Six Sentence Sunday - 2/19/2012 - From "Larvae"

The room was trashed, like a cabal of hooligans armed with cans of red and green spray-paint had rampaged through the place. But that wasn't what made his breath stick in his throat.

Swathes of pink skin clung like obscene sticky notes to the gurgling mass of whitish-green mush oozing across the living room towards Bradley. Wormy creatures crawled within the behemoth, visible through diaphanous, rubbery flesh. Tiny, sunken green eyes the only recognizable facial features on the disgusting, misshapen snowball of its head. Bulbous appendages that might, in some fucked-up universe, be considered limbs attached to stumpy, finger-less hands.

The cop gets it in this story. Poor Officer Bradley. He had no clue what he was walking into when he entered the Mitchell household. As he says, "The pranksters and the creatures from the pit. I get the worst damn house-calls."

You can download Larvae free from the Kindle store today and tomorrow. So scoop it up if you're a horror fan and can deal with a little gore. And don't space heading over to Six Sunday and peeping all the short, sweet posts from all the great writers.

Six Sentence Sunday - 2/12/2012 - From "The Fountain of Eden"

I just finished making revisions from my editor's notes on my horror novelette, Larvae, which will be published in a matter of days. But for this Six Sentence Sunday I'm returning one last time to The Fountain of Eden: A Myth of Birth, Death, and Beer. The novel will be free for download from the Kindle store on February 15th, 16th, and 17th. The promotion on the 15th is in conjunction with an event at World Literary Cafe, a great website that every indie author should be involved with. They're so darn nice over there! They'll be helping to promote forty or so free Kindle e-books this Wednesday, so be sure to stop by. Surely, out of all those, you can find something that interests you. Pick yerself up a copy of Fountain if you enjoy an irreverent comic fantasy. Just don't take it too seriously. :)

The scene below occurs in Chapter 4, entitled Adventures of a Patchrobed Novice. Sitting Lotus is one of the major secondary characters in the book. The perpetual novice Zen monk residing at Eden, Virginia's own New Shaolin Monastery (ten years tenured with no monk-hood in sight), he comes across a water bottle filled with fizzling liquid while scavenging for discarded but useable goods on his weekly Dumpster-diving route. (BTW, Dumpster-diving has been around since the time of Buddha himself, just minus the giant metal bins. So I guess it was called something else back then, like stinking-refuse-pile-diving and . . . I'm gonna shut up now.)

*

He unscrewed the cap of the bottle to dispose of the fluid, and an indescribable aroma of loveliness wafted its way up to his nostrils. It was the best-smelling smell he had ever smelled; it was the smell to end all smells. It transported his mind into new, undiscovered realms--and Sitting Lotus's longstanding crystalline walls of mental formations fragmented into oblivion, and he solved his koan.

With no sense of accomplishment--accomplishment was a drug, a dream, a lie--he looked down, down, down, into the bubbling water, shining within the bottle like liquid starlight. Not dwelling on good, not dwelling on evil, he brought the bottle to his lips--and drank Zen, Buddha, Mind, all the way down to the last drop.

 Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.

Now, just what you always wanted: a little bit of boring-ass backstory. The koan Sitting Lotus has been puzzling over since he arrived at New Shaolin is: "Not dwelling on good, not dwelling on evil, what is your original face before you were born?" Uh, yeah, so . . . anybody got an answer to that one? I certainly don't, but Sitting Lotus somehow figured it out. So what if he had a little outside help from the Water of Life?

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to wander over to Six Sunday and peep the short but sugary posts from all the fine writers.

Six Sentence Sunday - 2/5/2012 - From "Larvae"

"Logical explanation?" Wade spat on the floor, and a horrid grin slithered across his face. Slick, seaweed-colored slime coated his teeth.

Wade's spittle glared neon green in the kitchen's overhead lights. Neither of them spoke as two pairs of glassy eyes stared down at the mess of phlegm. Filled with tiny, moving things, the shuddering glob lurched this way and that about the tile.

Larvae is complete. It goes off to the editor tomorrow. I had much fun writing this one, and I hope everybody has much fun reading it. It should be available for purchase by Feb. 18th.

I've got ideas for a couple other horror shorts I plan to release this year, along with a YA fantasy novel I've been working on for a little while. Yeah, so I'm all over the place in the land of genres. But when an idea strikes me, no matter what it may be, I usually grab my pen and run with it. Sometimes I even stab myself in the neck with it when I trip and fall. The pen, that is, not the idea, unless we're talking figuratively. Oh, wait, we are . . .

I've really been slacking recently on the blog posts, so thank you to the good folks at Six Sunday for inspiring me to put out content weekly. But I'm now working one up on the writing process I utilized to bring Larvae into existence. Stay tuned. It'll have screenshots and everything. Yowza.

