S. Gates's Blog

Some things I’ve learned about writing

(Note: This post was originally published to my personal Tumblr. I’ve made some tweaks before posting it here.)

In the past four-ish years, I’ve managed to finish and publish a couple of manuscripts (one ~44,000 words and the other ~96,000 words), which for someone who’d never finished anything longer than ~5,000 words is a really huge deal. Here are some things I realized/started practicing that helped me get to this point:

“Writer’s Block” isn’t a thing. That’s not to say that I didn’t sit down to write and have nothing come out, but the thing that got me past those times was realizing that there isn’t some outside force called “writer’s block.” When I couldn’t put words down, it wasn’t because there was a thing separate from me that kept me from doing it. It was because I didn’t know what happened next. When I realized that, it became a lot easier to deal with because “all” (scare quotes because even knowing this didn’t make it easy) I had to do was figure out where I was going and I could get back on track. Which leads in to…
Talk it out, even with yourself if that’s all you have. This is the main thing I used to get past my slumps. Sometimes I’d talk with friends (seriously, I love all of my friends who are willing to put up with me talking about fictional things pretty much non-stop). Sometimes I’d just “talk” it out with myself in a separate document or inline using square brackets (which was a technique that Piers Anthony once told me about when I was way too young to understand the value of the advice). It wasn’t always quick, but talking things out always got me past the parts giving me trouble.
If it’s boring you, you’re doing it wrong. Another huge momentum-killer for me was feeling like I had to “show” everything, even the boring bits. But if I’m bored writing it, my audience will certainly be bored reading it. Which means I need to find some other way of coming at the scene/chapter/whatever to spice things up, or just “tell” about the boring bits for the sake of advancing the story. Sometimes that’s resulted in things being really weird, and sometimes I ended up dropping the scene/plot thread entirely later, but that’s what revisions are for!
Embrace crummy drafts. I kind of hate all the teachers who praised me for having such clean “rough” drafts because they gave me a complex about how drafts ought to look. It took a really, really long time to let myself start having drafts that look like crap. I’m about 14k words into the sequel to AMIND and it’s littered with so many instances of “and then this happened” or things in square brackets where I haven’t decided exactly what goes there yet. Instead of stopping to figure things out exactly, I just sketch things out and let it go. It can be fixed when I do revisions.
Notes, notes, notes! So literally everything I write these days I have either a Google Docs or Evernote file full of random bits and pieces of musings about plot/outlines. AMIND’s Evernote file is about 5k words long, most of it copied from Hangouts chats I had with folks during the initial development of the plot and world-building. I would often go back to this document to remind myself of where I was going and what I hoped to accomplish. The version of the manuscript that I have now doesn’t bear a whole lot of resemblance to the notes anymore, but those notes were imperative to me getting the damn fool thing done.
Outlines, outlines, outlines! I used to be really bad about being a “pantser,” which is to say just writing without any idea where I was going in any but the most broad sense. This was Not Good because of the first bullet point up there. If I didn’t know what happened, I didn’t write, and nothing got done. I’ve started doing the vaguest outlines for scenes and that has helped keep me on track and writing consistently. I doubt I’ll be producing more than 300-900 words a day any time soon, but the fact is that with my skeletal outlines I can produce those words every day. And trying to sketch out about 2/3 of the story before I start (the arbitrary number I gave myself before I let myself start on the sequel to AMIND) gives me enough wiggle room to surprise myself while also keeping me on-track.
Schedule writing time. This was kind of hard and is also a very new thing but it seems to be working well. I wrote most of Bodies Are Disgusting in spare minutes wherever I could, and probably about 50% of it was written on my smartphone. With AMIND, I tried to set more goals for myself and stick to them, and that seemed to help. Now I’m trying to write at least a little bit every week-day after I get home from the day job. I am getting really militant about achieving a certain word count goal during the week, and I also try to give myself the weekends off.
BONUS: Writeometer! Google rec’d this app to me and HOLY COW, I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I don’t even use the whole “guava” and “treats” thing. Just having a way to record words and see a chart and set goals… oh my goodness, it has helped motivate me so much this past month. It automatically calculates what you need to do in order to meet your deadlines and you can set alarms and it’s FREE. If you have an Android device, I can’t recommend this app enough.
BONUS BONUS: Scrivener! This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning how awesome a tool Scrivener is for putting drafts together. I still do most of my writing in Google Docs, but once a large chunk of a draft is done, I’ll bring it into Scrivener so I can tweak scene placement and chapter arrangement. There are other cool things it can do, too, but it can  be a little intimidating. Even so, I still really really really recommend it.

