Posts Tagged ‘short story’

I’m Back From Europe

Posted: May 30, 2014 in Living and Life, Tales from Abroad, Writing
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Ah, the Eiffel Tower. See how it glows in the night.

Ah, the Eiffel Tower. See how it glows in the night.

Hi honey I’m home! After about three weeks in England, France, and Germany, I’m finally back in the States. I will definitely miss being in Europe (I will especially miss transportation made easy through the Metro systems), but I was beginning to miss my family and my life here and I’m glad to be back.

Of course, now that I’m back I’m not going to spend the whole time on my butt (though for the most part that’s what I’ve been doing while I get reacclimatized). In addition to catching up on all my shows and going to see some movies that came out while I was abroad, I plan to be very busy this summer. I’ll be doing my usual chores and errands, for one thing, and I’ll be working in the financial aid office for the whole summer (and if I can find one, I’ll try for another job that’ll allow me to work one or two days a week to help with the income). I also plan to finish my novel-in-progress Laura Horn, which I think I can get done by mid-July if I don’t get too distracted. I also hope to write plenty of short stories after I finish the book, because God knows I have plenty of ideas for those (I came up with about 40 ideas for stories while in Europe, most of them short stories. The lesson to be derived from this is that if you’re a writer and you find yourself on a trip abroad, bring a notebook to write down any ideas you have).

What else do I plan to do? Oh yeah, Snake will be coming out on June 10th, so I’ll be getting ready for that. And The Quiet Game’s one-year anniversary will be in July, so I plan to hold a sale for that on the e-book. And I’ll try to do some author interviews now that I’m back in the States, as well as finally getting around to editing Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City. And maybe I’ll finish some of the series I’m watching on Netflix.

In short, I’ll be very busy.

But enough about that. I said I was going to share some of the stories from my study abroad trip. I think I’ll start with my last night abroad, with the final dinner. Why? Because it shows how much we bonded over the trip:

We were having a special dinner on the second floor of a beer garden at Alexanderplatz in Berlin called Lindenbrau. The weather was cloudy and rainy, but we didn’t really care, because we were all very happy. Maybe that was because of the alcohol and warm food, but we were happy. I was talking with my teachers and y roommate Henry and my friends, and I had a wheat beer in front of me. Most of us were really sad to go, but we were also glad that we’d had this experience together. Also, a few of us were itching to go home, or to go to other places if we were staying in Europe longer (I might have and gone to see Poland and Italy or maybe go back to England, but I couldn’t afford it).

And then our teachers, Dr. Steigerwald and Professor Willging (affectionately nicknamed Dad and Mom, respectively, by our group), stood up to say some words. They said how proud they were of us, and how they hoped we would all stay in touch for years to come. And then they handed out awards to us, the kind like “Most Likely To…” or “Least Likely To…” awards. We were invited to guess whom each award was for, and I got about three or four of them before anyone else. My award was, “Most Likely To Wander Into Rommel’s Chateau.” Considering how oblivious I can be sometimes, that’s not very surprising.

And then something interesting happened: Ramsey Hardin, one of the people on my trip who had become probably my best friend while on the trip, arrived late and hungry. He’d gone to a museum to get a little bit more culture, but on the way back traffic had been really bad, and he’d ended up about an hour or so late getting to the beer garden. Believe me, he was upset, and only a jug of beer and a really huge ham could possibly relieve that anger.

Happy Birthday Ramsey Hardin! By the way, that's David Corrigan photo-bombing te shot. What a goof!

Happy Birthday Ramsey Hardin! And that David Corrigan with him, by the way.

But then a huge surprise came out: the waiter brought Ramsey a piece of chocolate cake with a single blue candle stuck into it, a flame dancing on the wick. It was Ramsey’s twenty-fourth birthday. Boy, did that cheer him up! I wonder what he wished for, though. He probably asked for a big book of history. Ramsey’s a huge history buff, and reads anything about the past. In fact, he was voted “Most Likely To Teach Alexander the Great History” or something like that.

We ended the evening with dessert and a few more drinks, and then I went back to the hotel, to get ready for tomorrow’s flight and to store all these wonderful memories in my head.

And trust me, I’ll have a fun time relating them to you all in the coming months (or until you’re sick of hearing about them). That’s all for now though. Hope you enjoyed the story, my Followers of Fear. I’ll tell another one when I have a moment.

“The Murderer’s Legacy”: Finished

Posted: May 17, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, short story, Writing
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You know, I said I wasn’t going to do much writing while I was abroad. Well, I may have been a little naughty and wrote a short story in about six days or so. Wasn’t planning on it, it just sort of happened that way.

