S.R. Hughes's Blog: The Froth-Mouthed Ravings of a True Lunatic, page 20

No Grave: Meet Harley

Hey, guys!  Just another friendly reminder that No Grave is coming out in a few weeks!

So are we ready for another sneak peek?

Today we’ll be meeting the secretive Harley, (of the Four Horsemen from Nicole’s Assignment) a non-narrator character caught up in the plot woven between Cyrus, Tristan, and Nicole.

If I had to describe her with a single phrase, I think I’d say she’s “aggro as fuck.”

A descriptor we get right out of the way the moment she’s introduced.

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Today’s sneak peek:

 

[Cyrus had] opened his mouth to ask Miranda his next question when the door swung open and a new customer stepped in.  She was a tall woman, five eight or so, made taller by the six inch blood-red mohawk erupting from her scalp.  Her face was all angles, pronounced jaw and chin and high jutting cheek bones.  She had a thin, narrow nose set between brilliant blue eyes, and standing out against all her pale, paper-white skin, were lips painted in the same dripping red hue as her hair.

The lapels of her leather moto jacket were peaked and sharp, the epaulets crowned with inch long spikes.  Her pants were ripped and weathered, held together by pins and old patches, one of which was the printed image from the album cover for ‘London Calling,’ on her right thigh.  She strutted across the bar with heavy combat boots, steel toed, and right up to the counter.  “I need a drink,” she purred.

Cyrus watched Miranda roll her eyes.  The woman looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t place from where.  “Any specific kind of drink?”

Her tongue seemed to be the same lurid shade of crimson as her hair and lips, its tip poised between her teeth for a second before vanishing.  “Do you do bottle service here?”

Cyrus furrowed his brow.

Miranda snorted and sneered.  “’Do we do bottle service?”

The woman turned towards Miranda and said in a chilly voice, “Are you mocking me?”

Miranda quaffed a third of her vodka in one slug and set the glass back on the bar.  “Mocking you?  The woman who came to Bushwick, Brooklyn, looking for bottle service?  No way, not me.”

The woman’s long fingers flicked out faster than Cyrus could follow, suddenly clutching the rim of Miranda’s glass.  Miranda let go of it, jerking away from the bar.  The woman’s hand flexed, tendons popping.  “Mock me,” she demanded.

Cyrus took a step backward toward the register.

“Th—that’s my drink, you—” Miranda stuttered.

“Mock.  Me,” the woman snarled in reply.

“Who the hell are y—”

The woman’s hand clenched down, fissures forming and splintering across the rocks glass until it shattered.  Stinking vodka splashed across the countertop, exploding out from the jagged foundation.  Shards stuck in the woman’s hand, and tributaries of thick, dark blood ran from the wounds and dripped into the pool of clear alcohol.  Miranda jumped back with a yelp and the remaining patron quietly ogled the scene.  Nobody moved.

“You don’t know me well enough to mock me,” the woman said, plucking a jagged fragment from her palm and licking the dark blood from the wound.  She set the broken bit down on the counter and started picking other small slivers out of her hand one at a time.

Cyrus backed up to the register and slid his hand underneath, clutching the grip of the revolver.  He started to peel it away, and the woman’s eyes flicked towards him.  “Do you want to talk about bottle service?” she asked.

“I want to talk about you getting the hell out of my bar.”

She dropped the slivers of broken glass into the pool of spilled alcohol and dug her bloodied hand into her jacket.

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No Grave: Nicole’s Assignment

Hey, guys!  Just another friendly reminder that No Grave is coming out in a few weeks.

Today’s sneak peek goes back to Nicole, the narrator of No Reflection.  She’s a huge part of No Grave, definitely the lead narrator, and has a lot to juggle.  Living an overcrowded life, shut in by a sunset curfew, and struggling to stay ahead of an increasingly dangerous game, Nicole’s journey through No Grave is fraught with danger, confusion, and a surreal descent into strange visions and dreamscapes.

