatic sopranos, kids singing, and advertising jingles, so you can bet that when they created "The Most Unwanted Song," it was heavy with all of that and more.

For "The Most Wanted Song," they learned that people liked R&B love songs, male/female duets, tenor sax, and so on. You won’t be surprised that "The Most Wanted Song" provides all of it and then some.

Though old news now, if you’ve never read about or heard either of these songs, you simply must click here (unwanted) and here (wanted) and explore this music. You’ll both be glad you did, and regret it for the rest of your life. Promise!

So what does this have to do with me, or my writing? Nothing actually, except I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m doing, I don’t write books or stories that people want to read, and I need to find myself another story-writing mechanism.

And so, after examining the current New York Times Bestseller list, I’ve created the blurb for what will be my next, and no doubt most successful, writing endeavor. I call it: Help Kill Me If You Can: Take Mile 81 to Yakima Street Over Mill River Past The Abbey and Prey:

A young white woman and two black maids find a bag of diamonds. One, an abused widow, will change many lives in her small Vermont town, except those unsuspecting drivers who on the way end up dead after pulling into a boarded-up rest stop on a Maine highway.

Meanwhile, Bruce Peyton’s pregnant wife has left him, and against orders, the former homicide detective begins an investigation into his niece, a master executioner who has had a long and savage journey.

But with the age of flying machines still in its infancy, the son of a serial killer atones for his father’s sins while fighting his own inner demons, and after a colossal battle, the Seven Kingdoms face new threats.

Who will survive the madness? Only Help Kill Me If You Can: Take Mile 81 to Yakima Street Over Mill River Past The Abbey and Prey holds the Key!

Now, for the easy part.

Writing it.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

2011-09-19T11:29:00.005-04:00

(In celebration of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, here's another excerpt from Swash!, my novel of eighteenth-century pirates let loose in the modern world:)

* * *
The small sloop began harassing the tall ships just a few miles outside of Boston. In an egregious affront to the agreed upon sailing order of the day, it tacked to and fro between and among the larger vessels with abandon. The skipper of a Portuguese brigantine who thought she came far too close attempted to raise her on the radio, to no avail. The captain of a French schooner simply shrugged and gave her the right of way, while sailors on a grand four-masted Argentine barque cheered their misbehavior and spurred her on. The smaller sloop managed to overtake most all the larger vessels, and with what some might call daring and others would call merely foolhardy, she screamed into Boston Harbor under a full head of sail.

Paying no attention to the larger vessels, she sailed straight toward that icon of the Boston waterfront, Long Wharf, where a sea of crowds stood watching the parade from just outside the famed Boston Harbor Hotel. Some of the more nervous types in the crowd, seeing a ship under full sail showing no sign of slowing down, began to slowly shrink away from what to them was obviously a looming disaster. Others stood their ground and raised their cellphone cameras, to record what was obviously a looming disaster. With any luck, if they survived it, they could have the video on the Internet in seconds.

And still, she kept coming. Some thought she picked up speed the closer she came. A panic broke out among those nearest the water as the ship began filling their horizon. The panic grew such that no one in the crowd — not even those filming it — stopped to note a familiar black flag with skull and crossbones waving proudly on her yardarm. Closer and closer she came, close enough that some on shore would later swear they saw a kid on deck wearing an Alf T-shirt (though later magnification of the video proved inconclusive.) Suddenly, just as it appeared the ship couldn’t help but slam full-speed into the wharf, a shouted order came from her deck and the ship swerved hard to port, sending huge plumes of water into the crowd.

She seemed to hang there a moment, an eerie ghost ship with, of all things, a dog barking excitedly on its deck. And then . . . her boom swung the other way, and wind again filled her sails. She was propelled parallel to the shore a moment before tacking hard back out to sea, picking up speed as she went. The stunned and now wet crowd went silent a moment, before someone started applauding. Moments later, a rousing cheer rose up. Whatever that was, it hadn’t been listed in their twenty-dollar programs, and anyway, the water was cooling. The crowd continued to watch as the ship sailed away, paying no attention to the huge Russian barque that was next on the program. And some of those watching had a feeling that whatever this little ship was up to, its next destination could only be the nearby party boat, the Sojourner. It was headed straight for her.

* * *
Sojourner was doing a lazy ten knots along the south side of the harbor, sailing past Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant, when the first mate spotted something.

“Vessel approaching from the port side, Captain,” he said. “Fast.”

He handed his captain the binoculars. After peering through them, the captain smiled.

From their own bridge, they’d all watched the spunky little ship scream into the harbor, then put on a little show for the crowd down on Long Wharf. The captain marveled at the seamanship, remembering doing the same in his younger days in the navy. While it was going on, his humorless first mate began to say something about it being outrageous. One look from the captain put a stop to all that.

After asking himself again just what the hell he was doing piloting a three-star restaurant around the harbor, the captain ordered, “All engines stop.”

The first mate raised his eyebrows. “But Captain . . .” he began, stopping when the captain gave him another cold look. He bit his tongue again, thinking that sometimes, it seemed as if the captain didn’t like his job very much. But then, surprisingly, the captain smiled.

Handing his first mate the binoculars, the captain said, “Have a closer look.” While his mate was doing that, the captain addressed the bridge.

“It would seem, gentlemen, that our client has arranged some sort of entertainment we were not informed about. It happens sometimes.” He waited for the first mate to lower the binoculars before going on. “Unless, of course, you believe we’re about to be attacked by pirates.”

He waited a beat before turning to his first mate and asking, “Do you believe we’re about to be attacked by pirates?”

The look on the captain’s face revealed there was only one correct answer to that question.

“No, sir,” the first mate answered. “I surely don’t.”

* * *

The Applewood Saga . . . continues

2011-08-30T11:27:00.006-04:00

I'm pleased to announce that "Fledge," the next volume in the "Applewood" series is now available in Kindle format from Amazon.Com, and coming soon in paperback and other e-reader editions. Buy it. Read it. Like it on Facebook! And tell your friends!

Fourteen-year-old Scott Dugan is both desperate survivor and hunted casualty of a vampire outbreak that decimates his small Massachusetts town. His uncle believes science offers hope and takes the boy on the run from shadowy forces tasked with exterminating those like his nephew.

But when the two separate, Scott embarks on an epic journey that takes him from cheap carnival sideshow act to comfortable refugee in the home of a wealthy and reclusive man with his own dark tale to tell.

As the chase moves from the low deserts of Arizona to the high peaks of Colorado and into the White House itself, Scott must avoid becoming a pawn in someone else's deadly game.

And when he learns that self-discovery for those like him is found only by embracing all he has become, he must weigh his longing to remember who he was and where he came from against the certainty that in doing so, he will never see the sun again.

Read the first two chapters here.

As always, thanks for reading!

The Second Messiah

2011-08-23T08:33:00.005-04:00

I wonder if it’s getting harder to write biblical thrillers. I mean, think about it. The Ark of the Covenant is safely lost in a government warehouse. The Robe Jesus wore was won in a dice game. And the Holy Grail wasn’t a grail at all, it was something called “the sacred feminine” . . . or some such thing.

Undaunted by all that, into the fray comes Glenn Meade, with his new novel The Second Messiah.

Our story begins with the discovery of an ancient scroll, near Qumran in Israel, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found forty years before. Shocked by the revelation contained within, on his way to share his discovery with the world, the discoverer and his wife are killed in a car wreck. Happening upon the scene is a young Catholic priest, who manages to salvage the scroll from the burning vehicle, only to have it disappear forever behind the walls of the Vatican.

Twenty years later, the son of that discoverer, following in his father’s archaeological footsteps, makes a similar discovery, a scroll very much like the one his father found. But even he doesn’t have it more than a few hours before history starts repeating itself, people turn up dead, and the scroll goes missing.

On a simultaneous track is the election of a new pope, an American who promises to open up the Catholic Church by revealing all her ancient secrets. Needless to say, there is an old guard within the Vatican that doesn’t think that’s a good idea at all. The new pontiff, who is haunted by something in his past, will not be dissuaded. By then, we readers know that the new pope might very well be the same man who rescued the scroll from the car wreck twenty years before.

Now if all that sounds a bit of a mess, it might be. But it’s a delightful mess, one you need to get through before the real action begins, that takes our somewhat bloodless hero on a journey through the deserts of Jordan, beneath the ancient streets of Rome, and into the rarefied sanctuary of the Vatican’s secret vaults.

Of course, the payoff to any story of this type is what exactly is the SHOCKING REVELATION! contained within the scroll, one that would ostensibly crack the foundations of Christianity and cause otherwise good men to kill? Meade does a good job keeping that under wraps for a few hundred pages or so.

And though I won’t tell you what it is, I was impressed by both its simplicity and believability. Perhaps the highest praise I can give is to say that when I read it, I said to myself, “You know what? That – or something quite similar – probably did happen.”

The book is written in very short chapters, most every one a cliffhanger. As previously noted, lots of information is crammed within the first few chapters. But my advice is to just go with it. It pays off in the end. Another thing that struck me is how squeaky clean it is, with nary a D-word or an F-bomb in sight. I suspect that’s done purposefully, with a specific audience in mind, however I’m not sure it’s the way gritty men on archaeological digs actually talk.

In a similar vein, our hero is surrounded throughout by beautiful woman, two of whom have obviously fallen in love with him, yet he remains single-minded in his quest. Not sure how believable that is either. In fact, I was about to give up hope for him until the last few pages, when he finally shows an emotion other than bitterness at his parent’s deaths. Score one for Jack!

Hope to see more of him.

A Taste of Fledge

2011-08-19T12:04:00.008-04:00

(Fledge: Applewood Book II - Coming soon to an online retailer near you!)

Slumped against a wall in the darkest corner of a low-slung building, the man dozed fitfully through the stifling heat of the long day. Beside him lay his young nephew, fast asleep beneath the shelter of a filthy tarpaulin. The man had been roused from his slumbers more than once by a sudden loud bleat or a wet honking snort. He soon drifted off again, taking comfort in the certain knowledge that his nephew’s sleep suffered no such interruptions.

The two had abandoned their crippled car about five miles behind. They walked as long as they dared along the steadily brightening highway, then raced toward the nearest available shelter seconds before the first searing rays of the morning sun appeared. The boy’s disease made daylight travel impossible.

He had collapsed the instant the two of them entered the cool darkness of their temporary sanctuary. The man dragged the boy’s limp body through the muck to the rear of the building, where he tucked him gently against the wall. By virtue of the boy’s presence — as did most all of God’s creatures — the fattened pigs gave both man and boy wide berth.

Exhaustion had long ago combined with the stress of their journey to push the man past his known limits. But in those brief moments of interrupted sleep, while waiting for darkness to fall and the boy to awaken, the man let his mind wander. More often of late, he found himself thinking about the sun. He wasn’t well educated, but you couldn’t live in this world without knowing a little something about the sun. What the hell did he know about it anyway? He knew the ancients had worshiped it: Persians, Egyptians, Greeks. The whole lot of them. The Romans had even named a day after it.

Sometimes, he thought the ancients had gotten it right, and the Bible had gotten it wrong, that in the beginning was the sun, and not the Word. It made more sense to him that way. And in his most blasphemous moments, he wondered if the sun itself was God and the ancient legends were true, that those most cursed by Him were doomed forever to wander the earth in eternal darkness, infernal creatures who were never again permitted to set their eyes upon daylight. But in the end, he always rejected that thought out of hand. One thing he knew for sure was that the boy who slept beside him had done nothing to deserve that. Nothing at all.

From somewhere deep within his half-consciousness, an inhuman scream snapped the man fully awake. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he glanced up to see an enormous black and white sow was now giving him the evil eye. He shrank back in fear for a moment, seconds later grinning stupidly to remember where he was and what had brought him here. He relaxed a little and settled back to watch the pig for a while. For some reason, this pig had separated itself from the . . . what was it again? His logy mind struggled to recall.

A herd? A flock? A crunch?

Whatever the hell it was, this one acted different from the others. None of them had dared venture closer than about twenty feet or so, leaving a kind of semicircular no man’s land between man and beast. But it looked to him now that the monster in question had taken it upon itself to start patrolling the invisible barrier that separated them. And the more the man watched, the more brazen the pig became.

It began scraping its conveniently ham-sized hooves against the dirt as if about to charge, before apparently thinking better of it. But after each abortive attempt, it looked the man in the eye and punctuated its frustration with an earsplitting squeal. And though the man was reasonably certain he was safe while with the boy, he found himself taking a peculiar dislike to this particular pig. The longer he watched it, the more certain he became that the feeling was mutual.

Managing somehow to tear his eyes away from the strange sideshow, he began taking stock of his situation. Rays of sunlight still streamed their way through the myriad cracks in the building, creating tic-tac-toe patterns along the dirt floor and upon the high backs of the pigs. But it seemed that the light was weaker somehow, tired looking, late afternoon sunlight. His bladder calling, the man turned and saw a small doorway cut into the back wall. Crawling over, he raised the latch holding the door shut and went outside.

Unaccustomed to even this weakened daylight, he squinted and blinked a moment, rubbing his eyes before reaching down to drop his zipper. From behind, he heard the occasional sound of a lone car or truck zooming down the highway a few hundred yards away. While emptying his bladder against the cracked foundation, he peered around the corner and saw row upon row of long and low-slung structures identical to the one he and the boy had spent the day in. Overbuilt for housing pigs, he thought.

Shaking off the last few drops, he raised his zipper and strolled around the side of the building. Through the deepening shadows he saw what he was looking for, a rusted spigot jutting out from sun faded yellow trim. He walked over and turned the handle, letting the brown-tinged water run for a while. After it cleared some, he cupped his hands together and began drinking copiously from the cool stream. When fully sated, he plunged his head beneath the now crystal clear liquid and kept it there a while.

His mind was clearer too when he walked out of the shadows and raised his head to the afternoon sky. The sun was low on the western horizon, the diffuse daylight turning the dense, smoky clouds into a kaleidoscope of purples and pinks and oranges. He stood and watched a while in a mute, almost religious awe as the sun sank lower, keeping its daily appointment with the craggy peaks to the west. For the next few minutes, the sky exploded with color. The man had heard about them, even saw pictures in a magazine once. But this was his first Arizona sunset.

When the sun finally went down behind the rugged mountains, he gathered himself enough to get back on his belly and crawl through the small door. While making his way through, a lesson from the Catechism of his boyhood inexplicably popped into his head:

“. . . thou art cursed . . . upon thy belly shalt thou go.”

He resisted the childish urge to bless himself while other memories flooded back.

God sees you Daniel Patrick Proctor!

No, he doesn’t. That was bullshit. Sorry, mom. He didn’t believe in curses. Even with all he now knew and had seen with his own eyes, he still believed in science. And that was where the boy would find his salvation.

Why then do you run from daylight? Why do you sleep with pigs?

Back inside the building, through the twilight shadows he saw the large sow still patrolled her ground. The man shook his head at her audacity while crawling over to his still sleeping nephew. The boy would be awake any moment now. It happened about the same time every night, and for a reason he still could not quite articulate, the man liked to be there when it happened.

Glancing up to reassure himself it was truly dark enough, he reached over and began slowly peeling the tarpaulin away from the boy’s sleeping face. His blondish brown hair appeared first. Boy needs a haircut, the man thought, smiling inwardly. The boy always needed a haircut. At least that much hadn’t changed. As he moved the tarp lower to reveal the boy’s gaunt features, his inward smile began to fade. His heart sank.

If anything, the boy looked even sicker today. His bone white skin was luminescent enough to give off a sallow, unhealthy light of its own. He had lost even more weight overnight, but that was no surprise. The boy refused to eat. He suspected the boy had made a few abortive attempts, even thought the boy might have gone through with it once after he returned from a furtive nighttime outing with what seemed a bit more color in his cheeks. But that had been weeks ago.

Reaching over, he tousled the boy’s hair, drawing away suddenly after running his finger along a nasty groove carved into the right side of his head. Steeling himself, he moved his hand back to run his fingers across the boy’s now misshapen ear. That can be fixed, he thought. The boy had never told him how he had received his injuries. The man had never asked, suspecting the boy himself didn’t quite remember. There simply hadn’t been time to ask the boy’s friends about it, the ones who had cared for him while waiting for his uncle to show up. Of course by then, head wounds were the least of the boy’s problems. While brushing his fingers along the fourteen-year-old’s cheeks, he wondered sadly if the boy would ever be able to grow a beard.

He sighed deeply. There was so much that neither of them knew. Overwhelmed suddenly with love for the boy, despite his recent blasphemy, he closed his eyes and said a clumsy prayer for his sister’s child, realizing only then that the boy was now his only living relative. That thought only jarred him from his prayer and brought a cynical smile to his face. Never much of a praying man anyway, he thought. When he opened his eyes, he was startled to see that sometime during his botched prayer, the boy had also opened his. He drew his hand from the boy’s face to save them both from embarrassment and smiled.

“How you holdin’ up, kid?”

In answer, the boy squeezed his yellowed eyes shut and began shaking violently. The man reached out and lifted the boy to his chest, bringing him close. He was again shocked at just how light he was. Seventy-five pounds, probably. No more than that. The man squeezed his own eyes shut to hold back his tears while gently rocking the sick boy. After a while, the violent shudders and tremulous quakes settled down. He tried to keep his voice from cracking as he spoke.

“You know what it is, son,” he said firmly. “We both know exactly what the problem is. You gotta eat, and that’s all there is to it. Please, Scott. Do it for your Uncle Dan, won’t you boy?” His voice cracked as he continued. “I don’t wanna lose you, boy. You’re all I got. Please, son. You can do it.”

He pulled the boy from his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. There was still something of the boy he once knew left in those eyes, but there were times you had to look long and deep to find it.

“Do it, Scott,” he pleaded. “Right now. I’ll leave if you want me to. I’ll stay if you want me to. But we’re not leaving here ‘til you eat. Okay?”

After a moment, the boy gave in to his stubbornness and nodded weakly. When he remained still, the man took that as his cue. Laying the boy gently back on the ground, he turned to crawl back through the narrow cubbyhole.

Halfway there, he paused a moment and turned around.

“Scott?” He waited for his nephew to turn and look him in the eye before going on. “Do me a favor, willya?”

The man cocked his head in the direction of the monstrous sow. If anything, the animal had become even more agitated since the boy had awakened. But that was to be expected. The boy appeared to take note of the animal and turned back to his uncle.

“Make sure to get that one. Okay?” the man asked.

After a puzzled moment, the boy nodded. The man returned the nod and winked once before turning to scurry quickly through the door. But he had been heartened to see what might have been just the ghost of a smile appear on the boy’s face.

Once outside, he stood there only long enough to confirm the boy was going through with it. When he began hearing the screams, he walked away from the building to leave the boy alone with his newfound nature.

By Popular Demand

2011-08-14T11:52:00.011-04:00

Got an anonymous comment this morning on my previous post asking, “When will you post again. I’ve been looking forward to this !”

As an aside, my blog settings are such that after three days or so, comments need to be moderated before they'll appear. When I went to approve the comment, I found also that for some reason, Blogger had marked it as spam.

But anyway, anonymous poster (or even spambot! I'm not proud.) I got your comment and truly appreciate the thought.

Truth is, I’ve started more than a dozen posts recently, however to be perfectly honest, I’ve also been feeling somewhat down on myself lately, and everything I’ve begun has sounded whiny or self-serving. I figured better to keep my mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.

The only “news” I have is that in a desperate effort to spark sales, I’m contemplating self-releasing the sequel to Applewood sooner rather than later, like, in the next few weeks. I’m also left wondering which is sillier: writing a sequel to an unpublished novel (I wrote the sequel to Applewood long before it was accepted anywhere) or releasing the sequel to a published novel that no one is buying.

In happier news, I’ve been in excruciating pain for the last few days. Woke up yesterday morning with some kind of severe bursitis or pinched nerve in my left shoulder. Not sure if I slept on it wrong or what, but most any movement of my left arm causes severe, literally tear-inducing pain. Kept me awake most of last night.

Where is my root canal Vicodin when I need it! Ah, well. Beer will have to suffice.

Until next time!

Not a bad way to end the week

2011-07-29T07:57:00.007-04:00

Got a very nice review of Applewood over at Patricia’s Vampire Notes blog yesterday. Well. Very nice is an understatement, but I’m trying to be humble here. Among other things, the reviewer wrote:

"The dialog is right on pitch, and Myers' young protagonists react to situations with adolescent authenticity. As we get to know Dugan and his pals, we come to care very much about them. This is Myers' secret weapon, one reason we keep turning the pages as fast as we can."

The entire review can be read here. Please check it out!

She ended the review with the following:

"There are three distinct time frames in the novel, and the reader might wish Myers had spent more time fleshing out the Civil War-era scenes, as well as wrapping up the present-day face-off of the old gang against their long-time nemesis. (To be fair, Myers may be planning a sequel.)"

Heh. More than planning, my dear reader / reviewer. The next volume in the series is complete and ready to go.

So long as people want it!

Sincere thanks to this reviewer, and all reviewers and readers, for taking the time to read my book. Special thanks to this reviewer for the very kind words.

Summer of Night

2011-07-28T11:38:00.007-04:00

In Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night, an ancient and forgotten evil comes to life in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, where a close-knit group of recently graduated sixth graders are among the few to realize it’s happening, and soon understand they are the only ones who can deal with it.

Though a terrific work of horror, Summer of Night is much more than that. It’s a coming-of-age tale that deftly recalls what it’s like to be eleven-years-old, no longer a kid, but yet not truly adolescent either. It affectionately captures hot, sweaty summer days of riding bikes, playing sandlot baseball, camping out, long days spent in the woods, and a nascent and budding interest in the opposite sex.

It also quite cleverly captures a time, the year 1960, with black and white background images of Democrats nominating Kennedy, and the first satellites being sent into space; and a place, the dying town of Elm Haven, Illinois, which doesn’t know that it’s dying.

The source of the horror both stretches credulity and is quite clever. Then again, it doesn’t matter what causes the World War I soldier to come out of his grave and stalk one of the character’s grandmothers. It doesn’t matter how the lamprey creatures can burrow and surface and dive into asphalt as easily as a dolphin in water. And it certainly doesn’t matter what caused the interior of Old Central School to become ensconced in viscous fluids, pulsing eggsacks, and fleshy tentacles. What matters is it has happened, and must be dealt with.

One of the things I find interesting about reading an obviously semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale is trying to determine exactly which character is the author. In this book, there are many to choose from. There’s altar boy and all-around good guy Mike O’Rourke, earnest Dale Stewart and his younger brother Lawrence. There’s wiseass Jim Harlen, and quietly strong Kevin Grumbacher. And in the background, hovering over them all, is the bookish and brilliant (and doomed) Duane McBride.

Though it becomes obvious toward the end which character most resembles Simmons, I’m struck upon every re-reading just how fully drawn each of the characters is, and can’t help but think there’s a little bit of Simmons in all of them.

What strikes me most upon each re-reading of this book is the universality of it. Though I wasn’t born at the time this book takes place, it captures my own perhaps romanticized memories of my youth, hot summer days playing baseball and hanging out with friends, of riding bikes and camping out and playing in the woods. That may be why I re-read this book every few years or so.

It’s always good to catch up with old friends.

In case you missed it . . .

2011-07-20T08:55:00.007-04:00

(With no original thoughts lately and nothing much to report, thought I'd repost the guest blog I did for Patricia's Vampire Notes a few weeks ago. As always, sincere thanks for stopping by this desolate outpost on the Internet!)

I remember years ago, reading a quote by Stephen King, in which he said what he did was something akin to being a paleontologist, finding that first small bit of bone sticking up out of the ground, then lovingly and painstakingly brushing away all that dust and dirt until the entire skeleton – in his case, a completed story – had been unearthed.

I think what he meant by that is often, even he has no idea where a story is going until he sits down and writes it. Of all the stories I’ve written, Applewood comes closest to my experiencing what King was talking about.

For example, I didn’t even know there were vampires in it until they showed up (though once they did, it explained a lot.) What I had in the beginning were ruminations on growing up in a small town, and reflections on the friends I managed to make. I had some sketches about a place where you couldn’t take a step or two without tripping over some piece of history or other, a place very much like the town where I grew up.

Applewood begins with a man coming home to a neighborhood that’s now abandoned and fenced off from the outside world. When I wrote it, I had no idea why he was coming home or why his neighborhood had been abandoned, but I was very curious to find out. He returns to the house where he grew up, and memories begin flooding back.

It turned out, he didn’t have an easy time of it growing up. Compounding the natural awkwardness of adolescence, his mother had recently died, and his father taken to drink. He’s been experiencing strange visions, flashbacks to times and places he has no business knowing about. Though he’s been blessed with a couple of close friends, they’re all mostly outcasts, bullied by the adults in their lives and by their peers, who run roughshod over their town, their school, and their lives

When to my surprise the vampires did arrive in Applewood, making the lives of my characters even harder than they were, I was determined to do what I could for them. There would be no wet nighttime feedings or bloody daytime stakings. I would ensure that none of my beloved secondary characters would succumb to the onslaught, and my main characters – the friends I had so lovingly crafted over long weeks and months – were not in any way to be maimed or killed (or worse) by the outbreak.

Alas, the book had other plans; the bones of this particular dinosaur had a shape of its own.

I had an awfully good time writing it. I hope you have a good time reading it. If you like traditional, 1970s, non-sparkly vampire mayhem, if you enjoyed "The Lost Boys" and are partial to coming-of-age fare like "Stand by Me," then Applewood may just be the book for you.

Most sincere thanks for reading.

On Free Stories

2011-07-11T15:14:00.025-04:00

My friend Aaron Polson has a quick and interesting blog post today about a recent review he received on one of the story collections he offers for free. The review was (apparently) from someone who doesn’t typically read paranormal stories, and therefore found what was inside somewhat jarring. They gave it a one-star review.

Those of us who read and enjoy paranormal and horror, especially those of us who read and enjoy Aaron’s work, can only raise our eyebrows. What was this person thinking they’d find?

It might be instructive to take a moment to talk about why a writer offers stories for free in the first place, and I think there are more than a few reasons. Some writers (be they good or bad) are only looking for readers, and are happy to offer most or all of what they write for free. They might not even care whether someone likes their work, they’re simply happy to be read.

Other writers (myself included) offer stories for free in the hopes that people who like our free stories might be inclined to purchase something else from us, perhaps a story collection or a novel. For example, in the back of all the stories I offer for free, I include marketing material on other works I have for sale, descriptions and links to Swash!, Sumner Gardens, Applewood, etc. Frankly, in my case, it’s the only reason the stories are free at all. Yeah, it's nice to be read. Flattering, even. But it doesn't pay the electric bill.

But in my experience, a funny thing happens when offering free stories, and I touch upon it in my reply to Aaron. What I’ve discovered is that the stories I offer for free are not only reviewed more frequently, but they are reviewed more harshly. Bear in mind now, in most cases, these are stories that have been good enough to be purchased by publishers (small publishers, yes, for not a lot of money. But someone paid me for them!) and have appeared in anthologies, however they often get only one or two stars.

