Matt Moore's Blog, page 4

Workshop on November 21: Short Story Writing

I will be teaching a writing workshop on short stories along with the amazing Lydia Peever at the November 21st meeting of the Ottawa Independent Writers.

The details:

WHEN: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 @ 7PM (doors at 6:30)

WHERE: Hintonburg Community Centre, 1064 Wellington Street, Ottawa

HOW LONG: 2 hours

COST: $10 payable at the event (free to members of the Ottawa Independent Writers)

Why take this workshop?

Have you always wanted to write a short story? Or are you looking to improve your skills? You’re not alone.

Short stories can be deceptively complicated little beasts. I’ve known a number of novelists say they’re harder than novels. This workshop will break down how short stories work, where to find inspiration, techniques to turn that inspiration into the story you want to tell, and how to get them published.

Meet and greet begins at 6:30, workshop at 7 p.m. Coffee, tea and snacks are included. If you’re not a member of the Ottawa Independent Writers, the $10 fee can go toward your OIW membership if they wish to join.

There is plenty of parking at the rear of the Community Centre.

 

Rest in peace, John Dunsworth

Heartbroken to learn John Dunsworth, Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys, has passed. Dunsworth’s portrayal Jim Lahey was tragic, complicated, sometimes inspiring, often humourous, and always indispensable in the storytelling. The perfect antagonist.

What’s remarkable is if you were asked to pick one word to describe Lahey, what would it be? “Drunk”? “Asshole”? “Tragic”? How about gay? Too often, “the gay one” is the defining characteristic of a gay character on television. (Hi, Riverdale!) Jim’s homosexuality was never his defining characteristic, and his rocky relationship with Randy was treated with no more or less focus, humour or respect than any other.

And how about “driven”? Lahey loved the park. While we side with the Boys, I think if a lot of us lived in Sunnyvale we might side with Lahey in keeping the gun-shooting, loutish drug dealers away from us and our kids.

Lahey was never a monster, but always his own worst enemy. Sometimes the voice of reason, sometimes the voice of The Liquor. But always the voice of shitisms.

Rest in Peace, Jim.

In the meantime, I invite you to read a blog post about why Trailer Park Boys is a much better show than it might appear on the surface.

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Writing workshop: “Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats” at CAN-CON on Oct 13 in Ottawa, ON

I will be teaching a writing workshop on how to create and maintain tension in your story at CAN-CON in Ottawa, Ontario.

WHEN: Friday, October 13, 2017 @ noon

HOW LONG: 2 hours

FORMAT: Lecture with group exercises and hand-outs

COST: $20

REGISTER: CAN-CON website (and take a look at the workshops)

Why take this workshop?

We all want our stories to be page-turners that readers can’t put down.

But have you been getting rejections like “Just didn’t grab me” or feedback saying it “Started too slow”? Do you have trouble figuring out what your main character should do next? Does your story start great and ends with a bang, but gets bogged down in the middle?

This workshop will help.

How will it help?

Tension is more than short, clipped sentences, the “ticking clock” or cutting between scenes. It’s making readers want need dying to know what happens next. This all comes from how you reveal and conceal information, and increase the stakes for your character. It’s not gimmicks, tricks or “on page 14, reveal the conflict” formulas. It’s solid writing techniques that can be used in any genre and any length of story.

What will you get out of it?

We’ll discuss:

How to structure scenes and the overall story so readers will keep turning pages
Techniques to make sure there’s always several things threatening your main character, driving them through the story
The various kinds of antagonists working against your main character, and why they are such a threat
How to keep upping the stakes if your character fails
How to stop using clichés, tricks and gimmicks that actually remove tension from your story

 

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Story out in new anthology The Sum Of Us

[image error]I have a new story out in the anthology The Sum Of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound. “Good-bye is that Time between Now and Forever” is a brief story about a daughter travelling with her father to an appointment for doctor-assisted suicide. Except in this world, the dead rise.

The theme of The Sum Of Us is the burden that caregivers carry. Often forgotten or not valued, caregivers face challenges that too-often go unrecognized. This anthology hopes to change that. And part of the money raised from sales will go to support programs provided by Canadian Mental Health Association.

With a cover by Samantha Beiko and stories by friends Hayden Trenholm, Sandra Kasturi and Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, you can find links to where you can order the book on The Sum Of Us page on the Laksa Media site.

Cover for my short story collection It's Not the End and Other Lies released

I’m very happy to show you the cover for my debut short story collection It’s Not the End and Other Lies. Published by ChiZine Publication (CZP), it is scheduled to be released in April 2018. The cover is by Erik Mohr, who has been doing the covers for CZP since the beginning.

After years of admiring CZP’s work, I am honoured and humbled to be joining their roster of writers.

More to come as a release date and table of contents is finalized.

Cover for my short story collection It’s Not the End and Other Lies released

I’m very happy to show you the cover for my debut short story collection It’s Not the End and Other Lies. Published by ChiZine Publication (CZP), it is scheduled to be released in April 2018. The cover is by Erik Mohr, who has been doing the covers for CZP since the beginning.

After years of admiring CZP’s work, I am honoured and humbled to be joining their roster of writers.

More to come as a release date and table of contents is finalized.

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Writing workshop: “Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats” at Limestone Genre Expo on June 3 in Kingston, ON

I will be teaching a 2-hour writing workshop on how to keep readers on the edges of their seats at the Limestone Genre Expo in Kingston, Ontario on Saturday, June 3, 2017. It will start at 3PM.

