M. Duda's Blog: The Cryo-Freeze II, page 5
July 9, 2018
Giving a Face Lift: Consider Redoing Your Book Cover
The cover should match the readers taste and genre.
June 21, 2018
The New, Not New, Not New at All
Going forward, I think I know where I’m stepping. But I’m not yet sure of what I’m stepping into.
The New
For some time now, I’ve wanted to write other genre fiction. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and hopefully for you too.
Right now, most of my work has fallen under the literary umbrella, only covering other genre elements like sci-fi and suspense. It’s time to expand myself.
My readers who enjoy M. Duda books know me for experimental, literary type stories. So how do I go about writing in other genres?
I’ll be using pen names. This isn’t to deceive readers. I’ll use pen names because new readers will associate my new genre with a different focus. The reader will know what they are getting.
Could the new books be fantasy? Yes. Pen name, “X.” Sci-Fi? Pen name, “Y.” Mystery? You get the idea.
Going forward, I think that this will be fair to a reader’s expectations. You, the reader, are who really matters.
The Not So New
I’m about to publish a literary anthology of flash shorts and poetry titled Tiny Stories. It’s just something that I’ve wanted to do. Indulgent, I know. But I’ve enjoyed it.
The book should be ready by August or September. I’ll post updates about this anthology at a later date on this site.
A second book will be all of my short stories gathered together in one collected anthology. I haven’t decided on the book’s title and publisher tags. Or the format.
Because the stories are all over the place, I’ll have to brainstorm to figure out how this book fits into the fiction marketplace.
And I’ll continue to write experimental literary under the name M. Duda. Like Bedtime for Seneca, A Cat Will Play and Deny the Father. No one will be surprised by this.
Not New at All
Several of my existing shorts will be broken out as stand-alone stories. They’ll even get their own artwork. Expect to see these trickled out over the year.
So expect some new things. And some things not so new.
The New
For some time now, I’ve wanted to write other genre fiction. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and hopefully for you too.
Right now, most of my work has fallen under the literary umbrella, only covering other genre elements like sci-fi and suspense. It’s time to expand myself.
My readers who enjoy M. Duda books know me for experimental, literary type stories. So how do I go about writing in other genres?
I’ll be using pen names. This isn’t to deceive readers. I’ll use pen names because new readers will associate my new genre with a different focus. The reader will know what they are getting.
Could the new books be fantasy? Yes. Pen name, “X.” Sci-Fi? Pen name, “Y.” Mystery? You get the idea.
Going forward, I think that this will be fair to a reader’s expectations. You, the reader, are who really matters.
The Not So New
I’m about to publish a literary anthology of flash shorts and poetry titled Tiny Stories. It’s just something that I’ve wanted to do. Indulgent, I know. But I’ve enjoyed it.
The book should be ready by August or September. I’ll post updates about this anthology at a later date on this site.
A second book will be all of my short stories gathered together in one collected anthology. I haven’t decided on the book’s title and publisher tags. Or the format.
Because the stories are all over the place, I’ll have to brainstorm to figure out how this book fits into the fiction marketplace.
And I’ll continue to write experimental literary under the name M. Duda. Like Bedtime for Seneca, A Cat Will Play and Deny the Father. No one will be surprised by this.
Not New at All
Several of my existing shorts will be broken out as stand-alone stories. They’ll even get their own artwork. Expect to see these trickled out over the year.
So expect some new things. And some things not so new.
New, Not So New, Not New at All
Going forward, I think this will be fair to a reader's expectations. You, the reader, are who really matters.
June 13, 2018
Story Prompt: Something In the Barn
How to use these story prompts for your own writing:
*This story prompt is to inspire. Do not plagiarize.
*The prompt’s location could be a location in a story prelude or in a scene in the main story, itself. Experiment. Change the setting.
*Derive a new character from this prompt.
*Derive your new character’s main story problem from this prompt. Is this prompt a prelude to future problems?
An ashen moon above gave off a dull yellow glow like the color of some drunk’s eyes, the kind of clammy-handed perpetrator who weakly protested being pulled into the Ironville station for disturbing the peace.
But the sickly light prevented optimal visibility as the woods opened. Judy ran toward what looked like a timber-framed barn, common to these parts of Connecticut. Tall grass and dark tendons of ivy clung to a nearby field-stone wall. Some kind of graffiti polluted the top of its gritty surface.
Where the wall terminated at the barn, a shadowy figure stood dead still by two hinged doors. She regretted not checking the battery charge on her tactical flashlight as the last of its beam quit.
