Meanwhile…

I almost forgot, but the writing group is doing our annual Story Every Day contest this month. For the next couple of weeks we’ll be churning out a short story every single day. It is crazy!

Thanks to some forgetfulness and a minor communications snafu, we’re actually starting today instead of yesterday like we’d originally intended. But no biggie. So I’ll be trying to post excerpts of my attempts each day.

This is a little of what I wrote last night at the write-in to kick things off. I thought this might serve as a good companion piece to a story I’ll have appearing in A Thousand Faces later this year.

Continue reading

Good news – A Thousand Faces accepted a new flash piece from me! I had a lot of fun writing this one. Look for that later this year.

Tuesday evening I pounded out more than I’ve written in a while. Perhaps I’m getting back on track after a pretty dry couple of months.

I’m a fan of writing these interview-style works. I enjoy writing dialogue, and the form really lets you explore the character and how they see the world and interact with others. Don’t have to worry about advancing a plot or framing an action scene. The story is in how the characters reveal themselves through their speaking. Just a couple of people sitting around chatting. It also makes me feel like I’m working on a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary (though I’m not nearly so talented as those guys).

There’s great poetry done in this style, too. So I thought, more as an exercise to get my brain going again more than anything else, that I’d write a few interviews with my fictional alien rock band, Virtuoso of the Serious Combat. By the time I got through the first section, the spark of a fuller story had ignited.

But do these sorts of things work as prose stories? I don’t know how entertaining they really are to anyone other than me. It may be that this will make a great screenplay for a short film, but not a short story. We shall see! I understand Script Frenzy is next month, too. Perhaps this will give me a chance to break in my copy of Celtx.

Anyway, here’s the rough first part of the interview series. Let me know if this looks like something that might be entertaining, in any medium. Continue reading

A Thousand Faces is having a sale for today only – everything is 25% off with the coupon code CYBERBOOKS. If you have any interest in superhero fiction you should check it out. Issue 4, featuring my story “Shades of Red” (as well as some great stories by Erin and Jens), is only $8.97, before the discount! These are great deals, people.

What also may be of interest is that the latest issue is out, featuring a story by Erin and holy cats now I see one by KC Ball as well.

Man alive. I’m the superhero guy and you’ve all left me in the dust. I need to get back on that.

Clearly, I’ve fallen way behind on my Story Every Day exercises. I just barely squeezed one out for today.

Still, I thought it would be fun to play around with a minor bit character I created for Shades of Red way back when. I had to look him up just to remember his name. In a way this is sort of a follow-up to that story, one of the consequences of that adventure. Some of the best genre stories are from the point of view of someone not directly involved with the big epic that’s taking place. The little guy on the side who’s a witness to these big events can offer a fresh perspective on the action and help flesh out the universe at the same time.

This story involves Radio Gal, who if you’ve been around here long enough you’ve seen once or twice before. Just the first few hundred words. For some reason I have a blast writing these scenes of superheroes just sitting around talking. Continue reading

My wife made this awesome cake for my birthday last week.

Don’t recognize the picture? Then clearly you need to head over to A Thousand Faces and check it out!