Eric Garrison's Blog, page 21

Hydra Games is talking me up!

Hydra Games is talking me up!

It’s so nice to be a part of Hydra Games.  They’ve been doing posts about me all week.  I’d better get to work on that first module for them!

My novel Reality Check was signed by Hydra Publications!

So, Reality Check is a dimension-hopping science fiction adventure novel that I wrote last year.  I spent most of this year polishing it, running it past beta-readers, adding material and reworking the plot.  I submitted it to Hydra Publications awhile back, and just this morning got the contract signed for it to be published through them!

I’ll post more news as things progress, but to say I’m thrilled about this first novel deal would be a vast understatement!

I’m going out of print…

…for awhile.  In a few days, I plan to take down all print versions of my books.  I’ll still be offering epub versions, and if you catch me in person, I do have a supply of hard copy books still that I’ll sign and sell to you.

Why? Well, I want to re-evaluate print. Since Print on Demand (POD) is so easy and costs nothing to offer, I don’t think I’ll ever completely abandon print. But I’ve been told there are better options.

Plus, I’m considering taking Amazon up on their Kindle Select program, which could mean a big free Kindle-format giveaway in the future.

So, if you really want a paper copy of any of my books, you’d best go get them now or contact me to get one of the limited supply I have in stock!

An Indiana Ghost Story Within a Story

As the Haunted Hoosier Blog Hop draws near its end, I want to relate something personal.

I wrote a lot when I was young, but gradually gave it up when my college education and career took me to more technical things.  Oh, I dabbled with short fiction for myself and friends, did some creative writing in blogs, and even joined a creative writing group at one point.  But I never made a habit of writing.  My creative energies often went to games and online roleplaying. And I’ll say gaming has made me a better writer in many ways.

But what really brought writing out in me was the death of my uncle Chuck in October 2007. In a week, it’ll be the 5th anniversary. He was a writer his whole life, but rarely showed his stuff to anyone, and was never published. His writing wasn’t even found after his death, and I thought that was one of the most tragic aspects of his death.

I’d heard about National Novel Writing Month for years, but always had reasons not to.  That year, it was my self-appointed mission to write a novel in Chuck’s honor, to dedicate it to him, and to make memories of him a part of it in the form of a character nicknamed Gonzo.  Hunter S. Thompson was a hero to Chuck.

Anyway, some of the Road Ghosts books are pieces of my life, memories made fictional, enhanced like a tall tale, or refitted entirely to fit the needs of the plot of the book.  But one memory from my times with Chuck was taken almost word for word from reality, as best I could recall.  It’s another guy’s ghost story, from Anderson, Indiana, it was told when Chuck and I were present.  It’s one of the less sensational things in my books, as ghost stories go, but in person, it was powerful, and not just because we’d been drinking.  Okay, kind of despite the drinking.

I’m including that little bit as the ghost story within a ghost story, a nugget of pure memory embedded in pure fancy.  This short bit is from the third book in my Road Ghosts trilogy, Me and the Devil.

Ralph nodded.  He was silent awhile, a faraway look in his eye.  “Hmm, you know this place is haunted too, right?”

Brett looked at Gonzo, who shrugged.

“I’ve had weird stuff going on here since I moved in a few years ago.  Tod and Jenny lived here last summer, they can tell you.”

Jenny nodded.  “I was having an argument with Tod one time, I think it was over paying the gas bill…”

Tod interrupted.  “Aw, don’t bring that up again!”

She shook her head.  “Let me finish!  We were arguing in the kitchen, and the phone flew off the wall and hit the cabinets.  By itself!”

Brett wished he hadn’t finished his Raid so quickly.  His head was swimming, and he wanted to remember the stories.  “Wow.  What else?”

“Well,” began Ralph, looking uncomfortable.  “Around that time, I started having nightmares.  At first, it was just of darkness and feeling trapped.  Later dreams, I was a little girl, clinging to my sister in the dark as a monster loomed up at the top of a staircase, the only light came from behind it.”

