My friend and fellow novelist Adan Ramie recently interviewed me for a new feature on her blog, Spotlight Saturday. I’m supremely honored to be her first guest on the feature and I was very happy to discuss my writing with her. Definitely check out our conversation, it’s something you won’t want to miss.
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
#FirstLineFriday
Posted: January 1, 2016 in Living and Life, Scary Stuff, WritingTags: #FirstLineFriday, 2016, Amazon, big sale, Createspace, entertainment, holidays, horror, ideas, living and life, New Year's Day, Ohio State University, sale, sales, scary stuff, Smashwords, writing
If you haven’t read my last post yet, then allow me to shout “Happy New Year!” And wouldn’t you know it, it’s also Friday. You know what that means. It’s #FirstLineFriday!
Now, for those of you who don’t know the rules of #FirstLineFriday, let me break them down for you:
- Write up a blog post titled “#FirstLineFriday”, hashtag and all.
- Explain the rules like I’m doing now.
- Post the first one or two lines of a potential story, story-in-progress, or completed or published work.
- Ask your reader for feedback.
Now although it’s New Year’s Day, I don’t have a New Year’s edition for this post, unfortunately. I actually couldn’t think of any of my stories, written or otherwise, that take place on New Year’s (there may be one, but I have a lot of story ideas, and I’m not going to go trolling through them just to see when they take place. That would take too long). So instead, I’m just going to post something that I think would be interesting to read if it started one of my stories. Enjoy:
He looked across the tracks and saw the girl in the dark pink dress. And he saw the thing he knew would be standing right behind her.
Thoughts? Typos? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
So I hope you’re having a good New Year so far. I’m planning on relaxing and watching Ohio State take on Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl today (Go Bucks!) and having dinner with my family tonight. Not sure what’s on the agenda for the rest of you, but I hope you enjoy it to the fullest.
And if you’re looking for something to read this New Year, maybe you can head over to Amazon, Createspace, or Smashwords, where all my books are on sale now. It’s the perfect time to try a new read and support an independent novelist at the same time. Sale goes on till January 14th, so there’s plenty of time to make a selection.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear!
Laura Horn: More than Halfway Through the Second Draft
Posted: December 27, 2015 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, WritingTags: Divergent, editing, entertainment, films, Laura Horn, living and life, novel, Ohio State University, Olympus Has Fallen, progress report, reflections, storytelling, The Hunger Games, thriller, White House Down, writing
So I stayed up way too late last night working on Laura Horn, and I’m happy to say that I’ve reached another milestone in the editing process. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Laura Horn is a novel I wrote during my third year of college at Ohio State, and follows a teenage girl with a tragic past who comes across a conspiracy against the US government and finds herself in the position to stop it. It’s kind of like White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen, only instead of some hunky action hero, you’ve got a teenage girl trying to sort through her inner trauma.
Yeah, that’s a story I wrote, and I’m making it work somehow. It’s no harder to believe than a teenage girl taking on a government that kills a bunch of its citizens’ children in an annual death game or forces its youth to choose factions based on their personalities, anyway.
Anyway, the novel is divided into seven sections, including the prologue and epilogue, based on what happens in those sections. Last night I completed editing on the last two chapters of Part III, which means I’m a little more than halfway through editing the novel. To which I say, “Hooray, I’m making progress!”
And I remember thinking that the first draft of this novel might be a little too hard to believe. I don’t mean that like I meant the examples above, I meant that while the story itself would make a great novel, the way it played out in the first draft wouldn’t work. I actually considered rewriting the story so that the story seemed slightly more plausible. But then I decided to take a chance and start editing the first draft, see if I could still make a great story with the material I already had.
Sure, some parts of the story needed to be seriously changed, several chapters have been combined, and one I actually threw out because it became unnecessary, but all in all this story turned out to still be workable and make sense. And slowly, gaining speed as I worked through more and more chapters, I’ve fallen in love with this story and I’m very close to finishing up this draft.
