Revolving Door

I really ought to install a revolving door at FAR Manor — M.A.E. lasted about a week at the free-range insane asylum this time. At the beginning of the week, she told us she was going to visit with Lobster for a night. One night stretched to two, three… and Lobster has a girlfriend living with him, so I don’t think it was that. However, I did get a call on my smellphone while I was at work from some guy named Jesse (I think it was). I figure she hooked up with someone on Facebook. Again.

So I was working at home Friday, because I had a meeting on Wednesday, and she came in without my noticing. I often work with the door closed to keep Mason from demanding more granddad time, so that wasn’t unusual. I also managed to miss the “discussion” she had with Mrs. Fetched, who had talked with her baby-daddy when he called earlier. So…

M.A.E. asked Mrs. Fetched, “Am I going to get Moptop this weekend?”

“No.”

“Why not?!”

“I don’t want her here this weekend.” There was the minor detail about us not being here all afternoon today, and M.A.E. almost immediately blowing off everything after she promised us she’d do anything if we let her come back, but Moptop does antagonize Mason a lot. Sure, he gives it right back, but the constant shrieking does get annoying.

So M.A.E. stomped upstairs to make some phone calls. Mrs. Fetched called up the stairs after her to bring the phone back down with her. She didn’t. This is where I first learned of M.A.E.’s presence, as she stormed back downstairs, slamming the door behind her, then out. “If you’re leaving,” Mrs. Fetched advised her, “you’d better take your stuff with you, because you’re not coming back.” M.A.E. gave no response. We found out later she went down to Big V’s with the boo-hoo routine, then got Cousin Splat to give her a ride into town (presumably to meet her current… whatever you want to call it).

• • •

Left to right: Mason, me, Skylar

The 80s song, “Me and the Boys” might be my theme song for this week, since that might be what’s coming. Since we get Thursday and Friday off, and everyone else is going to be gone anyway, I took the rest of the week as vacation (or more like staycation). Skylar is another revolving-door inmate at FAR Manor, in and out a lot, and I expect that Mrs. Fetched will find many “reasons” to leave them both with me.

I’m hoping that Big V will start picking up some of the slack, since she’s had cataract surgery and can see a little better now. Funny how things work: just when he’s where he’s not screaming in his sleep at night, and is starting to play a little better with Mason, they take him back.

One of the Evil Twins is here for a couple days, so I just may get a few things done while otherwise abandoned with the grandkid. Her sister is visiting some friends, and she’s getting stir-crazy.

#FridayFlash: Wandering Mind

“Hello, Mr. Johnson,” the nurse chirped in her baby-talk voice. “Are we doing okay this morning?”

“Hi, Tammy,” I replied. “Whatever it is I’m doing, I seem to be doing it here at the moment.”

Her smile became less forced, her tone closer to — but not quite — adult-to-adult. “Oh, good. Looks like you’re having a good day, then! Do you know what year it is?”

“I’ve told you twenty-‘leven times, it’s twenty-‘leven.” The retro styling was supposed to help us Alzheimer’s patients by giving us comfortable surroundings, but it can confuse things. It didn’t help that they assumed we all liked Glenn Miller and that other big band crap — give me good old 50’s rock and roll.

Tammy laughed. “Good! Are you up to eating, then?”

“Yeah. Breakfast would be good. And some crosswords, maybe. I’d like to call the kids, if they’re around.” I paused. “How long was I gone?”

She gave me a sad look. “Three days. And you were pretty foggy the day before.”

So I’m lucid about a third of the time now. “I hope I didn’t cause trouble.”

“No. We know you weren’t yourself.” Tammy’s expression changed enough to tell me I’d been trouble. She brightened. “I’ll send your breakfast in. Anything else you need?”

A Viagra pill and you out of that uniform, I thought but did not say. Her job was hard enough. “Nope. Not unless you have a cure for this damned Alzheimer’s!”

She laughed. “If we find one, I’ll make sure you’re first in line!” She breezed out of my room, off to her next patient. God, she had a nice ass — broad and round. Not a conventional looker, but I had a few of those in my time back before I settled down. They were lousy in the sack. Hell, I might not even need a Viagra with Tammy. Never needed one with Martha, God rest her soul. I’ll see her again soon enough.


I breezed through the two easy-level crosswords, and did pretty good with the middle level. For however long it lasted, I was all the way back. The shrink’s intern came by with the usual battery of exam questions, then said, “Well, I’ve asked you my twenty questions. You have any for me?”

“Yeah. Where the hell does my mind go when it goes away? I’d like to follow the son of a bitch and drag it back here where it belongs.” I tapped my hairless skull.

He gave a nervous laugh. “That’s a question… I don’t know how to answer. Maybe that’s more metaphysical, or even spiritual, than psychological. Some medical researchers would say your mind just… shuts off.”

“But wouldn’t that kill the rest of me?”

“Not necessarily. Your conscious mind resides in the cerebral cortex, the uppermost layer of your brain. If that upper layer stops — or freezes up — the lower layers continue to do their functions. Your phrase, ‘mind goes away,’ is half-right: only your conscious mind goes away. The involuntary functions like heartbeat, respiration and digestion continue to do their work. Reflexes, too. If someone pokes your arm, you’ll move it.”

“Yeah. So what’s happening in here when I vacate the premises? I guess I wasn’t much fun to be around this last time.”

“Good question. Can you remember what you were thinking last time?”

“Kind of. I could feel it coming on, and I was furious about it. I hated what was happening to me. Still do.”

“Ah. So that anger came through — or stayed behind, rather — during that last episode. You were belligerent. The staff had to restrain you for two days.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

“Blame the disorder, not yourself, okay?” The intern smiled. “Maybe next time you feel an episode coming on, try to calm yourself instead of letting the anger have its way. You might not be with us, but perhaps you can ‘program’ your limbic system to be less aggressive before you leave.”

“Worth a try.”


I woke up this morning in a fog. “Here we go again,” I said, but it took me a while to figure out what that meant. Worse luck, it was Tammy’s day off. The Chinese guy — Song, that’s his name, like music — stayed with me as I collected my fading wits and battled with an easy crossword.

I grew frustrated, angry, at my inability to concentrate. But I remembered what the intern said, and I focused on calming myself. Don’t be a jerk, I told myself. There was something else — something important — I needed to remember. I tried to think of what it was as I used the bathroom — one less diaper for the music guy to change — then laid down.

I hate when my mind goes away… aha. Where is it going? Can I follow it and bring it back to my brain? Why I can’t remember where I go when I’m gone?

Follow it. I reach out, take hold of my mind. You’re not going without me this time, I tell it. I feel a moment of clarity as I take hold. Together we go, into the unknown.

Writing Wibbles

Today, I’d like to talk a little about the story bomb. But before I do, go over to John Wiswell’s blog and read Making Ideas. Writers get asked about imagination a lot, he begins. Where do you get your ideas? It’s a really insightful post about the beginnings of the writing process.

Me, I ’m not that insightful — or at best, most of my insights don’t lend themselves well to description. I’m mostly a pantser (i.e. I write by the seat of my pants) and that really starts with the ideas. These Writing Wibbles can be difficult to write simply because I often don’t put that much thought into the process of writing; I’m too busy doing it. In the best of times, the characters are telling the story and I’m just taking dictation.

