Archive for the 'The Writing Life' Category

28
Nov
09

NaNoWriMo 2009: Finish Line

Twenty-eight days and 62,731 words later, I’ve crossed the finish line, my friends. I’ve completed work on the first draft of Opening Night of the Dead, my 2009 National Novel Writing Month project, with three whole days to spare.

I finished the story last night at about 12:30 a.m. I actually hit the required 50k a few days ago, on November 24, but I wasn’t finished with the story yet so I barged forward. I actually had my two most productive days of writing after I hit the 50k mark, with a burst of creative energy on Wednesday the 25th, then a slower day for Thanksgiving. Then yesterday, with the ending in sight… I’ve never been surfing, but I imagine that last burst of a novel is similar to catching that big wave and just riding it as far as it will take you.

I’m especially proud because, although I’ve met the 50K word requirement every year that I’ve taken this challenge, this is the first time since 2005 (when the project was a book you may have heard of called A Long November) that I actually finished the story itself and didn’t just make the word count prior to the end of November. That’s a pretty big deal to me, I have to admit.

“So Blake,” you ask, “What do you do now?” You’d think I would take a break, wouldn’t you? Sure, maybe if you didn’t know me at all. I am putting aside Opening Night for a while, though. Every writer learns some things about his own technique and style after a while, and one of the things I know to be true is that I cannot begin editing a project as soon as I finish the first draft. It’s still too fresh, I’m still too in love with the little lines and the little beats that a more objective eye can tell need to be changed — or even removed — to make for a better story. I need at least a few months before I can even think of beginning the editing process.

So what will I be doing instead? Well, two projects are in my immediate future. First, I’ve got to write my annual Christmas Card short story. I’ve got the plot, even the title, all planned out. It’s just a matter of putting pen to paper on that one. The other thing I need to do is get heavy in the edits for Cross-Purposes, to get that book polished up and ready to record to present in the Evercast in early 2010. Cross-Purposes, I should remind you, is my 2008 NaNoWriMo project. So that should give you an idea of my usual editing cycle.

So one project ends, and it’s back to an older one. But hey, this is what I love to do. So wish me luck, friends. It’s back to the grind.

21
Nov
09

Another quickie…

After several massive problems — problems that actually required me to do my NaNoWriMo writing longhand for three days this week, I’ve finally gotten a new computer. It was coming anyway, and with Windows 7 now out, it just didn’t make any sense to keep sinking money into that thing in the hopes that it would get better. I definitely am not going back to that particular brand of laptop, and after 24 hours of playing with my new toy, I like it quite a bit.

I’m hammering away now, trying to finish up tonight’s writing, and it’s going well. With this weekend off work for Thanksgiving, I intended to get a Hell of a lot finished. I may not actually finish the story — there’s more left than I expected at this point — but I’m pretty sure I can cross the 50,000-word mark before Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.

14
Nov
09

NaNoWriMo Update quickie

The NaNoNoveling is coming along beautifully. I just hit 30,311 words total. Remember, the goal is 50k by the end of the month, but I’ve been doing a good bit more than that each day. If I didn’t write another word until Thursday, I’d still be on pace to finish before the end of the month. But don’t worry, I’ve got no intention of allowing that to happen.

Earlier in the week, just about the time I hit 20k, I had one of those beautiful, writerly moments that only happens in a writer’s favorite stories. I’ve got several things set up — characters, motivations, set pieces and so forth. And I knew what the end point of the story was, but I hadn’t quite decided how to get there. While on duty Tuesday morning, I was pondering the story and everything — really, every significant character, plot point, theme — all seemed to just gel in my mind. It was an awesome feeling, and when I got the time later in the day, I did something I very rarely do: I outlined the second half of the book. It’s coming along swimmingly now. I’ve got about 20k left to go to meet the NaNoWriMo requirement, but I suspect that I’ll actually overshoot that a little when it comes to actually finishing the story.

And I couldn’t be happier.

07
Nov
09

NaNoWriMo presents… Opening Night of the Dead (Prologue)

I’m doing pretty good so far with NaNoWriMo. One week in and I’m about two days ahead of where I need to be, and I’m having fun with my novel-in-progress. So good, in fact, that I wanted to give you guys just a quick nugget of the book. Here’s the prologue, which I wrote on Halloween night, right after the clock struck twelve and it was officially November 1…

Prologue

If Josh Cambrie knew the crap he was in for after he died, he would have made a more concerted effort to stay among the living. He wandered the Halloween Festival of Fear, alone, his date having abandoned him for a guy in a Conan the Barbarian costume (and not a square of cotton padding to fill out the muscles, either). Josh was dressed as a scarecrow, and like Kelly’s new Conan, he had the physique for his costume. Josh was thin, spindly – even sickly if you looked at him from the wrong angle. To be frank, it was astonishing that a zombie would bother to bite somebody with so little meat on his bones. Then again, it was just his luck to run afoul of the only member of the undead in the world to count Weight Watchers points.