So at this point, I’ve about twenty-four chapters left to work through (assuming I don’t combine any more of them or chuck one or two more out). I think I’ll start on the next chapter after I have lunch, and see where it gets me. If I’m lucky, I can get another two chapters out of the way, and maybe be done by the middle of next month.
So wish me luck, my Followers of Fear. Because this afternoon, I’m going into full editing mode, and I can’t wait to see what I come up with during that time.
Review: “Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes” by Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley
Posted: December 26, 2015 in Living and Life, Novel, Review, Scary Stuff, WritingTags: authors, celebrities, editing, entertainment, films, Five Night's at Freddy's, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes, horror, ideas, living and life, novel, proper decisions, publishing, reflections, review, scary stuff, Scott Cawthon, slasher, storytelling, video games, writing, YouTube
Now before I start this review, I need to do a little background: Five Nights at Freddy’s is a video game series created by game designer Scott Cawthon that follows a security guard trying to survive a week at a haunted pizzeria filled with killer animatronics (yes, that’s what it’s about; read here for a fuller explanation on the game and its popularity). The game has proven extremely popular, spawning three sequels, an upcoming RPG game, a movie that I’m excited about, and was a large part of YouTube’s annual Rewind video this year.
The game’s popularity is due in part to simple gameplay paired with a surprisingly challenging game, terrifying visuals and sounds combining to create a tense atmosphere, and a lore that tons of people have been trying to make sense of and put in a timeline since probably the very first game (seriously, search “FNAF theories” on Google. I’ll wait). And these people were excited to hear that Cawthon had teamed up with a writer to produce a novel based on the games, hoping that it would lead to an explanation.
Unfortunately for them, that’s not the case. While the book is kind of canon according to the creator, it’s kind of like an alternate universe’s version of the story of the games, a retelling of the story in the form of the novel with most of the elements of the games. It doesn’t actually explain the lore of the games.
That being said, I decided to check the book out anyway. I like the series, I wanted to know if this could be a clue to what the movie could be about, and I like a good scary story. With that in mind, I downloaded it onto my Kindle, and read it all in three days.
So with that background out of the way, what did I think of Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes? Well, I thought it was an average horror story at best. Not too say that it was totally bad, it had some things about it that I liked. I just felt that it didn’t have as much effort put into it as could’ve been put in.
So what’s the book about? FNAF: The Silver Eyes follows Charlie, a young woman who’s father was the owner of the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, and who’s returning to her hometown with her childhood friends to confront their pasts with the restaurant. Along the way they find the restaurant, and go in, leading to all sorts of chaos as they awaken the evil sleeping within.
I did like how the author sets up scenes, and the characters other than Charlie have enough personality to them to work for a slasher-style novel. The flashbacks are handled pretty well, and there are ideas here in the story that I liked. The climax is exciting enough, and despite what some theorists and even Cawthon the creator says, I felt like the book answered a lot of questions that I had about the games’ lore and mythology. Those are positive things, in my book (pun totally not intended).
I expected more from a story based around these characters.
However, there was a lot that I didn’t like. For one thing, I don’t get why the teens kept going back to the restaurant. I mean, they went enough that everyone could see it and relive their childhood memories, but why did they go back after that? I didn’t really get it. Not to mention that a lot of elements from the games weren’t present in the book: the animatronics don’t really come to life until much later in the story, which I found weird considering that they’re active from Night 1 in each game, and that the Puppet character from the second game, which a lot of fans of the games love, was noticeably absent from the story. And even if I wasn’t familiar with the games and didn’t have theories about it, the way the story’s told makes certain things obvious (from the moment we meet one character, we just know he’s a bad guy), which took some excitement and scares out of the story. Plus the conclusion felt sort of half-done, like they’d left something out in the final draft. That definitely brought down my enjoyment of the story a little.