Straight off the bat of No Grave, Nicole is pulled back into the supernatural swing of things, helping her brownstone crew with a murder investigation, but, of course, her life could never be so simple as just that…

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Sneak peek:

 

Goodwin’s phone buzzed, and he peeked at the screen for a second, his demeanor dropping at the sight.  “Well, it seems like I won’t be staying very long, so let’s move on to business, shall we?”

“Let’s.”

He reached down into his leather bag and withdrew a thin folder, sliding it across the table.  “Have you ever heard of a band called The Four Horsemen?  They released two albums, 2002 and 2004, and an unplugged album in 2005.”

“I haven’t heard of them,” Nicole shrugged.

“Ah, well, then…the information is in the folder, but I’ll give you a quick rundown on the basics.  Formed in January of 2002 with their first album release the same year…under the MCA entertainment wing,” he said this last part as though giving her a stern warning, and continued after a beat, “second album in 2004, and a rather messy split in the summer of 2006.  It was a group comprised of four women, if you’ll take a look at the pictures there.”

Nicole flipped through several pages in the folder and arrived at a series of photographs.  There was a photograph of a tall, curvaceous woman with a shock of black hair spilling down to her shoulder blades.  Her pale arms were covered in tattoos, starting at her collarbone, running down both arms, and wreathing her fingers.  The next photo was of a slight, slender woman with shaggy blond hair that arched behind her down to her waist.  Her eyes were narrow, almond-shaped, and her skin reminded Nicole of the bark of a tanned tree.  Nicole thought she’d seen the woman somewhere, before, but couldn’t place it.  She flicked past those photos and found a dozen more of two other women from different angles and in different situations: on stage, in the street, in a promo ad, and at home.  One of them was extremely angular, tall and lean, with a sharp chin, prominent cheekbones, and a jawline that seemed like it could be used as a weapon.  The other had rounded cheeks, an hourglass figure, and full, bright lips.  Crinkled strands of hair fell around her shoulders in loose waves the color of blond coffee.  Her sepia skin looked drained and washed-out, but Nicole imagined men would stare at her, anyway.  The thought made her flinch.  “Who are they?”

“The thin one is named Harley, lead guitarist in the band, and back-up vocals.  The other one is Michelle, bassist and lead lyricist,” Goodwin explained.  “They are not what you would call morning people.”

“I see.”

“Quite.  In any case, I need you to convince them to sign a contract with me,” he tapped his fingers on the edge of the table, “specifically me.  Not the firm, not MCA, just me, Charles Goodwin, Esquire.”

“Did you just refer to yourself by title?” Nicole grinned.

“It helps to remember I went to school for this,” he answered, the everpresent smile tightening on his face.  “In any case, that’s a very important part of the arrangement…because of their history with MCA’s entertainment wing, especially.”

“So you want me to, what?—not tell them what company you work for?”

“Exactly.  Don’t mention MCA to them, at all.” Goodwin folded his hands in front of him, his tone measured and even as he spoke.

“That sounds…like a lie.”

“No, no,” Goodwin rebuffed, “not at all, because they won’t be signing a contract with the company.”

“Just with you?”

“Right.  So it should only be necessary to mention me.”

Nicole’s eyes drifted from the folder in front of her to Goodwin’s face and back again.  “This is very different from the business we usually do together,” she observed, staring at Harley’s face, the hue of her deep, crimson lipstick.

“This is a very different situation from what we’re usually in.  Is that okay with you?”

Not really, she thought, but nodded, anyway, “Yeah…yeah, I can do this.”

“Great.  I’ll be in touch, then.  Don’t be afraid to reach out if you need anything.”

“I won’t be.”

Goodwin stood from the table and pulled his bag from the floor.  “Good, good,” he dug into his pocket and came out with a monogrammed money clip, slipping out a fifty dollar bill and putting it on the table.  “Lunch is on me.  Have a great one.”  He gave her a short nod and was halfway across the restaurant before she could shout a goodbye after him.