John makes an excellent point: you have to immerse yourself in good stories, in good writing, to train yourself to recognize it (and, we hope, create your own). I read a lot from the time I could read (before my fourth birthday… I cannot remember ever not being able to read) up to the time I plunged so deeply into the world of FAR Future that I was spending all my free time writing.

So where do I get my ideas? They just come. I’ve mentioned before, I believe creativity to be a reflection of the Divine, the image in which we were created. Sometimes, the idea comes in a snippet of a dream (in which I tell someone, “Dammit, you fool, I’m her father!” although she was made rather than born). Or there was the time I was driving to work and was surrounded by white pickup trucks for a half-minute. Writing prompts usually work best for me when I ask a question — what happened up to this point? — and if I ask the right question, the answer often comes in a story bomb and I’m off to the races. White Pickups was originally a flash piece, about 700 words, ending with Tina in the Saver-Mart parking lot. When I asked myself “so what happened next?” I got a 200 kiloword thermonuclear story bomb. Well, no — I didn’t get one Big One, it was more like a carpet story bombing that has kept me busy for nearly two years now. Accidental Sorcerers (and some partly-written follow-ons) came from a photo and an off-hand comment by the photographer.

What about you? Do you get ideas as a story bomb? Or do they just trickle in? Or do you just lasso an idea and drag it into the corral?

#TuesdaySerial: Xenocide, pt 5

Previous episodes: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4

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Xenocide, part 5
The Crack House That Wasn’t

“Hey. Can I talk to you?” The Moss kid stuck his head through the window of my patrol car.

“Sure. What about?” I put a finger to my lips, then grabbed my ears and stretched them away from my skull.

He smiled, lips pressed together, shaking with silent laughter, then recovered quickly. “Uh… you know there’s a crack house just up the block from here?”

I cocked one eyebrow, he shook his head. “No. What’s the address?”

“I didn’t write down the number. But I can show you where it is.”

“They’ll be watching for cop cars. Maybe you can take me on foot.”

“Yeah.” He smirked. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

I rolled up the windows and locked the car, and we walked up the block. “They bugged you too?” he asked me, sotto voce. “That’s some serious shit. I mean, yeah, what’s a kid gonna do about it. But a cop?”

“I doubt there’s much we can do about it either,” I said. “They’ll just deny it. I was trying to figure out how to get word to you when you came by just now.”

“I saw ‘em do it.” Moss shook his head. He looked angry. “Assholes. My computer’s in the living room. That ice queen’s on the sofa, she leans down to tie her shoe, and the big jock’s at my desk. I saw him reach up underneath. I guess he figured I’d be staring at her tits or something. Yeah I did, but I didn’t exactly focus on them. They were okay, but there’s girls at school with better racks than hers. One or two I might even have a chance with.”

I laughed. “What did you do about it?”

“I downloaded that sucky Cop Killer track off a torrent, hung a speaker right next to their bug, and put the track on repeat at full volume for a couple hours. Parents were out, so I just left the house and left it running. By the time I got back I figured they got tired of it and turned it off, so I pried it loose and threw it in the garbage.”

We both laughed. “You know they probably left one or two more where they wouldn’t be so obvious. The sheriff figures they can hear everything going on in the office, so we don’t talk about it there or in our cars.”

“Damn. So you guys are still on the case?”

“Let’s just say we haven’t closed our books on it just yet.” I stopped and thought a minute. “Hey… doesn’t your dad own a car detailing place?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“If we get lucky, he just might have a lead for me.” I motioned for us to turn back. “Listen. You’re a smart kid, smarter than you let on. Stay out of trouble, and you might just surprise some people, how far you go. Okay?”

To my surprise, he laughed. “That’s what I’m plannin’ on, Ossifer Friendly.”


The senior Moss owned Northside Detailing — the name made me wonder if the kid inherited his dad’s sense of humor. There were over a dozen full-service detailers in the county, some that made house calls, and more self-serve car washes than I could count. If the perp decided to hose that alien goop out on his own, I was SOL — and that’s what I expected. But I had to run these leads down. I couldn’t do it from the office, because the Fibbies were sure to have the phones tapped on top of the mikes they left around. A visual inspection turned up four bugs, including one in the men’s room, and we hadn’t even started electronic sweeping yet. I figured my home phone and cellphone were similarly numbers of interest, so I used the old drug dealer trick of paying cash for a prepaid cell and enough minutes to deal with the situation.

On a smoke break the next morning, I let the sheriff know what I had in mind. He surprised me: “You know that Cutlass we impounded back in April? It’s still in the lot. I’ll let Sam know you need it for some undercover work. There’s some cash from the same bust, still in the safe.” He grinned. “You never know when you’re gonna need a slush fund.”

I laughed. “Man. The Fibbies really got on your bad side. I wonder if they know how bad.”

Sheriff Carmichael put the grin away. “To be honest, Adler: I’m probably taking this a little too personal. But someone dumped a body in my county, and the Fibbies bugged my office. I don’t mean to let either one just slide. There’s not a lot I can do personally, but I can give you a whole lot of leeway to pursue this.” He shook his head. “If you decide you’ve hit a dead end, though? Just let it drop. I’m probably giving you too much encouragement as it is. But I’d sure like to wipe that smug look off the Feds, you know?”

continued…

The End is Just the Beginning

Somebody pinch me. Bonus points if you’re female and I get to pinch back.

It appears that we have outlasted the chicken houses!

Tyson’s, using their usual “company store” debt-slavery tactic, demanded some rather pricey upgrades to the chicken houses to renew the in-laws’ contract. They said “nope,” and thus the last batch was scheduled to leave around the end of March. However, since the entire paycheck goes out the furnaces during winter grow-outs, the in-laws pulled the plug after the last batch left Friday night. Permit me a brief…

WOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!

This leaves the farm with four empty chicken houses and still a small hill of debt remaining. Several possibilities have been bandied about for making the houses pay the rest of their way — some kind of greenhouse seems to be the idea that we all keep coming back to. It's actually not a bad idea; the houses have lights, water, heat, and ventilation. And fertilizer. Lots of fertilizer. If we replace some of the roofing tin with plexiglas, we can get some sunlight into the middle of the houses as well. I’m pushing for herbs (cooking, not smoking) as a primary crop, since the stores charge like two bucks for an ounce of leaves and they can grow like weeds under the right conditions. The agent at the ag coop that has the loan had several good suggestions for marketing and lining up customers. The upside is, you can go away for a weekend and not come back to a thousand dead chickens to pick up.


In less pleasant news, M.A.E. seems to be back at the manor. She can’t seem to pick friends who can handle her desired lifestyle, which is to spend the entire day on Facebook and do as little as possible to help around the house. She’s brought her daughter (Moptop is no longer a good moniker for her as her curls have gone for now) over for weekends and she and Mason have a great time antagonizing each other.

Gotta take the bad with the good, I guess.

Let’s Go To the (Blog) Hop!

I was invited to participate in the Scribbles Blog Hop, and it sounded like a lot of fun, so here we go…

each writer is going to post pics of their writing journal/diaries/notebooks/notepads/etc and tell a little about their approach to writing, how & why they use their journals, and post links to the other bloggers participating.

