Eric Garrison's Blog, page 11

Book Gift Guide is featuring my Reality Check!

Do you like Ready Player One? BookGiftGuide.com says you’d love my Reality Check!

Of course, I think it’d make a great gift for any science fiction reader. Just sayin’.

Whiteboard Wednesday – A scene from Restless Spirit

Tiny gargoyles share a shot glass of something at Heath’s Brewery.

NaNoWriMo Restless Spirit peek #2 – Weirdness

A little bit of Chapter 11, in which “booth babe” Skye figures out Minnie is missing. Frannie helps Skye by sending her “ghost” off to search. Fantasy Free Form employee Phil (on loan from RJ Sullivan’s Virtual Blue)  is confused and annoyed.

“Frannie?”

“Hi Skye,” she said, eyes half-lidded.

“That’s still you?”

“Yeah. Some of me.”

“What’s it like?”

She shrugged. “Like napping, kinda. Only awake.”

I shivered. She reminded me a little too much of Ernie’s zombie thralls. “Do you need to sit down?”

She shook her head.

Phil handed me more postcards. “Come on, if you’re not leaving, make yourself useful.”

He did a double take when he saw Frannie standing there in her dumb state. “What’s with her?”

I didn’t feel like weirding Phil out even further, so I punted. “Uh, long story. Call it astral projection, if you like. Means I can stick around a bit while she finds where Minnie went.

Phil glared at me. “Just how much weird do you think I can swallow?”

“I am not kidding you. Look, I’m handing out postcards, looking sexy. ‘Cause otherwise, I’d run off to go look for Minnie myself.”

NaNoWriMo peek – freshly written tiny random excerpt from Restless Spirit

Chapter 10, in which Skye wakes up hung over after a night of overindulgence and mishaps:

Still cocooned in blankets, I rolled away from the light and sounds and fell off the other side of the bed with a whump, face first into the scratchy hotel carpet. I heard someone whimper, and realized it was me.

I struggled with my linen restraints, but only ended up rolling to the nearby wall. My arms pinned, legs bundled together like a mermaid’s tail, all I only managed pathetic flopping around. I could ask Frannie for help, but my pride forbade that. My pride and I wormed around on the floor, dragging blankets and sheets off the bed with me as I propped myself against the wall and pushed with my feet.

Frannie cavorted around the room, arms and legs flailing, red hair thrown this way and that. I had a weird impression that it was a tribal ritual or some terrible spell meant to raise the dead. She sang along with the music blaring from her phone. Then she noticed me. She laughed. “Oh Skye, I should take a picture.”

“Do it and die,” I said, giving her my worst skunk eye.

LISTEN to Troll or Derby – now an audiobook!

Troll or Derby is now an AUDIOBOOK on Audible.com!

We wants it, O yes, we wants it, precioussss… Ahem. My friend, the fabulous Red Tash, has created an audiobook version of her dark fairy tale (or fairy dark tale). I have the book and the ebook, but I want to LISTEN to this story.

If you like audiobooks for listening to on your iPod or phone, maybe for knocking around in the last days of fall, or maybe you want something to listen to as you drive over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house later this month… if you’re a fan of fantasy or fairy tales or rollerderby or all of the above, you’ll want this preciousssss recording too.

And unlike Gollum’s precious… we can BOTH have it, O yes we can…

NaNoWriMo Whiteboard Wednesday #1 – Restless Spirit cover

Skye battles the Chained Lord at Big Con

I am writing the first sequel to Blue Spirit this November, called Restless Spirit. In this book, Skye is on a mission to find dark magics and stop them from being used. Only there’s more than one supernatural force at work at Big Con, and Skye is caught in the middle.

I have a confession: this was not drawn on a whiteboard. (gasp) It was drawn on paper with whiteboard markers as part of the kickoff festivities for NaNoWriMo here in Indianapolis (Nindy). No, that is NOT bacon to the left, it’s a Big Con banner that’s been torn down. Skye is NOT on top of a cake, it’s a sort of dais/stage that she’s standing on to give herself a little height on the giant troll.

