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Monthly Archives: October 2013

Why I Won’t Be Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

It’s nearly the end of October, and as you may be aware, my favorite holiday is rapidly approaching. Hallowe’en is less than a week away, and I’ve been making some arrangements for upcoming events. Looking at the way things will be falling into place over the next month has left me no choice but to say this. I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for the last two years. When I first started I was couchsurfing and working one job, nineteen hours a week. I had plenty of time to tackle the project, and I was giving Scrivener a go at the same time. It seemed perfect to me, and I managed to crank out over 30,000 words in the course of the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Then my car almost died on my way home for the holiday, and my ability to focus went out onto the highway along with all of my coolant.

Last year, I was back to two jobs (actually, the same two that I’m doing now… I feel somewhat accomplished for that in and of itself), and decided that I wanted to tackle a totally different genre for me second attempt. I changed my mind partway through, and told myself I was going to edit my NaNo project from the year before instead. I was still apartment hunting. I was convinced that NaNo would bring the structure that my life needed. It didn’t. I got essentially zero progress done on any fiction writing. I was disappointed, to say the least. So this year, I’m going on NaNo Hiatus.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be writing. It definitely doesn’t mean that. In fact, I’ll probably be writing more than usual. However, I’ve got multiple small projects that I’m going to be working on that are going to be taking priority over an attempt to cobble 1600+ words together each day. I have existing stories that need fleshed out. I need to place focus on them.

Damn straight, Jean-Luc.

My favorite part of this meme is the look on Jonathan Frakes’ face.

Not that facebook is the biggest distraction I have from writing, but you get the idea. Writing’s not the only thing I’ve got to focus on right now either. Whether I like it or not, I’ve still got two part-time jobs that keep me occupied. The bookstore job in particular is only going to get more intensive as the holiday season approaches. It’s the nature of retail, and as much as I dread the thought of another Christmas in that field, what I do is all about helping people find the right book.

So yeah, there’s the whole job thing kind of interfering with writing, but honestly, I’m not certain that NaNoWriMo is the right route for me to take through it, at least not right now. Maybe, if all goes well, I’ll have full-time employment by this time next year, and I’ll be able to drop all of my accumulated vacation days on November, and just take paid time off to write. That would be amazing.

Until then, I’m going to work on a couple of longer pieces that I plan to submit for publication, and whip together a few microfiction pieces for the various writing challenges that pop up throughout the month. To those of you who are tackling NaNoWriMo in a couple of days, I wish you the best of luck. It’s great for certain people at certain times in their lives, and can be spectacular simply to get the words out of your head. Those of you who won’t be doing NaNo are more than welcome to join me at the bar on Hallowe’en and toast to the crazy people who are hunkering down in the writing bunkers for the next thirty days. Cheers!

Trifextra Week 91: Seeing is Believing

For this weekend’s Trifextra Challenge, we were instructed to write 33 words about a beast in an unusual place. As it’s nearly Hallowe’en, I decided to write this one for you. Why? Because flash-fiction horror is fun! Here’s “Seeing is Believing.”

“Mom! Can you come look at my eye?”

“What for?”

“It feels weird.”

“Did your brother poke you again?”

“No, Mom. Just come look.”

“Coming. Now, what THE HELL IS IN YOUR EYE?!”

Doctor Sleep: A Review

In 1977, Stephen King chilled readers with a tale of a young couple and their son, and the worst winter to ever pass in a hotel in Colorado. That book, The Shining, was King’s third novel, and thanks in part to the brilliant work of Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick, is widely remembered as the basis for one of the greatest horror films ever. Now, almost forty years have passed since The Shining first hit shelves, and we are granted a rare treat from the master of horror. On September 24th, 2013, Stephen King released Doctor Sleep, a sequel to one of his earliest and most famous novels.

One winter, long ago, one of Colorado’s finest hotels burned to the ground after the aging boiler exploded. Four people were at the Overlook Hotel at the time. Jack Torrance (the recently hired winter caretaker), his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny (a young boy gifted with the titular “shining”, a type of psychic power), were living in the hotel for the season. Also on location was Dick Halloran, head cook of the Overlook, who had returned from vacation in Florida because of a growing concern for the safety of the Torrance family. Mr. Torrance was killed in the blast while the other three escaped with relatively minor injuries. Torrance had reportedly returned to the hotel’s basement in an heroic attempt to relieve the pressure in the boiler, albeit regrettably too late to save the hotel and himself. The truth of that winter is known only to the survivors.

