eddyfate

Between encouragement (well, mocking) from my family and a few people at work keen on the idea, I'm seriously considering giving National Novel Writing Month a try this year. Which means I have to start outlining... well, now.

I've actually wanted to try NaNoWriMo for about five years now, but I've never had a chance to. This year I actually do, and I have the energy for it as well -- Whitechapel has really gotten me excited about writing longer pieces of fiction. While I've written whole books before, I haven't ever even tackled a novel before, so this will be totally new to me.

That isn't to say that I haven't had ideas for novels all this time. In fact, I've had several. I've managed to narrow it down to five that I have interest in and notes for, but I'm having a hard time choosing, so I wanted to see what y'all thought. I won't necessarily go with the most popular option -- it might be that I look at that option and go "Ugh," which means that I really had my heart set on another idea and didn't realize it -- but it will help me boil my options down to one. Here are the "elevator pitches" for each, and any pros or cons against them.

• As The Devil Drives: A demon-possessed mobster runs afoul of a washed-up detective who has seen things most people won't believe. (Horror detective fiction) This is actually a novel I wrote a chapter or two on a while back, but I could never get moving on it. In feel it would be pretty close to Whitechapel, which means I might want to consider something a little different to change it up.
• Night Fall: A witty female vampire hunter gets caught up in the society of the local undead who are all idiots. (Comedic modern fantasy) This is actually what started the idea of NaNoWriMo going -- a parody of various female vampire hunter novels out there. Of course, this is pretty close to what I do for a living, so it's got a similar strike against it as "As The Devil Drives" in terms of mood overlap.
• Terrifying Disappointment: The salvage crew of the HCSS Terrifying Disappointment find that they are the only hope left in their sector of space against an alien menace. (Comedic sci-fi) I've been watching a lot of comedic sci-fi recently, so this idea is pretty fresh to me, but it would be two genres I've never done before.
  
• The Bureau: A group of empowered individuals work together in secret to defeat a race of dimensional creatures from taking over the world. (Modern pulp superheroes) This is a pretty old idea that I've been poking at again recently. I like the idea, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a novel or something else.
• Thy Kingdom Come: The War of Heaven comes to Earth in the late 19th century. (Dramatic alt history) Another old idea, and not something I've worked on recently, but I did a lot of research a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure I still have all those notes somewhere.

So, if you have a second, click on the titles you think are interesting/would be interesting for me to write/think I would have fun writing. You can choose as many as you want -- again, I'm not looking for hard data, but just collecting some random opinions to give me something to mull over and help me narrow these choices down.

(Note: Poll is not working for some, so if you can't vote, just toss your thoughts in a comment, tweet them to me on Twitter, or email me.)


Poll #1470098 What book should I write?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 31

What book should I write for NaNoWriMo?

Before I start, I need a moment.

Ahem.

HOLY FUCKING CHRIST I'M GOING TO BE PUBLISHED IN A FICTION ANTHOLOGY.

Whew. There. Now that that's out of my system, "Gloomy Sunday" has been confirmed as one of the stories in the upcoming Close Encounters of the Urban Kind by Apex Publishing. This is awesome for a couple of reasons: it's only the second time I've been paid for my straight fiction (the first was "Questions" for the Pseudopod podcast), and it's the first time I've been invited into an anthology instead of blindly submitting a story for consideration. I have a chance to do a polish and reformatting pass before the editor gives me redlines. And then, at some point in the future, the awesome happens.

But no time to slow down. I've been chugging along on Whitechapel, and I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out. I've been babbling about my writing process on that project quite a bit -- you can check out my post-mortems if you're interested.

And because my brain doesn't have enough going on, I've been poking around with an older project for the past few days -- a weird kind of pulp superhero universe. It's something I've kicked around for a few years now, but it's been intermingled with some other projects in my head, and I'm in the process of slowly extracting them so I can focus on fleshing out those elements. Originally I had a few different OpenOffice documents that I was trying to keep notes in, but it was hard to keep track of all the interconnections, so I'm now putting all my notes into a TiddlyWiki page. My time running a Scion cycle on Obsidian Portal has helped me to think of ways to use a wiki for cross-referencing world information and characters. Of course, I don't have any plans to work on comic scripts or a superhero RPG, so I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with it just yet, but I'm sure I'll have some fun with it at some point.

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

… Cold. So cold. I can’t feel my hands. They’re a couple of twitching lumps of meat at the end of my arms, uncaring about my needs or desires. I push them closer to the fire sputtering in a rusted oil drum, but the heat is as unconcerned about me as my hands are.