Now, I THINK I know why that happens with my two zombie stories, Nearly Dead and Fortunato’s Ghost, and that is because they’re not your traditional blood ‘n guts zombie tales that (I suspect) most zombie afficianados are looking for. In fact, Nearly Dead is meant to be more comedic than horrific, and my own love letter to St. Pete. But I do call it a “zombie tale” and therefore will (rightly) suffer slings and arrows from those looking for more. I can accept that. I also like to think that folks in St. Pete will find it, at the very least, amusing. And that's really who I wrote it for.

But I simply reject that the other stories I’ve offered for free are anything less than two or three stars (and maybe more) and wonder if psychology is more at play here than anything else. Perhaps people who download free stories are preconditioned to think they’re crap (and honestly, a lot of them are.) Maybe it’s unconsciously easier to have your preconditions confirmed than it is to be surprised and then delighted to find that it’s not what you thought it was going to be.

Another reason folks might be preconditioned to think it’s crap is, a) they’ve never heard of the author, and maybe they're just another crap writer offering crap for free, or b) if even I don’t think my work has any value (i.e. I’m offering it for free) then why should they believe it has any value?

At any rate, I’ve become very conflicted about offering things for free, going so far as to remove all of my free stories a few weeks ago before getting cold feet and putting them back. Heck, I’m even thinking about offering a complete novel for free (Hopetown? Swash!?) in order to get readers to notice me. But then, I think about how easy it is for folks to be dissapointed (for whatever reason, legitimate or otherwise) and leave a bad review. And I wonder if instead of sparking sales and interest in my other writings, the bad reviews on the free stuff actually undermine sales of my other offerings.

It’s quite vexing! But it comes with the territory of being an “independent author” I suppose. For the record, in most instances, I've simply stopped looking and will let the chips fall where they may.

As always, thanks to Aaron for bringing it up. It’s not the first time he’s posted what I’m thinking, and it’s always nice to know there are others out there struggling with the same issues.

Congratulations, and a pleasant surprise

2011-06-30T12:37:00.025-04:00

Congratulations to the three winners of signed copies of Applewood, two from the Goodreads giveaway, and a third to a commenter over at Patricia's Vampire Notes blog. Though the contest is over, if you haven't had a chance to read my guest post, click the link and check it out. It was a first for me and I was a little nervous about it. Think it came out pretty good anyway.

Can't thank enough everyone who participated in both contests, and am especially delighted that in the end, 1330 people entered the Goodreads giveaway. If only a few of the non-winners are intrigued enough to pick up a copy, it will have been a success.

Goodreads has notified me of the names and addresses of the two winners, and those books will be in the mail within the hour. Still waiting to hear back from Patricia who won over there, however I suspect she's just waiting to hear back from the winner herself with their name and address.

Now, for the pleasant surprise:

I blogged here a few weeks ago about my author copies of Applewood arriving, noting they had come very well packaged, in one box, in two separate wrappings. They were so well packaged, in fact, I only opened one of them, and saw that my author copies were paperbacks. Nothing at all wrong with that, and I was delighted to receive them.

However, mere moments ago, having given away almost all the first half, I opened the second package and discovered . . . they were hardback copies. Applewood is the first of my books to even be offered in hardback, and it's a pretty cool feeling to hold one of them in your hands for the first time. Especially nice that I had absolutely no idea they were there.

In other news, got a very nice review of Applewood from the Minding Spot book review blog the other day. I'm also appreciative that she posted the review to Amazon, which helps a lot. Thanks for that, Wendy. I've posted an excerpt of the review over on the right. Click the link to read more!

As always, thanks for supporting my writing by checking out my free stories on Smashwords, buying my books, and for visiting this blog.

I've noticed too that more and more folks are taking a look at my comedic pirate adventure, Swash! For what it's worth, I think that too (in addition to Applewood, of course!) would make a great summer read for young and old alike.

To Sir, With Love

2011-06-27T08:55:00.020-04:00

(Years ago, I stumbled onto a C-SPAN interview with E.R. Braithwate, the author of "To Sir, With Love." The whole thing was delightful, but of course the part that fascinated me most was how his famous book happened, but almost didn't.

Link to the full interview here -- seriously, set aside some time to watch the whole thing. You'll be glad you did -- however below, please find the part where he talks about the book.)

"At the end of each day, because I did not know how to teach, I would go home, and in notebooks, record exactly what had happened that day in the classroom. I kept careful notes of what was said, what was done, not only what the children said, but how they said it. I tried as carefully as possible to recapture the atmosphere of the classroom. And as you can well imagine, after seven years or more, there were lots of these notebooks.

And long after I had established a kind of rapport with these students, and was able to work with them, I was sitting at home during the holiday season, thinking that these books were literally driving me out of my room. There were too many, and I planned to have a little bonfire in the back of the yard, and I’d taken out handfuls of them, and before burning them, I began rifling through the old days, remembering what it was like at first, reminding myself of many an instance when, if it were possible, I would have walked away from that school and never looked back.

And then Mom came out and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “Listen to this, Mom,” and I would read to her bits and pieces, and I would say to her, “Do you know, if only I had been sensitive enough, there was so much I could have learned so early!”

And she said, “What are you going to do with these?” I said, “I’m going to burn them.” And she said, “But, why? These could be useful to some other young student. Why don’t you write a book?”

Write a book? You don’t just ‘write a book.’ You need to be TAUGHT how to write a book, you need to go to university particularly to LEARN how to write books. I said, “I can’t write a book!”

Writing a treatise is not writing a book. To write a treatise you borrow from all sorts of sources, and then put it together and stick your name on it. That’s not writing. So I said, “I can’t write a book.”

Anyway, she gathered these and took them back indoors, and day in, day out, she would remind of this book I should write. And finally, one weekend I thought, “Okay. You want a book? You’ll have a book.”

So I went into the local town, I hired a typewriter, I bought some paper -- and I knew so much about writing a book, I forgot to get carbons. And beginning with the earliest of those notebooks, I tried to retrace my steps in this exercise called teaching.

When it was all done, one morning, I put it on her plate, breakfast time, I said, “There’s your book.” And she said, “Don’t give it to me. DO something with it!” But what do you do with it?

I went to the local library, and said to the librarian, with whom I’d established a kind of superficial friendship, and I said to him, “Look, I’ve written this thing. What would you advise me what to do with it?” So he said, “First of all, let me read it and I’ll tell you.”

I left it with him for a week. Then I returned and I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Well I’m not sure whether my reaction to it is because of our friendship, or because of the manuscript itself. Why don’t you take it to an agent?”

An agent? I said, “Look. I can’t afford even to go to the cinema, and you’re telling me I must hire an ag—“ He said, “See, I didn’t use the word ‘hire.” And he went to a shelf and brought back something called Authors and Writers Yearbook. In it were all the agents anywhere in England, dating back I suppose to – I don’t know, you pick. The old ones.

And he said, “Let’s go for one who has been in business longest!” I was willing to let him tell me. And we happened upon a firm, a firm of agents called, “Pern, Hollinger, and Hyam.” Very impressive names! So he said, “Try them. What have you got to lose? Nothing.”

Following day, no, that very day, I went to the local printers and had them put a cover – a paper cover – onto this ‘manuscript’ and, the binder said to me, “What do you want to call it?” And at the end of the manuscript, there was this label I had used. When the kids at the end of that term were leaving, they gave me a present, and on it they had put their names, and over their names, “To Sir, With Love.” And I thought to myself, “Strange title. Why not?”

So I put on the front, I wrote: To Sir, With Love by E. R. Braithwaite.

So that morning, I went to the West End of London, Dean Street Soho, very next to the red light district, if you know where that is. And I walked up these narrow stairs, and there was this elderly lady sitting at one of those little . . . telephone things with the horn, old fashioned, you plugged into the thing – not like today, you know, they just use their fingers.

But, she was sitting at this, and I said, “Good morning. I’ve brought a manuscript.” And when I said the word ‘manuscript’ she looked at those shelves, where the cobwebs were hanging on all these packages. I got the message, and I said “Okay” and I picked up my – I was leaving, and she said, “Just leave it there. Put your name and address and telephone number, and eventually . . .” She made eventually sound as if it had ten syllables. “E-ven-tu-a-lly.”

So I left it and I went home. And I was sitting in the backyard next morning, and mom came out and said, “You’re wanted on the telephone.” And I figured out, I didn’t have a girlfriend. Who was calling me? So I answered the telephone, and the person on the other line said, “Mr. Braithwaite?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “My name is Paul Scott. And I’m calling from Pern, Hollinger, and Hyam.” And so I said, “Yes?” And he said, “It’s about your manuscript.”

Have you ever heard such a beautiful word?

So he said, “When can you come that we might talk about it?” So I said, “How about tomorrow?” I would have gone that day if I could. So I went up and he told me that . . . it was in. He said there were two possibilities, either The Bodley Head, which was England’s most prestigious publisher, or another one he mentioned, Secker and Wahlberg. He said, “But let’s go for the best first. If they don’t like it,” he said, “we can always try Secker and Wahlberg.”

So he sent it off The Bodley Head, and they said they’d be happy to publish. And it became an overnight bestseller. And the only person who was not the least bit surprised . . . was mom."

Advice to "Indie" writers

2011-06-24T12:36:00.013-04:00

A questioner on an Amazon.Com message board asked the question recently: as an independent, self-published author, how does he promote himself?

Having some time on my hands, I composed what I think was a thoughtful response.

This is really one of the things folks need to think about before moving ahead with publishing anything. I think experts would answer that you've got to "brand" yourself by using the tools of blogging, social networking, and the like.

Ideally, long before you've published, you have a well-established blog, writing regularly about things that interest you. It can be anything: politics, current events, sports, knitting. Anything. It's also important that you participate regularly in other peoples blogs, commenting on their posts and networking that way.

And maybe, you build on that by using twitter, and Facebook, and Goodreads, and the other social networking tools that are out there.

For one example, there's a guy who recently published a book (who also posts to this forum) that ran a fan fiction site for some time, posting his own and other people's fiction, building up a network of friends and social acquaintances that way. Last I checked, his book was still sitting at #2 or #3 in the Space Opera science fiction category.

What he had built for himself (not that he was even necessarily trying) was what folks in traditional publishing call a "platform," a network of folks who might already be interested in purchasing something he's written, and upon which he can build.

So in a nutshell, make sure you think about these things before publishing. Attempts to do such things afterward usually (in my opinion, anyway) come off as looking insincere and desperate. It takes time, often months and years, to build up relationships such that people are interested enough in you to buy your book.

And maybe, you already have a "platform" in place and just need to think creatively about it -- are you active in town politics or in your community or in your schools? Perhaps you already post regularly to other forums, are well known there, and can let people know about your book that way. At any rate, you need to think about how can you parlay those sorts of relationships into something more.

Something else you may want to try is contacting your local community paper. I often read articles and blurbs in them about "local citizen writes book." Can't hurt, right?

Anyhow, I'm not saying you can't do these things afterward. Just saying it will be a slow slog. My two cents. Best of luck!

I'll confess right here and now, the longer I do this, the less I believe any of it. I think more appropriate advice might have been: write a series of private detective novels, keep churning them out. Or maybe vampire romance. That's what people want to read.

Throw some dragons in there for good measure.

People love dragons.

Guest Blogging

2011-06-21T05:40:00.005-04:00

Got that guest blog I was talking about up on Patricia's Vampire Notes. Here's a tease:

I remember years ago, reading a quote by Stephen King, in which he said what he did was something akin to being a paleontologist, finding that first small bit of bone sticking up out of the ground, then lovingly and painstakingly brushing away all that dust and dirt until the entire skeleton – in his case, a completed story – had been unearthed.

I think what he meant by that is often, even he has no idea where a story is going until he sits down and writes it. Of all the stories I’ve written, “Applewood” comes closest to my experiencing what King was talking about.

In conjunction with the blog, I'll be giving away another book. Check it out by clicking here.

Free stuff . . . everywhere!

2011-06-17T10:16:00.024-04:00

Happy to report I've made another story available for free on Smashwords, this one called The Intersection, telling the tale of a small town police chief with a vexing traffic problem.

First published in the Night Terrors anthology from Blood Bound Books, if you like the story, I'd reccommend you click the link and head on over to Amazon and pick yourself up a copy, for more chilling tales of the beyond.

While we're on the subject of free stuff, I've got a guest blog going up next week over at Patricia's Vampire Notes, where I'll be giving away a signed copy of Applewood, my newly-released vampire, coming-of-age novel. I've posted a couple of the early reviews over to the right, and I'd very much appreciate your checking it out!

Of course, there is also the Goodreads Giveaway, in which I'm giving away signed copies of "Applewood" to two lucky Goodreads members. Details of that can be found both to the right and in an earlier post below.

And since I'm in such a . . . giving mood, why not give away a signed copy right here on this blog? Why not right now?

Here's the deal: Simply post a comment below (doesn't have to be fancy, just make sure you leave some way for me to get in touch with you, e.g. myname at gmail, or a link to your blog or twitter) and I'll have someone close to me randomly select a lucky winner (not me, making sure it's fair should one of my more frequent commenters care to give it a shot.)

Just two catches: First, let's keep it to the U.S. and Canada only -- memories of international ebay shipping charges still haunt! -- and second, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a review or even simply a rating somewhere, be it Amazon, Smashwords, or your own blog.

Of course I hope you love it, but even if you don't, criticism is always welcome, and mentions anywhere help.

Now, I can't make you write a review or post a rating, and won't think any less of you if you don't. But I'd certainly appreciate it!

If you're partial to horror, liked "The Lost Boys," and enjoy both vampire tales and coming-of-age fiction like "Stand By Me," I'm fairly certain you won't be disappointed.

Let's have the contest end this coming Monday, June 20th, at noon, EDT, so folks won't have to hang on so long and it doesn't conflict with the other giveaways.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and good luck!

Random musings for a Friday Afternoon

2011-06-03T14:17:00.056-04:00

First of all, thanks to everyone who has purchased "Applewood." It means a lot. Thanks as well to all those participating in the Goodreads giveaway (link to your left.) As of this writing, 448 people have signed up to win one of the two copies available, with plenty of time left for more to get in on the fun.

In addition, thanks to all the Goodreads folk who have added the book to their “to-be-read” shelves. I think that kind of buzz can really make a difference. If you're not yet a member of Goodreads, see last week’s post below for details about the giveaway itself.

In other news, I’ll be writing a guest post over at Patricia’s Vampire Notes blog, tentatively scheduled to run on June 21st. It's a first for me, writing a post for someone else's blog, and I'm finding it . . . hard to write. Not sure why. I suppose it's because it's for an audience that doesn't know me yet.

In conjunction with that post, I’ll also be giving away another copy of the book, and the odds of winning there will no doubt be far better than the Goodreads giveaway, so stay tuned for details!

As an aside, I popped on over to Patricia's blog moments ago and saw that her latest post summarizes vampire releases for May, and she has again featured "Applewood." Can't thank her enough for the kindness.

Got my first Amazon review of “Applewood” this past weekend.

". . . an engaging atmospheric horror thriller that hooks the reader with the opening corpse and never slows down . . . the story line is fast-paced . . . Dugan is a unique protagonist . . ."

Click here to read it. I’m sincerely grateful to that reader as well. As a reminder to folks, good, bad, or indifferent, reviews help a lot.

Finishing up my reread of Dan Simmons “Children of the Night.” I read it when it first came out back in 1992 or so and am finding it interesting to read it again. Have pretty much the same opinion of it too. Keep an eye out for my upcoming review on Goodreads.

I'm heading down the home stretch of a tedious edit and rewrite of the sequel to "Applewood." It amazes me to think that when I finished the last edit, I thought it was all done. It was perfect! And then, to open it a few years later and see it needs so much work . . .

I find nothing as tiring as editing. Sleep comes very quickly the evenings of those days when I’ve done a few hours of it.

Contemplating perhaps, a few months down the line, issuing the sequel to "Applewood" myself, if only to stimulate sales of the first. Though I believe it’s worth every penny at $6.99, it is the most expensive ebook I’ve ever been associated with. Maybe releasing the sequel at a bargain price will stimulate sales of the first, and folks always love a series.

Speaking of that, I’m a few thousands words into the third episode of the "Applewood" saga. Just random notes and thoughts at this point, but the rest will come.

On another front, I created a new cover for "Hopetown":

Always hated the one I threw together, though I always thought the birds were a nice touch. It's easy to forget that aside from my short story collection ("Adamson's Rock and Other Stories"), "Hopetown" remains my best reviewed work.

Question for other writers who also use Smashwords: Have your Barnes and Noble sales "frozen up"? I've sold or given away more than 1200 books over there in the past year, and then, a few months ago, it stopped cold. I'm still distributing there, the books are still available, and Barnes & Noble readers continue to rate them, but the number on the "Sales and Payment History" page hasn't budged. Doesn't make sense they'd just stop like that.

Anyway . . .

Have a good weekend everybody! Drive safely.

PS: To answer the question I'm getting the most:

It’s not a cat.

Look again.

Goodreads Giveaway

2011-05-26T15:15:00.032-04:00

Received a box via UPS this week containing my ten author copies of Applewood. Planned on taking a picture of them (most author copies I've ever received!) but they were bundled up so nicely, in two separate packages, I didn't have the heart to open them both. That, and my digital camera sucks.

Gotta say, the book itself looks wonderful. I know the cover graphic looks dark on the computer, however it looks really good on the cover. The pages are cream (which I've never used on my own books) and that looks really classy. I've always liked the font, particularly the one used for the diary entries. They definitely look like something out of the nineteenth-century.

For what it's worth, I'd point out too that this is the first book of mine available in a hardcover edition, to any friends or family that might want it in that format. I know I do! Alas, my author copies are paperback . . .

In terms of the author copies, two or three are pledged to friends who were beta readers and offered encouragement over the years, and the rest I planned to give away in some kind of marketing manner, but I wasn't sure how. I'd seen some folks use twitter ("Be the 100th person to retweet this and win a signed book!") but I have so few followers it would have to be the fifth or the seventh retweet, and that would just be embarrassing.

That, and I hate using twitter for marketing. Setting aside it doesn't seem to work for me, I think it turns off more people than anything. I think its larger purpose is to brand yourself, and hopefully the rest will follow.

Anyway, I was on Goodreads.Com the other night, a cool community with about 10 million members that brings authors and readers together, and saw they had an excellent giveaway mechanism. So, if you're already a Goodreads.Com member, simply click the gadget on the right and sign up! If you're not a member, it's really easy to sign up, and if you love reading, it's definitely worth your while.

The giveaway itself opens on May 30th and runs through June 30th, so plenty of time to sign up. I'm giving away two signed copies, and the winners are selected randomly by Goodreads.

I'll be giving away the rest over the next few weeks and months, some of them here on this blog, guaranteeing the book has at least ten readers anyway. Or goes up on ebay, which might only help.

In other ruminations, I'm torn between offering another free short on Smashwords or doing the complete opposite and pulling the ones already there. They don't seem to help sell books at all, mine, anyway. It might just be because my most popular free shorts are zombie tales that probably have lots less blood and guts than most zombie aficionados like. It could also be that two of them are humorous tales, and two of them are classic horror, maybe confusing potential readers about what exactly my books are. Or, it could just be that they suck. What the hell do I know.

Anyhow, to my friends and family, if you haven't yet purchased "Applewood," please do so at your earliest convenience. I think these early sales are vital to the book having much of a chance at all. As always, thanks.

And if you do click the Goodreads link, you'll see one of the reasons I have yet to sign up for Facebook. I have one friend! (Thanks again, Aaron!) If you're a Goodreads member, I'd be happy to be your friend.

But I ain't gonna beg.

Applewood Update - Rapture Edition

2011-05-20T15:18:00.007-04:00

Confess I’m of two minds in terms of this whole world ending thing. From the scant reading I’ve done, it appears it happens in two parts. Tomorrow, the select will ascend into heaven, leaving the rest of us behind to suffer earthquakes and horror and all sorts of fire and brimstone stuff. And then, I guess, it’s October when the rest of us will fall into the fiery pits of hell or something.

Fortunately for me, I’m fairly certain that me and all the people I know will still be here come Sunday morning. For whatever reason, I simply don’t have in my circle of friends folks who believe themselves either born again or saved. That may be either an unconscious decision on my part, or a conscious decision on theirs . . .

Anyhoo, should it all blow to hell tomorrow, I’ll be happy and proud that as of the end of the world, my novel “Applewood” will be (as of this writing, anyway) one of the 200,000 bestselling books in the world. Considering the millions upon millions of books there are, that’s quite a feat!

And though I quite understand why folks may have been reticent to pick up a copy in the past week it has been out, should you still be here on Sunday morning . . . you will have no excuse.

Thanks very much to Patricia Altner at Patricia’s Vampire Notes for posting an announcement about the release. Fun too to see other horror sites around the ‘net picking up the announcement. To all of them, I’m grateful.

In the other good news department, I’m proud to say that my story “Ohrwurm” has been selected to appear in a new anthology, “The Best of Necrotic Tissue” that will be out at some point before the year is finished. I’ve blogged before about how much I liked and respected the folks at Necrotic Tissue magazine. They were the very first outlet to publish me, and for that, I’ll be forever grateful. They will be missed.

And so, to those of you reading this who will be ascending tomorrow to be with the choirs of angels, I wish you luck. As for the rest of you, I suspect I’ll see you next week! And there better be a copy of “Applewood” in your hands.

For the rest of us sinners . . . enjoy.

Applewood

2011-05-15T07:37:00.005-04:00

Twenty-five years ago, a mindless act of teenage vandalism reawakened a long dead nightmare in the small Massachusetts town of Grantham. When a mutilated body is found by the side of the road, some in town realize that the horror of their youth has returned. They call upon their damaged friend Dugan, who has never forgiven himself for what happened back then and has lived ever since with the terrible consequences.

". . . reminiscent of . . . Shadowland and Salem's Lot"

Delighted at first by the disappearance of the town bullies, Dugan and his outcast friends soon realize that as the undead begin to surround their own neighborhood, they must do battle against a growing vampire army led by the town's long dead Civil War hero. Along the way, they'll find clues in the diary of a young boy not unlike themselves, and strength in their own unique bonds of friendship.

"The Lost Boys meet Stand By Me"

Some, like Dugan, will never be the same . . .

Applewood, a coming of age horror novel and vampire story, is available now in both Kindle and paperback versions from Amazon, Barnes and Noble.Com and your other favorite online retailers.

Read the first four chapters here.

Applewood Eve

2011-05-14T15:15:00.014-04:00

Well, tomorrow’s the big day, when my novel "Applewood" officially goes on sale.

But I’m delighted to see that “Applewood” pages have been built over the last few days on most of the major bookselling sites, and is currently available for purchase in both Kindle and paperback versions from Amazon, as well as at Barnes and Noble.Com and (for some reason) Borders.Com in Australia, which is kind of cool.

Those close to me, family and friends, many of whom were beta readers and who offered lots of comments and suggestions along the way, as well as more than necessary encouragement, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You know who you are.

It’s been more than six years since I wrote it. Spent a year or two sending it around. It even sat for two years within Dorchester Publishing before they sent a rejection. I put it down in discouragement.

A year later, I sent it around again, and a small publisher in Massachusetts who specialized in vampire novels, By Light Unseen Media, showed an interest. It was another nine months or so after that until I finally received kind words about it from them, and more than that, they wanted to publish it. That took another year or so. Since that time, it’s gone through a series of careful edits and surgical excisions.

Thanks again to Inanna Arthen, By Light Unseen Media’s owner and publisher, for both showing an interest and for working tirelessly editing the book and creating the finished product. If we don’t sell a single copy, you’ll still never know how much it means.

Thanks to my friend Tommy, who invited me along every summer up to his family’s house in Maine that had been in his family for generations, providing a lifetime of happy memories.

Thanks to Jimmy, who wasn't really a friend of mine, but who got me arrested once, and who used to take three friggin’ days to get a haircut. Both those life experiences came into play. You weren't a bad kid.

Thanks to my older brother, who when I was twelve let me drag him to an all night Beatle movie marathon, but more importantly, took me to see "Carrie" one Halloween long ago at the movie theater downtown.

Thanks to the town of Stoughton, whose junior high was even more hellish than Grantham's, but had I described it the way it really was, no one would believe me.

Thanks to Mr. Madden, who wouldn’t let you on the bus if you didn’t have a ticket, even if you’d been riding the damn thing for six frigging years.

And thanks to Paul, my trusted lieutenant, fellow altar boy, and the best damn paperboy who ever lived. Without Paul (and his brother Jimmy, who took after him) there would be no Dugan.

Thanks to lots of other folks who I’ll mention in the future at random moments when they occur.

The sequel is written.

The third in the series has begun.

Onward!

The Ides of May

2011-05-03T11:21:00.031-04:00

Wasn't planning to blog about this because frankly, it's none of your business. But May has always been my favorite month of the year. For lots of reasons, I guess. First of all, it's the month in New England in which winter finally seems to give up the ghost. It's not at all unusual to get snow in April. But snow in May is unusual indeed.

Another reason is because when I was in high school, I was in lots of plays. The biggest plays, the ones that brought out the biggest audiences – the annual school musicals, the senior class play – were always held in May. From tenor in the barbershop quartet in "The Music Man" to Sir Lancelot in "Camelot" (which not by coincidence gives us the song "The Lusty Month of May") to the Emcee in Cabaret, I trod all of those boards in May.

May is also the month when the school year begins winding down, when teachers (sometimes) would finally give in to the pleas of "Can we have class outside today?" I remember too it was in May of my senior year when I first (gasp!) took a skip day with my friends.

In later years, I often found myself traveling on business in late April or early May, leaving behind a Boston that always seemed (to me, anyway) still in the grip of winter (or maybe an unusually cool spring) to visit Tampa or Houston or Los Angeles, sunnier climes all. Each time I traveled that time of year, upon returning home, I discovered that a miracle happened while I was away: the days were warm; the air was redolent of freshly mowed grass. The forsythia had bloomed in my absence.

For some reason, May also seems to be the month that brings me the most fortune. I do admit that maybe it's only because I'm paying extra attention during that month and expect good things to happen. But still, they invariably do. Normally it's small things, little things that delight. But I do remember a few years back being in a casino, playing electronic draw poker, and hitting a Royal Flush.

The machine was still buzzing and people were all looking my way when it occurred to me, and I smiled. It was May 15th. And as wonderful as all of May is, things always seem to peak for me in the middle of the month. Certainly, before that and after that are all delightful too. But it is always mid-May that holds most of the delights and surprises.

And so when I learned a while back that one of my favorite authors, who hadn't written a "horror" novel in more than twenty years, was releasing a new one, I wasn't surprised to learn it was coming out on May 15th. Because that's my day, the one day of the year reserved especially for me. Already got my order in for Robert McCammon's "The Five" and can't wait.

