Posts Tagged ‘short story’

It is Wednesday of Week 8 of the semester here at Ohio State, putting us squarely halfway through the semester. And as is my custom on this blog, I’m letting people know how I’m doing right now.

Love it at my school!

Right now I’m at work taking my lunch break. Work’s going well, by the way. I work between ten and twelve hours a week, and now that busy season is over, we’ve kind of fallen into a routine that’s quieter than the summer and early fall but stil busy and full of things to do. Actually some of my biggest fans are at work. The head of the Financial Aid department keeps telling me she’s going to buy two print copies of The Quiet Game when she shops on Amazon next, one to read and one for me to sign and keep in pristine condition forever and ever. She just has to find time to shop on Amazon, which is hampered by her very busy schedule. She’s also looking forward to reading Reborn City when it comes out in November, as well as some of my coworkers. I’ve got to love the people who work here!

My classes are also going well. I’m taking five courses right now, and my favorites are without a doubt my Science Fiction and Fantasy literature course and my Holocaust in History course. I learn a lot from my teachers and the discussions are always stimulating and we all have fun, especially in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy course. My one class I’m struggling with is my Biology course, but I’m meeting with my TA a lot to talk about points I’m having trouble with and improve my grades. Hopefully by the next midterm in that class I’ll be Super-Student.

Not likely, but I’ll get as close to it as possible.

I’ve also applied for a Study Abroad trip in May to Europe to see some of the more important sites of World War II Europe. I don’t know if I’ll get in yet (I won’t find out till next week at the earliest), but my GPA is high enough and one of my former teachers wrote me a stunning letter of recommendation, so I’m hopeful. I’ll let you know if I get in.

And at my apartment things are also peachy-keen. My roommate Morgan and I get along very well and we divide up our duties both as housemates and as resident managers for our complex very well. Sometimes I even cook for the both of us, though that doesn’t happen often because Morgan’s studying to be an engineer and has a bigger courseload than I do, so he’s often on his own schedule and I’m on mine. It’s sad that we can’t hang out as often, but I’m okay with it. Besides, there’s something on every night on TV, so I’ve got pleny to occupy my attention.

If I could change one thing about this semester though (besides how much I have to work on my Biology coursework or get a winning lottery ticket), I’d like to attend clubs more often. I attended a couple of club meetings for the English Undergraduate Organization and the Science Fiction club at the beginning of the semester, but somedays my homework load piles up and I just don’t have the time or the energy to go. Especially when some club meetings, like for the sci-fi club, are on the south side of campus and I live north of campus. The only place I can regularly go to that can be considered club-like is OSU Hillel for Friday night services and dinner, but beyond that nothing much. Hopefully for the second half of the semester I might find more time though. Depends on a number of factors, but I’m hopeful.

And finally, some updates on my writing. Video Rage has less than twenty chapters left till it’s completed, so I’m trying to get as much done as possible when I have the time. Laura Horn is still a long way from being completed, but the chapters are shorter than the ones for Video Rage, so I should complete that by midway through the spring semester. The Quiet Game is doing as can be expected for a first-time writer being published, which means it’s close to reaching 50 copies sold. Reborn City is still coming out on time, so that’s something to get excited about. In fact, I plan on doing a bit more advertising for it as the week goes on, so get prepared. Also, Snake is still getting its final draft looked over by author Angela Misri of a Portia Adams adventure, but it should be ready by spring or summer 2014. There’s something to look forward to. And last but certainly not least, I’m already planning what to write after I finish the first drafts of Video Rage and Laura Horn. I’m thinking I’ll do a lot of short-story writing, maybe put out another collection. I also want to write something with a big supernatural influence that is longer than a short story. We’ll see what happens when I finish the WIPs, though.

Well, my lunch break is just about over, so I’m signing off. I’ll let you know if anything happens when it happens, and I hope you have a nice day. Blog on you later!

And…ACTION!

You know, I don’t think I’ve had words begin with lowercase letters since I first started writing this blog. Except for “the”, “a”, “is”, and words like that, but that’s beside the point.

