Ari McKay's Blog, page 18

Daily Dose story: “Changing the Things You Can”

We’ve got a new short story coming out in June as part of Dreamspinner Press’ Mended Daily Dose anthology!

The entire anthology package is on sale for $39.99 until the end of April. After that, you can buy the package for $49.99 through May 25. Starting on June 1, all stories will be available for individual sale or you can still buy the whole package for $64.99.

Changing the Things You Can:

Devastated by the death of his best friend from a drug overdose, rock star Devon Bailey retreats to his hometown to grieve. When his fragile emotional state causes him to break down in a local bakery, owner Michael Behrman comes to his rescue.

Michael’s nurturing instincts prompt him to reach out to Devon, offering support and a comforting shoulder, and the two grow closer. Michael’s feelings for Devon deepen into something more–but how can he know whether Devon feels anything more for him than gratitude?

Update and Hearthstone

I’ve just done a little update to our site to include “Herc’s Mercs: The Bigger They Come” on  our list of novellas, and I’ve got a separate page for it set up on our series list as well. I also updated the reviews page.

This weekend, I’ve got a lull that will allow me to (finally!) finish the Herc’s Mercs 2 edits, so I think we’ll be submitting that next week. We don’t have anything coming out in May, but we do have a short story coming out from Dreamspinner Press in June! We’re participating in the Daily Dose again this year, and our entry, “Changing the Things You Can”, will be available on June 1.

In other, non-writing related news, I’ve gotten really into playing Blizzard’s new online card game, Hearthstone. I’ve played Blizzard games for well over ten years, starting with the original Warcraft games, and I’ve played World of Warcraft since launch in 2004. I’m also playing Diablo III pretty regularly since the new expansion came out last month. But really, it’s Hearthstone that’s got me sucked in right now.

I’ve never been particularly interested in card games before. I never got into Magic or anything like that, but Hearthstone is proving to be a lot more fun than I expected! I haven’t really built a killer deck yet, but I’ve been having fun with my priest deck lately. I played it some last week because one of the daily quests was to win two games with either a priest or paladin deck.

I ended up in a game against a hunter that was going pretty bad for me. I was down to about five HP while he** was still hovering around 20 (you start with 30). His mistake was starting to toss the “well played” emote*** at me prematurely because he obviously thought he was going to smash my face in, especially when he brought out a Gruul that gets +1 health and +1 attack at the end of every turn.

The problem? I was at ten mana and had a mind control card in my hand (which costs ten mana). I mind controlled his Gruul away from him and whittled his health down to 14. He played a card with “taunt”, which means it acts like a shield; you can’t hit the player until that card is out of the way. At that point, I was still at 5 HP against his 14, and he started “well played”-ing me again because (I assume) he thought I wouldn’t be able to get through the taunt card and get to him before he got to me.

The problem? I had #2 of 2 mind control cards in my hand and the Gruul had gotten its +1/+1 up to where it had 14 attack. So I mind controlled his taunt card over to me and beat him with his own Gruul. (No, I didn’t get to keep it permanently.)

I think the moral of this story is not to be a dick and start “well played”-ing your opponent until you’ve actually won the game. Also, luck of the draw, man. Luck of the draw. That was my most epic win, even beating out the game where my opponent and I got each other down to 1 HP and I only won because they ran out of moves and it was my turn.

 

** I say “he” because the hunter avatar is a male character from Warcraft; I don’t know the actual gender of the player.

*** You’d think this would be a good thing, but I’ve read on the Blizzard forums where players are actually using the emote to be dicks and mock their opponent before demolishing them.

Writing Process Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Ari McKay portion of the Writing Process Blog Hop! Much thanks to Sean Michael for inviting us – you can check out his blog at http://sean-michael.livejournal.com and learn all about how he does his thing!

 

1) What am I working on?

 

We usually have at least 2-3 things in various states of progress at any given time. Some things get backburnered indefinitely, and some get backburnered temporarily, but nothing ever truly goes to waste. Everything we write allows us to practice something new.

 

Right now, we have a rough draft of the second Herc’s Mercs story (the first is coming out this Wednesday, April 2!) finished and awaiting final edits before we submit it.

 

We have a rough draft of the third Herc’s Mercs story mostly finished. It needs a couple of action scenes added and a first round of edits. The Herc’s Mercs bunnies hit hard, fast, and en masse, so we pretty much wrote three stories in that universe back to back.

