My book exists :D 2 small changes were made for all future editions: 1 - Pages 66, 68, and 69 will have the broken ' ot ' sign fixed to make it a 'hotel' sign. For all intents and purposes, it will, contextually, flicker; so it won't ever be repaired entirely. 2 - Page 61 has a glow that glows SO BRIGHT the word "glowed" can't be read... Future editions will include the word "glowed", which no doubt will be a less-bright torch. Please feel free to fill in the missing information as an activity (or not.) |
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Thanks beyond mere blog-words for giving my new novella such a warm reception! It means more than I feel can be expressed for anyone who finds my work of interest in such a time as we find ourselves. In the interest of story flow, I find myself drained for finding any other way to plug at this time: The Dreary House and A Place to Stay are both available now. The third part, tentatively titled "Chance of Tragedies", is currently on-schedule and in-progress. (Slated for an autumn release with a hefty side-helping of optimism!) When the idea for the short story which follows first arrived a few years ago, I told myself to write it down so I would not forget it. No writing down occurred, and I forgot the specifics of the story pretty quick. Remembering it recently, it was written down right away when it returned. From inception to publication here, the story seems to owe some degree of homage paid to one James, who is no longer with us. This story is snack-sized as it ever was, and titled "Finn's Tale."
"a man, out walking in the woods one night. He grows tired in the darkness. The night is long and the man has been traveling longer. He spots a glow in the distance. His path changes toward it, with care around trees and in silence over branches. As he gets closer, he sees others sitting around a camp fire. One is talking in a low voice. Leaves crunch under the man's footsteps upon his weary approach and the others turn, spotting him at an edge of some trees. A hush passes between everyone as one speaks to the tired man, 'Our night is long, so we are telling stories to pass the darkness. If slumber will cease to seize you yet, you may join us to tell a story of your own.' The man watched the flames meet the night's abyss before the starry sky above as others looked at new flames finding a temporary space. 'I do have a story,' he replied while joining them at the campfire, taking a seat. 'There is" A few projects in the works right now, though nothing much to put here today. The audio book for The Dreary house will go ahead sooner than a physical copy. It will likely be available late February/early March. A Place to Stay is still in progress, there were considerations today to re-post the first draft before deciding against posting bad writing without further explanation. However, we'll forego having to read too much bad writing by saying chapter 5 is half way done, out of a total 10 chapters. Half way to half way, one might say; for a draft done this way, anyway. The third book is continuing to have the outline refined, but still seems to be on course for October this year. Thank you for reading!
Two words pleasant enough on their own: Paperback, as in "I picked up a paperback today" and delay, as in, "The ducklings crossed the railroad tracks after being notified through duck post the train had been delayed, and now is instead taking an alternate, non-threatening route which still allowed all passengers to arrive on time and all railroad-train/other-necessary-structural-functional-societal-mechanism et. al's personnel to continue on with their day as normal"; are generally accepted as colloquial normalities, even if the perception of writing in a drawn-out fashion is a bit more than this particular explanation requires; although it may be worth noting to some.
The paperback is being delayed. It seems we'll have a dash more joy by working with other publishers. Being unable to publish the paperback at the time I intended has been my first real disappointment as a writer, and I apologize to the readers who were looking forward to it. I plan to release the paperback as soon as possible. However, not everything has been for naught yet. The digital edition has been updated to include illustrations, along with fixing some minor grammatical errors. I greatly appreciate everyone who has read the book. Your feedback means the world to me. A fully-updated version of The Dreary House is now available on Kindle. Find A Place to Stay soon. From an early age, Busytown had some of my favorite art in any book to date. Hours were spent looking at the pictures of one such book. The pictures in Roald Dahl and Dr. Suess books stood out next: I loved the way crude, scratchy lines could be used in so many ways of expression.
