Ned Hayes's Blog, page 81
October 7, 2014
"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the...
"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the day before she died, my mother took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea—the thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the rhythm never ceasing. And she taught me something: strange and secret words in a foreign tongue, a lilting singsong cadence to it."
PHOTO: Sunrise Wave at Popham Beach, Maine | Arlo West
October 6, 2014
"Dawn is a breath of frigid air as someone pulls aside the...
"Dawn is a breath of frigid air as someone pulls aside the sackcloth. I open my eyes from a dream of Nell. I know who killed you, I tell her. But it is only a dream, the face I seem to recognize evaporates as I wake. Night is fading from the sky, and a last faint star etches a bright line. It falls off the edge of the ethered darkness, a light winking out."
October 5, 2014
TWELVE Terrifying Two Sentence Horror Stories
I found a thread on Reddit that asked this question: “What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences?” I posted the best ones I found, as well as one more scary tale I created on my own. See if you can figure out which one is mine!
With Halloween right around the corner, these two-sentence terrors fit the month perfectly! Happy Halloween!
1.
“My daughter won’t stop crying and screaming in the middle of the night. I visit her grave and ask her to stop, but it doesn’t help.”
Image Credit: Fivvr
2.
I woke up to hear knocking on glass. At first, I thought it was the window until I heard it come from the mirror again.
Image Credit: Vampyr Fangs
3.
I can’t move, breathe, speak or hear and it’s so dark all the time. If I knew it would be this lonely, I would have been cremated instead.
Image Credit: Public Domain
4.
After working a hard day, I came home to see my girlfriend cradling our child. I didn’t know which was more frightening, seeing my dead girlfriend and stillborn child, or knowing that someone broke into my apartment to place them there.
Image Credit: Dead Girl (film)
5.
My sister says that mommy killed her. Mommy says that I don’t have a sister.
Image Credit: Universal
6.
“I can’t sleep,” she whispered, crawling into bed with me. I woke up cold, clutching the dress she was buried in.
Image Credit: Cemetery Guide
7.
I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy, there’s somebody on my bed.”
Image Credit: Flickr
8.
A girl heard her mom yell her name from downstairs, so she got up and started to head down. As she got to the stairs, her mom pulled her into her room and said, “Don’t go, honey — I heard that, too.”
Image Credit: Random Geekings
9.
Yesterday, my parents told me I was too old for an imaginary friend and I had to let her go. They found her body this morning.
Image Credit: DeviantArt
10.
In the early morning, I could feel the cat purring against my side, nestled up against me in bed, but the cat smelled of blood. I woke slowly remembering that I had tortured that cat to death last Sunday, and scattered the body parts across the construction site.
Image Credit: DeviantArt
11.
The last thing I saw was my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushed her long rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I sat bolt upright, relieved it was only a dream, but as I saw my alarm clock read 12:06, I heard my closet door creak open.
Image Credit: DeviantArt
12.
The doctors told the amputee he might experience a phantom limb from time to time. Nobody prepared him for the moments though, when he felt cold fingers brush across his phantom hand.
Image Credit: MNN
TWELVE Terrifying Two Sentence Horror Stories was originally published on NedNote
“I can see her now. On the day we take the forest path to the...
“I can see her now. On the day we take the forest path to the deep stream beside the alder copse. There a plover calls in the deep woodsy stillness, and then a pair of martins dart across the over-grown path. Through the trees can be seen the thick and fast-moving line of flowing water, a steep bank beneath our feet and flowering at the edge of the water, the purple loosestrife and meadowsweet of spring.”
October 4, 2014
"Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other."
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (via jacob—kurtz)
October 3, 2014
Book Quote:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal...
Book Quote:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is no road at all. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country and paths that lead to other places. Hob is taking us beyond the bounds of the known world.”
(PHOTO: Christine Gunn)
"My parents would frisk me before family events. Before weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, and what..."
- Neil Gaiman (via observando)
October 2, 2014
books-tea-wanderlust:
bookslooks:
New edition of Jane Eyre...
New edition of Jane Eyre from Folio Society. It’s perfect.
I need this.
October 1, 2014
Publishing in an Era of Change
I have a publisher. I like my publisher, although they are smaller than the Big 5 publishers. We get along pretty well, and I’ve appreciated their work on my novel Sinful Folk, which has received great publicity from my publisher’s marketing department.
I’ve also self-published other material under the name Nicholas Hallum, and I’ve enjoyed that experience of working on material that I entirely control.
However, in this era of increasing chaos and change in publishing, it’s interesting to see some people — like publishing veterans Mike Shatzkin and Aaron Shepherd — fundamentally misunderstand the mind-set of the many authors (both traditionally published and indie-published) who signed the largest petition ever signed by a single group of authors (8,000 and still counting).
Fundamentally, I think most authors see themselves as a group united in their obectives of A) Making a living at writing, B) Telling a story to interested readers.
The world that currently exists in publishing — mostly comprised of the Big 5 — is enormously unfair to authors and is antithetical to both of the stated goals above.
Authors who some see as “attacking” publishers are asking for the rights of all authors — as a profession — to accomplish their goals.
Authors as a group — a profession — are finally feeling their power and are trending toward a unity against contracts and policies that will hinder their shared goals as a profession.
If you are a plumber, you tend to like things good for plumbers as a profession. The same is true for writers.
If you are a writer, you’ll tend to like the self-publishing clarity of monthly payments, control over rights, etc. — those writers who don’t like those things will be perceived as “scabs.”
That’s exactly the position Authors United is putting itself in right now.
Marc Cabot recently posted a precisely appropriate quote about the recent uproar:
“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”
— Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)
Publishing in an Era of Change was originally published on NedNote
