Aaron Frale's Blog, page 19

Footfalls on Creaking Floorboards – Part 2 #Horror #Halloween

Angela stepped into the darkness of the basement. The floor creaked, and she could feel it bend under her weight as if it would snap under the pressure. The next step was equally as perilous. The darkness closed in around her as she went further and further down. She thought about her media arts instructor. He was an older man with wild Einstein-like hair. He always wore a tweed suit like he was a stuffy professor at an aging institution that was relic of the past. Instead, Mr. Harrison, was a media arts teacher at a local high school that hired him because he decided to retire from his thirty year career at the local television news station to pursue a “nobler” profession.

He would stand at the front of the class with an ancient slide projector. Her high school was probably the only one left in America that used physical slides. After the school installed a state of the art computer and projection system into every classroom, Mr. Harrison would still dust off the slide projector and use that instead. The new machine had a layer of dust on the keyboard. Her teacher would click between slides, mostly from his personal collection and explain some aging media concept. That’s when Angela realized that he probably didn’t retire from TV but was probably forced out when the television stations were required to upgrade to HD. He never adapted to the future.

Earlier that day, she was falling asleep to the cha-chink noise that emitted from the machine in between slides when an interesting image appeared on the screen. It was a picture of the stairs she was walking down this very moment. At the bottom where the concrete basement floor gave way to darkness, there was a ghostly figure staring at the photographer.  It was huddled on the floor with its neck craned to stare at the intruder at the top of the steps. It was an eerie sight.

“You’ll notice,” Mr. Harrison said in his nasal, dry tone. “The image here displays a pretty convincing picture of the supposedly haunted Wellington house down on east end. This photograph was submitted to the station as proof of the haunting.”

The students all knew the stories. Most of the class road past the house on bikes when they were kids. They would peddle faster until the house was a safe distance behind them when they got near. A few people here and there claimed to have entered the house and had all sorts of tales of bleeding walls and unearthly spirits. However, it was also well known bullshit.

Cha-chink. The next slide was a close up on the ghost itself. A decaying man appeared to be crying out in pain.

“You’ll see the ghostly image is clearly a picture of a real person, perhaps a leper, that was made ‘transparent’ by lightening the…”

And Mr. Harrison then began to describe a long, labor-intensive process that could be done in seconds with photoshop and a laptop. Two objects that Mr. Harrison probably made a point never to own. The class tuned out and fell asleep while he described dark room and film techniques that had a place in a museum more than a classroom. But there was something that interested Angela about the photo. It was something that drew her focus almost immediately. It was so interesting that she had to make up a bullshit excuse after class to see the ghost photo again.

Her eyes had not deceived her. There was a mark on the beam of the basement ceiling above the creature. It was a crisscross of scratches that the paranormal community had called “witch marks.” Those who believed in the legitimacy of the photo explained that the marks were designed to keep the evil trapped in the basement. For those who claimed the photo was a fraud, they explained carvings were designed to make the situation more spooky.

Angela knew that any theory about the origin of the marks was wrong. She knew exactly who carved them. It was her brother, and he had disappeared three years ago.

Footfalls on Creaking Floorboards – Part 1 #webserial #Halloween

The floorboards creaked while Angela tiptoed through the abandoned house. There were decayed shelving units built into the walls casting shadows that danced on the edge of her vision. She didn’t use her cell phone to light her way for fear of drawing too much attention to herself, so she made her way towards the kitchen with only the glow of the moonlight to guide her through the house. Each footfall was accompanied by the moan of the floorboards and the dust floating into her nose.

Her face crinkled as she almost coughed. She stopped, collected herself, pinched her nose, and resisted the oncoming sneeze. After she was sure that there would be no errant evacuation of dust particles from her nostrils, she continued through the house towards the kitchen. A tingle went up her arm as she brushed up against a spider web. She could feel the strands on her arm like tiny bugs crawling on her skin.

There was an abandoned oak table in the dining room adjacent to the living room. Its chairs had disappeared in ages past leaving the table to stay abandoned and forgotten. It had an ornate pattern on the trim that was faded and scratched with age. The remnants of a chandelier hovered over the table like shards locked in a fall from a crumbling tower. She carefully made her way around the table towards the kitchen.

