Sean Patrick Little's Blog: Still in Wisco, page 11
June 26, 2018
A Brief Update
A brief update.
The new job has been taking up a lot of time, but I have the third book of The Survivor Journals edited and ready to roll to presses. Paige Krogwold is champing at the bit to get the cover done, and hopefully we'll see this baby born by September.
I'm also working on an Omnibus edition for the Survivor Journals. Nothing fancy--just an easy way for new people to get into the series by buying three books at once. This will not be released in hard copy form because it would just be too expensive to do it properly.
I'm getting that laid out now, and I hope to con someone into writing a nice foreward for it. We'll see what happens.
I'm also working on getting the two Teslacon novels edited and ready to roll for a November release. Four books in a year...who knew it would be possible?
Might even get an omnibus edition for those badboys, but let's not put carts before steam-powered horses, shall we?
Stay tuned, true believers.
--Sean
The new job has been taking up a lot of time, but I have the third book of The Survivor Journals edited and ready to roll to presses. Paige Krogwold is champing at the bit to get the cover done, and hopefully we'll see this baby born by September.
I'm also working on an Omnibus edition for the Survivor Journals. Nothing fancy--just an easy way for new people to get into the series by buying three books at once. This will not be released in hard copy form because it would just be too expensive to do it properly.
I'm getting that laid out now, and I hope to con someone into writing a nice foreward for it. We'll see what happens.
I'm also working on getting the two Teslacon novels edited and ready to roll for a November release. Four books in a year...who knew it would be possible?
Might even get an omnibus edition for those badboys, but let's not put carts before steam-powered horses, shall we?
Stay tuned, true believers.
--Sean
May 30, 2018
Long Overdue Blog Update
I haven't written or edited a thing for myself in a month. Sort of feels good, but at the same time, I wonder if I'm in one of those downward spirals where my subconscious has given up on writing. (Don't worry, I always go back to it, eventually.)
I started a new job on May 7. That's a big part of why I'm not writing. Between work, commuting, and the gym, I don't have a lot of time left in the day. (And I hate the gym...)
I think another big part of why I'm not writing is the slow uptake on the last two books. LONG EMPTY ROADS did okay, but honestly--AFTER EVERYONE DIED is still selling more copies than LER. And for a two year old book, AED is not exactly burning up the charts. LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS is more or less dead in the water. I had hoped for a boost after I did the interview at Airship Ambassador, but it did not help much. TB&TRR has barely sold any eBooks, and it hasn't sold a single hard copy since @TeslaCon ended. It hasn't generated any reviews, and as I've said before: If you don't get to at least 50, that means the book is dead. Right now, LER is at 35.
I should get back to writing and editing soon, though. My new job has summer hours. That means I work M-TH and have Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off. This Friday, as of now, I'm anticipating revisiting Culver's, sidling into my old regular book, and jamming on the keyboard for a while. Come have a burger with me.
In other worlds, I've partaken of some pop culture, so here's some reviews:
Movies:
DEADPOOL 2: Fun, funny, and a worth sequel. Was it as good as the first movie? No. Is it still a good movie? Absolutely. Ryan Reynolds has said they probably won't make a third, but he wants to see Deadpool as the sidekick in someone else's movie. I would any price for a ticket to the Spider-Man/Deadpool crossover. And if they made a Deadpool/Wolverine movie--oh, man...
SOLO: I thought this movie would be stupid when they announced it. It is a pointless movie to make. We know the three most important characters WILL NOT DIE. That really cuts down on the drama aspect. However, they made a fun heist movie that, despite having no real emotional impact, is still worth seeing. Go see a matinee. Pay less cash for the ticket, but still a fun film. I liked it better than ROGUE ONE or THE LAST JEDI.
SUPER TROOPERS 2: Funny. A worth sequel. As good as the first? No. But, I still laughed. Some of the gags were hilarious. And Rob Lowe's Canadian accent is worth the price of admission.
BLOCKERS: I went to see this because I had nothing better to do. I love Leslie Mann, though. And I've always liked Ike Barinholtz. And John Cena seems like a truly good dude. I went to an early show ($6 tickets!) and I had a good time. Is it a great movie? No. Is it funny and clever? Yes. It's a standard teen sex romp film, but taken from the female perspective. It had some fun with some tropes. Cena was great. I liked it far more than I thought I would.
TV:
Series Finale of THE MIDDLE: I loved this show. I initially started watching because of my love for SCRUBS and Neil Flynn's Janitor character (Knifewrench! For kids!), but this show really grew on me. I was sad to see it go, but it was a fitting end to a nine-season run. I hear they're going to spin-off Eden Sher's Sue Heck into her own series. I'd watch that. I thought Sue Heck was one of the most original characters I've seen on TV in a while. Her optimism was uncrushable, and the world needs more of that.
Books:
AGE OF ASSASSINS by RJ Barker: Just plowed through this novel, the first in the "Wounded Kingdom" trilogy. It was the type of book I love--fantasy, a young hero-in-the-making still in his apprenticeship, and a good, tight, political "find the assassin before he kills the king-to-be" plot. I enjoyed it enough that I jumped on the sequel immediately.