I knew there was a reason I was saving all those scraps of paper…

Everything eventually finds its way into Scrivener on my laptop, but not all of it starts there.

After I got caught out with an idea at lunch, and nothing to write it on, I got into the habit of taking a pen and either a notepad or notebook to lunch with me.

Depending on how hard something is trying to get out of my head, I’ll either eat lunch (usually at the Johnny’s Pizza on Jones Bridge in John’s Creek) or just start writing right away and keep an eye out for the server. I’ve been going there long enough that the staff knows I drink unsweet tea and usually get two pizza slices with mushrooms. Once I get started, I’ll write until whatever it is gets completely out of my head or until it just gets too late to ignore how far overtime my lunch “hour” is running.

This particular scrap of paper contains what became Episode 74 of White Pickups. You may notice scratch-outs on the paper — those happen at the time I’m writing. I can’t get out of the habit of editing as I write. I’ll edit some more as I type things in — often inserting sentences or whole paragraphs.

One day I was poking around in a B&N while someone (I think it was Daughter Dearest’s boyfriend at the time) was at the nearby game store, and it was there that I saw the Moleskine rack. I bought one of the pocket notebooks, and bought a second one in May after I filled up the first one.

They’re awfully handy — it’s easy to see why (as the promotional literature wants you to know) the likes of Hemingway swore by them. The little pocket in the back holds note cards and other bits of not-quite-outlines that I’ll flesh out when the characters get off the dime and let me know what’s going on.

That pretty much leaves “why” — well, I’ve already explained part of it: it’s a convenience. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, writers are working when we’re staring out the window — but the downside to that is that we’re always working. So having a way to get words on paper when the ideas are coming, but the keyboard isn’t available, is crucial.

Now of course, that only works if someone (like Mason, the World’s Cutest Grandkid) doesn’t snatch the pen and Moleskine right out of your pocket:

I took this shot back in February, when he was about 18 months old. He’s 26 months now, and still likes to grab ’em when he can. Maybe once he learns to write, he’ll be writing his own stories too.

But until Mason starts sharing his stories with the world, go check out the other writers participating in the Scribbles Blog Hop:

Danielle La Paglia: http://daniellelapaglia.wordpress.com/

Anne Michaud: http://annecmichaud.wordpress.com/

Marianne Su: http://mariannesu.com/blog/

Victoria D Griesdoorn: http://www.vdgriesdoorn.com/

Ren Warom: http://renwaromsumwelt.wordpress.com/

J.A. Campbell: http://writerjacampbell.wordpress.com/

Tammy Crosby: http://tammywrites.wordpress.com/

Maria Kelly: http://mariakellyauthor.com/

Chrissey Harrison: http://chrisseysgreatescape.wordpress.com/

Natalie Westgate: http://nataliewestgate.com/

Tony Noland: http://www.tonynoland.com/

Larry Kollar: http://farmanor.blogspot.com/ (←you are here)

Book Review: Six Moon Summer

This is the first in the “Seasons of the Moon” YA series by S.M. (Sara) Reine. A promising, even exciting, start.

Price/Length: $2.99 / 50,000 words

Synopsis: Rylie’s having the worst summer ever: her parents are divorcing, and they’ve sent her to summer camp to get her out of the crossfire. She’s a city girl in the woods, and the other girls at camp have made her their personal chew toy. Even worse, she got lost in the woods and was bitten by something, and now… she’s changing. Her vegetarian ways are giving way to a craving for raw meat, and twice a month — at the new moon and full moon — things get seriously weird. The one high point of the whole experience, the cute boy from across the lake who keeps coming to see her, only makes things more complicated.

Storytelling: ★★★★★ This is a great take on the traditional werewolf story; it stays true to the legends while introducing new wrinkles (like the new moon changes). So much of horror these days is zombies and vampires (sparkly and otherwise), and it’s almost refreshing to see a reminder that there’s more to life and unlife. As a YA novel, it walks the tightrope with aplomb — plenty of boy/girl, but avoids sex scenes. I wouldn’t have a problem giving the book to a 12-year old, or even a bright 10-year old.

Writing: ★★★★★ Sara creates characters you care about and characters you love to hate. The Mean Girls got me hoping that Rylie would chew them up and spit them out, at the same time hoping she somehow kept her humanity. Her parents made me want to rattle their cages until they get their acts together. I cringed at Rylie’s mistakes and cheered her triumphs.

Editing: ★★★★ Very good, near professional-quality editing. A few typos, nothing cringe-worthy. If I get my book out at this level, I’ll be satisfied.

Summary: I’m looking forward to reading All Hallows Moon, the next book in the series. ’Nuff said!

Writing Wibbles

Whew, I made it.

I recently finished reading a book (no, not the next review, nor the one after that) where the editing… well, there’s no easy way to put this. It started out really well, a few glitches here and there, all books have those. About halfway through, it got past the “all books” benchmark. In the last fourth of the book, the editing broke down completely. I tweeted the author about it — via direct message, no need to hang dirty laundry out in public — and she was pretty cool about the whole thing. Two people had edited it, and the author hadn’t looked it over before the final went out — heck, I’d have been inclined to think that two editors would have done the job as well. But like I said, she was pretty cool about it, and plans to roll out a corrected edition next month (hooray for eBooks!). I would probably have a very public meltdown if it happened to me; I’m anal about typos to the point where I’ll fix old blog posts if I see typos in them.

So I’m expecting lots of jitters before, and immediately after, the White Pickups release. I’ll be happy if it’s completely typo-free, but I need to keep some perspective — even if there are more than a handful, I can push out a corrected edition. I wanted to release it on Sep. 14, the day the story began, but I’d rather have it out late and right. I've probably gone through the entire thing several dozen times, no exaggeration — one advantage of serializing your work, it makes you go through it to make sure the next episode doesn’t wander off into the weeds. That’s one reason I’m going to start small (literally) with Xenocide as a short eBook. I figure I’ll learn several valuable things that I can use to make the White Pickups release go smoother.

I can’t remember, did I ever link to The Were-Traveler issue where my two drabbles appeared? My entries are #2 (Hunted), and in the middle (Unseen). If you haven’t seen them, go check them out. They’re all good.

Instead of a #FridayFlash this week, I’m participating in a bloghop. I think it will be interesting — there will be verbiage about how I use my handwritten notebooks and photos of my horrible penmanship, as well as links to other participants. (I may recycle a certain photo of Mason, just for the “the cute, it burns” factor.)

#TuesdaySerial: Xenocide, pt 4

Previous episodes: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3

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Xenocide, Episode 4
Doc Dix

Doc Dix was the county coroner from back before urban sprawl turned our sleepy little county into a hotbed of subdivisions, retail strips, and shopping malls. He’d adapted well to the changes; sometimes he complained about how much busier he was than twenty years ago, but he did love the work. Data he’d provided cracked more than one important case over his career.

“What brings you here?” he asked. “If it’s that thing Tenesha and Ali brought in day before yesterday, the Feds took everything. Bastards even took the instruments I used for the autopsy. You think they’ll compensate the county?”

“Probably not. But I’m here about the Jones case.” He gave me a puzzled look and I winked. “I’ve got something to show you concerning it.” I led him out back.