You see, I had this idea while in London for a short story (and I’ve had so many ideas for stories while abroad, but that’s a discussion for another post), and on the ferry from Portsmouth to Normandy, I had a lot of time on my hands, about four hours worth. Most people were sleeping or working at the last minute on assignments. I didn’t feel like doing either, and there was Wi-Fi, perfect for searches on random facts for a story.

So, I finished writing and editing an essay for an anthology I’d heard about, and then I started on “The Murderer’s Legacy” (that’s the working title, anyway. I may change it when I edit it). It’s about a man living in a magical version of Victorian England who is accused of murdering his wife and is about to receive the worst punishment imaginable. The story follows his attempts to figure out who actually killed his wife and why as he is lead off to his punishment.

I got about two-thousand words in on Monday, when I started the story (like I said, I had a lot of time on my hands). I might’ve finished the story sooner, but as I was writing it the story sort of evolved on me. At first the magical elements were minimal, but then they started becoming a bit more widespread. And then I started having my main character try to figure out who might be the real murderer, and I added more dialogue, and even up until the last minute, I was making changes to the story that I’d never intended to put there.

Well, I guess Stephen King would approve. He said in his nonfiction book On Writing that one should write a story as one unearths an artifact, starting with one small piece revealing itself and then dusting and picking away to find what else is there (that’s what he advises, more or less). But still, at nearly fifty-eight hundred words, I had no idea I would unearth so much!

Anyway, I hope that when I get the chance in a few weeks (or months), I’ll be able to do a really good job of editing this story. Despite being a lot longer than most magazines like to accept, I like to think it has potential. And I want to see what more I unearth when I go through the editing phase, maybe see if I can make my main character a bit more of a bastard, someone you’d want to hate, as well as add more explanation into the world the characters inhabit and go into some of the more principle characters themselves. And hey, maybe I can add a whole new scene to the beginning.

Though if I do that last one, I may need to do a lot of rewriting and editing. Well, if the story calls for it. And it’s not like I haven’t done that before with a story.

Well, it’s late here in Bayeux, and I better head off to bed. Big day tomorrow and all that. I’ll try and write some more if I can. As they say here in France, bon nuit, my Followers of Fear.

Spring Semester 2014: Post-Semester Wrap-Up

Posted: May 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report
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Well, I got my final grades in for spring semester. Can I just say, about time! I was worried I wouldn’t be able to post about this until I got back from Europe. But in they are, my grades, so I can now tell you my impressions of this past semester and what I’m hoping to get from the next one.

Well, to say the least, this past semester was dominated by preparing for my study abroad trip. Besides the obvious meetings with the people in my group, orientations on health and safety, and applying for numerous scholarships (of which I got three and I have a couple of people I have to thank for that, including teachers and wonderful donors), almost all of my classes were devoted to preparing for the trip. Part of taking the WWII Study Abroad Trip is that I have to pass certain classes in order to go with everyone. I’d taken one of the required classes and one of the optional classes in previous semesters, so I had four more classes to get through before I went abroad. These classes were American History from 1921-1963, in which I got a B, French American Relations Through the Years (B+), a special French study course to learn basic French (these sort of classes you get either a “Satisfactory” or “Unsatisfactory” grade; I got the former), and a History Research Seminar focusing on WWII (I got a B+).

I have to say that while all of my classes were interesting and fun (usually), my favorite was the American History one. The teacher was so passionate about the subject matter, and he was fun to watch as he told us about everything from the Roaring Twenties to Truman’s abilities (or lack of them) as President to the rise of the nuclear family and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. That class also had the most interesting books, including one I used for research into a short story, and another two I decided to keep (you never know when they might come in handy). But each of the classes had something that made them special. I learned French customs and speech in my French courses, and I was able to look into the actual connection between Nazism and the occult for my research seminar. It was a wonderful time.

The only class I took that wasn’t related to my trip was Contemporary Disabilities Studies: Deaf Literature and Deaf Culture, in which I got an A. I took the class as a requirement for my English major (yeah, I’m not sure how a Disabilities Course overlaps with English, except that it was about Deaf and deaf literature, and yes there’s a difference). The teacher of that class was a deaf woman getting her post-doctorate who’d also been a GTA in one of my classes from a previous semester. I got to know her much better this past semester though, and I ended up really enjoying her class. I also ended up learning a lot about Deaf literature and culture that I hadn’t known previously, and it expanded my worldview and helped my writing. In fact, one of the short stories I wrote this past semester, Darkness at Noon, was for a project in that class. Not only did it receive an A, but my teacher cried at the end and said I should get it published. Believe me, I’m working on it.