Wandering the park alone, not knowing or particularly caring if Kelly would have a ride home with her Cimmerian king, he decided to force himself to have a good time. This would have been a brilliant idea, had it proven even remotely possible. The roller coaster was a bust (literally, it broke down with three people remaining in line ahead of him), and the last time he’d gone on a Tilt-a-Whirl he’d been left with three days hugging the toilet bowl. The Haunted House, he decided, would be his safest bet. Not likely that he’d run into Kelly in the dark, and maybe a good scare would manage to wipe the depressed look from his face.

Of course, that was the great thing about the scarecrow costume – the mask covered his entire head. His coke-bottle glasses fit under there as neatly as his enormous ears, his matted-down haircut was invisible, his acne across the bridge of his too-small nose was as good as clear. No one could even see the small brown blob underneath his chin, the birthmark that his mother always tried telling him looked like a lion, but that he thought just looked like he’d been eating chocolate and hadn’t wiped his face well enough.

Chocolate if he was lucky.

Christ, it was amazing that Kelly had even agreed to come here with him in the first place, wasn’t it?

He was told that actors in a Haunted House are trained to leap at the most terrified-looking person in a group, but Josh was going in solo. In front of him was a giggling mob of teenage girls, each of whom seemed to make for a welcome target when someone was primed to leap out from a casket or reach a mummified arm out from behind a hidden panel in the wall. Since the actors invariably blew their wads on the girls, they were always resetting themselves when Josh walked past. He tried not to focus on the idea that actors paid to terrify people seemed to have no interest in him at all.

After about 20 minutes in the house, Josh wandered into an area lined with rows of pretty authentic-looking corn stalks, with yellow lights twinkling at him in pairs – eyes watching him from behind the rows. Interesting effect, one that worked pretty well, he thought. It would be better if they tried to shape the lights a bit, they were too round to really work as eyes, but an A for Effort. He even felt appropriately dressed here in the cornfield, even though he didn’t actually feel like he fit in any better than he did anywhere else.

There was a chill across his back when the gurgling sound began, and the zombie that moved out of the cornrows reached out at him, hissing and snapping his teeth. Josh didn’t scream – didn’t even flinch. He just rolled his eyes and said, “Dude, I really think you wandered into the wrong scene.”

He turned to continue after the girls on the path, but the zombie wrapped its clawlike hands around his arm. He turned, starting to get angry at the pushy kid in the zombie getup. “Look, man–”

Whatever threat or ultimatum would have followed was lost when the zombie’s thick, yellow teeth chomped through the burlap shirt that was part of his costume and into the admittedly thin flesh of his arm. He shouted, yanking his arm back out of instinct, but succeeding only in helping the zombie rip out a chunk of his arm. Blood spurted into the air and dripped from the mouth of the hungry ghoul. Josh screamed again, but still had the presence of mind to back away, flailing, and bolt from the scene. He rushed ahead, shoving aside the teenage girls (who threw some decidedly un-ladylike language at him, not that he was in any condition to get into a snit about it) and through one room after another. In an Egyptian crypt, he nearly trampled an old woman in a walker. In Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, he actually shoved the Monster himself over into the lab table, eliciting some joyous laughter from the kids Frankie had been trying to terrify. Finally, he stumbled through the exit door and fell right onto the pavement, rolling to the feet of a little man with a big smile.

Josh looked up at him, seeing someone dressed in all black, which wasn’t exactly unusual at this time of year. The small figure had no hair, but a wide, toothy grin spread across his face like he was looking down at a well-cooked steak. He held something in his left hand – cradled it, if one was going to be honest – but Josh wasn’t even paying attention at that point.

“Dude! There’s someone in there… someone friggin’ biting people! You gotta call someone, you gotta–”

“Joshua Cambrie.”

Josh blinked, surprised to hear his name from the lips of this stranger, startled just enough to arrest his panic. “I… yeah, that’s me, but…”

“Eighty-two years old,” the little man continued. He reached out with his right hand, grabbing the burlap mask that shielded Josh’s unseemly face from the rest of the Halloween crowd. With one fierce yank, he pulled the mask away, exposing Josh to the elements. Josh looked up, seeing a horrible gleam in the man’s eye, and suddenly he was far more terrified than he was when it was just the walking dead after him.