 

We have about 22k words of a post-apocalypse novella/novel that we envision as a kind of futuristic Steampunk Western. It might be a while before we get back to this one, but we’ve had a lot of fun with the world-building, so we’ll definitely finish it eventually.

 

But the main thing we’re working on right now is the third novel in the Blood Bathory trilogy! We’ve started and scrapped drafts of this two or three times as we tried to figure out which way we wanted to go with it, and we’ve finally settled on a direction that’s working out really well. This novel will wrap up the battle between the vampires and theriomorphs begun in Blood Bathory: Like the Night and continued in Blood Bathory: Absence of the Sun, which is coming out on July 2. Even though we’re wrapping up this particular arc, we’ll probably revisit this world down the road because we’ve grown attached to the characters and the world we’ve created, and there are definitely other stories to tell!

 

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

 

With the Blood Bathory series, we’ve tried to create and explore different variations on the traditional types of vampires and werewolves. Our shapeshifters are a kind of shaman, servants of Gaia who protect and nurture life. Their form is determined by their nature, and they can transform at will. Our vampires are cursed rather than undead, and the distinction will be made clearer in Blood Bathory: Absence of the Sun, which reveals the origin of the vampires.

 

There’s a lot of world-building in the Blood Bathory series, and while there’s definitely a romance (and sex), the emphasis is on the plot, which has plenty of action sequences. World building and character development tend to be common elements of our works in general, especially when we’re creating a series.

 

3) Why do I write what I do?

 

We write a lot of different genres! We have a lot of contemporary romance stories, but we also have historicals and paranormal adventures. Even within the contemporary works, we’ve tackled a wide range of characters and settings. Basically, we go where the plot bunnies take us, and we enjoy trying new things. So if we get a particularly aggressive plot bunny biting our ankles, we’ll try it, doing research as needed.

 

4) How does your writing process work?

 

Because we don’t live near each other, we use Google Docs to write our drafts. The benefits of using a collaborative writing tool is that we can both access the documents at the same time and write together in real time when we’re online together in the evenings, and we can access the draft and take our turn in the current scene when we have time during the day. It saves drafts automatically, and the draft can be downloaded as a Word document once we’re ready to start editing and formatting in preparation to submit the story.

We use Evernote to organize notes about our stories, clip webpages and photos we can use for inspiration, write up character bios, and keep an on-going plot bunny list, among other things. We give our novels their own notebook; each series has its own notebook, and our short stories all go in the same notebook. It’s been a very handy organizational tool, and the best thing is that we can both access it from our computers, our smart phones, or our iPads.

Our writing process is pretty simple, and we’ve got it honed to an art form at this point. First we decide on the overall plot, which is determined based on whether we’re writing for a specific call for submissions or we’ve been attacked by a giant, rabid plot bunny that’s sunk its teeth into our ankles and refused to let go. Sometimes, it’s both!

After that, we discuss the main characters. Sometimes, a character will pop up and start yakking at one of us. At that point, deciding who writes whom is easy. We stick to single POV within a scene, but we do alternate POV from scene to scene so that the burden of exposition doesn’t fall entirely on one of throughout the story. On the rare occasion when we do stick to single POV, it’s because either the story length requirement was so short that we thought it wouldn’t be worthwhile to switch or we thought the story would work better seen through the POV of a single character. Most recently, we tried first person POV with “Call of the Night Singers” because we were trying to mimic the common tropes of traditional Gothic horror.

After we finish the rough draft, Ari takes the first editing pass. After she’s done looking at it, I format the work to the publisher’s requirements and take my editorial pass through it. Sometimes, we get someone else to look at it as well if we’re worried about any particular aspects of the story or we want to make sure it reads well. We’re pretty much a well-oiled machine when it comes to writing the rough draft, but we do tend to get bogged down in the editing and revision stage. That part always seems like a necessary evil when we’d rather be starting on the new shiny!

Next week, please check out the blogs of some other fantastic writers:

 

For author and textile artist A. Catherine Noon, it’s all about the yarn, both metaphorical and literal—spinning a yarn, knitting with yarn, weaving, sewing, painting, sharing stories and good times over a cup of coffee with dark chocolate. She teaches creative writing, creative expression and textile arts. You can find her blog at: http://acatherinenoon.blogspot.com/

 

Medeia Sharif is a writer of Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction from several different publishers, as well as being a middle school English teacher. You can find her at http://medeiasharif.com

Cover for Blood Bathory: Absence of the Sun

Here it is! The cover for Absence of the Sun, coming on July 2 from Torquere Press!