So, yeah, sorry, that got a little long, but I just wanted to share these things with y’all in case it helps anyone who’s struggling with their own writing. I’m certain that none of this is new information, but this is the specific cocktail it took to get me to the point where I could stop saying “I write” and start saying “I’m a writer.”

Big News!

So, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I haven’t really been posting much here recently. This isn’t to say that I don’t haunt the Internet, just that I’m usually on more casual sites like Facebook and Tumblr. Since last I posted, a lot has changed for me: I have been at my current day-job for almost two years; I bought a house; we moved into said house; friends have come and gone. Perhaps the biggest thing is the state of AMIND.

When I completed the Camp NaNoWriMo in 2014, the rough draft weighed in at about 55,000 words. This was still 25% more than Bodies, but still kind of anemic for a full-length novel. I let the draft rest for probably longer than I should have (about a year), and when I came back to it, I ended up making some major changes. The current draft is almost twice as long (about 95,500 words), with some of the story significantly changed and the entire POV of the novel shifted to be first-person.

Late one night in early April of this year, I decided that I was going to submit my manuscript to a publisher that one of my friends had recommended to me. My friend (whom I have talked to pretty extensively about the plot and development of AMIND) had worked with this publisher before, and they felt that they might be a good fit for me. So, in a fit of insomnia, I stayed up far later than I should have crafting my submission letter.

As of May 18th, 2016, AMIND is under contract to be published by Less Than Three Press! There are still a lot of things that need to get done before I have a firm date, but words cannot express how excited I am about this development.

Additionally, I have also begun work on the rough draft of the sequel to AMIND, whose working title is (oh-so-creatively) Alonso Munich Is Still Dead.

In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to revitalize this space with more information about AMIND as it makes its way through the publishing process, as well as some thoughts on the process that got me from Camp NaNoWriMo to here.

The next weeks/months are shaping up to be really exciting, and I’m so excited to share it with you all!

Post-Camp Nanowrimo Post

Well, after taking a day to kind of recover (both from Camp Nano and my first week at my new day-job), I just wanted to let you all know that I am stoked as heck and ready to celebrate!

First, as those of you who have been keeping up with my stats may have noticed: I successfully completed my Camp Nano challenge! I had a lot of fun and it taught me a lot about ways to improve my personal writing process, as well as what proper expectations for myself can be given different circumstances. It was a great learning experience all around, and that brings me to…

Second, the first rough draft for AMIND is finished! There’s still a lot of work to be done on it, but the skeleton of the story and a lot of the flesh are all there, and it is definitely going to be a full-length novel once I’m done with revisions/rewrites. Considering that it took me over two years to finish the first draft of Bodies, having finished the first draft of AMIND (a more ambitious project, in my mind) in a little over a year is absolutely astonishing to me. And, speaking of Bodies, that brings me to…

Third, I’m running a celebratory sale! Until August 15th, you can use coupon code DF87K when you purchase Bodies Are Disgusting on Smashwords to get the book for $.99!

Thank all of you for your encouragement and support! Regular Music Monday, Fiction Friday, and art posts will be resuming a little later this month. :D

Camp NaNoWriMo

Sorry for being so quiet lately. Unfortunately, I’m probably not going to get much more talkative this month because I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo! I’m using the event as a way to kick my butt into gear when it comes to finishing AMIND, and it’s been working pretty well so far. I’m finally over two-thirds of the way through and coming into the final stretch. I’m estimating that it’ll come in at around 60,000 words once all is said and done (so it will definitely be a full-length novel rather than a novella like Bodies), maybe a little more.

If you want to keep track of my progress, check out my stats page. I’m really excited to hopefully get this story finished because I can’t wait to share it with the world at large.

Fiction Friday #5

This Fiction Friday, I figured I’d shake things up, especially since it’s a holiday weekend here in the US. Instead of talking about a print work, I want to highlight one of my favorite web-serials this week: Worm.

