Archive for the ‘ideas’ Category

The First Short Story For The Collection Is Finished

Posted: December 20, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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And what a short story it was! It scared me a little during the writing process. Me! And I’m the guy who thanks Mrs. Voorhees for her hockey-masked son Jason. Tells you what sort of a story it is.

Now, how can I tell you about this short story without giving too much away? Well first, it’s longer than the average short story. But then again, this is for a collection. Most writers who release collections will make their short stories a little longer than usual just because they can. Stephen King definitely does it a few times, even if his stories end up as novellas in the collection. Thankfully this one didn’t get to novella length (20k-40k words) but it’s longer than usual.

But like I said, this story scared me. Why? Well, imagine yourself placed in a situation like The Hunger Games, where you’re in a battle you don’t want to be in and someone else is controlling everything that’s going on. Even worse, it’s a psychological battle. No weapons, just some crazy crap that’s messing with your head. It can be taxing, especially if you’re in a space that doesn’t get much bigger than your high school campus.

And then I added a few other things. For one, I added a religious zealot with a bit of charisma and a thing for power? Well, after every disaster–real or just percieved in your head (I’m talking to Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris on the latter)–there’s always someone saying the world’s about to end and we better do as s/he says or we’re all going to hell in a shopping cart. And occasionally, people believe them. Which leads to a bunch of problems.

Add a little doom and gloom, a bit of Celtic/English mythology, and my disturbed mind, you get a rabbit’s hole that scares the person who dug it. Nice!

Oh, I forgot to tell you the name of this short story. It’s called “The Quiet Game”, and I think I’ll also make it the title of the collection. It feels like the right thing to do, and it was the right choice to write this story first. I like it, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

But first, I’ve got some editing to do, including turning a male character into a female character, because if the character’s male, there’s a romantic element in this story, and I just don’t want that there. So I’ll take it out and turn the character female. No romantic element, but still plenty of emotion and psychological terror. It’ll be awesome.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and then watch the original Die Hard movie, because the new one is coming out in two months and I’m psyched to see it. Tomorrow I’ll do the editing, send it off to a friend, and then I’ll start on something else.

Trust me, this next story will be something else. It’s based on a friend’s experience, but it’s given the Rami Ungar treatment, so you know it’ll come out twisted and freaky!

I’ll Write A Collection of Short Stories

Posted: December 17, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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“Doth quoth the raven, ‘Write some short stories. CAW!'”

With the first draft of Snake done, I want to work on short stories for a while. And since Reborn City is taking a little longer than expected. I don’t want to work on RC‘s sequel until RC actually comes out, and I won’t get to Snake for a while, I’ve decided to take the short stories I write during this period and make them into a collection, which I’ll release as an e-book for a $1.29 download fee–the same price as a song by a popular artist on iTunes. In addition, I also plan to publish each short story individually, though if you get the whole book there will be extra goodies that don’t come with the short stories alone.

What sort of extra goodies, you may be asking? I’ll let you know another time. First, I got to get to work on the five short stories I plan to include in the collection. Then I have to have the short stories critiqued and edited, then I have to come up with a name for the collection, get some illustrations, purchase copyrights…you understand where I’m going with this, right? Publishing is never easy, even with free e-book creation and distribution.

Oh well. That’s the price we pay, and I’m certainly happy to pay it. Wish me luck and I hope to have more news soon.

A Paper-Clip of Short Stories

Posted: December 12, 2012 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve received a lot of support from friends, family, and readers on the possibility that after I finish Snake, I could work on some short stories and possibly turn that into a collection, and publish it before I publish Reborn City or Snake. Well, I’m still a little undecided on that, but I’m definitely taking some time this vacation to write a few short stories. I actually picked out five of the fifteen ideas I had amassed on my tack board and put them on a paper-clip. And I don’t mean I had some ideas, wrote them on pieces of paper, and paper-clipped them together. What I meant was, I put down some short story ideas on pieces of paper, and then poked them with the business end of a paper-clip. I’d take a photo with my camera and post it here on my blog, but my writing is big and recognizable. There’d be no point if one of my stories gets stolen.