“You die,” the man said. “You die alone, from a pulmonary embolism in your sleep, after a tragically lonely and pathetically uneventful life.”

“What the hell?”

The little man raised his hand, and something flashed. Something long and silver.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m about to spare you all that.”

*   *   *

Ten Evernaut points to the first person who recognizes the mysterious guy that approaches poor Josh. Have a good one.

06
Nov
09

What I’m Reading: Doom Patrol #4 (plus a new book from Blake!)

Doom Patrol #4Except for the two Green Lantern titles and the odd prologue, it’s taken four months for Blackest Night to touch upon any regular DC Universe titles. But look out, friends, because this week’s Doom Patrol #4 opens up the floodgates. To be honest, I haven’t sampled this version of the Doom Patrol before. I’ve read some of their previous incarnations, but I’ve never been a huge fan, and if it weren’t for the Blackest Night tie-in (and the Sinestro Corps ring that came with the book) I wouldn’t have picked this up. Still, I’m dedicated to reviewing the whole of Blackest Night here, and this counts.

As we’ve come to expect from the scourge of the Black Lanterns, this issue focuses on several late members of the Doom Patrol rising from the grave to cause havoc for the current members, including Niles Caulder’s late wife (who does not inspire the emotions that one would expect) and a rather curious Black Lantern that’s specifically sent to target the human-brain-in-a-mechanical-body hero called Robotman.

For the first time since this crossover started, I’ve found this issue to be a mixed bag. The Robotman stuff is promising, but I’m not really all that interested in the rest of the team or their respective Black Lanterns. The writing is solid enough, and the art by Justiniano is very good, but I’m just not connecting with this team.

Like many of DC’s current books, this title has an ongoing second feature, in this case the Metal Men. While the second story has nothing to do with Blackest Night, I read it anyway because… well… I paid for it. This story, by the old Justice League International creative team of Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, features a robotmaker whose creations, a trio of bald supermodel dolls, wind up causing trouble for Dr. Magnus’s robotic creations. Unlike the main story, I took to this one right off. The JLI series by these creators is one of the highwater marks of the grim and gritty 80s, and as they proved with Formerly Known as the Justice League a couple of years ago, they haven’t lost a step. This story was funny, entertaining, and a treat to read. If the book was reversed, with Metal Men as the lead feature and Doom Patrol as the back-up, I’d seriously consider adding it to my pull list on a regular basis. As it is, I’m just glad that DC has announced the second features will be reprinted in their own series of trade paperbacks.

Doom Patrol Rating: 6/10
Metal Men Rating: 8/10

A Long November and Other Tales of ChristmasMy first eBook is available!

If you missed the announcement in yesterday’s post, I just wanted to let you all know that the eBook version of my Christmas anthology, A Long November and Other Tales of Christmas, is now available from Smashwords.com. In addition to the novella A Long November, the eBook also includes eight other Christmas-themed short stories, as well as a new introduction and notes on each story, where they came from, and in some cases, how they fit in to the larger picture of my Realms.

Want to hear something even better? The book is available in various formats suitable for any eBook reader! Have you got your Amazon Kindle, like I do? Got an iPhone or iPod Touch? The Stanza reader, the Sony reader, or a good ol’ PDA? Or maybe you just want to read the text on your computer screen. You can get the book in any of those formats, and for a limited time, you set the price you pay. You can pay nothing at all, or you can kick a donation of any size over 99 cents (to cover the PayPal transaction fees) into the jar. So if you’re a fan of my work, even if you’ve read these stories before, cruise on over to Smashwords.com and download this book to read by the glow of your Christmas tree this season.

03
Nov
09

Assorted commentary on the universe around us

Just got home from my night class a little while ago, and I’ve got to get my butt working on my NaNoWriMo novel if I’m going to hit my word count goal for the day. So rather than a full-blown blog post, I’m just going to hit on a couple of things that are on my mind.

How ’bout Dem Saints?

I’m not a sports fan, in general. I don’t watch a lot of sports, outside of the Olympics, but in the past few years (years, not months, that’s important) I’ve become a particularly enthusiastic fan of our hometown boys, the New Orleans Saints. After Hurricane Katrina slapped around our city a few years ago, the Saints became a sort of rallying point for the city. For good or ill, the team has become a real symbol of our hopes for the city, a living example of what we’re hoping will happen to the whole region. Seeing the Saints enjoying such an amazing season, in some sort of weird transference, is like watching the entire region pulling itself back up again. It means something. I don’t know how else to explain it. It just plain means something to us.