Everyone was quiet as Ralph talked.  He paused to finish his beer.  God’s Stereo could be heard inside playing “Bad Moon Rising”.  He adjusted his glasses and continued.  “Well, anyway everyone joked about those dreams.  I wanted to pry out the nails shutting the basement door, but these two didn’t like the idea.  One day, we started having sewer problems, and I had to go down there.  It was a mess, ankle deep in water, TP and unidentified floating objects, for the most part.  But the floor sloped upward toward a crawl space, so it was dry over there.”

Ralph looked like he didn’t want to go further.  The L.T. offered his cup of Raid to him.  Ralph shook his head and continued.

“Up in the crawl space, I found two doll heads.”

After a long silence, Brett heard The L.T. curse.  He turned to look at Tod and Jenny and they were nodding to back up Ralph’s story.

“You’re so full of shit, Ralph,” said Gonzo.

Ralph shrugged and smiled very faintly.  “Hey, believe what you like, but I know what happened.”

Hmm that was shorter than I remembered it being.  So just for you, I think I’ll add more from the next chapter, when Ralph convinces the drunken crew to follow him to a haunted site.

They followed Ralph and Gonzo down the street, each still carrying their drinks.  Tod had to run back to the house to lock up, to preserve God’s Stereo if nothing else.  Brett could still hear Creedence playing half a block away.

He hadn’t heard that Ralph was a ghost hunter.  If so, this broke some important rules about sobriety… who would believe any ghost stories that involved alcohol?  Whatever the mission, though, this wasn’t anything official, he told himself.

They went to the dead end at the end of the street and ducked under some branches.  They climbed a small hill, and Brett tripped on a railroad tie, nearly spilling his drink.  The tracks  led off into the darkness in both directions.

Gonzo looked up and down the railway.  “Hey, Ralph, these tracks are abandoned, yeah?”

Ralph didn’t answer, but started off down the tracks to the left.  Trees formed a corridor as far as Brett could see.  In the moonlight, at least, he could see the ties and roughly where he was going.

“Ten or fifteen years ago,” Ralph said from up ahead, “There was this school, kind of an old one-room schoolhouse that was set up again for gifted kids.  A magnet school.  But it was really old, from settlers’ days.  Anyway, the school was restored and kids were bused in from all over the area.  It showed up on the news now and again, if it was a slow news day.  There were maybe thirty students, so it was more of a showcase than anything.

“Anyway, they called it the Mounds School, because it was on land that used to belong to the Mound Builder Indians.  You know, they made these huge earthworks, no one’s sure what for, or even how they managed it.  They lined up with the stars and the Sun like Stonehenge and shit like that.  The place had been a park forever, and still was, except for the school.”

Brett thought the story sounded familiar somehow.  He thought maybe he’d heard it in Indiana, or maybe even Tennessee.  Maybe this was one of the urban legend type ghost stories, he thought.  Like every county in Indiana has its very own “screaming bridge” from which lovers had leaped, mothers had dropped their babies, or someone had been struck by a car late at night.

Still, the Mound Builders had spanned a large area.  Brett had also heard that in addition to astronomical correlations, the locations of the earthworks fell along other lines.  The supposed lines of power called “ley lines”, along which metaphysical energy was supposed to flow.  He and Lizzie had visited Mounds State Park up near Anderson so she could experience the lines.  He remembered watching her dangling crystal pendulums at various points in the park until she found just the right spot.  She’d sat there for the better part of an hour, meditating.  He remembered being glad he brought a book with him.

The trees parted to reveal a tributary river, maybe a hundred feet across.  The tracks continued on over the river, carried by an iron suspension bridge.  Ralph continued walking, stepping easily from one tie to another as he talked.

Brett saw Gonzo hesitate.  He looked back at the others behind him and swore.  He drank deeply from his Moose cup and started across, staring at his feet as he stepped less certainly onto the bridge.

Brett was next.  He could see between the ties, down the steep embankment.  He could hear the water rushing and splashing on the rocks on the bank thirty feet below.  He took a step onto the first tie, then to the next, hoping to get a rhythm going so he wouldn’t have to think about it.

He heard The L.T. and Tod arguing behind them.  He heard Jenny say out loud, “no fucking way, Tod.  Ralph’s nuts, let’s go.”