When I later learned the date my own publisher had selected to release my novel "Applewood," I wasn't at all surprised to learn that it too was coming out on May 15th.

Because that's my day.

My Interview with Me

2011-04-28T07:29:00.010-04:00

As you might imagine, I get dozens of interview requests and other demands upon my time. Thus far, I've turned them all down. Until now, that is, because when I heard Me magazine, a new avant-garde journal out of Slovenia, wanted to profile me for an upcoming issue, I thought it was time.

And so, we sat down a few weeks ago, and today I received a pre-publication transcribed copy. I present it below, warts and all.

* * *
Me: First of all, and let's get this right out of the way. You're very handsome. Does it embarrass you when I say that?

BPM: (blushing) Thank you, thank you. And no, of course not. I get that a lot. But it's always nice to hear.

Me: So let's talk about your writing. What got you into it?

BPM: Well, I guess you could say I'm a lifetime reader who probably, like everyone else, once or twice put a book down and said, "I could write something better than that." I'll confess too that I tried my hand at it as a much younger man, but what the hell did I know back then? Didn't really have a lot of experiences to draw from at the time, if you know what I mean. So, a few decades later, I tried again, and here we are.

Me: Here we are. Now, you've written four novels . . .

BPM: Five, actually.

Me: Really? Well, we'll get to that. You've also written a number of short stories. Why the two? I mean, why not one or the other?

BPM: Truth is, I set out to become a novelist. But after completing the four novels and having them go nowhere, I thought I'd try my hand at short stories, maybe get a few published, build a name for myself that way to spark some interest in the novels. I was fortunate to have the first two shorts I wrote picked up.

Me: What were they?

BPM: Hmm. The first is easy, that was "Ohrwurm," which appeared in the "Malpractice" anthology from Stygian Publications. Next was called "Where Spirits Dwell," which appeared in the "Northern Haunts" anthology from Shroud.

Me: That's when you set up your blog.

BPM: (smiling) You've done your homework. But yeah. Still feel funny about it, though. Have sort of a love-hate relationship with it. I'm not a very social person and don't like to toot my own horn. But I'd lurked lots of aspiring writer blogs along the way, and it seemed that's what people do. Anyway, both stories were accepted within a week or so of each other, so I thought I was on my way! Didn’t quite work out that way.

Me: Did those publication credits help you at all in getting your novels taken more seriously?

BPM: Not that I could tell. Anyway, I was just pleased both to appear in print for the first time, as well as having something else to put in my query letters for the novels.

Me: You also received an Honorable Mention in the "Writers of the Future" contest, right?

BPM: Yeah, that was for "Adamson's Rock." I really enjoyed writing that story, and I think that showed up in the final product.

Me: Now, rejection is, of course, a part of writing. How many times have you been rejected?

BPM: (smiling) Gotta be somewhere between 500 and a thousand times. Probably more like 700 to a thousand times.

Me: How do you deal with all that rejection?

BPM: Drink. Heavily. (laughter) Seriously, though, it's all part of the process. Or so they tell me.

Me: Let's talk about the novels. What got you started?

BPM: Well, I sat down one day and said "I'm going to try writing a novel." That turned into "Sumner Gardens," a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale that drew heavily on my youth. Almost as soon as I finished that, I said to myself, "Anyone can write just ONE novel. But if you really want to be a novelist, you've got to write more than one." So I sat down and immediately wrote "Hopetown."

Me: The thriller.

BPM: (smiling) Well, my attempt at one anyway. It's a flawed book, I know that. Still, it has a warm place in my heart.

Me: What came next?

BPM: Well after those didn't go anywhere, hundred or so rejections on each, I sat down to write the next one, "Applewood."

Me: The vampire one?

BPM: Yeah, that's right. Excited to say it's coming out on May 15 from a small publisher called By Light Unseen Media out of Massachusetts. It's available for pre-order now from both the publisher's website and BarnesandNoble.Com.

Me: I know you sent that out a lot, tried real hard to get a publisher. Did you ever get close before finding BLUM?

BPM: Probably closer than the others. I'd only had one request for a partial before, and that was on "Sumner Gardens." Big shot New York agent showed an interest in it, but when the associate who showed that interest moved on, the big shot agent asked me not to contact him anymore. Quite nasty about it, too.

Me: Oooh. Who was it? Let's hear some dirt.

BPM: (smiling) Not gonna happen. Doesn't matter anymore anyway.

Me: So, "Applewood"?

BPM: I got a couple of requests for the full manuscript on that one, including one from Dorchester Publishing, which I was very excited about. Got "thanks but no thanks" from most of them, and heard nothing at all from some of the others who requested it. In fact, Dorchester sent their rejection more than two years after I'd sent it.

Me: Two years? That's despicable.

BPM: (laughing) Hey, I've learned that's about as polite as the publishing industry gets. Been my experience, anyway. And at least they sent one.

Me: Did you set out to write a vampire story?

BPM: Actually, no. In fact, I didn't even know there were vampires in it until they showed up. It didn't start out to be about vampires at all. Funny, thinking about it now, but as autobiographical as "Sumner Gardens" was, "Applewood" is probably moreso. Most everything that happens in "Applewood," the coming-of-age stuff anyway, is something that really happened, either to me, or to someone I know.

Me: Including the vampires?

BPM: (grins) More things in heaven and earth, my friend. More things in heaven and earth.

Me: Well, you can probably tell, I could talk to you all day. Do you mind if we come back sometime? Maybe check in to see how "Applewood" is doing? And of course, we haven't even had the chance to talk about "Swash," that mysterious "fifth novel," or even what else you might have in the pipeline.

BPM: Nah, this has been fun. I'd do it again.

Me: Me too. And again, thanks so much for your time.

BPM: No, thank you.

-- END --

Required Reading

2011-04-24T10:25:00.012-04:00

Random thoughts while waiting for May 15th to come around . . .

One of the characters in my forthcoming Applewood makes an observation which, coincidentally enough, is also something I've wondered long and hard about. He puts it thusly:

The purpose of junior high is to prepare you to die.

The evidence he proffers for that theory isn't the hellish junior high experience he and his friends are going through (and whoever thought it was a good idea to put all of those hormones and angst into one building hopefully died a horrible death) nor is it their own personal trials and tribulations. What he uses to buttress his theory is the required reading he and his friends have had shoved down their throats the past few years, which coincidentally, were the same books shoved down my throat when I was their age.

Among the books the characters have been forced to read are Death be not Proud ("Kid gets brain cancer and dies."), Lord of the Flies ("Plane crash. Adults die. Cannibalism. Just like our school."), Go Ask Alice, and On the Beach ("They all began to laugh, because On the Beach was the granddaddy of them all. In that book, everybody in the world dies. Eventually.")

Of course it doesn't end there. There was A Separate Peace and The Outsiders and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and more. I remember another Death be not Proud teenager-gets-cancer-and-dies book being synopsized in the reading magazine we all got. And of course, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving every year, all the classes came together in the cafetorium for a ritualized viewing of Brian's Song.

You couldn't make it up.

So like I said, I've done a lot of wondering about that over the years, and I gotta figure part of it is simply payback on the part of teachers and school authorities for having to deal with eleven- to thirteen-year-old kids in their native habitat. And if the kids are going to make their lives miserable (and they do), then the teachers will have the last laugh, reminding kids every day that their time will come, and sometimes, sooner than you think . . .

Throw in frog dissection ("Extra points to keep the heart beating!") and getting bare-ass naked in front of other people for the first time and I tell ya, it's no wonder I recall junior high with such fondness.

I do recognize that much of the above is indeed classic literature. Just question if it may be . . . a bit much. It certainly left an impression upon me, though in my case, some of it may have just been the zeitgeist of the time. As my own seventh-grade career was winding down, Seasons in the Sun hit the number one spot, and by the time I put my pen down for the last time that year, it had been overtaken by Billy Don't be a Hero.

So not that long ago, I wasn't surprised to see my eighth-grade nephew writing a paper on A Separate Peace. Another nephew, when asked what book they had him reading, alerted me there had been a new book added to the pantheon of classic dead-kid literature they make you read.

He was reading Into the Wild.

Excerpt from Swash! - Part Deux!

2011-04-19T07:46:00.006-04:00

Asleep in his bed, Arthur Cobb felt a gentle tickle at his throat. Thinking it perhaps the lighting of a mosquito or the crawling of a small bug, he reached up to swipe it away. Before he could, he felt another, and then another. More than half-awake now, fearing an infestation of some sort, he reached to his throat to slap them away and his hand came upon unflinching metal. He opened his eyes.

Through the starlight drifting into his room, he saw three long foils were now pressed to his throat. Bizarrely, he thought at first they were radio antennas and he was having a close encounter. But when the middle one pressed more sharply against his Adam’s apple, he felt what might have been a drop of liquid trickle down his neck and understood implicitly it was more than that. His bladder let go. He pressed himself deeper into his soft mattress. The sharp ends of the swords followed him there.

The light was such that he could not make out faces or details of the men who now had him trussed up as well as any entomologist had ever pinned a bug. He could just make out that the man in the middle wore a hat of some sort, though that might just have been a trick of the shadows.

His next thought was to ask them what they wanted, but he knew any movement of his throat was certain to send any one of those sharp points plunging into his skin. No, whatever these men wanted, they’d let him know when they were good and ready.

“You,” one of them said. The one in the middle. “Perfesser. Sirrah.”

He let the words linger a while, and if anything at all had been left in Cobb’s bladder, it wasn’t anymore.

“You’ve got tings don’ belong to you,” the man said, and Arthur knew suddenly that these were the men he’d been taunting. The ones who had taken the Lady Grace. But this was not what he had expected.

As one, he felt the three sharp points retract a bit, but only a bit. Just enough to allow him to get a word or two out.

“I don’t . . .” he began to say, and seconds later felt a blade beneath his ear. The man had come from nowhere. The wetness he felt on that side of his head revealed the man’s knife had already broken his skin.

“That not be the answer we come fer,” the man said. “Now, I made a promise not ta kill ya. But I made no promise I wouldn’ hurt ya. An’ I made no promise I’d let ya keep yer ears.”

With that, the knife beneath his ear pressed forward. Tears formed in Arthur’s eyes.

“An’ so, I’ll ask again. You got tings don’ belong to ya, do you not?”

The points against his throat let up once again, but the knife to the ear remained where it was. “Back room,” Arthur choked out. “Hidden door in back of closet . . . but their locked . . .”

An explosion echoed throughout the house, causing Arthur to twitch and the knife to his ear to slice further. Moments later came another thunderous clap as the door to the closet was kicked open. Arthur showed far more self-control this time.

It seemed to take an eternity, but shuffling sounds came from up the hall. “Think that’s it, Captain,” the voice said.

Forever and a day later, the sharp points to the left and right of Arthur’s neck ebbed somewhat and then were gone. An epoch after that, the knife was removed from behind Arthur’s ear. After that, the only danger to Arthur was the sharp point that had never left his Adam’s apple. He understood then that whoever wielded that sword, he was the most masterful of all.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods,” the man said quietly before he too removed his sword.

Arthur didn’t hear any of them leave the room. Minutes went by, then hours, but Arthur remained frozen in place until the first shafts of daylight revealed he was truly alone.

~

~
Available from Amazon.Com and other fine online outlets.

Excerpt from Swash!

2011-04-14T07:19:00.007-04:00

Lucas and the rookie Tomlinson got the call.

The brazen robbery of building materials from the lobster dock and the lumberyard was heinous enough, and they went there first to take their reports. But while there, another call came in, and what had happened to the octogenarian security guard at Wal-Mart really burned Lucas’s buttons.

When they arrived there, he was still bound, gagged, and tied to a wheelchair in the medical device aisle. The employee who found him had left him that way because she worked in cosmetics, and company policy strictly forbade her from having anything to do with medical devices.

Lucas complimented her for both following company policy and keeping the evidence intact, such as it was. And what the security guard told them when they finally got his gag off, which took half-an-hour because it was tied with some kind of devilish sailor’s knot, revealed the trauma of the experience had sent the man off the deep end. The guard was so incoherent, Lucas sent Tomlinson off to the prescription counter to grab the guy a couple of Xanax.

When the store manager arrived, they all went into a narrow backroom to view grainy black and white videos taken from both the parking lot and inside the store. After watching only a few minutes, a now tight-lipped Lucas thought maybe the security guard was onto something.

The thieves had arrived in a horde, swooping down on the place after the security guard unwittingly opened the door to have a cigarette. Dozens of men wearing bandanas on their faces or hats pulled low swarmed down on the unarmed man. Once inside, they began to loot and pillage selectively. From the camping section, they took every canvas tarp in the place. From sewing, they took needles and thread and piles of loose material. The cutlery section was almost a total loss.

A few minutes into the video, Lucas saw the image shift to a different department, where a lone man stopped a moment to carefully examine its contents. His body language suggested he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“What section is that?” Lucas asked the manager.

“Cutlasses,” the man answered.

It took Lucas a moment.

“Cutlasses?” he asked.

“Cutlasses,” the man answered again.

He turned to Lucas and saw that he still didn’t understand.

“You know,” he went on. “Swords and foils and sheaths and stuff like that. Cutlasses. You’d be surprised what big sellers those things are. Folks like to hang them in the house as decoration. They’re also big in Revolutionary and Civil War reenactments. In fact, swords of all kinds are among our company’s biggest sellers.”

“Cutlasses?” Lucas asked again.

“Cut-la-sses,” the man said again, impatient now, drawing out the word as if speaking to a child.

When he got no further comment from the cop, he turned back to the video and watched the mayhem continue in — as much as the cop refused to believe it — the cutlass department. More and more men began to arrive, and before long they all carried out armfuls of the things. To Lucas, their face and head-coverings along with their strange clothing made them look like something from another age. He was on the verge of remembering something important when the manager spoke.

“Hey, you know what they look like?”

After a moment, Lucas answered. “Yes, I do.”

With swords in their hands now, you couldn’t help but see it. The fact that one or two had begun engaging in friendly and quite masterful swordplay only underscored the image.

“They look like pirates!” the manager said excitedly.

Lucas gritted his teeth. It was the exact word the security guard had used to describe them.

“Yes,” he answered coolly. “Yes, they do.”

In fact, not only had the security guard sworn they were pirates, he said that as they carried out their booty, they began to . . . sing. He hadn’t recognized the song, but said it was one of those where one man shouted and the rest answered, one man shouted and the rest answered. The chorus went on and on. The guard said he feared he’d hear it ringing in his ears for the rest of his life. He said it went something like:

“I’ve got a coat and a nobby, nobby coat
I’ve got a coat a-seen a lot of rough weather
For the sides are near wore out and the back is flying about
And the lining’s looking out for better weather.”

Of course, the Xanax might have been kicking in about then, so Lucas wasn’t sure how much was real and how much was imagination. But seeing it now on the screen he knew one thing for sure: this needed to be kept under wraps. The last thing he needed was for his town to become the butt of jokes or worse, people actually believing there was a marauding gang of pirates running around, even if there were. He looked the manager in the eye before laying down the law.

“By order of the police department,” he began, “all information gleaned from these videotapes, which I’ll be taking by the way, and statements from all witnesses to this crime are hereby ruled strictly confidential, on a need to know basis, and embargoed as evidence in a criminal case. And if any word of this gets out, I will know exactly where it came from and you will fry, my friend. Do you understand me?” he asked.

The manager had already gone back to looking at the video.

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered, unable to turn away from the mayhem on the screen. “I guess.” But moments later, he just couldn’t help himself. Turning to the cop, he said, “But they really do look like pirates, don’t they?”

~

~
Available from Amazon.Com and other fine online outlets.

Coming . . . May 15 . . .

2011-04-11T15:27:00.009-04:00

Twenty-five years ago, a mindless act of teenage vandalism reawakened a long dead nightmare in the small Massachusetts town of Grantham. When a mutilated body is found by the side of the road, some in town realize that the horror of their youth has returned. They call upon their damaged friend Dugan, who has never forgiven himself for what happened back then and has lived ever since with the terrible consequences.

Delighted at first by the disappearance of the town bullies, Dugan and his outcast friends soon realize that as the undead begin to surround their own neighborhood, they must do battle against a growing vampire army led by the town's long dead Civil War hero. Along the way, they'll find clues in the diary of a young boy not unlike themselves, and strength in their own unique bonds of friendship.

Some, like Dugan, will never be the same . . .

Applewood, a coming of age horror novel and vampire story, is available for pre-order now from BarnesandNoble.Com, and available May 15th from all your favorite online retailers.

Read the first 29 pages here (.PDF).

A moderate twitter success story

2011-03-09T11:05:00.022-05:00

A few weeks ago, I posted a somewhat petulant rant about aspiring writers using twitter to tweet about writing and the writing life. I think part of what motivated my rant was jealousy (What? They’ve written another ten-thousand words while I’m staring at a blank page? They’ve submitted yet another story?) but part of it was that I just find such things boring. Others may not, though. And that’s . . . okay.

The overall point of my post was that I didn’t believe such things helped in marketing your work and, in fact, just might turn folks off to it. I suggested folks tweet about themselves, their lives, their interests, hell, even what they had for lunch. Personally, I find that far more interesting than word counts or submissions.

Do I understand why folks do it? Absolutely. There are so few places for “indie” (God, I hate that expression) writers to get noticed at all, so why not use twitter to blow your own horn a little (though my rant was against those who do it a lot.) There are also very few ways for unaffiliated writers to market their books, and the ways that are available (Amazon forums, Kindleboards, etc.) are filled with attention-whoring self-published writers that will step on your thread or posting in a heartbeat to get their own stuff noticed. Because of all that, aside from this blog, I’ve kind of given up marketing my own books at all.

Previously, when I released a free story on Smashwords, I’d create a thread alerting folks to it, mentioning my other books as well. I’ve also participated in other writer’s threads, trying to become part of the “community.” But when your own threads get very little response (hell, even a “Sounds interesting. Best of luck with it!” would be nice) it’s hard to feel part of the “community” at all.

Anyhow, I only say all that to say this:

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a flurry of sales, mostly of “A Truck Story,” my Red Sox spring training novella. I sold half-a-dozen within a couple of days, and a few dozen more within the next week or so. I also noticed sales of some of my other books (most gratefully, “Swash!”, my criminally ignored tale of pirates coming back.)

But what sparked the interest? I’d done nothing at all marketing-wise. Did someone read one of my works and post something about it? Did I get a mention somewhere? (I keep waiting to get a mention somewhere. . . whatever the hell that means.) Anyhow, the flurry of sales died down, and I’ve sold only a single copy of “A Truck Story” in March.

So the other day (not even thinking about my books) I clicked on “your tweets, retweeted” on twitter and saw that 22 people had re-tweeted something I’d sent to a sportswriter about the Red Sox. What must have happened (though I missed it entirely) is that the sportswriter retweeted my tweet to his thousands of followers, and 22 of those followers retweeted it to all of their followers. Some of those followers / Red Sox fans must have come to this blog, and the rest is history.

Of course I suppose was lucky, in that I had a Red Sox novella that was (inadverdently) brought to the attention of Red Sox fans. If I were a Red Sox fan who wrote romances, would I have achieved the same level (admittedly low) of success? Well, I did sell a few of the other books too. So I expect it would have helped.

Anyway, not sure what any of this means, except to reinforce that tweeting about your interests might, in the end, be more fruitful than tweeting about writing or the books you have for sale. As for me, I still hope someone takes “notice” of something I’ve written, hope that word of mouth on something or other sparks sales. Because it’s really hard to maintain the drive to keep writing when it sometimes seems that nobody at all takes notice of you. But I also believe that cream does indeed rise to the top, and if nobody is taking much notice of you, then there’s probably a reason for that too.

We’ll see what (if anything) happens with “Applewood,” my vampire novel coming out in March Though late to the vampire game, maybe it will take off – or maybe it will sink like a stone. If it does, I’m prepared to say I’ve done my best, anyway. And at that point, I’m also prepared to say that with regard to any pretentions I might have had about writing, the market will have spoken.

Not just "Meh." Very "Meh."

2011-03-07T15:14:00.012-05:00

One of the bravest things I’ve seen on writer blogs happens over at Kim Paffenroth’s excellent Gospel of the Living Dead site, where he (at one time, anyway) posted the worst reviews of his books he could find. So in that spirit, I wandered over to Barnes and Noble’s website the other day for the first time to see that many readers of my free stories have taken the time to rate them on a scale of 1-5.

One reader actually took the time to write a brief review of my St. Pete-centric zombie short, Nearly Dead, which reads:

It's a (very) short story, not a book. by Benzpyrene
Customer Rating: 1 star

This is not a book. It's a very quick and mildly amusing read. Would probably be more fun if you know the St. Pete, FL area, as the author does not really flesh out anything. It comes across as a "Hey, I have an idea for a story" kind of story, but with very little effort put into the telling. Very "Meh".

And ya know, I can’t argue with any of it.

In happier news, while at B&N I noticed that Applewood is currently available for pre-order. That’s kind of cool.

Noticed too that someone on Goodreads.Com recently read Hopetown and gave that a 4-star review.

Funny (and I’ve mentioned this before) but I had very little faith in that book, my first attempt at a thriller. What I tried with it was to have as normal a guy as possible get caught up in events beyond his control, to see how he’d handle it. I couldn’t be more pleased (and surprised, actually) that most folks who read it seem to kind of like it.

At the very least, they don’t think it was a waste of time.

That’s the thing I find most terrifying about this fiction writing thing, that I would be guilty of wasting the most precious resource any of us have . . . time.

And with that, I won't waste any more of yours!

Wheat World

2011-02-28T12:50:00.018-05:00

The girl’s brother died sometime in the night. The old man dragged the boy’s body into the stalks before she awoke. They were hours into their walk the next day before it occurred to the man she hadn’t asked about him.

As they walked, the man raised his head toward the eternal blue sky and wondered again when was the last time he’d seen the contrail of a passing airplane. Months? More likely, he knew, it was years. Johnny had been the one keeping track of time for them both. But he’d been killed long ago.

As was their custom, when the day got too hot or the girl too tired, they rested. There was no shade, for trees had long ago succumbed, so the two simply lay down in the tall stalks. While giving the girl a sip of water, the man wondered if it might be the last water on Earth.

Lord knows, they hadn’t seen a river or a stream in months. Ponds and lakes too were but a distant memory. They’d been the first to go. No, he thought, in the world of Q2, you took your water wherever and however you could find it.

He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. Instead, the faces of those who had fallen along the way flashed before his eyes: the minister who had taken his own life rather than slow them down; the young couple lost to marauders; the bickering husband and wife who had taken their battle into the stalks one day and never returned; And Johnny, his own son. But the man wasn’t yet ready to think about what had happened to Johnny.

It occurred to him then that though he’d lost his own son, he’d probably miss the boy the most. There had been something engaging about the kid, some spark that seemed to have all but vanished from the world. What he’d miss most, he knew, was the kid’s sense of humor. God love him, the boy had kept that all the way to the end.

Ah, hell, he thought. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore except getting to the city. That had been their destination all along. It somehow made sense things would be better in the city.

They’d all heard the rumors that someone at Harvard or MIT had figured out a way to kill the stuff. That’s what Johnny believed anyway, and that slim hope was good enough for him. Further, the man knew they were getting close. He’d been catching glimpses of it on and off in the distance the past few days.

After an hour or so, he woke the girl and they continued their journey. Things were better for him. His head was higher than all but the tallest stalks. But for the girl, it was like walking through a jungle.

Something about Q2 had morphed over the years. Evolved. The stalks grew taller with each passing generation. The grains harder, sharper. The man did his best to blaze the trail, holding back the hellish stalks from whipping back and slapping the girl in the face. But both their faces were now tic-tac-toed with red welts and long scrapes, the evolving face of humanity in a world filled with Q2.

Late in the afternoon, the man stepped in some muck and heard something snap. He held up his arm to warn the girl before timidly, remembering the minister’s broken leg, putting some weight on it. He breathed a sigh of relief that nothing was broken, but still. Something was wrong. It took another moment to realize what it was. There should be no muck in a world where it no longer rained.

He glanced down and saw his foot was embedded a few inches deep in a wet hump of earth that was bordered by streamers of tattered blue flannel. To the left and right were more humps, dozens of them, along with what he now recognized as scattered clothing and shoes. Protruding from within them all were the yellowing remains of those who’d once worn them.

Looking closer, the man saw that from their almost fleshless skulls, sightless eyes hosted tall, healthy stalks. Wheat grew from the holes where noses used to be. The tallest stalks grew from the once moist wetness of their mouths. Further inspection revealed that their upper skulls had been blown away by something large caliber. The man noted absently that the wheat apparently found brain matter an especially good fertilizer.

Letting go of the stalks, he pulled his foot from the goo and turned to the girl. Take my belt, he said. Follow me. The girl nodded and reached out. Don’t look down, he added before the two wandered into the killing field.

Once through the worst of it, the man glanced up and saw the city was closer now. Another day’s walk at most. He allowed his mind to wander, to stop and consider how far they’d come in the years since Q2 had entered their world.

Johnny had seen it first, pulling up what he thought were weeds in the garden. The next day they were back, taller than before. The man first noticed it while pulling into his driveway, twelve-inch stalks growing from cracks in the asphalt that hadn’t been there when he’d left that morning.

After that, they saw it everywhere: in the yards, the playgrounds, and the baseball and football fields of their small town in northern Maine. Days after seeing it for the first time, the man saw it sprouting from his roof.

He and Johnny stayed in the crumbling home as long as they dared, keeping up with an outside world that was falling down around them. Before it fell, the government ferreted out what happened, if not how. Q2 was a strain of genetically modified wheat designed to grow pretty much anywhere. The agribusiness conglomerate that developed it believed they’d created something that would solve world hunger forever. How it escaped the lab, whether through terrorism or sheer stupidity, stopped mattering after a while.

Lost in thought, the man realized the sun was nearly down. The two had been walking uphill for a while. It was time to stop. Turning, he motioned the girl to rest and watched her collapse where she stood, quickly falling into unconsciousness. He waited for her breathing to settle before walking further on up the hill, from where he knew he’d be able to see the whole of the city.

Reaching the top, he pushed aside the stalks and glanced down to see the wheat stretched unbroken, into the city and beyond. The wide river that had once separated Cambridge from Boston was gone, consumed by the voracious wheat.

Across the wheat river, in the heart of the city, skyscrapers too hosted the plant. The iconic blue of the Hancock Tower was gone, replaced by the sallow yellow of the wheat growing up all fifty stories. To its right, the Prudential Tower looked for all the world like a single unearthly stalk of the substance.

Smaller surrounding buildings too were swathed in the stuff, those that still stood, that is. Many had collapsed from what the man guessed was the sheer weight of the stuff. These looked like perverse, gigantic haystacks from another world.