“What is this about?” Dix glared at me — he was pushing sixty, if it wasn’t pushing back already, and he was starting to get a little grumpy in his old age.

“A precaution. We’ve found listening devices in our offices and patrol cars, and it’s likely the Feds bugged your office too.”

He swelled up. “Bastards! What right—”

“They’ll just deny it was them if you confront ‘em. Best thing to do is let ‘em think we’re letting them handle it all on their lonesome.”

“Hm. Underhanded, I say. I didn’t vote for your boss, by the way. He’s sneaky.”

“Personally, I like working for him. But I didn’t come to talk local politics.”

“I suppose. Well, like I said, they took everything. Everything but my memories.”

“That’s really why I’m here. Do you remember a bag coming in with the body?”

“Ah. Didn’t you inspect it?” Doc Dix gave me a mocking look.

“No, the smell got to me. Funny thing for a cop to say, I know —”

“No shame there. It nearly overwhelmed me as well, and I’ve dealt with bodies in every state of decay.”

“I’m sure. So you inspected the bag?”

“Of course. But I couldn’t tell you what the contents were with any certainty. Food and technology is about the best I could tell you.”

“What about the breathing mask?”

“Ah. Now that was interesting. It resembled a portable oxygen concentrator, but it was concentrating methane.”

“Really?”

“If I’m not mistaken, and I’m quite sure I’m not. There was a canister of methane attached to the apparatus, perhaps as an emergency supply. I speculate that the creature naturally inhaled a methane-oxygen mix and exhaled good old CO₂.”

“Huh. Any chance the breather was failing?”

“None whatsoever. I’ve never examined an alien lifeform before, but I’m confident in my diagnosis. Cause of death was blood — loss of whatever vital fluids it had — and organ damage from multiple double-ought buckshot wounds. I’d further speculate that the creature was lurking in the vicinity of livestock, where abundant excrement would provide sufficient methane for its needs.”

“Sounds plausible. Did you tell the Fibs all that?”

“Of course not. However, I’d made notes and they did carry those off as well.”

“What about time of death? Any thoughts there?”

“Hard to say, given the nature of the victim. Certainly no more than a day or two prior to discovery, though.”

“Thanks, Doc. I knew you’d be a big help.”

“I always try to be.”

“You always have been. If we need to phone each other about this, we can call it the ‘Jones case’ again. But details outside the office or vehicles, got it?”

“Understood. Sneaky, like your boss. But warranted, in this situation.”

I drove away, chewing on the implications. It made sense: Farmer John Doe lets fly at a perceived threat to his herd, panics over the thought of creating an interstellar incident, figures to ditch the evidence up in the mountains. The smell gets to him and his — son? hired hand? — before they can get that far, and they unload it the first place they can find.

“Could have been a sewage plant,” I almost said aloud. I didn’t know of any sewage plants that felt their security needed 12-gauge shotguns, though.

continued…

Book Review: Checkmate and Other Stories

Icy Sedgwick is a #FridayFlash regular on Twitter (she tweets as @icypop), and Checkmate is a collection of 15 of her short pieces. It’s a good choice for a rainy weekend afternoon or plane trip.

Price/Length: $0.99 / 15,000 words

Synopsis: A collection of Icy’s flash fiction, published between 2008 and mid-2010. The stories run the gamut of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, and are arranged in chronological order of publication.

Storytelling: ★★★★★ Icy has an amazing ability to write dark fiction with an oft-humorous twist. While all of them are well-written, six of the stories stand out as particularly memorable for me:

Midas Box — a young woman’s life takes a turn when she is given a very special box.

Checkmate — in which the fate of the world is decided over a coffee shop chessboard.

My Bleeding Heart — a macabre twist on an old pun.

Bleed Them Dry — a vampire has more than one way to draw blood.

The Mirror Phase — a creepy story of a little girl fascinated with a mirror.

The Dead Do Listen — sometimes, the dead want to set the record straight!

Writing: ★★★★★ Like most #FridayFlash participants, Icy is versatile and can write well in many genres. In fact, her Western novel, The Guns of Retribution, was recently released in paperback and eBook by Pulp Press.

Editing: ★★★★ Checkmate stands out in the self/indie-published arena as having very few typos or other editing issues. I ran across maybe one or two minor issues. All books — indie or otherwise — should have this much care put into them. The only real glitch I ran across was a formatting thing: using the Kindle’s “five-way” to move between stories put the original place of publication at the top of the page, and the title at the end of the previous page. This may have been something Smashwords did.

Summary: Brief as it is, this is a steal for 99¢. If you enjoy dark fiction, you’ll find big enjoyment in these short works.

If you like Checkmate, you might be interested in some of Icy’s other work:

• The Guns of Retribution (Western)
• The First Tale (a “vaguely steampunk” novella, set in Icy’s Vertigo City)

Weekend Wibbles

Writing Wibbles, Photo Wibbles, Life Wibbles, I need to start posting in the moment again.

But first, welcome to the two newest followers:

• S.M. Reine — author, proprietor of Red Iris Books, and (as you may remember) the person who designed my White Pickups cover.
• Carole Gill — an author whose goal, as she puts it, is to “push the boundaries of gothic romance.”

Your visitor’s badges are at the front desk — in a free-range insane asylum, you don’t want to be mistaken for an inmate!

Hallowe’en has come and gone. Mason had his first trick or treat experience, and brought home a modest bucket of loot. Now when he wants a piece of candy, he’ll say, “Trick or treat? Please?” As he loves Cars so much, Mrs. Fetched got him a pit crew uniform for his first outing.

If I had to caption this particular photo, it would be something like, “Well, they told me to make a scary face, so…” Or maybe “Caaaaandyyyyyy!”

This morning at church, he pulled a good one. He snagged a hymnal and sat down and said, “Read?” I reached for it, and he insisted, “I’m reading!”


Daughter Dearest has also been busy. She had her senior recital last weekend and it went pretty well. The preparations for the reception following were fairly intense, though. Fortunately, I was spared and and just had to keep Mason out of everyone’s hair.

We took video, and I took a few pictures:

I've learned that slightly de-saturating the photo is the best way to deal with the rather intense backdrop on the Falany Performing Arts Center stage. DD really has a gorgeous voice. I’ll link to the video somehow when Mrs. Fetched edits it down, so you won’t completely miss out.


Writing? Right. I’m definitely not doing NaNoWriMo, but cheering on anyone who is. I’ve got two people, John Xero and Chuck Allen, looking over the complete version of Xenocide so I’ll know it’s in reasonable shape. I’m using it as a “test bed” of sorts, turning it into an eBook so I’ll have an idea of what the overhead will be like for White Pickups as well.

My #FridayFlash piece from week before last (Geek vs. Zombies) pretty much confirmed a theory I came up with: if you want lots of pageviews and comments, write a zombie story. I got really close to cracking 200 pageviews, and got nearly 30 comments. Quite a spike when compared to other recent #FridayFlash stories (not to mention the #TuesdaySerial). So the big question: is it wrong to be a “zombie whore”? I don’t think so, not if you write them because you enjoy writing them. I like doing a slightly different take on the zombie apocalypse — such as scavengers on the edges of the horde, or even grass-eating zombies.

I’m working on a soundtrack for White Pickups. I’m about 40% done, and that’s just songs in my own playlists. I’ll continue looking for suitable tunes.