Angela was in the science club at Roosevelt High school. Since she dressed like a pseudo punk pop star with platinum wavy blonde hair, every guy in the science club sputtered like cretins around her. However, she didn’t care about boys, at least not in the way they cared about her. People thought that she cared more about science and school then everyone else. Which was true in some context. She’d rather dive into the source code of a robot that she had been constructing than talk with some drooling boy any day. When she had a goal in mind, she was singularly focused and didn’t stop until she achieved that goal.

That’s why when she crossed the threshold of the dining room to the kitchen, she didn’t let what she saw stop her. The kitchen was old with appliances that looked like they hadn’t been used since the fifties. The decrepit popcorn painted ceiling had a large black grease spot directly over the ancient stove. It had coil burners and big clunky knobs. A dusty pack of matches stood as reminder that igniters didn’t always come with the stove.

There were bones on the floor. Most were gnawed T-bones that looked like the previous owner left each bone to rot after giving it to their dog. A fridge with a round top stood in the corner with a smell emanating from it that made Angela cringe. The kitchen was filthy with stains from who knows what marking the counter tops. Angela quickly made her way through the mess to the door at the other end, the door to the basement.

She opened the door. The hinges cried from neglect. The stairs disappeared into an abyss. She wanted desperately to use her phone to light the way, but she knew that she couldn’t. Angela sucked in her breath and looked back towards the dining room. The shadows danced around the table seeming to warn her “go back.” She turned to the darkness awaiting below.

Angela breathed out a long slow sigh and stepped into the basement, one footfall at a time.

Hayden’s Mistake #newsciencefiction #scifi

Download the third Teristaque Chronicle here.

Hayden’s craft landed on Tek’Tu’Pat’s landing platform on the ocean. Tek was the wealthiest city of Nigramoto, and the landing platform was the largest on the entire planet. At a few hundred kilometers long and one hundred wide, it handled the entire off world transport. Every commercial, civilian, and military craft landed in different sections of the mega platform. It was the largest structure on the planet, and its silver sheen could be seen from orbit.

Freighters packed with the black decrand ore were lined in rows waiting for their military escorts for their trip into space. Frigates and squadrons of fighters flew in formation around each freighter. Since humans had spread to over three hundred systems, the energy requirements for human civilization required more energy than a star could produce. Decrand could generate one thousand times more power than solar panels could collect. The human race was powered by decrand, and Hayden was here to protect it.

Hayden was packed into a troop transport with several of his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms. A quick release belt kept him from being tossed from his seat when they dropped from orbit. His troop was a mean looking bunch with scars and the eyes of soldiers who had seen too much. Their power armor made them look larger than life. However, since they weren’t wearing their helmets, their heads looked small compared to their bodies. Sarge’s suit clanged against the metal floor as he stomped through the troops. Underneath the armor, Sarge was built, bald, and mean looking. He was almost more intimidating without the battle gear.

“Everybody suit up,” Sarge yelled. “You think you’re here for a vacation. We are here to work.”

Hayden fumbled for his helmet and wasn’t as quick to gear up. Sarge spotted his fumble, and put his face up to Hayden.

“What’s a matter babyface? You need your mom to help dress you?”

Everyone called Hayden babyface, partially because Hayden looked like he should be in a boy band, and also because he was the new guy. No one liked Hayden, but Hayden knew it was more because he hadn’t earned their respect yet. Until Hayden had a chance to prove himself, he would be the butt of their jokes.

“No sir.” Hayden said. “There is no excuse for this recruit to not be ready, sir.”

“Recruit?” Sarge laughed, “You’re still in boot camp? Last I heard you were a soldier.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes, and came so close to Hayden that he could smell the tobacco on his breath. Hayden didn’t flinch and looked Sarge in the eyes.

“So why don’t you act like a soldier?” Sarge said firmly.

“Yes sir, sir.”

Hayden put on his helmet. He connected the breathing tube in front to the filter mounted in the chest. The heads up display in his field of vision ran through the checks of the various ocular enhancements built into the eye pieces. After they were all in their power armor, they looked inhuman. They had large black eyes and a tube leading from their mouth like a gas mask from ancient times. Hayden understood why the other species called a soldier in his body armor Teristaques. They were a fierce group to behold.