Across from me, the man with the long, diamond-shaped scar covering his cheek smiles, his teeth as black and broken as the ancient blacktop around us. “It’s cold tonight,” he says. I nod and look away to avoid gagging on breath that smells like cigarettes stubbed out in used cat litter. The lumps twitch toward the illusion of warmth again.

“Name’s Claude,” he says. “You’re new.”

I nod again, still looking out into the empty street near the alley. It’s bad enough that I lost everything – my job, my home, my family. But now I’m going to be trapped in this alleyway, snow melting into my shoes, listening to a disfigured man with breath as stale as his conversation forever. This isn’t just another November night. It’s a pit of hell that I’m trapped in, a punishment for unknown crimes against the universe.

“Sometimes the innocent are put in jail, and the guilty go free.”

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

One week until the launch of Whitechapel! If you’re looking for other free Internet serials to fill your time with while you wait, I have four other sites you should check out.

Jet Pack is a central point for the fiction of three extremely talented writers: Chuck Wendig, Will Hindmarch and Wood Ingham. I’m particularly into Wood’s sci-fi novella “Memory Sticks.”

And if you can’t get enough Chuck Wendig, he and Marty Henley just launched The Storyverse, a dueling serial that trades off between Chuck and Marty every week. It’s… well it’s… there’s kind of a sci-fi thing… with pirates… and pulp… kinda. It’s awesome, and they’re big supporters of the Project (they even changed their release date so as not to conflict with the launch of Whitechapel), so go check out their work.

I’ve always been a fan of Mur Lafferty, and she’s been doing some of her own serial work in a multimedia story called “Her Side.” I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll probably start catching up really soon. I understand it can be a bit disturbing, but if you’re waiting for horror goodness from me, you’ll probably like Mur’s work just fine.

Finally, I have been ordered by Filamena Young to go check out Tim Pratt’s Bone Shop. It’s a donation-funded urban fantasy novella that’s only a few weeks old, so now is a good time to check it out.

Once you’ve read all that, come back here and get ready for episode 1!

I've been thinking about my flash piece "Questions" again recently, and I was pleased to find that the podcast version is still online. I don't know why my brain keeps circling around a piece of mine that's several years old, though.

A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire: Part V
Foreword, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

( 'I can’t believe you two. You’re useless....' )

A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire: Part IV
Foreword, Part I, Part II, Part III

( Although much of our trip that morning was not in heavily urban areas... )

A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire: Part III
Foreword, Part I, Part II

( There were, of course, the typical gift shop offerings... )

A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire: Part II
Foreword, Part I

( We stayed in London for a week... )

A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire: Part I
Foreword

( I've never changed a tire... )

My third and final story in class was a fictionalized memoir of a humorous (though not at the time) experience I had in Yorkshire. The story is titled "A Sheepish Trip to Yorkshire." I just got it back from my professor, and he thought it was very good (although not a proper story per se, which I agreed with). The clean-up suggestions he had were actually very few. While I still need to hammer on it to make it more of a proper story for eventually publication, I've had a few (well, two) requests to read it, so I'll be publishing it in installments in my LJ. Feedback of any sort is always appreciated!

Feathery snowflakes fell and melted into her golden hair as we held each other. Time became muffled under snow and ice. Her arms squeezed me tightly as she buried her face in my chest. Her face was wet as I held her to me, assuring myself of her reality, clinging to something I didn't understand but was so afraid to lose. A second, an hour, a lifetime passed by as we held each other, no other words needed but simple human contact.

I felt her stir, and I looked down into her eyes. Her electric-blue gaze slammed into my mind. I leaned forward just as she did and our lips connected, completing the circuit started in her eyes. Soft passion flowed through me as I felt her hands inside my coat, her nails gently raking my back as our lips flowed over each other and melting snow slid down my face, masking my tears.

Three shots cracked in the darkness. Warm life splashed over my face as I felt my leg buckle. I fell to the frozen street, banging my head on the car parked behind me. I screamed her name as I drowned in a sea of darkness. Frozen pricks dotted my tongue as I called her over and over again, struggling to keep my eyes open.

As the freezing void drug me down, the last thing I saw was her lying on the ground, her dead eyes staring at me as gritty, sticky blood oozed under my hands.

---

Author's Note: Decided to get a scene out that was lurking in my head. This is background to events in my eventual Midway City story. Revised 11/18.

Dedication: There are a few people in my life who have felt like ducks recently. This is for all of them.

---

( Once upon a time, there was a duck. )

It all started with me making a quick PDF of "One Patriot Too Many" last night for naamaire to read. And then... well, my muse went a little crazy.

THE AGENT PATRIOT LIBRARY
For people who have no idea what this "Agent Patriot" business is, this is probably the best place to start.