There was also some sloppy editing in the story that, as a novelist, I disliked. Indentations at the beginning of paragraphs or even for entire paragraphs vary from paragraph to paragraph, certain scenes or settings aren’t written very well, and at times I found myself aghast at certain things the story left out: for example, at one point a character says he can see the moon, but another character next to him can’t. Why? Is there something in the way? Is it a height issue? It’s never explained. And not too long afterwards, one character hears a music box and tells the others to be quiet. One character says he then hears it too, but we don’t get clued into if the other characters hear it too. Now those are small details, but they are important for good storytelling, and I could not believe those parts weren’t cleaned up during editing.
All in all, I’m giving Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes a 2.6 out of 5. I feel like if maybe Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley, the author he worked with, had maybe spent more time on the story, maybe called in an editor and some beta readers for feedback, the story could’ve been a great horror novel as well as an explanation of the events of the games. As it is, it’s good for demystifying the lore, but if you want more than that you probably won’t get it.
I just hope this isn’t the basis of the movie’s script, because then the movie’s going to suck.
#FirstLineFriday
Posted: December 25, 2015 in ideas, Living and Life, Novelette, WritingTags: #FirstLineFriday, Christianity, Christmas, Doctor Who, entertainment, holidays, horror, ideas, Judaism, Krampus, living and life, novelette, reflections, scary stuff, science fiction, thriller, writing
It’s Friday again, so you know what that means. It’s #FirstLineFriday! And since today is Christmas, I wonder if I should a Christmas edition #FirstLineFriday or be a typical Jew and say, “Bah, humbug.” Hmm…okay, I’ll do a Christmas edition. Just as long as I still get visited by three ghosts.
Alright, for those of you who don’t know the rules of #FirstLineFriday, here they are:
- You write a post on your own blog titled #FirstLineFriday, hashtag and all.
- You explain the rules like I’m doing now.
- You post the first one or two lines of a potential story, a story-in-progress, or a completed or published story.
- You ask your readers for feedback.
Like I said, I’m doing a Christmas edition. Speaking of which, can you imagine a Christmas story from me? A Jewish horror writer? God, that story would probably not just be scary, it would probably make you rethink the holiday a little.
Well, I do have an idea for a Christmas-themed novelette written down somewhere, and here’s what the opening would probably be like. Enjoy:
Rob swore that if Chrissy didn’t calm down and shut up, he was going to smack her hard enough to knock her into the New Year. And he didn’t give a damn who saw him do it.
Thoughts? Errors? Let’s discuss.
Well, that’s all for now. For all my Christian readers, I wish you a Merry Christmas. For the rest of us…at least we get a really awesome Christmas Special from Doctor Who every year, right? And the movie theaters and Chinese restaurants are open (yeah, that’s a Jewish stereotype that’s actually true), so at least we’re not stuck in the house. Oh, and it’s still very pretty around this time of year, so that’s a plus. See? There’s always a silver lining.
Anyway, have a good weekend my Followers of Fear. I hope to have some good news out this Sunday, so be on the lookout for that. Also be on the lookout for Krampus, I hear he’s punishing bad kids this year.
Until next time!
Review: “A Head Full of Ghosts” by Paul Tremblay
Posted: December 17, 2015 in Novel, Review, WritingTags: authors, blogging, Catholicism, entertainment, horror, literature, novel, possession, psychological horror, psychology, reality television, reflections, review, scary stuff, social media, Stephen King, storytelling, television shows, unreliable narrator, writing
Recently I read an article about eleven recent novels that Stephen King apparently found scary. Being the fan of His Royal Scariness that I am, I checked out the article and found this book at the top of the list. The premise sounded interesting, so the next time I had a credit for an Audible audio book, I got A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, which is about a young woman who tells us her memories of when her elder sister started showing symptoms of schizophrenia, but when treatment after treatment seems to fail, the family comes to the conclusion that the sister is possessed, and somehow a reality show documenting the family’s attempts to exorcise their daughter evolves.
