Matthew Ledrew's Blog, page 11

On projection and reading. | Sam Bauer Blog

Fantasy from the Rock

Ellen Curtis & Erin Vance (Editors)
Twenty-One short stories written by an eclectic mix of some of the best fantasy authors in Atlantic Canada, some of them award-winning veterans of their field and some of them new to the craft!

C$25.00

I have an odd question for you; how much meaning can you imbue into a text? (By text, I mean any media, be it song, story, memoir, or movie.) How much can you actually insure that the reader will take the meaning you want them to? This is a question I am wholeheartedly unqualified to answer. But I do have an anecdote, about when I was reading way too much into a text.

So, I was sitting at home when my phone buzzed on the counter next to me. Upon opening it, I found that Matt had texted me, asking if I could read something and tell him if it was fantasy enough for Fantasy from the Rock, as the three judges (Matt, Ellen and Erin) were in a deadlock. Of course, my first question was how on earth three people managed to tie. He replied that there was some sort of “electoral college” system to keep him from getting too much power. Fair enough, I get to reading. As I read, I start analyzing it.

I should preface this by saying that I was going through a particularly rough patch romantically at the time -yes I know, nothing out of the ordinary for me two years ago, but still- and so as I continued, I told Matt how the author clearly had unrequited romantic feelings, and how he was clearly in a frustrated state. I just tore into it. At the end, I also told Matt that it was not fantasy. I closed the conversation, happily convinced that I had shown Matt how capable of an analyzer I was.

About twenty minutes later, Matt told me to ‘check a typo’ in The Long Road that people had been telling him about. So I opened the little grey book to the page. And immediately found a poem that had appeared in the text Matt had sent me. Oops. Not only was my analysis completely and utterly wrong, I had been analyzing someone to their face, and basically calling them a frustrated child. So, years later, and many retellings by both me and Matt later, what can we learn from this?

First, never listen to anything I say, I will probably regret it before the day is done. It is well known that my foot ends up so often in my mouth its amazing that I don’t have podophilia.

Second, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine anything about the author from a work. Writing is innately personal, true, and the stories we tell and how we tell them is intensely personal, but there is enough intellectual engagement that any ‘insight’ into the author’s ‘deeper self’ is easily falsified or obscured, making any attempt to determine something from one text a fruitless task.

Third, analysis is a multi-person endeavour, shaped as much by the reader as by the writer. I would argue that more meaning is created by the reader than by the author. As an example, horoscopes, or fortune cookies. There, they have a wide audience, but often people are able to infer a personalized meaning.

None of this is new at all. It is covered, or at least mentioned, by most English teachers or first year university instructors. But on a personal note, this is where I more fully understood the ideas at play, and how in dense media, such as movies or novels, the creation of deeper meaning is unavoidable. Now, can you still create meaning? Absolutely. But you cannot control the reader. The reader will bring their own bias and problems into the text. The moment it enters the hands of the reader, I would argue that it is your duty to let the story out of your hands. Let them write their fan fiction, let them read strange sexual meaning into a cup, whatever. You, to the reader, should be dead, and let the text live as itself. If you want to discuss the text with a reader, go ahead, but remove your own authority. You may be surprised with what patterns emerge from your own work. And, be conscious of your own readings. Those reveal bias and trends in you, as much as in the author.

I could continue for a few more pages, maybe even write a proper paper on this. Not that I will, it’s summer and I am by far more concerned with walking the dogs and finding new music, and of course my own writing. I could talk about Asimov discussing his book with a critic, or about what I have been finding I have been reading more and more into texts, or how I continue to be a hasty idiot. But I will leave my contribution here for now, dear reader.

– Sam Bauer, your Friendly Neighbourhood Author.

Wrestling a Story into Submission | House Blog

You know what it’s like when you get an idea for a story and you’re really excited to write it down and bask in the wonder of your genius, but once you start writing you suddenly get stuck and the words don’t sound like they should and the idea’s not really coming across and it isn’t the way you thought it would be and you’re having trouble making that line sound good and you’re not even halfway through but it’s all crumbling in front of you and you don’t know what to do to make it right?

*takes a deep, calming breath*

Normally once I’ve reached this point I would put that particular story aside and work on something else, but the problem is that I don’t want to work on something else. Like a petulant child: I wanna to write this specific story and I want it to be good!

So what’s a writer to do? Suck it up and admit defeat? Stand strong before quietly slinking away? Try to convince my brain to fixate on something else?

OR… Do I try to wrestle the darn thing into submission?

It’s worth a try.