In media res is Latin for “in the midst of things” and it is a literary technique where a story begins in the midst of action rather than beginning with some background or exposition. It also details my semester at the moment, but that’s tomorrow’s post and it’s very beside the point! The point is, I noticed that a lot of stories I write tend to start in media res.

Even if we don’t know it, a lot of books we’ve read and movies we’ve seen begin with in media res (and plenty don’t).  They often use flashbacks to help fill in backstory and background information. A prime example of a book that uses in media res is the first book in the Bartimaeus trilogy, The Amulet of Samarkand. Anyone read that? No? Well, for those of you who haven’t read it, the story is about a world where magicians who summon and bind demons into their service rule over modern England. However we don’t find out all that information at the beginning. Instead we see human protagonist Nathaniel summoning the titular demon Bartimaeus into his service before he’s sent to capture the Amulet of Samarkand, and then through flashbacks (and footnotes) we find out that the magicians rule England and its colonies, and that they use demons to do their bidding.

That’s an example of in media res. A good example of a work that doesn’t begin that way would be Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, which all of us have probably read in high school or college. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, etc.” Only after we realize how much like our current era the era of the novel is do we find ourselves on a dark road in the middle of the night, and the story begins. And believe it or not, the first few lines of Harry Potter were exposition in nature: “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number 4, Private Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Rowling makes sure we know how absolutely, perfectly, horridly normal the Dursleys are before we realize how weird things are the day before they find Harry on their stoop. That is the exact opposite of in media res.

Now why am I bringing this up, you might be asking. Firstly, I just want to make sure everybody who’s not an author on this page knows what in media res is before I talk about it. And now that I’ve explained it all, I want to get back to what I said previously, which is that a lot of the work I write begins in media res.

This show’s pilot (and several of its episodes) utilize in media res. It is also my most recent TV addiction.

If you’ve read my collection of short stories The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, all but the short story I’m Going To Be The Next James Bond start out in media res. Take The Quiet Game itself: “It was a tranquil Saturday morning at St. Dunstan’s School for Girls as Traci opened her eyes and stretched.” I don’t spend a moment explaining that St. Dunstan’s is a Catholic school in the middle of the country, that it’s girls stay on campus, that it’s run by priests and nuns, or that it has a darkness within it. I let that come out later in the story.

And not just The Quiet Game, but most of my other work is told this way. I could begin Reborn City (out November 1st, by the way) by explaining that several years before the story begins, there was a conflict between Western civilization and several radical Islamic terrorist organizations and some Muslim nations that led to a third world war and the devolving of many nations into independent city-states, and then go into how my protagonist Zahara and her family get caught up in some violence in the West side of Las Vegas-style Reborn City. Instead, this is the first paragraph of RC:

Reborn City, former Nevada
28 Anno Bombus (2056 CE)
June 28

Zahara and her family had decided to eat out at a restaurant in North Reborn that served kosher meat, the closest they could get to halāl. “I know it’s for Jews mostly, but it’s a very nice place and the Jews were very nice to us in New York.” Zahara’s father, Emir Bakur had said when he’d suggested it. “They know they don’t have to fear Muslims anymore. And the Chaplinsky family in 4F was nice enough, right?”

Full action, no exposition or backstory. I leave that to the flashbacks I use throughout the story. And it’s the same with my other novel-in-the-midst-of-getting-published, Snake. The first four chapters are a single scene of the Snake taking his latest victim and then leaving the body out. I use several flashbacks throughout the book to explain why he’s doing this, but I don’t say it all in the beginning. I wait, and reveal it at certain points in the story through flashback and characters telling other characters about past events.

Now why am I saying all this? Because I think it’s an interesting stylistic choice that I decide to start most of my stories in the midst of the story and use flashbacks to get into past events that may have led to the current events of the story. In media res requires readers to put themselves right in the action of the story. No time to catch up, just plunge right in and fill in the details along the way. I think that’s a much more fun way to tell a story.