Having a cover concept for a novel ahead of time is a great way to have a vision to work toward, even if you trash it and go with something else later. Having that cover image makes it all feel more real, that finishing is inevitable. It’s a terrible waste of writing time, though I admit I’ve burned a day in past NaNo months to make a cover. But I did that on a day I was burned out, so it helped recharge my creative batteries.

Restless Spirit current wordcount: 13,469

NaNoWriMo update: already off the rails!

I posted earlier about Pantsing vs Planning and I came out in the middle, doing minimal planning but mostly leaving the story to grow organically. I learned in the wee hours of November 1st, at the Nindy Nanoween party that this method is also called “lampposts in the fog” or something similar… still looking for something online to back that up.  The ideas is that you have key events that have to happen (like Doctor Who’s “fixed points in time”) dreamed up, but you let the story and characters take you wherever else they want to go on their way to those lights in the fog. I called it laying down rails for the story to run on.

And this year, for National Novel Writing Month, I made a listing of potential chapter ideas. I started out following it, but so many other ideas have bloomed since then as I wrote, that the story’s already jumping those rails. I’m not trashing the plan, but I am letting the muse lead me along.

And I love it. I’ve gone from feeling so-so about NaNo and this novel to being very excited, since I no longer know for sure where it’s going to end up, or what’s going to happen along the way.

It’s going to be awesome.

5022 words so far.

If you’re doing NaNo too, how’s it going? Planning, pantsing, or otherwise?

Jailhouse Spook: my true ghost story

I have a guest blog post at Long and Short Reviews “LASR” today, please go take a look! It is a true story from my days in the Indiana Ghost Trackers with my wife.

It’s experiences like this that led me to writing Four ’til Late and the other Road Ghosts novels.

My 10 Scariest Ghost Hunts – Happy Halloween!

(The following originally appeared on the Flipside of Julianne blog, and I’m reposting it here for Halloween)

Brett, the main character of Four ’til Late, is an amateur ghost hunter, and that’s no coincidence. My wife and I spent 7 years ghost hunting nearly every month as a part of the Indiana Ghost Trackers and other groups and on our own. I got to be known as a sort of gadget specialist, and often served as the group’s skeptic. I earned a reputation as “the Simon Cowell of ghost photography”.

We visited quite a few haunted locations in our time, and so I’ve been asked by my gracious hostess to talk about the 10 scariest places I’ve been!

#10 – Rotary Jail  Museum, Crawfordsville, IN

This place is amazing. The jail cells are literally part of a gigantic horizontal wheel, two floors tall. The whole thing rotates on its axis like a sandwich vending machine, except instead of serving up tasty sandwiches, it rotated to expose different cells to put prisoners in, and take them out.

I think old jails are always scary, but this place had a certain energy in the air.  It was here that I first actually saw something I couldn’t explain. All of us had stopped in the area below the cells where great gears turn the structure around, in a curved hallway. A trifield EMF meter went off when no one was near it, and I saw something bright white peek around the bend in the darkness, just for an instant. I didn’t freak out, but I did curse under my breath and felt a thrill of fright. My curse was recorded and played back to me over and over later.

#9 – American Legion Park, Fortville, IN

Out past the bandstand area, even past the campsites of this park, you’ll find trails, and deep in the woods, atop a hill, you’ll find Doty Cemetery. One of the smallest cemeteries I’ve visited, Doty’s oldest grave is from 1832.

It’s not the cemetery that’s the scary part. In the area between the campsites but before the hill to the cemetery, out in the woods at night, my friends sighted shadow people, silhouettes of figures that make no sound or any trace of their passing, other than a glimpse of movement. I doubted this, since I’m a skeptic, but as we tested out K-II EMF meters.

#8 – Mansfield Reformatory, Mansfield, OH

A famous old prison,  “Shawshank” is huge and has such history. There were many times that we heard voices, saw shadows and had unexplained EMF readings. I felt exhausted after only a couple of hours here, and while I’m glad I went, I’m not sure I’d go back.