So I’ve selected my short stories. When I get home tomorrow and I finish Snake, I’ll start working on them. Shouldn’t take me too long, especially if I’m not distracted by anything. Unfortunately I tend to get very distracted somedays, so hopefully I can keep my mind on work long enough to make some progress.

So, if anyone is wondering on the short stories I’ll be working on, here’s the ideas I have, without anything that’ll give away anything important:

  • An isolated girl’s school becomes even more isolated one morning, and something dark is beneath it all…
  • A man trying to go clean gets a strange and spooky experience while going cold turkey…
  • A politician running for reelection gets a very deadly and undead visitor while in an old mining town…
  • There’s an old, abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town with a bloody history. And that history is very much alive…
  • A young boy with autism gets an encounter with the spirit world, and his small world might get a shock that’ll shatter it to pieces…

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Especially with the … after every idea. And if, God forbid, the two short stories I sent out recently get rejected, I could add them to this list; they’d make a great collection. Either way, 5 and 7 are lucky numbers for me, so either way I’m good.

Now assuming I decide to do a collection, what should I call it? Definitely nothing with the word “paper-clip” in it; that’d sound too comedic for what I’m doing. Perhaps “The Bells At Dusk”? Or “Eyes in the Smoke”? Or perhaps I’ll take a title from one of these short stories. Who knows? Any suggestions would be great.

Well, I’ve got work to do. Blog on you later!

A Story For The Black Dog

Posted: December 3, 2012 in ideas, Living and Life, short story, Writing
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Peek-a-boo! Woof!

Peek-a-boo! Woof!

Well, I’ve finally come up with an idea for a story that features a black dog spirit, and it came from the most unexpected place. You see, I was writing the latest chapter of Snake while listening to some Native American meditation music on YouTube. I paused to go and take my medication, and while I was taking it, I had epiphany: why not bring together the black dog spirit–normally a harbinger of death and occasionally an emissary of Hell–and meld it somehow with a Native American ceremony? It might require a lot of research, but the payoff would be enormous.

After I took my medication I went and filled out a sticky note, which I then put on my tackboard, bringing the new total to fifteen ideas on that tackboard. As you can tell, I’m going to be extremely busy when I’m done with Snake, but I finally figured out what I’m going to do with that idea for a story and I’m very happy with it.

Now, I know very little about Native American myths involving dogs. I know some of the Plain Indians equate the coyote with evil spirits and sometimes the Devil or King of Darkness. I’ve also heard of something called a “manitou”, but I think that’s some sort of shapeshifter. That’s all I really know, to tell you the truth. However one of my two majors is History, so we’re trained to do research. In addition, I’m at Ohio State, one of the biggest and most diverse schools in the country. More likely than not, we have a department that deals with Native American history and culture, and I’d be more than willing to ask them for help. And if I have to make a trip to our humungous library, all the better; I like to read, and I love that library (if you’ve seen it, you know why).

So before I go, I thought I’d embed the video that inspired me in this post. You should listen to it, and since it’s a long video, you should listen to it when you’re working on something and you need a little background music; you might find yourself inspired, or at the very least you’ll feel relaxed while you work. Enjoy.

So Many New Ideas But No Time At The Moment To Write Them

Posted: November 29, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Last night before I went to bed, I came up with another idea for a short story. It didn’t involve black dog spirits, but it did strike me as an interesting idea, so I got out a sticky note, wrote it down, and tacked it to the tackboard above my desk. The idea was someone who had an unusual addiction (I’m not going to say what this addiction is, for obvious reasons) and what happened to him when he tried to get clean (again, I’m not going to say what happens to him, just to be mysterious). I considered saving it for my creative writing class next semester, where the teacher has a bigger emphasis on literary fiction than my previous teacher, but I felt this story would be better written with some dark, supernatural elements, and besides, I wouldn’t know how to make the conflict interesting if it was just getting over his addiction (there’s enough stories out there, real and otherwise, that are like that).

This makes fourteen stories if you include the black dog idea that’s still forming in the mess that is my head. And yet with my school and work schedules and trying to write Snake in a timely manner (I started Chapter 68 last night), it’s difficult to find time to write them. I probably won’t even consider starting one of these stories until after I finish the first draft of Snake. So until then, I’ll just have to keep them on the tackboard till then.