Judy’s breath came in tight bursts as she forced her legs into a walk, her leather chukka boots squishing in wet footing, pulling at her soles, a sucking sound with each step forward. She carefully un-holstered a standard issue Glock 22, her heart now the only thing audible. The gun’s rubber grip collected sweat from the palm of her hands.
The shadowy figure didn’t move.
Despite only the pale moonlight, Judy’s eyes quickly adjusted, her vision having grown more accustomed to darkness after working for a few years on a night beat. She could make out that it was a scarecrow, the kind of thing used to scare away crows and blackbirds. It belonged in a field, not here. And it clutched something in its straw hands.
A soft wind brushed against her skin, carrying a faint smell of gunpowder sulfur and blood.
The reaction was immediate: Goosebumps crawled up both of Judy’s arms.
Earlier, a tow-headed girl had been stumbling along the road. When Judy had stopped her patrol car to assist, the child had dropped a toy bear before running off into these woods. That toy wore a hideous, toothy grin and smelled of sulfur and blood.
Just ahead, a scratching noise could be heard from inside the barn.
*This story prompt is to inspire. Do not plagiarize.
*The prompt’s location could be a location in a story prelude or in a scene in the main story, itself. Experiment. Change the setting.
*Derive a new character from this prompt.
*Derive your new character’s main story problem from this prompt. Is this prompt a prelude to future problems?
An ashen moon above gave off a dull yellow glow like the color of some drunk’s eyes, the kind of clammy-handed perpetrator who weakly protested being pulled into the Ironville station for disturbing the peace.
But the sickly light prevented optimal visibility as the woods opened. Judy ran toward what looked like a timber-framed barn, common to these parts of Connecticut. Tall grass and dark tendons of ivy clung to a nearby field-stone wall. Some kind of graffiti polluted the top of its gritty surface.
Where the wall terminated at the barn, a shadowy figure stood dead still by two hinged doors. She regretted not checking the battery charge on her tactical flashlight as the last of its beam quit.
Judy’s breath came in tight bursts as she forced her legs into a walk, her leather chukka boots squishing in wet footing, pulling at her soles, a sucking sound with each step forward. She carefully un-holstered a standard issue Glock 22, her heart now the only thing audible. The gun’s rubber grip collected sweat from the palm of her hands.
The shadowy figure didn’t move.
Despite only the pale moonlight, Judy’s eyes quickly adjusted, her vision having grown more accustomed to darkness after working for a few years on a night beat. She could make out that it was a scarecrow, the kind of thing used to scare away crows and blackbirds. It belonged in a field, not here. And it clutched something in its straw hands.
A soft wind brushed against her skin, carrying a faint smell of gunpowder sulfur and blood.
The reaction was immediate: Goosebumps crawled up both of Judy’s arms.
Earlier, a tow-headed girl had been stumbling along the road. When Judy had stopped her patrol car to assist, the child had dropped a toy bear before running off into these woods. That toy wore a hideous, toothy grin and smelled of sulfur and blood.
Just ahead, a scratching noise could be heard from inside the barn.
Story Prompt: Something’s in the Barn
She carefully un-holstered a standard issue Glock 22, her heart now the only thing audible. The gun’s rubber grip collected sweat from the palm of her hands.
May 16, 2018
Tiny Stories Kickstarter Project
The world around us is a jump off a creaky stair step with your best friend and laugh place, a smell the sweet rose and think of your loved one kind of place. It’s the kind of place we dash under a stranger’s umbrella and shiver in a cold rain. Where we say one last goodbye to a family member who’s moving away.
The world around us is an experience. In every moment of every day we feel something in both large and small ways. And sometimes, it’s the tiniest moments that linger the longest in our hearts.
Each story and poem in this book shares another character’s tiny moment. Each character may laugh or cry. She may wrinkle her nose and shake her head. He may tremble and sweat. But in the end, nothing may have changed except that tomorrow offers another sunrise.
Below is an excerpt from the flash short, “Never Trust a Can Opener:”
I’ve never trusted our can opener. This week I avoided it by scraping by with pantry remains, serving family meals of peanut butter sandwiches, a wilting salad littered with olives from a suspicious jar at the back of the refrigerator and Raman noodles floating in a neon colored broth. These meals have driven my husband, Bob, to open his wallet. Pak-N-Save ran a special on tuna in the Sunday Toledo Daily and Bob gave me the meets-our-budget nod of approval. No glossy, resealable foil packets with those benign plastic zips. No modern EZ-Open! pull tabs that leave behind smooth aluminum lips. Just eight-to-a-package-so-you-save-more, raggedy-edged cans.
