David R. Michael's Blog, page 28

Gunwitch Editing Begins

 
After writing a few more words in Sigils than I wrote yesterday, I began editing my Gunwitch project.
 
I completed Gunwitch's first draft back in January. Which seems a long, long time ago. I've written a couple short stories and an entire novel since then.
 
In the future, I don't expect to have so much time between "The End" of the first draft of a novel and editing that novel. Nearly five months is probably quite long enough. I did a lot of editing, formatting and publishing of other work in the interim, though. So it's not like I was sloughing off.
 
I'm just about caught up with my "backlist" now. So once I get Gunwitch edited, I should be able to start editing GoSH1 almost immediately (which will make my daughter happy; she's not especially patient about these things).
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
One Down, Five to GoTyping "THE END" is Such Sweet SorrowWriting First, Then Publishing

When I Implode…

 
…as happened yesterday, and I write very little, my only goal for the day after is:
 
Today I will write more than I did yesterday.
 
Which is easy. Because yesterday's production was pathetically low.
 
It's like my emotional distress leaves behind a small, plastic party favor, like a crappy whistle or a puke-colored crazy straw, just something it picked up at the dollar store for no reason it can remember other than the thing only cost a buck. See? my emotional distress seems to be saying as it drops the favor on the nightstand. Don't say I never gave you anything.
 
If I had any self-respect … Which is funny.
 
So I grab my whistle and use it to shriek out my frustration. Or I would if the damn thing worked. All I get is a spitting, sputtering hiss.
 
Disgusted, I get back to work.
 
And I write more today than I did yesterday.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Nano Day 17Nano – Day 5If I Don't Write Today…

Now Available – The World Wears Thin

 
The World Wears Thin – A collection of eight Sci-Fi and Horror stories by David Michael, with illustrations by Don Michael, Jr.
 
"A Fine Mess" – Kenneth hunts edible Strings in the Frayed remnants of the vegetation of the world.
 
"Enamored" – Chick-lit meets cyberpunk as overworked, underappreciated Roxy heads to work.
 
"Curtain Call" – The White Hot Hemisphere Community Theater Company chose Shakespeare's Hamlet for their first production after the cataclysm–and possibly their last before the end of the world.
 
"Insanity" – Corporal Jonathan "Drooz" Andrews wakes up in the middle of a war and wishes he remembered what he spent his re-enlistment bonus on.
 
"Encounter" – The Traveler tries to help in the aftermath of a riot in the Trog Ghetto.
 
"Until Death Do Us Part" – Ross and Marjorie grow old together in undead retirement.
 
"Baptism" – Drunk on mojitos, high on love, and smelling of sex on the beach, Myra Acevedo went swimming and drowned. Then she became the end of the world.
 
Bonus Story: "Roxy Overload" – Roxy, from "Enamored", heads home after work on an evening when it seems everyone–her best friend, her mom, her men–even her dog–wants a piece of her.
 




The World Wears Thin Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$2.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble) (available soon)


$2.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$2.99




 
Related Posts:
Now Available – "A Fine Mess"Now Available – "Curtain Call"Now Available – "Insanity"

The Door to the Sky – Preview

Chapter 3.
Evolution Televised
 
The first report of a TV station being destroyed, KTUL, Tulsa Channel 8, took nearly an hour to reach the national news networks. The first images from that attack, blurred cameraphone pictures of smoke and fire and people running, were only just beginning to hit the air, with promises of video to come, when reports came in that KUSA, Denver Channel 9, had also been attacked.
 
The eyewitness reports were a confused jumble of disbelief and horror and shock. Stories of subsonic fighter planes with flame throwers mixed with accounts of alien's in UFO's. Tales of dragons and flying dinosaurs mixed with hooded and burka-ed terrorists with rocket launchers. Amateur video, shaking violently, showed flying shapes and fire and lightning.
 
KLRT, Little Rock Channel 16, went next. Then KNIN, Boise Channel 9. WXVT, Greenville Channel 15.
 
Mayors and city managers scrambled police and firefighters and EMT's and put hospitals on alert. They made frantic calls to their state governors demanding National Guard protection. In the towns and cities where attacks had already come, people rushed to help survivors. Everywhere else, unsure where, when, or if an attack would occur, police chiefs and fire chiefs and hospital administrators took a wait and see attitude, poised to rush wherever they were needed.
 