Why should I take this workshop?

This workshop is for writers of all genres who want their stories to be page-turners that readers can’t put down. If you have been getting rejections or feedback like “Started too slow” or “Just didn’t grab me”, this workshop is for you.

There’s more to maintaining tension than just writing short, clipped sentences, the “ticking clock” or cutting between scenes. Stories, and the scenes within them, have a structure. (And do not confuse structure, which is descriptive, with formula, which is prescriptive.) That is, we are introduced to a scene, something changes for our characters, and they move on to the next scene. This can involve saving the universe or looking for their car keys. To create tension, you need to understand how the pieces of this structure work—plot, pacing, characters, conflict, etc.

We’ll look at things like:

How to end a scene in a way that makes the reader want to keep reading, but by giving a pay-off and not “cheating”?
What kind of threats and challenges can you throw at the main character that aren’t tired, clichéd or too easy?
Who or what is working against your main character?
What is on the line if your main character fails?

I hope to see you there!

Schedule for Limestone Genre Expo 2017

Here’s my schedule for the Limestone Genre Expo, a multi-genre convention taking place June 3 – 4 in Kingston, Ontario. This is a new and growing convention that I hope you’ll check out if you’re in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto or upstate New York.

One highlight is a workshop on Saturday about how to build tension in your stories. Learn about about it in the blog post I wrote for when I taught it at CAN-CON in 2015. I’ll also be doing a reading from The Sum Of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound, a great new anthology about the burdens caregivers must bear. My story, “Good-by Is That Time Between Now and Forever”, is about how do we care for the elderly and terminally ill in a world where the dead never stay dead.

Saturday

10:00 – 11:00: A Bleak Future: Post-Apocalyptic And Dystopian Fiction (Room 1020)
1:00 – 2:00: True Crime Leads to Crime Fiction (Room 1020)
2:00 – 3:00: Why We Need Tales of Vampires, Werewolves and Ghosts (Room 1020)
3:00 – 5:00: Workshop – Keeping Readers on the Edge of Their Seats (Room 1040)

Sunday

11:00 –12:00: Oh the Horror! (Room 1010)
3:00 – 4:00: Reading – “Good-by Is That Time Between Now and Forever” from The Sum Of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound (Room 1030)
4:00 – 5:00: Historical Fantasy: Facts vs Imagination (Room 1010)

 

Schedule for Ad Astra 2017

[image error]Here’s my schedule for Ad Astra 2017, a sci-fi/horror/fantasy convention happening this weekend in Richmond Hill, Ontario (just outside Toronto). Some good horror programming on here!

I will also be doing a reading, but the timing for that is TBD.

Friday

9:00 – 10:00: REVISITING JOHN CARPENTER

Richmond B

John Carpenter’s films have always had an audience in fandom, but recent years have seen a critical reappraisal of his work. In the words of Guillermo del Toro: “Carpenter creates masterpiece after masterpiece and they are often ignored.” Films like Halloween and The Thing are definitive horror films, but are they more relevant to cinema as a whole than previously thought? What other works of Carpenter deserve a closer viewing? (with James Bambury, Beverly Bambury, David Clink, Adam Shaftoe-Durrant)

Saturday

11:00 – 12:00: UNSETTLING THE READER AND CREATING FEAR IN HORROR

Richmond A

Works of horror necessarily disturb their readers with feelings of unease, revulsion, and fear. Easy to say, hard to do. What do horror authors do to create the negative emotions their readers are seeking? (with Derek Künsken, Jon Oliver, Alexandra Renwick)

6:00 – 7:00: UNSETTLING THE READER AND CREATING FEAR IN HORROR

Aurora

Publishers describe novels as a “supernatural thriller” or “novel of terror”, but is no one saying “horror” anymore?  Did the 80s heyday, and eventual burn-out, of horror novels ruin the term? Or maybe the onslaught of remakes of 80s horror film? Why aren’t we saying “horror” anymore? (with Anne Bishop, Beverly Bambury, Dean Italiano, Jen Frankel)

Sunday

2:00 – 3:00: FANTASY FROM TRILOGIES TO TELEVISION SERIES

Oakridges

Fantasy in the 1970’s and earlier was usually a stand alone book or a trilogy at the most.  Now it’s a megaseries of books often with a movie or television tie-in.  Once the little sibling of science fiction fantasy now dwarfs its sibling.  How did this happen? (with Jeff Beeler, Brandon Draga, Nicholas Eames, A.A. Jankiewicz)

A Plague of Immortality

It’s always a thrill when someone reviews your story and zeroes in precisely on the themes and ideas you were looking to explore. My hat’s off to Derek Newman-Stille for this review, where he barely touches on plot and nicely sums up the ideas of immorality, change and conflict through the lens of less-than-ideal small town life.

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

A review of Matt Moore’s “Innocence Prolonged, and Overcome” in Lazarus Risen (Bundoran, 2016)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Contagion narratives have been increasingly popular in our fiction, exploring the human fear of the microorganism, a tiny predator that can consume us without being seen. However, what happens when a virus gives us what we think we want? We are also a society who fears ageing, so what if a virus can end ageing?

In Matt Moore’s “Innocence Prolonged, and Overcome”, a contagion named the Grail Virus has spread,, killing the vast majority of people that come into contact with it, but granting immortality to a select few people. Because the virus is deadly to most people, this select group of immortals, frozen at the age of infection, have been cut off from the rest of society, quarantined in a small town.

Moore explores the image that is often projected onto small…

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