Call of the Night Singers

Tomorrow, our Gothic horror novella, “Call of the  Night Singers”, is coming out! It’s something Ari has already talked about, but there were a couple of behind the scenes things I wanted to share as well.

The story takes place primarily in Bath, NC, and it mentions a curse on the little town, which is a real thing. Well, as real as a legendary curse can be, depending on how much stock you put in that kind of thing! It’s called the Whitefield Curse, and it was placed on Bath by a traveling evangelist in the mid-1700s. Apparently, he thought the residents of Bath were unrepentant sinners, and when he left town for the last time, he shook the dust of the town off his shoes and laid his curse on it.

Coincidentally (or not *ominous music*), Bath began as a prosperous port city, but not long after Whitefield left, its fortune began to decline. Washington (NC) began to rise in its place, stealing away its business, population, and prospects, and Bath has never flourished again since that time.

I’ve mentioned before that we often include elements in our stories purely for our own amusement, and Roderick Heatherford’s faithful manservant is one of those elements. We named him O’Brien after , and we based the character’s appearance on Riff-Raff. I pictured the character so strongly that I typed “Riff-Raff” instead of “O’Brien” more than once.

We hope our readers enjoy our foray into the realm of the Gothic! Given our love of the supernatural and paranormal, it probably won’t be our last. Just not in first person.

A Trip Into the Unknown…

As some people know, on March 19th our novella “Call of the Night Singers” will be released by Torquere Press. This is a very different venture for us in many ways, and we’re eager to see what people think.

What’s so different, you may ask. Well, to begin with, it’s in first person. I know a lot of people don’t care for first person POV, but in this case it was absolutely necessary for it to be written as such, because the story is very much an H.P. Lovecraft-inspired gothic horror. Both McKay and I are fans of the horror genre, and for me, especially, H.P. Lovecraft was one of the authors who I read extensively in my formative years. His kind of brooding, creeping horror/suspense had a big influence on my appreciation for a well-crafted tale of the macabre, and it’s very easy to trace his influence on authors such as Stephen King and Robert McCammon (both of whom I also enjoy).

The second difference is that the story is a historical. Our other historical piece, Heart of Stone, has been well-received, so we wanted to venture back to the Victorian era once more. One advantage of a historical setting for this kind of story is that it helps preserve the nature of the unexplained and unexplainable, to make the horror that much more fearsome because the characters don’t have to get caught up in things like DNA analysis or infrared photography to prove or disprove their experiences. This is in direct contrast to our story “Ghost of a Chance”; while “Ghost” wasn’t a horror story per se, the scientific proof (or lack of it) lay at the very heart of the conflict between the characters. In “Night Singers”, however, disbelief isn’t much of an option for the protagonists, and they are the products of a Victorian era which was rife with seers, seances, and all sorts of unexplained phenomena.

Another difference from our usual type of story is that it’s an established relationship piece. Geoffrey Wainwright, the POV character, has been with his lover Garland Heatherford for several years, and they are very much in love with one another. Rather than the central story involving characters discovering one another and finding love, this time love is the motivation for overcoming fear and horror in order for the characters to protect one another.

Even though this story is bit different from our other work, we do hope people enjoy it, especially those who are fans of a good horror story!

Story Blurb:

When Garland Heatherford is named heir to his uncle’s vast fortune, he isn’t pleased by the honor, and with good reason. The last five heirs all met with most untimely deaths – four of them from drowning. Although loathe to accept his inheritance, Garland nevertheless travels to the “cursed” town of Bath, North Carolina, to meet his aged uncle, hoping to avoid the fate of his predecessors. But Garland has something in his favor the other heirs didn’t: his lover, Geoffrey Wainwright.

The sight of the decaying hulk of Heatherford House dismays both men, yet they have little choice but to enter a world where a miasma of horror lies beneath a veneer of breeding, and madness and death seem to lurk in every corner. Ruling over all is the presence of sinister Roderick Heatherford, who has managed to outlive five young, healthy heirs despite his allegedly poor health. When an unexpected illness strikes Garland and he begins to sleepwalk, lured from bed by singing only he can hear, Geoffrey resolves to protect Garland from every danger – even if it costs him his own life.