Music:
The lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, Chris Hutchison, recently committed suicide. Tragic, tragic end to an amazing singer and songwriter. Depression is real. And it's horrible. I've been dealing with it for most of my life. My buddy, Matthew Eidson, introduced me to FR on his outstanding radio show, Old Dog, New Music (which you can listen to online tomorrow night). He called their sound "Sad Bastard Music"--which is fitting. And I love me some good sad bastard music. Go check out their record "Painting of a Panic Attack." There isn't a bad song on that record.The song "Get Out" is wonderful. And the video is art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBdsY...
Rest in peace, Chris. You are gone far too soon.
Podcast:
I've been listening to Michael Ian Black's "How to Be Amazing" a lot lately. A lot of really interesting interviews. Black is a good host. He asks pointed, thoughtful questions and sits back to let the guest really talk. I enjoy it a lot.
Anyhow, enough for today. I'm not dead...it just seems like it.
Hope you all are well.
Tell friends to write reviews.
What are you all reading/watching lately?
Best,
Sean
I started a new job on May 7. That's a big part of why I'm not writing. Between work, commuting, and the gym, I don't have a lot of time left in the day. (And I hate the gym...)
I think another big part of why I'm not writing is the slow uptake on the last two books. LONG EMPTY ROADS did okay, but honestly--AFTER EVERYONE DIED is still selling more copies than LER. And for a two year old book, AED is not exactly burning up the charts. LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS is more or less dead in the water. I had hoped for a boost after I did the interview at Airship Ambassador, but it did not help much. TB&TRR has barely sold any eBooks, and it hasn't sold a single hard copy since @TeslaCon ended. It hasn't generated any reviews, and as I've said before: If you don't get to at least 50, that means the book is dead. Right now, LER is at 35.
I should get back to writing and editing soon, though. My new job has summer hours. That means I work M-TH and have Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off. This Friday, as of now, I'm anticipating revisiting Culver's, sidling into my old regular book, and jamming on the keyboard for a while. Come have a burger with me.
In other worlds, I've partaken of some pop culture, so here's some reviews:
Movies:
DEADPOOL 2: Fun, funny, and a worth sequel. Was it as good as the first movie? No. Is it still a good movie? Absolutely. Ryan Reynolds has said they probably won't make a third, but he wants to see Deadpool as the sidekick in someone else's movie. I would any price for a ticket to the Spider-Man/Deadpool crossover. And if they made a Deadpool/Wolverine movie--oh, man...
SOLO: I thought this movie would be stupid when they announced it. It is a pointless movie to make. We know the three most important characters WILL NOT DIE. That really cuts down on the drama aspect. However, they made a fun heist movie that, despite having no real emotional impact, is still worth seeing. Go see a matinee. Pay less cash for the ticket, but still a fun film. I liked it better than ROGUE ONE or THE LAST JEDI.
SUPER TROOPERS 2: Funny. A worth sequel. As good as the first? No. But, I still laughed. Some of the gags were hilarious. And Rob Lowe's Canadian accent is worth the price of admission.
BLOCKERS: I went to see this because I had nothing better to do. I love Leslie Mann, though. And I've always liked Ike Barinholtz. And John Cena seems like a truly good dude. I went to an early show ($6 tickets!) and I had a good time. Is it a great movie? No. Is it funny and clever? Yes. It's a standard teen sex romp film, but taken from the female perspective. It had some fun with some tropes. Cena was great. I liked it far more than I thought I would.
TV:
Series Finale of THE MIDDLE: I loved this show. I initially started watching because of my love for SCRUBS and Neil Flynn's Janitor character (Knifewrench! For kids!), but this show really grew on me. I was sad to see it go, but it was a fitting end to a nine-season run. I hear they're going to spin-off Eden Sher's Sue Heck into her own series. I'd watch that. I thought Sue Heck was one of the most original characters I've seen on TV in a while. Her optimism was uncrushable, and the world needs more of that.
Books:
AGE OF ASSASSINS by RJ Barker: Just plowed through this novel, the first in the "Wounded Kingdom" trilogy. It was the type of book I love--fantasy, a young hero-in-the-making still in his apprenticeship, and a good, tight, political "find the assassin before he kills the king-to-be" plot. I enjoyed it enough that I jumped on the sequel immediately.
Music:
The lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, Chris Hutchison, recently committed suicide. Tragic, tragic end to an amazing singer and songwriter. Depression is real. And it's horrible. I've been dealing with it for most of my life. My buddy, Matthew Eidson, introduced me to FR on his outstanding radio show, Old Dog, New Music (which you can listen to online tomorrow night). He called their sound "Sad Bastard Music"--which is fitting. And I love me some good sad bastard music. Go check out their record "Painting of a Panic Attack." There isn't a bad song on that record.The song "Get Out" is wonderful. And the video is art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBdsY...
Rest in peace, Chris. You are gone far too soon.
Podcast:
I've been listening to Michael Ian Black's "How to Be Amazing" a lot lately. A lot of really interesting interviews. Black is a good host. He asks pointed, thoughtful questions and sits back to let the guest really talk. I enjoy it a lot.
Anyhow, enough for today. I'm not dead...it just seems like it.
Hope you all are well.
Tell friends to write reviews.
What are you all reading/watching lately?
Best,
Sean
April 11, 2018
Hangover
So, I finished writing the first draft of a novel on Sunday. Today, I finished reading a book I started on Tuesday. I have serious book hangover now, in that I neither want to read or write a new book. This is a problem for me.
