S.A. Check's Blog, page 10

Stein Snippet #3

Bwahahahahaha!  Just needed to get that out of my system.  It isOctober, you know.  Halloween is just around the corner and even better than that, we’ve just stumbled into yet another Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  What is that you ask?  Well, only a group of some truly inspired sci-fi/fantasy writers that contribute weekly snippets of their work.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out the main site at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com for a complete list.  And what better time to tell a zombie story than the scariest month of the year!!  Quick recap – in the last few snippets, Annie has been on the run from the meat patrol (ravenous zombies) and took a bad turn into a dead end.  With the running dead closing fast, her only hope is jumping into a trash filled dumpster.
          Annie pulled back the lid to the dumpster and threw her leg up onto the ledge to crawl inside.  A hand shot up from inside the darkened container, slamming the top back down.  Annie stumbled away, dropping the tin medical kit she carried under her arm.
          “Mine, go ‘way!”  The voice sounded like someone choking a dog after they just let it drink drain cleaner, low and coarse, more consonants then vowels.
          The first of the zombies crashed into the wall at the mouth of the alley, clinging to the bricked wall with rotted fingers.  One of the arms from his orange jump suit hung empty at its side.  Annie guessed it for a paramedic or E.M.T. that came across the wrong patient.  Their eyes locked on to each other’s in the little light the corridor provided as its eyes glazed over with the hunger.
          “Pretty food.”
          And there you have it.  I'm still working on a title.  Hope you enjoyed and come back next week to see what happens to Annie and the rat pack.  Please, leave a comment before you go.  They’re always appreciated.

SciFiFanSnippet - 10/12/13

Bwahahahahaha!  Just needed to get that out of my system.  It isOctober, you know.  Halloween is just around the corner and even better than that, we’ve just stumbled into yet another Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  What is that you ask?  Well, only a group of some truly inspired sci-fi/fantasy writers that contribute weekly snippets of their work.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out the main site at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com for a complete list.  And what better time to tell a zombie story than the scariest month of the year!!  Quick recap – in the last few snippets, Annie has been on the run from the meat patrol (ravenous zombies) and took a bad turn into a dead end.  With the running dead closing fast, her only hope is jumping into a trash filled dumpster.
          Annie pulled back the lid to the dumpster and threw her leg up onto the ledge to crawl inside.  A hand shot up from inside the darkened container, slamming the top back down.  Annie stumbled away, dropping the tin medical kit she carried under her arm.
          “Mine, go ‘way!”  The voice sounded like someone choking a dog after they just let it drink drain cleaner, low and coarse, more consonants then vowels.
          The first of the zombies crashed into the wall at the mouth of the alley, clinging to the bricked wall with rotted fingers.  One of the arms from his orange jump suit hung empty at its side.  Annie guessed it for a paramedic or E.M.T. that came across the wrong patient.  Their eyes locked on to each other’s in the little light the corridor provided as its eyes glazed over with the hunger.
          “Pretty food.”
          And there you have it.  I'm still working on a title.  Hope you enjoyed and come back next week to see what happens to Annie and the rat pack.  Please, leave a comment before you go.  They’re always appreciated.

Twelve Sunsets

What’s that I hear in the distance?  Is it thunder?  The ice-cream man?  No.  Then it must be another installment of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  Due to universal forces out of my control, I missed posting last week but I did add some to the WIP I posted from the last few times.  I was all ready to post from there again but, to my own amazement, I caught the message that this was cue word week, like college week on Wheel Of Fortune but cooler.  Anyway, the word suns appeared nowhere in that snippet, considering it’s night in the scene, so instead I got all prose-like and came up with this.  I hope sunsetsmake the cut – it was as close as I could get.  Something a little different but staying in the zombie state of mind (Is that a Billy Joel song?).  Enjoy and check out all the other great sunsrelated snippets over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com. ___________________________________________________________________________
Twelve sunsets lay rid
The ghost town of Manhattan
Where zombies dwell in the spas and
Walk through fountains
With weekend hats and plastic souls
Driving down brick laden paths
To farmer's market filled with
Spoiled fruits from forgotten realms
Burning out their retinas
Watching blurred horizons
I never claimed to be a poet.  Seeya next week where I’ll return to Annie trapped in an alley while being chased by a ravenous pack of zombies.  Maybe they’re vegans?