Right?

So for every move this story throws at me, I’m going to counter it and strike back. No matter how many Figure-Four Leglocks or Sharpshooters or Sleeper Holds come at me, I’ll be ready!

First, I’ll consider if the narrator needs to be changed, or if the third-person limited perspective is the thing that’s not working. Then I’ll think about how I’m telling the story and see if I need to shake it up and be even more non-linear (or more linear). Or maybe I need to focus on different events or circumstances. After that, I’ll try some free writing, just jotting down anything and everything that comes into my head, even if it doesn’t make sense, to see if there’s a clue hidden within.

Instead of forcing the story in a direction that’s not working, I’ll adapt, change pace, and see if I can’t finally Full Nelson the darn thing into a workable first draft.

…And if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to find some new moves.

Any suggestions?

‘Flights from the Rock’ becomes Amazon Bestseller in multiple categories!

Flights from the Rock, the fifth volume in the modern From the Rock series, hit #1 Bestseller on June 12, 2019 at 5:19 PM Newfoundland Standard Time: a full month before its release. It reached #1 in the categories of ‘Military Historical Fiction,’ and ‘War Fiction.’ As of this writing it has reached #127 on the overall paid Amazon ca charts, #1 in Military Historical Fiction, #1 in War Fiction, #1 in Hot New Releases in Historical Fiction, #38 in Historical Fiction overall, and #70 across all Genre Fiction.

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Flights from the Rock features twenty-seven short stories celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic Flight! Stories by wonderful bestselling authors as well as new talent, and edited by Erin Vance, Lisa Daly, and Ellen Curtis! This collection features the thrilling, creatively charged, astonishing fiction that showcases the talent, imagination, and prestige that Canada — both in the Atlantic region and beyond — has to offer.

Featuring the work of Sherry D Ramsey (One’s Aspect to the Sun), Amanda Labonté (Call of the Sea), Carolyn R Parsons (The Forbidden Dreams of Betsy Elliott), and more!

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Engen Books would like to congratulate editors Curtis, Daly & Vance on this achievement, and thank its fans and peers who helps make this possible. We also extend gratitude an congratulations to authors and contributors: Ali House, Paul Carberry, JRH Lawless, Michelle F Goddard, John Burnham, Sara Burke, Shannon Green, Sherry D. Ramsey, Jennifer Shelby, Matthew Daniels, Heather Reilly, Peter Gillet, Amanda Labonté, Paul Moffett, Jennifer Combden, Jeff Slade, Bronwynn Erskine, Peter J. Foote, Lindsay Kitson, Stacey Oakley, Teresita Dziadura, Nicole Little, Carolyn R Parsons, and Brad Dunne!

Flights from the Rock PREORDER!

27 short stories celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic Flight! Stories by wonderful bestselling authors as well as new talent, and edited by Erin Vance, Lisa Daly, and Ellen Curtis!

C$20.00

A Few Words on Writing Advice | Dobbin Blog

Let’s talk about writing advice. Nowadays, telling someone not to follow writing advice is as cliché as the writing advice in question. Write what you know – but you can also write what you don’t know (it’s called imagination). Don’t use adverbs – unless they work for the story you’re telling.  To make things worse, there are literally millions of “How-To” books out there (okay, not a million, but it feels that way) espousing the best way to write, most of which promise to help you write the next bestseller or be the next Stephen King. It’s all really very confusing.

It certainly doesn’t help that writers are a nervous bunch. Some might say that we lack self-esteem. Maybe we even lack basic confidence in our work. As such, we often just want someone to tell us that what we are writing is okay, that we meet the standard, that we’re not wasting our time and effort.  We want someone to tell us how to be successful. So, we search for the writing advice, but we see the contradictions. Does writing advice work or doesn’t it?

Listen, I’m right there with you.  I love a good How-To-Write book.  I devour those little so-and-sos. I’ve read them all: Stephen King’s “On Writing”, Chuck Wendig’s ‘Damn Fine Story”, John Truby’s “The Anatomy of Story”. All great books, all with different takes on the craft of writing.  When I first started writing, I read those books looking for the quick fix; the one miracle answer to how to write well. The thing is, there’s no book out there that has the easy answer. Why? Because there isn’t an easy answer. Writing is work. It’s hard work that involves constant growth and improvement. So, I didn’t find the answer I was looking for, but I wrote anyway. I wrote to make myself better, but through that I found a few chinks in my armour; some things I could work on.  I’m a pantser at heart. I come up with an idea and I write it, no preparation just writing. This has served me well… to an extent.  To this day I can write a decent short story without an outline or guide, novels on the other hand…. Well, my first novel, The Starving, was written mostly by the seat of my pants. I had an idea, I had characters, and I knew where I wanted my story to begin and end.  All I needed to do was make those two things meet.  That’s easier said than done, however. After that book, I started to look specifically for books that could tell me how to plot, how to structure. I took a writing class that focused on a few different things, but included a trick to structuring a story. I focused on the advice that I wanted and sought it out.  Was everything I found good? Nope. Did I apply some of what I read to my writing? Yup. Boom, just like that, I went in, found what I wanted, and was out again. Like a thief in the night.

