Ira Robinson's Blog, page 2
October 3, 2020
12 Tips for New Short Story Writers – How To Write A Short Story TODAY
12 Tips for New Short Story Writers – How To Write A Short Story TODAY
Are you ready to up your short story game?
Short stories are a different animal altogether. They take a special bit of wizardry to make them work effectively.
These 12 tips for new short story writers will MAKE A DIFFERENCE in how you write, and hook readers from the FIRST LINE.
I have published 14 books and dozens of short stories, and I am here to give you WHAT YOU NEED to be successful!
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The post 12 Tips for New Short Story Writers – How To Write A Short Story TODAY appeared first on Original Worlds.
How To Break Emotional Addiction – Emotional Addiction in Relationships Is REAL – Excerpt Open Eyes
This talk is an excerpt from one of my Open Eyes Radio Show broadcasts.
In it, I discuss Emotional Addiction, and what can be done to break the cycle and find good, strong, and healthy relationships. The talk is based on my book, When Good Relationships Go Bad, which you can find on my website: http://OriginalWorlds.com
The emotional addiction subliminal nature is hard to overcome, but, with help and a firm decision that you WANT to do it, it CAN be done.
ANY type of addiction seems to have this information as its base.
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The post How To Break Emotional Addiction – Emotional Addiction in Relationships Is REAL – Excerpt Open Eyes appeared first on Original Worlds.
Writer Reacts to A Perfect Circle Orestes – Lyrics Meaning and Analysis – This Song Cuts DEEP
It’s a LOT deeper than you think!
Writer Reacts is a series of videos by author Ira Robinson, in which he reacts and delves deep into songs that tell stories. Some of the time, it’s to songs he’s never heard before.
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The post Writer Reacts to A Perfect Circle Orestes – Lyrics Meaning and Analysis – This Song Cuts DEEP appeared first on Original Worlds.
September 27, 2020
Connection – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION
“Night is coming. Get inside your shelters, and good luck.”
I flipped the switch off, the crackle of power and the descending hum that always accompanied the winding down of the radio broadcast board in front of me comforting in a strange sort of way.
I hit the button on the turntable, and the whirr of its spinning up filled the silence that had come. Soft music – an old metal song – began to filter through the speaker above the mixer. I tend to play that kind of music when the night is falling. It helps get people amped up a little, gets the adrenaline flowing. Just in case. Some of them need it, desperately.
I turned the volume down a bit more, just to make sure there would be no sound coming out of the small room I kept the equipment in. I had about five minutes before the end of the song came along and the need to switch it to something else to replace potential dead air, and started my nightly ritual of getting ready for the passage of the sun outside.
First things first, check the windows. The wood paneling I found a few weeks ago has been holding up well, and I think it’s doing a good job of blocking out any light from inside of the small building I had come to occupy, but I check it every day, just to make sure everything is in its right place. The glass has been gone for a long time, I think, but that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to look out of it, anyhow.
Door locks in place and still solid. Good. That’s always my first line of defense and would be the first thing to go if the things decided to come.
The large desk and filing cabinets I had waiting on the other side of the door would help. Hopefully.
I opened the door and checked outside, the sun still shining bright in the sky over the endless expanse of green grass and brown hills to the north, and there was no sign of anything walking that I could see.
Good. That was one of the things I really liked about this place. Whoever built it had done a good job, its structure sound and steady, and the fact it was surrounded by flat land for a mile around it each way was something I had come to appreciate.
The door slipped closed and I flipped the lock into place, then slid desk and cabinets in front of it to create a blockade.
I went to the kitchen and prepped what I would need for the night. Three bottles of water were already on the counter waiting, and I filled the filter bucket with another batch to decontaminate for the next few hours. Dinner was simple and easy, as it usually was, but I was starting to get worried about my meager provisions. I would be able to hold out for another few weeks without much issue, but I’d have to start foraging soon, and that was always a danger.
Not only from the things, but other people, too. Desperate times…
While the cook fire was getting the batch of rice ready, I went back to the broadcast room and flipped the record to another one, a dance hit from sometime in the Eighties. Whether people liked that kind of thing or not, I didn’t know, but it was a catchy tune and made me smile, anyway.
