These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales

How does one deal with the crushing isolation of surviving the apocalypse? Hey, parasites just might be the answer!

What's the deal with that flat up there at 9 Curzon Place? I'd caution against checking in, but the place is building one heck of a band, you've got to give it that...

Hey teachers! All that grading got you down? Now, for a small down payment and a minimum (and...infrequent) maintenance fee, you can have all the help you need, courtesy of the zombies of the Caribbean island of Haiti...

Haunted hotels and zombie ponzi schemes. Alien invasions and murderous murals. All this and a heaping helping of weird are being served up gratis, but only for a limited time!

Get the collection These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales, currently free for the Kindle.

The Fine Line

Aaron Polson, a terrific writer of dark speculative fiction, wrote a great blog post today on the nature of marketing. I can relate really well to what Aaron is saying there. Creative people (which equates to all seven billion living, breathing human beings on the planet Earth) only have so much time to do creative things. How much left do they have to get others interested in those creative things? 


I owe my agent a book. She's been patient in checking in with me. I'm just about finished with it (it won't be much longer, B, I promise!), and I think it's a good novel.


But other things always take precedence. Teaching, grading papers, committee work and office hours chew up a good chunk of the week (I'm back officially on Monday). I spent many hours this year in pulling together applications for both sabbatical and admission to graduate school at UCF. I also have a two-year-old, and we'd like to have some more kids. I like to run and fish and play golf. I need those things, just like I need to take my wife to the movies and our whole family to the zoo or the arts market and the beach.


And then there's the hour or two I actually devote to growing and refining the stories I enjoy writing. I had a great January and a solid February. With work starting up again, I'm not sure what will happen to my productivity, but I'll wager it'll drop. Oh, well.


Marketing? I just don't have much time to really become very active in forums. I have my blog and I like my Goodreads page, but I haven't gotten into Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Google + or Twitter. Maybe I will down the road, but it'll be more likely for professional networking and staying in touch with family or friends.


I woke up today battling a stubborn chest cold. I had designs on writing for a few hours, but instead I went to the doctor and I dropped by the college to pick up some texts and I raked the front yard and organized The Horrible (its our cabinet filled with small kitchen appliances, and the cords and crockpots and blenders all meld together like some awesome junkyard robot, but it makes getting the rice cooker out of the back a real bitch, so I cleaned it).


I wrote some chapter notes and this blog post, and that's the extent of what I do with marketing on a daily basis. There it is. It's not too effective, I know, but the girls will be home in ten minutes and then we're going for a walk and I'm certain the last thing we'll talk about is how much fun we all had today in sitting in front of a computer... 


Edit: Oh, in the meantime, I forgot to add that Amazon dropped the price on Survival. For a limited time, you can purchase the novella for just .99 (BAM! marketing)!

John Rector's Already Gone

I enjoyed Already Gone quite a bit. With its grim themes, spare prose style and violent plot, it read like good modern noir. The plot takes some nice twists and I found myself digging the narrative voice. Rector writes well in the present tense, which is not always the easiest thing to do, and dang, that Diane is one dastardly dame!


Or is she?


Fun story that moves well through the conclusion. I'll be looking for more of Rector's fiction...

On Reading and Creativity

I've been testing the waters lately on working with a group of writers in forming a literary cooperative. My initial thoughts were to find thirteen writers that would each write and design two novellas each. The idea would be to create a website that would include industry news, new fiction releases every two weeks (on a pre-set schedule), author collaboration, and general discussion on writing.


Here's where the idea might hit a snag: I'd like to feature novellas on the site.


Frozen is garnering some kind words on Goodreads, but folks seem to want more content. It's a fair criticism, and length seems to be a real hurdle for many readers of novellas.


I find that interesting, as I really like to both read and write stories in that 15,000-20,000-word range. I think some of Stephen King's best work falls into that narrative size, and I actively seek out novellas when I'm looking for stories on Amazon.


But maybe I'm in the minority. When I thought up the idea for the cooperative, I did it with an eye on filling a niche. I have my favorite go-to sites for short stories and I still scour the library once a week for novels, but there really isn't a web repository for novellas.


I keep a reading journal, and my general habits seem to follow these trends:

• 20-25 novels in a given year
• 25+ collections/anthologies (this is where I depart from most readers, I think; I really like short stories)
• Three or four nonfiction titles
• 25+ cookbooks
• Loads of online reading, and I get Shimmer and Fantasy & Science Fiction at the house  

I've read six novellas so far in 2012, with only The Odds coming in hardcopy. I was thinking that a website with dedicated original content in the novella format would be good for folks like me, but maybe there just aren't a lot of readers that like that storytelling size.