Now, that I’ve come to that, here’s the thing about writing and writers.  We’re thieves. We steal what we can and we make it our own.  Think about your first writing project, probably in grade school right? Well, were you like me and ripped off R.L. Stine or Stephen King just to make your Halloween story creepy? Did you steal jokes you heard on the Simpsons and plug them in to a story about vampires just to get a laugh (I didn’t even get a chuckle)? Okay, so maybe not exactly those things, but you get my drift.   We use examples of the writing we enjoy to frame how we will write.  It’s not taboo (unless you blatantly steal sentences and content to make money), it’s just a way to learn.  So yes, we’re thieves, but not horrible thieves. Maybe we’re more akin to Robin Hood: we steal from those rich with experience and supply it to the poor writers who need it (us).

So what does this have to do with writing advice? Well, it’s the same premise.  We take the writing advice that works best for us and leave the rest behind.  It’s as simple as that.  To revisit my earlier question: Does writing advice work? Maybe. It depends on if you need it or not.

What I’m saying is: treat writing advice with a grain of salt, but don’t ignore it. In a wide stream of dos and don’ts there’s bound to be something there that ups your game, or that helps that light bulb go off over your head. Ding!

So, be Robin Hood. Poke around until you find what you want and then make yourself richer (better) because of it.

Jon Dobbin

author, The Starving

Winner: “Duplicity” by Ashley Greening | Kit Sora Flash Fiction Photography Contest

[image error]After much deliberation, Engen Books is proud to announce the winner of the April 2019 Kit Sora Flash Fiction Photography Contest: Ashley Greening with her story, Duplicity!

Ashley currently residing in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her first published fiction was ‘Flurries’ in Kit Sora: The Artobiography.

There were three judges for this month of the contest:

[image error]Kate Sparkes is a USA Today Bestselling author of Fantasy and Urban Fantasy. She currently lives in beautiful central Newfoundland, a magical island at the very eastern edge of North America. She has two kids, one husband, and a handful of pets keep her plenty busy when she’s not writing. She also writes under the name Tanith Frost, and it is under this name that her most recent novel, Temptation, has been released! It’s the fifth book in a series about vampires in St. John’s Newfoundland: we wholly recommend giving it a try!

Peter J. Foote is a bestselling speculative fiction writer from Nova Scotia. Outside of writing, he runs a used bookstore specializing in fantasy & sci-fi, cosplays, and alternates between red wine and coffee as the mood demands.

His short stories can be found in both print and in ebook form, with his story “Sea Monkeys” winning the inaugural “Engen Books/Kit Sora, Flash Fiction/Flash Photography” contest in March of 2018. As the founder of the group “Genre Writers of Atlantic Canada”, Peter believes that the writing community is stronger when it works together.

[image error]Kit Sora Photography. Kit Sora is an artist and photographer from St. Johns, Newfoundland. Her photography draws inspiration from fantasy, dystopia, and thrillers to create evocative imagrey that startles, inspires, and excites.Kit signed with Engen Books in 2018 as head photographer, producing the thrilling image for Chillers from the Rock and re-imagining the covers to the entire Black Womb series into the Coral Beach Casefiles series. Drew Power is a currently seated member of the Sci-Fi on the Rock committee. He was recently featured as the model on the cover of the bestselling collection Chillers from the Rock.

Runners up include Behind the Stone by Lynn Reiker and A Hundred Miles Past Regret by Bronwynn Erskine.

The Flash Fiction Photography Contest is sponsored in part by FictionFirst Used Books, which specializes in previously enjoyed Sci-fi & Fantasy Novels, Roleplaying Manuals and Graphic Novels. It is run out of the Annapolis Valley and open by appointment only. Their inventory is currently over 5000 titled strong and they ship within Canada, USA and Europe. You can find them on Facebook, here.

The winning entry will be featured on this website as well as on the Fantasy Files newsletter (click to join!). Both runner-up entries will also be featured.