From the Worm site: An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one, thrusting her into the midst of the local ‘cape’ scene’s politics, unwritten rules, and ambiguous morals. As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Why I recommend it: This work has completely spoiled me for superhero fiction. The world-building is amazing, Taylor is a fun narrator to see the world with, and I cannot gush about the way the characters all use their superpowers enough. This is a finished work, so no need to worry about when/if it will update, and I do not regret the late nights I’ve spent up reading this story. If Wildbow releases Worm in e-book format, you can bet money that I will be gleefully purchasing each and every volume of it.

Music Monday #5

Peter Murphy – Hang Up

They come on over, said the tripper to the… was the goast

Caught you real dead in, master of masters

I tell you daddy,

Don’t… to a place all full when the angels are alive

They believe in nature,

I get so fear, I get so fear,

I get so fear, I get so fear,

And you was the… and you are the Jesus the Moise the…

Yes there’s a god higher

Hang up the phone and come on over

Don’t act like that to a place when all the angels are alive,

There been angels alive

Higher so be there,

Higher so be there,

Higher so be there,

Higher so be there,

Higher so be there,

If the truth be told, does teh tripper show

Is messing with the… to that drive that devil got now

You can drag me and sometime with no clothes on

With a problem and no poasing

Hanginh up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

I tell you this

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Hanging up the phone

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Higher so be there

Fiction Friday #4

From Amazon: A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.

Why I recommend it: There are a lot of reasons I love this book and can’t wait to get my grubby little paws on the next two installments of the Craft Sequence, but the top one is the world-building. Alt Coulumb is so lush and vivid, and it feels like a very real place despite the fantastical elements to it. The system of magic is another phenomenal aspect of this book, as it feels both unique and very intuitive, once the reader has a working knowledge of it. It’s also worth noting that the main character is a Woman of Color, which is very refreshing when the urban-fantasy genre tends to not have a lot of diversity.

Bodies Are Disgusting: Art IV

Like last week’s foray into the art of Bodies, this week contains some spoilers. The meat of the post can be found under the cut!

This image was originally slated to be the cover of the story once I’d completed it. As you can see, I finished it a little over a year before I actually finished the story itself, so I had plenty of time to reconsider. The primary reason I decided to go with a different image was because of the spoiler factor. I’ve always disliked getting half-way through a book and realizing that the cover image gives away a huge plot twist that may be gently foreshadowed but not too obvious otherwise. The other reason had to do with the feedback I received when I posted the image online: it was just a little too creepy for some people, and I didn’t want to immediately turn off potential readers by having an off-putting image on the cover.

As an aside, I actually have the tentacles from the background on my bank card because I am a gigantic nerd.

Music Monday #4

The Grand Experiment – Doomtree

DESSA

It begins with a flash

I know they say it ends the same

bit of skill, bit of chance

now every player guess the game

we start with these planets waltzing through the darkness

tip the axis, that one’s ours

zoom the camera in, cue lights up, dim the stars

We shape the stone

paint our pictures on the wall

we hunt alone, plant in spring

learn to harvest in the fall

and we choose a king, mine the metals for his forges

to better wage our wars and all of Olympus is laughing

until we go and split the atom

SIMS

Push that metal on down the road, we built this city on coal and gold

Money that trickles out, fill up that cup and sip it down

from the salt in the sails on down the rails

Everything’s for sale is the golden rule

including…well, I’m no fool

They get in a rush in a haze but I get out of mind, out of body, out of pocket

I don’t mind putting on a bit of mileage, but I won’t auto pilot with my eyelids shut

I’m still gunning, but I learned what’s worth hunting

and I learned what’s worth nothing

saw it

read it

outdone it

STEF (hook)

There’s no escape

They always looking for that easy out

but there’s nowhere to go

There’s no patience

They always looking for that easy out

but there’s nowhere to go

CECIL

Now all the parts are running, sparks are spilling out the gears

Over some thousand faces waiting years to see this work

Aching cause they need it first

Patient, but they seem berserk

Craving for that feast of merch

Yo! Save a slice for me and her

Isn’t it marvelous…just darling (it’s the newest thing)

It’s totally harmless, but it’s charming (it’s the cutest thing)

But, it bites…not hard…just hard enough to break the skin

and your bone

and your back

and the bank

But wait, it comes with a warranty

for a week, and that’s respectable

It’s cheap and it’s ethical…well, it’s ethical…well, it’s magical really

See, you put the cash in the till, fill in the blanks and that’s it

For my next trick I’ll need your password and an exit

and then poof

cue the fog machine

(Hook)

MIKE

Modern man

out of hand

motor mind

off the line

automate the operator

Can you hear me clearly?