I happened across a site called ifttt (IF This Then That) recently. It’s really handy, the way it can tie many of your online services (and your phone) together. It doesn’t talk directly to Blogger, but does read RSS feeds, so I have it auto-tweet new blog posts and text me when someone comments. Several people have had trouble with Feedburner’s auto-tweet lately, and I pointed them to ifttt. I may expand on what I’m using it for later on. I also need to talk about Calibre, and how it can turn your Kindle (or other eReader) into an offline blog/news reader.

#FridayFlash: Antibodies

This is another story idea that’s been kicking around in my head for a long time. I originally intended to make it a brief screenplay. It may happen yet.

---

Antibodies

The waitress departed, and something nudged Jan’s foot.

“You said you need gym clothes, da? For your health?” The bulky blonde man across the table smiled at him.

There would be no cheating, but all the same Jan pulled the gym bag into his lap, keeping it out of sight as he peeked inside. As agreed, it was stuffed with zlotys and euros. He reached inside and felt the four gold bars at the bottom.

“Just my size!” he grinned, slipping the bag under the table. “Any company logo?”

“Nyet. No. No markings of any kind. I saw to it myself.”

“Ah, good. Are they made in China?”

“Likely. Or perhaps Pakistan.”

The waitress brought their supper, pierogies and borscht, and they were quiet for a while. Jan lived in a decaying industrial town in the Polish heartland, but this café was quiet and served good food. And if Jan often dined with strangers in suits? He did computer work for a firm in Warsaw, and on occasion, they needed to visit him here.

“A question, if I may,” said the visitor. “Only personal curiosity.” At Jan’s nod, he continued: “You use the alias Vector for your work. Does it indicate the mathematical meaning, or some other?”

Jan grinned. “English is a wonderful language. So ambiguous. Many words have the same meaning, yet other words have more than one meaning. In your maths, a vector has direction. Purpose, even. And in English, it may also mean the path a infectious agent takes to invade a living body.”

The other man — Jan was sure he was Russian, perhaps KGB — looked amused. “An almost poetic layering of meanings, my friend! But beware, living bodies often develop antibodies to resist such invasions.”

“Of course. Discretion is survival.”

“Very good.” The visitor rose. “Well then, you have your project and goals. I should leave you to it.” He looked at his Rolex. “I have plenty of time to catch the train back to Warsaw, but I like to arrive early. I can call the office and let them know everything is well in hand.”


At home in his flat, Jan got to work. Two wide displays, side by side, showed him the locations of thousands of computers around the world under his control. He’d come a long way in the years since he found a shabby old computer in a dumpster and brought it home, his first step to becoming Vector. He had direction, although the organisms he invaded thought he came from a different direction. Moscow wanted control of America’s satellite fleet, while making it look like a Chinese hack? A worthy challenge to be sure, but a challenge he was more than equal to.

(A relay clicks over, opening a valve. Gas hisses, pouring into the basement.)

Vector considered. His client wanted some blame to fall on Pakistan? That could be arranged. He had access to systems in Lahore and Islamabad; some were active. With a few keystrokes, his servers in China uploaded necessary software components.

(Through the apartment building, phones ring. People leave in haste, carrying what they can.)

Ignoring the commotion outside his door, he worked on. His viruses continued to infect more computers around the world. Cracking military networks was tough, but his infections gained him a toehold and opened a tunnel. What his client planned was not important —

(A surge through the power lines causes a switch to arc over in the basement, igniting the gas.)

Jan heard a thump, then the floor collapsed beneath him, dropping him and his tools into the inferno beneath. What few remains there were, were fused together in death as they never could be in life.

Living organisms develop antibodies.

#TuesdaySerial: Xenocide, pt 3

In case you missed the previous two…

• Part 1
• Part 2

---

Xenocide, Episode 3
These Guys Bug Me

The Fibbies had names — Phillip Jobst and Sarah Plant — but I thought of them as Mulder and Scully from the get-go. Too bad they weren’t really Mulder and Scully; they both acted like they had batons rammed so far up their asses they would need surgery to get them out. Plant was kind of hot at first glance; not my type but Moss might get a little tongue-tied if she asked the questions. Jobst was the faux dumb-muscle type — acts stupid because you expect a big jock to be stupid, but you don’t get to be a Special Agent without above-average brain power. To be honest, I figured Jobst to be the smarter of the two; Plant didn’t know how (or actively refused) to work her assets to best advantage.

“You’re the responder?” Jobst grunted.

“I was. You’ve got my photos and the report, right?”

“What did you see?” Plant’s tone said we’re asking the questions here.

“It’s in the reports. And the photos. The — whatever it is — took a shotgun blast to the body at close range. It appeared to be wearing some kind of respiratory apparatus, and there was a bag under the body. I didn’t attempt to inspect any further.”

“Any suspects?”

“No. Plenty of people out there with the means, maybe some had an opportunity, but motive? We got nothin’. Besides a galloping case of arachnophobia. You got any better ideas?”

Plant huffed — I’d dared to ask them a question again. “It’ll take some time to assess the data, Adler. We’ll need your full cooperation in the meantime.”

That’s the way the interview went; like I told the kid, they asked the same questions several times and then wrapped it up. “If you think of anything else,” said Jobst, sliding a card across the table, “here’s a number you can call. We’ll be staying at the Garden Inn while we conduct the investigation.” There was a slight emphasis on the we. “We’ll be in touch.” They up and left without another word.

Sheriff Carmichael let them walk out the door, counted to three, and came in. Without a word, he leaned over to look under the table. He rolled his eyes and said, “Adler. I need a smoke. You want one?” He put a finger to his lips, then tapped his ear.

The Fibbies bugged us? I thought. Aloud I said, “Sure,” and followed him out the back door.

I don’t smoke, but the sheriff was trying to quit. Trying. I followed him out back, and he lit up and took a drag while I tried to stand upwind. “Quite the charmers, those two,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’d say it’s pretty likely our vehicles and phones have been given similar treatment. And anyone with a scanner can listen to our radio traffic anyway. So if we need to discuss anything further about this case, we’ll just step out for a smoke, right?”

“Sounds like a plan.” I liked working for the sheriff. He did things different.

The sheriff chuckled. “Anything you thought of that you didn’t tell our friends?”

“Yeah, one thing: just because the body was found along Cain’s Creek doesn’t mean the murder took place there — or anywhere else in the county. They probably thought of that anyway.”

“Sure. And they woulda said they’d thought of it even if they hadn’t.” We laughed. “I think I know what you’re thinking here, but what gave you that idea? About it being a body-dump.”

“The scene had the classic elements: it was near a road, wrapped in a blanket — even if it was the alien’s own blanket — and remote enough to not have anyone see them.”

“Wasn’t it on the other side of the creek from the road, though?”

“Right. So…”

“There’s at least two people involved. Good work, Adler. What else?”

“If they carried that thing in the trunk of a car, it’s gonna reek. It smelled strong, like worms and burnt coffee. They’ll either have the car cleaned or torch it.”

The sheriff puffed his cancer stick. “That might explain why they dropped it in our lap, instead of continuing north and leaving it somewhere it might never turn up. We’ll ask ‘em when the time comes.”