The troop transport landed with a loud clank. Sarge screamed at them, and they all clicked the quick release of their belts and jumped to their feet. The hatch in the back opened, and they all ran down to the platform. The landing platform from the ground point of view was a large flat plane of metal in every direction. In the area around Hayden, there were swarms of troops, hover tanks, fighters, spider walkers, disc rovers, and every military equipment imaginable. The commercial and civilian part of the platform were too distant too see.

Sarge lined up the troops for inspection. His commanding officer, Colonel Dodgery, came shortly after and said, “At ease.”

The men and women of the squad relaxed, and the red haired officer with skin tone of a man who drank too much walked slowly through the ranks. He wasn’t wearing power armor, and was dwarfed by the suited soldiers around him. He pulled a tiny piece of decrand from his pocket. It was no larger than his finger tip, but Hayden could see his muscles straining to hold it up even though his face didn’t register the burden. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

“Decrand, sir.” Hayden said. The other soldiers laughed.

“Did I say you could laugh?” Colonel Dodgery said, and the others became rigid. “Sure that’s what the lab coat jockies call it, but to us it is the heart of civilization. Every member of your family enjoys their lifestyle from this rock. Why are you here soldier?”

“To protect the decrand?”

“You are here to protect our way of life. This is not like the soft inner planets. Out here is the frontier, and you are the law.  Have you ever seen a man bleed out?”

“Only in simulation, sir.”

“Jenkins!”

“Yes sir,” Tomahawk said. He was nicknamed after a weapon he had in his bunk that he claimed could be traced all the way back to his ancestors on Earth. It was a reminder that he came from a long line of warriors. The military was the only life he had known, and the only life he cared about. After the Liberation Wars, he was given some property on Earth, and a retirement settlement to last him a lifetime. He reenlisted the next day.

“Have you ever seen a man bleed out?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where did it happen?”

“A few clicks northeast of here.”

“What did you do?”

“Everything in my power to save him sir.”

“What happened?”

“He died from his wounds, sir.”

“What did you do after that?

“My job, sir.”

“And what’s your job?”

“To protect our way of life.”

“This is not a simulation. We are not on a civilized planet. We are on the border of the Treaty Zone. You may feel like you’re at home when you are in the walls of Tek but rest assured, there are rebels, hostile aliens, and creatures that don’t care about us or the way of life we are trying to protect. We live on the edge so others don’t have too. We are not guarding your mother’s flower garden. We are protecting the most important ore in the universe. If a freighter doesn’t take off every hour, people will starve. I expect the best. I honor those better than that. Dismissed.”

The troop called out their honor cry. Sarge and Colonel Dodgery walked away. The troop began gathering their gear from the transport. Spider, the communications specialist, turned to Tomahawk , “Hey Tommy, you got his speech memorized yet? You certainly know your part.”

Tomahawk gave Spider a rude hand gesture and continued to pack the gear onto the floating platform.

Hayden turned to Spider, “Does he give the same speech every year?”

“Everyday more like it. Every squad of fools like us that ship in from off world.”

“How many times you’ve been here?”

“Since the war ended? I’d say five. With a year off here and there. I’m surprised I’ve made it home each time.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Nigs make a good workforce, but they’re tough mothers. Power armor or not, you turn your back on one. Count yourself dead.”

“Noted,” Hayden said. He had heard similar stories, and read all the debriefs. The local intelligent species, the Nigramotoians, dwarfed humans outside of their power armor.  They were broad shouldered, and strong. One Nigramotoian could flip a hover tank, and puncture power armor with a medieval weapon. They were a fierce species, and it was easy to see why. The gravity on Nigramoto was five times Earth’s gravity. Most planets had nickel and iron in their cores. Nigramoto had a decrand core. An unenhanced human outside their power armor would barely be able to move. Even with the standard issue muscle and bone enhancements each soldier received in boot camp, a human outside their armor was sluggish compared to a Nigramotoian.