Governors issued orders to activate the National Guard, triggering phone calls to those remaining Guard units that had not been already activated by previous emergencies, call-ups, and political posturings. Then the governors began yelling into phone lines that connected them to the various branches of the federal government, Presidential aides, prominent Senators and Congressmen, contacts at the FBI and CIA and DHS and anyone else near or around Washington, DC, that seemed like they might be useful.
 
Savir Agrata, awakened by aides and flown by armed and armored helicopter from his penthouse to the skyscraper from which he oversaw the world, then down into the sub-sub-basement bunker that had been built for exactly this kind of emergency, arrived in time to hear that the President of the United States had ordered the FAA to ground all flights and set fighter jets to patrol the airspace of Washington, DC, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
 
Agrata rubbed his temples, not sure if the pounding in his head came from the impending merger he knew was coming or from the chaotic news Cyd was feeding him. Or maybe it was from Cyd herself. The woman's presence conveyed an electric hum, and her eyes glowed the same bright green as the tracery of wires that ran down her skin. In the darkness of the War Room her movements left little red trails on the backs of his eyes. At least she was looking at him, though, focused on him, instead of staring off into the ether only she and her "grlz" seemed able to see. The excitement of the morning's events kept her focused, engaged.
 
"And the other big cities?" Agrata asked.
 
Cyd's eyes lost their focus for a second as she accessed that information. "Fighter units, all bases, on standby," she said, "awaiting word."
 
Agrata took in a deep breath, then let it out. This could get out of control. But that was why he was here: to make sure it did not. "And they're still calling it terrorists?"
 
Cyd nodded. "The obvious story, neh? No sense fucking with the obvious." She paused, the green points of her eyes constricted, then dilated back to normal size. "We've just intercepted more pictures, and video. Good shit. The vague shit, the crap that doesn't show anything, we just pass that through, let the newsies have it."
 
Nodding, Agrata said, "Show it to me."
 
A wall that had been black blazed to life showing a wing of mounted dragons flying in the morning sky, silhouetted by the sun.
 
Agrata swore under his breath. This was going to be hard to cover up.
 
"That's gonna be fucking im-possible to scam," Cyd said, echoing his thoughts.
 
"Nothing's impossible," Agrata said, more out of habit than conviction.
 
The man behind the camera must have been a professional. He stayed on the flying dragons, widening the angle of his lens smoothly as they got closer, then keeping up with the beasts as they went into a steep dive. Agrata caught his breath when the attack commenced, two dozen dragons breathing in unison, fire and lighting erupting like an act of god made real and immediate.
 
Cyd looked at him from the side of her eye, the nearest corner of her mouth pulling up in a smirk. "Neh?" she asked.
 
Before Agrata could decide whether he should respond, one of the men monitoring the banks of displays and readouts shouted, "Fighter's engaging over Omaha." At the same instant, Cyd's eyes lost their focus again.
 
The attacking dragons on the wall display disappeared, replaced by multiple feeds that had to be coming from jets. The landscape blurred into the horizon line. In the gray-white of the sky, the winged shapes of the dragons hurtled at the War Room, then disappeared as the jets did a flyby. The horizon line banked then disappeared.
 
The dragons swung back into view, small but growing larger. Several of the images were lost to flare, then resolved back, showing smoke trails. "Missiles fired," Cyd said, her voice soft, distant, unlike the same words shouted by the man who had spoken before.
 
Explosions whited out three of the displays. Two of them remained dark. "Two jets are down," the man yelled.
 
Agrata swore under his breath again. Dragons should not be that powerful, even if they had elves or whatever riding them. Not against jets.
 
"No fucking way," Cyd said. "It's eff-ing Fey."
 
Agrata turned to look at Cyd, then looked back at the displays again. "Where?" he asked. "Show me."
 
All but two of the displays disappeared. Those two expanded to fill the space. "Steady them for me," Agrata said. Cyd complied, locking in on the image of the woman on the dragon's back, zooming and cropping and switching cameras as necessary to keep the woman in view.
 