“So we’re going to keep investigating this?” I was surprised.

“Damn right.” He ground his cig out against the brick. “Nobody dumps bodies in my county and gets away with it, and I don’t care if the victim came from Forsyth County or Your Anus. And I got a hunch that our friends from Washington aren’t all that concerned with justice in this case.”

continued…

October Horror Spotlight #4

Happy Hallowe’en! I’m wrapping up this series with some real treats: free horror fiction, fresh from the blogs! Clicking the links below open a new window, so you won’t have to remember to return here for the others.

Maria Kelly’s The Were-Traveler is a newborn webzine — the first issue, Hundred-Word Halloween, was published on Saturday. I happen to have two pieces in that issue. ;-) The ‘zine focuses on drabbles (100-word stories) and other types of micro-fiction, with occasional flash or short stories.

Lake Lopez wants to “scare the hell out of you,” so he blogs at The Scary Story. There are short and long pieces to suit your scarification needs. His current serial, Sinister, is definitely worth reading.

Christian Jensen’s Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children is for those adult-types who like their erotica with a big side dish of horror. Or maybe it’s horror with a side of nookie. Whatever!

And that’s a wrap. It’ll be November in less than an hour here, so enjoy whatever’s left of the day!

#FridayFlash: Geek vs. Zombies

If there’s a moral to this story, I suppose it would be don’t mess with a geek!

---

“You’re my little geek girl, Linda.” Her father’s voice came to her from years away.

“Flipping switches, turning knobs, pushing buttons,” she said aloud, and grinned. “Gotta figure out how stuff works.” What was once a passion was now a survival trait. She’d been in touch with her parents up in New York City up until the phones stopped working. Maybe they were still alive.

Linda Ma stepped away from the edge and wrote in her notebook:

Weaknesses: All senses seem dulled except for sense of smell. They can hear a gunshot, but not a bow. Sense of touch is all but gone; they ignore arrows to non-vital parts. If they are upwind, they cannot find a living person standing still in shadow.

They appear to be lazy, following the path of least resistance unless they smell prey. Stairs are difficult for them, locked doors are impossible.

Feeding habits: they are pack hunters, not scavengers. They will not eat carrion — which makes sense, otherwise they would attack each other. They will eat animals they can catch, but prefer human flesh. Packs of dogs follow them and attempt to snatch some of their kills (or tear off hunks of zombie legs) without themselves landing on the menu.

Knowledge — potentially useful — gained from a nauseating week of observation. Most of it had been done from right here, her fourth-floor rooftop garden, where the zombies got only occasional whiffs of her but no ideas how to reach her. Some of her work, though, required getting way too close. The dogs made things easier for her, though — the constant racket of their barking, nipping at zombies, and their smell (they rolled in carrion) kept them from noticing a living human lurking downwind. On the one occasion they spotted her, she reluctantly put an arrow into a dog and ran for it; they went for the easy meat.

She turned back to her notebook:

Miscellaneous: the zombies and dogs are in the process of forming a sort of symbiotic relationship. It might be useful to think of the dogs as remora, or pilot fish, but more aggressive. She pushed away the memory of what happened after she crippled one zombie with lucky shots to each knee: the dogs fell on it with gusto and left it little more than a skeleton, twitching on the street. Given the opportunity, they have no problem eating each other — but it’s possible that the dogs will start protecting the zombies, and perhaps even helping them find food, as time goes on.

She could hold out a long time. She had managed to raid a grocery store, and between that and what others left in the apartment building, she had plenty of food. Her father had immigrated here, her mother was second-generation, and they had raised her as Western as they knew how. But rice and vegetables just agreed with them all, and they made little effort to Westernize their diet. A vegetarian diet was about the only thing Chinese about her habits.

Picking up her notebook, she felt reluctant to add the next part:

How to fight: stay downwind. Attack from cover. Avoid using firearms, it seems to draw them. She remembered the small group of people who’d shot up a small pack of zombies, only to attract several larger packs with the noise. It had not ended well for the living. Crippling them is much easier than killing — the latter requires severing or destroying the head — and once crippled, the dogs will finish the job.

It may be better to take an Eastern approach, and simply remove ourselves from their path instead of trying to confront them. Their primary food supply (us) is mostly gone already, and they are not clever or quick enough to catch most animals. Zombies need an energy source, just like anything else, and without that they may finally turn on each other. Or they may simply lay down and finish dying.

“Or,” she said with a grim smile, looking at the cases of dynamite, fuses, and blasting caps she’d carried up, “you can just blow the bastards to Kingdom Come, and let the noise bring more. Lather, rinse, repeat.” It wasn’t an endless loop, but it would be a lot more fun than waiting.

October Horror Spotlight #3

I didn’t post last week because I was having way too much fun last Thursday. I ended up attending the Red Iris Books launch party on Twitter, conducted under the hashtag #TrickOrTweet. There was much swag and prizes — I got eBook copies — and the authors, S.M. Reine (@smreine) and Angela Kulig (@angelakulig), both ended up in the birdcage that is known as Twitter jail for excessive tweeting. As one of the other attendees put it, “it’s not a party unless someone goes to jail!”

And thus, I dedicate this week’s spotlight to the new indie imprint, Red Iris Books. Both books are available as eBooks (Kindle and Nook), and in paperback. As always, clicking a link will take you to the Amazon page for each book.

Let’s start with S.M. Reine’s Death's Hand (The Descent Series) since, as she puts it there’s more boobage on the cover. (She knows how to attract eyeballs.) 99¢ (Kindle eBook) or $12.99 (paperback), rated 5 stars on one review.

The blurb:

Policing relations between Heaven, Hell, and Earth is messy and violent, but Elise Kavanagh and James Faulkner excelled at it — until coming across a job so brutal that even they couldn't stand to see one more dead body. Now they've been pretending to be normal for five years, leaving their horrific history a dark secret. Elise works in an office. James owns a business. None of their friends realize they used to be one of the world's best killing teams.

After years of hiding, something stirs. Bodies are vanishing. Demons scurry in the shadows of the night. A child has been possessed. Some enemies aren't willing to let the secrets of the past stay dead…

And I have a feeling the former partners will be dragged out of retirement. This looks like an adult-oriented series; younger readers might enjoy her novel Six Moon Summer.

Angela Kulig’s Skeleton Lake is $2.99 for the Kindle edition. A paperback edition is available at B&N if you’re shopping the Nook Store. It’s rated 5 stars on two reviews.

The blurb:

Unsure if she's drowning or being saved, all Marlow wants to do is run away. Ensnared in a haunting love triangle, she realizes both boys have holes in their hearts—scars from loving the same girl, a girl who managed to stay dead.

Now she is being hunted for what she has become and what she never asked to be. Even as a Skeleton Marlow isn’t the worst thing in the night—she isn’t even close.


I hope you’ll support indie authors. There’s a lot of great stuff out there for not a whole lot of money — and yes, there’s not so great stuff, but it’s up to us to highlight the good stories out there.

There’s going to be one more Spotlight post, on Monday (Hallowe’en itself). If you know of a good story that needs spotlighting (even yours!), leave me a comment or email.

Writing Wibbles

Oh hey! Remember when I mentioned submitting two drabbles to the Were-Traveler? They were both accepted later that evening, woohoo! I’ll post a link when I get it.