Turning back to the folder, she sank down in her seat.  She flipped through pages detailing the life of the now-defunct Four Horsemen, photographs of the principal recruits, and a small CD buried at the back.  She shook her head and closed the file.  As if the case and the line and the e-mails hadn’t been enough…

“Excuse me, miss,” the waiter’s voice snapped her back to the restaurant, “what will you be having this afternoon?”

“Sorry, sorry,” she answered, “could I just have a second to think about it?”

The post No Grave: Nicole’s Assignment appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

No Grave: Meet Tristan

Hey, guys!  Just another friendly reminder that No Grave is coming out in a few weeks.  During the lead-up, I’ll be posting a few small segments introducing some of the new cast and helping you remember some of the lovely people you met in No Reflection.  Our second installment will introduce you to Tristan Wallace, monster slayer extraordinaire and another of our narrators.

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Now presenting…Tristan Wallace:

 

 

“A liter and a half…that’s some bold shit, mano.”

Alex adjusted his aviator shades.  The sun glinted gold off the lenses as he tilted his face toward the hospital across the street.

“Or desperate,” Tristan replied, scratching a bristling shadow of beard.  Dracs didn’t usually drain that much in one go, not off a single victim.  It was the sort of thing that got noticed, and monsters lived and died by one rule: don’t get noticed.

“A drac starving out in New York?” Alex gestured at the crowd milling over the gum-stained sidewalk.  “No way.  Place is an all-you-can-eat buffet for a smart monster.”

“Never said it was smart,” Tristan muttered.  He pointed to the bun nested on top of Alex’s head, “Speaking of which, boyo…how many times am I going to have to tell you to get a haircut before you swing by a barber’s?”

Alex’s lips parted in an off-white smirk.  “Least one more.”

“One of these days, something’s going to grab you by the hair when you’re trying to make a run for it, and that’ll be the end of that.”

Alex shrugged, leaning back against the slender column of a streetlight.  “We’ll see.”

Tristan stared at the Missing Persons posters plastered up the length of the steel pole.  A young woman’s face peered back from one of them, a girl he’d place in her late teens.  He studied the shape of her nose, the narrow bridge and pointed tip of it, and the way her eyebrows peaked like arrows toward her hairline.  Details were important.  The devil was in them, after all.  A stranger remembering the slight asymmetry of a young woman’s eye height could mean the difference between a family reunion and a funeral.

He’d had a daughter, once.

He tore his eyes away from the photograph and dug his hand into his pants’ pocket to touch the purple chip he carried with him.  It was a small token with a slate texture and a hundred microscopic ridges running along its spine.  He’d earned it at their last meeting two weeks ago.  Nine months sober.  He prayed to it, clutched in his palm like a bundled rosary, and withdrew his hand.  Alex was still staring at the hospital.  Tristan cleared his throat.  “Sam’s late.”

“He’ll be here soon.”

Tristan nodded and tried to keep his eyes away from the dozen Missing Person posters fading white on the lamp post.  He focused on the revolving hospital doors.  There’s a job to do, he reminded himself.  A monster to catch.  He put on a worn, wrinkle-chipped grin.  “What do you think Sammie’s going to set us up with, this time?”

“NYPD, bet on it.  Hell, I’ll put down ten bucks.”

Tristan shook his head, “No deal, boyo.”

“You scared?”

“No, just not stupid.”

Alex’s smirk spread into a full-faced smile.  “NYPD, definitely.”  He pulled on a silver necklace and lifted a small badge from under his shirt, “Boy’s gonna get me in trouble, one of these days.”

“If you don’t do it yourself, first,” Tristan replied.  Alex had used his resources as a legal bounty hunter more than a couple times to help them track a monster through the New York streets.  Of course, rule-breaking was par for the course for a hunter.  “Besides, Sammie’s stuff is solid.”

“Says the guy who didn’t want to recruit him.”

“He’s a good Man in Havana, sure, but the boy’s still a bloody boy.”

“Twenty-five years old.”

“Kidding me, twenty-five years old.  I was half-retired when he was shitting himself in diapers.”

“Yeah, and you’ll be glad to have him when it turns the other way around, old man.”

