Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 77

If I Could Impart My Meager Advice

Even if I’m not in a buying mood, I’m looking at books all the time. I see things that if I could whisper in the author/publisher’s ear I’d tell them how to fix. Not that I know a ton, but a 4,000 word story is way overpriced at $2.99. I would charge $0.99 for anything between 5,000 and 10,000 words. At 4,000, I’d either work on lengthening the story or putting it out for free while I worked on the next, longer story.

Also, when writing a series of books, don’t use the same cover over and over. People who buy your first book are going to think they already bought your second or third or however many you eventually put out. What you’re saving in cost you’re probably losing several times over in sales. Especially if you’re book is overpriced.

There are a few guides you can do a quick search and find, like The Launch Coach. He goes more into the pricing of non-fiction, so it’ll still require a little thinking on one’s feet, but I can tell you, no one will see the same value the same as the author who charges $2.99 for a story that is only 4,000 words. In this case, I think it is a good thing to see what one’s peers are doing. Unless the story is selling like gangbusters, that is. If that’s the case, by all means, carry on.

New Dethm8 Later

As you may well have noticed, there was no new Dethm8 last Friday.  I have a good reason.  Really.  I moved last Friday into a house.  We still have a lot of boxes to unpack, but I’m hoping to get the Dethm8 train up and rarin’.  After Gladys’ foray into her own head, we have Arlene taking a trip to the inside (but not her own mind) and enlisting an ally.  I promise, the story isn’t going to be resolved on the astral plane, but I’m going for something here.  The next installment will start to see some of this stuff pay off.  I mean, I’ve only killed like two people so far!  And by my count, there’s somewhere around thirty in the restaurant.  Expect to learn more about the monster outside and why she can’t get in.  Yes, the monster’s a girl and there’ll be a reason for it at the end.

And one other thing in case it’s popped into anyone’s head: they’re not already dead and The Spoon isn’t purgatory.  But everything is not as it seems.  I mean, somebody could be dead and is just walking and talking like it’s no big deal.

As usual, click on the ‘Dethm8… So Far’ link to catch up- http://bit.ly/RMoxRr.  And check out The Zombie Show on sale right now!

30 Minute Plan

I’ve been thinking about this short of mine more and more lately. While pleased with it, it definitely has its problems as have been pointed out by a reviewer or two. But it has also received (largely) positive reviews, including one or two who think it would do well as a full-length novel.

And I’m starting to ponder if I should do just that. After I’d written and published it, a few ideas about how I could have better fleshed out this world came to me. Potential conflicts, greater reasoning why the change in the zombies’ behavior, and perhaps giving more of a face to the ‘brains’.

I could run wild developing Danton’s back story and maybe I could have the focus shift to a few of the characters instead of solely on him. I think there’s a novella’s worth of material on him being in prison alone.

But I couldn’t possibly write this, could I? I mean, I’m done with that story, right? Well, maybe not. It’s kind of sort of a cliffhanger ending and maybe there’s a story after the end of 30 Minute Plan worth exploring.

I’ll have to sit down and think about this.

The Zombie Show on Sale

Hey, have you gotten a copy of The Zombie Show yet? Now’s a great time to pick up a copy because it’s on sale. After the great run Fleshbags had I decided to do it again. Starting today until the 23rd you can TZS for $1.49 on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

ABC News Michael Clarke Duncan image Blunder

Reblogged from Chatter Box Media:

I was so shocked to come across the following image after it is alleged that ABC made a horrible error when marking the death of actor Michael Clarke Duncan. Michael Clarke Duncan is an American actor, best known for his breakout role as John Coffey in The Green Mile, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

Read more… 103 more words

I wonder if this news station has retracted or corrected this error.

Dethm8, episode 8

Gladys wasn’t entirely certain where she was.  It was dark, cold and she was alone.  I could use a light, she thought and suddenly there was illumination.  She turned and looked, but other than its general direction, Gladys couldn’t tell where it came from.  She looked around and although it was very familiar, she had no idea where she was.

Gladys sensed danger, but not here.  This place, at least right now, was safe.  The floor and walls were of brown rock and two feet to her left was a small bubbling pond.  Gladys kneeled—her replaced hip not aching in the least—and drank several cupped palmfuls of water.  She hadn’t been thirsty, but it had been very refreshing.  In fact, she felt better, her confusion easing despite still not knowing what was happening.