I’m in the middle of a sort of writing break. I say “sort of,” because the flipside to working when you’re staring out the window is that you’re always working. But it’s a good way to fill up 20 minutes of downtime — for example, while I was waiting for choir practice to start I wrote down a few hundred words of a scene in Pickups and Pestilence, where Caitlin talks to Delphinia. That was interesting: after a false start with the opening sentence, I was off to the races. Something that I’ve known for a while but have just now put into words: if the opening isn’t working, start with dialogue. Seems like it works for me every time.

I’ll probably come up with something for #FridayFlash. Maybe something dark, as it’s the season (and I get bigger responses from darker fiction, insert evil laugh here). Speaking of responses, I’m a little disappointed in the (lack of) response to my current #TuesdaySerial. Makes me wonder if it’s that bad, or if it’s not grabbing people the way I’d hoped. I made an ePUB of the complete story and put it on the iPad for Mrs. Fetched to read; she’s found it interesting so far but I was hoping she’d have finished and offered general feedback by now. I’d like to have a couple beta readers check it out (Mrs. Fetched is an alpha reader of sorts).

On the other hand, in the last few days I won the Grand Prize of a big pile of (autographed!) paperbacks in the #LieOrDie event, and scored a couple eBooks in the #TrickOrTweet launch party from Red Iris Books. The latter was a ton of fun — the authors both ended up in Twitter Jail (is that a bird cage?) for posting too much — and I met a couple new tweeple. Tomorrow’s October Horror Spotlight will thus be focused on Red Iris.

Having decided to take a writing break, I’ve turned back to whittling my huge to-read pile. I started with G.P. Ching’s The Soulkeepers, which by coincidence is one of the paperbacks I’ll be getting from the #LieOrDie event. It was a great story — with a flaw or two, of course. But I so identified with Jacob (the main character) that I knew he was about to do something monumentally stupid and had to put the book down for a day because I didn’t want to see! (And I was right.) Yet another book that I need to review. I might combine three reviews into a single blog post this weekend.

#TuesdaySerial: Xenocide, pt 2

I combined two scenes today because they're under 1000 words combined. Hope you’re enjoying this…

Part 1

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Xenocide, Episode 2
Conversations

Ruth’s Sports Bar was a good place. Ruth was an ex-cop and knew cops and EMTs sometimes needed to talk about things nobody else needed (or particularly wanted) to hear about. She gave us a corner booth, away from eyes and ears.

The waitress left our beers — Sweetwater 420 for me (the name reminded me of the kid), Amber Bock for Tenesha. That kind of surprised me, I figured her to be a wine drinker.

“Well?” I asked.

Tenesha laughed. “Doc Dix looked at it like we brought him a camel. And the maintenance crew about quit when they got a whiff of the back of the ambulance!”

The mental image gave me a chuckle, too. “The sheriff called the Fibbies. I guess he didn’t want to deal with it either. They’re gonna be all over this town by tomorrow afternoon. I’m sure they’ll want you to give a statement again.”

“I oughtta just write it down and hand ‘em a piece of paper.”

“Good idea. Me, I can just hand ‘em the pictures I took and let them do the talking.”

“Y’know, that’s the last you’ll ever see of those pictures.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t mention I’d filled a keychain drive with copies of all my photos and paperwork, and slipped it above the ceiling tiles in the supply room — I trusted Tenesha, but didn’t want her getting in trouble covering for me. Sheriff Carmichael likely did something similar with the reports. The Fibs had resources that we didn’t, but that didn’t mean we wanted them stealing everything. It just might be needed.

“You know, Adler, it wouldn’t hurt to clue in that kid who called you in the first place. You know, about the FBI being in town and all.” Tenesha took a long swig from her bottle and held my eyes with her own.

“Good point. He could have let someone else find it and call it in.” I know it sounds weird, a cop going easy on a pothead. But that’s Sheriff Carmichael’s policy: his theory is if we let the little stuff go, people will cooperate better when something serious is up. My dad says that’s how it used to be: the cops would take drunk kids home to their parents instead of “miring the whole family in the legal and so-called correctional systems.” Thus, Jacob Moss and his alleged bag of weed wasn’t an issue unless he got stupid about it and made it an issue — on the other hand, we show no mercy to distributers or meth labs. It seems to work; we get tips, anonymous or otherwise, about anyone even thinking about setting up a meth lab in the county. Out of town feds aren’t likely to see things our way, though.

We finished talking shop and tried moving on to other topics. Afterward, I walked Tenesha out to her car and she kissed my cheek. I couldn’t get a commitment from her for a repeat, but she didn’t turn me down either. Which is probably how it should be in an exurban county; things can get busy.


I caught Jacob Moss on his way out of his parents’ house the next morning. He was bundled up in a black hoodie for the chilly October morning.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking me over. I wasn’t in uniform, and driving my own car. “I’m not in some kind of trouble, am I?”

“Not any of your own making. Besides, I’m off-duty. But I need to fill you in on some stuff. Lemme give you a ride to school.”

Moss looked up the sidewalk. “Fine. But you gotta drop me off before we get there.”

“No problem.” He got in, and I got rolling. “You know that — that body you found yesterday?”

Moss looked out the side window, away from me. “Yeah. What about it?”

“The sheriff called in the FBI. They’ll probably want to talk to you. Ask you the same questions I did.”

He breathed a swear word. “I wish I never called you guys. Do the right thing, get pounded.”

“That’s why I came by. To let you know. We’re not the enemy, at least the county cops aren’t. You know that, right?” He gave me a reluctant nod. “Yeah. So the FBI is gonna walk into your house like they own the place, and they’re gonna give you funny looks because you wear baggy pants and black t-shirts, and one of ‘em might poke around in your room while the other one’s asking questions that sound like they think you did it. So… I’m not sayin’ you do, but if you got anything that you wouldn’t want Feds stumbling across, you might want to get rid of it. Okay?”

“No worry. I’m clean.” He didn’t sound like he meant it. “So when do you think they’ll come?”

“For you? I’m guessing tomorrow. Today they’ll hit town and grill my ass and confiscate the pictures I took. That’ll take ‘em all day, because they’ll ask me the same questions in like six different ways — then they’ll do the same to you tomorrow. Just stay calm, tell them what you told me, and you can call ‘em on it when they start asking you the same questions. They’ll be busy running down the list of everyone’s names on the report and talking to them tomorrow, so they won’t be in your space too long. As long as you don’t give ‘em a reason to hang around.”

Moss laughed. “Yeah. Thanks for the warning, Ossifer. You can let me out here.”

continued…

#FridayFlash: Cody Resolute (White Pickups prequel)

A few weeks ago, Nina Pelletier posted a writing prompt on Google+: Backstory on why you (or your character) have a certain fear. That got me thinking: what is it that Cody fears, and why? But he explained it to Sondra that night they moved into the townhouses, and I thought I’d expand on that a little. I’ve added to it since it appeared on Google+ so if you saw it there you might want to re-read anyway. This happens about three years before White Pickups begins:

---

Cody Resolute

Cody hunched over himself in his bus seat, face buried in Second Foundation. He wasn’t really reading, but the book hid his wet eyes. A baseball cap covered his neat haircut. I did everything for her, he thought. Why did she do that to me? God, he hated these clothes. Designer stuff made him feel like a nerd, but she had gotten him to wear them. No more.