Turning to the east, he allowed his gaze to linger at the place where a great harbor once lay, and where beyond was once open ocean. Now, stretching toward what had once been harbor islands and beyond, was more wheat. The man had lived long enough with Q2 to be almost immune to its ubiquity and destructive power. But he shuddered to see confirmed with his own eyes something he had wondered about: it was indeed taking the oceans.

He stayed atop the hill a while before letting go of the wheat and turning back to where the girl slept. They’d come this far, he thought, and lost too many along the way not to go just one more day. Who knows. Maybe there would be civilized people down there, not just the marauders and scavengers and murderers he and his companions had mostly avoided along the way. Mostly.

If not, the man still had his pistol, though he vowed he wasn’t going to use that unless he could no longer care for the girl. She was the only thing he had left. Anyhow, Johnny had always believed things would be better in the city. And as the man lay down and closed his eyes he remembered that once, a very long time ago, that been good enough for him.

Overtaken by events

2011-02-17T09:40:00.012-05:00

"The world made plans to gather around their television sets for what promised to be quite a spectacle. In advance of it, there had been much condemnation and even some saber rattling. But given America's recent track record in wars of their own choosing, the consensus was that they too could only watch impotently. Even the feckless United Nations could not agree on the substance of one of their patented strongly worded letters.

It wasn't unprecedented. The world had done nothing when the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan began blowing up ancient statues of the Buddha. The Khmer Rouge had used the ancient temples of Angkor as a munitions dump. Napoleon himself had used the Sphinx for target practice. So when the Islamic Republic of Egypt decreed the Pyramids idolatrous and un-Islamic, the world held its breath."

I know it’s rough, but I wrote the above passage a few years back while writing down some early thoughts / sketches for a book I still hope to write, what in my own imagination is an expansive apocalyptic novel in the tradition of “Swan Song” or “The Stand.”

Of course mine won’t be nearly as good as those were. But apocalyptic fiction, like coming-of-age tales, Florida Fiction, and Vampire Fiction, have long been among my favorite genres. And, for better or worse, I’ve tackled coming-of-age, and Florida, and Vampire fiction. I guess you could also say I’ve touched on apocalyptic fiction with “Adamson’s Rock.” But those who have read it might wonder what comes . . . afterward. That’s what I want to write.

Anyway, in terms of the above passage, I got the idea not long before 9/11, while watching the Taliban blow up and destroy thousand-year-old statues of the Buddha, evidence of a long gone Buddhist culture that once thrived in Afghanistan but whose relics the Taliban viewed as “un-Islamic.” I remember thinking at the time, do they really have the right to destroy historic icons and vestiges of the past that truthfully belong to all humanity?

Then, while brainstorming political and world events that might lead to my fictional apocalypse, I wondered what would happen if a similar regime took over in Egypt and declared it an Islamic Republic. Would the world stand by and watch as their government blew up and destroyed the Sphinx or the Great Pyramid at Giza as un-Islamic?

I still do wonder about that, but it seems pretty clear now that the recent revolution in Egypt is fairly secular in nature, and that the right’s new boogeyman, the Islamic Brotherhood, does not really have the power or constituency to play anything other than (at least right now) a supporting role in any future Egyptian government.

Now, I may still use the above in my (I probably won’t even write it but really really want to) apocalyptic opus. Maybe it’s the next Egyptian government that falls prey to their worst instincts. But it got me thinking that it’s not the first time events have overtaken my writing.

For example, I wrote my Red Sox novella “A Truck Story” in 2005, coming off their first world championship in 86 years. Among the players I used in the story were Doug Mirabelli and Manny Ramirez. Of course, by the time the anthology it was slated for fell through, years had gone by, Mirabelli and Ramirez were no longer with the team, and the Sox had won yet another world championship. And so, prior to self-publishing the thing, I needed to make a few changes.

Same thing happened while writing “Swash,” my novel in which eighteenth-century pirates come back to reclaim their ship from the sands of Cape Cod. In that one, I had already written a section that referenced the wreck of the Somerset, a British ship that foundered off the Cape and hadn’t been seen since 1980. So what happened while I was finishing the novel? The Somerset reappeared on the beach one day for the first time in thirty years.

Get me rewrite!

Anyhow, not sure the point of this. But it is funny how events can overtake both novels you’re only thinking about, and novels and short stories you’ve already written.

Happy Writing!

The thin line between self-promotion and self-parody

2011-02-12T14:49:00.009-05:00

Read a terrific post over on Inkspot titled “Blatant Self-Poisoning?” (h/t @Vrydolak) regarding authors who self-promote too much and how that can backfire.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I know next-to-nothing about social networking, and present as proof that I’ve only been on twitter a few months and am not even on Facebook.

But I do know what I’ve read about using social networking to promote yourself (and recall Neil Gaiman wrote wonderfully on this) and that is you should use social networking tools to sell yourself, not your product. Because if you can sell yourself successfully, then the rest should follow, right?

But what does it mean, selling yourself, especially in the context of an aspiring writer? To me, it means truly being who you are on these networks, warts and all, not a carefully created façade of who someday you’d like to be, or worse yet, who you want people to think you already are. I’m telling you, the genuine people are obvious, and the not-so-genuine people are just as obvious.

In fact, many twitter accounts of aspiring writers could actually be, without changing a thing, a parody account called @aspiring_writer:

“Wrote 10,000 words today. Boy, I’m tired!”

“Got an acceptance! Yipee!”

“Was it Proust who said that the only thing worse than writing was not writing?”

Okay, I made that last one up. And again, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m guilty of all of the above. But hopefully, in moderation.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that me, personally, I’d rather hear your thoughts on what’s happening in Egypt than your word count.

I’d rather know what you had for lunch than you got a rejection or an acceptance.

I’d rather know what you’re watching on TV than how many “WIPs” you have ongoing.

Can you use social networking to sell books, or to try to sell yourself as an author who writes books and stories worth reading? Probably. But it ain’t gonna happen being a one-note-Johnny, who tweets or blogs about nothing but writing and the writing life. I’m pretty sure about that.

Now, like I said, I know nothing about the proper use of social networking, especially with regard to using it to sell books or anthologies. But I know what annoys me.

And I know self-parody when I see it.

Fortunato's Ghost

2011-02-09T16:20:00.006-05:00

In celebration of cracking a thousand downloads of my free stories on Smashwords, and in anticipation of the May launch of my vampire novel Applewood, I'm delighted to report that I'm making my zombie short titled "Fortunato's Ghost" available as a free download on Smashwords. The story itself goes something like this:

"It is six months since the dead began to rise. The windswept islands of Boston Harbor have become refuge to the few hundred souls who have managed to survive. But Will Bartlett, a young man rescued from the hellish mainland, soon learns that entry into this new civilization comes at a very high price."

Confess I had a lot of fun writing this one. Though it didn't get into the anthology I wrote it for, it did find a home in Dead Worlds, Undead Stories from Living Dead Press, a great anthology containing some of my favorite zombie shorts. So if zombies are your thing, pick up a copy today!

Hope you enjoy reading "Fortunato's Ghost" as much as I did writing it. You can download the story in a variety of formats (or read it online) it by clicking here.

January Update

2011-01-26T11:04:00.009-05:00

Funny how time passes, and the next thing you know you haven’t updated your blog for a while. Don’t want January to pass without at least a second post.

Not much going on writing-wise. Recently completed two shorts, one a post-apocalyptic tale that was rejected from Necrotic Tissue that I’ve sent it along to Triangulation, whose latest anthology uses as its theme “Last Contact.”

Triangulation creates themes for their anthologies and then says, “You tell US what it means!” You may recall I had a story rejected from them once that they said didn’t quite fit their theme. Heh. Can’t have it both ways, my friends.

At least I can smile about it.

Completed a second short that I don’t know quite what to make of, indeed haven’t even titled yet. Had an idea rolling around in my skull for a while, yet even I didn’t know until I wrote it that the main character would end up having . . . relations . . . with a somewhat alien plant. So keep your eyes open for an erotic plant anthology, okay?

What brought me back to the blog was to update the “What I’m Reading” corner. Just finished Richard Laymon’s “Flesh” (a gory serial-killer tale that uses a supernatural device as an excuse to write a gory serial-killer tale) and started reading “Black Sunshine,” one in a series of S.V. Date’s humorous Florida tales.

If you’ve devoured Carl Hiaasen, completed Laurence Shames, and run out of Tim Dorsey’s, you may want to give Date (Dah-tay) a try.

Sales of my Amazon offerings have been slow but steady, with even a couple of recent downloads of “Hopetown,” my first attempt at a thriller.

Yes, I know it’s flawed and no doubt cliché filled. Still, I had fun writing it and am told by some it was entertaining. And that, after all, is my goal.

Anyhoo, hope all is well with my friends and readers. Going to begin work on a couple of things, including the third installment of my “Applewood” saga. Whether the world wants it or not!

Applewood . . . is coming!

2011-01-01T12:02:00.011-05:00

I ~~warned~~ promised in my previous post that you'd be hearing more about my upcoming vampire novel "Applewood" within the new year. So I was delighted to see my publisher's tweet last evening that the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) is now available and she is soliciting blurbs and/or early reviews.

You can read and/or download the first 29 pages of the book by clicking here.

Funny, when I sat down to write it, I had no idea I was writing a vampire novel. I didn't even know they were there until I'd excavated the first fifty or sixty pages or so. What I did sit down and write were a number of things that had happened to me or that I'd witnessed growing up.

Within the book are the echoes of friends and relationships of my youth, some that I reflect upon and smile about every day, others that I hadn't thought about in twenty or thirty years.

One of the things I'll never forget from my youth was a kid in my high school class who lived "up back" in Sumner Gardens, and who for years delivered The Boston Globe to most every house in the neighborhood.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this kid was just about the best newspaper boy who ever lived; be it six feet of snow or pouring rain, there was no keeping Paul from his appointed rounds. And when he got too old for it, his younger brother Jimmy took over and didn't miss a beat.

And so I was delighted a few months ago to see on one of my blogs a comment from Paul and Jimmy's father, who had recently read "Sumner Gardens" and wanted to tell me he enjoyed it. He mentioned too that Paul was reading it.

I smiled when I wrote back that if Paul (who I haven't talked to in literally more than thirty years) liked "Sumner Gardens," he was sure to like "Applewood." I only hope he does. Not sure I've met anyone in my professional life who ever did his job better than Paul did when he was a kid.

So not everything in "Applewood" is either from or about me. Some of it is Paul and Jimmy delivering newspapers in the snow, and my buddy Tommy who took me up to his family's house in Maine, and my brother Brian, who took me to see "Carrie" one Halloween and scared the daylights out of me, and dozens of others that I'll share over the coming months, if you'll indulge me.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. But I can't wait to talk more about it.

Even more, I can't wait for you to read it.

Aplewood.

When a mutilated body is found in the woods near the central Massachusetts town of Grantham, Scott Dugan comes home for the first time in more than twenty years. He returns to the decaying house where he'd grown up, one of many derelict homes in the long-abandoned neighborhood of Applewood.

More than two decades earlier, Dugan and his tightly bonded group of friends had been struggling with the same pains that plagued millions of teens like them--bullies in school, broken families, money problems, relationships. But the evil that revives to spread through Grantham confronts them with a far darker and more destructive adversary. In 1861, Grantham sent its own home town war hero, Colonel Alexander Pope, and a company of locals to fight for the Union cause in the Civil War. Marching through the isolated rural regions of Georgia, the Colonel and his soldiers discovered a horrible secret hidden behind the lovely facades of the plantation mansions. When the veterans of Grantham came home, they brought something else with them.

Now that something else has awakened once more to grow and feed. Dugan and his friends are among the few who realize what's happening to their town. They band together to ferret out information about the history of the Colonel and to fight the threat. But victory, if it's even possible, will come at a terrible cost. Some, like Dugan, will never be the same.

Looking backward . . . and forward

2010-12-30T10:59:00.004-05:00

Not one to look at the end of one year and the beginning of another as any sort of landmark or guidepost, but I suppose it’s as good a time as any to count your blessings.

First and foremost, my family and friends (and come to think of it, me!) are all healthy and happy, and for that I am truly grateful. Let’s all be careful in the new year, okay?

Spent this past year getting acquainted with St. Pete, and among the highlights were taking in a dozen or so Rays games at the Trop. Won tickets to see Nelly after one game and he put on a great show. Also had an opportunity to take in the first playoff game against the Rangers, something that never would have happened at Fenway.

Saw The English Beat at newly revamped Janus Landing (an outdoor concert venue that takes up a half-a-block downtown.) First Fridays in downtown St. Pete were always a fun take. The city shuts down one of the main streets and they have live music and activities for the family. Also, you can drink on the street, which will never get old.

Went to The Taste of Pinellas and Ribfest at Vinoy Park, and chili festivals in the Kenwood neighborhood and on the waterfront. Went to the beach more than a few times.

Got just two stories published, “The Intersection” in the Night Terrors anthology and “Milk of the Goddess” in 52 Stitches. Need to work harder on that.

But I did complete and self-publish a novel, “Swash,” and had another novel “Applewood” accepted for publication by a small press. Lots more on that in the new year.

Finally signed up for Twitter and am enjoying the hell out of it. Can FaceBook be far behind?

All in all, it’s been a fun and interesting year, and thanks to all of you who occasionally pop your head in here to see what’s up.

Guess I’ll leave you with the image I’ll take most from 2010, of a man who reminded us what’s really important, and what isn’t.

Happy New Year!

The Pit

2010-12-23T11:37:00.007-05:00

Jack Nyhan was ready. Terminally ill, he’d lived a hard life filled with pain, most of his own making. When the brilliant white light appeared, he walked toward it and found himself young and strong again, in a place where dust and the screech of heavy machinery filled the air.

“Nyhan,” he heard a voice say. “Good to see you. Welcome back.”

Turning toward the voice, Nyhan watched a nattily dressed man approach with a clipboard.

“You’re in the pit today,” the man said, pointing to a place below where it appeared millions of shadows worked, breaking rock from the largest mountain Nyhan had ever seen. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Am I in hell?” he asked plaintively. The man smiled as if he heard this every day.

“Jack,” the man said, not unkindly. “There is no heaven. There is no hell. There is only this place and Earth. And your time on Earth is done. Here, let’s get your equipment. Got a lot of work to do.”

The man took Jack by the shoulder, but Jack would have none of it and shook it off.

“Whaddya mean there’s no heaven? No hell? Then what was the point?”

The man’s patience appeared to be waning. The area they were in was getting crowded with new arrivals.

“I don’t have time for this, Jack,” he said. “But I understand it’s confusing. At any rate, for the past . . .” The man looked at his clipboard. “Sixty-seven years, you’ve been on vacation. That’s what Earth is, a vacation from . . . this place. Hope you enjoyed it! Now, come on, let’s grab your gear.”

They stopped in front of a locker with “Nyhan” written on it. The man opened it and Jack caught a glimpse of now half-remembered mining gear: flashlights, tools, pickaxes, and shovels. He turned, but the man with the clipboard was gone. He glanced again into the pit, saw and heard dynamite being used to expose rock, and remembered.

He had been on vacation. Time on Earth was hard to come by. He had waited centuries for his own chance. Then, he remembered the caveat – he wouldn’t remember who he was, or why he was there, and would have to make the best of it. He’d have to find his own fun.

Stifling a sob, he realized then that he’d blown it, the one chance he had for the rest of eternity to relax, to have fun, to find the time to sit in both the sunshine and the cool shade of the evening, to love and be loved. And he’d blown it. For all eternity, he’d blown it.

Ah, what the hell, he thought. Turning toward his locker, he grabbed his gear.

It was time to go back to the pit.

Should the zombies come . . .

2010-12-17T11:29:00.004-05:00

Surfing the web the other day, I saw this:

So I looked to my left and saw this:

Yeah, the bucket's gonna come in REAL handy.

Ought to take one or two of them with me anyway.

52 Stitches

2010-12-14T08:38:00.017-05:00

When I was fortunate enough to have my first story accepted to Northern Haunts, I began Googling to see what other writers and stories had been accepted. It didn't take me long to learn there was a community of aspiring writers out there just like myself, writing stories and plugging away.

Though it would be months before I'd set up my own blog, and later still before I had the courage to post at one of the other blogs, I noticed there was a great deal of cross-pollination going on among the writers I followed. They posted comments on each other's sites, congratulating them on acceptances and commiserating on rejections.

Links to many of the blogs I lurked can be found on the lower right-hand part of this blog, but there were lots of blogs I kept going back to that aren't, and one of those blogs belonged to a guy named Jamie Eyburg. He'd had a number of acceptances to markets I was trying to crack, and he'd also blog about his struggles as a writer and his love for his wife and two young children.

He'd also had a couple of stories selected for inclusion in a project called 52 Stitches, which I'd learn later is overseen and edited by the (I'd learn over time) how-does-he-find-the-time-to-do-everything-he-does Aaron Polson.

52 Stitches is a weekly dose of the macabre, conveniently available each week on its own website and at the end of the year made available in printed form.

I'm only telling you that to tell you this:

I'm pleased to report I've got a story titled "Milk of the Goddess" available in the newly published anthology 52 Stitches from Strange Publications and available now from Amazon.Com.

I'm even more pleased to note that after many long years, I'm finally sharing a Table of Contents not only with many of the writers I've since come to know, but also with Jamie Eyberg, who along with his wife died in a tragic accident a few short months ago.

All proceeds from the sale of this, what I understand will be the final edition of 52 Stitches, will go toward an alreadly existing fund for Jamie and Ann's two children.

And so, to my friends and family who are pretty much obligated to buy my stuff, buy this. That's an order. And to those visitors who've ever considered checking out some of my own work or that of the other writers I've long spoken of, this is the one you want.

Thanks, Aaron, for letting me be a small part of it.

Obligatory Update and Weather Report

2010-12-10T11:43:00.012-05:00

Not much to report. Finishing up a short (1,500 words or so) post-apocalyptic thing that's been rolling around in my skull a few years. Got the idea from one of those "Top Ten Ways the World Could Really End!" lists that come around every now and then. Probably been done before, but then, what hasn't?

Received something called a "galley" (hey, what do I know? I'm self-published for Christ's sake!) for "Applewood," which on first glance looks pretty good. Will spend the weekend going through it.

It's funny, but after having gone through a few rounds of edits with the publisher, when I'm reading "Applewood" now, it's almost as if it was written by someone else. Not that it has changed that much, though a few scenes were excised and other bad habits I'd fallen into were flattened.

Maybe it's just because it was written three or four years ago, but like I said, by now it's as if someone else wrote it. And I'm pleased to say, someone better than me too.

Not sure exactly how it's going to go, but don't be surprised should I ask some of my writer friends for a blurb or two. Be ready!

Been cold here in St. Pete, with nights down in the thirties and daytime highs not getting out of the fifties. It began warming yesterday afternoon, and temperatures will be in the more normal seventy range before another cold front comes through on Sunday.

Finishing up a re-read of Robert R. McCammon's "Mystery Walk" that I picked up in the local used bookstore. I've mentioned before how long I've been a fan of his. In a recent post on his blog, he noted (to much complaint from his fanbase) that he has no intention of allowing most of his earlier works -- e.g "Baal", "Bethany's Sin", "The Night Boat" -- ever coming back into print.

Of course he's moved on to historical fiction, with his excellent Mathew Corbett series. Seems I recall he noted too (or maybe just gave the impression) that he was a little embarrassed by those earlier books. Having gone back and re-read most of them (and "They Thirst" comes to mind) I know exactly what he's talking about.

Still, for writers who aspire to get better, it's interesting to note just how he improves from one book to the next (though he was pretty damn good to start) before exploding with the wonder that is "Swan Song" and "Boy's Life" and "Gone South" and "Mine."

So, if you should happen to see any early Robert R. McCammon floating around your own used bookstores, pick them up.

They're not making them like that anymore.

Loathsome, Dark and Deep

2010-12-01T08:01:00.016-05:00

I'm delighted to report that my friend Aaron Polson's novel "Loathsome, Dark and Deep" was released yesterday from Belfire Press and is now available on Amazon.com:

If you're not familiar with Aaron (and you should be, or most certainly will be) he is fast becoming a well-known and prolific master of dark horror, appearing in dozens of anthologies with some of the biggest names in the biz.

And If you don't keep up with Aaron's blog (and you should) you've missed lots of free fiction, tips for young writers, explorations of the writing craft, and resounding defenses of the short story form. There is no more eloquent champion of the short story than Aaron Polson.

However with "Loathsome," Aaron explores the longer form, which can't be good for the sleep of any of us:

"After months of silence from the H&P Lumber and Pulp logging camp, strange raving madmen have wandered out of the woods near the Lewis River. Civil War veteran Henry Barlow hasn’t carried a gun since his wife’s brutal murder, a memory he drowns nightly with bourbon and whiskey. When reports of the strange goings on at the Lewis River camp reach H&P, they send Barlow and a small band of armed mercenaries upriver to investigate. As the days pass and things get stranger, Barlow must confront the phantoms of his past, his alcoholism, and the dark hearts of men perverted by power and greed. Most of all, he must find a will to live in order for he and his team to get out of the woods alive."

And if the above description of the novel from Amazon (and the creepy trailer that follows) do not make you purchase a copy RIGHT NOW, either for yourself, or as a stocking stuffer for someone you love who's interested in dark fiction with a historical twist, then you and I have nothing in common.

Most sincere congratulations, Aaron! And best of luck.

My Dream

2010-11-09T09:13:00.006-05:00

A neighborhood of two-story suburban houses. There was a blizzard. It was nighttime.

The snow went all the way to the roofs of the houses. Beneath the sallow light of streetlamps, some of the neighbors were shoveling snow off their roofs.

In a house at the end of the street was a family with two adolescent daughters.

There were four other men in the house. Two were known to the family. Two were strangers.

Workmen, perhaps? Friends or acquaintances of the other two?

I was one of the two men known to the family.

It was decided the four of us would go onto the roof to shovel snow.

As we were about to leave the house, the mother made a comment about finding blood on one of the daughter’s sheets. The budding daughter/woman went off mortified.

I glanced at one of the strangers, a Hispanic man with a moustache. He had a gleam in his eye.

Before we left the house, I fell or was pushed onto the floor. A voice came from behind.

“Let’s fucking do this thing.”

I thought he was talking about shoveling.

Turning, I saw a gun pointed down at me. I glanced toward the person I knew. He was in on it.

They were going to have some fun.

I woke up.

I stayed awake a long time.

Stupid Human Tricks

2010-11-05T14:15:00.028-04:00

Regular visitors to this blog know I'm a huge fan of Michael Connelly. Best known for his jaded LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, Connelly has over time added a number of other characters to his repertoire, and sometimes has fun cross-pollinating them between novels.

When "The Lincoln Lawyer" came out circa 2007, I picked it up and read the blurb, saw he was adding another character to his pantheon, an LA-based criminal attorney named Mickey Haller. For some reason, I never bought it. Perhaps after reading so much Connelly, I just needed to move on. Or maybe it was after reading one of the lesser Bosch novels, I just didn't give it a chance.

I confess too the title kind of threw me. Connelly writes LA perhaps as well as Chandler in his prime, but what, now he's writing about Lincoln, Nebraska?

Anyhow, I only tell you that so I can share this.

I'm finally in the middle of it, enjoying the hell out of this densely plotted legal thriller, when it occurs to me I hadn't yet updated the "What I'm Reading" portion of this blog showing the cover of my current read and linking to Amazon. While I'm at the book's Amazon link, I note that just six of the more than three-hundred reviews give it one star.

Now, I'm only halfway through it, and I guess if it turns out it was all a dream I might be pissed. But what would possess these readers to give the book one star? Disappointed Bosch fans, perhaps? Disgruntled Chandler fans angry Connelly is doing so well on their turf?

You won't be surprised it was nothing like that. Here are two of the six one-star reviews:

I thought that I purchased a hardcover edition of this book but instead received a paperback. Maybe I missed it but it should be made perfectly clear what you are odering. As a result I did not read the book and gave it away.

and

I am currently going through three (3) different books; all three (3) of which I have borrowed from the Library; & which I received prior to ordering Lincoln Lawyer; & just late yesterday afternoon, renewed them all. I can only say in the past I have enjoyed ALL legal books/thrillers, regardless of the Author, unless the book contains smut. If an Author has a good plot, he does not need to add smut. Do hope you will be able to receive suitable reviews from others. Hopefully, another time I can be of assistance. M.

People are idiots.

But then, so am I.

The title has nothing to do with Nebraska.

Broodings and Ruminations

2010-10-27T14:09:00.007-04:00

So maybe it wasn’t the best idea I ever had bringing Velarde back to the city.

Trying to snap out of my doldrums, wondering if I’ll ever write anything again. Went onto Duotrope this morning for the first time in ages and saw nothing enticing to contribute to, with the exception of an Apex Book Company zombie anthology whose deadline is Halloween.

I’ve never had any luck writing for a specific anthology, though stories I’ve written for specific anthologies have gone on to appear in other volumes. And so, having left an opening at the end of my previous zombie short “Nearly Dead” to continue the action into New York City, I’ve started writing that.

Of course it’s in the first person, a kiss of death for horror these days. And I fully expect it won’t be accepted by Apex, a market I’ve never cracked. I wrote a short called “Absentee Ballots” for their Halloween contest a few years back. It’s available on Microhorror.Com and is a story I like a lot for its winsomeness, though one Amazon reviewer called it “ridiculous.” But they did give the collection it appears in (“Adamson’s Rock and Other Stories”) five-stars, so you never know.

Having fun with Smashwords, watching the stories I’ve made available for free get downloaded, seeing how many people preview the other stuff. Also seeing a few sales trickle in here and there from Barnes and Noble and Kobo which is heartening.

Waiting for the next round of edits on “Applewood,” the first in what might be a vampire series if anyone cares enough. The second volume in the series is already written (as noted ad nauseum here, for you loyal readers) so we’ll see how it goes.

Can’t wait for election season to be over, recalling a young woman in England who was on the dole for a while, behavior that would be excoriated here. Why, she was just lazy, taking taxpayer money while lounging in a café and working on her silly “book.”

Wonder just how much in taxes J.K. Rowling has actually paid over the years. Bet she’s paid back her “welfare” and then some.

Kindle for the Web

2010-10-18T11:43:00.014-04:00

Amazon has a new program available called "Kindle for the Web" which (apparently) allows you to sample Kindle books via a small web-based application.

To the right of all books on Amazon is a new button called "Kindle Edition" which allows you to read the first chapter for free online and buy a copy for the Kindle and other e-readers.

But the app also has an "embed" feature which appears to work the same way as embedding a YouTube video onto your blog or web page. And the true purpose of this blog post is to see how this works:

Well, I had to squeeze and narrow the window to make it fit due to my narrow blog layout, but on a normal web page it might be pretty cool. Have no idea either why it's double-spacing everything (it's not double-spaced on the Kindle itself).