It also allows me to write in a way that keeps readers from getting bored with my work. Instead of explaining everything slowly at the beginning, I impart a bit of mystery instead and task the reader to play detective, to keep going through the novel to piece together how events of the novel came into being. The readers love it, they love unraveling how we got to where we are by reading and seeing what happened before the story and how those events correlate with what the story in their hands (or on their audiobooks).

So the next time a movie/TV show/book starts out like this, you’ll know what it’s called.

So yeah, I like in media res. And I’ll probably use it in the future. But I’ll be conscious of its use., and when I see other writers using it, I’ll wonder if they’re conscious of why they’re using it. Because the story requires it? Because they find that much exposition boring? Because it’s fun to tell a story that way? It’s almost as intriguing to guess why they use that method as reading the story to find out what happens, even if we might not ever know why that author does it. At least, that’s my opinion.

If you are a writer, do you ever use in media res in your fiction? And if so, why? If not, why

Had a pretty interesting experience today. This morning as I was getting ready to leave the house for my meditation class when I had an idea for a short story. I wanted to write it down, but I was about to leave the house though, so I couldn’t write it down. Instead I made a promise to write it down as soon as I had the opportunity to do so.

Just one problem: a good percentage of what passes through our five senses and through our thoughts gets forgotten pretty quickly if we don’t really grab onto the details and keep it in the short-term memory. And guess what? I didn’t seize a hold of this idea and now I’ve completely forgotten it! (I have a feeling it has something to do with the movie Pacific Rim, but other than that I cannot remember a single detail). And when I realized that, you know my beat myself up over losing it.

So I spent my meditation class trying to meditate my idea back to myself. I went over my morning, trying to find the moment where I had that spark of inspiration. However, I didn’t catch it. Whatever that idea was, for now it’s been lost to the darker recesses of my memory.

However, the day and the meditation wasn’t a total wash. I did manage to come up with a second idea that was just as good as the first (I think). I remembered a story I read last night, about a man from my state who had chained up his German Shepherd to a tree for four years and had neglected, abused and tortured the poor thing during that time (as hard as it is to read, I urge you to check out here). I thought to myself, what if the police hadn’t intervened and something happened to the dog? I recalled a certain belief from Southeast Asia about what happens when you abuse certain dogs, and I decided to turn that into a short story.

So while I would like to still get that idea back (and maybe someday I will), I think this idea is pretty cool as well. And it gust goes to show how ideas keep bubbling up in a writer’s imagination. It also shows you need to write them down as soon as you get them, but I think I already mentioned that. If I have any other good ideas, I’ll let you all know.

By the way, has anything like this happened to you? How did you feel about it?

Today I was walking back from running an errand. The streets were packed with people here to see the game between Ohio State and Wisconsin and drink and have a good time. There were people selling food and T-shirts and Buckeye gear all over the place. I barely noticed any of it. My mind was turning over other things: money and school, my two biggest worries in life these days.

I’m not going to unload my problems on this blog, at least not this post. That’s not what this post is about. But I will say that even with a job and some side gigs and the little money I get from writing, life’s still expensive. Tuition, rent, and groceries is what I pay for the most. And I wonder, as plenty of other people around the world and from all walks of life wonder, how I’m going to write it all.

And as I’m turning all this in my head, walking to the ATM to make a deposit and then head home, an idea for a short story pops into my mind. It’s more magical realism than horror,  but I think to myself, this sounds like a crazy good idea for a short story. I can base it around my own life, giving it an authentic touch. And I get to include some monsters in this story too! Imagine how much fun it’ll be to write that sort of story! A bit therapeutic too, that’s always good for the mind, body and soul.

Now I’m at home, writing up this post before I start on a paper for my English class. I have to say, writing about this had made me happier, even as it had occurred to me that it make my family worry about me because I’m blogging about money woes while talking about an idea for a short story involving my money woes. But like I said, I feel better writing about this, and if it guilt trips someone into buying my work, all the better.

I probably shouldn’t have written that last sentence. Oh well.

