Meanwhile…

I’m putting together a package of books for a cousin, who’s spending his summer in sunny Afghanistan. Any suggestions? He’s a sci fi/adventure fan. I’ll assume he’s read all the big mainstream hits.

Continuing to plug away at the monthly writing contest. I’ll need to finish up two stories today! Plus a movie review that was sort of dumped on me at the last minute. Insanity!

An excerpt from last night’s efforts. I honestly have no idea where this came from. It’s kind of random. I think, though, crafting the description of the dramatic Illiad-style invasion of the moon (not in this excerpt) is some of the most fun I’ve had writing in a while. Continue reading

I had fun with this one. In fact, with some work I think it might be worth submitting somewhere. So here’s the opening couple of paragraphs. Unfortunately, the really good parts of the story are closer to the end, but oh well. I will say that later in the story I feature the following sentence: “Beyond the transparent hull above the crowd, Virtuoso Of The Serious Combat (Ike was assured something was lost in the translation; he would argue that many things were lost in the translation when it came to Virtuoso Of The Serious Combat) rocked their fucking socks off.”

I have a number of friends in bands – you can’t attend the University of North Texas without sleeping with and/or befriending at least three or four music majors or local band members. I could say I know someone who won a Grammy, but really who doesn’t? At any rate, it seemed a shame that I don’t really have any music-inspired stories. This is an early attempt.

I have three more flash pieces to write in two days to win the monthly prompt contest.

(My own musical endeavors ended sometime in middle school when I moved to a new school and dropped band. I wasn’t that good at it anyway.)

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Every Day Fiction is in the process of selecting stories for the Best of 2009 Anthology (there’s a thread about it here – if you haven’t already, feel free to check out my last couple of stories published there, maybe comment/rate them, and if you have a forum account feel free to mention me). I think “Apotheosis Cake” might be worth putting in there, but I won’t be surprised if I get left out.

What the nomination thread has really made me realize is that my output this year has really not been very good. Most of the other writers listed in the nomination thread have got a good half dozen stories to pick from. Jens and Stephanie are pumping out novels faster than I’m getting flash pieces done, and Erin has created an entire new person, from scratch. There is no excuse!

I’ve worked on far fewer prompts this year, and out of the couple of stories I’ve had published recently (or soon-to-be-published), at least one of them was actually written last year. I’ve more or less decided not to attempt NaNo this year, in the interest of getting something done instead of wasting a month, but really I’ve been wasting most of this year. I feel stagnant.

To my credit, most of the stories I submit get accepted within a couple of attempts. It would be nice to say that I’m just exacting and have high standards for myself, but it’s really just because I’ve actually only finished a handful of stories this year, and the few I have submitted just happened to hit the right editors at the right time.  I should be getting a steady stream of unfortunate and regretful form letters. But I’m not because I’m simply not sending out enough submissions. I have a ton of half-finished stories laying around doing nothing for me. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have a piece in Every Day Fiction every month or so, or in every issue of A Thousand Faces or 10Flash. I should be working on podcast stories, too, an area I would love to get into.

So starting in August, I’m going to start pumping out the short fiction, as much as I can manage. I’m setting a goal of submitting at least one finished short piece a month (whether it’s flash or longer works). That doesn’t seem like much, but for me it’s a huge jump in productivity. I need to get this discipline down before I attempt a novel again.

The whole purpose of setting up this blog to begin with was to force myself to write more and on a regular basis. It worked well for a while, but I’ve slacked off these past few months. Time to get back on track.

Listen to me, I sound like Charlie Brown, gearing up to take another run at Lucy and that damn football.

Sorry about the rambling. Gay has a great post about this sort of thing over at the Flash Fiction Chronicles that pretty well mirrors how I’m feeling at the moment. Here’s to rejection!

I’m determined to win the writing group’s writing contest this month, though this is actually the first piece I’ve found the time to finish lately. Actually, I wouldn’t say this is even a finished story, it’s really just an action scene.

For some reason I thought it would be fun to create this Mexican crime-fighting duo. Goyo is very much the standard Luchador, but I have an interesting idea for Lady Remedios that I may expand into a full story.

I should note that, for a Texan, I know virtually no Spanish, and visiting Mexico has never appealed to me. You can’t drink the water, right? And it seems like lots of people die there, often of falling on bullets. Doesn’t sound like great vacation material to me. I have good Mexican friends here, anyway, no need to go. I do, however, find the people quite interesting.