Cover for Herc’s Mercs: The Bigger They Come

Cover for Herc’s Mercs: The Bigger They Come

Cover for Call of the Night Singers!

Call of the Night Singers

Dandy’s Little Girl

Our newest novella is now available! Dandy’s Little Girl is on sale now at Torquere Press! 103 pages / 31300 words for $4.99

Noah Coleman doesn’t do casual relationships. After losing his partner, Jeff, and raising their daughter Emily by himself, he’s not used to thinking of anyone in a romantic way. But when he moves back to Chicago and meets former classmate Andy Lane again, Andy somehow manages to worm his way into Noah and Emily’s lives – and into Noah’s heart. Noah watches Emily and Andy grow closer, but Andy doesn’t seem to want anything more from Noah than friendship. What’s a father to do when he realizes balancing love and parenthood isn’t as easy as he’d always thought?

Valentine’s Day story: Dandy’s Little Girl

Tomorrow (February 5), our first work of 2014 will be published! It’s a Valentine’s Day themed novella called “Dandy’s Little Girl”:

Five years after losing his partner, Noah Coleman lets Andy Lane into his life and the life of his daughter, Emily. Emily and Andy obviously adore one another, but can Noah handle it when his feelings of friendship for Andy become something more?

For this story, I wrote Andy, who is the manager of a toy store by day and a Bluegrass musician by night. His band, the Big Biscuit Bottoms, are hired to play an “Anti-Valentine’s Day” gig at a local bar, and I had way too much fun compiling the set list. Rather than go for songs about heartbreak and betrayal, I decided to use songs dealing with the end of a romance… via murder.

What amused me most is that I found so many, I had to narrow the final list down. Not all of the songs I chose involve murder, but they are all unconventional takes on love and romance. In case anyone is intrigued, I’ve compiled a list (with videos!) below.

“Pretty Polly” is a song I’ve sneaked into two stories; it was mentioned in “Holiday Hootenanny” as well as one of the songs being played when Clint and Josh arrive at the big family Christmas Eve shindig. It’s one of my favorite folk “murder ballads”.

The first video is a more traditional take on the song featuring Patty Loveless; it’s a pretty typical version.

This second version by Vandaveer is a much different interpretation of the song; the music video is a creepy story in and of itself, and they’ve slowed the tune down a bit. I’d never seen this before searching for videos for this post, but I fell in love with it!

“Where the Wild Roses Grow” by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue has another creepy story-video. Given Nick Cave has an entire album of murder ballads, I was tempted to throw more of his on the list, but I was trying to be as diverse as possible.

“The Banks of the Ohio” is basically about a guy who murders a woman when she refuses to marry him. The ultimate in “not taking rejection well”.

There’s no death in “Whiskey in the Jar”! But there is betrayal. The first video is a traditional version of the song, performed by the High Kings.

However, there’s also a version by Metallica! (Thin Lizzie covers it too.)

“The Long Black Veil” has both betrayal and murder, but not in the same way as the others. The narrator of the song is a man falsely accused of murder. This is a lovely, lyrical version performed by Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell. Mick Jagger also covers it with The Chieftains, which is my favorite version.

“Single Girl” by Peter, Paul, and Mary has neither murder nor betrayal! It’s a simple, pretty song about a married woman who wishes she was a single girl again because she misses the freedoms she enjoyed.

“Gay Pirates” is a modern song by Cosmo Jarvis about — as the title suggests — a gay pirate in love with his crewmate, Sebastian. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew doesn’t take well to their shipboard romance.

And since I was on a maritime theme anyway, I couldn’t resist including “The Ballad of Pirate Jenny” from The Threepenny Opera. It’s about a woman who dreams of a ship with black sails rescuing her from her miserable life (and destroying the whole town and everyone in it in the process). The first video is a typical Broadway musical take.

But I also found this amazing version by Nina Simone, who transports the character from a flophouse in Germany to a flophouse in South Carolina.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video for “Willie Taylor”. The version I’m familiar with is by an all-female Bluegrass group called Uncle Earl, and I love the song because it’s about a woman who finds out her lover has been cheating on her — so she walks up and shoots him right in front of his new girl, and the guy’s captain is so impressed by her spunk that he  invites her to join his crew. It’s a funny twist on the typical murder ballad trope.