Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 59
June 28, 2013
#Zombiepalooza Radio Tonight!
Tune in tonight to hear me talk with @Zombiepalooza13 tonight at ten o’clock. I’ll be talking about The Dogs of City Hall and a couple other works in progress in addition to my new #horrorsnippets thing. Join the FB page at http://www.facebook.com/TheDogsofCityHall.
#HorrorSnippet #1
“Johnny!” she shouted. Ann, for a change, was ready to go and here he was nowhere in sight. “Johnny!” she called her husband again. Still no answer.
He’d better not be messing with that bird again, she thought. He’d gotten the South African cockatiel or whatever it was three months ago and had been obsessed with it ever since. Always feeding and playing with it, letting it out the cage so it could walk up and down his arm.
Ann shivered. He’d set the bird on her shoulder unexpectedly once and she’d screamed and almost smooshed it like a bug. In the time since she’d wished several times she had, but she’d only issued the commandment that he never take it out around the baby.
Johnny had even missed work a few times to be with that bird. But after Ann had caught wind she’d threatened to send that ‘flying rat’ as she’d put it at the time, flying over an I-75 overpass.
The time wasn’t even the worst part. The bird was hideous. Warrant cockatiels supposed to be yellow? This one was in odd great Green purple color and it has almost no beak to speak of. And the few times she had actually tried engaging with the bird, to try to love it as her husband did (Ann actually did put forth effort–not like Johnny-sleep-at-the-opera--embarrassing!), she could have sworn she saw teeth lining its triangle of a beak.
It had beady soulless eyes, not that that was so different from any other bird, but they had luminescent rings that followed her around in the dark if Johnny forgot to cover its cage.
“Johnny!”
Ann slipped on an earring, intentionally stomping across the hardwood floor in her heels. It had been three months since they’d been out after dark and she had no intention on being late. Johnny’ s mother had the baby until tomorrow afternoon and Ann wanted to have a nice buzz by ten o’clock.
She stopped by the bottom of the stairs and listened. Not only was he ignoring her she couldn’t hear him even moving up there.
“Johnny, I’m going to leave without you!” She was steamed and let every ounce of it out in her voice. Ann stalked into the powder room to do one last make-up check. She outlined her mouth again and examined her lipstick a little longer and more closely than needed, hoping her husband would awaken from his avian fugue and get down here so they could leave.
Ann blew herself a kiss before turning sideways to see her profile in the red dress. She was hot, she had to give it to herself. The dress clung everywhere it was supposed to and hung loose everywhere else with just enough cleavage exposed. Not bad for a girl who’d popped out a baby a few months ago.
Ann walked into the kitchen for her clutch. The time on the microwave read seven-thirty three. All right, dammit, enough’ s enough. She turned for the stairs.
As she stomped her way up, she made sure to mumble loudly about him, the bird, and where he could shove it. She actually was speaking aloud, but wasn’t paying particular attention to the words coming out of her mouth.
“Maybe you can go to the party with your precious buh–” she began once she’d reached the top of the stairs. Their bedroom was immediately to her left and she’d turned into it and froze.
Johnny’s legs were sticking out of the closet, wearing the black slacks she’d asked him to wear and no socks on his bare feet. He didn’t appear to be moving.
“Johnny?” she said, all of the anger sucked out of her voice and replaced with trickling fear. She leaned slightly against the wall for just a moment before dashing to his side.
Johnny was only thirty years old. His father had a heart problem, he was much too young. She made him get it checked every year and he was always ‘fitter than a fifteen year old’ as he always said.
But there he was. Not moving.
She rushed to the closet, not wanting to see what she was bound to. Johnny had had a heart attack. She hoped it wasn’t too bad, that he’d only lost consciousness. But when she knelt by his side, slipping her hand into his, she saw the bird, still inside its cage–where his head should have been. He looked like he’d been dragged up to it, the ragged neck wound pressing into the bars where the cockatiel was casually nipping away.
Did you like that? Maybe you would like a few of my other stories. Try these.
June 26, 2013
#Horror #Snippets
I’m going to begin writing horror snippets and posting them here. I got the idea from a blogger who is doing the same with erotica. I warn you 2 things, good readers: I dictate into my phone a lot and there could be typos and I steal from myself. If something turns out particularly juicy I may take it and reuse it somewhere else. But I’ll warn you at least.
Let’s just see how far this goes.
#Interview with @Zombiepalooza13
This Friday at ten EST, join me on Zombiepalooza Radio where I’ll be speaking about works in progress, including The Dogs of City Hall, which will be available very shortly. I’ve spoken to Jackie ‘n crew a couple times before and it’s been a blast each time. If you’re hanging around, please tune in!