They pushed the hover platform with their gear towards the edge of the landing strip. A group of battle mechs towered over them in formation. They were black with the United Planets of Earth colors. Each had a variety of missile, plasma, projectile, and laser weaponry. The mechs sat three people in the armored chest plate, one pilot, and two weapon specialists. They were deadly machines, but Hayden didn’t like cockpits. He didn’t like feeling restricted. While ground soldiers had the highest morality rate, he at least had the freedom a mech pilot could never have.

Hayden grew up in the cramped Los Angeles mega-city back on Earth. His father and three brothers all shared a four hundred square-foot modular apartment. The apartment would convert to whatever space they needed. Beds would descend from the walls at night. Showers would sprout in the morning. A living area rose during the day. A dining area shifted from the wall for meal time. Hayden’s life was regulated out of necessity. It was no wonder why three of the four children joined the military. Hayden’s oldest brother died in the Libration Wars. His frigate was caught in the path of a planetary bombardment, and his body burnt in the atmosphere of Sallax Prime. That left Hayden and his other brother Joshua, who avoided most of the conflict because he was a mechanic, and Hayden missed the conflict because he was too young. The war had ended by the time he could enlist.

Hayden’s brother back home, Paul, was an English teacher. He took care of their father who had retired from the desalinization plant after forty grueling years of labor. Most of the muscles and joints were replaced several times from the manual labor. If only his father had access to the enhancements available to military personnel, he could have had a less sedentary retirement. Either way, the arrangement worked out. Paul was never good at sports, and always was the odd brother out. It didn’t come as a surprise that most of the family would be light years away from the congested planet of Earth.

His group got to the edge of the platform, and Tek’Tu’Pat spread out before them. The city was alien in its architecture. Unlike humans, who built large vertical structures, the buildings were ziggurat shaped and communal. The buildings all connected more like growths, than like Earth buildings that were all separate. Various floating ships, vehicles, and hover discs were buzzing around the city like flies.

When humans first arrived on Nigramoto, the Nigramotoians were just entering their computer age. The cities were still really small with no more than ten million at the largest. Hayden even heard rumors that there were still Nigramotoians who lived in villages, living the lifestyle of their ancient ancestors.  By comparison, there were pockets of humanity who still lived in tribes up until technology swept the planet, and began creating the first union governments, that marked the beginning of the end of tribal life.

The most breath taking sight was the wilderness around the city. There was actual uninhabited land unlike Earth, where uninhabited land was very scarce and almost always reserved for the ultra rich. Part of what inspired Hayden to sign up for the military was a trip to Colorado with his father and brothers as a boy. Parts of the Colorado Rockies were some of the few public places on Earth with natural wildlife. The parks were tightly regulated. They were monitored with satellite, and the passes to visit the park were so rare people had to wait years for a chance to visit, or have considerable wealth to buy out a person’s spot in line.

While the passes were only limited to one per family, nature reserve brokers facilitated the transfer of passes from families who ran into money trouble before their wait. Hayden’s father held fast to his pass. Despite the offers and the times where he nearly sold their one and only chance to see the wilderness, his father didn’t budge. The Colorado Rockies were the most memorable moment of his life. Years later, Hayden signed up for the foot patrol if only for the chance to see the wilderness again. Here on Nigramoto, as far from civilization as he could get, Hayden might get a chance to walk among the trees again. The time spent on lifeless rocks, and cramped spaces seemed worth it. The sight before his eyes was an endless expanse of forest.

To continue reading click here.

#PotAD 5 – Welcome to the Machine by #PinkFloyd

Thus begins the egregious amount of references to Pink Floyd in my novel Playlist of the Ancient Dead. There isn’t a single band with more songs that appear in the novel. Not only are they one of my favorites, but they are the best band of all time period, no further reason to argue. So there you go Internet, I’m stating my opinion as if it were fact. No one has ever done that before!

As for why I chose the song for this chapter, let’s talk about Caroline for a moment. I feel that Caroline never had any doubt in her mind that she wanted to go on the adventure. She’s the type of person who would see a pit and jump inside just to see what’s at the bottom. Whereas most people would stand clear of the abyss that invites her inside. If she sees too willing to follow Murphy down the rabbit hole, it’s because she’ll go were others dare not. And the warehouse knows this about her and opens for her.