How ’bout Dat DVR?

A few minutes ago, my buddy Mark sent me an instant message asking what I thought of the new ABC series V, the first episode of which had been airing for about 15 minutes when he sent it. My response was, “I forgot it was on entirely.” Fortunatelly, the ol’ DVR was set to record it already, so I managed to click it on. I’m probably watching the same sequence as he was when he contacted me right now, and it’s not bad so far. But man, what did we do before this technology? How would I have kept up with shows like Lost, FlashForward, and of course the most important program of all, The Big Bang Theory? It’s like a miracle.

How ’bout Dat Evercast?

So I’m hoping by now that all of you have had a chance to download and listen to the first episode of my new podcast, the Evercast. I’ve been working really hard on this show, and I want it to be something I can be proud of. I think it will be. But I’d still like your feedback. How did you like the inaugural short story, “It’s Time to Play the Music”? What kind of stuff do you want to hear in the future? Comment here or e-mail me at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.

How ’bout Getting Back to Work?

Don’t mind if I do. I’ve got a lot of NaNoWriMo writing to do on Opening Night of the Dead.

02
Nov
09

It’s that time of year again…

I wasn’t going to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year, honestly I wasn’t. I have so much going on, with two podcasts to shepherd, school to consider, and a dozen other things either in the hopper or getting ready to heat up. How on Earth could I even consider trying to squeeze in the composition of a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days?

And if all those reasons weren’t enough, how about the most obvious one: I didn’t have an idea. It’s particularly hard to write if you don’t have anything to write about. More than anything else, this is what was going to keep me sane this November. No idea, no feeling of inadequacy about not writing. Great, right?

Then, about a week ago, something terrible happened. I got an idea.

Like many of my best ideas, it actually came about when two totally unrelated ideas somehow married each other. One of the ideas is about two years old, the other older than that, and in fact they’re both stories I tried to write before. In both cases, the stories went nowhere because I realized all I had was an idea, not a plot. And, in fact, it was a third story that provided the glue to seal the two of them together.

In fact, it was a story you may have heard. It was “It’s Time to Play the Music.” While thinking about the stars of that particular story, I felt a tickling in my mind, a weird sort of literary magnetism, pulling two completely independent ideas that had nothing in common and making them… work.

At least… I think they’re going to work.

Here’s the synopsis of the novel, as it appears on the NaNoWriMo website. And warning — if you haven’t listened to “It’s Time to Play the Music” yet, the synopsis spoils the ending…

Tim Ferris and Casey King, two dead cops, are given a shot to get out of Purgatory and make it to the great beyond. All they have to do is go back to Earth and destroy a zombie so that the soul trapped inside can go on to its destiny. The only trouble will be finding the right zombie to kill, as their target sparks a plague of the undead during a Halloween festival full of all manner of things that go bump in the night.

Not bad, right? At least, I don’t think so.

What’s that? A title? Oh yeah, I’ve got a title. It’s actually rather unusual — most of the time the title is what comes to me last, after I’ve finished writing and re-writing and pulling teeth from my mind’s eye, and what a horribly mixed metaphor. But this time, the title is one of the first things to occur to me.

Opening Night of the Dead.

Catchy, ain’t it?

Wish me luck.

16
Sep
09

EBI Skip Week

No Everything But Imaginary column this week, guys. It’s a little too hectic and I’m a little too wiped out. But I had a couple of very interesting conversations this evening about a special project I hope to bring to the Evercast, and possibly, even beyond the boundaries of the MP3 world. I’m psyched.

Check out the two chapters I’ve posted — the first chapters of Cross Purposes and The Last Portal! Tell me which one you’d rather see as a podiobook first!

15
Sep
09

Help Me Choose my Next Podcast Novel Part III-The Last Portal

Yesterday, I showed you guys the first chapter of Cross-Purposes, one of two books I am currently considering recording and releasing as an audiobook podcast early next year. Today I’m going to give you the first chapter of the other book under consideration, The Last Portal. This is a zombie novel, but  I hope the first chapter will be enough to convince you that there’s a bit of a twist to it. Read ‘em both, please, and use the comment section below to cast your vote. Which one would you most like to listen to as a podcast? Keeping in mind that the “loser” of this little competition will more than likely be recorded eventually. I’m just trying to decide which to present to you first.