Years later, Danny Torrance is a grown man struggling with ghosts, both literal and metaphorical. Having inherited his father’s propensity for alcohol, Dan tries to hide from his past, locking away the memories of the Overlook and drinking to numb his psychic abilities, always on the move from town to town. After a time on the road, bouncing from bottle to job and back again, Dan realizes that he has to get his life back together. In a small town in New England (surprise!), Dan finds an AA sponsor and gainful employment at a local hospice. Before long, he’s learning to use his shining to help those who are near death to cross over to the other side, earning the nickname “Doctor Sleep.”

Far across the country, a group of people known as The True Knot are stalking people with shining, feeding off of their powers and extending their lives. They soon set their sights on a young girl named Abra, whose latent shining is a blazing fire next to the flickering match that is Dan Torrance’s power. The True intend to find the girl, torture her to death, and feast and rejuvenate on her power, or “steam.” When she learns of their existence and their plans, Abra reaches out via the shining, attempting to find someone who can help her stand against the True, and finds Dan. Soon the two are communicating, planning a way to defend Abra from those who would do her harm and simultaneously lay Dan’s ghosts to rest once and for all.

King has crafted a delightful tale with Doctor Sleep, continuing the story of a tormented young boy as he passes into adulthood. He skillfully weaves new and old, tying details of The Shining into the present-day narrative. It’s not The Shining all over again, but rather a different, more mature type of horror. Dan is sympathetic, and overwhelmingly human, struggling to flee from the gifts that saved his life when he was a child. Abra is a bright spot in his life, reminding him of the hope his family once had.

If you’re a Stephen King fan, odds are that you’ve already at least considered giving Doctor Sleep a read. I devoured it, and as always, I wanted more when I was done. It’s a fascinating opportunity to see the evolution of King’s writing style and technique, and a great story in its own right.

Trifecta Week 99: Special Challenge

This week, Trifecta celebrated their 99th writing challenge (not including “Trifextra” bonus challenges) with something special. Typically, challenge entries involve using the third definition of a given word in a story that ranges between 33 and 333 words. The 99th challenge, however, was something special. We were given a photograph of page 99 of the Oxford English Dictionary and told to write exactly 99 words using one of the words on the selected page. The page ranged from “babushka” to “back” and included several wonderful, potential-filled words. I opted to go with the first that caught my eye, and so I present you with “Babushka.”

“Babushka”

I’ll never forget the stories that my babushka used to tell me when I was a boy. She would take me on her lap next to the fire and speak in a hushed voice about the things that lived in the woods, and how she was one of them once, before she fell in love with a human. She once said that certain things linger in the blood, and can remain dormant for years, and that I must never tell my mother. After all, they may still be out there, watching and waiting to see if I’m like them.

The Apocalypse Mechanism

Today’s entry is a response to the latest Terrible Minds Writing Challenge, and comes to you courtesy of the wonderful Chuck Wendig. We were instructed to choose a word from each of two columns of ten words. These two words would give us our title for a thousand-word story. From there, we were free to choose genre, setting, etc. so long as the title was composed of those two randomly selected words. It is with great pleasure that I present to you “The Apocalypse Mechanism.”

“The Apocalypse Mechanism”

I found myself hypnotized by the button. It sat there all day, just peeking up at me from beneath its warning label-emblazoned plastic cover. The labels said “Do Not Push”. The button seemed to say the exact opposite, but I knew what would happen if I pressed it. Hell, the alarm system would engage the second the cover was flipped open
(I wanted to push it)

and that couldn’t even be accomplished without two keys, only one of which was ever in my possession at any given time.

So I stared at it. Me versus the button. The greatest showdown never to be broadcast live on television, though one documentary maker had come down to film my little chamber about a year and a half after I started. Our little chamber, I suppose. Marco and I took turns. I don’t know if he stared at the button the way I did
(I wanted to push it)

like I was looking deep into the eyes of the lover I could never have. We never talked about it. He only spoke Italian, and I only spoke English. He had the other key. I wore mine around my neck. I think he did too, but again, we didn’t exactly have the best of conversations, or any conversations, for that matter. Language barriers and whatnot. Pretty sure the guys upstairs planned it that way, but there’s no way for me to know for certain.

The chair was pretty comfortable, so I guess you could say it was a cushy job. I mean, how many gigs can you find where you get paid a shit-ton of money to sit in a big chair and wait patiently for nothing to happen? Not many. This one was one of a kind, too. It was an armchair, too, not a desk chair or anything like that. Designed for me and me alone. There was a matching one opposite mine, made for Marco, and we never sat in each other’s. We wouldn’t have been comfortable. That was the way it was designed. I asked once what would happen if one of us had been killed, and the only response I’d gotten was an offhand comment about having to draft a plan for a new chair.

The button was green. That really threw me off the first time I sat in that chair. I’d been expecting red when they gave me the breakdown of the job. It just seemed logical that a button that could end the world would be red, you know? Nope. Green. Big and friendly, almost a neon green, like it was telling you “Don’t Panic” or something. Like it wanted to be pushed. I’m fairly certain it did, because then it would’ve been all over, but when I mentioned that to the staff psychologist, he said I was just projecting.