I get this occasionally, especially after I finish reading a really, really good book (such as THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE), and absolutely NOTHING else on my reading pile or my Kindle looks good to me at all. This feeling often takes days to go away. It will eventually, but in the meantime, all my reading time usually becomes writing time.
However, right now, I have nothing I want to write. I have two Teslacon books on my computer that need to be edited, and now I have the first draft of that third Survivor Journals book, but I won't even look at that thing for at least a month. I need to cleanse the palate before I can think of seriously buckling down and editing.
I have an idea for a fourth TeslaCon book, but that series may not pan out. The first book is not selling at all. It did all right with the Con-goers, but it's generating no reviews and no sales. I guess Steampunk lit is not as hot as I thought it might be. I don't want to throw effort after nothing.
I have ideas for fantasy novels percolating in my brains, but there's something that blocks me from writing fantasy or mystery--my two favorite genres to read. I think I feel like I'm not good enough to write those because I hold the authors I like in those genres in such high regard.
I may have to switch it up and get away from prose for a little while, maybe hack out a screenplay or work on some non-fiction. Maybe try to write a comic book (something I've always wanted to do).
If nothing else works, I can always go dig up one of the dozens and dozens of novel starts or premise ideas on my hard drive "idea" folder and see if I can breathe life into one of those dying beasts.
Or, maybe it's good to take a couple days off.
I quit writing all the time. (I think I've told this story before.) I will look at sales. I will look at the lack of reviews. I will remember how impossible the game feels most of the time, get discouraged, and quit writing. I quit writing forever at least once or twice a week, it seems. And still, the next day, that computer gets turned on, Scrivener gets opened up, and I start slogging again. A real glutton for punishment, I am.
There is always something to work on, though. Always. And I will always get back to it sooner than later.
I get this occasionally, especially after I finish reading a really, really good book (such as THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE), and absolutely NOTHING else on my reading pile or my Kindle looks good to me at all. This feeling often takes days to go away. It will eventually, but in the meantime, all my reading time usually becomes writing time.
However, right now, I have nothing I want to write. I have two Teslacon books on my computer that need to be edited, and now I have the first draft of that third Survivor Journals book, but I won't even look at that thing for at least a month. I need to cleanse the palate before I can think of seriously buckling down and editing.
I have an idea for a fourth TeslaCon book, but that series may not pan out. The first book is not selling at all. It did all right with the Con-goers, but it's generating no reviews and no sales. I guess Steampunk lit is not as hot as I thought it might be. I don't want to throw effort after nothing.
I have ideas for fantasy novels percolating in my brains, but there's something that blocks me from writing fantasy or mystery--my two favorite genres to read. I think I feel like I'm not good enough to write those because I hold the authors I like in those genres in such high regard.
I may have to switch it up and get away from prose for a little while, maybe hack out a screenplay or work on some non-fiction. Maybe try to write a comic book (something I've always wanted to do).
If nothing else works, I can always go dig up one of the dozens and dozens of novel starts or premise ideas on my hard drive "idea" folder and see if I can breathe life into one of those dying beasts.
Or, maybe it's good to take a couple days off.
I quit writing all the time. (I think I've told this story before.) I will look at sales. I will look at the lack of reviews. I will remember how impossible the game feels most of the time, get discouraged, and quit writing. I quit writing forever at least once or twice a week, it seems. And still, the next day, that computer gets turned on, Scrivener gets opened up, and I start slogging again. A real glutton for punishment, I am.
There is always something to work on, though. Always. And I will always get back to it sooner than later.
April 7, 2018
Oh, Twitter...
The free week for downloading LONG EMPTY ROADS has passed. It wasn't quite the turnout I'd hoped, but it is what it is. Less than 1,000 copies of it were downloaded. Somewhere between 800 and 900, if I'm to be exact. I was hoping for at least a grand, but it just didn't get there. A lot of people won't download the second book in a series if they haven't read the first book. I just hope those that do read it review it so I can get to those 50 reviews.
I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the third Survivor Journals book. There's a chance that might see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe even by late summer or early Fall. I'm not going to rush it, but I would believe we will see it out sooner than later. I don't have a title for it yet, though.
A bit of a brouhaha went down on Twitter this week. An agent/writer claimed that men only write women as physical characteristics, thereby saying that men can't write women. This is a patently false assertion, of course. Lots of great female characters were written by men, just as lots of great male characters were written by women. (Stay gold, Ponyboy.)
However, a male writer, albeit somewhat boorishly, called this female agent out on her words, and he used the term "misandry in publishing." Well, a boatload of people jumped on that, mocking and belittling this male writer for DAYS. If that didn't prove that he had at least a hangnail of a point to his claim, I don't know what does. A bunch of "feminist" writers and agents slammed this man's claim for hours of their lives, taking great delight in the piling-on that occurred and basically proved that this male writer had at point to claiming misandry. Many of the women claimed they were only going to look at queries from women from now on, if the book's main character was a woman. And it got worse from there.
Now, given that this is the internet, and we will, no doubt, find some new hateful thing to turn our anonymous rage upon in the next hour or so, this whole thing will be forgotten by next week. However, it bothers me that so many people in control of book-selling through major publishers would support a stance that a male writer cannot write a female, just as it should bother you to hear that many men think female writers can't write men.