SciFiFanSat - 09/21/13

Here we go on another Science Fiction Fantasy weekend go round.  I’m back into the swing after taking a few weeks off and last week I decided to start a new story (is this like writer therapy? – share with the group).  This one is still untitled but it’s moving along nicely.  I think.  I’ve toyed around with some zombie adventures before but I figured this was a great venue to spread my un-dead wings and see where it takes me.  We pick up directly from last week and Annie’s on the run from a hungry zombie mob.  Let’s see where her decisions take her.  Arrgghhh…urrggg (that was zombie speak – like pig latin but without the finesse).   Enjoy and don’t forget to click over to SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com and check out all the other writing goodness happening there.
__________________________________________          She darted to the left, between two old warehouses, and then a quick right into what she hoped was a service entrance leading back out to the main road.  Instead, she found herself trapped in a delivery bay designed for big rigs to back their cargo up to a large bay door.  She pulled up on the latch, which held fast.

          “Great.”
          The guttural roars echoing behind her told her the pack had turned the same corners she had and would be filtering into the cargo bay any minute.  Frantically, she searched for another access door, a fire ladder leading up the roof.  Nothing.
          She leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath, and spotted a rotted metal garbage dumpster against the far side of the alley.  Annie figured it was her best shot, provide some protection, maybe mask her scent.  That and it was her only available option.
          Short, sweet, and directly into a dead end.  Dum dum dum.  Hope you enjoyed.  Please leave a comment or two.  They are always appreciated.  You can even use zombie-speak, I just can’t promise to know how to respond.  It’s a very tricky dialect and they’re such a sensitive lot.

Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday Snippet - 09/14/13

          Well, here we are again.  Another dose of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday fun.  I finished up the last short story I shared a couple weeks ago, Snips And Snails, and I had a lot of fun doing it.  While I'm waiting for the release date of my novel, Welcome To GreenGrass, to get closer, I was deciding what to share next.  I decided to take a page out of T.K.'s playbook and just run with it on a week to week basis, so I sat down and cranked out a few paragraphs.  I'm not a pantster by any means but I figured it would be a fun exercise.  No title yet - just some fun zombie rampaging.  I have a kinda cool idea where I want it go but we'll see where it goes.  Hope you enjoy!  Go check out all the great writers over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.  You'll be glad you did.
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          Whoever said always turn left and you’ll never get lost, never had a pack of rampaging zombies chasing them through the back alleys in the middle of the night.  Annie sprinted right at the next corner, changing her path and, she hoped, her outcome.  She knew better than to scavenge that late but Zach’s arm wasn’t healing and without some type of medicine, he was a walking advertisement for the meat patrols.  She pulled an old pizza rack down behind her as she ran.  Another universal un-truth - the undead sauntered along, dragging wayward appendage in their wake, was a crock.  They were fast…and hungry, always a bad combination.
          One of the rabid corpses tumbled into the metal shelving she toppled, the crash echoing down the alley.  The rest of the pack shrieked as their meal gained some much needed distance.
          The boy wasn’t her responsibility, she knew that, but in a world that had forgotten how to care for one another, Zach became her line in the sand.  If she let him down, she feared she’d loose what was left of her own humanity.___________________________________________________________________________________          Well?  I hope you enjoyed it.  Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment.  They're one of the best parts of contributing to SFFSat.  Enjoy the weekend!