So next up for me is the Study Abroad Trip, which I’ll be posting about a lot, both here on Rami Ungar the Writer and on my OSU blog site. After that, I’ll be heading into my final year at Ohio State University, as hard as that is to believe. In the fall, I’ll be taking five courses: a creative fiction writing workshop, a course focusing on Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, a course on the history of war, a course focusing on the history of East Asia before the modern era, and a biology course focusing on portrayals of biology and anatomy in cinema. I’ll also be working on a new novel as a thesis, which I’ll go into more detail about as the next semester gets closer.

For now though I’m going to take care of some other stuff for my trip, as well as write a blog post on the OSU blog site. So until next time, my Followers of Fear.

“Travelers of the Loneliest Roads” Is Now On WattPad

Posted: April 24, 2014 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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A while back I wrote a short story called “Travelers of the Loneliest Roads,” a story of a young woman hitchhiking on the back roads of America who gets picked up by a very strange ride. I wasn’t having much success in finding a magazine to publish it in, so I thought I’d share it on WattPad, where short stories rejected by publishers have found some success.

I really like this story. It was my first experimentation with trying to make the story progressively more terrifying using techniques I’ve picked up from various novels and movies, and I thought I did a damn good job. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone here who checks it out has to say though. After all, you know what they say: authors are often some of the worst judges of their own work.

Anyway, if you’d like to read “Travelers”, please click here. I hope you enjoy reading it and whatever your thoughts about it, please let me know what you think. As I’m fond of saying, I love feedback, whether it be positive or negative.

That’s all for now. I’m going to try to get some more writing done before my shows come on later tonight. So until next time, happy reading my Followers of Fear.

Some Good News, Some Bad News

Posted: April 11, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Review, short story, Writing
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Good News: Somehow I managed to get several articles written for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, all of which will come out in the coming weeks leading up to my study abroad trip. The next one comes out tomorrow, if I remember correctly.

Bad News: As the end of the semester comes closer, I’ve got a number of exams and papers to prepare for, including a 25-30 page paper for a research seminar! Oy vey! So as much as I’d like to focus on making progress in Laura Horn before I go abroad, I doubt that with my workload I’ll make it to Chapter 35, which would be a nice stopping-point before I go on my trip.

Good News: A short story I wrote for a class assignment got an A+ from the teacher, who “cried at the end of the story” and wanted me to publish it, along with some suggestions on ways to edit it. I plan to submit it somewhere this weekend, as well as submit a couple other short stories to other magazines.

Bad News: Another short story I wrote got rejected from a magazine this morning. I’ll try submitting it somewhere else, but I worry. Some of the criticism the editor gave me made me wonder if this short story is as good as I thought it was.

Good News: Reborn City got another five star review. This, along with a sale I plan to hold next month and the possibility of making it to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award make me hopeful.

Bad News: I won’t know about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award until Monday most likely, and I don’t want to go into more detail about the review or the sale until I have that info. Plus, RC‘s my first novel and I’m up against 399 other books in my category, all vying for 100 spots at most. I hope the excerpt I gave them is good enough!

Good News: I’ve found a camcorder that is within my budget that I can get after I get back from my trip. Creating book trailers and maybe starting a YouTube show or improving my YouTube channel might get easier with one of those camcorders.

Bad News: My local theater isn’t playing a movie I really want to see, a horror film with Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame. Well, that’s not as bad as it could be. I might know a certain woman (my mother) who’ll want to go see it with me, even if we have to drag her fiancee with us to do it. Forget I mentioned it.

When you get right down to it, a self-published novelist’s life is never easy, especially when you also happen to be a student with a part-time job and a lot of homework. Sometimes, like when I get criticism from magazine editors, I feel a little down. But there’s always opportunity for improvement. There are people who enjoy what I write and let me know when they get the chance to do so.

When I first started writing this blog nearly three years ago, I was just some freshman with one publishing credit to my name, a novel in need of some serious editing, and no idea how I was going to build a following or get my novel onto the printed page. Nearly three years later, I have a few more publishing credits, I’ve got two books out, a third on its way, and two more in various stages of writing/editing. I write articles occasionally for another website to help other self-published authors out, and I’ve made some friends who’ve been invaluable assets in helping me get this far.

So is my life as a writer ideal? I don’t know a single writer who can say that their lives are ideal. Even the biggest names in the industry are wracked by the usual anxieties, wondering if their work is up to scratch or if people will think their manuscript is sh*t or if they’ll ever live up to their childhood idols or if they’ll sell any copies.