The Last Portal

Chapter One: The End

 NOW

 Skip had never realized how sweet the air of Ezzix was until he accepted he was breathing it perhaps for the last time. It wasn’t sweet in a metaphorical sense, either, not in the way that his grandfather often talked about the sweetness in the town before the car factory moved in and started belching smoke into the air. Each breath of Ezzix air carried on it a different sweet fragrance – honeysuckle with one breath, then a hint of peppermint, then a warm cake baking in the oven. He stood by the familiar Wisdom Well, ready to ride down the bucket he was almost too big for, and he wondered once again how he had never noticed the changing aroma before. In a place of so much magic, this small one had somehow escaped him. He took one last breath – pumpkin pie with whipped cream – climbed into the bucket, and began his descent.

At the bottom of the well, he knew he would find his tunnel, leading in a slow slope up towards the bottom of a toy chest rooted at the foot of his bed. It had been some time before he really played with any of the action figures, games or stuffed animals that lay in the chest, but he kept them there for appearances’ sake. When he needed the portal, he carefully took the toys out and hid them in a cardboard box under his bed. He couldn’t take the chance of his mother deciding to clean up his room again – the last time she had filled up the empty chest and blocked the portal, the Prime Minister and the Queen’s honor guard needed to escort him to the Mirage Mountains to get to the only other one left open to him at the time. It was sealed, now, like all the rest, and even if it wasn’t, Skip didn’t relish the thought of another encounter with the Echo Chorus. Of all the creatures he had met in Ezzix, the Chorus was still perhaps the most confusing.

Skip carefully guided the bucket down the well, finally coming to rest on a ledge about two feet above the water line. The tunnel began here on the ledge, beneath a small stone arch just large enough for Skip to crawl through. The keystone of the tunnel archway was carved in the shape of a toy soldier, and the tunnel itself had a soft green glow, but no source of light. It had been a long time since he stopped wondering how that worked.

He reached back into the bucket, where Callie was still waiting. He stroked her underneath her chin, and her yellow eyes closed as they always did when she purred. Her sweet, cat-shaped face couldn’t exactly form into a smile, but somehow, he always got that impression from her anyway. “Almost home, girl,” he said. “Are you sure you want to come with me? It’s a lot nicer here, most of the time.”

As if in answer, Callie leapt out of the bucket and landed neatly on the edge of the tunnel, the picture as always of feline grace. Her orange fur looked green in the light of the tunnel, but her eyes were still yellow. They flashed as she looked back at him and meowed softly. The message was obvious: What are you waiting for?

She was right, of course. It was time to go.

THEN

 The first time Skip made this climb, back before he was Skip, when he was just plain Scott, he’d made it alone. He was seven years old then – nearly six years ago – and incredibly bored.

“I don’t have nothin’ to do,” he said to his mother on that rainy April morning. She wouldn’t let him out of the house, none of his friends could come over, and schoolwork certainly wasn’t an option. He’d read all of the picture books on his shelves about a hundred times, and the chapter books he was slowly graduating to weren’t enough to keep his interest when he wanted to go out and find an adventure. He remembered distinctly the flash of lightning that illuminated his mother’s thin face. “Scott Francis Montgomery!” she shouted. Scott firmly believed at this point in his life that the only reason children were given middle names was so their mothers could express their displeasure more efficiently. “You have a shelf full of books, a cabinet full of video games and a chest full of toys! How can you possibly say there’s nothing to do?”

“I played with all of these,” he said, picking up a robot that was supposed to turn into a fire truck, although Scott never quite managed to get the arms to fold up behind the ladder assembly like they were supposed to.

“Since when do kids only play with toys once?” she asked. “It’s like you’ve forgotten how to use your imagination!” She frowned then, turning around and leaving her only son in his bedroom, alone with a chest full of toys exhausted of their potential. He looked at the chest – a heavy cedar thing with a bright red cushion on the lid so it could serve as a bench. The sides of the chest were hand-carved with a marching row of toy soldiers, the sort that Scott imagined his grandfather played with when he was a child – big beefeater hats, rifles with bayonets shouldered, wide teeth above and below a gaping mouth. The only place one still saw such toys, Scott supposed, was on Christmas decorations, but somehow it remained emblazoned as a symbol for “toys.” There were thirteen of the soldiers marching in a row around the left and right sides of the chest, and across the front. The chest – which actually had once belonged to Scott’s grandfather, had been at the foot of his bed for as long as he could remember. He had never even seen the backside.

Scott slumped against the toy chest, giving his best pout to the empty room. The only way he could pout more would be to grow an extra lip. After about 30 seconds of this, though, he realized that there would was no point without his mother in the room. He turned around and planted his chin on the cushion, arms folded in front of him, and nibbled on his lip. He stared at the wall for a while. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. He rolled over again and shoved his face into the cushion. He picked his head up and began counting the stripes on his wallpaper (142). Finally, out of utter desperation and a lack of anything else to do, he lifted the lid of the toy chest and looked inside.