SnipsAndSnails#9

         Saturday – it rhymes with…well, I’m sure something.  But even more entertaining than my lack of skills of alliteration is the fact that another round of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturdays is here again.  Okay, down in the front row.  And with that I give you the final installment to the short story I’ve been sharing here, Snips And Snails.  After multiple failed attempts at scaring the young boy the creature has been forced into sharing a bedroom / closet with for the past several weeks, we come down to this.  I hope you enjoy it and please make sure you go over to the main site, scififansat.blogspot.com and check out all the contributions there from a great group of authors/writers and leave a few comments in your wake.  They are always appreciated and enjoyed._____________________________________________________________________________
          “Why can I not frighten you, bloodling?”
          “You don’t have anything I haven’t already seen, Booger.  You’re an outdated concept in a well-educated world, the analog to my digital.”
          They stood facing one another as the creature towered over the boy.  After all these centuries, the creature had never encountered a child like him.  What if this is what his future held and his time on that plane frightening the small humans of the world had come to a close?
          The boy raised both hands over his head and screamed, “Say something, you big dummy!” 
          In one swift motion, the creature grabbed the boy’s waist with both hands and thrust him into his now gaping jaws, swallowing hard.  Turning towards the closet, a content grin on his face, the creature burped.
          “How bad can purgatory really be?”  
          What?!  Did you really think I was going to give it a happy ending after all that?  It was fun to see the support the creature was getting over the last few weeks, being tortured with bear traps, toilet paper wraps, and of course, the dutch oven incident.  Moral of the story – when faced with real danger, maybe we shouldn’t rely on movies and the internet to guide us.  Facing fear is one thing, shooting paintballs at it is another. 
          Now, I have to figure out what to share next.  The short story from, mostly, front to back was fun but I enjoy sharing excerpts from WIPs also.  Down the road, I’ll share more from my upcoming novel, Welcome To GreenGrass, coming from Bedlam Press and Necro Publications in December (shameless plug) but for now I guess I need to dig into the archives.  Until theh, have a great weekend!

Snips And Snails #8

Saturday salutations all! I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.  It’s been a good last few weeks for me, having found a publisher for my novel – Welcome To GreenGrass via Bedlam Press, an imprint for Necro Publications.  We’re shooting for a December release date and I’ll definitely be sharing more as we move forward with the process. Check out my previous post for more details, if you like. Back to the action with this week’s snippet from my short story, Snips And Snails. Last week, we watched the creature get terrorized by the small child whose room he is trapped in and a little background how he ended up there.  This week, tensions mount as the creature’s frustrations get the better of him and we have a little “scare down”. Hope you enjoy and please leave a comment (or two – they’re low on calories). Make sure you go over to the main site at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com and check out all the great writing happening over there. Enjoy!______________________________________________________________________________ 
          Too focused on his re-avowing his mission, the creature barely noticed the boy sneak up behind him until he felt the five thousand volts of electrical current course through his neck.
          Reeling away from the jolt, the creature spun around to face the boy, who still held the tazer, the current flaring between the two prongs.
          Smirking, the boy said, “That’ll teach you not to pay attention.”
         The creature snarled and grabbed a toy from the desk as a green mist seeped from his nostrils, flowing down over his hand and melting the victimized space ranger into a puddle of plastic. 
          “I already saw that on Space Terrors 2 and that was a limited edition by the way.”
          Turning away from the child, the creature rammed two fingers into its eyes, turning back to display an eyeball on each pointer finger, the right one winked at the child.
          “Peepers – The Return but they did it better.”
          Flinging his eyes to the floor, the creature grabbed the horns on either side of his head and roared in pain as he ripped his head from his shoulder and hissed, “Your eternal soul is mine.”
          The boy sighed, “My Dearly Beheaded but yours has less blood.”
          Bending down to retrieve the remnants of his melted toy, the boy glanced up as the monster re-adjusted his head and added, “You owe me like two hundred buck for this.”______________________________________________________________________________

And then there's this

Exciting news on the book front.  Welcome To GreenGrass - my sci/fi/fantasy adventure based around the adventures of misplaced terran police officer, John Traveller, and his friends in the strange and exciting city of GreenGrass has been picked up by the awesomely creative and talented David G. Barnett and Bedlam Press, an imprint of Necro Publications.

Necro Publications, a well known leader in publishing dark modern fiction, has been around for years and the Bedlam Press imprint for the publisher handles the modern urban fantasy, humor, sci-fi, and more side of their catalogue.  They recently added a new imprint, Weird West Books, for horror, fantasy & sci-fi on the western side of things.  Check out their website over at www.necropublications.com.

I've been hoping to find a home for this novel and I couldn't be happier to have partnered with Necro / Bedlam.  We're looking at a December 2013 release date and I'll be sure to add updates as the time grows near.  Thanks for the support and I hope you follow along the ride until the release.