I think for where I am at this point in my career, I’m at a pretty good stage. Would I like things to be better? I don’t know a single writer who wouldn’t want that. But I’m a lot better off than I could be, and I have plenty of space to improve, and the resources and friends to allow me to do that.

So as the weekend creeps nearer, I’m going to work to improve, to write and to publish and be the best I can be.

Good News: The future is open, and my Tarot tells me fortune is headed my way. I’m heading to meet it.

Self-Pub Authors: Doing an Excerpt

Posted: April 7, 2014 in Journalism
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I decided that before I left for my study-abroad trip and got nearly zero-writing done, I’d write several articles for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. God knows I have enough ideas for articles. This is the first, Doing an Excerpt, with some helpful tips on picking passages from your latest work to use as excerpts on blogs, in contests, and in the back of your latest released book (there’s something I should try!).

Please take your time and explore Self-Pub Authors. It’s a really helpful website and it’s got articles from several different authors, myself included, on how to do self-publishing for little to no cost. And if you find the articles helpful, feel free to subscribe. We’ve got articles coming out all the time, so there’s never an end to the useful information you can read.

All for now. I’ve got an appointment in a bit, so I’ll get ready for that. Have a nice day, my Followers of Fear.

The Quiet Game: Review #9

Posted: April 5, 2014 in Review, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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tqg cover

I received quite the pleasant surprise this morning. My collection of short stories, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, had received its ninth review, this one coming from author and friend Matt Williams. I’ve been waiting to hear Matt’s thoughts on that book since he told me he bought a copy, and I’m glad to see he finally got through the book, which he gave 4 stars. Entitling his review An inspired romp, this is what he had to say:

Imagine if you will a young Stephen King penning dark scenarios inspired by his youth, and what you get is this anthology. Through this collection of short stories, Rami Ungar brings us into the world of dark urges, childhood traumas, ghosts, phantoms, and dark psychological thrillers. An inspired creation, and definitely a good intro to this indie author’s world!

Okay first, I love being compared to Stephen King. My mom did that when she read an early draft of one of the short stories in the collection, but I thought she was being nice! Glad to see someone agrees with her. He’s been such an influence on my work and I still hold him in high esteem. And second, I’m glad Matt enjoyed the book so much. I can’t wait to read your latest book, Papa Zulu, as well. I just need to get it.

If you’d like to check out The Quiet Game and read some of the other reviews, you can check it out on Amazon and Smashwords. It’s available in both ebook and print paperback, and it’s a quick read, so I promise it’ll be worth your time.

All for now. I’ve got a paper to work on, so I’m going to do that now. See you all later.

I’ve Got Too Many Ideas For Stories At The Moment

Posted: March 29, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Writing
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Over the past two semesters, the number of ideas I’ve had for stories has been growing quickly. At last count, I had about 117 ideas for novels/TV shows/movies/comic books/video games (I usually put those all on the same list), 152 ideas for short stories, and 36 ideas for articles on writing/editing/publishing/marketing. Just goes to show what happens when you give a mind with an active imagination and an affinity for storytelling too much stimulation.

I’m not complaining or anything. I love all these ideas I’m getting, and I make sure to write them down as soon as possible so that I can remember them for later (my writer’s pride won’t let me forget them).  It’s just that I want to write them all, but obviously with school, work, homework, bills, errands, and everything else in my life, I can’t devote myself 24/7 to writing, much as I would like to some days. So writing is a slower process for me than what I’d like for it to be. So with all these ideas coming to me and not as much time to write them as I’d like, there’s a good chance that I won’t write them all. Just a small fraction of them.

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps this is why James Patterson has so many co-authors. If he’s just overwhelmed by ideas and that is why he relies on so many different people to help him write his work. Of course we all know his publishing company paid him a hefty advance for so many books a year over the next however many years, but you get the idea. You want more time and energy or you want help churning your ideas out as stories or a cork on whatever font of imagination you’ve got flowing inside your head. You just want the madness to stop and for the work flow to just even out.

But that’s just not something that’s going to happen. All these ideas keep coming to you, and you have no choice but listen to them, and write down as many as you can. Luckily with this many ideas I’ll have plenty to work on and never the excuse that I can’t come up with anything new. As a writer that’s a blessing, because as bad as it is to have too many ideas, it’s even worse to have writer’s block or ideas block or whatever you want to call it and just sit around each day wondering why you can’t write anything at all.