Gladys sat by the pond and stretched her legs out.  She didn’t want any more water, but she had no place else to go.  She took a deep breath and looked around her.  This was some kind of cave, but Gladys had no idea why she was in it.  She didn’t like nature—the closest she’d ever come to roughing it was a hotel she’d stayed in without checking it out on Yahoo first.  So how has she come here?

“No,” Gladys said aloud.  That wasn’t the question she needed answered.  What was on the outside of here?  She turned her head and saw the dark mouth of the exit to the cave.  Had that been here all along?  Gladys hadn’t seen it before.  She crawled to her feet, expecting a creaking of bones that never came.  In fact, Gladys looked down at herself and guessed offhand she was at least forty pounds lighter.  She raised her hands, twisting them back and forth—why, she hadn’t been this small since…

…since the Christmas party at the VFW back in ’79.

Gladys pondered how she could recall such a thing so clearly and how it could so undeniably be true, but no answer seemed to be coming.  She looked back to that giant empty hole.  As good and as strong as she felt right now, she was afraid to go there.  As if something was waiting in or on the other side of it.  Maybe it was the reason she was here.

As if in response, there was a mighty knock against the far stone wall.  Dust shook from the jagged shelves of rock, sifting to the floor.  She took a step back and felt cold seep into her shoe.  Gladys looked down and saw she’d stepped into the pond.  She withdrew her foot, seeing a rippling image looking back at her.  She bent (her knees didn’t even so much as crackle) and examined her reflection.  Not a strand of grey and only slight crow’s feet tickling at the corners of her eyes.  She passed a hand over her breasts, feeling their firmness and could tell even considering their hefty size they weren’t the saggy things she’d all but stuffed in her brassiere this morning.

What was she back then, forty?  Gladys dialed back in her mind, she’d stopped keeping track of her birthday nigh on ten years ago and was never any good with her numbers.  Hell, she’d memorized all the prices on the menu in just about every combination imaginable so she could make change right at the counter when someone paid for a meal.  She’d barely been able to talk Fred out of raising the prices three years back, else that would have flummoxed her whole works.

Gladys and her reflection nodded in unison and she rose.  In here, where ever this place was, she was young again.  Well, younger.  It had dawned on her that this place was a dream, but definitely no ordinary one.  It had a solidness to it, a—what had that one businessman said to his co-worker a few weeks ago—a robustness.  Yes, that word suited how she felt about this place perfectly.

But that thing on the other side of the wall was hammering away even harder now.  She could feel it on the other side like a thick slab of ice wrapped in a towel pressed against her cheek.  The feeling made her want to pull her teeth out, like there was some sort of poison at their roots.  If this place was somewhere between dream and real then she’d have to prepare herself for whatever was trying to come through.  Gladys bent, marveling at how lithe and loose her body was, and picked up a rock that was easily thrice the size of her fist.  It was heavy, but when she threw it, it easily cleared thirty yards at least.  Gladys would have to be stronger.  She looked at the pond.

The suddenly not-so-old woman got on her knees and began cupping water into her mouth by hand.  The thing on the other side pounded even harder and chunks began to break out of the wall.  She drank faster, her arm and wrist moving at carpel tunnel-inducing speed.  A giant crack traced down the wall and it had to be only a matter of seconds before the thing was through.  Giant tentacles whipped through a hole and the thing gave a near-victorious roar.  Gladys turned her head away and dunked it into the pond, sucking down mighty gulps of water.

Her stomach surely should have been filled to bursting, but it was her whole body that filled.  She could feel there was more of herself in her body, as if she’d been some giant in a prior life and was now straining against the confines of this tiny mortal body.

Moments later, she came to the realization she was sucking on moist earth.  The bubbling pond was no more.  Gladys rose, her wet blonde hair falling into her face like thick vines.  The thing had broken the wall, but was so big it was still having difficulty forcing its way through.  But a sea of tentacles wriggled from the gaping wedge of dark it had created and from what she could see of it, Gladys would have guessed it was over twenty feet tall.

She made a fist, feeling the strength of the muscles wrapped around the bones of her forearm.  She was powerful.  Gladys felt like she was almost floating her body moved with such complete effortless as she—yes, as she walked toward the monster.  She didn’t need to see a reflection in a pond to know she looked the same as she had when she was sixteen, back when Stevie Jenkiss had asked her for a kiss and when she’d acquiesced he’d grabbed a breast to go along with it.  She’d been heavy-chested even then and after his hand had amateurishly squeezed in a way that had hurt, even pinching the nipple like a clothespin, she’d slapped him.  So hard his lip had split across the jagged tooth he’d chipped the summer before.  She’d seized the power back from him that he would have robbed her of that day and Gladys had a feel about her now that was much the same.  She understood that this whole place—the walls, the pond, even the hole off in the distance she was deathly afraid of, even more so than the monster—was a construct of her mind.  Was her mind in some crucial way and if she didn’t defend it, that monster would destroy it.  Destroy her, maybe even devour her if it were hungry.  She had no idea of what real damage it had done by rending a hole in the cave wall, but she had to stop it before it could do even worse damage.