Chapter five is where she tries to fake having a logical mind, and convincing herself not to go (which she does poorly). She tries to do what a smoker who always fails to quit does. They go through the list of reasons why they shouldn’t smoke even though they know fully that they are going to light up after they go through the list. I feel the character in Welcome to the Machine knows he’s making a deal with devil and does it anyway. Caroline knows she is doing something dangerous but does it anyway thus welcoming her to the Machine or more specifically, the maw of a warehouse full of dark forces but the machine sounds better.

I Ain’t No Folla Back Girl #amwriting

The twitter verse has a measure of success, the follower. Having a lot of followers means you are awesome! 50k followers means that there is a small city worth of people who hang on your every word and retweet your brilliant brainerisms (or Brianisms if you retweet your buddy Brian a lot). However, despite the overwhelming number of people receiving your twitter feed, you’re maybe lucky if one person favorites a post, and that person found it through a hashtag. That’s why I don’t follow people merely on the fact that they follow me.

What really matters in the social networking world are engaged followers. If person with 50k followers is following 50k people themselves, what are the chances that they’ll see one tweet among the thousands posted that day by their daily deluge of followers? A new follower means more when they followed you because they wanted to read your tweets rather than a numbers padding exchange.

Gwen Stefani does not approve of mindless following.

I always seem to get new followers who follow many people themselves. They always unfollow me after a couple days when I don’t follow them back. Having high social networking numbers doesn’t mean anything if most of the people aren’t reading my tweets anyway. I’d rather have twenty people who are engaged, than 5,000 who also follow 5,000.

The secret behind growing your twitter feed with active people is pretty simple, engage your followers. Make sure you stop by their twitter feed to say hi, strike up a conversation, retweet something you enjoy, and most of all, don’t expect anything in return. An retweet pile of unengaged followers does nothing for you. However, a retweet because you think your followers may actually enjoy the material, that’s the key to interaction.

So follow me if you wish, but keep in mind I ain’t no folla back girl.

#PotAD 4 – Werewolves of London by #WarrenZevon

You know when you’re a kid and you hear a song lyric incorrectly, but you swear that your version is the right one, and the fiction turns out to be more wonderful than the truth? Werewolves of London is that song for me. I had always thought that he was saying Werewolves of Thunder. How cool would that be? Werewolves of Thunder! Maybe they could even showdown with the Thunder Cats. Alas, my childhood fantasy of thunder werewolves was not meant to be. However, in a lot of ways, the character of Jasputin Trotsky is much cooler in the story of his head than in reality.

Jasputin was a character brewing long before I decided to get back into writing science fiction again. When we first started dating, my wife had a small 18 pound dog named Jasper. It took one weekend of watching him while she was out of town to earn his love. Now he sleeps on my shoulder as I type this post. When my wife and I first moved in together long before we were married. We got a nice slice of the ghetto near Burton Park. Since the neighborhood on the other side was nicer than ours, we’d muse on our walks about what was going on in the dog’s head.

We had created this inner monologue of this great hero who guards the house and called my wife, mommy, and me, “man”. Since our dog seemed to take every task with a grave sense of importance be it barking at the mailman, or walking through the park, we amused ourselves for hours with a “dog” voice about what Jasper thought about the world. We had visions of our dog sitting in a large stuffy chair in a gentleman’s sitting room, smoking a cigar and sipping cognac, talking about the rise and fall of bone prices. We created mysteries perpetrated by an “m-man” only to be discovered later that it was mailman all along. He was a dog PI named Licks Waggert. A Russian revolutionary named Jasputin Trotsky. A landed gentry named Sniff Barklington with our cat Mura Purmewsmith.

Though Jasper’s appearance in my novel almost never happened. In the first draft, the dog was flavor text for the first chapter. Later on (spoiler alert), I realized that actuators would probably need some helpers who could take the equivalent of the employee corridors of a haunted house. If a building was designed to test, then someone had to reset the test and clean up the bodies. The “friends” were born, and if there was going to be a character from the core group who was destined to join the friends, why not use this larger than life character my wife and I created together. My only regret is that I didn’t get to use more of our silly dog related creations. Maybe one day, I’ll write a dog fantasy novel with a hardened PI named Licks Waggert.