I checked the dials and saw everything was broadcasting out at the best power I could manage, the solar cells having charged the battery banks in the basements nicely without the cloud cover we’d had the past week. I was glad it finally cleared out and smiled once more at the effectiveness of whoever had built this place.
I had been so surprised to find it sitting empty, and there was no indication at all of who had created it or occupied it, nor what happened to them after the Fall, but I wasn’t going to say no to the taking.
Besides, I was doing a service, an important one, at that.
Morale is so hard to come by these days, and having a voice in the darkness can really make all the difference. I’m sure you understand completely, having lived through all of this hell, too.
If I could be a bright spot in the nightmare this world has become then so be it. I am happy to take on that lot in my life, and the few people who have been able to contact me tell me they appreciate what I am doing.
That’s good enough for me.
I brought the rice back to the room and closed the door behind me, settling into the cushioned chair for the evening.
I flicked the switch for the microphone and waited until the song playing was over, the soft whine of subtle feedback a little annoying to my ears, but that always happened when I put power to the device. I’m not sure if something is going wrong with it, or if it’s just a product of its age, but thankfully it only lasts for a couple of moments before fading out entirely.
“I hope everyone is settled in,” I intone into the microphone, my lips only a few inches from the metallic edge of it. I watched the monitor in front of me to make sure I wasn’t coming through too hot. “According to my clock, sunset will be in about 20 minutes. I’m ready for the night. Are you?”
I pulled another record out of its’ sheet and sat it on the turntable while I talked. I set it into motion again and popped the needle down on it, letting the first cadences of the song come through before going on.
“I’m going to be here with you, guys. I’m always here with you. We’re going to get through this, if we do it together.” I put my finger on the button to turn the mic off. “Be good to each other.”
The mic whined down and I sat back, letting the sound of the song, softly humming through the speaker, come into me, and I relaxed into it.
No one really knows how the things came to be, but the impact they’ve had on our world has been devastating. I’ve hear the rumors, and I am sure you have, too. Aliens? Nah, I don’t think so. If it was, I’m betting they would have come down by now and taken everything over. There are so few of us left now, after all.
All I know is the things are bright, lighting up the night like an extravagant candle while they hunt, and the day is the only time it’s safe to show your face outdoors.
I’ve only seen them once, and that was more than enough for me. It was the night before I found this place, in fact, before I took on the role of the DJ of the apocalypse, spinning the hits while oblivion opens its maw in front of us all and sucks us in.
I’d been walking through a field, desperately hungry with a pack almost as empty as my stomach. There was a hill not far ahead, the one to the north of this very building, in fact, and with night coming on, I knew I was in trouble. I’d hoped I could make it to the next town while the light of day still shone, but there was no such luck. I wasn’t even sure which direction it would be.
When I saw the flare of light, the body of the thing igniting its white-hot glare, I pressed my body into the dirt and prayed it hadn’t seen me.
I belly-crawled along as a keening wail started up, echoing across the flat of land I was occupying and each time it resounded, my stomach dropped even more. I was scared, my friend, terrified I had been spotted and would soon find myself a hollow meal for a monstrosity that thought nothing of humanity but that we were cattle.
Another echo from somewhere behind me told me there was more than one, and I knew I was in trouble. Oh gods, I was in serious crap.
My movements became more frantic as I desperately sought out some kind of shelter, something that would hide me from the watchful gazes of these incarnations of malevolence.
I think a god of some kind must have been watching out for me that night, because my body slanted downward as a large, long ditch opened up before me. I crawled into it and pulled lengths of grass out of the ground and covered myself with them camouflaging my body as much as I could.
One of the things was close. Oh, so close. I could hear the soft pads of its feet against the ground, and I am sure it came to the edge of that ditch, sensing me, perhaps, or having heard my frantic pulling at the grass to coat myself. It knew, I think, something was there, but did not come closer.
A burst of sound came from the end of the ditch I found myself in and I almost jumped up to run when I heard it, almost feeling the cold hands of the thing grasping me.
But it had been a rabbit or some other small animal, I think, startled into motion by the approach of the creature.