Even a seventy-foot dragon with a 150-foot wingspan could not overwhelm Fey. Nor could a grainy picture transmitted from a platform flying past at hundreds of miles per hour dim her ageless beauty. Her presence came through the image and pulled at Agrata's heart. She looked so sad, so determined, and so goddamned beautiful. Exactly the same as the last time he had seen her, a millennium ago. They had been enemies then too…
 




The Door to the Sky Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$2.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$2.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$2.99




 
Related Posts:
Now Available – THE DOOR TO THE SKYNow Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "A Fine Mess"

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, April 25, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Sigils


1508




Tuesday


Sigils


1504




Wednesday


Sigils


1528




Thursday


Sigils


1505




Friday


Sigils
Edited "Brain Freeze".
Edited "Callisto".
Edited "Indain Summer".
Edited "Constellation".
Edited "Selene".


1518




Saturday


Sigils


523




Sunday


Sigils


520














Total



8606




YTD Total: 125679
Current streak: 41 days
 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday





Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

 
Related Posts:
Now Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"Now Available – "Evanescent"

April Wrapup

 
So…this is about it for April. What happened?
 
I finished the first draft of GoSH1.
 
I wrote almost 18,000 words in my new project, Sigils.
 
I wrote over 37,000 words for the month.
 
I added another 30 days to my current writing streak, bringing the total to 40 days (and still counting).
 
I released my short story, "Sweet Tooth", as an ebook.
 
I think that about sums up April.
 
What didn't happen? I have a couple of short stories that didn't get released, and a collection of stories that almost got released (glares at PubIt). So I guess those will be rolled into May. So it goes, sometimes.
 
What's up for May? Well, on the publishing side, there's the leftovers from April that will be released (see above), plus I have one more collection of stories I will be releasing. After that, I'm planning to take both of the new collections, combine them with Demon Candy, and release the whole as a large "omnibus" collection. This omnibus will include all of the "mask stories". That is, all the short stories I've written inspired by Don's paintings. I haven't come up with a name for this omnibus, uber-collection yet. I need to do that. Add that to the list for May too.
 
On the writing side, I expect to extend my writing streak to a new personal record (my current record, set during A Short Story a Day, is 41 days) as I continue to add words to Sigils. I don't expect to finish Sigils until June, at the earliest, so that should be all I write on in May.
 
Have a good weekend!
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
A MilestonePosting Stories for a New CollectionMarch Was Fun – Mostly

"Highly Variable"

 
I think that about describes my literary tendencies. Which is to say, my lack of a clearly defined genre as a writer.
 
Will this change? And if it does change, will it change again?
 
I blame my "A Short Story a Day" project for this aspect of my writing life. During ASSAD, I wandered as far afield in fictive styles as I could. That's where I wrote my first horror stories. And my first stories of modern life. Even my first (and only) western-zombie-apocalypse. It was a wonderful learning experience. I highly recommend it.
 
Though maybe not so much if you want to write within a single genre.
 
I've found genre jumping and genre crossing and just plain genre ignoring a lot of fun. Addictive, even.
 
But it has made my writing style and writing topics and writing everything (though hopefully not my writing quality) "highly variable".
 
I have no doubt this high variability has made my initial marketing efforts as an indie author/publisher more difficult. Look at The Door to the Sky, for example. I called it "Spec Fic" because I couldn't come up with a better genre fit. The novel has fantasy (modern & less modern), sci-fi (ish), steampunk (ish), cyberpunk (ish), and just about anything else that it occurred to me to toss in (no zombies, though). I had a lot of fun writing that novel, and I had a lot of fun reading it again while getting it ready for publication. But writing the blurb for it was a pain. How do I put all that in a coherent paragraph that doesn't sound too schizophrenic? I gave it my best shot, and maybe it works.
 
But why look at just one book? Look at all of them. I'm all over the map: horror, dark urban fantasy, modern fantasy, young adult, slipstream, science fiction. And, yes, western-zombie-apocalypse. And that's just the visible stuff. The next novel I expect to release is, of all things, an alternate history fantasy (guns & magic, baby). And then there is the tween novel (modern fantasy) due out after that. And the dark urban fantasy/horror novel I'm working on now.
 
See? Highly variable.
 
I'd like to think it's a good thing. Since I don't expect it to change.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Oh. So That's What It's Called."Indie" is not a GenreWhy I Don't Worry About Confusing The Market

A Sigils Progress Report

 
As of today, I'm 14000 words into my current writing project, Sigils. Usually, by this time in a project I can make a reasonable guess as to the final length. I'm not so sure this time.
 