As a male writer, a husband, and a father to a teenage girl, I'm constantly worrying over how I'm portraying female characters. I want them to "real," but I worry about how my perception of "real" will be treated by others, both males and females. I have written scenes in other stories where, during the editing process, despite knowing that the scene was organic and real, I have thought that someone might object to how a female character acted or was treated, and so I rewrote the scene. Was it for the better? I don't know. I'll never know. I hedged my bets rather than write what I was feeling at the time. I don't like that. I don't want to have to do that, but that's clearly the world and culture in which we live now.
Are the sexes different? You bet. The way we approach life, the way we solve problems, the way we deal with little things--I don't think there's any problem saying that men and women are different in a lot of ways. Do men understand women fully? Probably not. Do women understand men fully? Probably not. But, to take a hateful claim against a man for writing a female character does no one any favors on either side of this divide. I'm all for progressive treatment of women in literature, and maybe the "damsel in distress" trope should come to an end. But, progressive treatment of women does not mean bashing men and calling them stupid for trying their own take on writing characters. Once one side treats the other side as lesser, they have lost their argument.
As Abraham Lincoln once said in a famous speech at San Dimas High School: "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes."
Back to writing now.
--Sean
I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the third Survivor Journals book. There's a chance that might see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe even by late summer or early Fall. I'm not going to rush it, but I would believe we will see it out sooner than later. I don't have a title for it yet, though.
A bit of a brouhaha went down on Twitter this week. An agent/writer claimed that men only write women as physical characteristics, thereby saying that men can't write women. This is a patently false assertion, of course. Lots of great female characters were written by men, just as lots of great male characters were written by women. (Stay gold, Ponyboy.)
However, a male writer, albeit somewhat boorishly, called this female agent out on her words, and he used the term "misandry in publishing." Well, a boatload of people jumped on that, mocking and belittling this male writer for DAYS. If that didn't prove that he had at least a hangnail of a point to his claim, I don't know what does. A bunch of "feminist" writers and agents slammed this man's claim for hours of their lives, taking great delight in the piling-on that occurred and basically proved that this male writer had at point to claiming misandry. Many of the women claimed they were only going to look at queries from women from now on, if the book's main character was a woman. And it got worse from there.
Now, given that this is the internet, and we will, no doubt, find some new hateful thing to turn our anonymous rage upon in the next hour or so, this whole thing will be forgotten by next week. However, it bothers me that so many people in control of book-selling through major publishers would support a stance that a male writer cannot write a female, just as it should bother you to hear that many men think female writers can't write men.
As a male writer, a husband, and a father to a teenage girl, I'm constantly worrying over how I'm portraying female characters. I want them to "real," but I worry about how my perception of "real" will be treated by others, both males and females. I have written scenes in other stories where, during the editing process, despite knowing that the scene was organic and real, I have thought that someone might object to how a female character acted or was treated, and so I rewrote the scene. Was it for the better? I don't know. I'll never know. I hedged my bets rather than write what I was feeling at the time. I don't like that. I don't want to have to do that, but that's clearly the world and culture in which we live now.
Are the sexes different? You bet. The way we approach life, the way we solve problems, the way we deal with little things--I don't think there's any problem saying that men and women are different in a lot of ways. Do men understand women fully? Probably not. Do women understand men fully? Probably not. But, to take a hateful claim against a man for writing a female character does no one any favors on either side of this divide. I'm all for progressive treatment of women in literature, and maybe the "damsel in distress" trope should come to an end. But, progressive treatment of women does not mean bashing men and calling them stupid for trying their own take on writing characters. Once one side treats the other side as lesser, they have lost their argument.
As Abraham Lincoln once said in a famous speech at San Dimas High School: "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes."
Back to writing now.
--Sean
April 4, 2018
Podcast Appearance
I'm doing an interview with the Prepper Podcast tonight (4/4/18) at 7:00pm (CDT) to talk about my #PostApocalypse novels, AFTER EVERYONE DIED and LONG EMPTY ROADS. Tune in!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theprepp...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theprepp...
April 2, 2018
Why I Have to Give Away My Book for Free
I was at a convention not long ago discussing book sales with another author. When I mentioned that I take advantage of the Amazon offer to give away your book for free for five days, she couldn't believe it. "Why would you give away your book for free?"
So people might actually read it, I guess.
Independent books, both from self-published authors and small presses, often get a bad rap. It's hard to get people to drop even a dollar on a Kindle book from someone they have never heard of on a book that might only have a smattering of reviews. When I put out AFTER EVERYONE DIED, it did almost nothing at first. The free week of books got it downloaded over 5000 times in five days. From those downloads, I got over 50 reviews, and that helped launch the book to a considerable amount of sales. Would I have liked the $2000 or so those 5000 downloads would have brought me? Sure. Who wouldn't like a couple thousand dollars? However, those free books got me an additional 20K sales and change. In the long run, the book benefited from the free giveaway.
Now, with LONG EMPTY ROADS, I had two minds about the sequel: on one hand, I know that sequels usually do not do as well as initial books. On the other hand, I was hopeful that it might. Since its release on Feb. 2, LER has not done nearly as well as I hoped. Part of it might be marketing (or my general lack thereof). Part of it might be not hitting the fifty review threshold that is so important to Amazon. And part of it is probably just the fact that we have a society where people are used to getting free things. I sympathize with people who bargain-hunt and get free stuff. Everything in society has gone up except paychecks the last few years. People's dollars don't go as far as they used to. When people need entertainment, it all seems frivolous, to some degree. Why drop $40 on tickets, popcorn, and drinks at the theater when that same film will be out on Blu-Ray in three months for $15? Why pay $30 for a hardcover when the paperback will be $18 in six months? Why pay $18 for a paperback when the Kindle edition will be $10? Why buy a book from a no-name nobody for $5? Five bucks isn't nothing.