Brett glanced back to see Jenny towing Tod the Rod back the way they’d come.  The L.T. gave him a little salute with his big cup and came after.  Brett looked back forward his head spun enough to make him lose his bearings for a moment.  Which way was really forward if everything was doing a slow orbit around him?

Brett’s right foot stepped out onto air.  He started to pitch forward.  He felt himself falling, his left foot still on the tie immediately behind.  He was already too far off balance to throw himself back, and Gonzo was a few ties ahead, so he had nothing to push off of in that direction.

He was sure he was going to end up falling into the river below when he heard a yell and felt a thump and felt his belt pull hard into his gut.

Enough to steady his balance and get both feet on the same tie.  He thrashed and threw his weight backward.  His cup sloshed and the drink splashed.  His back bumped into The L.T.’s head.  The L.T. let go his belt, letting out a whooping yell.

Brett stood up with great care, ignoring the spinning.  He saw Gonzo and Ralph turn around at The L.T.’s yell.  When he saw the looks on their faces, Brett could feel the foolish grin spread across his face.  “Hey thanks-”

“Dude.  Don’t turn around.  Thank me later,” said The L.T. quietly behind him.  “Let’s go.”

Brett took a swig of what was left in his cup, drew in a deep breath and stepped to the next tie.

“Thought I might be dead there for a moment,” said Brett as he reached the middle of the bridge.  He was very aware of a cool wind coming down the river’s course.  He saw traces of mist chasing along with it.  It made him feel like he was walking diagonally.  He had to look up at Gonzo’s back to right himself.

“S’okay.  Ever think about dying?”

“Huh?  Yeah just then, that’s what I mean.”

“Naw, not just then.  I mean, what if a train came along now, like in that movie with River Phoenix?  Except we’re drunk, and trains don’t go that slow.”  The L.T.’s voice held a nervous edge that Brett didn’t like.

“Uh.  Yeah.  Why, do you hear something?”  Brett started counting ties to keep his focus.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.

“Maybe.  Don’t look back, but what if there was a light in the distance, heading our way?  Would you be okay if that was it?  I think I would.  I’ve had a good life, you know?”

Brett almost turned around to see if The L.T. was serious.  To see if there really was a light behind them, gaining on them fast.  He couldn’t help breathing faster, felt his heart beat harder. He had to keep counting.  Twelve.  Thirteen.  Fourteen.  Was that a train whistle?

“Um, actually, I’m hoping my best years are ahead of me, man,” said Brett.  Sixteen.  Seventeen.  Eighteen.  He glanced up and cried out in surprise as Gonzo was right in front of him.

The big guy grabbed his shoulders, grinning into his face and pulled him off the track to one side on to slightly sloping ground.  Brett cheered and made a show of actually getting down on the ground to kiss the dirt.  It wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed, and he wiped the dirt on his sleeve.

He looked up in time to see The L.T. stumble on the rail close to him.  Brett had to move a hand quickly to keep The L.T. from stomping it with his boot.  He looked up and they traded grins and laughed.

“Had you going, didn’t I?” said The L.T.

Brett pulled himself up and dusted off his knees.  He looked back across the bridge.  It was dark as far as he could see.  “Maybe.  Hey you know what?”

“What?”

“Looks like we all still have our beverages!”  Brett raised his in a sloshing toast.  Gonzo looked at the Moose cup as though it was a wondrous discovery and joined Brett and The L.T. in the toast.  They each drank down what was left in the big cups.  Gonzo made a show of carefully hiding his cup in some bushes near the end of the bridge.  Brett and The L.T. followed his example.  They could pick them up on the way back.

So this second bit, taken from Chapter 5 of Me and the Devil, is a mix of two different real events in my past.  Crossing the railroad bridge with Moose cups full of rum and coke really happened, just somewhere else with someone else. The drunken mission to look for the old schoolhouse really happened too, though I may not recall the actual story the real life version of Ralph told… it’s been over twenty years, and I was a little impaired at the time.

Of course, I go over the top with it after this point, when they get to the schoolhouse… it becomes more what I imagined would happen.  In reality?  We got spooked and hurried back to “Ralph’s” house.

Hope you’ve enjoyed these excerpts, and the Blog Hop in general.