Am I 20% of the way done? More? Less? I have no idea.
 
If every "day" [2-part chapter] in the outline ends up around 8K-10K (like the first day), then I'm about 16% done [because there are 9 days in the outline].
 
I'm thinking day #2 will end up closer to 10K-12K words. I'm already at 5500 words in this day and I haven't even gotten to the second part of the day yet. Will they all be that long? The 3rd day could be a lot longer. The 4th could be much shorter. In fact, there's no reason to assume that there will even be a useful "average word count" per chapter.
 
So … no … I have no idea how long this book will be.
 
I have 8 full weeks before Junebug's due date, plus I'll do about 4K more words this week. Which comes to about 72K words before Junebug. Or about 86K words total by then.
 
Will I be done by then? I have no idea. All I can guess is I will be either done or close to the end by then.
 
Which is a pretty vague guess, if you ask me.
 
My longest completed novel (which was also my first completed novel; which is unlikely to ever see the light of day) hit 145K words in its first draft (I cut it down to 125K in editing). I really don't expect Sigils to get that long. At least, I hope it doesn't.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
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My Flash Fiction "Time: A Love Story" on Book Brouhaha

She opened the door wearing only a coy look and a towel, her hair still dripping wet.


He smiled and pulled her close to kiss her. She returned the kiss and put her arms around his neck, then squealed and pulled away from him as her towel started to fall off…
 
Click here to read the whole story…
 
My thanks to Alain Gomez of Book Brouhaha for hosting the story.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Opining About Short StoriesA Story in "Zombiepalooza""Until Death Do Us Part" on Zombiepalooza

Story Storming; or How I Wrote My Latest Short Story

 
Here are the notes I wrote to myself before I started writing "Secondhand Coffin" back in February. Obviously, there are a lot of spoilers in the notes, as I lay out the entire story (eventually), at least in rough outline. So if you haven't read the story yet, feel free to do that now. I'll wait.
 
Click here to read "Secondhand Coffin".
 
"Secondhand Coffin" was my entry in the NY Midnight Movie Madness Short Story Challange 2011. Which you know already, because you read the story. Right?
 
Without further delay, here are my (unedited) story storming notes for "Secondhand Coffin":
 
SSC2011 Story Storming
 
I drew "Ghost Story" and "Claustrophobia".
 
My immediate idea was a secondhand coffin. Which might actually be a cool title, now I write it out. Buy a coffin, discover you're not the first to use it. But how is that fun? What if it's a for a beloved spouse, and you just fixed him up with a date for eternity? How does a coffin get reused? Is someone digging them and reselling them? "This would never happen if you used cremation." What if the claustrophobia is in the crematorium? The furnace? It's getting crowded in there, all those stuck souls.
 
Why did the soul stick with the coffin instead of its body? Or isn't that always the question? Body's over there, souls floating about whilly nilly, hither and yon.
 
The coffin isn't *really* secondhand. Someone was killed and hidden in the coffin while it was at the funeral home. Their body was then taken out and dumped somewhere more discreet. And hidden.
 
What is the ghost waiting for? She died before she could be a mother…so she's waiting for a child to care for. She wants revenge and is waiting for the man who killed her.
 
So…she's a she? This ghost? Why was she killed?
 
Does she possess the body of whoever is placed there and go on a killing spree? A sort of revenge story with a ghost possessing the body of a man prepared for burial.
 
I like the idea. How do I keep it short? 2500 words isn't a lot of words.
 
And none of that has anything to do with claustrophobia.
 
I could do a somewhat circular story. Start with the coffin on display for sale, lid propped open. End with it back on sale, lid propped open. She can't take it when they close the lid at night. SHe especially can't take it when they place a body in the coffin and close the lid.
 
Maybe a fragmented story with multiple viewpoints. The guy who works at the funeral home who let a body be stored there over night in one of the coffins. The guy who killed the girl and hid her body and then disposed of it. The ghost of the girl.
 
Maybe she was wrapped in plastic and buried under concrete. That would be claustrophobia inducing, I'm sure.
She moves back and forth from her body to the coffin.
 
She woke up just as she was being concreted. She wasn't awake for her last breath. But she was awake when she died of suffocation, unable to move or scream or do anything. The next time she woke up it was when the lid of a coffin was raised.
 