The biggest challenge for an author, be it me, JK Rowling, or Stephen King, is getting people to actually buy the book. People are more than willing to at least try a free book, but for someone unfamiliar with an author, a free book is the only way to get them to take a shot on something new.
So, for the next five days, LONG EMPTY ROADS is free. Hopefully, I can get another 25 reviews out of it, and maybe some of those reviews will be positive. If that happens, maybe both books in the Survivor Journals series will start showing up in Amazon marketing and maybe other people will actually pay for them. Who knows?
This book-selling business is hard. And I'm not good at it.
I always marvel at the authors who really work at selling their books. They're out there doing spiels, pounding pavement, attending cons, doing events--it's a ton of work. I write books because it's all I know how to do. Everything else is beyond me. I'm not a salesman. This is why I'm so dependent on kind words from strangers and social media posts. I'm not the kind of author who will churn out a ton of marketing material to sell a book. I'd rather spend that time writing another book.
Many, many thanks to those of you who have written reviews of AED or LER already. They are invaluable to me. Please take this week to tell friends of the free book giveaway. The more people I can get to download the book this week, the better.
I just checked the sales dashboard for Amazon--since midnight, over 120 have downloaded it. Fingers crossed, everyone.
--Sean
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079J6R5Y8
So people might actually read it, I guess.
Independent books, both from self-published authors and small presses, often get a bad rap. It's hard to get people to drop even a dollar on a Kindle book from someone they have never heard of on a book that might only have a smattering of reviews. When I put out AFTER EVERYONE DIED, it did almost nothing at first. The free week of books got it downloaded over 5000 times in five days. From those downloads, I got over 50 reviews, and that helped launch the book to a considerable amount of sales. Would I have liked the $2000 or so those 5000 downloads would have brought me? Sure. Who wouldn't like a couple thousand dollars? However, those free books got me an additional 20K sales and change. In the long run, the book benefited from the free giveaway.
Now, with LONG EMPTY ROADS, I had two minds about the sequel: on one hand, I know that sequels usually do not do as well as initial books. On the other hand, I was hopeful that it might. Since its release on Feb. 2, LER has not done nearly as well as I hoped. Part of it might be marketing (or my general lack thereof). Part of it might be not hitting the fifty review threshold that is so important to Amazon. And part of it is probably just the fact that we have a society where people are used to getting free things. I sympathize with people who bargain-hunt and get free stuff. Everything in society has gone up except paychecks the last few years. People's dollars don't go as far as they used to. When people need entertainment, it all seems frivolous, to some degree. Why drop $40 on tickets, popcorn, and drinks at the theater when that same film will be out on Blu-Ray in three months for $15? Why pay $30 for a hardcover when the paperback will be $18 in six months? Why pay $18 for a paperback when the Kindle edition will be $10? Why buy a book from a no-name nobody for $5? Five bucks isn't nothing.
The biggest challenge for an author, be it me, JK Rowling, or Stephen King, is getting people to actually buy the book. People are more than willing to at least try a free book, but for someone unfamiliar with an author, a free book is the only way to get them to take a shot on something new.
So, for the next five days, LONG EMPTY ROADS is free. Hopefully, I can get another 25 reviews out of it, and maybe some of those reviews will be positive. If that happens, maybe both books in the Survivor Journals series will start showing up in Amazon marketing and maybe other people will actually pay for them. Who knows?
This book-selling business is hard. And I'm not good at it.
I always marvel at the authors who really work at selling their books. They're out there doing spiels, pounding pavement, attending cons, doing events--it's a ton of work. I write books because it's all I know how to do. Everything else is beyond me. I'm not a salesman. This is why I'm so dependent on kind words from strangers and social media posts. I'm not the kind of author who will churn out a ton of marketing material to sell a book. I'd rather spend that time writing another book.
Many, many thanks to those of you who have written reviews of AED or LER already. They are invaluable to me. Please take this week to tell friends of the free book giveaway. The more people I can get to download the book this week, the better.
I just checked the sales dashboard for Amazon--since midnight, over 120 have downloaded it. Fingers crossed, everyone.
--Sean
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079J6R5Y8
March 20, 2018
Please Write Reviews
Every so often, I remind people to write reviews. I do it for the books I read whenever possible. Reviews are not feedback for the author. They're sales tools for booksellers. The more reviews a book receives, the more likely it is to be promoted by online agencies, and thus, the more the book will inevitably sell.
Obviously, negative reviews sometimes hurt a product's sales, unless that product is outrageously bad to the point where people buy it just to make sure they are seeing what they thought they were seeing. ("The Room," anyone? "Birdemic." "Manos: Hands of Fate.") But, positive reviews can make or break a book for a small time fool like myself.