He’d played with these toys a thousand times each; he knew them all intimately. But maybe if he dug deeply enough he could find something with a little energy left in it. He sifted through the toy robots and action heroes, all of whom had fought innumerable battles against the forces of evil (represented by the toy robots and action villains, piled on the other side of the toy chest). His laser swords weren’t any fun without someone to dual with. The same went for the games stacked neatly at the bottom, all of which were marked “for two or more players” in bright white letters that made him resent his mother a little for not understanding his dilemma. He still had his stuffed calico kitten and other dolls, but he hadn’t touched them in a long time, as he was A) too old for them and B) a boy. A year later, he would resolve to put them aside to some day share with his baby sister. On this rainy day, though, his sister wasn’t in his mind, wasn’t even in existence. For now, he just scooped the stuffed animals out and tossed them on the floor next to the pile of robots and heroes. He took out the games last, hoping that perhaps at the bottom of the pile he would find a jigsaw puzzle he hadn’t already assembled so many times he could do it with his eyes closed. He didn’t.

He put the games on the floor and slumped back against the toy chest, lid still open. He put his feet up on the stack of boxes and tilted his head back, forgetting that the cushion wasn’t there as usual. Instead, his head hung over the edge of the chest.

“Bo-ring, bo-ring, bo-RING!” he shouted, kicking out. He shoved himself up onto his feet and sat on the edge of the open chest. He kicked again, knocking aside the character that had been his favorite superhero three movies ago, shoving away the stuffed panda bear his grandmother had given him last Christmas, completely misunderstanding that boys his age didn’t play with dolls anymore, pushing off from the board game he’d begged his parents for the month before his birthday, which he’d played with once and dismissed as too confusing, boxing it up for good. He kicked one more time.

He lost his balance.

He noticed the strange green glow as he fell back into the toy chest, and so he was thinking about that instead of wondering why, when he should have hit the bottom of the chest, he actually just kept falling.

He’d actually fallen for about 20 seconds before he realized he should have stopped, and by then he’d already been falling for so long that it seemed rather silly to start screaming now. The hole in the bottom of his toy chest didn’t go straight down, but in fact seemed to be at a rather steep slant, and soon he wasn’t falling so much as rolling.

Why was there a hole in the bottom of his toy chest again?

He rolled until he bumped into a stone wall, bouncing off slightly, but not enough to really hurt himself. He bounced a few more times, finally coming to a stop. He was dizzy, having spun around about a dozen times during the slide. He lay there, eyes tightly closed, taking slow, deep breaths until the lumps in his stomach worked themselves out. When he managed to open his eyes without wanting to throw up, he peered back up through the shaft. The grade was steep, but not too steep to climb back up, once he’d caught his breath. He’d been digging through that toy chest for as long has he could remember – how could there be a hole there that he’d never seen before? Did his parents know about this? Was there an earthquake that opened up a hole inside the toy chest? Had his father, perhaps, dug this hole as a secret escape hatch while Scott was at school? And what could he need to escape from?

No. That’s the sort of explanation adults came up with. Children were free to just accept the facts: there was suddenly, and without reason, a hole in the bottom of his toy chest that had never been there before. Sometimes the obvious explanation was the best one. He shook his head back and forth, trying to clear out the screws that were knocked out of place. The slope back up to his bedroom was just there, to the right… he’d climb up as soon as…

If the slope was to the right, why was he feeling a draft coming in from the left?

He turned to see that, at a 90-degree angle from the slope he’d just rolled down from, lay a second tunnel. This one was more or less level, and seemed to stretch out far into the distance, the soft green light illuminating it until it ended in a black dot. How far did this tunnel go? He wasn’t quite sure where he was in relation to the surface, but he started to imagine crawling to the end of the tunnel only to pop out in Timmy Lawson’s basement, where his dad’s pool table was.

On the other hand, somehow this felt like the sort of thing he should tell his own father about. Strangers with candy, strange smells from the oven, anything that looked like smoke… Dad had given him a whole list of things to report as soon as they happened, and although “mysterious tunnels opening up under the toy chest” wasn’t on that list, it seemed to Scott as though it should be. He looked back at the slope towards his room, calculating in his head the angle of descent and trying to figure out just how far he’d fallen – how far he would have to climb.

“—elp–”

What was that?