Following Skye through Holliday Park

A friend purchased my book, Blue Spirit, today, and was excited about the part he’d read about Holliday Park, since he’d been there.  He went so far as to say he wanted to trace the characters’ steps through the park and find all the places described.

I’ll admit, I’ve done that before myself, just to see if I got it right. One of the trails has been rerouted for habitat reconstruction by Indy Parks, but overall, I didn’t do so bad.

Here’s Chapter 5 of the novel, Skye’s first visit to the park, if you want to read how I used these places for the story.

Holliday Park Bus Stop

Not glamorous, but the IndyGo bus system is how our heroine Skye gets around town. This becomes very important very quickly, as she gets help from the whimsical Transit King.

Bus line 28, as it happens, also goes fairly near my home.





Ruins

These artistic but fake ruins are the centerpiece of the park. Who could look upon this and not speculate on what sort of fanciful building might have stood here if this had once been a real building? It’s part of the magic of the park that led me to set a modern fairy tale in Indianapolis, and why Skye visited here in the book.





Trails

This is the switch-backed trail that Skye and Annabelle follow down into the depths of the park’s forests. This landscaping hints at the fantastic terrain ahead. The trails have been rerouted for habitat restoration by Indy Parks since Blue Spirit was written, so some of the directions aren’t quite right, but if you follow this trail, you’ll certainly get to the frogmen’s boggy pool at the bottom, you can’t miss it.





Smelly and partially stagnant, this mosquito breeding ground is where Skye and her friend first encounter Queenie’s comical but deadly frogmen footmen.

There’s also a geocache centered near this spot called “The Forbidden Pool”, named for place in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. I found the cache, too.





In 2003, this looked a little different. It was more as described by Skye: “Just as in the dream, several paths converged at the top of the hill, each marked with a stone, and inside that ring of stones was a smaller ring of stones, each big enough to sit on as a lumpy natural seat.” It was this place I brought Amy when I proposed. She said, “you’re joking” first, but then accepted.

These days, the outer circle isn’t so circular, and the inner circle is just a huddle of stones, but it’s still a magical place.

Holliday Park appears in a few more chapters throughout the book, and is the most visual of the locales Skye visits.  I’m fortunate to live near the park, and it was fun to retrace Skye’s steps tonight to take you for a virtual tour.

If you want to visit the park in person, check out www.hollidaypark.org.  Watch out for the invisible frogmen!

Blue Spirit Giveaway

So, as part of Red Tash’s Hoosier Horror Blog Hop, I’ve decided to try the Goodreads giveaway program for my book, Blue Spirit.  It’s simple, you just log into Goodreads account and click on a book in the giveaways section you’d like to win, to be sent to you for free.

Here’s mine:

So far, there are already 44 people interested in this giveaway!  If you sign up to win it, please check the “to read” box to give my book a little bump.

The book follows the adventures of Skye McLeod, a girl with Second Sight – she can see into a dark spirit world, but only when tipsy. Starbucks barista by day, vampire roleplayer by night, Skye finds she must protect her friends from very real dangers lurking on the other side of shadows.

If you want to find out more about the book, get a free sample of it, or heck, go crazy and blow $2.99 to have your very own Kindle copy, check out the Amazon Blue Spirit listing!

Paranormal Investigation and Me

Hello, and welcome to the Hoosier Horror Blog Hop! I’ll be posting an entry here every day from October 1st through 5th.  Be sure to click on the link and explore the other fantastic Indiana bloggers, authors and other folks who are crazy about Halloween, the paranormal, and all things spooky in Indiana.

I’ll start by talking about paranormal investigations.  In 2003, my wife Amy found an organization called the Indiana Ghost Trackers, people devoted to looking in old houses, theaters, cemeteries, under rocks, etc, for ghosts.  I’ll be honest and admit it sounded a bit crazy to me.  At the time, she didn’t drive, so she asked me to take her to one of their meetings at the Indianapolis chapter. Oh yes, it seemed these nuts had whole chapters all over the state.  Wow.

I resisted the idea. I didn’t think I wanted to be involved with a roomful of mixed nuts like that. I said that if she planned to go again, she might want to try to arrange a carpool with others.  I was dragged kicking and screaming, more or less.