The moment AFTER EVERYONE DIED hit 50 reviews on Amazon, it was like a light switch someplace got flipped and book sellers said, "Hey--this might be something important!" The book started showing up in Amazon's promotional materials and the "Customers Also Bought..." sections. I noticed a considerable change overnight. Prior to AED hitting the low-lists for sales, my biggest book had been THE SEVEN. I think in its lifetime, THE SEVEN sold around five or six thousand copies. It sells a copy about once every blue moon now. I think it got 19 reviews on Amazon. Obviously, it's a dead book now. It receives no promotion, and unless someone stumbles across it, it will never, ever been found browsing Amazon.
Today, I received a sales email from Amazon. My "buying" account and my "author" account are two different emails. Amazon does not know Sean the buyer and Sean the writer are the same person, so it's always nice when I get the promo email and see my book in it. But, it's just a reminder of how important reviews are to all authors, not just small fry guys like myself.
Reviews tell others about the book. They tell Amazon who is looking at books, who is reading books, and what genres are popular. Reviews tell agents what sort of books people are reading, and thus encourages those agents to seek out more of that material. Reviews tell publishers what people are seeking.
Reviews don't have to be long, like I write, but a sentence or two and a four-or-five star rating can be the difference between a book breaking out and becoming something for an author, and a book dying on the vine before it has a chance to be fully realized.
Too long, didn't read: Help people out--write a review.
Obviously, negative reviews sometimes hurt a product's sales, unless that product is outrageously bad to the point where people buy it just to make sure they are seeing what they thought they were seeing. ("The Room," anyone? "Birdemic." "Manos: Hands of Fate.") But, positive reviews can make or break a book for a small time fool like myself.
The moment AFTER EVERYONE DIED hit 50 reviews on Amazon, it was like a light switch someplace got flipped and book sellers said, "Hey--this might be something important!" The book started showing up in Amazon's promotional materials and the "Customers Also Bought..." sections. I noticed a considerable change overnight. Prior to AED hitting the low-lists for sales, my biggest book had been THE SEVEN. I think in its lifetime, THE SEVEN sold around five or six thousand copies. It sells a copy about once every blue moon now. I think it got 19 reviews on Amazon. Obviously, it's a dead book now. It receives no promotion, and unless someone stumbles across it, it will never, ever been found browsing Amazon.
Today, I received a sales email from Amazon. My "buying" account and my "author" account are two different emails. Amazon does not know Sean the buyer and Sean the writer are the same person, so it's always nice when I get the promo email and see my book in it. But, it's just a reminder of how important reviews are to all authors, not just small fry guys like myself.
Reviews tell others about the book. They tell Amazon who is looking at books, who is reading books, and what genres are popular. Reviews tell agents what sort of books people are reading, and thus encourages those agents to seek out more of that material. Reviews tell publishers what people are seeking.
Reviews don't have to be long, like I write, but a sentence or two and a four-or-five star rating can be the difference between a book breaking out and becoming something for an author, and a book dying on the vine before it has a chance to be fully realized.
Too long, didn't read: Help people out--write a review.
March 11, 2018
A Free Short Story - "Forever Clementine"
I thought I'd try something new and give away a short story I wrote for an anthology project back in 2013 or 2015--I forget. The anthology project was a horror anthology. I don't really write horror. I'd like to, but I find it so difficult. How do you scare someone on paper? It's not like you can easily do jump scares like in film. It has to be slower, more psychological. Stephen King is good at that. So is his son, Joe Hill.
This one is a ghost story. I hope you enjoy it.
Forever Clementine
Sean Patrick Little
Clementine liked to play with Abigail. They were the same age, roughly, and Abigail was a pretty thing, blonde and rosy-cheeked. Clementine was shy at first, unaware of how to act around this stranger, but Abi was friendly from the start. She invited Clemmy into her room and asked her to sit at the play table strewn with tiny, child-sized dishes. They would have tea poured from a fine China set that Abi’s father had bought in New York and pretend to eat biscuits and talk of things like kittens and toys they liked and what it was like at Abi’s school.
Abi and Clemmy were the best of friends, often talking in bed long after Abi was supposed to go to sleep. When Abi finally did sleep, Clemmy would watch over her, keeping the covers from shrugging off her shoulders and making sure Abi’s cat, Snowball, never jumped on her during the night, waking her.
On sunny days, Abi would play out in the yard and Clemmy would watch her from the window. Abi’s father hung a swing in the grand oak tree in the front yard. Clemmy remembered the old oak as smaller, healthier. Now it was large and skeletal, with as many dead branches as living ones. Abi would swing back and forth, sometimes so high that Clemmy thought she might leap off the swing and soar into the bedroom window. Abi always wanted Clemmy to come with her, to explore the woods with her, but Clemmy could never oblige.
More than anything, Clementine wanted to follow Abi, but she never could. She didn’t know why; she just couldn’t. Clem would wait for hours until Abi finally came back. Then, they would play with Abi’s dolls or take turns riding her rocking horse and pretending that they were cowboys.
Clementine loved Abigail, and she thought that Abigail loved her as well.
Abigail grew into a fine, beautiful young lady. As she grew, she no longer had time for the tea parties and pretend. She stopped talking to Clementine for the most part. Some nights, when Clementine was feeling bored and naughty, she might play hide-the-trinket with Abi, taking Abi’s favorite hairbrush and stowing it in her toy box or under her bed. On those days, Abi would comb over her room until she found the brush and then she’d smile and make a clucking noise with her tongue and say, “Oh, Clemmy.”
That always made Clemmy happy. She missed her friend.
