Christmas is Coming Early!

I don’t think there’s going to be any fancy wrapping paper or shiny gold bows involved, but there may as well be.

I was lucky enough to see David Dunwoody read during a panel at Horror Realm this year, and I’ve been meaning to pick up his novel Empire for a while now. He’s recently been included in an aquatic-themed anthology called Dead Bait, which I’ve had on my Amazon wish list since a day or two after it came out. Seriously, anyone who knows about my obsession with fish and all things water could see me freaking out over this book from a mile away. Just the cover was enough to make me grin.

Look at this. Just look at it. Is that not the most awesome book a horror-writing fish lover could own?

I received an email today telling me I was a winner in his November mailing list raffle, which means I’m about to find signed copies of Necrotic Tissue (an awesome horror magazine that’s often mentioned over on The Funky Werepig, one of the most informative and hilarious podcasts I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to) and Dead Bait in my PO box.

It is kind of like Christmas, and just in time for semester break. I’m going to be tearing through books until the first day of Spring classes.

I really lucked out. Awesome, awesome stuff.

"Singles Line" Appearing in Flashes in the Dark

My short, 900-word flash piece “Singles Line” will be appearing on Flashes in the Dark. It goes live mid-December, and I hope I made it in time to participate in the “Worst of Love” competition, which was what I wrote it for. Life (and NaNo) got in the way most of the month, so it was cutting very close to the deadline when I submitted it.

David Mitchell’s first novel, the wonderfully odd Ghostwritten, has a chapter towards the end of the book that consists entirely in dialogue. It was a difficult book for me to read, and I put it down and picked it back up several times over the course of a few months, but once I got to that chapter I was hooked. It deals with a late-night radio shock-jock and a listener who calls in on the same night every year for a series of years, never giving away their identity but revealing much about the nature of the world.

When I read the chapter, I was struck by Mitchell’s technique. Up until that point, I don’t believe I’d read anything that was comprised entirely of dialogue before, and I was amazed at the amount of story that could be told just through the speech of a few people. I was determined to try it myself.

The first story I wrote employing this technique was The Anything Goes Call-In Show, which is still up over on Ficly, a neat little open source flash-writing site that I’ve mentioned on the blog before. One of the hardest things about using this technique is that you have to create a scenario in which it is plausible for the characters to only be talking, without any descriptors, and still get enough information across. For a horror writer, the easiest way is to put them on the phone or other mass-communication technology, and then throw in a nasty twist along the way.

I’m not going to talk about “Singles Line” much yet, because it’s available on the site yet, but suffice it to say that I loved writing it and look forward to seeing the reactions of readers. I hope they find it just as interesting and creepy as I did while writing it.

Gizmos and Gadgets

I am horrible with lists. HORRIBLE. I’m not even sure if that’s the right word to describe it, but I can’t think of anything stronger at the moment and I’m running on coffee vapors, staying up to finish the first draft of a paper on Poe, alcoholism and alternate theories of his death.

I found one thing today that I think may be able to save me from myself in regards to my absentmindedness, my need for better multitasking abilities and my general slovenliness. It’s called Anxiety, and it’s a tiny OS X Leopard widget that manages tasks. You can add multiple calendars (just a fancy way of saying “category”) to add extra layers of organization, which I desperately need, and assign levels of importance to each task. The widget exports to both Mail and iCal, which is nice, and keeps copies of completed tasks.

I’m liking it so far. Right now I’ve got calendars for School, Home, Writing (general things like blogging, interviews, reviews, etc) and Submissions, and each one is color coded and separated by a drop-down menu. Very nice. When exporting to iCal, it’s easy to add deadline dates as well, which helps me keep track of which things I need to get done first and which I can give my usual “Eh, I’ll do it later, right after I read these blogs and post on this forum” treatment.

The best part of all is that it’s free.

I’m always looking for new Mac apps to make my life better, and this one is a tiny little gem. Here’s hoping I stick with it and give it a real chance to increase my productivity.

I Need a Beer

Made the official NaNo deadline of 50k today. Seems the Office of Letters and Light’s word count validator is twelve hundred words off of my OpenOffice program, meaning I had to fly through another section of the story before I could be declared a winner.

Anyway, the story’s about halfway done, and I’m not setting it down. I will be taking a few days to get caught up on book reviews, author interviews, the Flashes in the Dark entry I’ve been putting off and a few other things. I’m still debating on submitting to my campus literary journal.

It feels good to have gotten this much of the project done. I’d been holding back on it for months so that I could use it as my NaNo plot, and it turned out a bit better than I’d been planning.

Now, off to write another thousand or two words for Rain, which updates tonight. The typing never ends.

"Contaminant" Appearing in 69 Flavors of Paranoia

My nautical zombie flash, “Contaminant,” has been accepted by 69 Flavors of Paranoia for their Vol. #3 lineup.

This was an interesting piece for me to write, and pretty much kick-started my interest in both water-themed and zombie shorts. I’m looking forward to being part of 69FoP again.