“Fuck you,” Tristan couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.

“Just saying.”

“And you better say a little less before I show you what kind of tricks an old dog like me’s picked up over the years.”

Alex stepped away from the lamp post with a wide grin, “Go ahead.  Maybe I can show you some new ones.”

Tristan held up a hand and nodded to a figure maneuvering through the thick downtown crowd.  Sam was so grayed out Tristan barely noticed him: he wore an unaccented beige overcoat over olive pants, a plain gray shirt, and featureless sneakers—clothing picked out to blend in, manufactured to vanish.  His bright blond hair was trimmed short, but not military-style, with bowl-cut bangs an inch above his eyebrows and nothing hanging loose around his ears.  He was a bit pale, ghost-like except for the fading remnants of a country tan, but there was plenty of pale to go around in the Financial District.  Tristan smiled.  “At least the boy listens when I tell him something.”

“Yeah, and you still picked him out.”

“I got training for that.”

Tristan could hear Alex’s eyes roll behind the golden sheen of his shades.  “Whatever you say, mano.”

Sam pulled out a pair of leather-bound ID cards as he came up to them, “NYPD detectives.  We’re just doing a routine follow-up interview with the victim…crossing, dotting, the usual type stuff.  Tristan, you’re going in as Detective O’Malley.  Alex, you’ll be Detective Vasquez.”

“Ten bucks,” Alex held out his hand.

“I didn’t take the bet, boyo.”

“Chicken.”

Tristan took the leather-bound bifold from Sam, “And who are you?”

“Be going in as Detective Howard.”

“Howard, Vasquez, O’Malley…sounds a bit memorable.”

“Well…” Sam took a deep breath, the kind people take when they know they’ve screwed up.  “What’s a really common Irish name?”

“Brennan?  O’Brien?”

“So maybe…Detective Brennan and, uh, Detective Ramirez?”

“I get this feeling I’m being typecast,” Alex said.

Tristan snorted, “That’s half the point.  Quick and forgettable.”

“The names’ll have to wait ‘till next time, anyway,” Sam fumbled his own bifold open and showed them the NYPD emblem and ID badge inside.  “I already made everything up under O’Malley and Vasquez, even got it so the badge numbers call up records if someone digs into them.”

“Really?” Alex asked.

“Now, they won’t hold up to a real investigation, but as long as no one starts making phone calls, we should be fine.”

Tristan nodded.  “Then let’s not waste any more daylight.”

They split up, each one weaving away from the others through the lunch hour street traffic.  It was part of their approach ritual.  The monster’s axiom wasn’t just for monsters, after all.  A good hunter was an invisible hand.  A good hunter left a series of vague eyewitness accounts and disconnected paper trails in the wake of a downed beast.  A dead werewolf didn’t look much different from a dead human, after all, and nobody did the world much good behind the coal-colored bars of a prison cell.

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No Grave: Meet Cyrus.

As (all of you?) know, No Grave is coming out in just a few short weeks!  To tickle your curiosity, I’ll be posting a few small segments introducing some of the new cast and helping you remember some of the lovely people you met in No Reflection.  This first little teaser will introduce you to one of our narrators, Cyrus LeSage: Brooklynite, bar manager, and semi-retired witch.

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Without further ado, Cyrus LeSage:

 

Cyrus ate food cart breakfast on a sidewalk bench outside of Gilbert Ramirez Park.  He always thought calling the place a ‘park’ was a stretch.  It was a collection of white concrete streets winding around moldy bird fountains and scrappy patches of dying shrubbery.  Pale, splintering benches lined coiled walkways, framed in rusted black metal.  The park sat across from a desolate, walled-in lot of unoccupied land where tall, blue boards cried out ‘POST NO BILLS’ in faded orange stencil.  Despite the fervent demand, nearly every board was covered in vivid graffiti, wild hues of purple and yellow scrambled together in arcs of text and almost-murals.  One of the spray-paintings, a nearly three-dimensional spiral, reminded him of something from his nightmares.  He did his best to avoid looking at it.