A loud hoot-howl emanated from the light and it shot away from my position, giving chase to the movement. I held my breath as its companion joined it, and held myself stock-still for the next few hours it took night to come to an end.
I don’t know if that bunny made it. I hope so. It was my salvation that night.
I’ve heard those hoots out in the fields surrounding this place, and I wonder if they, perhaps, are aware they missed me and are searching for me in their way, but I cannot be sure.
I do know I never want to look at one again, and, as the night comes down once again over the little land of oblivion we all now occupy, I hope you do not either.
Night is coming, folks. Get to your shelters… and good luck.
To us all.
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The post Connection – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION appeared first on Original Worlds.
September 25, 2020
How To Come Up With Story Ideas FAST and EASY – This Can CHANGE Your LIFE
You know what it’s like trying to come up with ideas for stories. That ever-elusive story plotting void that happens to all writers…
I am here with a SECRET, to teach you how to come up with story ideas that are ready to write. Not only easily, but faster than you can write them down!
Are you ready to change your writing career and make your writing much easier?
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September 23, 2020
Choice – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION | Creepypasta / NoSleep Style Intense Dark Futurism Dystopian |
The trouble with giving people the freedom of choice is, sometimes, they make the wrong one.
It was just another election in yet another year that most people paid no attention to. The day to day grind of work, play, and sleep can really wear down the senses and lull one into a lack of care for anything of the outside world.
One day after another, the cycle of politicians spouting their rhetoric on television screens across the nation kept those who did pay attention to such things rapt with the constant hammer fall of this issue or that, and, of course, accusatory words flew from people’s lips as the blame game was played.
Dirty tricks and dirtier politics made the headlines as this revelation or that came out about the electees and, one after another, they dropped from the races they were in, crying foul and taking no responsibility for their actions or their constituents they let down.
Oh, they would come on the stage of the nation’s media, carting their dutiful families in tow, including the wife who shed tears as she looked with forgiving glances at the husband who betrayed them, while promises of “doing better for my family” drifted from their tongues. Those kept the people of the nation the most intrigued. After all, the media, itself, lives by the adage of, “Sex sells, and if it bleeds, it leads.”
They were always pros at making sure those scenes played out for the masses, one cavalcade of smut and aggression after another.
People tired of it, of course, and as the weeks became months, the constant drum beat of hateful talk and baleful would-be tyrants the amount of those who could keep up interest dwindled considerably. When it was only weeks away from that final moment, the day on which the die would be cast and the chosen ones would make their way down the streets in parades, something new came on the scene.
Something that would alter everything we knew and held dear.
Something that would force a choice that we can never go back on.
Maybe it was one politician too many spewing hateful rhetoric. Maybe it was done on behalf of a giant conspiracy that wanted to change the world in their own way. No one really knows for sure, and by this time, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
It was such a small spark, a tiny echo that became a storm that destroyed everything we knew and changed us all.
For the better?
That is yet to be seen.
It happened in Chicago. Have you heard of it? Maybe. I know there are whispers of the old names sometimes in the dark, people telling stories of how things used to be.
Some years before all of this began, a bomb had gone missing. Oh, this was not just any bomb, dear one. It was something massive. They called it a suitcase bomb, of all things. A small package with devastating consequences.
When it went off, it caused damage, of course. But the real problem wasn’t the structures that fell or the people who were killed, though there was a lot of that.
No, the real issue was what else was in that bomb. A large vial was embedded in it, which threw out great amounts of a liquid that in turn contained small things.
Bacteria. You’ve heard of that, of course, I know you have. It’s what we have to watch out for when you get a scrape or sick. Little creatures that fill up your system and make you dead.
That was what happened back then, too, you see? Tiny creatures, so small you’d not be able to even look at them without something special on your eyes, those got into the air and started to spread.
By the time it was done and it had burned itself out, the great town that had been known as Chicago had been taken out completely, left to ruins for fear of anyone going there starting it all over again.
That fear became so great, in fact, the next, harsher option was decided. The town had to go, the risk too large for things to ever resolve.