Once, I tried out a cooking class at the community center. The other stay-at-home mothers covered their perfect print blouses with starched aprons and they handled kitchen utensils like a master mechanic worked a wrench. Wearing bohemian hip-huggers and an exposed belly ring, I destroyed an egg with a whisk.
It was best to accept my shopping mission by first studying the enemy. I pulled out the contraption with a bulky hand crank from the kitchen utility drawer. It has cold steel wheels, one with serrated teeth for grabbing and a sharper one for cutting. A bleeding finger was in my future and Bob and our two children, Dillon and Terri, will weep and toss flower petals over my shriveling, tetanus-filled body.
My Mother never had this problem.
I was a little nervous about how a Kickstarter project is setup. But after adding the final bits of project information and pressing the “Complete” button, I can sit back and drink a cup of coffee.
I expect to publish my latest literary anthology, Tiny Stories: Six Flash Shorts and Some Poetry About the Everyday Things in Life, sometime in September. The only reason for the delay is because some journals are considering some of the included stories for a one-time publications right. It could be much worse.
I’ve sweetened the Kickstarter pot: two of the rewards are signed copies of a print version. And one of the print versions will be a casewrap hardcover in linen. If you are a book nerd like me, hardcover books are simply, “Cool!” And most likely, the hardcover prints will be very limited runs.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
The world around us is an experience. In every moment of every day we feel something in both large and small ways. And sometimes, it’s the tiniest moments that linger the longest in our hearts.
Each story and poem in this book shares another character’s tiny moment. Each character may laugh or cry. She may wrinkle her nose and shake her head. He may tremble and sweat. But in the end, nothing may have changed except that tomorrow offers another sunrise.
Below is an excerpt from the flash short, “Never Trust a Can Opener:”
I’ve never trusted our can opener. This week I avoided it by scraping by with pantry remains, serving family meals of peanut butter sandwiches, a wilting salad littered with olives from a suspicious jar at the back of the refrigerator and Raman noodles floating in a neon colored broth. These meals have driven my husband, Bob, to open his wallet. Pak-N-Save ran a special on tuna in the Sunday Toledo Daily and Bob gave me the meets-our-budget nod of approval. No glossy, resealable foil packets with those benign plastic zips. No modern EZ-Open! pull tabs that leave behind smooth aluminum lips. Just eight-to-a-package-so-you-save-more, raggedy-edged cans.
Once, I tried out a cooking class at the community center. The other stay-at-home mothers covered their perfect print blouses with starched aprons and they handled kitchen utensils like a master mechanic worked a wrench. Wearing bohemian hip-huggers and an exposed belly ring, I destroyed an egg with a whisk.
It was best to accept my shopping mission by first studying the enemy. I pulled out the contraption with a bulky hand crank from the kitchen utility drawer. It has cold steel wheels, one with serrated teeth for grabbing and a sharper one for cutting. A bleeding finger was in my future and Bob and our two children, Dillon and Terri, will weep and toss flower petals over my shriveling, tetanus-filled body.
My Mother never had this problem.
I was a little nervous about how a Kickstarter project is setup. But after adding the final bits of project information and pressing the “Complete” button, I can sit back and drink a cup of coffee.
I expect to publish my latest literary anthology, Tiny Stories: Six Flash Shorts and Some Poetry About the Everyday Things in Life, sometime in September. The only reason for the delay is because some journals are considering some of the included stories for a one-time publications right. It could be much worse.
I’ve sweetened the Kickstarter pot: two of the rewards are signed copies of a print version. And one of the print versions will be a casewrap hardcover in linen. If you are a book nerd like me, hardcover books are simply, “Cool!” And most likely, the hardcover prints will be very limited runs.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Tiny Stories Kickstarter
The world around us is a jump off a creaky stair step with your best friend and laugh place, a smell the sweet rose and think of your loved one kind of place.
May 9, 2018
Grim’s Giveaway: Deny the Father
Six lucky winners will receive a Kindle edition of Deny the Father. Good luck!
April 25, 2018
Does Speed Kill (Your Writing)?
Don't misunderstand me: I do think an author should write fast, especially a commercial or indie author.
April 4, 2018
Just for Grins
Having a little fun with these pics.
The Cryo-Freeze II
Michael is the author of several collections of short stories. Under pen name M. Duda, his titles include We Dream at Twilight and Whispers from the Grave.
His most recent story "The Sound of Blue" w ...more
His most recent story "The Sound of Blue" w ...more
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