The park was a good place to eat.  It was lightly populated.  Small children ran between scrawny trees laughing and playing tag, while older kids threw a tennis ball against a high wall and caught it as it rebounded.  An elderly couple perched on a nearby bench looked on, narrow smiles tickling their faces.  Cyrus had long ago found it was calming to be in the midst of a crowd.  No matter what happened, someone would see it.  It was a pleasant thought, even if it wasn’t true.

Cyrus dropped the Styrofoam serving box in a curbside garbage bin and watched a pair of children chase each other around a birdbath.  He turned to walk down the street when he heard a voice pick up on the autumn wind.

“Cyrus,” it tickled the back of his ears, soft and musical.

He spun around.

Bushwick, he reminded himself, his eyes searching for an unnoticed shadow somewhere between attenuated tree branches.  He took a step toward one of the twisting white walkways and peered down to where it vanished in on itself behind a thicket of bushes.  He listened for another sound.  A high-pitched giggle arced up from around a small hill.

Static crackled between the hairs on his arm.  The air hummed.  A coil of smoke lifted in the back of his mind, a West Virginian campfire window to Darkplace.  An ash-scented memory of the Last Ceremony.

His heart wardrummed in his skull.  It was coming.

A child turned a sharp corner over the crest of the hill and bumped into him.  She was a small girl wearing a floral dress, her hair a black tangle on her head.  She stared at him wide-eyed until a boyish laugh sounded behind her.  She squealed and ran off, leaving him alone with the drums in his head.

Cyrus swallowed.  The only other sounds he heard were clipped exchanges of Spanish and muted voices in the distance.  He looked the park over once more, and started walking away.  He kept close to the park’s wrought iron fence as he moved, hands tense at his sides, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to see if he was being followed.  He’d spent years of his life learning to check if people were following him.

That was before everything else, though.

That was before Kenya Kitteredge and the Coven, before magic was real and Hell was a place he had seen.

Now he had different things to worry about.

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Pre-Order No Grave!

Alright, guys, it’s about that time!  No Grave will be coming out on Friday, Sept. 11th, 2015…and you can be among the first to get it!  Digital pre-orders are available right now!

That’s right, you can grab No Grave on your Kindle or Nook as we speak, from Kobo, Amazon, Smashwords, or B&N.

Brief synopsis: A tangled supernatural fiction of epic proportions, No Grave focuses on three troubled characters as they struggle to come out on top against massive odds, fighting to keep hold of the lives they’ve barely scraped together.

Detailed synopsis: One year ago, Nicole DuPond was wrenched into a world of secrecy and horror, spinning down a spiral of terror and addiction. Since rehab, she’s been working alongside a ragtag team of paranormal researchers, trying to keep her head above the lorazepam waves. Now, she’s being pulled back under, stalked by an old enemy, tangled up in a new job, and uncovering a secret she’s kept even from herself.

Tristan Wallace sits in the cage of an empty suburban home. Since losing his family, he’s struggled through AA meetings and job loss to become a fearsome bogeyman in his own right—the man with the guns going bump in the vampiric night. But as the ghosts of his past haunt his dreams and his latest case proves to be beyond his pay grade, the life he thought he’d finally pulled together starts to unravel.

Cyrus LeSage wakes up every morning with a pounding heart and a head full of nightmare memories, trying to muffle them under a sea of whiskey and a string of one-night stands. All of that goes sideways when his past catches up to him. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s signed himself on for a suicide mission to erase his debts, wired up on a sleepless quest to beat the odds and keep his hold on the little life he’s built for himself.

As their stories intersect and disconnect, it’s clear there’s something going on beyond their understanding. Someone or something is playing out a deadly bet with their lives as collateral, and if they can’t pull through to the other side, they’ll have a lot more to lose than their sanity.