Oh, the politicians screamed about it, in those weeks leading up to the election. They talked at great length about how Chicago was a symbol. Both sides claimed this, of course, but one was sure that the rebuilding of that once-majestic town would be the pinnacle of strength, a show of force to prove that the nation’s spirit was indomitable and sure.
The other side, the more popular option, was that it had to be cleansed in a sacrifice, to show strength lay in resolve to do what was necessary for the sake of the nation’s heart. To throw it into the pit of sacrifice was the ultimate expression of security.
The leader at the time, a trembling and fearful fellow, really, decided to make that choice, and sparked off the terror our lives today have become.
It’s all about those choices, see? The first was to allow the rhetoric of hateful people spewing their disease across waves of air to be broadcast to begin with, but that was all for the sake of the money they held so devotedly to then. People sat in their chairs and watched the flickering images, all while advertisements for one stupid product or another danced across the screens in between, and the cash registers churned out more money to give more luxury to those who already had it all.
The next choice was the person, or group of people, perhaps, who decided the best course of action to take in response to it all was to detonate something fantastic and horrible, the culmination of all of mankind’s dedication to the god of science.
Choice. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one, especially in a world gone mad, drunk on its own blood and iniquity.
The other nations saw the fall of Chicago and the subsequent detonation of another device in its center, to eradicate any trace of what might be left hidden in the ruins, as a sign of the bleeding out of the country.
They had been waiting a long time to see her limping, the smell of blood high in the air too much for their ravenous hearts to resist.
They pounced, on the day the election happened, twenty countries combining together to strike a final, massive blow to her heart.
She was not as frail and toothless as they thought, however, and soon enough her own missiles were flying.
One after another took to the sky, spreading death across the world. Oh and the nation was not the only one to take part in this choice. No, many others did, as well, retaliations and preemptions sought out the throats of everyone they could, and old grudges were resolved in the heartbeat the flashes took to end it all.
We huddle, now, at the fringes of places once thought unsurvivable, we thin groups seeking warmth and anything left to scavenge to fill our bellies.
And we tell each other these stories, reminding us of the past that once was and never shall be again, so we can, perhaps, make the right choices in the future.
You, child, are my own choice, bringing you here into this circle of the light of the fire to talk about what our fathers did to us, and, some day, you’ll have to make your own choice of telling your child.
Now don’t be frightened. Let’s see, do you want the venison, or the corn? There’s not much left of either, but we’ll see what more we can find tomorrow.
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The post Choice – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION | Creepypasta / NoSleep Style Intense Dark Futurism Dystopian | appeared first on Original Worlds.
September 18, 2020
Recess – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION
“Melanie, don’t go too far,” I said as I watched my young daughter run down the street.
My stomach always dropped a little when I saw her legs moving, in those first few moments of freedom I could allow her to have.
She was four years old, and all I had left in of the life I once knew. The life we all once knew.
These moments of pureness, of when I could allow her to explore, to play, hell, to be a child, were precious and few. She was so special to me, with her long blond hair flowing behind her as the wind caught it up and tossed it all over, as the heavy clothes I had to put her in before she walked out of the front door to protect against the cold that had come on.
She was my gift.
I know every parent has the same kind of words they use for their children. Special, gifts, precious, sacred. But Melanie was different.
I guess all of our children are different, these days.
I watched her pick up a ball and bounce it around, a smile on her face even from this distance. I know I should be closer, should be watching over her like a hawk at a meal, but I also felt the need to let her have a small taste of freedom, to explore what it meant to be alive and, for a time, a kid. Those moments, too, were far and few between.
One of the other children, Max, I think, passed her by at a run, heading off to his own devices. He was a little older, probably wanting to have little to do with trying to have fun with a peer so young compared, but Melanie, at least at first, didn’t seem to pay him much mind.
I saw her turn around toward him though, and thought I caught a fleeting glimpse of regret on her face. She went back to her ball, though, the moment passing her by as Max disappeared behind the corner of a house.
I looked around me, trying to see his parents, but they were not in sight. I’m not sure why they were not, but a nervous trill ran through my veins just the same. Didn’t they know any better?