But then we got there, and the people seemed more or less sane, intelligent, excited and friendly.  They talked about interesting things like dowsing and past ghost hunts and techie equipment they used on a ghost hunt.  Then we all got to go out on a hunt, right then, out in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, to an old pauper’s cemetery, a supposedly haunted bridge, and to try to find an unmarked civil war cemetery. We took lots of pictures, and did recordings where we asked questions to the air, hoping for a response when played back, and had flashing, beeping EMF detectors as possible aids to our human senses.

I was hooked.  I couldn’t wait to go back the next month. And the next…  Over the next eight years, we made many of our best friends, had adventures, and had grew with the organization, learning how to lead and educate new people coming in just as we had.

Amy and I let our membership lapse at the end of 2010 for a variety of reasons, but we still both have a fascination with the paranormal and with historical places in and around Indiana.  My first three novels feature a ghost hunter protagonist, and I wrote about many of the places Amy and I visited with the Indiana Ghost Trackers. The ghost stories in those books are fictional, but many are based on real events.

Over the next few days, I plan to post some real ghost hunting stories, and where possible, include excerpts from my Road Ghosts novels that go along with them. I think it’ll be fun!

P.S. Context was fun, wonderful, and exhausting.  I KNOW I will have more news about that to post.

P.P.S. I am doing a Goodreads book giveaway of a copy of Blue Spirit… though since I just extended the deadline to the end of October, so it has to be approved by Goodreads again, hopefully will be open later today.

Context schedule

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be attending Context SF convention this week!  From Friday, September 28th to Sunday, September 30th, I’ll be road-tripping to Columbus, Ohio for fun times with friends (old and new).  What is Context?  Well, they say they are “…a friendly convention focused on speculative fiction literature and related games, comics and films.” And this is a convention very much focused on the written word, not so much other media. Writers and readers and publishers mingle and talk about their favorite genre fiction, buy and sell books, and network with each other.

I have to say special thanks to Hydra Publications for offering me table space to sell my books in the dealer room!  So, this year, I will be freed from table-sitting in the dealer room to wander and participate in panel discussions. Here’s what I’ll be doing:

The Science of Yeast Friday, 9pm in the Madison Room.  I have to admit, I am super excited about this panel.  My friend, PhD biochemist Trista Robichaud, came up with this idea and I was honored to be invited!  She will be dishing out the real science, and I’ll be telling the how-tos of homebrewing, along with a few funny personal stories.

Re-inventing “Once Upon a Time”: The Modern Fairy Tale Saturday, 8pm in the Fairfield Room. This is going to be fun.  Of course I’ll talk about my modern fairy tale, Blue Spirit, but also about the stuff I’ve loved to read that influenced me.  Also, some newer literary infatuations along those lines (hint: I’m looking at you, Red Tash). I’m honored to be sitting on the panel with Addie King,  Mindee Arnett, and Guest of Honor L.E.Modesitt.

Fun Diseases For Your Characters Sunday, 1pm in Short North. I will be on the panel with Mary Turzillo, and Brick Marlin and my friend Lucy Snyder. I may want to hold off on lunch until after this one’s over, since my skin’s already crawling in anticipation with what the others come up with. Me, I’m going to describe a paranormal disease afflicting characters in my Road Ghosts novels. Might contain spoilers…

A Simple Source: Plotting Based on a Single Object Sunday, 2pm in the Pickaway Room. Ahhh the MacGuffin, whether a certain Ring of Power, a sculpture of a bird of prey, or a persnickety droid containing dangerous information, plotting based on an object is a standard in genre fiction.  Characters gotta WANT something, so why not a shiny just-out-of-reach MacGuffin?  But how to do it well?  That’s what I’ll be talking about with Steven Saus, Lawrence C. Connolly, and David L. Day.

It’s going to be a great time. I hope to see you there!