Like I said, it sounded interesting, and it was, though I wouldn’t call it scary. I mean, there are a few moments that can be terrifying, but even imagining them as a horror movie in my head, I didn’t really feel that it was as scary as King hyped it up to be.
Still, A Head Full of Ghosts is definitely not a dull read. In fact, it’s quite entertaining. The main character and narrator, Meredith “Merry” Barrett, is one of the most enjoyable types of narrators, the unreliable kind (see my post on unreliable narrators). Eight years old at the time of the events of the novel, she tells them anew to a writer for a new book in the year 2030 (which apparently still values paperbacks and blogs. I find that reassuring). As she tells us early in the novel, she misremembers a lot of what happened, due to the passage of time and of course what everyone has told her has happened.
To a certain extent, most of the characters in this novel is unreliable to a degree. We can’t tell what’s up with the older sister: is she possessed, is she schizophrenic, is she something we don’t have a word for? The things she says and does, you get a lot of conflicting signals. I have my guesses, but you really don’t know at all, right up to the end. The father is struggling because of unemployment (I sympathize) and has recently rediscovered God and begins to see everything through a religious lens with disastrous results. The mother seems to be perpetually grumpy and wavering between trying to be in control and trying to be responsible as her life unravels. The priest from the Catholic Church seems priestly, but underneath that you get a sense that he’s milking this situation for his own reasons. It’s amazing how little you can actually trust these characters.
My favorite parts of the novel involve segues into a blog by a horror fan (a woman after my own heart) where she gives us an idea of what watching the reality show was like, as well some good ol’ scholarly examination of some of the show’s deeper meanings. And all with a snarky voice too. These segments are hilarious and fun, but they also help us as readers put the story and characters into context and prepare us for future events in the novel.
Another part I enjoyed about the novel is just seeing Merry and her family experience her sister’s illness/possession/whatever and then the craziness that is being the subject of a reality show, how fame has its downsides, how the show and the ordeal brings out the worst in her family, how her relationship with her sister becomes strained by all these events. It’s a very engrossing evolution.
One problem I do have with this novel (besides the fact that I never really found it scary) is that we never really see Merry outside of the context of her family or the show. Not even when we see her as an adult, because it’s fairly obvious that her family and the show has affected the adult she’s become. I would’ve liked to see Mary outside of the context of the family or the show, maybe in the company of friends or her soccer program. Those aspects of her life are mentioned, but they’re not really delved into, and I think she would’ve been a fuller character if we saw that her family and what’s going on around it isn’t entirely what defines her.
Oh, that and I didn’t particularly care for the audio book’s narrator. I mean she was good, especially when she was voicing the older sister, but when she does male voices, especially the father character’s voice, it sounds like every daughter’s impression of her embarrassing father or teacher. Just not convincing at all, more comical than anything.
All in all, I give A Head Full of Ghosts a 3.9 out of 5. It’s not as scary as I’d hoped it would be (or maybe I just listened to it wrong), but it’s psychological, it’s entertaining, and you want to see it through to the end. If you’re looking for a book that’s like The Exorcist with a modern twist, this might not be for you. But if you want to read something with dark subjects but you’d like to sleep at night, I think you’ll find this book fits the bill.
What’s a Creepypasta?
Posted: December 16, 2015 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, WritingTags: authors, blogging, creepypasta, entertainment, films, horror, Internet, literature, living and life, novel, Reddit, reflections, scary stuff, short story, Slender Man, Smile Dog, social media, Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen King, storytelling, television shows, viral phenomena, writing, YouTube
Smile Dog, a creepypasta character.
Recently I’ve been delving into a genre of horror that’s grown up on the Internet, and I have to say some of it is quite impressive. I’m talking, of course, about creepypastas.