Welcome to GreenGrass
A city filled with amazing and strange creatures living on the brink of a civil war.  Rising tensions between the enchanters and technologists threaten to disrupt the city’s delicate balance when a high profile murder shocks its citizenry. 
Enter John Traveller, terran police officer, and his band of unorthodox housemates consisting of a pacifist demon, a cast out demi-god, and a telepathic female, who find themselves at the center of a mystery that can alter the lives of every being trapped within the city’s domed walls.

SnipsAndSnails#7

  An original thumbnail sketch when I was
plotting out one of the below scenes
Yeah, I know, stick with writing.Did you know that the early Romans considered Saturday or “sun’s day” the first day of the week?  Neither did I until I looked it up on wiki, but that’s not the point.  What I’m getting at is what better way to start your week (okay weekend) than a fresh batch of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday snippets (say that five times fast) provided by the talented pool of authors and writers over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.  Oh yeah, I submitted one too.  For the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing pieces from Snips and Snails, a short story about a boy and his closet monster and the strange relationship they’ve formed.  I left off last week with the creature trying to sneak attack the boy in bed only to find a pillow stuffed under the covers before being pelted by something in the head. We pick up from there.  Enjoy and leave a comment or two if you’d like.  They are always appreciated!
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          Covered in a veritable rainbow of colors, the creature spun to face the wide eyed boy still pointing the paint ball gun at him from behind the cover of a wooden toy chest.
          “Are you the Booger-man?”
          That was the first of many nights, as images flooded back to the creature longingly watching a batch of clouds wash across the star scattered sky. 
          His eyes were still recovering from the laser pointer incident and he had trouble focusing on the puncture marks on his hands from the bear trap under the bed fiasco.
          He swore he’d never leave a child behind that hadn’t been taught the principles of fear, the very core of his existence.
          Brushing his hand over his scalp, a small scrap of paper flaked onto his nose, a leftover from the toilet tissue and shaving cream dousing from last week.
          Learning how to fear was intrinsic to a human’s survival and he remained bound to that duty.
          He sighed and took in a deep breath, the smell of burned hair and lighter fluid still lingered, mixed with the remnants of something the bloodling referred to as an oven made by the Dutch.
          One mistake and he would be exiled to purgatory forever.
          Running his claws down the glass, the creature formed a fist against the pane and re-asserted under his breath, “Failure is not an option.” ______________________________________________________________________________
          Thanks again!  Have a great weekend and don’t forget to check out all the great writing snippets over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.

Snips And Snails #6

 
Hello.  I’m not just a Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday endorser but I’m also a client.  Nothing else on the market keeps those ideas brisker and scrubs away those nasty moments of writer’s block.  Now, new and improved with a fresh midnight epiphany smell.  Act now and you’ll get to read a second snippet of equal or lesser value just for commenting in only a week’s time (Hopefully).  Seriously, thanks for stopping over.  I know I’ve been WMIA (writer missing in action) for the last couple weeks but I’m glad to be back with another snippet from my short story Snips and Snails.  Over the last few snippets, we’ve been introduced to the creature in the young boy’s room and their unique relationship and the boy’s poor choice in video downloads leading to the creature’s near up-chuck.  We pick up directly after that.
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          The creature stumbled over to the window and forced down the bile growing in his throat as he watched the darkened street running through the quiet residential neighborhood below.  The anguish in his face distorted in the glass as he turned his attention to the cloud covered moon, regarding the dead star as one would a long lost friend. 
          “There’s an extended un-edited cut and I’m so downloading it.”  The young boy called out behind him.
          Sighing, the creature rested his hand against the window pane as images from the prior weeks flooded his memories.
          The setup was the same as the countless thousands before, a darkened bedroom, a slowly opening closet door with just a hint of un-oiled hinges, and the ominous cast of a shadow stretching towards a young child’s bed.  Perfected by the screams of generations, it was the stage for his aria of terror.  Looming over top the huddled mass of blankets, his fangs shimmered in the glow of his hungry eyes.  Tearing away the façade of protection, the creature howled directly into the grinning face of a certain geometrically shaped cartoon character printed atop the empty pillow.
          That’s when he felt the first impact pinging against the side of his face.
           Thanks for reading and before you go on with the weekend, make sure you go on over to SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com and check out all of the fantastic writing and writers who have contributed their own snippets over there.  You’ll be glad you did.  Hurry – this is a limited time offer (not really).