Such is the way, sometimes, though, when life is lived on a the edge of a knife so sharp you can lose everything in a heartbeat.
So much loss, so much regret. It weighs on you, a millstone sinking to the unfathomable depths of a sea that never ends. Pain, loneliness, these things become as familiar to you as your own breath, and it is only in the darkest moments of night, those few seconds between waking and sleep that you can have time to actually process it, to think about it in some kind of healing terms.
Healing. There’s so precious little of that left to us, too, a word we use to try to convince ourselves things have a sense of normalcy, that there might be some hope for the future, but it’s a hollow word.
Hope, too, is a dangerous word, though, as I looked at Melanie playing in the brightest moments of the day, when there was little space for any shadows to be able to exist, I could not help but see hope for the future.
That word though, that sensation of hope can make you lax, can lull you into a sense that all things are right with the world and there’s going to be something ahead that will make everything you go through worthwhile.
Will it be worth it, though? Will there be any kind of future, when the bleeding edges of sanity fray more and more by the day?
Hope, freedom, healing, these words are so rarely used, so rarely spoke in our little community these days, and with reason, but as I said, those moments in the night when the fears are the greatest need to have something to hold on to.
Especially when the screams start.
Even in the light of day, when the shadows are at their furthest away, the echoes of those screams can haunt, and I am glad Melanie does not seem to be bothered by them as she plays.
It makes me glad, because recess is, for our children, such a rare commodity and they must embrace it without fear, without regret.
I wish I could feel it, could let go of those sounds that filter through the thin walls of our house as we hide ourselves away in the attic. They stay with me always, even as my eyes roved over the street, looking for any sign that something was out of place.
No, it’s not possible to just let them go, to find a way to no longer hear the sound of my precious wife screaming in the night as she was taken away. The sound of her voice as she begged me to save her, plead with them to let her go, the horrific wailing that still wrenches my guts to this day as her flesh was flayed open and the beloved blood that kept her alive in this god-forsaken world we live in was shed across the ground, lapped up by desperate lips and tongues that had no right to exist.
No, those sounds I will never be able to heal from, to throw away. To forget.
So many of us gone, so many lost to the shadows that come, and though I miss many of them, she is the one from which I will never recover.
If it weren’t for Melanie and her need for me to be here for her, to protect her and keep her safe in an insane world, I would have put the shotgun to my mouth and pulled the trigger long ago.
I can’t do that, though. Melanie needs me and there is no one else who would be there for her without me. There are too few of us, now. Too many who have been lost, leaving us without the ability to sustain ourselves, even, especially with the oncoming winter.
Oh, god, what are we going to do, then?
Already, the two of us huddle in the cold room at the top of our home, the place my wife and I thought would be a shelter from a world we once understood. There is already so little in our bellies, holding off what we can to make it one more day, one more week. One more meal, clinging to the hope that we will be, finally, rescued, set free from these bonds of the shadows that come.
And, yet, I know we’re not the only ones. Those around us are going through it too, but I cannot give them any care. I can’t. We don’t have enough, even as I watch the other children around the street falling into emaciation, falling away bit by bit, day by day.
So few of us left now. Is the rest of the world still spinning? Still going through its’ travails as it always had?
Or is everyone else going through the same thing as we few are here? I suspect so. The few rumors we once had coming through our community as one person or another shuffled into the city limits spoke of the horrors they, too, witnessed.
No, we may not be alone in the horrors, but Melanie and I have always been an island unto ourselves, clinging to each other as the rest of the world falls apart.
She’s still able to smile, though more infrequently. I would give her one back, but the thought always ran through my head that she might have been doing it just to appease me, to give me something to hold on to, as only the wisdom of a child who has survived a torturous event can do.
My stomach lurches and I jump to my feet again as the loud whistle blows, the watcher pulling the string on the alarm that once was merely to warn of impending storms. Warbling, loud, echoing through the countryside.
Melanie dropped the ball as she ran, her eyes wide and desperate, back to the house, and I watched her legs flying beneath her, the sound of her footfalls against the ground muted by the volume of the siren.
She made it into the house and I slammed the door behind her, swinging the makeshift barricade into place. It always made me feel better, even if I secretly wondered if it did any good.