But it is beta, and I can see how one might use it to market their books. Kudos to Amazon for offering tools such as this to assist Kindle authors in their marketing efforts, and doing their best to ensure Kindle remains the gold standard for e-book reading.

Ohrwurm

2010-10-09T14:42:00.026-04:00

It was two years ago this upcoming Monday, having within days of each other had my first two short stories accepted for publication, I started this whole blog thing.

And why not? I had already written four novels, at least two of which I thought were pretty good. But I'd had no success either finding an agent or getting a publisher.

So I says to myself, I says self, you don't know a damn thing about writing short stories. But maybe, just maybe, if you could write a couple of shorts and get them published, get a couple of credentials under your belt, then maybe the novels would be taken more seriously. And thus "Ohrwurm" was born, my very first short story.

The coolest thing about it was, it came to me almost fully formed. Yeah, I had to sit down and try and put the words in the right order and all. But I knew exactly what was going to happen, I knew who the characters were, I knew where the action was going to take place. Hell, I even knew the song.

I was proud and excited when "Ohrwurm" was selected for inclusion in "Malpractice: An Anthology of Bedside Terror" published last March. And if you haven't picked that up yet, please proceed to the link on the right and purchase your copy today.

So, in celebration of the approaching creepy season and the second anniversary of this blog, I'm pleased to announce I've made "Ohrwurm" (which is also available in my collection Adamson's Rock and Other Stories) available as a free download from Smashwords.

You can download the story in the format of your choice (or read it online) by clicking here.

And no, I'm sorry. I can't tell you. I won't tell you. It is a burden I must carry alone.

But trust me.

You'd thank me.

The Party's Over?

2010-10-05T17:14:00.016-04:00

As promised, I've been monitoring the chatter from authors who discovered over the past few days that Amazon has been giving away their books for free. Remember, these were books they were already giving away for free over on Smashwords, but had been charging the minimum price (.99 cents) for at Amazon.

It appears within the past few hours that Amazon has put a stop to this, first making these books inexplicably "unavailable" and now putting them back at their .99 cent price point. At least one author has been in communication with Amazon about this, and Amazon says that further information on this issue will be forthcoming. Now THAT should be interesting.

But as a quick perusal of this thread reveals, most authors are delighted that this happened. Authors are reporting downloads of 5400, 5600, 8980, and more free downloads of their books. In many instances, these free downloads propelled them into the Top Ten "Bestseller" lists on Amazon. In some instances, their books are now #1 in their genre.

These authors now have thousands of new readers they might otherwise not have had, and because many of these free books were the first in their series, if a reader becomes intrigued by it, it will no doubt result in more sales. In any event, users searching the bestseller lists are now far more likely to stumble upon their books, all because they were in violation of Amazon's Terms and Conditions.*

I noted in a post a few weeks ago just how much luck seems to figure into an author's success or failure. I probably should have noted that chutzpah too figures in.

So I do congratulate these folks for taking a risk and having it pay off. I further hope Amazon is somehow forced to pay you the thousands and thousands of dollars in royalties you otherwise would have received had Amazon not reduced your price to zero. No doubt, some litigious author will push it, and I wish them luck.

Following the rules is over-rated anyway.

*The assumption being that an Amazon "bot" or spider discovered the book for free elsewhere, and automatically matched the lower price per their Terms and Conditions.

Strange goings on at Amazon

2010-10-04T18:06:00.014-04:00

An interesting thing has happened recently over at Amazon.Com. Used to be, independent Kindle authors could not offer their books for free via Amazon. The cheapest list price we could offer books for was .99 cents.

Of course, there was lots of grumbling about this, why were big publishers allowed to offer the first book in a series for free, for example, but an Indie author with a series was not. But that’s the way things were.

Flash forward to this past summer. Amazon’s royalty went from 35% to 70%, with the caveat that books got that 70% royalty only at prices of $2.99 or more. No surprise this caused many authors (including this one) who had been offering books at .99 cents or $1.99 to up their prices to $2.99, hoping the larger royalty might offset lost sales at the higher price.

Of course, behind the scenes, Smashwords was offering their own publishing platform, hooking up with Barnes and Noble and Sony, allowing authors to offer “coupons” to prospective buyers, allowing immediate changes to sales prices, and generally being a far better experience and interface for the Independent author, except that it doesn’t really sell very many books. But Smashwords DOES allow authors to give books away for free, which Amazon doesn’t.

So apparently, many authors were offering their books for free over at Smashwords, however selling them at the .99 cent minimum list price over at Amazon, a clear violation of Amazon’s terms and conditions. You are not allowed to offer a book for a lower price elsewhere. But I guess struggling authors do what they have to do, right?

Except for this one. I made all my Smashword prices match my Amazon prices, and the free short stories (which I’d LOVE to make available on Amazon) I didn’t upload to Amazon at all, because I’d have to charge a minimum .99 cents for them, violating their publishing agreement if I kept the stories free at Smashwords.

Flash forward to this past weekend. It seems many of those same authors who offered their books for free on Smashwords and .99 cents on Amazon logged in to discover that Amazon.Com had made their books available for free.

Hundreds and thousands of books by these authors were being downloaded, much to most of their delight (remember, they wanted to offer them for free anyway, as a tease to get folks reading their other stuff). They were shooting up the bestseller charts as well.

And just to make things interesting, their Amazon dashboard appears to be giving them the 35% royalty on these “free” books. One author posted a screenshot of their Amazon dashboard showing they made more than a thousand dollars over the past few days.

Part of me wants to be really happy for these folks, getting thousands of new readers and all this exposure. And part of me wonders why Amazon.Com appears to be rewarding those who seem to be in violation of their terms and conditions.

But most of me is just really, really jealous.

The creeping creepiness of the Internet

2010-10-01T08:52:00.011-04:00

Is it just me, or is the Internet getting creepier lately?

Maybe it’s just an unfortunate confluence of events, but just this past week we’ve had the Rutgers roommate webcam feed leading one young man to suicide, along with the Duke University graduates “Fuck List,” an in-depth analysis of the intimate details of her encounters with her college classmates.

Then, we've got the strange case of the Michigan Assistant Attorney General essentially cyberstalking the president of the University of Michigan Student Council. Yes, you read that right. A public servant cyberstalking a college kid.

And just yesterday, the St. Pete Times published a column that stemmed directly from an insensitive comment left on one of their message boards. A few weeks back, a man was hit while riding his bicycle along a major road, one of five bicyclists killed in the Tampa Bay region in just the last few weeks.

In the initial article about the incident, the reporter noted the man was 48 years old and worked as a dishwasher at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called the Crab Shack. The comment that instigated yesterday’s article went something like, “If you’re 48 years old and working as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack, you’re better off dead.”

Now, I’ve become inured to insensitive comments left on newspaper web sites. In fact, I suspect it was simply a bad joke. However, it was enough to generate a follow-up article which nicely told the life story of the man who was “better off dead.”

At any rate, it just seems to me the Internet is getting . . . creepier lately, reaching out its ever growing tentacles and affecting the real lives of real people. And given my hobby, I can’t help but wonder if it knows exactly what it’s doing.

A Mouth for Picket Fences

2010-09-24T16:08:00.013-04:00

I always appreciate it when writer friends ask for a little cross-blog promotion, for two reasons, really. First of all, I'm not all that comfortable promoting my own stuff, because I probably suck, and nobody will ever love me, and I'm going to die homeless and penniless and . . .

I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud?

The second reason is, it provides an instant blog post for this place, the likes of which I'm finding it harder and harder to do, mostly out of sheer laziness. But I truly am excited about this one, because in this instance, it gives me the opportunity to post this way-cool cover:

And if you're anything like me, after seeing that cover, you want to see . . . more.

You can do just that by clicking this link to Belfire Press to check out my friend Barry Napier's new collection of poetry. Here's what folks are saying about it:

"Napier’s poetic characters inhabit a world of contrast, where “normalcy” is measured by the weight of the unknown and the commonplace is balanced on the blade of a knife."

-Constance Brewer, co-editor, Everyday Poets

“A Mouth for Picket Fences” showcases Barry Napier’s unique voice and maturing skill as a poet. His is a name worth watching, and “A Mouth for Picket Fences” is a collection worth reading."

-Brian Hatcher, Shroud Magazine

"In this collection, Napier moves confidently from “the nebular of a hayfield” to “a chapped madness.” Do not expect to know what comes next as Napier skillfully carries us from poem to poem."

-Kelli Russel Agodon, author of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room

And head on over to Barry's blog ghosts in (parentheses) where you can win an autographed copy of the book and some other very cool prizes, and also check out some of his other stuff.

Most sincere congratulations, Barry.

Nearly Dead

2010-09-19T11:20:00.022-04:00

Apologies for not updating, and being derelict in commenting on my writer friends' blogs (which I am indeed reading, though). In addition to my previously announced melancholy over the Liberace museum closing, I’ve been busy.

I am pleased to announce I've released a free short, a St. Pete-centric, tongue-in-cheek Zombie tale titled "Nearly Dead" on Smashwords. You can download it in the format of your choice (or read it online) by clicking here.

Plot summary goes something like this:

"When a New York crime boss sends a hitman to St. Pete in the middle of a zombie infestation, the hitman finds that though infested with the undead, his beloved St. Pete hasn't really changed that much. But even in the middle of an infestation, he has a job to do."

The story is perhaps too St. Pete-centric for some, with unexplained inside jokes you'd maybe have to live here to know about. Or maybe, it doesn't work at all. Who the hell knows anymore? But hey, it's free, right?

In other news, I’ve completed reviewing the first-round edits of Applewood, my New England vampire novel, and will be sending them back in the next day or so. I’m certain the edits truly make it stronger. We’ve also had preliminary discussions about potential covers. Hard to believe it’s really happening.

One reason I opted to not self-publish this one (after making the rounds of agents and publishers, of course, and sitting at Dorchester for more than three years before they said no) was for just that, to have someone else read and edit and help with production, someone to tell me which parts suck (and not be afraid to use those exact words) and point out bad habits I’d fallen into.

Another curiosity about “Applewood” is there is a completed full-length sequel, picking up where the cliff-hanging end of "Applewood" leaves off. I started writing it as an exercise to more fully flesh out “Applewood” and it took on a life of its own.

I remember thinking at the time, “Is there any greater act of faith or stupidity than writing the sequel to an unpublished novel?”

Don’t know for sure, however I suspect J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer were sane enough to wait and see if anybody cared about the first to write the next.

But between you and me, I think the second in the series is even stronger than the first, and project it would take another four books or so to truly complete the “saga.” I’ll keep you posted.

Course with my luck, vampires will be passé right about then . . .

As always, thanks for reading!

A New One

2010-09-07T14:44:00.035-04:00

A few weeks ago, I blogged excitedly about a submission for a specialty anthology. Note to self: Do NOT blog about pending submissions. It never works out.

Like every submission, I carefully read the guidelines on Duotrope and on their website (2,500 – 4,000 words, due August 30th). There was an interview with the editor on Duotrope (cool new feature) providing further detail on what they were looking for.

So I wrote the story and came in just shy of the 4,000 word limit. I submitted it and felt pretty good about it.

It was just over a week later I received a fairly positive response, saying they liked my story – up to a point. I opened up their edited version and saw yellow highlights and comments everywhere (most of the “cut – cut – cut” variety). First time for me that a story has come back like a graded paper.

Anyhoo, my effort was a (supposedly) humorous zombie tale, so some of the comments were interesting. In one scene, a zombie panhandler carries a sign reading “GWARRKK!” or some such thing. The comment was: “Alphabet still in use among zombies?” My answer, of course, is “yes.”

Another instance where my character references his gun (a .45 pistol) was met with, “Name your gun.” This being Florida, I wondered: do they mean the brand? Or do people in Florida actually, you know, name their guns?

Millie? Betsy? Fred?

Still not sure about that one.

My point is that the story was read carefully (I got the impression by more than a few people) and some of the comments were really good (“Your character was well-established but starts to lose focus here”). I’m not sure they read it as it was meant, a humorous tale, and I’m certain they stopped short of suspending their disbelief.

But what really got me was this comment in their cover letter: “We’d like to get your story down to the 2,500 word limit for this anthology before considering it.”

Of course, the stated limit was 4,000 words, on both Duotrope and on their website. I’d have written something different if the limit was 2,500 words. But just for fun, I began editing the story with their criticisms in mind, criticisms that stopped about a third of the way through, suggesting they hadn’t read the story to the end.

But there was no way this particular story could be edited down to 2,500 words. So I thanked them for their (granted, tepid) interest and wished them the best of luck.

Now, I suspect what happened is they already accepted a number of higher word limit stories, perhaps from folks they know or folks who have been in their previous anthology or maybe even themselves, and they’re looking for a few lower word limit stories to round out the collection.

And I do sincerely wish them well, but won’t be submitting to them again.

Which brings up something else that’s been going through my mind lately (quite literally), the beginning of “How to succeed in business without really trying.”

At the beginning of the movie (and the play) young J. Pierpont Finch finds a book titled “How to succeed in business without really trying” and starts on Chapter One, which contains the advice “start in the mailroom” on the lowest rung of the ladder.

So Finch follows their advice and gets a job in the mailroom, then opens to Chapter Two which contains the advice “get the hell out of the mailroom.”

I sometimes feel that everything I’ve ever done to advance (heh!) my writing career is keeping me in the mailroom.

In conclusion (and for what it’s worth) my humorous St. Pete zombie tale titled “Nearly Dead” will be expanded and made available for free on Smashwords, alongside “Telegraph Hill.”

Work continues on my full-length Dick Londergan P.I. tale.

“Applewood” is coming!

Meanwhile, I’ll be down here in the mailroom if you need me.

Sometimes, they get it right

2010-08-28T10:14:00.003-04:00

000
WWUS74 KLIX 281550
NPWLIX

URGENT — WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28, 2005

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

.HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

The Futility of Marketing

2010-08-22T10:22:00.046-04:00

It was a rainy night on the outskirts of Philadelphia that I saw it, a huge billboard advertising a book.

On the left was what had to be a thirty-foot tall photograph of a middle-aged, smiling, and well-accessorized female author. To her left, beneath some kind of breathless blurb, was the cover of the book.

I guess what most surprised me about it was a) I’d never heard of the author, and b) I’d never heard of the book. I craned my neck while committing the author’s name and the book's title for later Googling, but it had been a long day, I was tired, and the information was gone from my head in about eight minutes.

But here’s what I suspect it was: a self-published author with money bought herself a billboard overlooking I-95. Or maybe, it was the husband who had the money, and he was helping his wife fulfill her lifelong dream.

Alas, it didn’t work in my case. Further, I suspect they never earned back the money it cost. But I bet it sold more than a few books.

I suppose I remember it for a few reasons. First, you don’t see a whole lot of billboard advertising for books. In fact, you don't really see a whole lot of any advertising for books. How is it that people buy books anyway?

That got me thinking about how I buy my own books, and who were the authors I’d never heard of but gave a chance to anyway. In my case it’s mostly from browsing bookstores and word of mouth from friends. Very occasionally, I’ll read something in the paper that will get me intrigued enough to buy something.

For example, back in the early nineties, a business columnist for the Boston Globe named David Warsh used to write often about a writer named Floyd Kemske. According to Warsh, Kemske had created a new genre of fiction called the “Corporate Nightmare,” which used fiction to lampoon the modern workplace.

On Warsh’s recommendation, I bought Kemske’s then-current book “Human Resources” and never looked back, devouring everything Kemske had ever written. (If you’ve never read Kemske, start. You'll be glad you did.)

Even before that, back in the early eighties, Time Magazine had a blurb about a mid-level bureacrat in the Social Security Administration who had recently tried his hand at fiction and had Washington all abuzz. Some suggested he had to have used classified material to write so in-depth on his subject.

Intrigued by that blurb, I immediately went out and bought the hardcover edition of "The Hunt for Red October" by an unknown named Tom Clancy.

It was my buddy Dan who turned me on to Carl Hiaasen, lending me a dog-eared copy of “Skin Tight.” Not only did I become a Hiaasen fan, buying all his previous books and breathlessly waiting for new ones, but while waiting for those, I began looking for authors who also wrote humorous Florida Fiction.

I stumbled upon Laurence Shames in just this manner, when a book called “Florida Straits” caught my eye at the bookstore. Didn’t take me long to devour his entire output. One day, at Kate’s Mystery Bookshop in Cambridge, another title caught my eye, “Florida Roadkill” by Tim Dorsey.

Could there be, I asked myself, yet another author who writes uproarious Florida Fiction? Yes. Yes, there could.

At any rate, I could go on and on:

Stumbling upon Christopher Moore browsing my local Barnes and Noble.

Discovering George Pelecanos browsing Spencer’s Mystery Bookshop on Newbury Street in Boston.

Buying a remaindered hardcover of a book called “Usher’s Passing” by someone named Robert R. McCammon at Lauriat’s. Plot looked intriguing. Thought I'd give him a try.

An old boss giving me a dog-eared copy of “The Charm School” by someone named Nelson DeMille.

My brother turning me on to Ken Follett by way of “The Pillars of the Earth.”

My sister turning me on to Stephen King.

My point is that I don’t get books marketed to me, and most book advertising simply goes right over my head. In fact, maybe it’s not just me. Maybe that’s why there traditionally hasn’t been much “book advertising” outside of the Times Book Review.

Though now that I think of it, years ago (well before the Internet) Lauriat’s was giving away pamphlets containing the first chapter of a book by an unknown author. I remember taking one off the counter, but don’t remember if I ever read it. But I do remember the book was called “A Simple Plan” by Scott Smith.

I remember too years ago, one of the radio shows I listened to heavily marketed a new author using the Rolling Stones “Heartbreaker” as a backdrop. I heard that commercial a lot, but never investigated the author.

Probably ten years later, I was browsing my local bookstore and took a chance on a paperback by Robert Ferrigno, then read everything else by him. Turned out one of his earliest books was called . . . “Heartbreaker.”

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m writing any of this. Just been thinking a lot about book marketing lately, something I am demonstrably not very good at and don’t have much interest in. There are a few places online to market your self-published books, creating a thread and bumping it every now and then so folks have a chance to see it.

But that’s not for me. I’m not comfortable with self-promotion, and frankly, I’m not very good at social networking either. Then again, social networking doesn’t sell books. Word of mouth sells books. Browsing in bookstores sells books.

I guess finally, it was a few months ago when I saw a commercial featuring James Patterson. Now that IS unusual, I thought, a television commercial selling fiction. And in this commercial, in which Patterson was flogging his latest Alex Cross novel titled “Cross,” Patterson threatened to kill Alex Cross if people didn’t buy the book.

This is a man who has sold more than 25 million copies of his books and recently signed a $100 million dollar contract for 22 more in the next three years. This is a man who doesn’t even write his own books anymore, and who crowds out far better books by far better writers.

But he damn well knows how to market.

Dog Days

2010-08-17T11:37:00.013-04:00

Not much to report, except I DID finish a story and sent it off to submission-land. So that's something.

I blogged in February about a book release party held locally for a zombie anthology centered in St. Pete. Never having had a book release party for any anthology I’d been in, I thought that was cool enough.

And though I’d only been here a few months at the time, St. Pete had gotten under my skin enough where I realized it truly was a funky and off-beat enough place to support a zombie anthology of its own.

Though I missed that opportunity, I was inspired to jot down a few pages of notes for a St. Pete-centric zombie short that I’d get around to writing someday, if only for fun.

So color me excited when I learned the folks who created that anthology announced another, and not only that, but a whole series of place-themed zombie anthologies.

The first two announced were for a second St. Pete volume, submissions due August 30th, and a New York City based one, submissions due December 30th.

I was inspired enough to reopen those notes and tailor a St. Pete zombie tale.

Anyway, they probably have hundreds of good ones from folks more talented than me, who know the place far better. And they’re not paying anything, so I have nothing to lose. Still, had fun writing the thing and think it’s pretty good.

In other news, still puttering away on my novel-length Dick Londergan / P.I piece.

More than two hundred folks have downloaded Telegraph Hill, my free Dick Londergan short available on Smashwords, with at least a couple of more every week. Nobody has written to complain, so maybe there's a market for it.

Having fun too (thus far only in my head) with prospective titles. I want folks to know it’s a Dick Londergan tale, so I’m trying to both think of a way to get his name in the title as well as to parody great crime novels of the past.

So far, “The Big Dick” is in the lead.

(:>)

Some final thoughts on The Dome

2010-08-08T11:13:00.005-04:00

Me, last week:

And I suppose it's possible that an explosive ending will completely turn me around from my current "meh" thoughts about it.

If nothing else, I'm rooting for that.

Sometimes, you get what you root for.

(Caution: Spoilers ahead).

I’m talking of course about Stephen King’s “Under the Dome”, which I finished a few days ago. I’d been critical of it as I was reading it, so thought it only fair to say that it absolutely redeemed itself by the time it was over.

Yes, there were the obligatory deaths of most every character you’d been following for more than a thousand pages. However, as I tweeted with a few dozen pages to go, when reading Stephen King, don’t get too close to the kids or the dogs. It will only break your heart.

One of my criticisms was that I didn’t care about any of the people. Turns out, as they met their demise one after the other, I cared more than I realized. No doubt the weeks and weeks we’d been held hostage together (them, Under the Dome, me, compelled to finish the book) had something to do with it.

What truly salvaged the book for me was, a) what the Dome was, and b) who was behind it. ‘Course, you don’t find that out until the last few chapters. Aside from some folks in the book assuming it was extra-terrestrial, even that isn’t completely clear until you near the end.

So in a nutshell, I’d give it a seven out of ten and recommend it.

And as I assumed earlier, there are some who won't like the sometimes heavy-handed politics embedded within. But like I said, in my case he’s preaching to the choir. Nice anyway when something you’ve intuited comes true.

Random comment from Twitter:

Summer Doldrums

2010-07-28T12:07:00.019-04:00

Not much to report. In a kind of summer doldrums, I guess. Been copy editing "Swash!" the last few weeks in preparation for self-publishing it. Got a third "thanks but no thanks" from a New York agency, leaving five or so who haven't responded (six weeks in). Sorry, traditional publishing. Life's too short to wait for you.

Actually looking forward to the next project, a novel length, humorous (hopefully) work based on my old-school P.I. Dick Londergan. Thinking it might have some "Don Quixote" in it. Time will tell. Will start that in earnest within the next week or so.

Am about two-thirds of the way through Stephen King's "Under the Dome" and as I've tweeted, I really don't care what happens to any of the people. The book has been compared to "The Stand" (at least in breadth), but as I recall, "The Stand" had clearly marked lines of who was good and who was evil. The good people were very good. The evil people were very evil. You cared what happened to the good people.

Now I know that was intrinsic to the plot, but isn't it important you have somebody to root for? There are very few people in this book you can.

I've blogged before about my difficult relationship with Stephen King. Read everything I could by him when I was younger, and then he started killing off his characters, e.g. the young kids at the end of "Cujo" and "Pet Semetary."

"Cujo" in particular pissed me off (at least young Gage in "Pet Semetary" came back . . . sort of). You read hundreds of pages rooting for these people and then he goes and kills them off?

(Course in his defense, as he later confessed, he doesn't even remember writing it. Cocaine's a hell of a drug).

Before I took a long break from reading him (after "Gerald's Game" I think it was), I said, "If he doesn't care about his characters, then why should I?"

Anyway, it's hard now as an aspiring writer not to read another's work with an eye toward their craft. In this book, King does a lot of foreshadowing . .. well, it's not really foreshadowing. He basically tells you what's going to happen before it does, stuff like:

"He kissed his wife goodbye. It would be the last time they saw each other."

And then the guy goes and gets killed. There is LOTS of that in this book, surprisingly. Another thing he does quite a bit of is inject himself and his own opinions into the story (think they call that "author intrusion"). There's lots of THAT in this book as well.

And it's readily apparent what is there to move the story along and what is preaching. In my case, he's preaching to the choir (least I don't have a problem with the politics he's injected into the story). But I can imagine there are some who will.

Curiously too, while he injects lots of real products and personalities into the story (Wolf Blitzer, Lester Holt, Obama, etc.) there is a plane crash of an Irish passenger jet that he calls "Air Ireland" as opposed to Aer Lingus. Wonder if he contacted them and asked permission and they said no, or whether he thought it best not to use a real airline's name. I suspect the latter.

At any rate, the story begins terrifically enough, with the dome slamming down on the second or the third page. Lots truly believable gore and mayhem. But I'm finding it hard to suspend my disbelief for much of what happens later. It's obvious what King is trying to do here (selectman turning into tinpot dictators, many of the young people in town turning into Hitler Youth).

Two-thirds of the way in, I'm still not sure what the dome is (though I've just finished the part where one character discovers what is generating it). Looking forward (I suppose) to learning that.

Of course, I write none of this as criticism. Simply the musings of someone who'd like one day to be as good as him (and hey, why not better?)

Anyway, he's already got a piece of my $19.99 (for the paperback, no less, though at more than a thousand pages it's lots of bang for your buck). There's no doubt I'll finish it. And I suppose it's possible that an explosive ending will completely turn me around from my current "meh" thoughts about it.

If nothing else, I'm rooting for that.

Maybe, they too will come back

2010-07-15T05:27:00.020-04:00

From the New York Times:

18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site

In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.

On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.

Photo: NY Times

By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.

Very cool stuff. Click the link above to read more and view a slideshow with more pictures.

In other news, fun with CreateSpace's Cover Creator:

Queried ten agents, got two requests for fulls followed quickly by two polite passes. Between you and me, I think I'm done with all that. I simply can't take the rejection.

In excess of 200 rejections on now five novels seems to be my limit. Throw in another hundred or so for short stories, and well . . . isn't one definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Did get some good feedback from the first beta reader who finished it (thanks again, Steph!). Apparently, I've fallen into the habit of using "whatnot" and "and the like."

Funny, they're not expressions I use in my everyday life. Didn't at all realize I was doing it while writing, but I must have used it as shorthand, reminding myself to go back later and fill in those blanks.

Anyway, I'm at the point now thinking the book may be passable, but probably not all that great. Too bad. I think it's a great idea (pirates coming back to the modern world) that might have been good in more competent hands.

So, I'm probably gonna just go ahead and publish this on my own, learn whatever lessons there are to learn, and move on to the next thing. Substitute teacher, maybe. Or better yet, short-order cook.

I'll bet they get free food.

urder

2010-07-08T12:14:00.027-04:00

Olson put his key in the lock and opened the door. He recoiled from the sour aroma that emanated from inside the room, somewhere on the bad smell spectrum between spoiled meat and an adolescent's bedroom. After flapping the flimsy door a few times to air the place out, he stepped inside.

Tired and sweaty from a long day on the road, he wanted nothing more than a hot shower and to order up a movie. But first, a long piss was in order, to empty his bladder of the dozen or so cups of tea he'd endured that day. The things you do for money, he thought.