The first three complete stories of Agent Patriot (from xiombarg) are up in PDF format. I tried to get it to look a little like a pulp magazine. I also did a quick spellcheck and grammer check on each story (because I know it's rough getting that right when you're dashing it out on LJ). I've also put the Creative Commons legal information in each story, and posted the first four parts of "One Patriot Too Many" for anyone else who has trouble reading it on my LJ. As I hear of more completed AP stories, I'll PDF those as well. If people want to contribute art to these stories, let me know. The number scheme is fairly arbitrary in the order that the stories came out, with the digression that "The Blood Queen" has to thematically take place after "Ghost of Genius" and "One Patriot Too Many" - hence why it's numbered before the almost-complete "The Dark Infection".

Anyhow, enjoy.

2009 Edit. That website is down. The best collection right now of the Agent Patriot fiction is here: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=xiombarg&keyword=patriot&filter=all

I've slightly rewritten "One Patriot Too Many", Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Feel free to reacquint yourself with the story while I work on the new parts. :)

The car slowly climbs up the hill. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

At the top of the hill, there's that pause. Your stomach is jelly, and you can see for miles. Anxiety and exhilaration collide in your brain. You feel weightless, calm, peaceful.

And then, before you know it, you drop like a rock. WHOOSH. You're going face first towards the ground at a million miles an hour. OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD.

You slam back into your seat as the car twists and rockets up and away from a demise you know was never possible but your instincts are still screaming over. The car rattle rattle rattles against the track. You've been saved, reprieved, but you can still see miles of track ahead of you. The next hill climbs in front of your eyes.

The car twists away violently, unexpectedly. You can feel your teeth chatter as your body lurches against your restraints, unable to predict anymore which way you will fall. You are powerless, helpless against this beast of metal and gravity. You can feel yourself start to panic. Don't scream don't scream don't scream don't scream.

And then you're on the hill. You can feel the adrenaline turn to sludge in your body as the car slowly coasts up. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

Again you hurtle towards the ground. WHOOSH. Maybe it's because this hill isn't as high, or your mind is just overwhelmed from the experience, but you barely see the green blur rising towards you. You notice your hands gripping onto the bar in front of you, but it doesn't seem real anymore.

The car jerks to the other side, and you slam against your friend next to you. THUMP. He smiles and gives you a quick thumbs up, his eyes wild with excitement.

Then you feel yourself jerk forward, rising suddenly, and the ride is over. The car coasts to a slow, gentle stop in the station. The brakes hissssssss, and the restraint that you were so thankful for a moment ago digs into your chest. You scramble to unlatch it and pull yourself out of the cramped car.

Your body tingles. Your mind spins. Your balance is shot. Your stomach is queasy. You spend a moment trying to remember what solid ground feels like under your feet instead of in front of your face.

But it was all worth it.

I looked at myself in the mirror. She stood behind me and smiled, playing with my hair. "You're perfect," she whispered.

"Perfect?" I glanced at her, and then went back to looking at myself.

He nodded slightly. "Your hair, your skin, your eyes... even the sound of your breathing is perfect. No one will ever know that you're not human."

My eyes flicked over to her again, watching her mouth shape the words, and then flicked back. I stared into my own eyes, looking for something there. "I will always know," I said to myself, and felt the heavy burden of being alone.

I touch your lips from a glassy distance.
I feel your warmth, a hot breeze to the distant horizon.
I run my hands over your face before it fades from my fingertips.

Your scent lingers in my nose, purple perfume fading to black.
Your soft whispers echo broken promises of forever in my scarred ears.
Your eyes close as a single tear falls, but they never look at my soul again.

You are the shadow of a ghost, and only your dim memory keeps me company.

---

Author's Note: Another late night inspiration.

My mind spins.

Is it my mind? I have a mind to choose my own mind. But my mind is not my own. The slightest comment, the merest scent, the faintest touch sends it off into unknown depths. I (me) follow behind as I (he) race off on a new world that you (me) set before me.

I feel what you feel. Is it my feeling? Property is theft. Your every thought washes over me unbidden, and I'm dragged back into the pool. I (he) run forward, and you (me) pull back.

I ramble - I gibber - I speak in riddles with the answer key torn out. I can't make sense, because I don't know what sense is driving. You are what you have made me to be. I am the master of my own destiny, with your permission.

I am a soldier, the weight of the world on my shoulders. These shoulders shift but they won't break. Who am I holding this world for? If not for you, then for me. If not for me, then for the faith that I am who you think I am.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.).

---

Note: I don't understand it either - not yet. That doesn't make the need to get it out of my fucking head any less pressing. I sleep now.