I’m gonna live forever

give me guerilla arms

sling shot me into outer space in hyper colored glitter bombs

We’ll make our mark huh?

They’ll put no stops to us

We’ll leave our footprints on foothills and dance the Megatropolis

pushing evolution faster

catching continental drifts

Desperately Seeking Solutions to problems we know we’ll never fix

In the belly of a robot

out the valley of a microchip

Dialysis in Wonderland

Apple Z the viruses

I’ve never been myself, there is no human experience

you can’t Apple S yourself

this is The Grand Experiment

(Hook)

More AMIND

Since CorgiHat is out the door and things are settling down after MomoCon, I’ve had the chance to plug away at Alonso Munich Is Now Dead, and I’m eager to share a little more of the story with you all. This part takes place immediately following the first post (so I highly recommend catching up before jumping below the cut).

*

It took very little time to clear out of the room, as neither of them had anything other than the items on their person. Tyler checked them out of the Motel 6, paying the clerk in cash while Alonso shuffled his feet awkwardly by the door. Despite the fact that a teen of questionable repute had just spent at least a couple of nights with a man likely twice his age, the desk attendant looked nothing more than disinterested in their doings. Once the account was settled, Tyler held the door open for him and let him take the lead in the cool night air.

“I sort of thought you lived there,” Alonso blurted after a moment or two of strained silence. Tyler threw back his head and laughed.

“Dude, no, I have a pretty swank-ass place in Midtown. I was just down here takin’ care of some business when I saw you get dumped. I got the room there ’cause there was literally no way I was draggin’ you back to my pad before dawn, not to mention the fact that bringing home weird vampires without talkin’ to ‘em first is a habit I never picked up.” He clapped Alonso on the shoulder and pointed down the street. “C’mon, like, two blocks that way is a real good place to find you some grub.”

“Oh yeah, there’s a good pub down there, and a diner,” said Alonso. “I work down here. There’s the Hard Rock, too. Or we could just go a couple more blocks down and get some McDonald’s.”

“I am not getting you McDonald’s, dude,” Tyler said, the corners of his mouth tugged downward. “You can’t eat that shit anymore. I told you, we’ll just grab you a donor at the halfway house.”

“There’s not a halfway house down this way.”

“Ugh, dude, I know you got hit in the brain hard by whoever did this but seriously, you’re starting to sound like a scratched CD.” The kid turned to face him, arms crossed over his chest. “You. Are. A. Vampire. Forget just about everything you knew about this city. Not only are you about five years late on the uptake, shit don’t work the same for people like us, who aren’t mundies.” He sighed and let his arms fall to his sides. “Just roll with me for a bit, and I’ll help get you fixed up, okay?”

The desire to simply walk away tugged at the edges of his thoughts. Alonso’s car should still have been parked no more than two miles from where he stood, and he knew where the spare key was hidden. He could go home, shower, and shave. Ask his wife what she’d done with her phone while he’d been… wherever.

But that was a lie. Punk kids didn’t pay for motel rooms for strangers if they’d just robbed them. Once it had been pointed out to him, he could feel the slow, plodding pulse that never seemed to quicken. Shifting just a little so his elbow brushed Tyler’s would send that weird electric rush through his nervous system. Something was going on, and Tyler was his best bet to find out what.

He nodded. “Okay.”

Tyler grinned. “Attaboy!”

He led them west on the street, climbing the hill up to where all the eateries were. Traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, was subdued. Definitely not a weekend evening, then. None of the people they passed seemed to notice or care that they passed the pair, even when they came close enough to bump into them.

They crested the hill and started down the other side. About half way down, a chill seeped into Alonso’s bones, and the hair on the back of his skin prickled up. Before he could mention it, though, the sensation fled.

Still, Tyler glanced back over his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah. Just…” Alonso shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Oh, I bet you’re reacting to the wards. Little cold feeling, right?”