Without taking another moment to think about it, Gladys leapt at the thing as it came through.  The trunk itself from which the myriad of tentacles shot out was almost indescribable.  A black and green, squarish thing that looked mostly unfinished—almost as if its design had been an afterthought of some hurried god or the hand stroke of a child’s drawing—but at its very top was a humongous, red-rimmed and lidless eye, the brown pupil fully fixed upon her.

Gladys sailed some fifty feet through the air before the first tentacle shot out, wrapping around her ankle.  It squeezed, much harder and more painful anything Stevie Jenkiss could have ever managed, and its legions of suckers bit into her naked flesh.

She screamed.  But it not in defeat.  As Gladys’ blazing eyes remained locked on the monster’s lone one, she screamed even more fiercely and loudly.  It was a warrior’s cry.

August 2012 Newsletter

1) THE LATEST FICTION

My latest novella, The Zombie Show, was released on 6/20/2012. So far, the reviews I’ve been seeing have been pretty good. It’s now available on Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, iTunes, the Sony store, and just about everywhere else. You can even get a print version on CreateSpace that includes Fleshbags. So it’s two books together! I’m also doing a promotion with The Zombie Times

An undercover agent hellbent on bringing a drug cartel enforcer to justice by any means infiltrates a group of college kids out to have a good time across the Mexican border. But the enforcer has plans to disappear forever before he can be taken alive, putting together a big show that will culminate with a big ending. But as the agent closes in, one of the zombies in the enforcer’s stable half-devises his own plan for revenge. When things finally explode, not even the dead may survive.

2) PUBLISHING SCHEDULE 2012/2013

Look for How to Get Your Self-Published Novel in the Library in the near future and I’m hoping to have Brain Juice out in time for Christmas.

I’m still working on that stuff, but writing is fluid and you have to go where the muse takes you. I currently have a short story on my website titled Do Not See Me. I’m cobbling ideas together, but I may be making that my next novel. Check it out, it’s free.

3) WHERE I’LL BE

Nowhere so far. But I’m going to attempt to put together a class at a library on how to self publish electronically.

The ball is slowly rolling on this. I’ve contacted one library and I’m waiting to hear if they’ll accept my suggestion. More on that as soon as it’s available.

4) MOVIE REVIEWS

Project Nim-

Just saw this docu Sunday and Monday night. In the 1970s a scientist took a baby chimp and placed him in a home to be raised like he was human. They teach him sign language to see if he can eventually make coherent sentences. But Nim’s story goes much deeper than that as he is transferred from home to home. Very touching, highly recommended.

Dark

Slay Me

Tales from an Apartment

Booklist

UK Booklist

iTunes

Sony

May I Recommend…

My 2 free short stories, 30 Minute Plan and The Beggar’s Bowl?  I think they’re pretty great introductions to my stuff if you haven’t read them

Do Not See Me

Please feel free to pass this around. This is my first vampire story of any kind and I may turn this into a novel or novella.

Jimmy sat in the back of the cruiser, waiting for the cop to take him in. They’d had them dead to rights, he wasn’t sure what he would have done with that gun even if he’d had the time. But this guy, this police officer, was some kind of magician. He’d appeared out of nowhere and all but plucked the gun right out of Jimmy’s hand.

He hadn’t even noticed until the gun was moving in his grip, the knurled metal handle wedging against his palm, and then saw the officer with a hand on it. Jimmy had panicked, felt himself reflexively squeeze—both his fingers and his guts—but the officer must have put the safety on with a bit of slight of hand. Fire had exploded across Jimmy’s cheek then and though he hadn’t seen it, Jimmy instinctively knew he’d been slugged. He spilled to the floor, his eyes rolling around in his head like pinballs, hearing the cries of the woman he’d been holding hostage. There was gunfire coming from the other room and that was either the guys shooting or being shot at.

Jimmy lost consciousness, but felt himself being hoisted up—out of the inky blackness and by the arm, and though he couldn’t see, knew he was being moved by the wind on his face.