The button was only part of it, of course. The room wasn’t built to house anything, it was everything. The whole complex I worked in was the device, and the room with my little chair and my big friendly “Do Not Push” button
(oh, gods I wanted to push it)

was only a little chamber, a tiny fraction of the thing they called “The Apocalypse Mechanism.” Designed by the most brilliant minds on the planet, top to bottom, including my chair. I can’t call them the best minds, because if the best minds had been around at that point, it wouldn’t have come to the building of that damned thing. The best minds would have been able to come up with something better, a plan that wouldn’t involve Earth being sacrificed.

Still, the minds we had left were brilliant. They had taken good care of them in the facilities back in Russia. Neat little rows of jars, cleanly labeled, and so on and so forth. I’d actually gotten a tour of the place a few years before I got my button-watching job. A cold set of shelves, but like I said, they held the most brilliant minds left on Earth. They put them to use, and away we went, letting them design the mechanism that would allow us to hide our tracks completely.

Marco and I each worked on ten hour shifts. Ten hours on, ten hours off. Since we were underground, it didn’t really matter much to us that we didn’t see daylight. What was left to see on the surface anyway? Nothing I hadn’t seen before. Nothing I wanted to see again. Ten hours sitting, waiting for the word that it was time to wake the other, time to use the keys, time to release the plastic cover, time to push the big green button.

It would mean that the world would end. Earth would be destroyed, and the home of the human race would be lost to history forever. Marco and I would have no choice but to stay behind, of course. As far as I knew, he was just like me. No family, nothing left. No reason for us to be on the ships that would be setting course for the colony worlds far from our solar system. My button was the trigger. I held one of the two keys that would prevent anyone or anything from taking our home and using its resources against us. The Apocalypse Mechanism. The ultimate in scorched earth tactics.

I stared at the button for a lot of my shifts. I could have read, I suppose, or listened to music, but I couldn’t help myself. I knew that I’d have to push it one day. I could feel that from day one, so I stared at the button. I stared at it for five years, ten hours at a time.

Until now. Until the alerts. Too many ships still orbiting, trying to leave. Too many people still in range. No way to protect them now. No choice. I call Marco. We draw out our keys, unlock the cover.
(I don’t want to)

We push it together.

Trifecta 97: “Stranded”

Here’s my entry for Trifecta Week 97. We were asked to use the word “ass” in a postpositive sense. Having fun with that one yet? It means that I got to write a story with “dumb-ass” as a key word. It’s short (333 words, so long-ish for Trifecta) and a little silly, but here, nonetheless, is “Stranded.”

“You know, sir,” Nolan said, finally finding his voice. “Dumb-ass over there has a point. If we don’t get back in the next three hours, the ship will leave without us.”

“Yeah,” Beckett chimed in. “Because he’s the one who set the auto-pilot before leading us out on some wild-pteranodon chase.”

“I want a pteranodon,” Shyle murmured, continuing his doodle in the sand.

“Not the point, Shy. Also, Beckett? Weird expression. Don’t use it around Shyle again. You know how he gets. And Nolan?”

“Yessir?”

“You’re right. I hate to say it, but Harker’s right too. We’ve got to get in high gear if we’re going to make it back to the ship. Harker. How far off course are we? Never mind. Don’t talk. Beckett, ping the ship. Get us a route plotted, double time.”

“On it, sir.”

“Nolan?”

“Commander?”

“I don’t care if it’s true or not. Don’t call Harker a dumb-ass. He’s still a part of the team.”

“But he was wrong! There was nothing out here. Not a scrap of salvage. Nothing worth even making the trip, not to mention the risk of getting stranded.”

“Hey guys?” Beckett called. “I’ve got a course to the ship, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, sir, take a look. According to Harker, we’ve now got under three hours to make it back to override the autopilot, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because according to the beacon, the ship is currently ten klicks farther than our original touchdown point. Which means either we’ve gone way past what our suit gauges say we’ve traveled, or…”

“Or someone’s moved the ship. Damn. Where’s a pteranodon when we need speed?”

“Said I couldn’t have one,” Shyle mumbled.

“Keep drawing, Shy. Where’s that leave us, Beckett?”

“In a word, sir? Screwed.”

“How screwed, scale of 1-10.”

“Shut up, Nolan. Go sit with Harker.”

“Uh, Commander?”

“What, Nolan?”

“Harker’s gone, sir.”

“Beckett?”

“Ship’s gone too.”

“Crafty son of a bitch…”

“Yes sir.”

“What now, Commander?”

“Hope for pteranodons.”