Other information: ePub ISBN: 9781310915734

Kindle ASIN: B013ESUSW4

Release Date: 9/11/2015

Length: ~440 pages, 6×9 format (variable on digital devices)

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No Grave Inspiration Soundtrack

I create soundtracks when I write, particularly if I’m writing long-form (No Grave, for instance, is a novel).  I find it helps to surround myself with music with similar motifs and emotional resonance when I write.  This is, of course, after all the initial brainstorming is done and I actually sit down at a keyboard or notepad to start work on the actual words (brainstorming is a whole different bag of cats–er–crap).  I usually start off by making a soundtrack of anything I think matches up remotely with what I’m doing.  For No Reflection and No Grave (as well as a couple other half-finished projects I haven’t announced), the first-draft playlist runs about 40 songs.  In perspective, the final draft playlist for No Reflection was 12 songs, and the final draft playlist for No Grave is…15 songs.  There are overlaps between the two soundtracks because they have similar themes, overlapping characters, and, of course, similar setting.

The playlist gets cut as I learn more about the story.  The more I write, the deeper I get into the narrative, the characters, and the action, and the more I figure out what the story is really about in terms of themes, motifs, metaphor, politics, etc… the fewer of the original songs make sense, and the fewer of them serve to put me in the mindset of the story.  They get sloughed off so that by the final draft the playlist is significantly shorter and more poignant…actually, they’re rather like the words, themselves, in that way.

I was under the impression, for most of this, that nobody really cared what I listened to when I wrote things.  Since I have had three different people ask about it, this week, however, I’m beginning to think that maybe I was wrong?  In any case, instead of simply answering the people who asked, I decided I would put it out for anyone, anywhere, at any time, to read.

Without further ado, the track list for my inspiration soundtrack for No Grave (I have added links to those artists who have posted their work online — I’ve done my best to make sure the link is sourced from the artist, so if I’ve messed up, please let me know):

1. Lauren O’Connell – House of the Rising Sun

2. Johnny Cash – Ain’t No Grave

3. LEGS OCCULT – There’s a Sadness

4. Dinah Washington/Max Richter – This Bitter Earth/Nature of Daylight

5. Lorde – Biting Down

6. Johnny Cash – Hurt

7. LEGS OCCULT – Breathe

8. Nine Inch Nails – The Wretched (Keith Hillebrandt Mix)

9. Marilyn Manson – Golden Age of Grotesque

10. Lauren O’Connell – Oh Death

11. John Murphy – In the House – In a Heartbeat (from the 28 Days Later OST)

12. The Crawdiddies – Ain’t No Grave

13. Marilyn Manson – This is Halloween

14. Tom Waits – Dirt in the Ground

15. Marilyn Manson – Spade

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Oceanrest Flash Fiction: Birth

I can feel my skin stretching over it, taut like the flesh of an overripe peach. I press on myself and I can feel it push back, feel it organic and ready, pushing, pushing its way out…

I don’t know what it is. I don’t remember when I first felt it. Sometime after getting to Oceanrest, after my first nights sleeping in the empty house by the shore, listening to the song of the Sargasso Sea. Listening to the sound underneath the song.

Now it plays violin with the hairs on the back of my neck.

Did it come in from the ocean? A microscopic thing? A spore that grew? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

I’m not afraid. I can feel it running its long tendril fingers gently along the folds of my brain. It doesn’t want to kill me. It just wants to change me. It wants to change the world. I can relate to that. Anyone could relate to that.

This body? Just a precursor to my next body. I can feel it, working its way through the old human skin…soon I’ll be born again. It will come out of me like light spilling through a stained glass window. I am the stained glass animation of the resurrection. “Come,” it sings in the tune of the Sargasso, “come live again with me.”

I push in on the flesh of my arm, so tight. Ready to break open. Ready to birth me, again.

Won’t you join us? Won’t you sing the Sargassan hymnal with us? Don’t you want to change yourself? Don’t you want to change the world?

Come live again with us.

Come live again.

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Downtown Dark One, Pt. 2

It has eaten my gods.  My tiny deities.  It has rolled over my life like an oil-slick tsunami and wiped away everything I’ve ever had.  Its worshipers gather around with their earpieces, muttering unintelligibly, eyes dead and busy, vultures around a carcass.  Here comes the estate sale.  I want them to bury me deep, put me somewhere where I won’t have to be part of the world anymore.  They won’t.  They don’t bury the dead.  They carve them up and sell them off one bone at a time for maximal profit.