Well, I’ve finished getting that off my chest. Now I’m going to try and write another chapter of Laura Horn before I have to get going. A friend invited me to a party, and I am itching to get out of the apartment. Honestly, I’ll go stir-crazy if I don’t do something tonight. Have a good night, Followers of Fear.

Ohm: An Honorable Mention

Posted: March 27, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Today I received an interesting e-mail from one of the professors in the English department. Some of you may remember Ohm, the short story I wrote about a cult leader who makes up his own brand of meditation and yoga to get money and power. I submitted it to the Jacobson Short Story Award at OSU, hoping that it might do well in the contest and maybe win me a little bit of money for rent purposes.

Today I got the results. While Ohm did not get the first or second prizes, it did get an honorable mention, which is definitely worth celebrating. The person who reviewed Ohm, a novelist and a professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder, said it deserved the honorable mention “for its confident use of language”. Reading that gave me a boost to my own confidence.

I’m glad Ohm got some good recognition, even if it didn’t win the award. I’ll see about getting it in a print magazine, and if that route is unsuccessful, maybe I’ll publish it on WattPad. I won’t know until I try, so I’ll be optimistic and see what opportunities are available.

That’s all for now. I’ve got a big night of writing ahead of me. I hope to have more good news and more posts to write as time goes by. Wish me luck.

New Ideas At Work

Posted: March 12, 2014 in ideas, Reflections, Writing
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Today at work, I had a mostly usual day. Went through a ton of files, ate lunch, went through another ton of files, and had conversations with some of my coworkers about life, the weather, and the job. Pretty average. Oh, except for the fact that I came up with several different ideas for short stories and articles today. About 16 new ideas total, if I remember correctly.

And this is not unusual for me: just yesterday I had an idea for a psychological horror novel. The day before that, I came up with a science-fiction/horror novel, all while sitting calmly at my desk and going through file after file after file. So while coming up with so many ideas in a single day is somewhat unusual for me, coming up with ideas while working or going to classes is a pretty regular occurrence for me.

Why am I making a blog post out of this? Because there are some writers–not many, but some–who are under the mistaken impression that holding any sort of job will stifle creative juices and ruin them as an artist. For example, I used to be on friendly terms with a writer and blogger over in Europe. He wrote a lot of poetry, took plenty of photos, and was working on a novel. For reasons that I never found out, he and his wife separated and he ended up living on the streets. Because he didn’t want to get a job that would most likely force him to be a slave to a corporation or a government (at least based on his political views I assume that’s why he didn’t get a job), along with his views that a job would ruin his artistic power, he asked his readers to donate money to him through PayPal so that he could buy airline tickets to America where his parents were. Nobody donated, which he felt was a personal insult and he got really nasty afterwards. When I tried to be nice and encouraging to him, he swore at me, leading me to stop following him. Last I checked he’s still in Europe and living on the streets billing himself as a starving artist.

Now, I’m not saying that all artists who refuse to get jobs are like this. Many are the kindest, sweetest people you’ll ever meet. They’re sincere about wanting to do well in their chosen fields. But I do want to let artists of all kinds know that a job won’t necessarily ruin your career and your skills, whether you’re selling only a few books or several thousand books. In fact, sometimes a job can help you. Several of the people in my office read my work when it comes out; I wouldn’t have made some of the money I’ve made without their help. Not only that, but I’ve made a few connections through my job, including with a screenwriter I met today who’s working on a screenplay while helping students out with financial aid and other questions during the day. Tomorrow I’d like to give him the name of a professor at school who also has connections to Hollywood. I figure that’d help him.

So don’t worry about losing your creative streak if you get a 9 to 5 or even just a part-time job. It may actually make you more creative, or give you the drive to produce better work just so you can get out of that job. I’ve certainly benefitted from working. I’ve come up with so many ideas over the years while working in the financial aid office. I don’t think I would’ve come up with those ideas if I was in a different setting.

Not to mention the fact that I would’ve had to move back in with my parents or become homeless long ago if I hadn’t gotten a job. Trust me, I’m very grateful for that. Especially since I’m sheltered from the cold. Do you know how bad the weather can be in Ohio in winter?

If you’re still not sure, just go ahead and try it. Give it a month or two. If a job does kill you creatively, then I’m sorry that you can’t write while holding a job. And if you don’t find any change or instead find yourself becoming more creative, then I’m glad things are working out for you and I wish you luck in whatever occupation you’re currently working in.

How has holding a job affected your creativity? What advice do you have for authors who are concerned about how a job might affect their writing?

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