The ladder to the attic came down easily and I helped her make it up there, checking things over once more before joining her. She was already lighting one of the candles and pulling out one of the few remaining tins of food we had on hand.
Recess was over. The shadows were coming, and there was precious few moments left before the screams would begin again.
The post Recess – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION appeared first on Original Worlds.
September 15, 2020
Writer Reacts to Johnny Cash – Hurt – FIRST TIME HEARING – MADE ME CRY
THIS SONG HURT ME!
Writer Reacts is a series of videos by author Ira Robinson, in which he reacts and delves deep into songs that tell stories. Most of the time, it’s to songs he’s never heard before.
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September 5, 2020
To Hell – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION
I do not know how long I have been standing here, or what brought me to this place, but I am grateful for it, nonetheless.
I am grateful, because I can see him, as he eats his dinner alone in the small cafe. Even this far across the street, with the dregs of the city and a dirty window pane between, I can still recognize him.
How can I not? He’s the one who killed me.
My cover had been blown; I knew it as sure as I knew my smile was loaded and ready to go.
I had been foolish and careless, the best way to get yourself in trouble when you are under cover. I knew where my target was. I knew his name and his face and was ready to go through the kitchen into the living room of the house to complete what I had been assigned months before.
They all had gotten to know me as a low-rent drug pusher – I was good at making that little trick of the trade work in my favor. It was one of the reasons I was given the assignment to begin with.
I was dressed in the usual scum-bag clothes they had become accustomed to seeing me in, and when the guard my target always had on staff saw me, he waved me on in with a smile.
When I saw the smile drain from his face, I knew something had gone terribly wrong.
Such a rookie mistake, one that never should have happened, but I had been distracted by that pretty new officer assigned to the front desk. You know how it is, the right smile in the right moment can lead you to your doom.
The guard was looking at my waist and, when I looked down as well, i knew there was no going back.
There was my ID, hanging out of my pocket. Stupid regulations requiring all officers to have their ID showing at all times when in the precinct, combined with my foolish moment at the desk, led to the guard shouting a warning that a cop was in the house.
Hell broke loose with all its fire coming down on my head and I knew I was done.
If only I had my gun…
The thugs got me to the ground pretty quickly, though I think I did enough damage to at least one of them to make the day a memorable one. The butt of the gun put my lights out before I could even say a word.
The room I woke in was cold and dark. I realized pretty quick it was the walk-in freezer the cooks used to store everything in before making the meals for the small army the boss had around him most of the time.
That man, DiNardo, was there in the room with me, staring embers into my eyes, but my head ached a little too much to really care.
I was seated in a small chair, with my arms tied behind and my lower extremities strapped to the legs of it. The man was sitting before me, with my ID loosely hanging from his hands. He kept making it sway as he held it. I couldn’t help but stare at it.
The taste of blood was heavy on my tongue and I could tell at least one of my teeth had been cracked to bits by the gun that slammed into my face. The pain of it was just as strong as the ache in my head.
“You disappoint me,” he said, finally. His voice was loud in the enclosed space. “I do not like to be disappointed.”
“Me either. Why don’t we just call it even?” It was hard to speak, but I knew I was damned either way.
DiNardo stood, the chair creaking as his weight was taken off of it. He was not an obese man, but his large frame was still a little more than the small wood frame of it could handle.
He stepped to the door and motioned to someone outside. I could see one of his lieutenants handing him something before DiNardo returned to stand before me. The rope hanging from his hand was thin, but looked strong enough.
“I guess I will see you in hell, DiNardo.” I spat at him with everything I could muster up; watching the glob of spittle and blood was over his nice suit and tie was more rewarding than I thought it would be.
I was still laughing when the rope went around my neck. “You’ll get there first,” was the last thing I heard before the lights went out again.
So now, here I stand. Is stand the right word for it? I don’t really have legs anymore, at least as far as I can tell, but it’s a close enough approximation.
I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t even know for sure what I am anymore, but I am sure of one thing.
I will make him pay, any way I can.
I might even be able to laugh in his face again, one last time, as I drag him to Hell.
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