“How’d you know?”

Tyler shrugged. “Lucky guess. Most vampires feel ‘em like that, but other people will feel it different.” He turned his attention back to the sidewalk in front of him. “Those are supposed to keep this zone safe from any of the Master of the City’s goons. This area’s a no-fly zone when it comes to vampire bullshit.”

“Am I even supposed to be here if I really am a vampire, then?” asked Alonso, stopping in his tracks. The other pedestrian traffic parted around him like a stream parts around a stubborn rock.

“Dude, whatever happened to you, I’m willing to bet that the Master ain’t that interested in you, otherwise you’d be dead.” The kid motioned for Alonso to keep moving. “It keeps out the bullshit, not vampires themselves.”

“Right.” He wasn’t convinced, but Alonso followed all the same. When they reached the bottom of the hill, Tyler stopped in front of a business that Alonso did not recognize.

“We’re here,” Tyler said, his tone closer to that of a child outside a candy shop than that of the impromptu tour guide he was trying to be. “Just knock on that door there and they’ll let you in. Then you tell ‘em you need a donor ’cause you got whammied and you don’t know when you ate last and they will hook you up.”

“You aren’t coming with me?” Alonso winced at how pathetic the words sounded to his own ears. He was a grown man for fuck’s sake. He could walk into a business establishment without a teenaged chaperone.

Still, Tyler appeared not to notice his momentary vulnerability. “Dude, I am not abandoning you. I realize I am probably the only friendly face you know right now, but I gotta take care of some shit I put off when I dragged you into the motel.” The kid fished in his pockets and pulled out a small wad of crumpled five dollar bills and a featureless white card made of plastic. “Here. This’ll pay for a taxi to my pad and that card’ll get you in. By the time you’re done gettin’ a meal, I’ll be home and can open the door for you.”

Alonso took the bills and smoothed them out between his fingers before pulling out his wallet and putting them there. The key-card he slipped into his left pants pocket. “What’s your address?”

“I’m right next to the art school, so just get the cab to take you there.” Tyler patted him on the shoulder. “Go on, I’ll catch you on the flipside.”

The door was glass but had been covered by an opaque material so it was impossible to see through. The windows to either side of it, rather than featuring any sort of signage or display of wares, had received the same treatment. The only vague indication of what sort of establishment it could be was the sign affixed to the exterior of the door which read, “All Comers Welcome.” Gathering himself, Alonso rapped three times on the glass. The door swung wide, allowing him entrance.

Inside, the whole place looked almost gutted. The remains of a drop ceiling lingered above his head, exposing plumbing and duct-work and wiring. The lights were few and far between, but they provided plenty enough light for him to make out several cots (some occupied) at one end of the room. A bare sheetrock wall had been erected halfway to the back, blocking at least a third of the room from his sight. Next to the door, looking terminally bored, sat a man in his late twenties, reading a dog-eared novel.

When the man noticed Alonso, he laid a piece of yarn between the book’s pages and set it aside. “The decor won’t change no matter how hard you stare at it,” he said. His lips twitched as if he were fighting down the urge to sneer. “What brings such an obviously upstanding guy such as yourself to Mama Bautista’s?”

The words Tyler had given him came to Alonso’s mouth easily. “Listen, I… uh, I really don’t know what happened. I think I got whammied and I don’t know the last time I ate and, uh, I need a donor. A friend said you could help me here.”

The man pushed himself out of his chair with a frustrated huff. “Oh my fucking god, we have another one. Fuck this.” He turned toward the back of the establishment and cupped both hands around his mouth. “Grace! Gracie, get your ass in here, we need some molko for this guy and it ain’t my night!”

Behind the sheetrock, a woman bellowed back, “Fuck off, Bobby, it’s not my night either! Get Marcy to donate!”

“Marcella ain’t here, Grace, and she ain’t said when she’d get back! Now do this fucking job or I’m walking, and you can tell Mama how you let some stray go without a meal in her town!” Bobby shouted. A few of the people on the cots stirred, grumbling. Alonso scooted back toward the door.

“Ugh, fine,” Grace called. “Gimme, like, five minutes. Gotta find a vein.”

“Uh, it’s really no big deal,” Alonso said quietly. “I can just, y’know, leave. It’s fine. I don’t want to be a bother.”