Conventions 2012

It’s a big year for conventions for me this year! Here are the ones I’ve been to, and the ones I plan to go to this year:

Mo*Con - Back in March, I went to this little but powerful convention for the second time.  It’s put on by the Indiana Horror Writers, and is focused on horror, speculative fiction, religion, and many other topics.  It’s a cozy gathering of writers and readers and publishers.  Somehow, everyone’s your friend at Mo*Con, and even an introvert like me can feel at home and make new connections. I got to visit with Janet Harriet and Jason Sizemore from Apex Books and Michele Lee and met cool new people like John Edward Lawson. It’s a lot of fun, and I hope to return for a third year in 2013.

InConJunction - Amy and I went to this with our daughter Sarah and our roomie Helen.  It’s the 4th year Amy and I have gone.  The show had a bigger, better dealer room that incorporated authors this year, though I was not there in an authorly capacity.  We had a great time at the Five Year Mission concert and Sarah and I made fools of ourselves doing a bad Karaoke of “Kung Fu Fighting”.

Gen Con Indy – I’ve been going to Gen Con since 1987, and have missed only a couple of years. It’s always a crazy fun time with 50,000 of my people – gamers, geeks and other freaks. This was Amy’s first year of going all four days, and she had a good time!  In the past few years, there’s been a quiet revolution going on, a real writing track has sprung up.  I admit I did not take as much advantage of this as I meant to, but Gen Con is mind-bogglingly huge and confusing, and I came down with Con Crud on Saturday morning, so that kind of put a damper on my plans.  But if you are a writer and a gamer, I HIGHLY recommend Gen Con, you can combine both of your loves.  The author alley was bigger and better than I’ve ever seen it, and I got pounced on by Maurice Broddus and ran into Jerry Gordon and the Apex folks as a random encounter.  We also went with roomie Helen to see Five Year Mission, and they rocked out to a big, enthusiastic crowd of Gen Con folks.

6th Annual Indianapolis Paranormal Meet & Greet – I set up shop along with Michael West and RJ Sullivan, selling my books to the paranormal enthusiasts – of which I am one – under a tent at this fun outdoor mini-festival.  Hundreds of ghost geeks showed up to represent their own teams or to hobnob with others. I had a lot of great conversations with people who stopped by to ask about my books, and I got to visit with some old friends who were there as well. The lovely and talented Renee Graham of Dead Speak Radio got me up on stage to talk about my stuff and the books my Indiana Horror Writers friends had brought.  I even survived the experience.

That Book Place Labor Day Book Sale and Author Signings – The tattered remains of hurricane Isaac may have kept people away from this event, but I had a lovely time hanging out with RJ Sullivan, Stephen Zimmer and Rodney Carlstrom of Seventh Star Press as well as chatting with the brilliant and charismatic Red Tash and her husband Tim. Thanks to Frank Hall of Hydra Publications and That Book Place for hosting this event and inviting me.

Context – Some of my IHW friends and I are going to trek out to Columbus, OH again for this wonderfully bookish speculative fiction convention. This year, I plan to have books hosted at the Hydra / That Book Place table (thanks for the offer, Frank!) while I buzz around as part of as many panels as I possibly can.  My dazzling scientist friend, Trista Robichaud and I are doing one in particular on the science of yeast (aka how to homebrew beer and wine, and why it works). That will be a lot of fun!  I’m also looking forward to being more of an attendee than last year, since I’ll be freed from table duties.

Starbase Indy – I never thought I’d be going to a Star Trek convention, but I went last year to see Five Year Mission (yes, that’s the third time I’ve mentioned them, shut up, I’m obsessed and I know it), but found it to be easily as fun as InConJunction, and Amy and I made new friends and had a lot of fun. I guess I should have realized that Trek fans are my kind of people as well. It’s a convention centered around Star Trek fandom, but not limited to that show.

Whew! That’s a lot of cons!  If you’re going to either of the remaining conventions, look me up.  Next year, I will be more organized about posting here where I will be.

Blog Hop!

Fellow dark fantasy author Red Tash has invited me to be a part of her blog hop! This of course reminds me that I’ve been bad about posting here, and solemly vow that I will fix that.

Look for posts about recent and upcoming events, and my musings about this year’s NaNoWriMo.  (Are you doing NaNo this year?  You should! It’s insane fun, and it is a GREAT motivator to get writing!)

See you soon.