Daft Punk and Coffee By the Gallon

One more week, and it will all be over.

This has been both the most experimental and most stressful NaNo project I’ve taken on to date. Not only have I been writing with a full college course load to juggle, but I bit off more than I could chew with my term paper project and I’m starting the new Rain chapters while trying to get everything else done.

Suffice it to say that all novel-reading, reviewing and interviewing ended up on a short-term hiatus this month, though as December looms I think things will phase back in without any issues.

I’m pleasantly surprised, though, with how the novel has turned out so far. Not only have I been experimenting with perspective (a rotating third-person instead of my usual first), but this is the first novel I’ve worked on where the pacing hasn’t really been at a breakneck speed. Nothing needs to be squeezed into and resolved in fifty thousand words, and so I’ve been letting the story unspool at its own pace. This has proven to be both slightly worrisome (I occasionally wonder if perhaps I’m not letting the story drag on a bit too much) and somewhat liberating, though I still see myself entirely as a novice, learning as I go.

Hopefully there will be something workable in this draft when it’s all said and done. Some days, I look at the previous chapters I’ve printed out for quick reference (I need to invest in my own printer one of these days) and wonder what in God’s name I’m writing this for, and other days I sit down and rifle through the pages and I’m somewhat pleased with the turnout. I suppose I’m just one of those shifting, never satisfied types. Sometimes it’s almost passable, and a few chapters really stand out, and other times the whole thing is garbage and I really ought to stop embarrassing myself with this charade. I think these are common reactions to one’s own work, though, since I see other, more well-known writers say the same things sometimes. At least I’m in good company, I think.

Approximately twelve thousand more words until I can slow down and give each project equal weight. I have to say, I’m looking forward to that, even though I want to finish Ghostbox’s initial draft as soon as possible.

I suppose that’s what semester break is for.

Conference

I got the go-ahead from Jacob Kier, owner of Permuted Press (and sponsor of this year’s Horror Realm flash contest) to reprint “Conference,“ my second-place winner. I’ve linked before to the video of the super-cool James Melzer (author of Escape and Invasion) reading it at the flash winners’ panel (I’m still laughing about making him drop the f-bomb on camera), but I held off on posting the text in case rights had been transferred or Permuted had plans to do anything with it. Seeing as I recently found that they’re not, and the rights are entirely mine, I said to myself Hey, Jessica, why not put it up on the blog? You haven’t posted any original fiction in a long time, and people are probably sick of reading your long-ass complaints about writing.

I was just asked today about whether or not Jonathan Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" had any influence on the story, and the answer honestly is no. I hadn't been thinking about it at all at the time I wrote the story (I was actually pretty harried and hungover while banging it out that Saturday morning), but it's so appropriate I can't help but link it.

So, here’s the flash that won me copies of Derek Gunn’s The Estuary and Jason S. Hornsby’s Every Sigh, the End. Enjoy.

_______________________

There were so few of us left at this point.

Christine and I stayed in the office, in the server room, while the rest of them had run off looking for shelter elsewhere.

We barricaded ourselves inside after checking to make sure our maintenance department had been on the ball with the whole backup generator issue. After the last hurricane blackout, corporate came down pretty hard on ineptitude involving mechanical subjects.

We broke and raided every vending machine, dragged every freezer chest up to the top floor. When we were convinced we'd be able to stay hidden for as long as possible, we shut ourselves up with nothing but cables and blinking boxes to keep us company. She had her laptop and I had mine.

We scanned the Internet, peeling the wrappers off HoHos and Twinkies. It didn't look like we would be able to leave the building for quite some time. Whole cities were crawling with the newly dead and the not-so-newly dead, and nobody knew quite what to make of it, aside from the fact that it was terrifying as all fuck.

I checked my company email. Nothing. I still had no word from anyone. I sighed. “What about you?”

Christine shook her head. “Nobody's responding. I know they took their laptops with them, but...”

I clicked on an application and the familiar, comforting Skype startup screen faded into view. “I'm going to try getting a hold of my family. God knows if they're all right. I left my cell back in my office. Stupid, stupid.”

“Good idea.”

I hovered over my friends list. Who should I try first? My mother? My sister? Who was more likely to be at their computer at this moment?

Before I could decide, a call came in. Amanda, the little window announced to me. Our receptionist, one of the group who'd made a run for a nearby medical center.

It was a video call.

I accepted it and the tiny window expanded.

Amanda's face was raw and bloody, a chunk torn out of her cheek running diagonally beneath her nose and across her mouth. Part of her lip was gone, and several teeth had been torn from their moorings. Her mouth looked partially chewed, and her hair had been torn out in chunks. Her eyes had a glazed look to them, as if there was nothing of value left behind them, as if she were entirely animatronic.

Her ruined lips moved, and her voice came out in a low, garbled moan. “Meeting. Five minutes. Mandatory. Come downstairs.”

_______________________