Or maybe the first time she woke up, she was in the coffin, her hands bound. The guy at the funeral home raised the lid, saw her, then called the guy. She can hear muffled conversation. Then the guy who hit her comes back and hits her again or somehow renders her unconscious. "Really dead this time." THen she wakes up unable to breath and being buried by cold, lumpy concrete. THen she wakes up again in the coffin…accept this time she has no body, and no one hears her screams. Her consciousness moves back and forth between the coffin and her concrete grave.
 
Could go Twilight Zone…she possesses the body to drag her boyfriend back to the coffin with her. Accept she manages to also pull him into the concrete with her…or she swaps places with him, leaving him alive in her little nook under the concrete. Her body being found in the coffin with the body she possessed.
 
Can I fit that in 2500 words?
 
Why did the guy kill her? Was he really her boyfriend? Why did the funeral home guy go along with it? Was this something mob related?
 
Or maybe go occult. She was sacrificed to grant them access to power of some sort.
 
She has to know the man who killed her, I think. She needs a connection to him. A personal connection. She needs to know why he killed her.
 
Maybe they're killing someone else. That's how she gets access to both men. Neither of whom she knows. Nor does she know the body that was hidden in the same coffin she was hidden in.
 
She was attacked and , but she wasn't dead. They wrapped her in her own expensive carpet, then stuffed her, carpet and all, into the coffin. "She won't stain anything." "But she'll still stink." "Ever heard of Febreze, you dipshit?"
 
It's almost worse when they open the lid everyday, letting in the golden glow of the special lights of the display room. Almost. Because nothing could be worse than the cold plastic and concrete pushing against her skin. But almost. Because every night, they dusted the coffin and closed it again, locking her away from the light again in her grave of manmade stone…
 
So…open with the opening of the lid. A bit of reflection. Customers who look into the coffin and shake their heads. The funeral salesman who looks familiar and never touches the coffin. Then closing for the day. Then…opening at night and there *he* is, the man who killed her. Or tried to. Twice. And failed both times. And there's the funeral salesman. He's helping the man who killed her put a carpet-wrapped body into the coffin. "What? Do you buy these things wholesale?" They close the lid and now she's alone in the coffin with the dead body. She finds that she can move into the dead body. But with the carpet wrapping her it's almost as bad as her concrete grave. When the men come for the body, she causes it to thrash about and the men drop the body.
 
Now it gets macabre.
 
The man who killed her shoots the body, but this doesn't seem to kill it. There's some beating that happens too. When the carpet is loosened, she manages to lurch the body out and attacks the man who killed her. The funeral home salesman cowers in the corner. She kills him too, but more quickly. She puts both bodies into the still-open coffin. Then she climbs in with them. As she leaves the body, she closes the lid on them.
 
That's 3 parts, really:

Beginning – Return
Middle – Repeat
End – Revenge

 
I don't explain why she was so damn hard to kill.
 
I don't explain why her spirit remained.
 
I don't explain why her spirit could move between the coffin and the concrete.
 
I don't explain why she can possess and animate a corpse.
 
I don't explain where she's headed after the end of the story.
 
I'll need to have a name for her. She doesn't know the name of the two men. Maybe. Maybe she doesn't need to know what she was killed. She can guess, maybe. Or maybe she just wonders what she must have seen or who she must have spoken to at the wrong place and time.
 
~ ~ ~
 
That's all exactly as I typed it into The Journal in my "Short Story" category on 6 February. (This commercial brought to you by The Journal: Write, Organize, Remember, Find. )
 
It was sometime last year (2010) I first used the phrase "story storming". I use it to mean I'm sitting at my desk, typing ideas about/for a story into my journal. Usually *before* I start writing the story, sometimes in the middle to figure out what I screwed up and how I can get past it.
 
My story storming sometimes gets a bit longwinded. As you might have noticed. How longwinded depends on how long it takes me to wander verbally into a story idea that catches my attention. The above was over 1100 words–and that was for a 2500-word story. Compare that to my story storming for a recent novel project: 19,000 words of notes and outline for a 65,000-word first draft.
 
Anyway, I hope that was at least interesting.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
My Short Story Challenge 2011 Judges FeedbackMy Short Story Challenge 2011 Story: "Secondhand Coffin"Lookitthat – More Words Than I Needed