Bobby pivoted on one heel to meet Alonso’s gaze. “Oh, oh hell no. Mama would have my ass if I let a hungry vamplet out on her streets. You are staying right the fuck there until Gracie gets done with your donation and then you are going to sit down and drink it and tell me what the fuck happened so I can pass that on to Mama.”

Though the man was easily a head shorter than he and likely ten years his junior, Alonso nodded. “Sure. Okay. Right. I’ll just, uh, stand right here. No problem.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and slid back just a little further, until his back was pressed against the wall next to the door.

A woman whom Alonso could only assume was Grace emerged from behind the sheetrock divider after a few moments, just as she’d promised. She was a little taller than Bobby, a little younger, and a little less terrifying in that particular moment. Cradled in both hands, she carried a paper plate on which rested a paper bowl (both of the Dixie variety), a red plastic cup, and… Alonso narrowed his eyes. Was that… a syringe?

As Grace passed Bobby, she threw an elbow (bandaged with one of the obnoxiously bright compression wraps usually given out at blood drives) at Bobby’s ribs. “Stop glaring at the guy, asshole. Go do something useful and scrub the toilets or something.” Before he could even respond, she turned her attentions to Alonso. It was as if a switch had been flipped; her body language shifted to being loose, open, and welcoming. A wide smile lit up her face. “Hey there, stranger! My name’s Grace, and I’m your donor for this evening.”

“Er, uh, hi. My name’s Alonso,” he replied. “I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t even really know what’s going on.”

Grace set the plate down on the chair her cohort had just vacated. “Oh, don’t worry about that. This happens a lot more often than anyone likes. Vampire gets impetuous, decides to be a sire, then abandons the child once they realize they don’t want the responsibility.” As she spoke, she pulled a couple of vials out of her pocket and laid them in the bowl. “Mama can’t stop that sort of thing, that’s up to Paidrig himself, but she makes sure people like you get as easy a transition as she can manage in the circumstances. Is this your first time?”

“I… don’t really know.” He rubbed at his face. The stubble under his palm rankled him more, now. It was a little whisper in the back of his mind that Tyler was not playing an elaborate prank on him. “Listen, the last thing I remember, I was going home and then I wake up in a motel room with this punk-looking kid telling me I’m a vampire and that it’s 2016 and… I don’t even know where to start with how messed up everything is.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Grace said. Her voice was steady and low, probably practiced specifically to calm someone in Alonso’s exact predicament. “A cup’s probably your best bet. Lets you think you’re just sipping some juice.” She picked up the vials of blood and uncapped them.

The effect was immediate and visceral in a way nothing, not even that strange electric charge Tyler had called a “living spark,” had been since Alonso woke up. He jerked forward, propelled by some invisible force. He felt flush with wanting and a desire so strong that any attempt for his brain to quantify it came up short. Something rumbled in his chest, not a heartbeat but near where that would be.

Continuing to mutter vaguely soothing nonsense at him, Grace poured both vials into the red plastic cup and pressed it into one of his hands. His fingers convulsed around it to the point where it nearly crumpled, but the aroma that reached his nostrils brought him up short. It was sweet like honeysuckle on a warm summer evening without being cloying. Almost as if someone else were in control of him (and how that thought made him shudder when it flitted through his mind), he raised the cup to his lips and tipped it up.

What hit his tongue was so clean and pure and alive that his knees buckled under the weight of it and only through Grace’s quick reflexes did he manage not to pitch face-first to the floor. After three mouthfuls, it was gone, but it suffused him with a warmth not unlike the first blush of being drunk. Everything was painted in razor sharp clarity, from the dust on the floor that he was grinding into the knees of his slacks, to the sinew in Grace’s arms that surely came from spending hours a day shifting heavy things, to the way that the room was cast in peculiar chiaroscuro from the spotty light fixtures.

For a moment, he could count each beat of Grace’s heart, slow and steady and strong. He could catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye; he could read the worry on her face. Was he about to go ballistic? Was he about to faint? She cut her eyes over to where Bobby presumably stood (no presumption, in the clarity of the moment Alonso could practically feel the other man’s presence like a cool bar of iron pressed against his back). The three of them were frozen like that for what Alonso felt was an eternity of uncertainty.