As a result, there isn’t really any Spanish in this piece. As a fun nod to comics, I did encapsulate the dialogue in <>. Comic book letterers used to do this all the time to indicate that people are speaking in foreign languages, why not here? I’m not sure it’s a technique that you could use for a mass audience, as they’ve probably never heard of it, but I think in the right circles it could work.

Anyway, here’s the scene. It’s really just a big action scene, me getting a feel for the characters, how they look, and speak. I’d originally intended to make Remedios an empath, with the power only to heal (which you can kind of see there in the paragraph introducing Goyo), and I think I’ll still do that. Telekinesis was a little more handy for this, though, and it just kind of naturally popped in there. So that probably makes all this useless, but who knows?

I like the villain, Subterráneo. He almost fits into the Mole Man archetype, but rather than some mad scientist or megalomaniac who feels the surface world has wronged him, he’s basically just a lunatic who likes to occasionally surface and fuck with people. That’s pretty much all I had in mind for this. I may develop him further at some point in the future.

Based very loosely on this prompt:

Write a story where an earthquake is/has taken place. You can decide the severity of this natural disaster.

Almost 1,200 words!

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For today’s post I will direct you to the Flash Fiction Chronicles, where I chat about research for stories. Exciting!

The article also talks about some of the inspiration for “Four Liars,” in case that is of interest to you.

This past weekend I went to see the new Harry Potter movie. The movie was fine, I enjoyed it. But there was a scene that reminded me of a common storytelling event that I’ve grown weary of – amazement at the fantastic.

Mostly this annoys me in stories in which the character should be a veteran of the incredible. Harry, for example, has battled dragons and giant snakes, rode a flying car to escape spiders the size of horses, and routinely encounters ghosts at his school. Is he really going to be impressed when someone waves their wand and cleans up a room?

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a sense of wonder imparted to the viewer. But don’t have Harry staring like a slack-jawed yokel every time someone levitates a pencil or fixes a crack in a window.

This is one of the reasons I’ve grown a little tired of the “origin” story and tend to not write them for my superheroes. How many scenes do we need of someone looking at their hands in wonder, or trying to figure out how their powers work for the first time, often with “wacky” and “hilarious” results.

We see this so often because of the standard storytelling device wherein an outsider is chosen to tell the story. This outsider offers basically the same perspective as the audience, and provide someone normal that the reader/viewer can identify with. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s an effective way to tell a story. But I think when it comes to these fantasy and science fiction stories, especially late in the story when the character should have long since acclimated to the fantastic happenings around them, it’s a little bit of a stretch. We should consider, too, that the audience has likely seen something far more impressive in other stories.

Save the awe for when something genuinely awesome happens.

Things have been crazy busy this past week or so. We finally decided to get rid of our pool, which has been nothing but a drag on our time and money for the past year. So the last couple hours of each day have been spent slaving away at dismantling the damned thing (work and the unbearable heat pretty much make it impossible to anything during the day). Work has been busy. This past Saturday was spent at the Can’t Stop the Serenity charity event, which was fantastic, as usual. I spent Sunday wading through half a foot of sludge to cut the liner out of the pool. I’m be glad when it’s all finally gone, at least.

Most annoying, I missed out on seeing Moon this past weekend. Since Fort Worth is a cinematic wasteland, I’ll have to either drive to Dallas to see it or wait for the DVD.

At any rate, I’ve been kind plucking away at this zombie flash piece, but I’m not very happy with it. It needs to be more immediate and immerse the reader in what’s going on. It feels too much like a big info dump in these first few paragraphs, which in my opinion doesn’t work well for flash.

It’s going to be a very depressing story. My stuff is usually pretty light and fluffy. I almost feel bad for how dark this story will be. This is what happens when you write about zombies and it’s not a comedy, I suppose.

So here’s the first few paragraphs. I’ll be keeping some of this, but likely reworking it heavily to make it feel more like the reader is there in the house with them, rather than reading some account of it later.

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Congrats to Erin, who yesterday rather unexpectedly gave birth to her daughter, Summerlyn. It comes rather early, but both mother and baby are fine.

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Serenity charity screening in Dallas. If you’re in the Dallas area this weekend, you should swing by.

And work has been busy, so I haven’t really had a chance or the energy to post here. Which is unfortunate, because I have some ideas in mind.

The people behind Public Enemies should have read my article over at the Flash Fiction Chronicles on how to focus your story and not waste a bunch of time on unimportant world building.

I just noticed that my steampunkish story “Four Liars” is live over at the premier issue of 10Flash. Check it out and let me know what you think, over there or here.

There are some other awesome writers featured there as well, including Jordan, Gay, and Erin, so you should find something you like. I need to check them all out myself.