Posts Tagged ‘short story’

“Old Sid” Is Finished!

Posted: March 17, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, it took me a while, but I finally did it! I finished Old Sid, the second short story I submitted to my creative writing class. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Old Sid is about a bunch of students at Ohio State University trying to delve into the truth of Old Sid, an urban legend I made up for the short story (so don’t go online trying to see if Old Sid is a real thing, because it’s only a product of my imagination). The story is narrated from the point of view of several people at once, similar to what Jeffrey Eugenides did with his first novel The Virgin Suicides.

I ended up changing a lot with this draft, and at times I purposely got easily distracted just because it was slow-going and I wanted a break. But the story’s done, and I really like how it turned out. Old Sid has his Boo Radley moment where the characters realize he’s not a legend but very human, but it’s done in such a subtle way that it’s not right in your face. I think my teacher will like it when he reads it, especially since Old Sid is in the vein of literary fiction and I’m barely able to write horror in short story form with any amount of competence.

After I get my grades for the semester and some feedback on Old Sid, I might edit it again and send it off to a literary magazine, preferably one based in Ohio or better yet in Columbus. It’ll probably have a better chance in a local magazine, since a lot of people are very familiar with Ohio State in its home state than outside it (of course). I’ll let you know if I have any luck in that department. Wish me luck.

A Welcome To My New Followers

Posted: March 17, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of new followers over the past month or so, and especially during these past two weeks. So with that in mind, I’d thought I’d extend a welcome to my new followers and thank them for deciding to follow me and read my blog. And to my returning followers, welcome back and thanks for continuing to read my blog.

Also, I wanted to clarify some things for the newest readers. Occasionally on this blog, you’ll see words and phrases such as The Quiet Game, Reborn City, or Snake. These are my works-in-progress that I’ll be self-publishing hopefully within the next year or so. Each is very different from the other, and are at different stages of getting ready for publishing. I’d like to take this oppurtunity to tell you all about each of them and to let those who are already familiar with the works in question how progress is coming along.

So without further ado, here’s a look at my WIPs:

The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones

TQG cover

This is a collection of short stories I’ll be putting out soon. I wrote these short stories over winter break and the beginning of spring semester, and it’s almost ready for publication. I’m just waiting for the US Copyright Office to get me my copyright and then I’ll be ready to upload this onto the Internet. Since the Copyright Office takes about two and a half months though, we’ve still got a bit of a wait to go before it comes out. So please be patient, and in the meantime you can read the description for the book on the page “Books by Rami Ungar” or watch the trailer below:

Reborn City

This is a science fiction novel about street gangs in a post-apocalyptic future I wrote in high school and that’s being reviewed by a beta reader before I prepare it for publication. The beta reader, Matt Williams, also happens to be a published writer and blogger, so you should seriously check out his blog here: http://storiesbywilliams.com/. Currently Matt’s halfway through the novel or thereabouts, and since he finished his latest novel Pappa Zulu, he’s been able to get the chapters back to me that much faster. I can’t wait to see what results from our collaboration.

Snake

This is a thriller novel I wrote over six months from June to December 2012 and follows a serial killer in New York who is hunting members of a powerful mafia family, his reasons for doing so clouded in mystery and in murder (how’s that for a description). I recently finished the second draft and have sent off the first four chapters to a beta reader I trust. Hopefully she’ll be able to let me know what she thinks very quickly. In the meantime, there are a few excerpts of Snake on this blog, so if you get bored you can probably go looking for them and find them.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. I hope this piqued your interest in some of my work. Once again, thanks for reading and agreeing to follow my blog. It really means a lot to me. Have a nice day, and I’ll post again soon.

Rami

The Quiet Game: On Its Way To Get A Copyright

Posted: March 4, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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TQG cover

Well, it’s been a busy Monday for me, but I have some good news: in addition to editing another chapter of Reborn City after recieving said chapter back from my friend/beta reader, I sent The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones to the US Copyright Office for legal protection. Thus, I’ve initiated the final phase of the publishing process for my collection of short stories, which will culminate in publication.

Of course, the first thing I sent over to the US Copyright Office, I’m still waiting for them to process. This was about four weeks ago, so I’ll probably be finishing my finals when I finally get these oh-so important legal protections from plagiarism and illegal sales.

Oh well. In the meantime, please enjoy the tailer I created last week. It’s absolutely eerie.