The moment stretched thin until it finally snapped when the door swung open. In this hyper-lucid state, it took Alonso only a moment to take in the newcomer’s appearance: a woman of middling height– at least ten years his junior– with dusky brown skin, a strong jaw, and the sort of round softness some people acquired when puberty failed to burn off all the baby fat. The quirk of her full lips and the set of her narrow hips gave away her irritation, which melted when she finally took in the scene. Her eyes widened and she let the grocery bags she carried slip out of her fingers in her rush to kneel at Grace’s side. With firm hands, she shoved Grace away from him and snatched the cup away. “The fuck, Grace! This guy’s two seconds from rippin’ your face off!”

Alonso tried to form a protest, he really did, but his tongue was thick in his mouth and his teeth didn’t quite feel right. He turned to face this new woman to plead his case, but she placed her palm upon his forehead before he could even really look her in the eyes and gently pressed him backward until he was slumped limply against the wall. The feeling of her skin was more than Alonso could parse, rendering his limbs as useful as a bag of kittens.

“All right, this guy’s not goin’ anywhere for a minute,” the young woman said, “so why don’t you go get me a refill on this cup and give this guy some space.”

Bobby’s cold presence skittered backward without a word until it was no longer within range of Alonso’s senses. Grace, too, seemed to recede, leaving Alonso alone with the short young woman pinning his head to the wall. He tried again, dazedly, to explain himself, but the woman cut him off. “Okay, listen, my name is Marcella and you were about to tear out the throat of the lady who is probably my best friend in this town which isn’t cool at all.” Like Grace, her tone was modulated and even, but there was something else to her words that curled around the base of Alonso’s skull and nestled down there. “What you’re about to say is probably somethin’ like ‘No way!’ but I’m gonna guess you haven’t eaten in, what, a week? Two? And askin’ someone to donate without tellin’ ‘em that, that’s a shitty thing to do.”

“I didn’t know,” Alonso said. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. I don’t know what’s going on.” His words had a strange lisping quality to his own ears, and it felt like there was something wrong with his teeth. He tried running his tongue over them, but stopped when he noticed the skeptical expression on Marcella’s face. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe, but I mean it. My friend– well, I call him a friend, but he’s really just the guy who found me– he says I got… damn, what’s the word? Slammed? I don’t know…”

He took a deep breath. The crispness was beginning to bleed off of everything, but there was still a low thrumming that he could only assume was associated with Marcella’s hand on his forehead. She stared at him intently, almost like she were studying his face for traces of some cosmic secret. Alonso was again cognizant of every way in which his body refused to respond. No sweat sprang to his brow. No blood rushed to his cheeks. The only beating was the almost subliminal thudding coming from the point of contact with Marcella.

Evidently, Marcella found what she was searching for. “You got whammied, is that right?” Alonso nodded, though he suspected the question was more rhetorical than literal. “Yeah. I can see that. This ‘friend,’ he say anything else?”

“He said it’s 2016, and that I’m a vampire,” Alonso replied. The sibilance flaked off his words as he spoke. Somehow it must have been linked to the too-vivid feelings from before. “He told me I could get help here and gave me cash so I could crash at his place when I was done.”

“It is 2016,” Marcella said. “I’m guessing that the last thing you remember, it wasn’t, right? What’s the last date you can remember? 2015?” At Alonso’s silence, she paused. “2014?… You’re kidding, 2013?”

“No. It was… May. 2011.”

The words hung there between them, Marcella’s eyes narrowing as she tried to decide whether to believe them or not. “Madre de dios, you’re serious. Shit. I’m so sorry.” She pulled her hand away from him and pushed herself to her feet. “Grace, Bobby, can you get this guy set up and put the groceries away? I gotta call Mama.”

He watched her stalk away, passing Bobby and Grace as she went. Grace set to picking up the bags that Marcella had left at the door, while Bobby presented him with another cup.

Alonso tried to accept the cup. The strange young woman’s words were still wrapped around the lizard parts of his brain. He tried to accept that what she’d told him was true because she seemed nice and the thrumming he’d felt when she laid hands on him was almost like a heartbeat. He tried to accept it.

In the end, he waved desperately at Bobby as he rolled onto his side and puked on the concrete floor.