“What are you willing to do to survive?”

The market’s voice is like Diet Coke but with too many chemicals.  Carcinogens growing cancer through my frail bones.  When it speaks, I think of syrup poured over purchased flesh.  I think of children reaching between spinning machines with tiny fingers, grease stains on their foreheads.

“What are you willing to do…for me?”

(“The more you do for me, the more I can do for you.”)

Eat all my stars.  Eat my jellied eyes.  Crack open my skull and eat my rotted brain.

Eat my tongue out before I answer.  Kill me.

But It won’t.  It purrs in Its sucralose voice and waits, all Its little servants watching me with cellphone eyes.  Waiting.  Waiting for me to cave in and fill my head with It.  Let It drill Its way inside of me and see how long It takes to drive me insane.

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Maps! (Map of Oceanrest)

While writing No Reflection and No Grave (almost done, guys, I swear), I never had much use for any kind of reference map.  I live in the city they’re set in.  If I need specific details that I can’t recall (say, at Coney Island, for instance, ahem, hint hint) I can jump on Google Maps and walk their little dude-dad around the streets for reference.  I have spent time in these places and I can draw on those experiences.  PS: Coney Island is pretty unpleasant in the fall.  I shot two different films there, both during late-September and early-October, and let me tell you…what looks golden and sunkissed in the summer can be gray, sludge-like, and rancid in the autumn…

Back on topic, though: I don’t need a map to work on those books.  I live here.  Details are easy to find.  There are MTA maps in every subway car.

Doing worldbuilding stuff for Oceanrest, however…places characters in an entirely fictional town (in Maine), and I thought it would behoove me to draw up a map.  And fill the map with landmarks and story ideas so that I’d have plenty to write about.

Since I haven’t posted lately (working on No Grave very intently, drawing the map, jotting down character/plot ideas, etc…), I thought the least I could do would be to share this map with you.  It’s even hand-written (in pen, with cross-outs) because I don’t know how to make fancy computer maps.

Take a look!:

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Oceanrest Flash Fiction, World Building Exercise

Oceanrest.  There’s something wrong with this place.

Can’t you feel it?

“Something in the water” people might say–but it’s not in the water.  It’s in the air.  Airborne, like fungal spores taking root in your lungs.  Spreading.  Turning your insides into a mushroomed jungle.  Greasy growing on your skin like milky sweat.  The fog around the docks, the leftover factory smell in abandoned warehouses, something not quite smog.  Can’t you feel it?

I can.  I can feel it inside my lungs, around my innards, on my skin.  It’s like a second me growing inside the first one.  A second reality waiting under our own, its lungs inside our lungs.  We inhale, it exhales.  It’s pushing itself through a crack here, something we can’t see but can vaguely feel.  Something old and instinctual.  We can’t see it, but an unconscious impulse deep in the twitch of our lizard brain tells us it’s here.  Tells us we should get away from it.

Can’t you feel it?

Inhale.  Exhale.  Don’t you feel that shudder?  That half-second weakness, shivering in your alveoli, your bronchioles?

There’s a heartbeat behind your heartbeat.  Listen to it.  No.  Listen closer.  Listen to the thing behind the thing, inside it.  Hear the whispers breathing through the crack.  Feel the spores drifting through the fog.  Feel the second reality living behind ours.  Feel it pulse there, waiting.  What is it waiting for?

Something about this place…something really wrong.

Makes people do bad things.

Might make you do bad things.  Maybe it’s small.  All bad things start small.  The spore that grows.  Might make you lie about something important, one day.  Might make you wait a little too long to hit the brakes.  Might make you pick up a gun and put it in an old woman’s gummy mouth.

Do you feel it, yet?

I can feel it.  Since the day I got here.

Might make me do something bad, one day.  Might make me do something bad to you.

Listen…

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