And what he did was collect money from little old ladies for home repairs that would never be done. Today's take alone was close to five grand.

Turning on the lights, he walked past a small bathroom on the right and down a short hallway to the bedroom.

The room was about what he expected: an off-brown carpet with stains of unknown origin, a scratched and worn dresser with an ancient 27-inch on top that overlooked a mysteriously bulging double bed. Along the far wall, dingy floor-to-ceiling curtains were drawn tightly shut.

After throwing his suitcase on the metal stand, he reached over and turned on the television. After a moment, a blue screen with white letters appeared:

"Welcome to The Repose Motel! Press "Order" for movies, other buttons for other services."

He smiled and glanced around the room, thinking he wouldn't be ordering any "services" from this place. Opening his suitcase, he grabbed his toothbrush and some clean briefs before heading to the bathroom.

Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped himself in a towel and went back to the room. He pulled the no doubt cum-stained coverlet off the bed and dropped it to the floor before lying down on the hopefully cleaner sheets.

Turning, he reached to his nightstand for the remote, pausing halfway to remember something he'd learned on TV: the TV remote was easily the filthiest item in any hotel room. He pondered that a moment before grabbing the thing by its sides. When he brought it in for closer inspection, he saw this one did not disappoint.

Brown crusty stuff was embedded along and in-between the top rows of buttons. Remnants of a hardened grey matter he only hoped was snot ran along the sides. A clear sticky substance was visible along the bottom. Putting that out of his mind, he stared at it a while looking for the "Order" button.

Most of the letters were too schmutzed or worn down to be read. He knew it didn't help he'd left his glasses in the car. But he noticed a round (once) white button set off by itself near the bottom. After reading the letters beneath, he blinked twice, rubbed his eyes, and read it again. It said:

urder.

After thinking about it, he realized that no doubt the O was simply worn down, leaving what looked like a lowercase U. But what had really given him pause was the grey splotch to the left of those letters. It was shaped like an M.

Smiling at his own silliness, he put those thoughts out of his mind and figured it had to be the right button. He pressed it and waited. When nothing happened, he pressed it again. More nothing. Frustrated, he threw the useless remote to the side and got up to figure it out manually.

Halfway across the room, he heard something coming down the hall, a high-pitched thrumming of some sort. He stopped to listen more closely before smiling once again and shaking his head.

Whatever it was, it wasn't coming for him. Nobody knew he was here. He had checked in using one of his dozens of false identities. He was a fifty miles from the nearest town he'd worked that day. Still, in his line of work, you never could be sure.

The sound got louder before seeming to stop directly outside his door. A moment later came a heavy thud and then a knock.

Olson glanced down the narrow hallway toward the door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

There was a pause before a voice answered.

"I have your order sir."

There was something strange about that voice, Olson thought. An electronic quality as if something computer generated. More chillingly, it was vaguely familiar.

"I didn't order anything," he said.

He watched whatever it was on the other side try the handle a few times before it answered.

"I'm afraid you did, sir."

Where had he heard that voice?

"Go away," he said, roughly this time, hoping they'd take the hint.

Childish giggles came from the other side, sending shivers up Olson's spine. Whoever it was got control of itself long enough to say: "It will only take a moment sir."

Hearing the voice a third time made Olson remember suddenly where he'd heard it before. But it couldn't be.

It was madness.

"Go away," he said, weaker than he wanted, covering it up by adding, "I have a gun." The thing giggled again.

Olson watched it try the door one more time before realizing he had to run, or hide. He glanced frantically around the room, dismissing the closet immediately, knowing it was always the first place they looked.

Turning, he lunged for the drapes and the safety of the windows beyond, but pulling them open revealed only a blank wall, with more of the same drab wallpaper that covered the rest of the room.

Those bits of wallpaper he could see, that is.

Because most of the wallpaper behind the curtain was covered with splotches of that same brown crusty matter he had seen earlier on the remote. Chunks of the grey matter were here too, clinging here and there like a bizarre climbing wall. Rorschach patterns of the unidentified clear liquid dribbled down the bottom third.

With nowhere else to go, he pressed himself against the gore.

"Go away!" he shouted. "It was a mistake!"

The voice outside the door was unmoved.

"You pressed twice, sir," it said. "Once is a mistake. Not twice."

Olson heard a chainsaw start, then watched the flimsy door come crashing down. When he saw the thing behind it, his knees buckled.

It wore its fedora at a jaunty angle, and on the leatherface beneath its bald head was a hockey mask, with red circles like targets painted on either side. In its gloved left hand, whose fingers were sharpened steel, was a chainsaw. In its other was a machete.

Around its neck he wore a wide striped tie, too short, atop an apron that could only have come from a slaughterhouse. Olson heard the chainsaw rev. The thing moved closer.

He realized then that the . . . thing . . . wasn't who he thought it was, but was an amalgamation of every creature from every nightmare that had ever been ordered from that crusty, hellish remote.

Moments later, he almost laughed when he wondered where the music was. That oh so familiar music.

Seconds later, he wet himself, and understood immediately the origin of the mysterious clear liquid.

Yet, as the thing moved closer, Olson found himself strangely resigned to his fate. After all, he'd seen it happen a hundred times before. A thousand times. He couldn't really blame it. It was just doing what it did. It was bringing what he ordered.

urder.

* * *

(Note: After being rejected by most every self-respecting outlet, I decided to post "urder" here, where it would surely never be read by anybody. Probably a failed story, but I had fun writing it. They can't all be winners.)

I Had No Idea

2010-07-03T08:06:00.002-04:00

Among the many delights of reading Tim Dorsey, whose books chronicle the exploits of renowned serial killer and all-around bon vivant Serge Storms and his stoner sidekick Coleman, is that they are travelogues of all things Florida.

Here's something I learned from the one I most recently concluded, Hurricane Punch:

"The Hummer took a left onto Sunset Isles Boulevard and crossed a bridge over Biscayne Bay. "Shhhhh! Listen!" said Serge. "You hear that? I heard it."

"Hear what?"

"The bridge. That clackety-clack sound."

"So?"

"You don't recognize it?" said Serge. "Think of where we are! I'll give you five clues. No, three. No, one. Fuck it: I can't wait. I'll just tell you. It's the opening guitar riff!"

"From what?"

"Now you're being deliberately dense."

"Honest, Serge. I don't –"

"The year: 1975! The place: Miami! The magic . . . Bee Gees! . . . Illustrious brothers Gibb in town to let Florida soak into their Main Course LP being recorded up the road at Criteria. Barry had to take the Sunset Isles Bridge to work every day—the same one we're on right now!—and he starts humming along with that clacking bridge sound. Genius strikes! Hit song! . . ."

The Room

2010-06-19T10:10:00.013-04:00

So apparently, I've been living in a hermetically sealed bubble for the last few years, because I've never heard of "The Room," a 2003 independent film that has become something of a "Rocky Horror"-esque late night hit.

The first I heard about it was this morning in an article on Boston.Com about the film's current run at the Coolidge Corner movie house.

Described by one film professor as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies," it was bankrolled by its somewhat mysterious writer, director, and star, a guy by the name of Tommy Wiseau.

The plot seems to concern a love triangle between Johnny (played by Wiseau), his best friend Mark, and Johnny's "future wife" Lisa, who is having an affair with Mark.

It also appears obvious he made the movie as a serious drama, but is content to ride the wave of its second life as something to be laughed at by college kids and professional comedians.

You can read more about it here and here. Some pretty interesting stuff.

But what struck me most about it was it made me incredibly sad.

As a writer, you never really do know if something you've written is good or not. And though I believe writerly angst is somewhat overdone, anyone who has tried their hand at anything creative has to have some doubts.

What if I've already created my own "The Room" and simply don't know it yet?

And would I be as magnanimous as this guy?

Anyway, here's to you, Tommy Wiseau. You've already accomplished more than most of us do in a lifetime.

Brotherhood, distilled

2010-06-12T11:02:00.004-04:00

Alex put on jeans with a thick belt, a shirt with snap buttons, and Jarman two-tone shoes with three-inch heels. He shut down the stereo and left his room.

His brother Matthew, fourteen, was in his bedroom down the hall. Matthew was close to Alex's size and excelled on the football field, the baseball diamond, and in class. He was more competent in every way except the one way that counted between boys. Alex could still take him in a fight. It wouldn't be that way for much longer, but for now, it defined their relationship.

Alex stopped in the doorway. Matthew was lying atop his bed, tossing a baseball up in the air and catching it with his glove. He had thick, wavy hair and a big beak, like the old man. Alex's hair was curly, like their mom's.

"Pussy," said Alex.

"Fag," said Matthew.

"I'm headin out."

"Later."

- George Pelecanos, "The Turnaround."

St. Pete Loves Its Zombies

2010-06-11T12:10:00.003-04:00

Summer Doldrums

2010-06-10T11:13:00.016-04:00

And it ain't even summer . . .

Not much to report. Sent out seven queries on Swash! thus far and will no doubt send out more before the week is out. Haven't heard an immediate "No thanks" yet, which is unusual in itself and (maybe?) a good sign.

Still, sent out more than fifty on each of the others, and expect to send out at least that many on this before reverting to fallback mode. Won't even contemplate that before the end of the summer anyway.

Went to Barnes and Noble yesterday and saw prominently displayed on the "New Releases" table a book called The Ark by Boyd Morrison. Picked it up, read the lavish praise from lots of big names, the most prominent from premier thriller-writer James Rollins.

Why did this book pique my interest?

Well, aside from my interest in thrillers, I knew Boyd Morrison as a self-published Kindle author who I first met at Kindleboards last summer after self-publishing something of my own. Only a few weeks after I joined, he announced a six-figure, three-book deal with one of the big names (forget who), and here we are, a year later, and he's in the game.

You get a chance, check out both his book and his website. He has a very interesting biography, both personal and professional.

For me, the coolest thing about Swash! (especially if it WERE ever picked up by somebody) is that the next two I'll be working on are kind of in a similar, seriocomic vein. My next will be a P.I. parody / spoof with a heart, with the same character featured in my free Smashwords story Telegraph Hill (I know, I know. You're tired of hearing about it. Well, I'm tired of saying it!).

And as of right now, I think the one after that might also be somewhat seriocomic, featuring a mob hitman with a job to do . . . who finds himself in a zombie holocaust.

Just a wisp of an idea and a few paragraphs at the moment. But like I said, should Swash! ever be picked up and they want more, the next two will be in the same vein.

Guess I'll leave you with the first sentence of my currently untitled WIP:

When I first met Linda Stark, I didn't ask why she had a bird on her head.

5,000 words and counting!

As always, thanks for reading.

The Query Phase

2010-06-03T11:53:00.007-04:00

Spent the weekend editing the recently completed novel, and earlier this week sent out the first queries. Sent only a few to start with as I get back up on the query horse.

Though it probably needs some work (I tweak it further after each one I send) the following is essentially what I'm using:

When a late winter storm unearths an ancient shipwreck, the sleepy town of Sully's Rump is turned upside-down, first by the media, then by the pirates who come back to reclaim their ship.

Local historian Arthur Cobb wants the legendary ship for himself, but so does his nemesis, gazillionaire businessman Barney Zimmerman. Caught between the two is Chris Duggan, the boy who found the wreck, who just wants to help the pirates get home.

He realizes the only way to do that is to rebuild the ship and fulfill the pirate curse, but soon discovers that dislodging the pirates from the Rump may prove even more difficult a task than deciphering the curse that brought them there.

Spanning a magical summer in the life of an isolated community filled with indelible characters, SWASH! is approximately 88,000 words and has never before been published. In terms of where it fits on the literary spectrum, I'd call it Christopher Moore meets Willy Wonka.

I used AgentQuery to narrow the search to those who don't mind "quirky," because I think at heart, that's what it is.

Also Tweeted the other day (only half-jokingly) that I'm not querying agents looking for "great storytelling" or "something I'll long remember" (both found in agent profiles) because frankly, I'm simply not that confident in myself and don't want to waste their time.

Confess too it was hard sending out the first query, but got easier with the next few. I suppose having been rejected a few hundred times already on previous efforts, I'm just not looking forward to the certain rejections to come. But it's all part of the game, I guess.

Printed out two reading copies and sent them along to beta readers. Two copies burned a single thirty-dollar black Inkjet cartridge. Hilarious.

That's how they getcha . . .

Will start on the next opus soon and keep you posted!

Finis

2010-05-27T07:42:00.012-04:00

Pleased to report I've completed the first draft of "Swash!", my comic novel about a boy who stumbles upon an ancient pirate shipwreck, only to find he has to also deal with the returned pirates. Now comes the hard part . . . editing the damned thing.

Clocking in at 87,822 words, it is the longest piece I've ever written, which I find it heartening in a way. I'd like to think each of my "novels" has gotten longer and longer because it reflects my improved ability to thread in other subplots and description, which perhaps I wasn't doing enough of before.

It's also mostly true that ten-percent of a first draft is crap that needs to be excised, but I'll be just as pleased if it ends up at 80,000 or so.

I confess I'm delighted with the way the thing turned out. I THINK all the various subplots tie together nicely, and the ending actually has a kind of Willy Wonka meets Christopher Moore vibe that I hope works.

Not that I planned to, but I've done some things differently on this one than the ones previous. For one thing, I didn't print out a single "draft" copy of the work in progress until I finished it. I suspect this has more to do with the sticker shock I get when buying inkjet cartridges ($66.00 for the cartridges I need!) than anything else, but I'm glad I did my in-progress editing on screen.

And because most of the activity takes place on a small slice of land jutting into Cape Cod Bay, early on I also hand drew a map detailing where things were, just so I wouldn't confuse myself. No, I can't draw for crap, but I can imagine (dream, more like it) that a hardcopy edition might contain a similar map (drawn by one with more talent than me!) to lure folks into what's inside.

Editing the thing will take some time, but in the next week or two, I'll send reading copies for comment out to all the usual suspects (yes, that means YOU friends and family members who I KNOW read this thing but don't comment!) Keep an eye out for it.

Plan to pull out all the stops on this one in terms of trying to get representation. But it seems I'm always about to query when the publishing industry takes their (perhaps mythical?) summer off. Though one wonders with e-books and Ipads and Kindles nipping at their heels, whether that's still true or not.

I'm also excited to know exactly what I'll be working on next, a novel containing the private detective character featured in my free Smashwords story Telegraph Hill.

I've mentioned before that I started something a while ago with him and abandoned it. But after finishing something whimsical and somewhat comic, I'm looking forward to continuing in that vein.

And if you haven't already downloaded and read Telegraph Hill then what's stopping you? One-hundred and sixteen people already have! For me anyway, I suspect that's the closest to viral I'll ever get.

And after trying my hand at horror, thriller, and sentimental coming-of-age, perhaps my true calling is something akin to serio-comic with a touch of paranormal. Only time will tell.

Down the stretch they come . . .

2010-05-20T15:26:00.043-04:00

Put in 2,500 plus today on the work-in-progress, which now stands at 64,968 words. About halfway through today's session, I reached a point where I felt compelled to boldly open a blank page and type "Book IV" indicating I truly am rounding third and heading for home.

It's a truism (and one I subscribe to) that the more you write, the better you get. But I don't think necessarily that means you automatically write better. I think maybe a larger aspect of it is that you know yourself better as a writer, and are therefore more aware of your own strengths and weaknesses.

For example, one thing I've learned about myself is that I'm not good at going back once a work has been finished and "filling in the blanks." Sure, I'll edit for grammar and spelling, and occasionally choose better words. But once the thing is written, that's pretty much what it is.

And so I look back at some of the longer pieces I've written and imagine what might have been, if only I'd known myself better, known that I shouldn't merely write a "fill-in" scene just to move things along, because more than likely, that stinker is going to remain. Sure, I'll make it better where I can, but I know myself well enough now to know it is what it is.

Therefore, with this one, I've tried to be careful as I go along, to uncover every rock to see what's underneath, to make sure I write THEN AND THERE what it smelled like, what it looked like, because knowing myself as I do, if I don't do it then, it won't get done.

That sort of thing has certainly slowed things down some, but I think (and hope) the finished work will be better for it. Sure, there are details I need to go back and add (for example, I have yet to mention my pirates wear earrings, and dammit, my pirates wear earrings). But I'm pretty confident because the house has been built properly, and the underlying structure is sound, that I can with confidence go back and fill in those blanks.

Another curious thing about this one is I feel that only now, almost 200 pages and 65,000 words into the thing, am I really getting to know the characters. I mean truly getting to know the way they think and feel. For example, I wrote a scene today I thought would be merely a throwaway, simply to pass some of the summertime as we build toward the Labor Day climax. And I surprised myself to learn a great deal about my characters.

Whether it will stay in or not, or is any good, I have no idea at this point. But I do know after today, I'm gonna miss these guys when they're gone.

There are other things I'm learning about myself, one of them being I am much better suited to the long form. I know, I know, a story should only be as long as it needs to be. But even though I am far more drained after writing longer works, and also feel that I've left important little pieces of myself along the way (far less true when I've finished short stories) that I'm probably more a novelist than anything. And that's . . . okay.

Anyway, for your reading pleasure, here's a little unedited something from today's session that I hope illustrates a little of what I'm talking about:

"Now, that last thing. I guess that's the hardest. It's only been three years now, and you know what? Sometimes, I forget what he looks like. Really. Just forget what he looks like. And when that happens, I go into a kind of panic, you know? Because I forgot what my father looked like. So to remedy that, I keep a picture of him and me in my wallet, and I keep other pictures of him hidden around here and there too so he's always within reach. But that's one of my biggest fears, that I'll forget what my father looked like. Funny thing though, I'll never forget his voice. I can hear it in my head right now, matter of fact. Not that there was anything special about it. Not really. But he was always making jokes, or pulling pranks on my mother, and his laugh, oh boy. That's another thing I'll never forget. His laugh. My mother tells me I have his laugh, so maybe that's it. And that's what makes it so weird, that I'd forget what he looked like, but not his voice. Know what I mean? And I know it's silly, but sometimes, when I'm feeling bad, I tell myself he just went away for a while, like on a business trip or something, and all I have to do is wait just a little bit before I'll see him again. Is that weird? And I remember he used to call me buddy. Sometimes, I think he's going to walk down the stairs, knock on my door, and say 'Buddy! Get the hell out of bed." Silly, I know. But it helps."

He went quite a while before going on.

"So anyway . . ." he said, turning to Sarah and smiling. He turned away quickly when he saw her eyes were damp.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean for that to happen. But you did ask, and I answered."

He gave her a moment before looking at her again. She was smiling now, and had wiped away any hint of dampness that might have been there.

"Thanks," she said. "I really appreciate it."

He smiled too. "Ah, hell. It's nothing. Like I said, there aren't any secrets on the Rump. Speaking of . . . hey, look!"

He pointed down at the beach. When she looked where he was pointing, he went on.

"Your boyfriend got some sand in an uncomfortable place."

She groaned and turned quickly from the scene, which was exactly what Chris had described. After she less than gently swatted his arm, he began to laugh, and he kept laughing until the tears started rolling down his cheeks.

Naming Conventions

2010-05-13T07:59:00.010-04:00

I remember back in high school, like probably every high school student, we read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. No need for spoilers, as I'm sure we've all read it.

And I remember that afterward, the teacher foisted all kinds of symbolism on us. I don't remember most of it. Perhaps the lottery itself was symbolic of humankind repeating empty rituals long after their purpose was even remembered, and maybe the end result of the lottery was man at his most primitive, and probably, most real. A bunch of crap like that.

But what I remember most about it was the teacher insisting that the name of the main character, the women who won the lottery, was purposefully selected by Ms. Jackson for its symbolism. Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face! Her name was, after all, De La Croix, which means "of the cross," which of course made her a Christ-like figure.

Again, I thought it was all a bunch of crap. Wasn't it at least possible that she simply sat down to write a cool story, and any symbolism inside was merely a cool coincidence? Who knows, maybe she couldn't come up with a name, grabbed the white pages, and landed on the D's.

The mere thought of someone putting such work into weaving "symbolism" into a short story struck me as a bit much, and maybe a bit pretentious. I guess I'm willing to concede that she might have, but she was so talented about it, and it was so subtle, that it appeared she didn't "work" at it at all.

And I suspect if even a slightly less talented writer tried to do the same thing—purposefully weaving "symbolism" into their work—it would all stand out like a sore thumb, and you wouldn't be reading it in a high school class.

I suppose what got me thinking about this is that I suck at coming up with character names. Oh, I suppose it's not so much I suck, really, as I simply don't give it very much thought or put too much time into it.

Sometimes, I'll pull up a news site and scroll through articles looking for an interesting name, or one I haven't used before. Or, I'll go back in my mind to elementary school classmates and try to remember their names. And yes, I've also used the phone book.

Once or twice, I've used the names of old friends or colleagues I haven't seen in years but think of often. For example, in the sequel to my vampire novel "Applewood," one of the major characters is a longtime vampire who becomes a mentor to my newly minted young vampire.

Not sure quite why I did it, but I remembered back to someone who mentored me early in my career, who became a good friend, but one I haven't seen in years. British guy too, pale and pasty, with slicked back black hair. He fit ALL the requirements. And so, with a smile, I used his name without even thinking about it.

But in the unrealistic expectation that some future high school generation is forced to read that book, I'd like to go on record and say that is the reason the last name of this character is "Mallett" and not because of any "symbolism" that he is named after the thing he most fears!

At any rate, the main character's name in my current pirate wip was easy to come up with. Buddy of my (then) thirteen-year-old nephew thought it would be cool if I used his name in a book. No problem, young Chris Duggan. No problem at all.

Speaking of the current wip, I'm in the middle of Book III and at about 54,000 words. They're coming easier now, which is nice. We've still got the whole summer to go (things will climax on Labor Day) so I suspect we're looking at around 80,000 words. I'm doing 1,500 plus a day, so we're still on target.

Here's another sampling, and as always, thanks for stopping by!

"Captain wishes to pervide evidence, then evidence shall be heard," he said, in a voice that brooked no discontent.

The murmurs settled down some. Chris saw that even Sykes knew he'd missed his moment, at least for now. His leg slowly descended to the floor. He put his head down and skulked off, choosing a seat off to the side.

Chris closed his eyes and let out a long breath. His legs were shaking. He thought for a moment he might faint from the tension. With his eyes still closed, he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. Turning, he opened his eyes and saw Sarah smiling at him. She motioned her head to the right, where Chris saw two empty chairs against the wall. Taking his hand in hers, she walked them over and the two sat down.

The shaking in Chris's legs subsided, but his heart still raced. He refused to believe it had anything to do with the soft hand in his. It seemed too as if they held hands far longer than necessary, but after another moment, Sarah took her hand away.

Chris leaned forward and put his head between his legs to let the nausea pass. While bent over, he felt a gentle tapping on his back, like the wings of an angel beating softly. Feeling better, he sat up slowly and then sat back to await whatever was to come. Moments later, he felt soft breath near his ear. Sarah.

"I've heard of these, but never done one," she whispered.

Chris turned, and when their eyes met, she went on.

"It's community theater, right? Improv of some sort? One of those audience participation murder mystery things."

Chris had no idea what she was talking about, but nodded anyway. Sarah went on.

"These guys are supposed to be pirates, right?" she asked.

Chris smiled, and after a moment, he answered.

"They prefer to be called . . . privateers," he said.

Falling in love with your own prose

2010-05-06T12:13:00.009-04:00

Having just tweeted about my automotive troubles, and having just almost shorted out the Good Samaritan's electrical system after he agreed to give me a jump (crossed the wires . . . hundreds of jumps in my life . . . first time ever), I'm not yet in the mood to write. Hope posting something here gets the juices flowing . . . no pun intended.

Things are going remarkably well on the current WIP. So well, in fact, that yesterday, I concluded one climactic chapter and then boldly typed BOOK III on a blank page, beginning yet another climb up a mountain. Still looks good for a late May finish, which is heartening.

Before writing Book II, though I hadn't worked it all out yet, I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. But I purposefully began the book with what I thought was a bold call to arms, to both myself and to the characters:

When Chris thought back on all the strange goings on of the past few weeks, when he reflected upon all the things he had both done and failed to do, it became clear to him that both his actions and his inactions had only made inevitable what was about to happen. He had only himself to blame for the chain of circumstances that brought him to this place, for he had paved this particular trail brick by brick, stone by stone, and decision by decision.

In fact, now that he thought of it, he realized had he done any single thing differently, had he made one alternate decision at any point in the chain, he would not be where he was now: cold, wet, and trying to keep his supper down from the amusement park ride that was going on beneath his feet.

And though nobody within two feet of him could possibly have seen it, through the tomblike darkness and torrential downpour and the pounding of ten-foot waves, he smiled. He smiled because he understood that a single different decision would have altered what was about to happen, and because he had just finished asking himself if he regretted any one of those decisions, asked himself if he could, would he go back in time and take any one of them back? And the answer he arrived at in that moment of quiet introspection was unambiguous.

Hell, no.

It ain't Shakespeare, and still needs a lot of work. And after typing it, I had no idea what the hell I was going to do to live up to those words. I had only a vague idea of where he was and what he was doing when he thought those things, but I found it a remarkable "line in the sand" to see if I could live up to what I wrote.

So no, I'm not "in love" with it at all. It may not even make the final cut. But I like the idea of drawing a bold line early, just to see if you can live up to it. And though I've never done such a thing before, I'm happy to say I think I did . . . but only time will tell.

And as always, thanks for reading!

My Week (and welcome to it)

2010-04-30T07:10:00.027-04:00

Fun and interesting week. Went to my first game at Tropicana Field on Tuesday night and saw the best-in-baseball Tampa Bay Rays beat the best-in-the-west Oakland Athletics 8-6 in a terrifically exciting and back and forth game. The win made the Rays 15-5 overall, the best start in baseball since the 2003 Yankees.

Of course, problem is, I was one of only 10,800 or so who saw the game in the mostly empty Trop. The newspapers had a field day with the low attendance, ammunition to move the team from St. Pete to Tampa or frankly, anywhere else.

So, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the next night's game (it's in walking distance and tickets are cheap) and saw the best-in-baseball Rays defeat the Athletics again to go 16-5, the most wins of any Rays team in their history and . . . there were even fewer people at this game, a mere 10,691, the lowest attendance of the season.

Didn't go last night, but the Rays beat the Royals 11-1 to go 17-5, and the paper reported a slight uptick in attendance, to around 12,500 or so. But still, I just don't get it.

Something truly special is happening here, they've got the cheapest seats in baseball, and though folks from Tampa whine about coming to St. Pete ("I have to go over a bridge!") the Trop is not that bad a stadium, nor is it hard to get in and out of.

Beginning to think that St. Pete (if not Tampa Bay) just can't support a major league baseball team.