When Abi grew even bigger, she stopped even thinking of Clementine, even when Clemmy hid her brush. Abi spent hours in her room pouring over her school books and writing long papers. Clemmy sat on Abi’s bed and quietly watched. She didn’t want to interrupt her when she was so intent on her studies.
One day, Abi and her mother came into her room with a giant old steamer trunk. Clemmy hid under the bed that day. She watched from beneath the dust ruffle as they loaded the trunk with clothes and other items. They left most of her childish things: the tea set stayed in its wicker case in the closet, the rocking horse, dusty with disuse, sat idle in the corner, and the porcelain dolls, forever staring straight ahead with cold, dull glass eyes, stayed on their shelf.
When Abi and her mother left, Clemmy came out from under the bed and sat at Abi’s desk. She didn’t feel like playing.
Clemmy watched out the window for Abi’s return. When Abi did return, she was different, older. She had a baby--a real baby--in her arms. A handsome young man in a smart suit and bowler hat stood by her. They were climbing out of a clever contraption, a wagon-like machine that propelled itself without a horse. Abi’s mother and father rushed out, exclaiming wildly over the baby. Abi and the young man and the baby came into the house, but Abi never came up to her old room. Clemmy had to sneak down the stairs and hide in the pantry to watch Abi visit with her parents.
Abi’s visits became more and more infrequent. Clemmy felt terribly sad. Some days, she did nothing but cry for hours. Some days she tried to play with the tea set or hold one of the dolls again, but it wasn’t the same without Abigail.
On a cold, fall day, men came into the room and slowly took apart Abi’s old bed. Piece by piece, they moved the bed out, the desk, and then all the toys and trinkets. Clemmy hid in the closet, smushing herself into the tiny crawl-space behind the wall. When the house was quiet, Clemmy emerged into a barren home. All the furniture, the pictures from the walls, and all the odds-and-ends were gone. The house was completely vacant.
At first, Clemmy liked running through the house, not worried if Abi’s parents could see her or not, but after a few days, the loneliness was unbearable. Clemmy took to hiding in the upstairs closet, the one in the hallway. It was a small, square closet with no window. When she closed the door, the darkness pressed in on her from all sides. When she couldn’t see the emptiness of the house, she felt less alone.
One day, Clemmy heard voices again. When she emerged from the closet, there were boxes and furniture cluttering the house again. When she ran back to Abigail’s old room, there was a new friend, little Jacky. Clemmy hadn’t played with boys very much, but she was so happy to see someone her own age, that she would not have cared if it had been a boy, girl, or dancing dervish.
Jacky was a sweet boy. He wore knee pants and smart, white shirts. He had wonderful toys: building blocks and metal cars and tractors. Jacky was as happy to see Clemmy as she was to see him. Together they played for hours, laying on the floor of his room, building sprawling mansions with the blocks and crashing tractors into the base to make it topple. When it would fall, they would howl with laughter, laughing until they had to wipe tears from their eyes. Then, they would do it all again.
At night, Jacky slept and Clemmy stayed crouched next to his bed. Jacky talked in his sleep and he had nightmares. When he cried out, Clemmy would stroke his hair and whisper in his ear until he stilled. If a dream woke him, Clemmy would be right there for him. She would cuddle next to him in his bed and they would talk of islands in the Caribbean and digging for pirate gold. They would talk of adventures they would undertake together.
When Jacky grew older, he became Jack. Jack was quiet and earnest. He would still talk to Clemmy, at least more often than Abigail had, and at night, before turning out the lamp, he would read to Clemmy from a large book of tales. He would read stories of medieval knights who fought with honor and brave farm-boys who battled witches. He read fantastical stories of men who built machines that allowed them to fly to the stars. He told Clemmy stories of warriors and soldiers, of love and war, of boys and girls who became great.
All too soon, Jack left the house. The room became empty again. He came back on occasion and slept in his old bed for a night or two, but he seemed like a stranger. One day, after Jack had been gone for ages, he came home again. This time, his beautiful hair was shorn close to his scalp and he wore a crisp suit of drab green. He carried a large duffel. When he came to his room, he tossed the duffel on the bed and sat next to it. He rested his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his fists. For a long, long time he did not move; he just stared. Clemmy hid in the closet and watched him. It didn’t seem like a time to play.
Jack’s mother came to his door and asked him if he wanted anything. He roused from his staring for a moment. He flashed a broad smile at his mother and told her that he was fine. His mother didn’t seem to believe him, but she left the doorway. The second she was gone, Jack went back to staring. His eyes filled with tears and he wiped them away with his finger. He took deep breaths and tried to keep from crying again.
Clemmy wanted to soothe him. She wanted him to go to sleep so that she could stroke his head and sing lullabies to him. He never did sleep. Long after the house went dark and quiet, he calmly stood and left the room. Out the window, Clemmy saw him leave the house, walking past the oak tree (which was now almost all skeleton and no leaves), and toward the barn.
For long, terrible, dreadful minutes, Clemmy only heard adverse silence. Then, she heard footsteps, heavy, hollow footsteps on the rickety wooden stairs.
“I wanted to see you again,” said a voice behind her. Clemmy spun from the window and saw Jack standing in the door, still in his green suit. He seemed to shimmer in the light from the window. He stared at her with eyes like pools of black tar. “I hadn’t seen you in so long. I missed you, you know.”