#PotAD 3 – Sharp Dressed Man by the #ZZTop

This song and band are the perfect introduction to Murphy. There is something over-the-top and larger than life about ZZ Top. Like their beards, they don’t do anything halfway. Murphy is not a partial commitment sort of guy. When he finds his focus, it’s all or nothing. Strangely enough, the man in this video is probably the same age as Murphy now:

 

On a completely unrelated note, ZZ Top was my only near death experience going to a concert, and I was at a Black Sabbath with Ozzy reunion tour where you could hear the roar of a massive adrenaline soaked mob echoing through the city streets towards you after their New Years show. Despite having been to metal shows that were banned by Satan, ZZ Top was the one that almost did me in. I was near the front row, and two mosh pits a had broken out on either side of me. In the chaos, I was knocked off my feet and tumbled to ground. The audience began to trample me.

A hand of a very large Native American man picked me up by the scruff of my jacket. He lifted me off my feet and set me back down again. “You better be more careful,” he said as he charged through the mosh pit cheering and screaming. In a daze, I wandered towards the back of the show, and watched the rest the concert from a safe distance. In case you’re reading this, thanks random guy large enough to burrow through a crowd to save a near trample victim. You’re the sharp dressed man.

Kal’s Truth

Click here to get the latest story.

Kal laid in a metal prison cell gasping for air, the sound of her people dying and the village burning still fresh in her mind. Her eyelids were heavy and her body felt like it was buried in sand. The first thing she could remember upon awakening was a human male with gold and silver teeth, and black rot infesting his mouth. He wore a white coat and had a bright instrument that blinded her. Unlike Sarge, his hair was grey and creased like the wrinkles that came with age. But unlike her people, this man had spots. Only later would she learn that humans developed a condition called “liver spots.”

The man in the coat turned and said something to a Teristaque waiting in the background. Her memory was incomplete, like the patchwork of one of her mother’s quilts. Every moment was a snapshot. She was being dragged through a hallway by two Teristaques. Her possessions were locked in a box. Her body was stripped. She was sprayed with a burning liquid. More dragging. Another exam from the human with the rotting gold and silver teeth. Finally, she woke up in a prison cell.

While Kal’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she heard a low grunt from the corner of the room. The grunt sounded like a krikshek beast back home. They were a fierce beast with a dire disposition and two large horns that could impale a villager. Kal attempted to scramble to her feet, but her muscles felt like she was trying to move through a thick goo, and she fell back down.

A creature slid from the shadows. It had a large bug-like body and three spiny appendages. It dragged the lower part of its body on the ground. There were stubs where other limbs should have been. The eyes were hideous, large, and clouded grey. The bug was a shade of brown. It sent shivers down Kal’s spine. She scrambled backward, but was unable to get very far and hit her head on a metal cot. The bang would have hurt if systems weren’t suppressed.

“Don’t be afraid,” the bug said in a deep voice. “You are recovering from sedation.”

“You speak Village Tongue!” Kal said looking for the “universal translator” on what she thought would be a wrist.

“There is a translation field covering the prison,” The bug said.

“What do you mean I was under sedation?” Kal said. She still wasn’t sure about this creature.

“They sedate all criminals during interstellar travel.”

“I am not a criminal!”

The bug laughed. Unlike Sarge, the bug had a slow wheezing laugh. Kal still didn’t quite know what to make of laughter. She had no room for it. The nightmares of her village were too fresh in her mind.

The bug must have sensed that its laughter made her uncomfortable, and stopped. It reached out an appendage to comfort her. “Do not fret my dear. Everyone here believes they are not criminals, and you’ll find that some do belong here even if you do not.”

Kal pushed the thing’s arm away, “I do not need your sympathy.”

She turned to inspect her cell, finding two metal cots. One small cot for her and a large one for her buggy cellmate. The walls were smooth and metal, with bars on the opening. There were two toilet facilities, one for a humanoid of her size and another for something larger. The toilets were located in two coves on the back of the cell for at least a little privacy from her cellmate, though a guard standing on the other side of the bars had a full view of either cove.

“I don’t offer you sympathy my dear, only advice. You will find friends hard to come by in this place.”