I like the idea of writers collaborating on projects, maybe writing stories that complement each other's universes. I like the idea of selling a subscription, which would be a book club of sorts. I think there would be a nice infusion of content in the novella category for the yearly awards cycles. 


I'm also energized to see where digital content delivery is going. I recently accepted an offer to join the Texts and Technology program at the University of Central Florida, and I'm very excited to begin classes in the fall. It's an applied programming degree, and I'll be honing my skills in design and programming while boosting my credentials to teach digital media in our new converged communication program at the college.


When I think about enriched texts, narrative assemblages, and all of the emerging digital platforms, I get pretty excited. The future of storytelling is bright and (as I sit here, typing away in a digital journal) pretty much unlimited for writers and creators...


If you have thoughts on the novella (one way or the other), I'd love to hear from you!

Already Gone, Sugarland

A Strange Circumstance

I'm writing a novel in three parts, and I was passing through some revisions yesterday when it occurred to me that I'd written myself into a corner.


My dilemma: excise seventy-six pages, or one paragraph.


It's funny how that can happen, but the problem became perfectly clear to me while I was out on a jog. In the case of this narrative, the text in question really shifts the tone. If I keep the focus on the plot and the action, then those pages go. If I stress the exposition and flashback to build a character bond, that throws an abrupt halt to the pacing.


What kind of book should it be?


Thankfully, because of the beauty of the words processor, I can cut the larger passage and maybe save that for a stand-alone novella. I'll write it both ways and test it out with readers.


Though I have an inkling of which way I'd like to take it (lean and mean and filled with spleen), I haven't come to this particular conundrum yet in writing a novel...

The Unfortunate Plight of Greg Oden

Sometimes, coincidence is just silly (maybe uncanny is a better term in this case). In the early 1980s, the Portland Trailblazers passed on a chance to draft Micheal Jordan. They took Sam Bowie because they needed a post presence, and Jordan would have had a hard time playing with Clyde Drexler getting the bulk of the minutes at the '2' guard.


Bowie played marginally well as a Blazer, when he did play, but his career was hijacked by injuries. Those injuries, coupled with the fact the Jordan revolutionized the sport and became one of the greatest athletes in the history of sport, relegated Bowie's name to the margins of Trivial Pursuit. 


The same thing, sadly, has happened to Greg Oden. 


Jason Quick does a great job of running the sad details down here. It's an unfortunate plight, or as much of a sad story as one can have for a player that has banked many tens of millions. 


Let me tell you, Portland reveres its professional basketball team. When 20,000 people show up downtown to welcome you, you understand how big pro hoops is there in Rip City. I have fond memories of gathering around the radio and listening to the great Blazer teams as they went deep in the playoffs with Terry Porter, Kevin Duckworth, Buck Williams, Clyde the Glide, Drazen Petrovic, Arvydys Sabonis, and the rest of the early '90s squads. I loved the early '00s squads, with Strickland and Kenny Anderson, Gary Trent, Bonzi Wells, Nick the Quick, J.R. Rider, Sheed, Darius Miles, Mighty Mouse and Scott Pippen.


And then we have this current group. They've been together about five years. Now Brandon Roy is out of the league with bad knees of his own and we're struggling to win games. We lost last night to the Lakers on the road, and we're hovering around .500.


When we drafted Greg with the #1 pick, it seemed perfect. Pair him LMA and B.Roy and count the rings. 


That hasn't happened. Instead, Kevin Durant has become the league's most consistent performer and one of its top stars. Greg? Well, he's gone through surgeries and rehabs.


Unfortunately, he made more headlines for having a nude photograph make the rounds on the internet than he ever did for his play.


When he was right, he really was right. He could board like a monster and he occupied so much space that he was like two defenders in the paint. It would have been great to see what he could do.


But the injuries probably won't allow that. Three microfracture surgeries is too much to come back from. And that's why it's unfortunate, because Greg bought into the city and the fans that adored him. He got it, and he was going to be great there.


Many Blazers never leave Portland when their careers are over. It's too nice a place, and the people there treat them very well. But the fans have turned on Greg, and I imagine he'll leave town. He'll have to channel his competitive spirit in another way, and that's why it's an unfortunate plight for him.


I believe he just wants to play, but his body won't let him.


Here's to good healing, Greg. Thanks for putting in the effort on all of the rehabilitation assignments, and I hope Portland left enough of a good impression that you keep a condo in the KOIN tower or something like that.


I love the Blazers, but damn if they aren't snakebit when it comes to drafting bigs with early picks...