The sixth-grader sharing his battered bench seat was preoccupied, talking to the kid across the aisle, and Cody felt it safe to wipe his eyes. “Never again,” he whispered to the book. “I’ll die before I let anyone make me be someone else.” His parents approved of his new look, especially his mom, and that was gonna be a hassle. He pulled the ball cap down tighter. That haircut crap was something both parents were happy about, and going back to looking like Cody was going to be tricky. Even going back to wearing his real clothes might be a problem, but maybe he could do that a little at a time.

He closed the book and watched out the bus window for a while, letting the landscape go by in a blur. He cracked the window open, letting in a little fresh air. The bus reeked of teen hormones and sweat, a smell so familiar that hardly anyone noticed, but the April air felt good (even if her name was April).

After countless stops, starts, and turns, the bus stopped in front of the Laurel Hills subdivision; Cody and a couple other kids he didn’t know well got off and hiked to the clubhouse. One of the kids stopped to check the mail. The other was an eighth-grade girl, a cheerleader, and Cody had nothing to say to her. She had no intention of talking to a seventh-grader, but was offended that he didn’t try. I’m supposed to ignore you. You’re not even looking at me. She trailed behind his quick stride, glaring at his back. Too bad he’s not in high school, I’d talk to him. He’s kind of cute.

The clubhouse was a short walk from the entrance. Cody would wait here for the elementary school bus to bring Teri; the cheerleader’s ride wasn’t here yet and she stood fuming and fidgeting at the curb nearby. Dad bought the house in here a year ago, and it was an okay place. He had his own room, and it was cool to have a pool, even if it was here at the clubhouse — it was covered up right now, but it would be open next month. Cody peered over the privacy fence, thinking how cool it would be to ride his skateboard in there. He would love to ollie up onto the diving board and roll right into the pool if he could do it without getting caught.

“Not like I’ll ever get a chance to do that,” he mumbled, oblivious to the puzzled look the cheerleader gave him. He sat and opened Second Foundation, and soon lost himself along the edge of the galaxy, leaving girls and other problems light-years behind.


“Hey dork,” said Teri, blocking his sun. His sister was a pain in the butt, but he still kind of liked her. Usually. At least the cheerleader was long gone.

“Kaaaaaa-terrrrrrrr-aaaaaaa,” he said, rasping the name and dragging it out.

“Don’t call me that, dork!” She gave him the scowl that only an eight year old girl can give.

“Why not, Katera? It’s your name.” He grinned.

“I don’t care. It sounds stupid. I go by Teri, and you know it. Let’s go, you can read that stupid book at home.”

“It’s not a stupid book, Teri-ble,” said Cody, tucking it in his backpack. “You’re just too stupid to read it.”

“I’m tellin’ Mom you called me stupid!”

“Whatever.”

Home after school was always quiet. After putting his nerd clothes away (forever), Cody did his homework while Teri watched Cartoon Network and Nick Jr. The parents would be home in a couple hours, then — then Dad was grilling burgers for supper. Cody thought a moment.


“Hey Dad. Need some help?” Cody stuck his head through the sliding glass door to talk to his dad, who stood at the grill on the patio out back. Dad had a beer close at hand, like he always did when he was outside.

His dad gave him a puzzled look. Cody was wearing what his mom called “play clothes” until last year: plain blue jeans and a t-shirt with the school mascot. He still had the hat jammed tight over the parent-approved haircut. “Did your mom send you out here?”

“No. I figured I should learn how to grill burgers and hot dogs, if you wanna show me how. If you guys get sick or something, I could fix supper.”

“Well, sure. It’s never too early to start learning how to be self-sufficient.”

“Um... does that mean not depending on someone else?”

“You got it, son!” Cody’s dad grinned and beckoned him closer to the grill. “Okay, this is how you start. Stack the charcoal like this....”

Writing Wibbles

I have to admit I made little or no progress on the Pickups series this week. But I did finish a short story I started in January 2008, and actually came up with a title, Xenocide. It’s my #TuesdaySerial for the rest of the year; I kicked it off with Episode 1 yesterday. Comments (even negative ones) are always appreciated, of course. I think it’ll wrap up in the first or second week of January — by then, White Pickups should be in the eBook stores and Pickups and Pestilence should be in beta. I have a somewhat aggressive (for a guy with a day job and raising a grandkid) publishing schedule for next year: Pestilence, an anthology, and maybe a novelized version of FAR Future. If I’m really productive, maybe the first book of that YA trilogy will be out by the end of next year.


But that’s all I’ll talk about myself this post. I seem to remember seeing something about this when it hit the fan in August, but my Twitter buddy and fellow Planet Georgia denizen (and virulently anti-traditional publishing advocate) Kendall Grey reminded me about it today. The Write Lawyer weighed in on the saga of Kiana Davenport, who had the audacity to self-publish (with Amazon) an anthology to keep paying the bills while her novel was working its way through the sluggish bowels of the traditional publishing system. The publisher, Riverhead Books (a Penguin imprint), had rejected the anthology years ago but had a full-blown temper tantrum when they found out what she’d done. The editor delivered a lovely shouting session over the phone, accusing her of (among other things) “sleeping with the enemy” (i.e. Amazon). They then canceled her book and refuse to return to her the publishing rights until she returns the $20,000 advance (which she needed to pay bills and live on in the first place).

Davenport sums it up pretty well, I think, on her blog: “Sleeping with the enemy? Perhaps. But now I know who the enemy is.”


But as Kendall points out, it’s not just publishers taking far too long (to their own detriment) to adjust to the new world of self-propelled eBook publishing. After attending a local romance writers’ conference in Atlanta, she’s pretty much sworn off writers’ conferences. And, quite likely, the Planet Georgia chapter of RWA (who sponsored this conference).

All the writer conferences I’ve attended (yes, every single one) are geared for people looking for agents/editors to schmooze. … I do not belong with these people. I’m an outlier who doesn’t fit into their box. I refuse to wear their leash.

Responding to comments, of which there were many (and most supportive), Kendall did admit that there were other good things about writers’ conferences — the networking, promotional opportunities, and the like — which got me wondering. Would a writers’ conference geared toward indie- and self-publishers spark any interest? Rather than workshops on crafting the perfect query letter, what agents are looking for, and so on, the agenda could focus on topics relevant to indies:

• Setting up an author’s site
• Blogging stories
• Compiling an anthology
• Getting the formatting Just Right
• Print on Demand
• Promotion without driving all your friends crazy
• …and of course, the great plotters vs. pantsers smackdown

There could also be ad hoc crit groups and a “skills exchange” — as I wrote last week, you need a good team behind you, but not everyone has the cash upfront to hire that team. But I might be a typesetting gearhead and need an editor; she has editing chops and needs a cover artist; he can produce killer cover art and needs someone to format his own book. We could all take on the parts we’re good at, and everyone gets (we hope) a quality job without breaking the bank.

Kendall thinks I ought to take this and run with it. I don’t think I have that much time on my hands. But if people think it’s a good idea, I’ll try to facilitate it. If I get a lot of response, I’ll open up a new blog or website to keep things moving.