The first year’s worth of these amazing short stories have been collected in a lovely hardcover edition from Engen Books, featuring photos from the author and flash fiction stories from some of Canada’s top talent! Order your copy today!

Kit Sora: The Artobiography

A stunning, hundred-plus page hardcover collection of over 80 of Kit Sora’s most ambitious photographs, paired with short fiction inspired by the art by Canada’s best authorial talents. Includes stories by USA Today Bestselling Author Kate Sparkes, USA Today Bestselling Author Victoria Barbour, and Bestselling Author Amanda Labonté.

C$75.00

 

Engen Books sale: All June at Broken Books!

[image error]All month at Broken Books all in-stock Engen titles will be 20% off, including Kit Sora: The Artobiography, Family Values, Dystopia from the Rock, and more!

In addition, there are special events this month!

Jon Dobbin will be signing copies of our newest release The Starving, Wednesday from 7-8PM.

Chelsea Bee will be signing copies of London Calling on June 13 from 7-8pm!

Broken Books has an amazing selection of titles, and this month has an entire shelf of Engen Books! Head down and pick up your favorite books, 20% off!

What do these three writers have in common? | LeDrew’s Blog

They are, collectively, the only people who will ever be able to say they’ve been featured in every From the Rock collection: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Chillers, Dystopia, and now Flights from the Rock.

Over the last five years, the From the Rock series has become one that is routinely among the bestselling anthologies in Canada. It has become a series that makes authors bestsellers. With that success has come increased competition: the first volume, Sci-Fi from the Rock, featured many reprints from previous defunct Engen volumes, as we only received a dozen or so submissions. Now we routinely receive over a hundred, typically 300,000 words worth of submissions.

To put it bluntly, the competition has gotten fierce.

Which makes it all the more impressive that there are three authors who have made it into every, single, collection: Ali House, Peter J Foote, & Matthew Daniels.

They’ve grown with the collection, their skills improve and expand on their previous work. We are genuinely excited for you to read what they have in the Flights from the Rock collection.

All of the authors that make it into these collections are amazing, but these three have proven themselves the most versatile (so far), able to rise to the challenge of different genres, themes, and styles.

So let’s take a moment to celebrate these three, and also, look forward to the gladiatorial competition that will become Pulp Sci-Fi from the Rock and beyond: which of these will continue? Will there eventually only be one?

We didn’t realize when we created the From the Rock series that we we creating a complex long-form game of Survivor, but we’re down.

The last Flights from the Rock author announced: Ali House!

Engen Books is proud to reveal the final author to appear in the Flights from the Rock anthology: the amazing Ali House!

A native Newfoundlander, House is a graduate of the Fine Arts program at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College (MUN). She currently resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she works in arts administration and spends more time than a person should in and around theaters.

House is an avid traveler and foodie, and uses her adventures for her inspiration when she writes.

In addition to her first novels The Six Elemental and The Fifth Queen, House is a prolific short story writer, with stories appearing in Bluenose Paradox, Unexpected Stories, Dystopia from the Rock, Fantasy from the Rock, Chillers from the Rock, Sci-Fi from the Rock and Gathering Storm Magazine.

House brings with her two short stories, ‘The Risk of Dreaming’ and ‘Fortune Favors the Bold.’

Ali is one of only three authors to have been featured in every modern From the Rock volume.

Flights from the Rock PREORDER!

27 short stories celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic Flight! Stories by wonderful bestselling authors as well as new talent, and edited by Erin Vance, Lisa Daly, and Ellen Curtis!

C$20.00

Ali House joins authors Paul Carberry, JRH Lawless, Michelle F Goddard, John Burnham, Sara Burke, Shannon Green, Sherry D. Ramsey, Jennifer Shelby, Matthew Daniels, Heather Reilly, Peter Gillet, Amanda Labonté, Paul Moffett, Jennifer Combden, Jeff Slade, Bronwynn Erskine, Peter J. Foote, Lindsay Kitson, Stacey Oakley, Teresita Dziadura, Nicole Little, Carolyn R Parsons, Lisa Daly, Ellen Curtis, & Erin Vance for the 2019 Flights on the Rock collection! Stay tuned for further updates and Never Look Back!

For exclusive content and FREE books, be sure and check out the Engen Books Patreon.

Bestselling author Paul Carberry writes for Flights from the Rock!

Engen Books is proud to present one of the authors to grace the pages of 2019’s Flights from the Rock, the Bestselling Author of the Zombies on the Rock series, Paul Carberry!