But after Snake is finished? Well maybe I’ll do some short story writing. It’ll be fun and good practice for me. And who knows? I could get some of them published in magazines, or I could create a short story collection and put it online as an e-book for $1.99. I really won’t know until I start writing.

Until then, I’ll keep collecting ideas as they come to me. When Snake is done, I’ll have plenty of work to keep me occupied until Reborn City is published and I’m ready to tackle its sequel and editing Snake. And keeping busy is a good thing in my book.

Snake & Black Dogs

Posted: November 27, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, it’s been an interesting day for me, and I’m going to end it by watching NCIS and writing during the commercial breaks. I’ll start with the first chapter of Part IV of Snake (wasn’t that a small break?). This part is where the Snake is offered help from a powerful sponsor in his goal to bring down the mafia family he hates so much (why does he hate it? You’ll have to read the novel once it comes out).  This section is much smaller than Part III, with only sixteen chapters, but what sixteen chapters they are! The Snake doesn’t just meet allies: the family he’s fighting calls on its biggest and baddest hitman; someone comes dangerously close to the Snake’s true identity; the Snake has an episode; and there’s a sex scene. Yes, you read that right. A sex scene. It’ll be awkward to write.

WOOF!

As for the “Black Dogs” part of that title up there, I got another idea for a short story. Or perhaps the beginning of an idea for a short story. Black dogs are more than just cute; in folklore, particularly Celtic and English folklore, the black dog is a portent of death and a messenger of the underowrld. Occasionally they also double as benevolent spirits that watch over children and traverlers, but more often they are not something you want to run into on a dark, lonely night. So I’m going to write a short story based on the idea of a black dog spirit. First I’ve got to think of a context for it that’ll be exciting and not relatively used. Nothing’s come to mind yet, but I’ll come up with something; I did with the dybbuk idea.

You know, now that I think about it, this’ll make 13 short story ideas on my tackboard. What do you think? Should I create a collection of short stories and put it on the Internet as an e-book? I could write several of them over winter break. Let me know what you think.

The Power of a Symbol

Posted: November 11, 2012 in ideas, Reflections
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What does this image mean to you?

I started watching The Dark Knight trilogy recently. I’ve seen all the films, but never one after the other, especially with the most recent one, and I thought I’d see them with a new perspective if I watched them as an adult than if I watched only the first two as a teenager. I do have a better understanding of the concepts presented in the films, but I also started thinking about something apparent througout the movies: the power of symbols.

Symbols do a lot in The Dark Knight films, making the men who use them more than just men. Batman is a symbol of fear to the criminals of Gotham, something that can’t be tamed or limited by rules and regulations. The Joker is a symbol of chaos, a psychopath with a sadistic streak who destroys for the sake of destroying…and getting to wear a skirt. Harvey Dent is both a symbol of how one can be twisted and how one can be a lighthouse for good. There are numerous more examples I could use, but let’s face it, Batman is rife with people-as-symbols, and The Dark Knight trilogy goes to great lengths to point that out.

This has made me think about some of the major symbols that men and women embody in some other works of literature and film that I admire. The Phantom of the Opera is both a symbol of fear of the unknown, and a symbol of tragic beauty. V from V for Vendetta has become a symbol for overthrowing tyrannical government through unconventional means (whether that government is tyrannical or not depends on which hacker you ask). Lelouch Lamperouge, the protagonist from my favorite anime Code Geass, symbolizes both mystery, the struggle of every oppressed Japanese man, woman, and child, and finally unconquerable rebellion. Heck, I’m not even Christian, but I can see what Jesus and the cross do for so many Christians around the world!

Even in my own works, there are people who act as symbols. The Snake is a symbol of rebellion against the Camerlengo family, a symbol that some are willing to use to their advantage (see my excerpt a few posts back). And in a work I plan to write someday and a work that I plan to make my personal magnum opus, the main character references the Phantom of the Opera when he decides to take on the evil government in the story, becoming a symbol of revolution by donning a mask and doing things others can’t (I would have him reference Batman, but this guy is operating about a year before Batman ever hit the bookstands).