Now I’m wondering, does anyone else write about their problems? Do they use fiction of any sort to release and share their problems? I’m pretty sure there are plenty of literary authors who do just that, but I don’t usually read literary fiction. I bet there are plenty of other writers who include their problems in their genre work,, but none come to mind at the moment. But I think that stories like those are probably some of the best. It’s someone sharing their life, having a conversation with themselves and with others through a fiction story. It feels real, even if there are vampires or knights in shining armor or other weird things in their stories. And those sort of stories are the ones where people can really identify with the authors and the characters, because they’re thinking to themselves, I’ve been in that situation before, and it sucks.

Well, I’ve got the idea stored away now, so when I’m done with Video Rage and Laura Horn I’ll be able to remember it. I’ve got a little over thirty different ideas for short stories written down right now, so I’ll definitely have plenty of stuff to write about when I finish my two current works-in-progress. I could even write another, longer collection of short stories if I wanted to.

Hmm…another collection of short stories. Not a bad idea.

Until then though, I’ve got a paper to work on. Wish me luck! I’m aiming to get an A on this paper. I’ll settle for a B if I have to, but an A’s the goal at the moment.

Do you ever incorporate your life’s problems into your fiction? How do you do it? And what has been the result of that?

tqg cover

Boy, it’s been a crazy day. I was afraid I’d never have a chance to write this post. But I’m in front of my computer, my homework for tonight is done, and I’ve called back everyone who’s left me messages, so here’s the post to celebrate the two-month anniversary of The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, my collection of short stories and first published book.

So far, I’ve sold about 41 or 42 copies, which isn’t too bad given I’m still pretty new to the indie-publishing scene and this is my first book. In addition, I’ve got a 4-star average on Amazon at the moment based on four reviews, which makes me happy. I like to think that people like what I write, so the reviews are proof that at least some people like the book.

I’ve also gotten some interesting responses to my book. For instance, the first short story in the collection, “Addict”, has turned quite a few heads with its content. But it’s a story about a man with sex addiction, so I can see why that might attract some attention. I’ve also gotten some great feedback on some of the other short stories. My dad thought the titular short story, “The Quiet Game”, was very creepy and well-done, and coming from him that’s some really awesome praise. And of course Jason Haxton, author of the book The Dybbuk Box, loved my original dybbuk story, “Samson Weiss’s Curse”. He’s the one who gave me my sole five-star review.

If you’re interested in reading The Quiet Game, please check it out on Amazon and Smashwords, available in both paperback and e-book versions.

I’m on a writing craze lately. In the past two days, I’ve finished a chapter of Laura Horn, wrote an entire chapter of Video Rage, and even did an entire article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. This time around, I did a little research on The Length Debate, seeing all the opinions on how long a piece of flash fiction, a short story, a novel, and/or everything in-between should be. It was a fun article to research, and I hope you read it and share your thoughts on the debate too.

And as always, I encourage you to subscribe and follow Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. If you independently publish, it’s a wonderful site full of information for authors on everything from creating your own cover to information on developments with CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to just general tips on writing fiction of any sort. I’m sure you’ll find it extremely helpful and informative, just like I did the first time I logged on.

Oh, before I forget and sign off, I just wanted to let you know I updated the About Me page on this blog. It’s just a little bit more general information, but if you’re curious, go ahead and check it out. You’ll find my somewhat-funny bucket list among the material I’ve added there.

See you in the morning, everybody. Have a good night, and I hope you don’t have any dreams about people with schizophrenia performing exorcisms in the street like I did last night (yes, I dreamed that. It seems even in my dreams I can’t escape the weirdness that is my somewhat macabre interests and hobbies).,

Writing is a mostly mechanical exercise, making practiced movements with a pen and paper or seeking the correct key on a keyboard. And putting those words together is part of the higher mental powers given to the human species through millions of years of evolution. But the act of imagination, the power it gives us to bring those words together into a coherent narrative and even tell stories with those words, to me that it is transcendent of all the abilities we’ve garnered from evolution. To me, it’s almost a gift of the soul.