Paul Carberry works for the Canadian Armed Forces and is a proud member the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. He is a huge proponent of the horror genre and its place in literature. He has two children, daughter Dana and son Rick, with his wife Leah.

Paul has published two novels with Engen Books: Zombies on the Rock: Outbreak, and its sequel Zombies on the Rock: The Viking Trail. He has also had numerous short stories featured in publication, including The Light of Cabot Tower, Into the Forest, and Halloween Mummers.

He brings with him his short story ‘Harmon Field,’ a story that stems from World War II aviation.

Flights from the Rock PREORDER!

27 short stories celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic Flight! Stories by wonderful bestselling authors as well as new talent, and edited by Erin Vance, Lisa Daly, and Ellen Curtis!

C$20.00

One final author will be joining Paul Carberry, JRH Lawless, Michelle F Goddard, John Burnham, Sara Burke, Shannon Green, Sherry D. Ramsey, Jennifer Shelby, Matthew Daniels, Heather Reilly, Peter Gillet, Amanda Labonté, Paul Moffett, Jennifer Combden, Jeff Slade, Bronwynn Erskine, Peter J. Foote, Lindsay Kitson, Stacey Oakley, Teresita Dziadura, Nicole Little, Carolyn R Parsons, Lisa Daly, Ellen Curtis, & Erin Vance for the 2019 Flights on the Rock collection! This author is a  prize winning talent and bestselling author! Who will join them? Stay tuned and Never Look Back!

For exclusive content and FREE books, be sure and check out the Engen Books Patreon.

 

 

Unholy Trinity: Alien and the Three Stages of Fear

It’s the fortieth anniversary of the release of Alien. In its honour, I’d like to try and breakdown why it’s arguably the most effective horror movie ever movie. Much like how the xenomorph has different evolutionary forms, so too does horror

In the introduction to his short story collection Maps in a Mirror, Orson Scott Card identifies three stages of fear: 1) Dread 2) Terror and 3) Horror.

Dread is the first and strongest of the three kinds of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is…

Terror only comes when you see the thing you’re afraid of. The intruder is coming at you with a knife…There is a frenzy to this moment, a climactic power—but is the power of release, not the power of tension. And bad as it is, it is better than dread in this respect: Now, at least, you know the face of the thing you fear. You know its borders, its dimensions. You know what to expect.

Horror is the weakest of all. After the fearful thing has happened, you see its remainder, its relics. The grisly, hacked-up corpse. Your emotions range from nausea to pity for the victim. And even your pity is tinged with revulsion and disgust; ultimately you reject the scene and deny its humanity; with repetition, horror loses its ability to move you and, to some degree, dehumanizes the victim and therefore dehumanizes you.

I agree 0 with pretty much every thing Card says here, especially with what he says about dread, and I think it’s really interesting how it maps onto Alien. Much of the film’s running time is committed to building that sense of dread. We learn about these characters, come to understand them and like them. Despite being astronauts out in the far reaches of space, we begin to see they’re familiar to us. Most of them are actually working class, blue collar truckers in space, getting pushed around by their bosses.

Then they get a distress call to a strange planet. They investigate an even stranger craft filled with gigantic eggs. Something lashes out and attaches itself to a character’s face. What is this alien creature? What is it doing to Kane? The sense of dread is nearing its peak. This is why Alien is often described as “Jaws in space.”

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And then the chestburster scene happens, when the xenomorph bursts (haha!) onto the scene. The tension is released (literally) in a moment of terror that has become one of the most iconic scenes in film history. But it doesn’t stop there. The xenomorph continues to grow until it’s seven feet tall, with two sets of teeth, and a tail like a scorpion.

From here on out, we’re fully into the horror stage. Interestingly, Ridley Scott has described this third act of the film as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre in space.” The fully-formed xenomorph stalks its prey inside the claustrophobic Nostromo, killing off the remaining characters until only Ripley–and Jones (always save the cat!)–are left.

 

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In his intro, Card goes on to lament that too many writers fail to recognize the value of dread in horror. And I’m inclined to agree. Go read IT and see how Stephen King works to establish some kinda bond with every character before Pennywise kills them. By the time Georgie is pulled into the sewer, we have grown to love him.

None of the scares in Alien work like they do unless we care about these characters. James Cameron understood this when he made Aliens, probably the greatest sequel ever made. Watch how much time we spend with Ripley and the marines before they get slaughtered.

If you want those big pay off moments, you have to do the heavy lifting of establishing dread.

Cheers,

Brad