Another draft came in through the tunnel (and although he wouldn’t remember it later, he noticed how strange it was that a wisp of air so far below ground carried the aroma of chocolate). He tilted his head, listening at the trail of air, trying to figure out if he actually heard anything or if he just imagined it. With the next draft of air (the smell of his mother’s strawberry shampoo), he heard a distinct voice, a girl’s voice, carried by the wind.

“Help me.”

He didn’t even spare a glance back at the shaft leading to his home before he began to crawl towards the woman.

The tunnel wasn’t really that long, not as long as it looked, and within a few minutes, the black dot at the end was growing bigger, more defined. It resolved into a hole, and as he grew closer, he could see a figure there. When he climbed out of the tunnel, onto a ledge about two feet above a pool of water, the girl was easy to see. She looked like a teenager, a few years older than his sister Sara, with a mane of long blonde hair that flowed straight down from her scalp, framing her upside-down face as she dangled from the rope. She was tangled up badly, and the bucket was lashed to her right foot, which was about three feet above her head.

When he crawled out of the tunnel, some of the dust in the air tickled his nose, and a sneeze announced his presence to the girl. She looked down at him, just noticing that she was no longer alone.

“Who are you?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

He laughed.

“You’re asking me?”

 NOW

 The tunnel was smaller than it used to be. Scott was twelve years old now, only a few days short of thirteen, and he had realized some time ago that his chances to use this tunnel would soon have ended even were it not for the Age Barrier that was about to seal him off from it permanently. His shoulders now brushed against the sides of it with almost each swing of his arms ahead of him, and the sharp turn that brought him from the well tunnel to the slope up to his bedroom had become almost unnavigable. Still, he managed to wiggle around the bend and pull himself up the slope. If there was any advantage to his size, it was that the slope wasn’t as long as it used to be.

He’d been gone about a week this time, but he knew his mother would be okay. About a year after his first trip to Ezzix, Zixi placed the enchantment on his family that made them sort of… ignore his frequent absences. But he had to put in an appearance every few days, or the enchantment would get strained and begin spreading to other people. When he was ten years old he spent a whole month in Ezzix and came home to find the entire town had forgotten not only him, but their own names, their families, and any and all sports statistics they’d memorized. Zixi needed to use the last of her age potion to make herself young enough to use the portal so she could come to Earth and reverse the spell. His birthday was on Sunday, in six days. Six days before he could never use the portal again. He was going to come home, put in a quick appearance, and then go back to Ezzix for one last adventure.

Just the thought of it made his chest feel heavy, broken and empty, and because he felt that way already, he didn’t immediately notice that something was wrong when he reached the top of the slope, pushed open the lid of the toy chest, and climbed out.

It was dark, but that wasn’t unusual. He often lost track of time in Ezzix, and on the few occasions he tried to keep track of it, he had learned that the passage of time while he was gone didn’t always exactly coincide with the way it flowed back home anyway. What he should have noticed, and didn’t, was that his digital clock was off. The red power light on his television that always glowed whether the set was on or off did not glow. The low hum of the air conditioner that had lulled him to sleep so many times was not present. All the thousand little sounds that run through a house with electricity were gone. Scott’s mind was still back in Ezzix, though, and he did not notice.

Scott had learned some time ago not to simply announce his presence after returning from a visit to Ezzix. His first instinct was to shout out the fact of his return to his parents and sisters – “I’m home! Did you miss me?” The first few times that happened, though, it was followed by an intense interrogation session about where he had been for such a long time. After Zixi placed the spell on them, though, it just resulted in confusion. When Scott told his family he was “home,” none of them realized he had ever been gone.

Instead, he quickly realized, it was better to simply march into the living room and integrate himself into whatever activity was transpiring as though he had been there all along. He’d once come in during a Monopoly game and simply placed the iron on Marvin Gardens, picked up the dice and rolled. Nobody questioned a word of it.

He gently pulled open the door to his bedroom. The hallway was dark, which struck him as unusual. His mother often kept the hallway light on overnight for the sake of Callie, who used that time to prowl. Sara had tried to explain to her once that cats could see perfectly well in the dark, but Mother said something about reading it in a magazine and went right on doing it.

The only light this evening was a dim blue glow of moonlight coming down the hall from the living room. For it to be that bright meant the curtains were open, and Mother usually closed them at night. For the light to be that color meant the streetlights outside were not on, and Scott finally realized what he would have known as soon as he emerged from the toy chest, had he been paying attention: he had returned home during a power outage. That was another way in which Ezzix was superior to Earth – the lines of magic never failed the way electricity did. Although he wondered what could have killed the power – it didn’t sound like there was a storm outside.