#7 – Royal Theater, Danville, IN

We recorded two strong voices in different locations. Backstage, a voice said, “go away” and it appeared on two different voice recorders held about 6 feet apart. The other was in the seats, where a deeper, growling voice said, “get out!”.

#6 – G C Murphy Building, Indianapolis, IN

We had no specific evidence here, but the basement can only be reached by freight elevator, and several people sensed presences and had the feeling they needed to leave immediately.

These days, I like to go to this building to find a different sort of “spirit” in the Red Lion Grog House that’s moved in as part of the building in more recent years.

#5 – Waverly Hills Sanatorium, Louisville, KY

I’ll say that when Amy and I went to Waverly Hills, the groups were too large, and so the potential for quiet ghost hunting didn’t happen until the wee hours of the morning. There were a few moments when we felt out of place, and the shadows held menace and movement. I rank this one higher more for its reputation and grand scale than any personal experience.

#4 – Hannah House, Indianapolis, IN

We’ve had numerous cases of voice recording evidence (EVP), and some with freaky correlations. In one case, the same phrase, “find me” is recorded in the same spot in the basement, six months after it was first caught, and 10 seconds later, one of the ghost trackers is heard to say, “Isn’t this where you got the ‘find me’?”.  Another case involved a recording of “keep away” coinciding with two compasses changing from North to East and back again.

Grandma’s room always seems to have thick air, hard to describe, and a forboding energy that makes me feel unwelcome.

Another time, as I climbed the stairs alone in broad daylight, a voice whispered, “go away!” in my right ear. At first I thought it was a prank, but no one was near the stairs.

#3 – Bobby Mackey’s Music World, Wilder, KY

All I will say about this old roadhouse, former slaughterhouse, and site of a murder, is that it’s called Hell’s Gate for a reason. It scared the daylights out of jaded ghost hunters. We had to go outside after an intense personal experience to calm down.

#2 – Central State Hospital, Indianapolis, IN

Now being demolished and repurposed by the city, this notorious old place stands out among haunted places in Indiana. We went late one November night, following oppressive underground passageways of the steam tunnels, poking around in the eerily quiet abandoned dormitories, and investigating the paranormally active administration building. Amy and I got our very first EVP in the admin building, as one of our group stated a “do not enter” sign on a door made her want to go in there more, a loud whispered voice asked “WHY?”. A flashlight bulb didn’t just burn out, it flashed and popped. Batteries drained. In one basement, we all felt like the stone floor was moving in waves and one nauseated woman was forced to leave.

#1 – Steel Forge Cemetery, Greenfield, IN

No link for this one, since I’m not able to find it on a map by that name. We were out ghost hunting at this little rural cemetery outside of Greenfield, when some members of the group thought they saw a shadow dog, or a ghost dog, a big one, coming at them.

Not long after, a real dog crept up on us and barked to try to scare us away.

Finally, four police cars pulled up, lights flashing. Several policemen came up to meet us with trained canines. I just about panicked.  The police were nice, and just asked us to leave, since the neighbors near the cemetery thought there were a bunch of drunk teenagers vandalizing, when it was only us weirdos who go looking for ghosts in the dark!

It’s not you, it’s NaNo – a warning to my friends.

Dear friends,

I’ve set this to post just before midnight [edit: except it went out at noon instead, oh well...] Most of my friends know this already, but just to be sure…

I’m doing National Novel Writing Month for the 6th time. That means I will be spending nearly all my spare time hammering out ~2000 words a day on a new novel, with a goal of at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Except I know it’s not 30 days. I can’t really write much on Thanksgiving, followed by no time to write during the Starbase Indy convention. I also have Fridays where I’ll only have lunchtime to write (Friday night is date night with Amy – extra important because even she is not going to see me all that much during November).  So that means only 23 days where I’ll be writing, turning up the pressure to get closer to 2200 words per day.

So I’m going to be turning down just about every invitation to hang out and socialize during November. Sorry, the “no” isn’t personal. I do this craziness for me, and it’s a little selfish, I admit. But I need this, it’s very important to me. We can get together in December, instead, okay?

Love,

Me