Thanks for letting me ramble on to you. And don't forget to head over to Six Sunday and check out the succinct, sweet posts from all the talented writers.

Six Sentence Sunday - 1/29/2012 - From "Larvae"

"It . . . it hurts, Mags. It fucking hurts like nothing I've felt before." Ropy green veins pulsed on Wade's forehead as he grimaced. "I can feel them . . . inside me. Gnawing at me. Just . . . just eating away."

This snippet is from the same conversation between Wade and Maggie from last week's Six Sunday. It occurs a few lines down the page. Am I freaking you out yet with this stuff? Or just grossing you out? Larvae does a little of both. Its aim is to keep you turning pages despite wanting to put it down because of all the wincing. Horror fans should dig it.

Sorry, but I mislabeled Larvae a novella a few weeks ago. It is actually an 11K word novelette. (Damn literary lingo always gets me.) I've been working like hell on this thing for the past two weeks. I've got one more section to write, a few days of self-editing, and then it goes off to the editor. Announcing the release date as Feb. 10th may have been a little hasty, but it should be all good to go by the 18th at the latest.

This story is the first I've written with a female protagonist, and I had a lot of fun with it. Two female protagonists, actually: a mother/daughter one-two punch. Yes, the ladies rule in this one. Just like in real life!

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to head over to Six Sunday and take a peek at all the short, sweet posts from all the great authors.

Six Sentence Sunday - 1/22/2012 - From "Larvae"

“It did drop onto our property. That must be what this is. Some sort of alien life-form.”

“You can't . . . you can't be serious.”

A wry laugh wracked with pain escaped from between Wade's lips. “Mags, whatever this is, it ain't from this planet."

 

Six Sentence Sunday - 1/15/2012 - From "Larvae"

The dog had gotten into something he shouldn't have, and now Prince lay dying.

Wheezing, whimpering. Twitching, convulsing. Foaming translucent greenish goop from his pulsating jowls, all over the living room carpet.

Brand-new white living room carpet, which Wade had argued against for the very reason that it would be impossible to keep clean with two kids and a dog in the house.

Told you so, Mags, thought Wade with a decidedly giddy edge. He almost giggled, but managed to hold it in.

I've always wanted to write a "balls-to-the-wall" horror story, and Larvae is it. Non-stop action from the first page until the end. The premise is a dog that escapes the confines of the backyard fence and gets into something he shouldn't have in the woods. Of course, this something turns out to be far worse than anything the Mitchell family could have ever imagined. EDP for Larvae: Feb 10th. (But don't quote me on that.)

Larvae is a bit gory. My cover artist, Rich DiSilvio, caught the novella's tone perfectly: This tale is not for the squeamish. More from this one next week.

Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to head over to Six Sunday and check out all the short, sweet posts from all the great writers.

SIx Sentence Sunday - 1/8/2012 - From "The Fountain of Eden"

“But you just said that if a human drinks six pints of the Water of Life they'll live forever! So why does the Water affect other human beings, but not me?” His patience at an end, Jack downed the last of his Scotch, slammed the glass down on the coffee table, and glared around the room.

Sir Arthur sighed, then obliged Jack in his quest for knowledge. “Jack, the Water of Life does not affect you because you are not a human being. You are—as am I, mind you—a mythological being. How else did you think you could have worked for Colonial Eden for over half a century without aging a day?”

In the scene above, Jack Whiskey is about to realize that things around the small Virginia town of Eden are not, and have never been, what they seem. He will very soon be getting a refresher course in mythology.

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to head over to Six Sunday and peep the great posts from all the great authors.

Six Sentence Sunday - 1/1/2012 - From "The Fountain of Eden"

“You ever hear saying 'If you see Buddha in road, kill him'?”

“Of course . . . but that's a metaphor! It means you shouldn't hang onto the idea that there even is such a thing as a buddha, or that it's even possible to become a buddha, because it interferes with what's truly important: your practice.”

“The true dharma not dependent on words and scriptures, much less metaphors and similes.” Master Mirbodi shrugged. “Interpret saying how you like--but tonight, if we see ugly, stinking harpy-buddhas in road, we gonna kill 'em.”

Master Mirbodi and Sitting Lotus, Zen master and Zen novice monk, were my favorite characters to write. These guys are fun!

NOTE: As a "hair-of-the-dog" special, The Fountain of Eden is available as a free download today and tomorrow in the Kindle Store. What better way to work off a hangover than read a novel about beer? Enjoy! And thanks for stopping by. I think I may mix it up next week and give you a taste of a WiP. See you then! And happy New Year!

And don't forget to head over to Six Sunday and check out all the sweet, succinct posts from all the great authors.