As I got older, The Phantom Tollbooth was in at least one classroom from third grade to high school. I finished reading it after graduating high school, and saw the pictures were just as important to the story. In the interim, I flipped through Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and thoroughly read the Harry Potter books. The art remained ever-important. For The Dreary House, I knew the exact sort of style I wanted while accepting my skill wasn't much for such drawings. With the paperback edition of The Dreary House, it's worth mentioning a few things about the art included. First, they are not the same as the text descriptions. I hope this will hint toward an unreliable narrative. Second, the art will be in full color. Images were drawn in black and white with splotches of color to highlight unique characteristics. Yellow may be the most common splotch, but it is never the same yellow twice. Green, blue, and brown round out the palette so far. They really tie the novella together. The Dreary House is available now on Kindle. Look for the paperback edition this Halloween. Find A Place to Stay 2019. Write concise.
If you find yourself wanting to write a given genre, be prepared to learn way more than anyone else would ever want to know about the genre. May you come away from any such study still fascinated in and by the process. When this series of horror novellas is complete, I plan to take a break from horror. Enjoy a sunny sky. Inexplicably, scary stories will find a way to draw me back. This last lesson learned may be the obvious choice: I learned how to write a book. It has inspired me to find ways to teach others to write books outside of a classroom setting. Stay tuned here. The Dreary House is available now on Kindle. Look for the paperback edition this Halloween. Find A Place to Stay 2019. Or rather, "What went in to writing The Dreary House?"
I started by noting dreams. Sometimes, these notes described a feeling or a full story. One specific dream I felt worked well with the story near the beginning of chapter 6, as Anna checks the restraint. I keep paper and at least one pen at the bedside. The morning I had a similar dream, I went from laying in bed to standing on the other side of the room to write it down. In real life, the bed was normal. The second step took some learning: I watched every horror movie I could sit through, regardless of quality. Before starting such a project, I claimed there are no scary movies. I still feel the claim is true, and what is meant by "regardless of quality" pertains more toward critical ratings and audience reviews than the content or subject matter of a film. There are horror movies I won't watch. The list is pretty short for particular movies, but I hope it suffices here to say I don't get in to torture or erotic horror. There are fears to explore outside of violence and sex amounting to things much more interesting. Eventually, I learned to watch for good horror movies rather than just spending time on anything. There were many horror movies. Many, many qualitative-bad horror movies. A few gems, too. When I didn't have time for horror movies, I studied film and horror. These informed narrative structure, what makes stories scary and perhaps something peculiar for writing: camera angles. By these means, I intended to write a horror story with a more cinematic feeling. If I ran out of media, I would often resort to YouTube channels (Top5s serves some informative nightmare fuel.) These inputs formed the output of my first horror novella. The Dreary House is available now on Kindle. Look for it on paperback this Halloween. Find A Place to Stay 2019. I was recently asked, "How did you plot The Dreary House?" And the short answer is magic. That isn't a satisfactory answer by any means, but it is likely to be as sensical by the time I explain it in more mundane terms.
It started with a dream. Not a dream I had, but someone I know. The second and third pieces of magic came when we were able to communicate about it through talking and listening. By definition, the Dictionary.com defines magic as, "the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious forces." Three components mentioned so far hold much mystery still: Dreams, talking, and listening. The last one in particular is difficult, as evidenced by the second step: Step two began after I started writing. I got a few chapters in and realized I didn't have enough details for the house. I asked the dreamer about the house, and was informed of some of its basic characteristics: Old, rusty, unfinished patches and cement. I added these details to the story I imagined over time and still couldn't produce the story found within the dream. Dreams are notoriously difficult in this regard, just when they seem to mesh with an afternoon the details fade to impressions at best. The last step was all study: School, education, teaching, and story structures by other writers. Joseph Campbell and Dan Harmon gave the structures implemented the most strict. I re-wrote parts of the story and paid close attention to the language in which I wrote. As it may be, English doesn't have a whole lot of rules despite Strunk & White's extensive writing juxtaposed with Naipaul's study on the subject: "...these so-called 'rules' have nothing to do with the language and are really rules about French usage," says the guy. However, my family history has been traced back to France, so please know Strunk & White's Elements of Style was noted more than once. With vast mysteries like these, it's just as easy to say magic. The Dreary House is available on Kindle. Look for the paperback this Halloween. |
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