But wind didn’t make sense unless he was flying or something. Jimmy hadn’t felt his feet on the ground, but didn’t have awareness of his extremities at all. He was more or less in a numb, grey area. He’d fully come to in the back of the cruiser with these cuffs on.

There was an officer sitting in the front.

“Morning, Sunshine,” the officer said, meeting his eyes through the rearview mirror. Jimmy said something, realized it was completely unintelligible, shook his head, and tried again.

“You the one that hit me?”

“The one who hit you,” the cop corrected. “And yes.”

Jimmy forced a smile, though the ache in the side of his face ratcheted up as he did so. “You’re gonna hear from my lawyer. You violated my Constitutional rights when you put your hands on me. Don’t you know anything above the collarbone is off limits?”

The cop’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows shot up out of the reflection. For a moment Jimmy thought he’d scared him until he saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and realized he was smiling. He adjusted the mirror so Jimmy could only see his mouth. Yeah, big ol’ toothy grin. Smug bastard. Jimmy made up his mind right then if he got the chance to headbutt him he would.

“Jimmy.” The cop shook his head, the mouth weaving in and out of the mirror. “Constitutional rights are for humans. You’re no human. You’re a wad of chewed up gum or some miscellaneous gunk sticking to somebody’s shoe. I’m just to finally scrape you off. Did you know you pissed yourself after I knocked you out? Me and Sylvia had a real good laugh after that.”

That pissed the Jimster off. He didn’t like being made fun of, dammit. He was a big deal.

Be cool, he told himself. Be cool. He looked down at his handcuffs, forcing the hard truth of his situation into his brain. He was cuffed. He was going to jail. They would take his freedom, but nobody got to take his pride.

He sniffed, smelled nothing and leaned forward and sniffed again. Jimmy had been in the sweltering heat of a building with no air conditioning for seventeen hours before he wound up in here and he stunk. But he didn’t smell like no peepee.

“I did not,” he said, flicking his eyes back up to the rearview. The cop shrugged. Jimmy looked at the back of the man’s head. It was like this person and the piecemeal rectangle he saw in the mirror were two different people. For a moment, he got a weirdo feeling like when he climbed up too high and looked down. Jimmy blinked and it was gone.

“What’s the matter? Still a little woozy?” A hand rubbed the chin underneath that mouth. “Maybe I hit you harder than I thought. You might have a concussion. Wanna go to the hospital?”

“No,” the Jimster growled.

“Serious. I could have broken your brain or something. Might want to get that checked out by a professional.”

“I’m fine. Can you take me to jail now? What are we waiting for?”

“Eight forty-seven.”

Jimmy had no idea what that meant and had no intention of giving the cop the satisfaction.

“What’s your name, anyway?” he asked. “So I can tell my lawyer who hit me when I sue.”

The cop turned around for the first time, a slow, deliberate maneuver, and stared at him. For a moment, it was the most alien thing Jimmy had ever seen. There was absolutely no life to his features, like he had the head of a mannequin. The cop gave him a non-stare across the steel mesh between them for an interminable minute like he could have been looking at Jimmy or a thousand other spots in the rear of the cruiser. But then a smile broke across the cop’s face and but it looked too animated. His face twitched in places Jimmy didn’t know there could be muscles. His ears wriggled as his lips parted. The declining light of the day danced in his eyes, age lines deepened at the corners of his mouth and he could have tucked pencil erasers into his well-deep dimples.

“You can call me Bruce,” the cop said. “Because I’m the boss.”

And that’s when Jimmy heard the music on the radio that had to have been playing all along. It was “Pink Cadillac”, the only Springsteen song Jimmy had ever been able to stand. The Boss was really twanging it up with that pseudo-southern by way of New Jersey accent and as Jimmy twirled the words in his head—not what Bruce the cop had said, but the tone and depth of his voice—he knew he was in trouble.

Bruce had some kind of accent. Or rather, a lack of one. Jimmy guessed he was American, but Bruce could easily have been somebody from somewhere else who’d practiced the foreign accent away to in theory sound like anybody else in this country, but in actuality, not like anyone at all. Kind of like that blonde chick who was in all the movies nowadays. Charlie-something or other.

But there was something else about Bruce too. Maybe it was the hair that was a little too long or in the set of his face or how he seemed supremely confident in some secret Jimmy would never be able to guess, but it was clearly there. Jimmy had been arrested somewhere north of a dozen-and-a-half times in his lifetime and all of those cops had had something indescribably unnamable in common that Bruce did not. Maybe it was a looseness of manner, though several of them had tried to get buddy-buddy, giving him the off-the-record pep-talk, particularly in his younger years.