He emerged from the black hallway to the blue living room, expecting it to be empty. It was close – his father and sisters were absent, most likely in bed, but his mother was in his father’s rocking chair, back turned to Scott, facing out the big bay windows.

There was a soft mew from behind him and Scott looked back to see that Callie had not ventured forth from the hallway. Her yellow eyes floated in the darkness, and Scott could tell from the shape of them she was frightened. He’d seen that shape often enough.

“What’s wrong, girl?” he whispered. “It’s just a blackout. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Mew,” she repeated, and then for good measure, she reached one paw out of the darkness, batted the air, and hissed. For the first time, Scott felt a chill. Callie was such a sweet-tempered creature. She never hissed unless there was real danger, and experience had taught him to trust her judgment in such matters more than his own.

He looked back into the moonlight, pouring into the living room through the windows. His mother was terribly still.

“Mom?” he whispered at her. When she didn’t answer, he said it again, louder. “Mom?”

She stirred in the rocking chair, and a wave of relief rushed over him. He stepped out into the living room and walked up to her. “Mom, is everything okay?”

He reached out and touched her shoulder. It was cold – extremely cold. For a moment, he wondered if he had imagined her moving before, but now her head began to turn slowly towards her son. Behind him, he heard Callie hiss again.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Scott watched his mother turning her head. He saw the left side of her face first. The eyes that had looked upon him so often with love and concern were empty now, and her face – usually immaculately clean – was streaked with dark smudges that, in the blue light, Scott took for dried ice cream or chocolate sauce. It didn’t make sense. His mother was the most meticulously hygienic person he knew. She never let a drip go a second without wiping it away, let alone allow one to dry on her skin.

Her face turned the rest of the way, and any illusion of it being covered in chocolate was shattered. A huge piece of her right cheek was missing, muscle and teeth revealed to the air, and her flesh was torn straight up to her eyeball, which hung hideously in its socket, rolling around in her skull, focusing on nothing.

Callie hissed again, but Scott didn’t hear her that time. Her kitten-hiss was by far drowned out by the screams that escaped Scott’s mouth just before his mother lunged, biting, at his throat.

 *   *   *

And there you have it, folks. Two beginnings. Which one should I roll with?

10
Sep
09

Help Choose My Next Podcast Novel!

Hey, friends. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of getting off my buttocks and launching a new podcast, the heart of which will be new original fiction. In the months of November and December, I’m going to re-present my first podcast novel, A Long November. (Of course, if you don’t want to wait that long, you can download the whole thing right now, and totally free, from Podiobooks.com.) After that, though it’s going to be time for something new.

I’ve got a few different projects finished (or damn close to it) that I think would work as a podcast novel, but I’m trying to decide which one to go with. So I decided I’m going to throw it out to you guys. If I’m going to have this ready to launch in January, I need to get started working on it. I’m going to present you guys three options and I’m asking, in a totally non-democratic fashion, for you to tell me which one you’d like to hear as a podcast novel first. Then I’ll use your suggestions to make my decision.

  • Lost in Silver. This book, of course, is the one I just finished serializing here at the Realms. The book is both finished and edited, which is pretty damn appealing to me as a writer. Plus, I think it’s one of my stronger stories.
  • Cross-Purposes. The project that began life as my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel needs some polishing before I could start recording, but that’s kind of the reason I’m trying to make up my mind four months ahead of time. I call this my “Superhero Robert Altman Film.” The book features several intersecting and intertwined plotlines that weave in and out of each other, including a doctor trying to cure a hero trapped in a half-human/half-monster form, a detective who feels overshadowed by his speedster partner, a paparazzi getting a series of threatening phone calls, a cop who believes her partner is leading a superheroic double life, and several others. This book also takes place in the Other People’s Heroes universe, so there may be a cameo by some old friends from Siegel City.
  • The Last Portal. This previous NaNoWriMo effort is one I’ve always had a soft spot for as I went on to work on other projects. Scott Francis Montgomery is only Scott Francis Montgomery on Earth — in the magical land of Ezzix, he’s a member of the royal house and friend to the Princess. On his 13th birthday, the last portal between Earth and Ezzix will close forever, trapping Scott on one side or the other — a hard choice that becomes harder when he returns to Earth to find the world overrun by the Living Dead, his parents and family murdered and transformed into zombies, and his baby sister missing.

That’s right, buddy. Zombies in Ezzix. I went there.

So the question is simple — come the new year, when you start downloading and listening to my audio fiction (you’re already making room on your iPod, right?), which story do you think I should start with?




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