Posts Tagged ‘The Quiet Game’

Spring Semester 2013 Wrap-Up Report

Posted: May 3, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
4

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to really write about, but I have something now. While I moved out of the dorms on Tuesday afternoon, I did not recieve my final grades till just now, so I’m writing this post now which some of you may have been eagerly anticipating. Others of you may also care less, but I hope you read this post anyway.

So anyway, a whole semester went by a little too fast if you ask me, but I did very well. I got a 3.3 GPA, an improvement by 0.1 from last semester. I didn’t get all the As I wanted, but I’ll work for that this coming semester. I did very well in Creative Writing with an A and American Literature with an A-. I also met some really awesome professors and learned a whole bunch.

I also worked hard on finishing up The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones and I’m now waiting for the copyright. Also, thanks to my friend Matthew Williams, Reborn City is close to having its final draft finished, and Snake is getting its 3rd draft. I’m a busy guy, but with all this effort I’m putting in, I should have RC out by the holidays and Snake by summer 2014 (hopefully).

In the meantime, I’m going to be working in the financial aid office at Ohio State like I did last summer, and I’ll be writing when I have the chance. Plus I’ll probably be seeing plenty of movies and reading a lot of books, so expect reviews. And let’s not forget I’ll hopefully be getting a Kindle, so if you want me to read your books, better start bribing me now.

So here’s to the start of summer. Let’s hope it all goes well.

An Update On Pending Works

Posted: April 25, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

As most of you are aware, I have three works of fiction on their way to publication, and at various stages of that progress. Since there has been significant progress made in all three works on their roads to publication recently, I thought I’d give you all an update of each work, in the order they’ll most likely be published in. So here we go:

The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones
The last time my collection of short stories came up in a post, I think I’d sent it to the copyright office so that I could sue anyone who used it without permission after publication. Getting a copyright through the US Copyright Office takes about two and one-half months, so I’m about a month and one-half of the way through the wait. When I do get the copyright, I plan to do a month-long countdown, and then upload The Quiet Game onto Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and other sites. It’ll be available for about $1.29, which is about the same as an iTunes song, but better because you get five short stories in one neat little package.
If you want to like the Facebook page for The Quiet Game, you can follow this link:

https://www.facebook.com/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

And if you want to watch my home-made trailer for The Quiet Game, please watch the video below.

Reborn City
As I’ve mentioned before, my friend Matt Williams (author of the phenomenal novel Whiskey Delta, now available on Amazon) is critiquing each chapter of RC and giving me feedback. Just yesterday in fact, Matt sent me Ch. 17, leave less than ten chapters left. After I’ve finished editing the entire novel based on Matt’s evaluation, I plan on creating a cover, a Facebook page, and a trailer, just like I did for The Quiet Game. Plus of course the whole copyright process will be repeated for RC.
And for those of you who don’t know what RC is about, it’s the first novel in a trilogy taking place several years in the future and follows a street gang whose leaders have strange abilities and their strange connection with a shadowy military company. I hope it’ll gain an audience, especially given some of the themes in the story.

Snake
My thriller novel about a serial killer hunting members of a certain New York mafia family is in the middle of a third draft, the point of which is to go into deeper character development and character history for the main characters. Once that’s done, I’ll probably put it through one more draft before I get ready to copyright it and publish it. And by the way, I think this novel is some of the scariest work I’ve ever done, and also some of the best.

I hope your interests are piqued by what you’ve read here today. I hope to publish The Quiet Game  soon and to have RC ready soon, so wish me luck and keep reading the blog for updates. Thanks and I’ll write another post later. I’ve got an errand to take care of.

The Black Dragon Award

Posted: April 14, 2013 in ideas, Living and Life, Scary Stuff, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
9

I know what you’re thinking: He got another award? But that’s not the case. You see, I made up my own award! I thought it’d be interesting if I created my own Internet meme and saw how far I went. Hence, the Black Dragon Award, an award for any author who has written any form of fiction that’s got something scary in it.

So here are the rules for the Black Dragon Award:

1. You must have written something scary or featuring something scary in the past year. (This can range from being a simple murder mystery to a full-on zombie novel with a wizard and serial killers mixed in for variety). Note that whatever work you’ve created will be the subject of several of the questions below.

2. You must thank the person who nominated you and then link back to their  blog.

3. You must answer the 10 questions below on your own blog post.

4. Finally, you must nominate at least 5 other authors for the award and then notify them of it.

Okay, time for the questions. Enjoy:

1. What is the premise of the novel you’ve written? My novel Snake, which I spent half of 2012 writing, is about a serial killer hunting down members of a certain Mafia family in New York. Why is he doing this is for the reader to discover as they read. It’s pretty scary.

2. How long did it take you to write it? I spent six months from June to December 2012 working on Snake. It was a lot of fun, but I’m still on the editing phase, and that can be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’m about to start on the third draft (God help me) and I’m going to be adding a lot of material for character history and character development. It’s going to be hard work.

3. Which character(s) are you most like? I think I’m most like the Snake (he’s somewhat based on me, after all). But at times I wish I was like the female lead, Allison. She’s a tough girl, but she’s got her nice side to her. I can’t help but fall for her.

4. What’s the scariest thing you’ve read/seen lately? Honestly, it was that ghost I saw the other night. That was freaky! I wish I could show what I saw to the Ghost Adventures crew.