So what does this tell us, besides that the only examples I can think of are men? Well, that humans-as-symbols are extremely powerful, especially when they are able to cause a stir, a wave in a criminal underworld or in the working staff of an opera house. They represent that which is impossible, that which can’t be imagined, that which shouldn’t come to pass but passes anyway. Why? Well, that depends on a number of reasons. But the point is, a symbol is a powerful thing, and when a man embodies it, it becomes even more so.

“Doll’s Game” Post-Workshop

Posted: November 9, 2012 in ideas, short story, Writing
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Alright, so I just got back from lunch, and now I’m writing about what happened at the workshop, where Doll’s Game was discussed and we talked about ways to improve it. Surprisingly, people didn’t hate it. Some actually liked it, and one person said that compared to the other stories we’ve read this semester, mine was “a breath of fresh air” (I’m going to chalk up that last part to the fact that I’m probably the only person besides the teacher in the class who’s ever been published, so I might have a little more experience than my classmates).

However, there were plenty of things to be improved upon. One was that my story spans about twenty years, summarizing unimportant bits while going into detail about life-changing bits. The gist was that all this information would make a great book as well as a novel (not that I’d write such a novel; in addition to the projects already in progress, I don’t want to write something that has nothing to do with horror). However, my classmates and my teacher recommended that instead of making a novel, I should focus on when my character Renee is eight years old and her life is changed forever, which sounds challenging and interesting to write.

There were some other parts that were pointed out as implausible, and now that I think about it, I can see the logic in this. So I’ll have to fix those areas up as well.

So I’ve got to do some rewriting to do, starting with a short revision exercise that I’ll do over the weekend. Finally I’ll turn in a rewrite in early December, and aftar I get the grade…well who knows? Maybe I’ll have something publishable. Fingers crossed and hope for the best, right?

A Plethora of Short Stories

Posted: November 7, 2012 in ideas, short story
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Or to be more specific, short story ideas.

You see, over the past couple of weeks I’ve had several bursts of inspiration, each leading to an idea for a short story. Today, I’ve reached ten ideas I could run with. The bad news? It’s National Novel Writing Month, and while there’s no rule excluding short story writing during NaNoWriMo, I want to focus on my two novels, one being looked over and edited by a friend, the other at forty-one chapters with the forty-second on its way.

But you know, there’s a silver lining in all this. If I can get through Part III of Snake by the end of the month, I might sit down and punch out one or two of those short stories. And who knows? That might lead to me working on several more. I could end up having a whole collection of short stories…which I could put out as a collective e-book. Oh, that’s a great idea. One sci-fi novel, one thriller, a collection of short stories. Sounds like the beginning of a great bibliography, if you ask me.

So I’ll keep collecting ideas. If I come up with thirteen, I’ll know it’s meant to be for me to do a short story collection. I even have a title in mind (but I’m not sharing it here; it’ll be a surprise).

Edits and Construction

Posted: October 17, 2012 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well yestereday I edited two short stories. One was Doll’s Game, the short story I’m writing for class, though I might decide to edit it again if I can get this idea I got today for the story to work somehow. I also edited Hunt in the Slaughterhouse, a short story I wrote back in April based on a dream I had. I’ve been trying to get around to editing it for a while, but I’ve had some trouble doing that. But yesterday I had the chance and I have to say, it loooks much better. I’ll have to figure out whether or not I want to send it to a magazine right now or if I want to wait and show it to someone else beforehand.

I also had an idea for Dodi Li, the succubus story I wrote over the summer. Although the plot for that story was really bad and I ended up deciding this story was best left as a learning experience, I decided to rewrite it after my teacher in my creative writing class gave me an idea. You see, she had been discussing the story we were critiquing today, and how the author was able to make it difficult to tell what was reality and what was delusion in his story. Listening to that, I just had a burst of inspiration for Dodi Li, which I plan to get to work on as soon as possible. Got to say, those workshop critiques can do wonders for you.

On, and before I forget, remember how I rewrote the outline for my serial killer novel Snake and that I mentioned I’d set a scene in a construction site? Well today I finally reached the man who could help me get onto the site. We’re going to try and find a time that works for both of us so that I can tour a site and ask some questions. This is a big oppurtunity for me because I want my readers not to have to suspend their disbelief too much and what’s better than actual experience?

Well, hope to have more good news for you later. In the meantime, I’ve editing to do.

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