The Quiet Game: The Final Edits Are Done

Posted: March 2, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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TQG cover

This evening I looked over the last two short stories in the order I’ll put them in the final book, and I had to smile at myself: In a little over two-and-a-half months, I’ve written five short stories, had them edited and critiqued, created a book trailer, and now I’ve gone over all five of them and done my final edits on them. In addition, I wrote some notes after each short story, explaining some of what I wanted to accomplish when I was writing the short stories and where the inspiration for each of them came from. It was thrilling thinking about the journey I’ve taken since December when winter break started, and seeing myself here and now.

The only thing left to do is to turn all the files into PDF format, and combine them so that I can send them to the US Copyright Office (and the sooner the better for that one; it seems that the US Copyright Office takes a long time to get your submissions processed and issue you a copyright, even when you do it electronically). After I get the copyright, I’ll upload The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones onto the Internet as an e-book, and share it all with you!

At this point, I’d like to once again thank those who inspired my work–Caitlin Kelly, my friend J, the people who created the film The Possession, and the Ghost Adventures crew–along with the people who critiqued my work–Marc Neiwirth, my creative writing class, Jason Alan, Enjie Hall, and Rabbi Wendy Warren Ungar–and along with all those whose encouragement has helped me to create this collection. You’ve been keeping me going, and you’ll keep me going until I run out of ideas for things to write, which probably won’t be anytime soon.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a break to work on a certain serial killer novel that’s been waiting for me. Have a good night, everybody.

Fugue: First Draft Finished

Posted: February 27, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, I finished “Fugue”, and I liked how it turned out. It’s a little longer than I expected, but I’m happy with it and I achieved what I wanted with it, which is the story of what happens when a very shy girl wakes up from a dissociative fugue, totally freaks out, and then finds out what sort of life she’s been living while she was in the fugue state.

The story took me about a week or so to write, with plenty of challenging aspects to it, such as how to put the main character through as much s%^t as possible without seeming sadistic or making the story seem unrealistic. I stuck with it though and had plenty of support. Plus the story itself was interesting to me, so I was able to get through it all without losing interest or getting disheartened.

Now I plan on sending it to two beta readers. One’s my Abnormal Psychology professor, who expressed an interest in the story when I told her about it. The other is an old teacher of mine, whom I think might be very interested in the story and may have some suggestions for me on how to improve the story. I hope he says he’ll read it, I have a feeling he’ll like it.

Wish me luck with all that’s coming. In addition to editing “Old Sid” and starting the second draft of “Snake”, I’m going to be working on getting “The Quiet Game” out on the digital bookshelves by April 30th, when the semester ends. Add in school and work, and Rami Ungar’s a very busy boy. Thank God spring break is coming!

Old Sid: The Critique

Posted: February 27, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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This evening, my creative writing class critiqued the second short story I submitted tot he class, “Old Sid”, about the subject of a fictional urban legend on Ohio State’s campus (by this, I mean I made up the urban legend). I was praised a lot on how my narrators gathered their testimony, and on how I captured the many apsects of the legend.

However, there were some thoughts on how the story could be improved. The most dramatic but necessary change was something I hadn’t even thought about: making the legend real. You see, every story with a Boo Radley has the Boo Radley character begin a legend and then become human at the end. I never did that for Old Sid, but I see that I can do that in the second draft and have a ton of fun with it while I’m at it.

I’ll also flesh out the narrators of the story and give them a little background as well, and then I’ll see if I can get the story off a tangent it goes on midway through the story. It’ll be awesome! I just have to finish “Fugue” first; I’m so close to finishing that short story, I can taste it on my tongue, and I’m not delaying that when I’m dealing with two really awesome short stories.

Wish me luck. I’ve got a first draft to finish tonight.

The Quiet Game: The Book Trailer

Posted: February 27, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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TQG cover

I’m very happy to announce that in only two hours, I managed to complete the trailer for The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I would like to thank the staff of Ohio State’s Digital Union for answering all my questions on iMovie and for helping me gather the photos and clips I needed.

The video was created using iMovie, and featured clips from YouTube videos, Google Images, and my own book cover. It features music I scrounged up on the Internet, and the sound effects were from iMovie’s sound effects database. I’m very proud of this video, particularly because a year ago I could not imagine myself making this sort of video. Thankfully I learned how to use all sorts of programs last semester, so now I feel a little less helpless using such programs.