In other news, St. Pete was the focus of the political world last night, as Governor Charlie Crist announced here in St. Pete that he would switch from Republican to Independent and continue his senate run (he was getting trounced in the Republican primary by tea party hero Marco Rubio). He made his announcement in a park about two blocks away (he's a native of St. Pete) so I walked down and took it all in.

In writing news, work continues on the pirate thing, though I hit some troublesome plot snags which slowed things down a bit. Thing is (and it's easy to say, harder to do) that you've got to just keep writing, even when you know its crap, or the coincidence you just inserted makes no sense, or whatever. It's too easy to give up and leave something half-finished, as I've already done once with this thing.

At any rate, just shy of the 40,000 word barrier which leaves me probably at about the halfway point. All downhill from here, right?

I figure the first draft of this will be done by the end of May, and after that I'll let it percolate a bit before sending out a few copies to friends and family to hear what they have to say. Not looking forward to the query process at all, but I'm gonna exhaust every traditional route I can with this. Think it may be unique or offbeat enough to garner somebody's interest. Time will tell.

Interesting to see seventy-four people have downloaded my free short story "Telegraph Hill" from SmashWords. If you have any interest, you can grab a copy here.

I've mentioned before it was simply gathering dust on my hard drive (not to mention, the pop culture it references is probably already a little stale). But I love the main character, a clueless gumshoe named Dick Londergan.

Like him so much, in fact, that a few years ago I got 6,000 words or so into a novel about him before concluding that I suck and abandoning it. But that's what I'm gonna move onto after I've finished this one. Maybe parlay the free story into folks shelling out, you know, actual cash for the new one.

Nah. Never happen. (:>)

In conclusion, here's today's totally draft and probably senseless excerpt of what I'm working on:

Chris was surprised to see there were so many of them. Seventeen or eighteen, at least. Maybe twenty. He'd personally only shepherded a dozen or so out of the sand, or water, or wherever the hell it was they had all come from, so a few must have had to fend for themselves. Or maybe, the others had helped them make the transition.

However it happened, most looked as if they still wore clothes from the donation bin, but it also appeared as though some of them had gone back and chosen something more . . . appropriate. To Chris, their outfits now looked less ridiculous somehow. More threatening.

Of course, they could all be wearing clown noses and floppy shoes and what was going on in this room would still look threatening.

The Captain was standing on a wooden chair in the center of the room, surrounded by his formerly loyal crew. His hands were bound behind his back. Sykes was the only other man standing. He had turned around when Chris entered the room, and his leg was still lifted off the ground, frozen in that moment of time just before he was about to kick the chair out from beneath the Captain's legs.

One end of the noose was tied securely around a beam about ten feet off the ground. Its other end was tied around the Captain's neck.

End-of-week wrap

2010-04-23T06:51:00.014-04:00

Finally finished "Mister Slaughter," the third in Robert McCammon's Mathew Corbett series. Not as fast a reader as I used to be.

If you didn't catch McCammon's recent post regarding his own travails within the publishing industry, including his difficulty finding a publisher for what he describes as "the best thing I've ever written" (this from the guy who wrote "Swan Song" and "Boy's Life") and his concluding that "niche" is where it's at these days in the publishing world, check it out here. Probably something every aspiring writer should read.

Because, if Robert McCammon can't find a publisher for his books . . . then what hope do any of us have?

And if you haven't read, or more importantly, aren't still reading Robert McCammon, then you are missing something wonderful.

The Mathew Corbett series begins with "Speaks the Nightbird."

You know what to do.

Things are going well on the "Swash!" front. Cracked the 30,000 word barrier yesterday with no end in sight. Strange too to be breaking one of the cardinal rules of new (and old) writers: Never write in dialect. Rumor has it hardly anyone ever pulls it off.

But there's no way to write "pirate" without dialect, is there?

Of course, I have no idea if any of it works, or indeed, short of James Joyce or Mark Twain or people far more brilliant than me, if it ever does. And I do know at times that I lay it on a bit thick, but I figure I can always cut it down to size later.

I'm also avoiding anything pirate or pirate-related (short of reading about the exploits of real pirates and real shipwrecks) so I don't end up re-writing "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Captain Blood" or something. I think that when I'm finished, I'll dig around for those scripts or find "Treasure Island" online and see how thick they laid it on. I suspect I'll be cutting it back some.

But writing this has had some delights too, scenes or tidbits I included for no apparent reason at the time that (hopefully) later add some humor or something interesting to the tale.

For example, my fourteen-year-old protagonist goes to the mainland one day, to the dentist, where the reader learns for the first time he has braces. No biggie, lots of fourteen-year-olds have braces. And today, he's getting his off.

So, the next time he runs into one of the . . . newcomers, it results in (again, hopefully!) this humorous exchange:

Seeing Chris smile, Hornblossom smiled too, and said, "An' if it not be too forward, lemme say yer new teeth be lookin' fine, laddie. Didn' wanna say anythin' at the time, but that last set a yers lef' a whole lot to be desired. Scary lookin' things they were."

It took Chris a moment, but when he understood he just smiled again and said, "Thank you."

Yeah, I know. It needs work.

While on the mainland, Chris also takes a strange coin he's been given from one of the newcomers into a coin shop, where he learns it could pay for his first year of college.

While he finds that interesting and all, more importantly, it puts him closer to piecing together the strange happenings in his corner of the world. What he finds most intriguing is that the coin itself has another name, a name he's heard before. It's an 8-reale coin, once more commonly known as a "piece of eight."

Happy writing!

The Great Word Count Race

2010-04-15T08:31:00.011-04:00

I remember reading somewhere that scholars were examining Mark Twain's original manuscripts for "Tom Sawyer" or "Huckleberry Finn" or one of his other classics when they came across a strange sort of code at the bottom of each page. There was what appeared to be a random number written and circled on each one.

Before they had a chance to go all "Da Vinci Code" on the subject, one of the level-headed researchers realized that what those numbers reflected were the number of words on each page. Yes, even Mark Twain kept track of his word count.

I bring this up only because it is a subject near and dear to a writer's heart. It is the sole objective measurement of our output, our productivity. So it's no surprise that many of the tweets from writers that I follow have to do with their own word count, either great pride at the 3,000 word marathon they've just finished, or frustration at their measly 500 word output.

I've noticed too that one of the celebrities I follow on twitter, the wonderful and inventive creative force behind the films "Shawn of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" @simonpegg is apparently also working on a novel, and yes, he too has been tweeting his word counts.

I guess there's just no getting around it.

Speaking of word counts, things are going well on the pirate novel front. I was just shy of 24,000 words a few days ago when a series of events climaxed at the same time, leading me to stop right there, open a blank page, and smack dab in the middle of it type: BOOK II.

Not sure if that will be the structure when finished (though I absolutely can see it having four "Books," each about 25,000 words) but it was nice anyway to have "finished" one part of it. And if it only provides the psychological boost I need to continue on up the hill, then that's okay too.

Speaking of shipwrecks being unearthed by the shifting sands of Cape Cod, did you catch this this last weekend? From The Boston Globe:

Photo by Harry R. Feldman Inc.

"The wreck of the British warship that Paul Revere slipped by on his legendary journey to Lexington in 1775 has resurfaced in the shifting sands of Cape Cod, and federal park officials are seizing the moment by having the wreck "digitally preserved," using three-dimensional imaging technology.

"We know the wreck is going to disappear again under the sand, and it may not resurface again in our lifetimes," said William P. Burke, the historian at the Cape Cod National Seashore, noting that the last time any part of the HMS Somerset III had been sighted was 37 years ago."

It was actually a similar event a few years ago, when an old schooner resurfaced at a place called Newcombe Hollow in Wellfleet, that inspired me to write my current wip. Here's the (very draft) scene where my protagonist comes across his wreck:

As their game progressed along the beach, Chris reared back and threw it over a tall dune. After watching it fly, the dog bounded up and over to retrieve it. Chris followed. Halfway up, he began to hear excited barks and yelps from the other side. Curious, he moved faster, and when he reached the top and looked down, it took a few moments for him to understand exactly what it was he was looking at.

On the beach below the dune, like the exposed ribs of an excavated dinosaur, thick black beams protruded from the sand. Though mostly buried, the part that was visible was about fifty feet long from end-to-end. Dismissing what he at first thought might be the skeletal remains of a whale, Chris crept down to get a closer look at what he now understood was the remains of the ancient shipwreck.

Of course by now, no doubt, there's lots of other writers out there maybe inspired similarly. Who doesn't think it's cool when a shipwreck resurfaces, and what writer of fiction with any interest in such things wouldn't have his appetite whetted to explore it? Can't help but wonder if maybe now, I'm in a race with a dozen other writers to get this thing out there first.

Or maybe I'm just re-writing "The Goonies."

Could go either way.

On that subject, I finally renamed the working document "Pirate Novel" to its new working title, "Swash." I like it, though it remains to be seen just how much swashbuckling there will be. I may just have to throw some in there to justify the title! And come to think of it, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

In other news, if you get a minute, a hilarious and telling clip from a recent "Colbert Report" makes clear in no uncertain terms on which side he comes down in the copyright debate. Check it out here.

There's an interesting article in today's Globe that's either heartening or depressing (I'm not sure yet) of the trail the book "Tinkers" blazed before this week winning the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. You can check that out here.

Finally, I made a short story that had otherwise been gathering dust available for free on Smashwords. It's a (hopefully) humorous tale of an old school private investigator who stumbles into perhaps his strangest case yet. You can grab it here.

Enjoy! Or not. Your choice.

And happy writing!

Of Pirates and Time Travel and Other Unlikely Things

2010-04-07T07:00:00.016-04:00

Contemplating something for Permuted's recently announced time travel anthology, but every idea in my head ends up being a re-write of either "The Terminator" or "A Sound of Thunder."

A future where machines take over? Been done. Going back to kill someone who has an effect on the future? Been done. Something changes in the past, with a "butterfly's wings" effect on the present? Done and done.

I did start something a while back, about a distant future where Earth has been destroyed, but the alien conquerors kept a few humans around because their natural curiosity made them good galactic private detectives. They do a lot of whiz-bang travel using futuristic gizmos, and have found that they can travel through time using ancient recordings of these things once called "movies" (or so the legend goes). Placing the recording into a machine, they can travel back in time to where the "movie" was set.

But it occurs to me I've never successfully written a story specifically for an anthology. I wrote a Poe thing for a Poe anthology, a futuristic thing for the "Footsteps" anthology, and "Fortunato's Ghost" for Permuted's "The World is Dead" anthology.

Now, I like every one of those stories and think they're pretty good. But not a one was accepted for the specific anthology I wrote it for. If anything, anthology submissions make good "idea fodder," and if you write a good story and it doesn't get accepted, you can always send it somewhere else.

And I still resent Permuted's last editor updating his submissions under the heading "slush pile." I sweated over the story, submitted it, and now you're calling it slush? I always thought "slush" was the term for unsolicited manuscripts and stories, and last I checked, you had an open submissions call . . .

Not bitter.

Progress continues on the pirate thing. Been averaging upward of 1,000 words a day, which is nice. Funny to find, though, as you go back and re-read and edit, that half of those words are crap. So you cut out the crap, and end up with four or five hundred of (what you hope) are the right words.

Also discovering more with this one than with anything previous that I often go back and "paint" in some more relevant facts, or what I hope are interesting or humorous happenings. For example, it was a Saturday evening when my protagonist successfully thwarted the raiders' attempt to steal the shipwreck (which is an old pirate ship, but nobody knows that yet.)

And it was just after midnight on Sunday morning when young Chris first meets the crazy man who shows up and talks funny. Of course, the "crazy man" is the captain of the pirate ship, who, with the unearthing of the wreck, has also come back.

Now, the guy needs more help than Chris can provide, and he's also really tired and wants to go home because his mother will be waking him up for church in just a few hours. Long story short, Chris does what he can for the guy and finally gets home, and the next scene takes place in church the next morning. And here's where the "painting" comes in:

I'd already written the above when it occurred to me that it shouldn't be just *any* Sunday morning, but it needed to be Easter Sunday morning. No doubt part of the reason was because Easter just passed, but more to the point, it allowed everyone in town to dress up in their finery, put beautiful flowery hats on all of the women, ensured there would be coffee and danish in the back of the church after the services, and mostly, it meant that Chris would not be able to find ANY excuse not to make it to church! I needed him there.

I also kind of like the idea that the celebration of a resurrection should coincide with . . . a resurrection.

Anyhow, I've rambled enough. But for those still reading, here's another snippet from the WIP:

In his seat at the end of the bench, Chris stifled another yawn, knowing the service would soon be over and he would be free. Like the rest of the congregants, his eyes were closed, and his head was bowed for a moment of silent contemplation. He was embarrassed to hear his stomach growl while thinking of the coffee and pastries coming up after the service. He'd had no time to spare for even an apple before his mother hustled him out of bed and out of the house.

His head was still bowed when he began to hear hushed whispers come from the rear of the church. Opening his eyes, he turned his head and saw what all the fuss was about. Upon seeing it, he turned again quickly and began sliding down in his seat, though he knew it was too late. He had already been seen.

But what Chris had glimpsed in that brief moment were the people sitting in the rear aisle sliding themselves all the way over to the other end, while folks in other benches stared wide-eyed at the new visitor. Some quickly turned around again, hushing their whispering children or pointing husbands and reminding them that staring was un-Christian.

When the newly arrived man had caught sight of Chris, he smiled broadly and removed his hat before again executing that fancy bow. But Chris had turned before the man stood up. He imagined the man was now sitting himself down in one of the recently vacated, though no doubt still warm, empty seats in the rear. And as Chris slumped down in his own seat, trying hard to make himself part of the bench, the man in back spoke, his voice echoing around the church.

"Now, now. Don' be lettin' me disrupt yer foin services on such a beautiful day. I apologize fer me tardiness, Parson, an' I'll see that it not happen agin."

Unconsciously, Chris clenched his eyes shut as the man spoke, fearing he'd say something about their encounter last evening. Only when the echo of the man's voice faded away, did Chris dare open one eye and look up to the altar where the minister stood, smiling peacefully with his arms open in welcome . . .

The Stage Is Set

2010-03-31T10:20:00.021-04:00

This may not be true for everyone, but at least the way I write, it's been my experience that there comes a point in writing a novel where things get . . . easier.

Now, now. I know what you're thinking. But hear me out.

What I mean is, you've plodded through the first ten-thousand words or so, maybe hesitatingly, maybe with abandon. You've established the main characters, a few supporting ones, and their relationships.

You've described the primary setting, where most of the action takes place, and some secondary ones. You've laid the groundwork for action, or for humor, or for conflict, or for all of the above.

The stage is set.

And that's exactly where I'm at with my current novel.

Of course, I'm writing this no doubt only to spur myself on, to give myself the confidence to proceed. And as of this writing, I'm only about 12,000 words into the thing.

But there have already been a few instances where a situation came up wherein a character was in need of something to move the plot along and . . . bingo! I had already established a vague something or other earlier on in the plot where I could go to find what I needed.

Case in point:

If you read the brief excerpt I included above my last blog post, you'll find that my protagonist, young Chris Duggan, has learned that the remains of the shipwreck he discovered is about to be poached by nefarious types looking to sell pieces of it (or the whole thing) to people with more money than they know what to do with.

The excerpt ends with something like: "And the more he thought about it, the more he knew he wasn't going to let that happen."

Now, when I wrote that, I had no idea how Chris was going to stop the men from going through with their plan. But that's one of the challenges (and the delights) of writing. Because there comes a point in your writing where the characters even surprise you.

In this instance, Chris lives on a slice of land that juts into Cape Cod Bay, where he helps his mother run a bed and breakfast. Chris is home-schooled, but fortunately, the small village is filled with retired professors, artists, and other eclectic types who are more than happy to tutor Chris in his schooling.

One of these is famed New York artist Dale Deusenberg, from whom Chris is learning that just about anything can be called "art," from the discarded tires that Dale once painted and hung on the wall in a New York gallery (and were the hit of the season), to bits of seaglass and discarded trash along the beach that Dale encourages Chris to collect and make art with.

Dale himself has recently become enamored with the packaging from the fireworks he sees in his stops on his frequent drives to Florida. He comes home with boxes and boxes of the things, discarding the fireworks, but painting or making collages from the packaging. So when Chris needs to come up with a ruse to "dissuade" the thieves from taking the ship, he comes up with an idea:

Chris watched from above as eight hunched shadows approached the hole where the wreck lay, then watched them one by one descend the ladder into the earth. He heard their hushed whispers carried on the wind, followed by the muffled pounding of hammers. They were breaking down the formwork supporting the wreck, Chris knew.

He heard the tearing, crunching sounds of nailed boards being torn one from another, followed by dull thuds as the discarded wood was tossed in a pile. After two minutes or so, he began to hear the unmistakable sound of handsaws cutting wood and knew it was time.

Turning to the dog, he asked, "You ready?" The dog wagged its tail, cocked its head, and licked his hand. Smiling, Chris scratched behind its ear and got to work.

He turned on the flashlight, pointing its fading yellow beam where needed before sticking it in the sand. Severely weakened from hours of use, he'd been forced to make most of his final preparations in the dark.

After taking a deep breath and asking himself one last time if he wanted to do this thing, he flicked on the lighter. Using his other hand to shield the flame, he brought it in contact with the master fuse. After a nervous moment, it caught with a smoky hiss. He watched the fiery trail run slowly up the dune.

Is it brilliant? No. Is it art? Absolutely not. Is it entertaining?

It had better be . . .

Because I'm never gonna get by on my looks alone.

The Best Laid Plans

2010-03-24T07:28:00.019-04:00

"Anger burned inside Chris. These weren't scientists taking bits and pieces for testing, but souvenir hunters selling pieces of a "real live shipwreck!" He remembered the feeling he got each time he saw some of it gone, then remembered the wonder he'd felt when he first came across it. It had always saddened him to think that one day, there'd be nothing left. But to think that day might be today angered him beyond measure. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he wasn't going to let that happen."

Not sure if you do this, but when I'm working on something, I keep a supplemental "scratch" document associated with whatever I'm working on.

Because I usually write in a linear fashion, without plans or outline, I use it to jot down random notes, thoughts on future scenes, bits of dialogue that come to mind that I'm not quite ready to use, potential character names and the like.

I've mentioned ad nauseum I'm working on a novel I began more than a year ago and abandoned, having to do with eighteenth-century pirates returning to modern-day Cape Cod.

I suspect there will be some wacky adventures, elements of danger, and pirate raids on Home Depot to acquire wood to rebuild their ship. I think their goal will be to go "home," wherever that might be. I'm not quite sure yet.

Anyway, I opened the scratch document the other day and saw this notation:

70,000+ by 12/31/08 and done.

Ah, the best laid plans . . .

In other news, I'm delighted to report my story "The Intersection" has been selected to appear in the upcoming Night Terrors anthology from Blood Bound Books. A few familiar names in there, as well as some new ones. It's an honor to be included among you.

And I'm not sure if that's the Table of Contents, but if it is, it will be the third time one of my stories has "taken up the rear," i.e. been the last story in an anthology. I don't give myself credit for much, but if I do say so myself, I'm pretty good at endings.

I've also shared before that this story too was once abandoned, so maybe there's hope for me and my "pirate novel" yet!

Obligatory Post

2010-03-18T08:46:00.009-04:00

"On the east side of the Rump, the new islands' largest landowner hadn't yet heard the news. It was late afternoon and he had just finished rounding up his llamas and putting them in the barn. Though he kept a zoologist and veterinarian on staff, he liked spending as much time with the animals as he could. They were so much more predictable than people. In addition to the llamas, he kept a pair of zebras and four miniature horses on his forty-eight acres. He was in talks to acquire a giraffe, but negotiations were in their early stages."

Work continues on the novel, but slowly. Added only a few thousand words since the last update, averaging probably only two-hundred a day or so.

Still, it's progress. I suspect today is the day that the pirates will make their first appearance . . .

On another front, the anthology I sent The Intersection to closed the other day. Duotrope reports a few acceptances, and rejection after rejection after rejection. Though (as always) I expect the worst, fingers crossed.

Stopped by an Irish pub in downtown St. Pete yesterday called Paddy Burkes for a few pints of Guinness.

Mmm. Guinness . . .

Random thoughts for a rainy Friday

2010-03-12T12:25:00.019-05:00

Work continues on the novel, picking up steam as time goes on. Funny, I began this one about a year ago and abandoned it (like so much else) while in the midst of self-doubt. But things are moving fairly well now, which is nice.

I remember the columnist Dave Barry commenting on writing his first novel (“Big Trouble”) saying something like, “Okay. So, you put a bunch of characters together and then . . . you have to get them to DO something.”

And that's one of the daunting challenges, I suppose, just finding the right characters. Will the girl I've placed at the front desk even figure into the story? How about the guy who does light maintenance at the inn, or the two fisherman at the bar?

These are just folks I put there to do something for a moment, or are there to be someone a character I'm more certain of can talk to.

But the thing is (and you've GOT to keep telling yourself this in order to have any hope of finishing) it doesn't really matter this early in the plot whether these characters will come alive or not. And they can always be excised later if necessary.

I think it's important early on (for me, anyway) to populate the novel with lots of characters, because you never know! They might be needed later on, or become critical to the story in some way. You've just gotta keep the faith . . .

On another subject, to get some sense of how much competition there is, I've often wondered just how many people use Duotrope.

According to Duotrope, one anthology I've submitted to has about fifty submissions, but the anthology website reports that they've received over 400, which would make the percentage something less than one in ten reported to Duotrope (assuming they've had more submissions since the 400 number).

Makes sense to me!

And happy writing.

How's the Weather?

2010-03-08T18:03:00.013-05:00

"For three days, winds from the howling nor'easter whipped the seas of Cape Cod Bay into a frothy brew, pummeling the shore with ten-foot waves and pounding seawalls along the coast. Wind gusts of sixty-miles an hour created whirlpools and eddies that rode atop and swirled beneath the unusually high tides, churning the current above and scouring the seafloor below."

Thus begins the first draft of my current WIP, an as yet untitled tale of Cape Cod and pirates that may end up being either "young adult for all ages!" or something more akin to Christopher Moore.

Of course, I'm only 5,000 words into the thing, so I really have no idea where it will go, or frankly, if it will ever be finished.

But having chided someone else recently on a site I frequent for beginning their work with something of a cliché (in that instance, it was all a dream!) I got to wondering about another writing axiom I heard recently (I forget exactly where) that goes: Never begin with the weather!

It's already too late for "Sumner Gardens" ("It was a crisp New England afternoon in late October, with a cool breeze that blew the dry, dead leaves back and forth . . ."), but when I saw how I opened my new work, I remembered the axiom, and something of a chill crawled up my spine. I began to wonder if I'd made a habit of it.

A quick check of a few other stories relieved me of my discomfort:

"Parker dragged deeply on his cigarette and kept the smoke in his lungs for a moment before exhaling." – Hope Town

"Higgins turned his cruiser into the lot and pulled into an empty space to the right." – Ohrwurm

"Paul Ellerbee glanced up when he heard it announced the train was entering South Station." – Adamson's Rock

But that research only revealed perhaps another habit, a penchant for beginning things with my protagonist doing something: dragging, turning, glancing. But a peek at "Applewood" revealed that too may not be a problem:

"It was ten-twenty five on a Friday morning in late March when the highway worker happened upon the body, halfway down a small incline and off in a shallow wooded area by the side of the road."

What does any of this mean? I don't know. In fact, I don't even know that what I excerpted above will even be the opening of the pirate novel.

But I do know that, in this instance, the weather is important. The howling waves, the swirling currents, the churning eddies and --most importantly -- the scouring of the sea floor are integral to what happens next.

So maybe opening with the weather isn't the worst sin imaginable.

I mean, it's not as if it's all a dream.

On Infamy and Marketing

2010-03-01T11:47:00.035-05:00

Of all the strange details to come from the recent Amy Bishop case, including that she "accidentally" shot and killed her brother back in the eighties and was suspected in a mail bombing, perhaps the strangest (and what should rightly send a chill up the spines of our own friends and colleagues) was that she was also an "aspiring novelist."

My writer friends of course won't be surprised to hear this, but to those of you in our circles, be warned. We're nuts. Certifiably so.

But imagine if she had, before her killing spree, actually published her novel, reported to be a wishful thinking semi-autobiographical tale about a . . . wait for it . . . professor struggling to get tenure, and the forces arrayed against her. Do any of us doubt that it wouldn't be rocketing up the charts as we speak?

Recall what happened when Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, was indicted for obstruction of justice. His novel (written years before and based upon his time in Japan) began selling like hotcakes!

And there was Michael Peterson, ultimately convicted of pushing his wife down the stairs (after tragically losing his first wife the same way). Does anyone doubt that his own infamy led to an increase in sales?

So is it any wonder that I too am now wondering what infamy I might participate in to, you know, get my name out there?

I don't have the stomach for murder, so that's out. Though I sometimes write all graphic and bloody, I actually avert my eyes when confronted with such things, literally raising my hands over my eyes when the Neda video or the Zapruder film is shown.

And the thought of jail gives me the willies as well. Having heard the "clang" of a cell door swing shut on me once in my life was quite enough, thank you very much. So it would have to be something more prankish and harmless than something truly hurtful.

Streaking at the Super Bowl or the World Series or something like that is probably more my style.

But if you folks have any thoughts or suggestions, I'm all ears.

I do have this one idea, where I build a balloon in my backyard and pretend that it gets accidentally released with my son on board.

But nobody would ever really buy something like that, would they?

Zombie St. Pete

2010-02-26T11:34:00.019-05:00

Now THIS is how you throw an anthology release party:

The event takes place Saturday evening, February 27th, from 5:00 - 10:00 PM down at The Pier. It's within walking distance of where I live, so I'm definitely going to check it out.

If you're in the vicinity, for more info on the event, click here.

And the cover looks awesome!

The cover is actually The Pier where the event takes place (and I suspect a story or two is set) which is very, very cool.

Best of luck to all of the authors and the event organizers.

I'll see you there!

Throwaway Post

2010-02-24T14:06:00.023-05:00

Nothing much to blog about, but tired of seeing the green of the Irish anthology clashing with the soft blue of my color scheme, so the purpose of this post is to be long enough to push that down such that I don't have to see it anymore.

Had "Wood Work" rejected from the Parsec End of the Rainbow anthology. As previously tweeted, I find it amusing when an anthology gives itself a cryptic title and asks "You tell US what it means!" and then rejects your story because it doesn't relate to the theme.

They also said something about there was a whole lotta rigmarole to go through without much payoff in the end. Maybe so.

But I kinda thought that a guy finding fucking EDEN just a few hundred feet deep in the woods of his backyard was kinda cool, though perhaps that didn't come through. Also thought that might be the kinda thing someone might wanna find or expect to find at the end of the rainbow.

Alas . . .

Hell, who knows. Maybe the story doesn't work. Sent it off to "A Fly in Amber" anyway and remain committed to someday getting something into Parsec.