“I don’t want your advice either,” Kal snapped.

“As you wish. You could have had worse roommates, you know. Grannork’s cell also had room for one more.”

“Oh yeah? At least Grannork doesn’t talk as much as you.”

“Grannork is Orcandu from the Tristar cluster.”

Sarge had told Kal about the Orcandus. They were brutes, and one of the few species that the Teristaques feared. They were massive creatures of pure muscle with a jagged horn on the center of their forehead and fierce, razor sharp teeth. Rumors spread that Orcandus had mis-wired brains and experienced pain as if it were pleasure. Almost every ritual in their culture was meant to induce pain. Kal shuddered to think about what it might be like to share a cell with one. At least an old-disabled bug could be managed.

The bug finally gave up and dragged itself back to its side of the room. Kal traced the cold metal wall with her fingers. She thought about the village that she practically rejected, even though it had embraced her, despite her differences. Now, she wanted nothing more than to be a part of it again. She thought about the warmth of her bed and the wood grain of the ceiling. She used to see faces in the wood grain and would make up stories about them. Now the ceiling was a smooth metal surface with no defining features. She could almost hear the humming of her mother from the kitchen as she drifted into sleep.

Support independent authors: get the kindle edition here.

#PotAD 2 – Santa Monica by #Everclear

Chapter 2 of Playlist of the Ancient Dead reveals my and Rashid’s disconnect from the rest of the world. Rashid is so hyper focused on the world of physics; pop culture has passed him by. Pop culture also passed me by. When Weird Al’s Mandatory Fun was released, I had not heard any of the original songs lampooned on the album. My wife created a playlist of all the original videos on YouTube, so I would know what Weird Al was parodying before we watched the comedic versions. I realized the original songs had a couple billion views. Somehow, most of the planet Earth had heard these songs that I was about to hear for the first time.

Why not turn that disconnect from the world of pop culture with an out of place opening credit song? Back in the eighties and nineties, I remember almost every movie having a pointless aerial camera view of urban landscape to a song that didn’t fit the movie. Even Groundhog’s Day, one of my favorite movies ever made had the cityscape credit sequence. I decided to choose a song from the last time I knew anything about popular music (the nineties) to not only have a disconnect with popular music, but also because in the back of my brain I’m hearing Santa Monica to pointless aerial footage of Albuquerque. That is why Rashid is from Santa Monica and not Brooklyn like I had originally wrote. But I think California makes sense. With overbearing parents, of course he’d go across the country for college.

In case pop culture has passed you by here is the song:

Did they break up with each other because they were so nineties?

#PotAD 1 – Caroline by the #Espers

I needed to pick the perfect song. If I was going to write a novel where music is the actual plot device, then I had no choice but to embed a playlist into Playlist of the Ancient Dead. The music had to represent parts of my life and fit into the novel. So each chapter heading became a song title. Each song fit it in its own peculiar way, and one song changed the name of the main character. That song was Caroline by the Espers:

 

It wasn’t easy picking Caroline. My main character was named Marissa in the early drafts, and I didn’t want to change it. I was going to change Murphy’s name before I changed Marissa’s. But like all prolific writers, I decided to deal with the problem by ignoring it. The first song in the playlist within the Playlist needed to set the tone of the book, and introduce the main character. But there wasn’t a song about a Marissa that fit that description, so I turned to music to mull the problem over. Often when I felt particularly introspective, I’d listen to a song like Caroline on repeat. One such evening, I noticed a comment on youtube about the Espers:

And that’s when it hit me, I had to name my main character Caroline, and no other song could fit better than Caroline as the first song in the playlist within the Playlist. There is something truly ominous hiding within plain sight of Caroline. It’s a building she walked by every day, yet fails to understand the significance. Not only did I find the song that fits the tone of the story, but I also found a song that would annoy Caroline’s parents. I could hear her parents now, “why’s it got to sound so depressing!”

Caroline only rebelled against the song of her namesake because of all the embarrassment she suffered at baseball games:

 

If you are curious to find out the artists of the rest of the playlist within the Playlist, please follow this blog or one of my social media outlets. You may be surprised by some of the artists on the list.