So without further ado, I would like to introduce the official book trailer to The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. Feel free to share it on Facebook or on your own blog or wherever you would like to share it.

The Quiet Game will be coming out soon and will be available for $1.29 when it does. Please wait until then for it. Thanks for watching.

The Quiet Game: The Last Short Story Has Been Returned

Posted: February 26, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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TQG cover

Today my beta reader for one of the short stories gave me his feedback on “Samson Weiss’s Curse”, the dybbuk story that’ll be featured in The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. At this time, that means I can draw the illustrations that’ll be going into the story and assemble it into it’s final format, which I’ll submit to the US Copyright Office before uploading onto the Internet.

I would like to thank all my beta readers–my creative writing class, Jason Alan, Marc Neiwirth, Enjie Hall, and my mother Wendy Warren Ungar, for taking time out of their busy schedules to read my work and give me feedback and criticisms. Your contributions are immeasurable and I hope to someday repay the favor.

Although that doesn’t mean I’ll be supporting you in old age, Mom. You’ve already got a wonderful person at your side for that!

Putting Characters Through S%^t

Posted: February 24, 2013 in Reflections, short story, Writing
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I can’t remember where I heard it (might’ve been from my Creative Writing teacher, who’s a published literary novelist with tenure), but someone once told me that all fiction starts with a single character getting into a whole heap of trouble and then reacting to that trouble or trying to find some way to extricate themselves from it. In many cases, that’s all you need for a compelling plot. And so it is the case for my latest short story, Fugue, which is about a girl waking up from a fugue state to realize she’s not in Kansas anymore and she’s in big trouble.

Well actually she’s from a small town in rural Virginia somewhere between Richmond and Charlottesville, but you get what I’m going for here.

The point is, I’m trying to put my main character through so much grief and fear without being sadistic about it and without causing suspension of belief. The start of her trouble is the fact that she woke from the fugue state instead of the fugue itself. When one wakes from a fugue state, they’re confused, they’re scared, and they have no idea that they’ve just spent a great deal of time (in this case, several months) living as someone else, and have no memory of the incident. With that in mind, I’m delaying resolving the character’s problems and allowing her to figure out what happened to her while I try to make an interesting story based on the things that are happening to her immediately following her awakening.

Or to be simpler, I’m trying to see how much s%^t I can put the poor girl through before I have to resolve the plot and get to where this whole thing will eventually conclude. Which is a tough balance, seeing as I’m trying not to make things too easy for this character. On the other hand, I want to make sure readers don’t get annoyed by it all and want to stop reading because there’s no resolution.

So what’s the best way to go about doing this balancing act? You tell me. In any case, this is the first draft, so there will be room for mistakes. However I must try to get this done by the end of the week, because I’ll be starting edits on Snake when March begins, and I don’t want to delay too much.

Which means I should probably stop blogging and get back to getting this girl to her next point of conflict. Wish me luck.

“The Quiet Game”: Last Night’s Reading

Posted: February 23, 2013 in Living and Life, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, I did the reading last night, and I’m very happy with the results. Not a lot of people showed up–about ten at most–but they seemed to like it, and several friends of mine and some lookey-loos who just lived in the building showed up, which made me happy.

I started the show with a friend on the building’s activity board playing some creepy mood music from a Marilyn Manson album before stopping the song. Then I came out from behind the audience wearing make-up to make me look like Heath Ledger’s Joker and laughing like a madman. It freaked several people out, which was the reaction I was going for (I don’t have a photo of it right now, but I’ll be sure to post a photo of it later on The Quiet Game‘s Facebook page, the address of which is below). I proceeded to read from small sections from all but one of the short stories (you might remember that one of them is about a recovering sex addict, so I couldn’t read from that), and some people were a little creeped out by what I read to them.

Afterwards I thanked everyone who helped put the show together, and I thanked everyone who came for attending and sticking around, before telling everyone where they could find out more about The Quiet Game. It was nice, and I really enjoyed myself. It’s part of the song-and-dance that writers, especially self-publishing writers, have to do in order to make their work heard and bought and read and possibly reviewed on Amazon. So hopefully they’ll buy a copy after the book comes out, maybe tell their friends about it. That’s what I hope, anyway.

So for all those who managed to come, thanks for showing. It really meant a lot to me, and I hope that at future readings, you can show up and maybe not be too freaked out by anything that might be on my face besides my glasses.

Good night everybody.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

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