I keep three separate lists on my flash drive. One list has short summaries and blurbs of novels, films, TV shows, comic books, and even video games I’d like to write. I’m up to sixty-one ideas at the moment. The second list gives short descriptions of short stories I plan to write (seventeen at the moment). And the third list has subjects for articles I can write for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors (great blog, by the way. Totally recommend it). That’s a total of eighty-eight ideas, and all of them are possible through my imagination. Heck, I wouldn’t have any of the ideas for stories I write if it wasn’t for imagination.

And imagination is influenced by so many things. Everyday life influences imagination, allows it to be transformed into stories. I read an article about efforts to stop forced marriages with metal spoons and I got an idea for a short story from that. When I went to my science fiction class, I had an idea for a novella that I had to blog about almost immediately (see this post for the actual article). Speaking to some friends about the recent death of an actor to suicide, I thought of an idea for a crime novel. When the lights in the Super Dome went out early this year, I got an idea from that too.

And not just events in life fuel the imagination. When I read or watch TV or a movie, I get ideas from them too. Just today, a book I’m in the middle of reading gave me an idea for a short story taking place in Jerusalem. Watching a favorite episode of Doctor Who the other day, I had an idea for a six-book series featuring Agatha Christie (Whovians, I bet you can guess which episode that is). I even have an idea for a movie to bring back a TV franchise I used to love as a kid. And how many fairy tales and childrens books have I taken and turned into new stories that boggle the mind and scare the soul? All this is possible through these works’ influences on my imagination, and my imagination’s influence on me.

Imagination. It is the ability to absorb events or old ideas and–pardon the adjective used–regurgitate it into a new form. It is the application of ideas and concepts in a new light, in a new way. It’s the churning of our subconscious, which spits out, like in a Greco-Roman Creation myth, something new and fabulous and beautiful. It is a force that I contemplate, that I look at and wonder about its complexity.

And perhaps one day I’ll write a story about its impact…oh wait. I’ve already got one or two ideas based on that! Never mind.

The point is, the imagination is something that is such a benefit to the act of writing, the act of living, that without it life would be so much less beautiful and powerful and amazing. It’s given me a ton of ideas, and I hope it’ll give me some more in the future. Because if my imagination can allow me to create a large body of work to leave me behind, even if I don’t get famous off of it all, I’ll feel like I’ve left behind an amazing legacy for the world.

Though if I can get famous I won’t complain.

What’s your view on the imagination and its impact on writing and on life?

Nice to meet you.

I finally sat down this evening, after finishing a whole lot of biology homework, and I watched the movie Warm Bodies. It’s amazing when people can take a tired, old plot and make it seem fresh and new. If you don’t get what I’m talking about, just see the movie. You’ll get it.

But it put me in mind of a zombie story I’ve written myself. Well, it’s not exactly a zombie story. Zombie-like or zombie-ish. If I call it a zombie story, it seems like it gets categorized into a larger body of work that people see as overused these days…and increasingly getting as dumb as its main antagonist. But my short story, “Buried Alive”, actually features some zombie-story elements. And even though I’m satisfied with the ending, I feel…I feel like the story could continue after it finished. And, I realized, I kind of wanted it to continue.

Just one problem: I don’t want to make a bleeding novel out of this story. I’ve got enough on my plate without another novel at this point.

Looks like Sean Connery in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

But then I thought of an old high school memory: in some of my English classes, particularly the AP courses I took when I was an upperclassman, we read a lot of Ernest Hemingway. My teacher just had this thing for Ernest Hemingway. Don’t know why. I didn’t particularly care for him, but we read quite a bit of him. Indian Camp, I think we read twice in my four years of high school.

And I remember, there was a character in many of Hemingway’s stories, a guy by the name of Nick Adams. This guy appeared everywhere, sometimes a kid, sometimes a teenager, sometimes an adult. I once asked my teacher about this guy, and he replied that Nick Adams appeared in plenty of Hemingway’s stories. Two dozen, to be exact. What made Nick Adams so appealing to Hemingway? He was supposedly based on a lot of Hemingway’s personal experiences, so maybe that had a lot to do with it.

