- Posts tagged Short Stories
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Two Adventurers Walk into a Tavern...
A short story for you today, featuring Wydrin and Sebastian. It's short and quite silly, and I hope that it might make the wait for Part 2 a little less annoying (big thanks to everyone on Twitter who wanted to hear more about the Scurvy Lemon). If you've not read The Copper Promise and would like to know more about this pair of rogues, you can get a copy here.
Random Story Thursday: Six Months, Nineteen Days
Dark Fiction Magazine: 2012 and Beyond
After a wee winter holiday, Dark Fiction Magazine is back with us, bristling with awesome science-fiction stories. Launch your ears into the future and go have a listen (for free) here.
The reason that I’m posting about it on my blog (other than the fact it’s just great, obviously) is that this is the first episode where my partner Marty and I have steering the Ominous Ghost Ship that is Dark Fiction Magazine.
We’ve been involved in the past, with both writing and narration, so when Sharon Ring and Del Lakin-Smith, the awesome chaps that founded the place, decided to take more of a backseat in order to pursue their own projects, Marty and I sort of shuffled forward to take the helm. Marty likes twiddling about with audio stuff (I’m fairly sure that’s the correct technical term) and I like reading through lots and lots and lots of stories (no, honestly, I do) so it seemed like the perfect fit.
Getting our first episode out has been an interesting process, and a huge learning experience. There were times, when self-imposed deadline after self-imposed deadline whistled merrily past my ears, that I wondered, “What on earth are we doing? Do I not have enough stories to wrangle as it is? I think my head might fall off.” But in the end, seeing the episode go live and knowing those four science-fiction stories will be amusing/alarming/entertaining earholes all over the interwebs was a lovely feeling, and I look forward to doing it again soon. So big thanks to: Marty, who not only handled the audio side of things but also did all manner of technical web stuff I didn’t understand, to our fabulous narrators and subs reading teams, who did an ace job as ever, and to Del and Sharon for letting us play with their toys.
No Giant Worms
Looking back through the last few entries, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a blog entirely about video games, or my unhealthy obsession with certain sprites. So as a reminder that I do also occasionally write stuff, here is a quick round up of my progress on "stuff that doesn't involve the Xbox".
1) Ink for Thieves has edged into that strange, twilight country known as “I’m a real book now almost, will someone please give me a home?”
2) I’ve just finished my first read-through of The Steel Walk since I finished the first draft, oh, ages ago. I think your writing style evolves over time, so reading back over it is a weirdly frustrating experience in places, as everything seems slightly off and a little wonky. However, with a lot of hacking and slashing (very appropriate for that book) I may well have something readable by the end of it.
3) The Copper Promise, which is the working title of my tentative ebook serial project, is happening in fits and starts at the moment. The current plan is to finish the first part (roughly 20,000 – 25,000 words) by the end of October, and take on parts 2 and 3 during Nanonwrimo, with the goal of getting the first bit out there for people to read by Christmas. All while re-drafting The Steel Walk… hmm.
4) Short story-wise, I seem to have fallen into a natural break. I have two stories not currently on submission anywhere, but in truth I am not altogether sure where to send them, as they’re both a bit… well, weird. For the time being I’m going to keep hold of the pair and see if something suitable occurs to me.
And that’s that! I’m sure you won’t have to wait long for me to be blogging about aliens and big guns again…
Campaign for Real Fear Review
Just a quick note to flag up a nifty happening: Peter Tennant has been reviewing all the stories published in Black Static, including the Campaign for Real Fear competition. If you go here, you can read a lovely little summary of my flash fiction piece, The Price.
I'm so proud of that story, and it's appearance in Black Static- I remember being all excited at Alt:Fiction because they were selling copies in the dealer's room; the first time I'd seen my work in print.
Free Short Story at Hub Magazine!
Snoopy dancing and general rejoicing! I am very proud to tell you that my short horror story Wallflower is in the current issue of Hub magazine. As I’m sure you know, Hub is totally excellent and totally free to read, so please do pop along here to have a butcher’s, and if you feel like making me super happy today, pop back here afterwards and let me know what you thought of it.
Wallflower was one of those oddly blessed stories, the ones that come out all in one piece and in a hell of a hurry, so that I found myself scribbling into a notebook on a train coming back from the SFX Weekender. I was hideously hungover and tired, but the story didn’t care if my brain was trying to crawl out of my ear, or that my mouth tasted like a dead badger’s armpit. If only all stories were so persistent.
News From Dark Fiction Magazine
As some of you will know, I've worked with Dark Fiction Magazine a number of times in the past, both as a narrator and as a writer with stories featured in a couple of episodes (the flash fiction short "Milk" read with grace and aplomb by Kim Lakin-Smith remains one of my proudest moments). These days I'm helping out a bit more, so I'm here to tell you that the magazine is open again for submissions of previously published stories- fantasy, horror, science-fiction, weirdness and terror and thrills, they're after them all!
I also have this message sent direct from the Dark Fiction offices themselves (carved into the bare rock of a mountain, you know, and staffed by the evil flying monkeys who thought the Wicked Witch wasn't wicked enough)
You already know that Dark Fiction Magazine are always on the look out for fiction of the creepy and fantastical variety- did you also know that we’re after artwork, too? And voices. Not in a steal-your-voice-in-exchange-for-a-nice-pair-of-legs way (we’re not Hans Christian Anderson) but we do like to have a good variety of interesting voices for our stories, so if you’re an artist or a narrator who could see their work being featured on DFM, please do send us examples of your work via our submissions site.
Hurrah! Get submitting.
The Pea Roast Post: Manticores and Mondays
Manticores and Mondays is an odd little story. It was one of the first written in what I like to think of as my “grown-up writing” period (that is to say, I wrote it in my twenties and actually managed to finish it) and it owes an awful lot to one of my favourite books, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I wanted to write something about how children behave when they are free of the watchful eyes of their parents. It’s also loosely based around tales my mum would tell me of her summer days spent in the fields behind my nan’s house.
It originally appeared in the Farrago Anthology.
Upcoming Story in Hub Magazine, and Kittens
So in celebration of the fact that I have a short story coming up in Hub Magazine soon, I will:
A) Do a snoopy dance (you will have to use your imagination here)
B) Post a picture of a kitten
And C) point you towards my previous two Hub stories, just in case you haven’t read them. The Sea, The Sea, The Sea is a tale of growing up, growing older and the terrible mysteries of, well, The Sea, and Jump is a story about how infatuation doesn’t always lead to flowers and chocolates. Sometimes, in fact, it leads to frogs.
The new story popping up presently in Hub is one of my favourites; a story initially scribbled into the back of my notebook whilst sitting on a train heading back from the SFX Weekender. As you can imagine, I was nursing a stinker of a hangover at the time and I think some of that hopeless terror and misery seeped through into the story.
Anyway, as soon as it’s up I shall shout and holler on here and possibly even post another picture of a kitten. Watch this space!
And more from the Chicken Machine...