Now, for those of you who’ve never heard of this and think I’m talking about a Halloween treat, a creepypasta is actually kind of like an Internet campfire ghost story, scary stories designed to shock and terrify and that originate online. They’re sometimes accompanied with images, audio or videos, usually distorted or featuring or gore or creepy imagery, in order to intensify the effect. The name “creepypasta” comes from “copypasta”, a slang term for text that is copied and pasted around the Internet multiple times.
And even if you’re not familiar with creepypastas in general, you may have heard of some. Slender Man, whom I’ve written about on this blog before, has been the subject of numerous creepypastas in the past, to the point where some creepypasta-devoted websites no longer upload new literature about ol’ Slendy. There’s also the novel Penpal, which started out as a series of creepypastas, and Candle Cove, a story that’s reportedly being adapted to television by the Syfy channel.
Slender Man has been featured in a variety of creepypasta.
Now while the length and quality of creepypastas, like every other type of fiction, vary from one to the other, there are some ways to categorize them:
- Anecdotes: as far as I can tell, these are the most popular of the creepypasta story form. The narrator(s), often anonymous, talks about a scary legend, a new story, or something from their past. The anecdote stories are often told in the epistolary format, or in the form of a letter or journal entry, though this being an Internet phenomena they’re more often told as blog posts or Reddit threads. They’re certainly my favorite form of the genre.
- Rituals: As the name suggests, these are things you can do to make something terrifying happen to you or someone you know. Examples include the Midnight Game or Bloody Mary (which I’ve tried on numerous occasions, and I’ve never seen any results). Sometimes these rituals have a short backstory, but they can vary, like with the Bloody Mary game. And as you can guess, these are quite fun at parties.
- Lost Episodes: This form has kind of fallen out of favor but it has some pretty famous creepypastas. Lost episodes usually describe a missing scene or episode from a famous TV show, usually a comedy or children’s show, that depicts a character acting very strangely and violently, usually ending in that character killing themselves or the other cast members. Often times the episodes, when they are supposedly found, feature strange or distorted audio and video, and occasionally are rumored to cause violent behavior in viewers. As you can guess from the description, these are pretty formulaic and repetitive, which is why they’ve lost popularity, though some are quite well known among creepypasta devotees.
Squidward Tentacles from Spongebob Squarepants has been the subject of a Lost Episode creepypasta. You can probably guess the rest.
As I said above, there are entire websites devoted to the creepypasta genre and droves of fans, some of whom create their own stories and upload them online. What makes this genre so popular? Well, I’m still pretty new to the genre, but I think that there are several factors that may explain this popularity. One is that creepypastas tend to be a bit more extreme than mainstream horror. They’re often accompanied by scary imagery or some other strangeness, and that adds to the creep factor. There’s also the very subject matter of creepypastas: with some stories, you can take elements from them and create your own stories. Slender Man is a character who’s been featured in a variety of media, and plenty of people have made creepypasta based on him. And then there’s the virality of creepypastas: you’re encouraged, by their very nature, to keep sending them around and around the Internet. There’s a certain power in that very concept that’s exciting, and encourages creators as well as readers.
It’s especially interesting when you consider that this is a genre born on the Internet, which has the reputation of having content geared towards people with short attention spans, and also is sometimes considered the gathering place of creators who couldn’t make it in the “real world” (eye roll please?).
Personally, I think creepypastas are quite entertaining. Some of the stories are very good, very creepy, and I enjoy listening to readings of popular creepypasta by YouTube artists. I know some people find them too extreme or that they lead to violent behavior (a subject for another time, not going into it here), but I see it as no different than enjoying a Stephen King story or going to see the latest scary movie. Just a different format with different rules that I would like to learn (though not write; by the very nature of creepypasta, I wouldn’t have as much creative control or make some side income off my work. Maybe I’ll try writing in the style though for a novel someday).
If you’d like to try some creepypasta, here are some good ones I’ve come across. If you check them out, let me know what you think:
Are you a fan of creepypasta? What is it about them that you like or dislike?
What are some creepypastas that you’d recommend trying?
Rami Ungar The Writer 