And as an aside, Dogs will be coming down sometime tomorrow to make way for the eBook.
June 25, 2013
#TheDogsofCityHall Coming Soon!
The current version of my short The Dogs of City Hall is going away soon. I don’t have a date yet, but this title is going to be made available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords for 99¢ and a portion of the sales will go to the Michigan Humane Society. Please download a copy for your e-reader when it comes out.
And it won’t be the exact same story you read if you read it before. I have a few enhancements in mind and this story is going to tie into a larger story arc.
But look for more info here and on the book’s Facebook page.
June 24, 2013
#Writing with Your #Smartphone
Someone asked me how to do this recently and I figured this is the perfect opportunity to share with everyone. Smartphones have become huge conveniences in our daily lives from navigation, banking, reading our favorite websites, to watching television. And there’s no reason writers can’t use it too.
If you have a Droid like I do (sorry, don’t know a whole lot about the iPhone) you can write and maintain several stories at once. Using the Quickoffice app on your phone or Google Drive you can taking your writing on the go. I prefer the Drive route for reasons I’ve gone into before and if you don’t have Quickoffice or would just prefer Drive, here’s what you do:
Go to your app store and type in Google Drive. Even if you can’t download the app you can use it through the internet. Once you have the app installed you’ll need to set up an account or link your existing account. The app will look like this:
Why I like Drive is the versatility it provides. I can write on my phone, my Kindle, or any laptop or PC with an internet connection and my changes are made as I write.
Once you have the app open, it’s pretty self-explanatory from there. You can create files and folders and even import files from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (although editing them is tricky).
But let’s move on to the actual writing portion. You can use your keyboard, obviously, but your smartphone should have a dictation feature. Once you are in your file simply begin talking after you turn this feature on.
Now it’s not perfect. And the older your smartphone or the more background noise or the weaker your battery the less accurate it’ll be. And like all things internet, it’s going to crash from time-to-time. But the auto save feature should keep your losses to a minimum. Unlike Quickoffice which could crash at any moment without warning and you lose everything after your last save. I’ve lost hundreds of words from stories and stopping to save every 50 or so words was a hindrance to the writing process.
I’m going to migrate everything I’m working on to Drive at some point and arrange folders the same as on my flash drive. But that’s enough to get you started!
For more tips on writing, check out my book How to Publish on Kindle, Smashwords, and Nook the Easy Way! on Amazon.
June 19, 2013
What I’m Listening to #TheDrive
For some reason I had a craving to listen to this song. It was one of those ‘not as good as I remembered’ moments. Kind of like when I first saw Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I remember loving it but fell way short of what my memory said it was.
I’m getting together a playlist of stuff I like to listen to. I’m usually on Grooveshark, but I don’t know my handle offhand.
June 10, 2013
#TheDogsofCityHall – Coming Tuesday
Tuesday at 3:30 EST, be sure to stop here to redeem my free short the dogs of City Hall. Imagine, one day at work when you are on your way to lunch and you see one of your fellow coworkers get mauled to death by something that shouldn’t even be alive. As Gary and a few remaining survivors struggle to survive, he also tries to figure out what has happened and how he can get home again.
June 4, 2013
#TheWalkingDead Newsletter
Dispatches From the Set – Gale Anne Hurd (Executive Producer)
The Walking Dead Executive Producer Gale Anne Hurd talks about Season 4′s ravenous new walkers and which characters from the show would make great producers.
Q: Sports teams have a boot camp-like practice to get back in shape for the season. What do you do to get everyone back in the swing of things on the set of The Walking Dead?
A: We have to hit the ground running every season. We do have zombie school every year, so our walkers get up to speed. It’s really more of a winnowing-out process — that extras who are eager to become zombies come in and audition for Greg [Nicotero] and he selects the ones that are most unique and believable. But in general, this is our fourth season, and people are so eager to get back. After the first set-up this year, everyone applauded and cheered.
Q: Every year the walkers show us something new. What can fans expect from Season 4′s walkers?
A: I think we’ll have walkers who are even more ravenous than before. We’re in a world where there are fewer people and more walkers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw that on-screen this season.
Q: What’s been one of the biggest challenges of producing a show like The Walking Dead?
A: We have serious weather issues to contend with. We had one day where there was a torrential downpour and a tree fell on the set, so you just have to roll with stuff like that. Other times, you realize that a character that you thought might live actually has to die.
Q: Is being Executive Producer of a show about a zombie apocalypse similar to surviving one in any way?
Continue reading "Dispatches From the Set – Gale Anne Hurd (Executive Producer)" »
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