Still got two other stories out there, "urder" sent off to Blood Bound Books D.O.A. anthology and "The Intersection" at their brethren publication Night Terrors. D.O.A. hasn't had too many submissions yet, and they've stretched the deadline to May 31. Night Terrors has had close to forty subs, with only one acceptance thus far and nineteen rejections. So who knows.

They've also listed some new anthologies they are currently accepting submissions to, which raises my eyebrows a little. They've got three open right now, and for a new imprint, it seems that might be biting off a little more than they should chew. Time will tell.

Is this enough? Have I typed enough to move the book cover down some?

J.A. Konrath has a cool post today centering on just "Getting your name out there!" to stimulate the sales of e-books. Click the link on the left ("A Newbie's Guide to Publishing") to check it out.

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day

2010-02-20T10:04:00.011-05:00

The Irish anthology I've blogged about containing one of my stories has been released. Should be receiving my two free copies any day now. I'm proud of this one for a couple of reasons.

It's my first non-fiction sale, recounting an incident that happened on my (thus far) lone visit to Ireland. It's also the most I've been paid for any short that I've written.

In fact, at $50.00 for 396 words, it comes out to twelve-cents a word! Wonder if that'll count as a "pro sale" toward HWA and other memberships.

(Kidding.)

I also suspect its availability in specialty gift shops and other places that sell such tchotchkes will make it the biggest seller of anything I've been included in yet.

My story recounts an incident that occurred while hitchhiking around Ireland during my freshman year in college, when I quite literally bumped into long lost relatives.

At any rate, you can check it out here here on Amazon.

Fear the Blobfish

2010-02-19T06:43:00.006-05:00

From the LA Times:

"Because as scary as the Asian carp may be, the carp are gigantic bony creatures with large scales. They could never squeeze through your tap.

But the blobfish is boneless. It's a blob.

So, theoretically, it might squeeze through all the protective filters and screens, and then, with a grunt, pop right out of your stylish Swedish designer faucet, its ugly face first.

Or perhaps out of your toilet bowl when you're at your most vulnerable, sleepy in the middle of the night.

Or what about your pulsating-massage shower head? Just imagine the beast squeezing from the shower head, hurtling at your face, or worse, into your open mouth, your muffled screams unheard by your loved ones."

Quick Update

2010-02-16T11:01:00.018-05:00

Not much to report. Had my story The Intersection rejected from Necrotic Tissue and, in retrospect, after receiving my first issue, it wasn't right for them. Both the length and the deliberate pace I'm sure went against it.

I was surprised at the matter-of-factness of the rejection, though. Well-known for their personalized rejections, this one had a real perfunctory, dare-I-say, form rejection feel to it.

And not that I'm anything special, but I have been published in their lone anthology and have a story in their current issue, so (silly me) I suppose I expected more.

The story and its rejection brings to mind something else I've been thinking about lately, and that is when you're not very well known, I suppose it's easy for an editor to reject a fair-to-middling story (though I think this story is good) for whatever reason.

But the dream is that one day, editors will be knocking on YOUR door to contribute a story, just so your name will be on the magazine or the anthology or whatever, to help sell a few copies. And I suspect in most instances, once you've got the name, that most readers will like and enjoy your story whatever the quality, if only because YOU wrote it.

I'm thinking of that Stephen King story where the writer was staying in a hotel and, shall we say, pleasured himself each evening, leaving his essence on the sheets. Now, the maid at that hotel knew all about the famous writer and his nighttime habits, and she decided that she wanted her child to have the genes to one day be a famous writer too.

Now, I won't give it away, but the story itself (though it stuck with me) is fairly pedestrian. I suspect King slapped it together and threw it on the bottom of his pile, and then, one day, someone said "Please, Mr. King! We need a story, ANY story!" and King said, sure, yeah, okay. And this was the story he gave them.

Well, I think, as time goes on, you wind up with more than a few stories like that in the bottom drawer, and someday, somebody may just want them.

Anyway, sent The Intersection off to that Blood Bound Books Night Terrors anthology. The pay is shit, but for the three best stories they pay more. And if the contract is too restrictive, I'll simply withdraw it (on the off-chance it gets selected, that is. Don't wanna count my chickens.)

Got some excellent feedback from beta readers on Wood Work and have modified it with their thoughts in mind. Between you and me, the more I read this story, the more I like it. Thinking of sending it off to Parsec's upcoming End of the Rainbow anthology. It has a sort of quest element to it, so it might be a fit. Hell, I'll even throw in a rainbow if I think it'll make a difference. Hope to get that out today or tomorrow.

Gonna finish urder next. For some reason, I've been trying to keep that to 500 words, when most flash limits are 1000 words. Need to flesh out the creature as well. Can't leave it ALL up to the reader's imagination now, can we.

Also working on a crime flash piece that I think has a nifty twist I may send off to Big Pulp or one of those crime sites just for the hell of it. After that, I reopen my pirate novel.

Happy writing!

With Most Sincere Apologies to the St. Petersburg Police

2010-02-13T10:22:00.022-05:00

It was about 6:30 this morning and still dark out when I began to hear the pounding on the door.

Now, I live on the second floor, the entryway is shared by two other apartments, and seeing as how I don't know a single soul in this town, the knock certainly wasn't for me.

The only other time someone pounded on the door like that was in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day. On that occasion, after the pounding had gone on a while, I did pop my head out, went down the stairs, and asked the women what she wanted.

She, of course, was looking for someone I did not know (have I mentioned I know not a soul in this town, with the exception of my landlady and the maintenance guys, who have keys anyway, and if they wanted to get up to see me, they could?)

Anyhoo, this morning's knocker was certainly tenacious, but after a while, the pounding stopped.

But only a few minutes later, I heard voices down below and then footsteps coming up the stairs, followed by a knock on my door.

I approached the door tentatively and said, "Hello?"

My landlady's voice came from the other side.

"Yes, Mr. Myers, the police are here and they have a few questions for you."

Heart pounding, I went to the door, opened it, and there on the landing was my landlady, looking like she'd just been woken up, and yes, a uniformed police officer. My landlady went on.

"They need you to go down to the station for a few minutes."

She let me stand there a moment, looking stunned or faint or however the hell I looked, before she said, "They need you to move your car. There's a road race today and they need to clear that side of the street."

It took a few moments for my befuddled mind to process this information.

It had indeed been a police officer pounding on my door, looking for me, and not being able to contact me, they phoned the landlady, whose phone number is posted on the door.

And they knew it was my car from the parking permit on the back, or maybe the license plate (funny to think of computers humming somewhere looking up my address . . .)

So when I finally did process all of this, I looked at the officer and said, "Man, I am so sorry. I mean . . . I heard the knocking, but I don't know anybody in this town . . . and figured it couldn't be for me . . ."

He continued to stare at me like I was a suspicious character. And, considering all the facts, I suppose I was.

Anyway, still shouting my apologies, my landlady and the officer turned and left. I threw on some jeans and moved my car to the other side of the street.

But most sincere thanks (and continued apologies) to the St. Petersburg police and the officer in question. You went out of your way, and I certainly appreciate it.

And yet another reason to like St. Pete: Where I come from, they woulda just towed the car.

So, now that I have a few hours distance, and can look back and even smile about it, I have a message for my landlady (who is a hot shit, by the way):

Payback's a bitch.

Where do ideas come from?

2010-02-12T06:33:00.022-05:00

Damned if I know. I don't get too many of them, and when I do, I'd better start writing or they'll be lost forever.

But with nothing else to write about, I thought today I'd offer the genesis for my three most recent (and yet to be published) stories.

* * *
The Intersection:

"The intersection of Bynum and Chambers was the most dangerous in town, often listed as the most dangerous in the state. Over the years, highway engineers were called in, the road was widened and regraded, vegetation cut back, and blind spots removed. Yet the accidents continued.

Only after a horrific crash seven years ago killed a mother and her infant son were lights finally installed. And the accidents continued. If anything, Foley thought, they'd only gotten worse. And from where he sat, sipping his coffee and watching the cars go by, none of it made any sense."

The idea for this one came from an intersection in the town where I lived for the past twenty years, located on an idyllic, lightly traveled residential street.

Now, halfway down this idyllic street, with well-maintained middle-class houses on the four corners, there's a cross street with stop signs on both sides.

It is an abattoir. A death portal.

One of the most dangerous intersections in the state, it has left a dozen dead over the past decade, and dozens more crippled and injured. And there's no reason for it, that I can see anyway.

The story offers at least one explanation . . .

* * *
urder:

"He dropped onto the bed and reached for the remote, knowing it was the filthiest item in any hotel room. This one did not disappoint.

Brown crusty stuff was embedded along the upper row of buttons. Remnants of grey matter ran along the side. A clear sticky substance was visible along the bottom.

He stared at it a while trying to find the order button. Most of the letters were too schmutzed or worn down to be read. It didn't help that he'd left his glasses in the car."

Sometimes, ideas come in the mail, like this e-mail I got from my sister just last week:

"I thought of you the other night when I stayed at a Holiday Inn in Concord. I was trying to use the remote to the TV there, didn't have my glasses on, and saw a button that looked to me to say 'Murder'.

I thought to myself, I don't want to order up a 'Murder'...jeesh what is wrong with the world! I put my glasses on and the button said 'Order', but you could barely read the 'O'....."

But what would happen, say, if the button really did say . . . murder?

Sometimes the things just write themselves.

* * *
Wood Work:

"Stepping onto the porch, he looked up and saw the late spring sun had almost reached its zenith. Lowering his head, he looked across their narrow strip of yard and saw immediately what she was talking about. The trees were indeed encroaching upon their land.

They only had about thirty feet to begin with. But the shade from long limbs now covered about a third, leaving only a narrow strip of sunshine between the trees and the shade of the house. The thick, bushy undergrowth beneath the trees had also migrated, leaving about ten feet less backyard than they had when they moved in.

Even as he watched, the light breeze blew more shoots from the trees onto their lawn. He saw then too that the air was thick with universes of floating pollen and felt a sudden headache coming on."

Not sure that's gonna be the final title, and confess too that I've been struggling with ending this one for the past week. I've only got another three-hundred words to go, I know exactly how it's going to end, and yet the words do not come. Gonna give it another stab today.

This one was barely a wisp of an idea when I started it, so maybe that's why it's been so vexing to write. And it was inspired more by "environment" than anything else, if you know what I mean. And if not, I mean this:

The kitchen window and rear slider in the condo I used to live in overlooked about thirty feet of lawn and then a dense patch of woods. In the late spring and summer, I had a neighbor who often sunned herself back there.

One day, I noticed that the trees and bushes beneath had migrated, leaving only a bare patch of sun for only a few minutes a day.

What would happen, I wondered, if this were a house where the wife liked to sun herself, and asked her milquetoast husband to cut back the trees?

And what if the trees didn't want to be cut back?

I know, I know. Just the wisp of an idea. With killer trees?

Well, the story had a mind of its own, and didn't go quite that way. And it may make no sense or be unpublishable for all I know. Still, as I noted last week, I'm determined to finish those half-dozen or so I started, and this was one of them.

Because for me, anyway, ideas are NOT a dime a dozen. They are more precious than gold.

Coming in 2011

2010-02-09T12:45:00.011-05:00

I'm sure some of you have been curious, but I wanted to wait until the publisher updated their website before I posted anything.

But apparently . . . it's official.

Can't tell you how excited I am to be working with these folks, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that their specialty is vampires and they hail from my home state.

Some of my writer friends might also be interested in a recent blog post the publisher made about the recent Amazon kerfuffle, which details exactly the relationship she has with her authors and offers a few more reasons why I'm excited about it.

Coming in 2011 . . .

Applewood

by Brendan Myers

An ancient evil awakens in the central Massachusetts town of Grantham, and only a small group of teenage friends realize what's happening. As they desperately work to learn the truth and fight the thing destroying their community, some of them risk being changed forever.

Learn more . . .

Some Silly Things I Do

2010-02-08T11:25:00.013-05:00

Well, not silly, necessarily. Quirky, maybe.

But as I put the finishing touches on a couple of stories, hoping to build a bit of a backlog, and gird myself to open up another unfinished piece that is sure to be novel length, I find myself doing many things that are now habits. For what it's worth, here are a few:

I'm a compulsive spelling / grammar checker, but not just for correctness. I confess I'm obsessed with Flesh-Kincaid readability statistics. If I sink below 80% and am graded higher than seventh-grade level, I know I'm probably trying too hard and need to rewrite.

In my quest for a Flesh-Kincaid "B" grade, I run my stuff through multiple programs, among them Microsoft Word's built-in grammar checker (I do most all my writing in Word), an old public domain program I downloaded years ago called "Doc Stats" that provides statistics such as word counts, most often used words, etc., and WordPerfect's built-in Grammatik program.

When writing in Word, I often shift my page size to "5 x 8" Index Card, with margins of one-inch on the top and bottom and .5 inches on the side. I do this for a couple of reasons. One, it gives a view two-pages up, making it look like two pages of an open book. This gives me a hint of what it might look like on the printed page, and lets me know if I'm using too many dialogue attributions, whether my paragraphs are too long or too short, etc.

I do it too because I remember reading years ago that Raymond Chandler did much of his writing on index cards. When asked why, he answered something like, "I want to make sure something interesting happens at least once on each card. If I can't write something interesting or exciting on the space of an index card, then I'm doing something wrong."

Seems like good advice to me.

I downloaded OpenOffice years ago because of its .PDF capabilities, and use it often to output my work to .PDF format for proof-reading and editing. There is something about looking at that bold, black .PDF font on the screen that makes stuff leap out at you. I'll have the .PDF open and the .DOC open and edit the .DOC as I read the .PDF. When that's done, I do it all over again.

Lots more quirks, no doubt, but those come immediately to mind. Curious to know what are some of the quirky things that you do?

PS: The document above has 420 words, 10% passive sentences (ugh!), a 65.9 Flesh-Kincaid Reading Ease score, and reads at a ninth-grade level. Not good!

For Everyone's Sake

2010-02-05T13:56:00.021-05:00

I was perusing the New York Times website today when the following article in their Personal Health section caught my eye: Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake.

I confess it was the part that came after the comma that intrigued me, and after clicking on the article, I was not disappointed.

You can read it for yourself, but it is essentially a book review that discusses the same sorts of things we've been hearing ad nauseum, how our western diet isn't good for us, how it leads to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. You know the litany.

In addition, it being the New York Times, you won't be surprised to learn it's also served up with a heaping helping of self-righteousness, like this doozy: I, for one, have been writing and speaking about them for decades.

But it was the eighth paragraph that proved my instinct correct, where I stumbled upon this tidbit:

I will add a third reason: our economy cannot afford to continue to patch up the millions of people who each year develop a diet-related ailment.

On the face of it, it makes sense. The things we do that are deleterious to our own health also affect others in lots of ways, such as lost work, shorter lifetimes, higher insurance rates, etc.

But it occurs to me there are a number of other activities that also contribute to these things, and you don't hear them talked about much in conjunction with self-righteous articles like the above, or indeed even in the recent health-care debate.

For example, I was reading about that snowboarder who suffered the horrific brain injury out west and wondered what his insurance situation was, what all the snowboarders, skiers, snowmobilers, and those who engage in these risky activities insurance situation is.

Now, I'm not a skier, therefore the risk of me being injured in winter sports is minimal. Nevertheless, am I in the same insurance pool as skiers? Should they be made to pay more?

And more to the point: Should our economy continue to "patch them up" when they suffer from the negative results of their own choices?

We've also had a number of horrific motorcycle accidents near where I live recently, a state with no helmet law I might add. Now, I don't ride a motorcycle. But am I in the same insurance pool as those who do? Am I subsidizing motorcyclists and skiers and snowboarders and every other sort of risky behavior that folks engage in for "fun"?

Of course I am.

But you don't hear people assailing these inherently risky behaviors in the same way that you hear people assailing smokers or the obese.

And you don't read snarky articles in the New York Times about how our society "cannot afford to continue to patch up the millions of people who each year" engage in such risky behavior.

I wonder why that is.

Unmasked

2010-02-02T07:09:00.005-05:00

Signed the contract over the weekend for publication of my vampire novel. In conjunction with that, I had to provide a bio and a pic for their website. Writing a bio is no fun, and most of my pics are in storage.

At any rate, without further ado, meet . . . me:

"Before devoting himself full-time to writing, Brendan P. Myers held a variety of senior positions in Information Technology throughout the Boston area, in fields as diverse as engineering, real estate investment, and commercial banking.

His short stories can be found in the Northern Haunts anthology from Shroud Publishing, Dead Worlds: Undead Stories from Living Dead Press, and Malpractice: An Anthology of Bedside Terror from Stygian Publications.

His Writers of the Future award-winning novelette Adamson's Rock and his novels Hope Town and Sumner Gardens are available online from all the usual places.

A lifelong resident of Massachusetts and die hard Red Sox fan, he has recently relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida and is loving every minute of it. You can always find him brooding at http://bpmyers.blogspot.com/

Hi, there.

Back on the horse

2010-01-29T19:38:00.025-05:00

"And I tell you, it has taken many years to put together what I've shown you today, and I don't know what to make of it either. Who can tell? Maybe the Indians are taking their revenge, reaching out across time to wreak the same havoc that was so unmercifully wrought upon them. Or maybe there's a kind of magnetic force at work, something cosmic or quantum that we don't yet understand. Maybe it's a portal to another world, or another dimension, something akin to a black hole. But you know what I think, Chief? What I truly think? What sixty-seven years on this Earth has taught me?"

Well . . . unless you're one of my beta readers or the editor for the next issue of Necrotic Tissue, you may have to wait a while for the answer to that question.

But I wanted to check in and say that, while I have not fully achieved my goal for this month, I'm proud to say I've finished something, something that has been half-finished for more than a year.

I suck at titles, but halfway through this one it became clear what the title should be, the only title it could possibly have.

It is called The Intersection, and concerns a small town police chief with a vexing traffic problem . . .

Funny thing about this one, I already had a strong start, and also knew exactly how it would end. It was the middle part that was all mushy.

But I said I was going to pick up one of my half-finished jobbies and finish it, then send it off to Necrotic Tissue before their submission period ends tomorrow. Done and done.

At almost 5,000 words, this one scrapes the upper word limit for NT, and they only accept one of those (I think) for each issue.

I've also heard this issue is kind of special, that whichever long story gets selected wins some sort of contest, so the odds are very much against it.

But if they don't accept it, with a little more polish, I think it may be perfect for Shroud. Their submissions open again in May.

Until then, lots more half-finished tales to begin anew, and miles to go before I sleep . . .

Synchronicity II

2010-01-28T06:18:00.038-05:00

Because of my recent move, mail to my old address has to jump through a few hoops to get to me, so I find myself still awaiting my contributor's copy of the latest issue of Necrotic Tissue featuring my 100-word fiction short "Adagio."

This past Sunday morning, I went to Google see if the magazine had become available and discovered that it had. As always, the cover looks really, really cool.

So, to friends and family and all the ships at sea, this fine magazine is now available for purchase, directly from the Necrotic Tissue website or from Amazon.Com.

Pick up a copy! Support your wastrel brother and friend!

You'll be glad you did.

I've mentioned before my own ambivalence about my story ("Is it really any good? Are they just being nice to me? Am I just pulling the wool over their eyes?") emotions perhaps familiar to the more neurotic among us.

But I get that same feeling any time something I've written gets put into print. Because now, it's out there . . . for all the world to see . . . and there's no taking it back.

And so, with these emotions on my mind, after learning the story was out there, I decided to grab my bag and take a long walk around my new city. It was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the seventies.

I walked the few blocks down to the waterfront, to stare at the beautiful skyline of waterfront condos and marinas packed with thousands of boats.

It was such a nice day, I grabbed my camera from my bag and took a few snapshots.

Still, I continued my brooding. I walked along the waterfront, past dozens of long docks mooring hundreds of sailboats each.

I stopped at one point, to lean on a fence overlooking the water, all the while still wondering:

Is it really good? Are they just being nice to me? Am I just pulling the wool over their eyes?

Then, I opened my own eyes and saw this (click for big version):

What it means? I have no idea.

But for those who have read (or will read) the story, you'll understand there is perhaps a double-dose of synchronicity in the image above.

Made me feel a little bit better, anyway.

On a related note . . .

Before composing this post, I learned that my friend, the marvelously talented writer Aaron Polson, has already received his copy of the magazine and has provided a review of it on his excellent Skull Salad Reviews blog.

I'm embarrassed to report in this space the kind things he said about my story, however please click the link above and read all about it.

All I can say to Aaron is I can't thank you enough.

It really means a lot.

And the check's in the mail . . .

The Sweetest Words I've Ever Heard

2010-01-25T06:54:00.005-05:00

I've mentioned in this space before that a small press had asked for a full of one of my novels. I'm delighted to report that the below arrived in my in-box on Saturday:

"Dear Mr. Myers,

I've spent the last two days [finally!] giving your manuscript . . . the close reading that it deserved, and I like it. I'd like to publish it.

And I'm interested to hear more about your sequel. Readers love sequels. In fact, readers love series."

Now anything can happen, and I've had my hopes dashed before.

But rumor has it a contract is on its way, and I intend to return it immediately before they change their mind.

I'll proudly sign on with these folks. It is a small but well-respected niche press, who has garnered very positive reviews for the small number of books they have published.

And I'll be looking to some of my writer and editor friends to say nice things about it we can use for blurbs. Be ready! I promise to one day return the favor.

And as always, thanks for reading.

Dispatch from St. Pete

2010-01-19T11:16:00.022-05:00

"the town of the newly wed and the living dead . . . a good place to come to die." – Jack Kerouac

The city itself reminds me of waking up the morning after my parents had a party. The living room is a bit askew. Chairs have been moved out of their usually precise positions. Mysterious new spots have appeared here and there on the carpet.

Half-filled glasses and empty bowls of snack mix and overflowing ashtrays adorn the coffee and end tables. The room is empty now.

But you just know it must have been one hell of a party.

Homeless stand on every street corner bearing signs asking for money. Every other street corner has a hand-made sign reading some variation of: "Must Sell: Three Bedroom. $32,000. Cash Only."

The news reports that 60% of Florida homeowners are upside-down on their mortgages.

Two out of three storefronts are empty. Even the pawnshops appear to lack for business, as if everything that could be pawned has already been pawned.

Morgan Memorial and Goodwill are two places appearing to do a brisk business. And the tattoo parlors. The many, many tattoo parlors.

The weather too appears to have it in for South Florida. Temperatures have been record cold. 30% of Florida's winter crop has been lost. Tens of thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shores.

I fear my new neighbors will think me a cold weather Jonah and try to keep a low profile.

Every other radio station is devoted to Jesus. He's really big down here. Even has his own show on the FM dial, "The Jesus Christ Show." Every time I tune in, there's a guest host.

In the news, an eleven-year-old girl and her fifteen-year-old boyfriend are charged with pouring gasoline around her mother's bed and setting it alight.

A young man convicted in the infamous "homeless murders" of a few years ago raps out a song on the witness stand while awaiting the jury's death sentence verdict.

Everyone I've met has been wonderful. More on them later.

But only time will tell if Kerouac was right.

I take no solace knowing he died eleven months after pronouncing his own judgment.

And all the ships at sea . . .

2010-01-14T16:22:00.031-05:00

America's number one talk-show host was already in a foul mood that morning. He noticed a small scrape on the door of his Hummer after the valet brought it around. Adding to his trauma, traffic to the studio was a real bitch.

Maybe that was why on this day (as opposed to any another) he was particularly sharp-tongued, inspiring some of his thirty-million or so listeners to action.

During the first hour, he said he believed Muslims in America were a fifth-column bent on our destruction.

When a caller suggested we try to befriend and understand them, the host countered, "I have a different idea. You want to befriend them. I want to kill them."

In his sweaty apartment outside Newark, listener Joe Sikes thought that was a splendid idea. There was a Muslim temple just down the street. It was almost time for afternoon prayers. The place would be crowded.

Returning from a station break, the host ominously intoned it would soon be impossible to buy guns.

"They're going to take our guns away, just like the Nazis did!"

He reminded his listeners that German citizens who refused to surrender their guns were murdered in their homes by jack-booted thugs.

Scott Foster, an unemployed laborer outside Philadelphia, wasn't going to let that happen. In fact, he'd seen a motorcycle cop just the other day whose boots were polished to a fine sheen.

Would he be the one who tried to take his guns?

From my cold dead hands, he thought.

Gathering his guns and ammunition, he overturned the dining room table and made himself a hidey-hole. He put on his bulletproof vest and killed his mother before calling 911.

In the second hour, the subject of abortion came up. The host railed against the "baby killers," and not for the first time mentioned one doctor by name and the place where he worked

That was all listener Phil Hastings needed to hear. He'd been waiting and praying for just such a sign. The clinic was just a few towns away.

In the third hour, the host questioned the President's eligibility for office, a subject he returned to often.

"He's not even a citizen! He has no right to be President!"

In a long hallway outside the kitchen of a D.C. ballroom, police officer James Casey was listening too. One of the cooks had the radio playing softly.

In between the applause and laughter and din of clinking glasses, he caught himself nodding when the host said he no longer recognized the country that he loved.

"This country is being taken away from us! Right before our eyes! And this President is responsible!"

He heard a roar of applause from the ballroom.

Even before it crested, he saw movement down the hallway, men with earpieces and bulges preparing for the VIP to exit.

As the talk-show host raged on about the usurper President, the cop realized there was nothing he could do about him.

But the woman he loved had just come out the door.

One Word at a Time

2010-01-12T07:24:00.004-05:00

Writing again. Slowly. Painfully.

Opened up one of my abandoned shorts.

Moved the character from the porch to beneath the tree.

Something bad happens there.

That's good, for me.

Alas, it's bad for him.

I fear he's not going to make it.

(Hell, who am I kidding? He's not going to make it.)

I remember vividly beginning this one.

On a beautiful spring day.

Filled with inspiration.

I abandoned it halfway in because (I told myself) I didn't know where it was going. But in truth, I did know.

The real reason I stopped writing is the same reason everybody stops writing.

It sucks. It doesn't make any sense. I suck.

The dreaded inner-editor rearing his ugly head.

I've got a half-dozen such stories abandoned similarly.

But you know what?

Finishing what you start (even if it does suck and doesn't make any sense) is what makes a writer a writer.

And I don't have to send the damn thing out anywhere. I just need to finish it. And when it's done, I'll let it rest awhile and then read it again with new eyes.

Maybe . . . just maybe . . . it won't be as bad as I fear.

So the plan is, finish this one up, revisit two other abandoned tales, finish them up, and then decide which one gets sent to Necrotic Tissue before January 31, their deadline for submissions for their next issue.

And suck or not, NT is getting one of these stories.

The worst they can do is reject it.

But at least I'll be back in the game!

February will bring a sequel to "Hope Town."

But that's a story for another day.