5. What’s something you’re reluctant to write about? I’m not sure. Perhaps rape scenes. Those are tough, and they really touch a chord that even veteran writers don’t want to touch. If I ever do write a rape scene though, it’ll probably be for the purpose of showing the horrors of rape and the attitudes around it.

6. If you could take characters from other works and insert them into an original story of your own design, who would you take and what would you have them do? I’d like to take Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Jason Voorhees and have them become reluctant allies. I’d probably kill off Clarice Starling early, though (I prefer Will Graham to Clarice Starling). Hey, that’d be the impetus for the events of the story. Jason could fall in love with Starling, and when she dies, Lecter and Jason could go on a revenge-fueled killing spree. That’d be interesting…and fun to write.

7. Do you envision a sequel to your novel? I’d like to write a sequel for Snake, but not for a long while. I like to take breaks when I’m working on a series, put some time between each book in the series. It’s good for my noggin that way.

8. What first got you into writing? And what got you writing scary subject matter? I think Harry Potter got me into writing, but it was Stephen King and Anne Rice who got me into writing scary stuff. I think my mother was happy that I loved those writers so much (we read a lot of the same things) but I think my dad was (and still is) probably worried about some of the subjects I write about.

9. What scares you personally? Spiders. Not the tiny ones, but the ones where you can make out the details on their faces. Close-ups of spider faces I saw back in 4th grade gave me nightmares for ages.

10. What are your future plans? Finish editing Snake, release my collection of short stories The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, and also finish editing and release Reborn City. After that, I’d like to work on RC‘s sequel, if you don’t mind.

Okay, and now for the nominees:

1. Stories by Williams.

2. A Portia Adams adventure

3. nightmirrors

4. Pat Bertram’s Blog

5. self-publish bible

Let’s hope this award takes off–with your help, anyway. Congratulations to the winners and good luck with your own posts.

A Welcome To My New Followers

Posted: March 17, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

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
Tags: , , , , ,
2

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
Tags: , , , , ,
2

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.

The Quiet Game: The Book Trailer

Posted: February 27, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

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
Tags: , , ,
0

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!

“The Quiet Game”: Last Night’s Reading

Posted: February 23, 2013 in Living and Life, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

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

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Posted: February 21, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
4

I was tagged by Lorna Dounaeva (http://lornadounaeva.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop/) for this post, which is similar to the award memes that make the rounds of the Internet. The Next Big Thing Blog Hop is a chance for us to talk about our works-in-progress, or WIP, and we have to follow certain steps to fulfill it. First, I have to tag the person who tagged me (thanks, Lorna!). Then I have to introduce and explain The Next Big Thing Blog Hop to those reading the post (check!). Then I have to answer ten questions about my WIP, and include pictures if possible. After the questions are done, I must tag five other writers with WIPs, and then let them know through emails or comments.

I’ll get to that, but first the questions, which will be focusing on The Quiet Game:

1. What is the title of the book you are working on? The title is The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones.

TQG cover

2. Where did the idea come from for the book? I think it started when I realized that editing my sci-fi novel RC was taking longer than I thought and that I’d probably finish my thriller novel Snake around the beginning of winter break. I’d played with the idea of working on a collection of short stories after Snake was done, but by the time winter break arrived, I thought it’d be a good thing to do, especially with my plans to self-publish. So as soon as I’d finished Snake, I got to work on it.

3. What genre does your book fall under? Horror, definitely horror. To be more specific, four of the short stories feature supernatural horror, while the fifth features psychological horror.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Well, it’s a collection of short stories, so that’d be five movies if I were extremely lucky. The only actor I can think of though, would be Taissa Farmiga from American Horror Story, who would play Traci from the titular short story, The Quiet Game. Although she doesn’t look very much like my conception of the character, she’d definitely define and bring the role to life, and that’s what I’m looking for.

Taissa Farmiga, everybody.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? Be prepared to enter the darkest corners of your mind in…The Quiet Game.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I’m doing the self-publishing thing. It’s the way of the future, and I’ve tried the traditional route to publishing novels and collections. Although it’s still prestigious,the traditional route is still very difficult to do and from the way some of the bigger companies in New York have been merging and acting, they know it won’t last forever. Besides, I want to get my work to my readers sooner rather than later.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manusript? Probably a month or so, though one of the short stories did need to be rewritten at some point, so that’s another couple of days there. Each story took different lengths of time to work on, so it was an uneven work schedule. Still, it was very much worth it.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? I don’t know; it’s so hard to compare one collection of short stories to another. In fact, I’d say it’s almost impossible, though my Mom did compare one of my short stories to Stephen King’s It, which I thought was a huge compliment.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I got inspiration from anywhere. The Quiet Game came from a comment-conversation on a friend’s blog; Addict came from the experiences of a friend of mine. If I tried to go back and figure out the origin of each story, I’d have interesting stories to tell right there!

10. What else about yoru book might pique reader’s interest? I think that it’s by a new author and that each story is different, scary, and unique might draw some in. That’s the hope, anyway.

And now, onto the tagged people:

1. Matt Williams (http://storiesbywilliams.com/)

2. Angela (http://aportiaadamsadventure.wordpress.com/?ref=spelling)

3. Cristian Mihai (http://cristianmihai.net/)

4. Pat Bertram (http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/)

5. Jason Alan (http://jasonalanwriter.wordpress.com/)

Congratulations to the tagged winners, and I can’t wait to read what you’re in the process of creating.

Older Entries
Newer Entries