Bruce was no cop. And at 8:47, if that were a time, Jimmy would find out exactly what that meant for him.

But it begged the question, how had Bruce come with the other police officers? When they’d stormed the building, clearly he’d been there, otherwise Jimmy would not be here. He looked around out the windows of the cruiser. They were at least fifty yards off from the building, parked in the growing shade, a few stones’ throws away from the nearest police car.

“Where are you taking me?” Jimmy asked Bruce. He wouldn’t have believed it possible, but the horizontal hold on Bruce’s already wide smile lengthened, his lips tightening as if they would split in their middles.

“I’m gonna eat you,” the man in the front of the cruiser said matter-of-factly. “Split you up the middle and gobble up your insides. Poke out your eyeballs and pop ‘em like grapes between my teeth. Tear off your limbs and let you watch me drink you down.”

Jimmy’s reflex—per usual—was to be combative. He was about to say, “I can’t watch you tear off my limbs if you already poked out my eyeballs,” when something told him to hold his tongue. It was the absolute conviction in Bruce’s tone. And perhaps the hot plastic non-smell of his breath. Sure, the guy could be a cannibal, but more than likely he was just some sadist trying for a scare. Considering Jimmy was handcuffed and at the man’s complete mercy, he figured it was appropriate to be scared. The possibility of actual murder at that moment was a minor thought for him, but it was still on the list.

“What are you gonna do to me?” Jimmy’s voice was much smaller than he would’ve intended.

“I just told you,” Bruce said. He threw his head back and gave a hardy laugh. Maniacal or no, it didn’t seem like proper time to do that, but maybe that was the point for a maniac. To be inconvenient. It wasn’t like anybody made an appointment to be kidnapped. He pressed his nose against the hard mesh separating them and flicked his tongue in and out through one of the holes. That hot plastic non-smell almost burned in Jimmy’s nose. “I’m gonna eat you.”

Jimmy’s pulled back against his seat, his mind racing to the blank period between when he’d been in the building and winding up here. Had the police given him to Bruce? Were they trying to cover this up? There had to be a reason, this just wasn’t right. There had to be a way out. Bruce turned around in his seat.

“Right now,” he began, readjusting the mirror, “you’re thinking something like ‘how the hell do I get myself out of this?’. You’re wondering who the hell the psycho you’re locked in the car with is and how did he get me. Something like that. Probably how you’re not that bad a guy and you don’t deserve and blah-blah-blah-blah.” Bruce held up a hand and flapped the four fingers against his thumb in poor mock imitation. “Well, I don’t need to tell you life is unfair. Bet nobody needs to teach that girl you had the gun on, either. Or all the people you robbed. Or hurt. Did you know four of her friends died because of you people?” Bruce shook his head, disgust plain in his voice. “And what would their parents say? Do you deserve to be right here with me or with them?” He inclined his head in the general direction of where the police were. Jimmy’s blood ran cold at that moment.

“How did you… how did you get past them?” Jimmy dared to ask. Bruce turned around again and his face was entirely different. The eyes were darker and weren’t set in his head the same; the ridge of bone above them had even reoriented, becoming sharper. His cheekbones had risen, given him a mildly Asian appearance and his skin had turned almost blood red. Bruce didn’t look inhuman so much as he looked like he’d traded ethnicities, but the effect was terrifying in a manner Jimmy couldn’t quantify.

“You should have an idea how this all went down by now.” Somewhat-Asian Bruce gave him a look. Whether it had just appeared or Jimmy had only now noticed it, Bruce’s smile had one particular tooth—a canine—digging into a pocket behind and beneath his lower lip. It made a pinprick bulge and looked like it would poke through the skin of his face were he to clamp his teeth together. Bruce spoke without moving his mouth, looking like the lid of his rage were barely contained beneath his skin. “You didn’t see me because I didn’t want you to. I caught your eye across an incredible distance—a pretty fine trick even for me—and I told you the same thing I told all those cops I walked right by: ‘Do not see me’.”

Fox 2 Interview

Okay, so I was going through some stuff and I found the CD with the interview I did with Fox 2.  I want to put it on my site, but when I went to upload it, something funny happened.  It pops up in Windows Media Player as 7 track, but each one flows into the other.  I’m not sure how to properly explain it, but when I go to the disc drive to see what kind of files these are, I see 6 files, 3 different types: .ifo, .bup, and .vob.  I think the .vob files are video files, but my site doesn’t recognize them and thus, I can’t upload them.  Anyone know a laymen’s method of converting these?