In any case, I thought, “Why can’t this short story be my Nick Adams?” It would be short stories I write every now and then, featuring the same world and the same protagonist, all originating from “Buried Alive”. I could even release them in a collection someday, far, far in the future. Who knows what could happen?

In any case, I’ll see what I come up with when I have the time and the energy to write some short stories. There are definitely possibilities here for a series of interconnected stories.

Have you ever written a short story and wished you could write a sequel/spin-off/related story to it? What happened?

tqg cover

I just recieved my fourth review for my collection of short stories, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. This review comes from my aunt, Michele Siegal (actually, it says my uncle’s name on Amazon, but that’s because they have a joint account). The review, which gave the book 4 stars, went like this:

“This is the first time I’ve read any of Rami’s stories. I was very impressed with the wide variety of stories and the way he wove the paranormal into each piece. Paranormal is not something I usually read and I enjoyed this collection very much. The collection reminded me of the Twlight Zone. The descriptions were especially well developed. Keep on writing Rami!”

Thanks Aunt Michele! I’m glad you enjoyed the variety and the descriptions, and I’m flattered that you think I reminded you of The Twilight Zone. And with this review, I’m maintaining my 4.0 average on Amazon, which I’m very happy with. And with book sales slowly but steadily rising, I can only hope that more reviews will come.

If you decide to read The Quiet Game, please don’t hesitate to write a review, whether you enjoyed the book or not. I always appreciate feedback, positive or negative, and reviews really help indie writers such as myself move up in the world.

Hope you’re having as good a day as I am. If I have anything else to write, I’ll post it later in the day (and if I can get my homework done in a timely manner, I might just have something to write about).

If you see a pun in that title, you’ll realize it’s one of THE worst puns in existence. I’m not even sure why I made it.

Earlier today I had an idea for a story that I’m tentatively calling “Rose”. I’m not going to get into details about it, though I will say that flowers and plants do play a big role in the story, if the title didn’t give it away, and when I write it I’ll probably listen to a lot of songs about obsessive love and stalkers. I somehow came up with it while sitting in my Science Fiction and Fantasy class today (I’ll probably be able to recall the thought process behind it better at a later date, because it’s a bit of a mystery now), and I wrote it down when I got home today.

Now at first I thought it would make a great short story. But then…I realized that this story would be longer than your average short story. Then I thought, “Perhaps it could be some weird, creepy novel.” But that was too long. So I thought to myself, “How about a novella?”

Now, I’ve never had any definite opinions on novellas. I’ve only read a few in my entire lifetime, most of them by Stephen King (anyone familiar with “N.” or “Everything’s Eventual”, by any chance?). I’d never considered writing one before. Short stories, which are the foundations for a career in fiction writing, are hard enough to write for me, and novels are my true passion. Why would I have time for a novella, that strange middle-ground between the art of short stories that is sometimes so elusive for me and the novel that is my freedom and passion?

But when I thought of this story, it somehow clicked that a novella format would be best. I wouldn’t have to struggle to extend the story, and I wouldn’t have to pack it into a neat little package. The story would fit in the format of a novella. And from there I formed my first real opinion on novellas: they are perfect for those stories that can’t fit into the format of a short story but would suffer as a novel.

I’m not exactly sure when I’ll write this novella–though I have an idea or two–but I look forward to writing it, like I look forward to writing all the stories I come up with. Until then, I’ll probably churn this one in the bowels of my imagination until I have a better idea of the story I’d like to write with it. After all, my stories are usually a bit better when I’ve given them a little time to mature in my imagination.

Oh, fun fact before I finish this post: this novella is the 60th idea for a story I’ve had, not counting short stories or articles I’ve written. With the amount of ideas I have, I’ll at the very least never run out of ideas for stories to write, and at the very best I’ll be very prolific. Either way, it’s good news.