Clemmy couldn’t say anything. She stared at him in the shadows and moonlight. She saw a large, red burn around his neck, a burn that was patterned with the outlines of a coil of hemp rope.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Jack. “I...couldn’t. I saw things in Europe--that’s where I was, you know: Europe. I was trying to make the world better, fighting for a good cause, I though...but it was horrible. The things I saw, I couldn’t stop seeing. I saw things whenever I closed my eyes. I wanted to stop seeing those things. Even now I still see them. Will it ever stop?”
Clemmy didn’t know how to answer him. She stepped toward him, but he held out a hand. “I can feel something happening. I did something real bad. Real bad. Something is going to happen to me because of it. Don’t get too close in case something goes wrong.”
They stood in the dark of the room and stared at each other. Jack’s face became more and more in shadow, a deep, liquid gloom that seemed to swirl like a wild river. “I wish I could stay with you,” he said. “We always had fun.”
The swirling shadows began to churn. Jack’s mouth opened as if he was screaming, but no sound came forth. His back arched like he was in agony. A terrible howl began to shriek in Clementine’s ears. It wasn’t coming from Jack. It seemed to come from the air around her. It was louder than anything she had ever heard before. She put her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. The howls increased. It seemed like there were thousands of wild, screaming Indians in her room, or howler monkeys. Clemmy was scared. She closed her eyes and crouched in a tiny ball, unable to take her eyes off of Jack and the shadows that were enveloping him, fighting him. In moments, the swirls of shadow surrounded him completely, writhing like snakes, like dragons, and then he was simply gone.
Clemmy ran to the attic crawlspace and hid, hid for ages. She clutched her knees to her chest and wept for Jack. She wished and prayed that Jack, little Jacky, her friend, would come back to her, but he never did.
When Clemmy finally emerged from the crawlspace again, Jack’s room had changed. A garishly bright wallpaper was plastered to the the walls. A bed with a bright yellow bedspread was in the corner where Jack’s bed had been. A white desk, messy with notebooks and magazines, was against the wall. A girl sat at the desk, she had a long ponytail and wore a bright red shirt that seemed thicker and cozier than any shirt Clemmy had ever seen. The girl was older than Jack or Abigail had been when Clemmy had met them. She had an odd contraption on her head, a sort of pair of black metal earmuffs with a cord that came out of them. The cord was attached to a strange box that spun a waxy black disc in circles.
Clementine had never seen anything like that. There was also a strange contraption on the desk, a glass cone with strange globs of illuminated color that seemed to boil and stretch in the liquid. The blobs spun and elongated, separating into two blobs and each set swirling. Without thinking, Clemmy walked toward it. She wanted to touch it, to see if it was warm. She extended her hand, fingers trembling, and reached for the lighted cone.
The girl in the chair suddenly grabbed Clemmy’s wrist. Her touch crackled through Clemmy like lightning. Clemmy felt her very core prickle with energy.
“Who are you?” the girl said. She was wide-eyed and shaking. She removed the strange metal earmuffs from her ears. “What are you?”
“I’m Clementine.”
The girl dropped Clementine’s wrist and Clemmy backed away from her, angling toward the closet.
“Don’t go,” said the girl. “I’m Sarah.”
Clementine froze.
“Sarah Winkler. I live here.”
“I’m Clementine,” Clemmy repeated. She didn’t know what else to say.
Sarah swiveled around to face her. “Have you been here a long time?”
Clemmy nodded. It had been years and years.
“Why are you here?”
“I...I live here.”
“You poor thing,” Sarah’s face softened. “You poor, poor thing.”
Clemmy felt strange. The look on Sarah’s face made Clemmy want to cringe.
“How long have you lived here? When did you...you know?”
Clemmy felt like she was going to cry. Her lower lip trembled. She felt shaky.
“Oh, don’t cry.” Sarah slid off her chair and knelt in front of Clemmy. “It’s okay. It’s all okay. I was just curious.”
There were footsteps in the hallway. When Sarah turned her head to look into the hallway, Clemmy dashed into the closet.
“Who are you talking to, Sweety?”
“No one, Mom. Just...rehearsing for the play auditions.”
“Oh, you’re going to try out this year?” asked Sarah’s mother. She was a pleasant woman, thin and willowy. She wore her hair in a braid that looped around the back of her head.
“I think so.”
“That’ll be fun.”
“I hope so.”
“Well, come downstairs when you finish your homework. M*A*S*H is on in ten minutes.”
“I will.”
Sarah gave her mom a smile and her mom left. Clementine listened to the footsteps disappearing down the hall.
“Where did you go?” Sarah looked around the room. She looked under her bed and then checked the closet. Clemmy pressed herself against the wall. “It’s okay. Honest. Come out and talk to me.”
Clementine squatted down so that a rack of Sarah’s clothes covered her. “You want to be my friend?”
“I totally do. You’re amazing.”
“Older kids usually forget about me.”
“I’m not like most older kids. My mom says I’m special. She says that I have a touch of magic like my grandma did. She could see the future, my mom said. I guess I have some special abilities, too. Don’t be scared. Come tell me about yourself.”
“I don’t have anything to tell.”
“What’s your last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
Sarah smiled at Clementine, a wide, genuine smile that made Clemmy forget the years of loneliness and isolation.
“I like your house,” said Sarah. “We moved here not too long ago. It had been empty and nearly abandoned. My dad is trying to fix it up. The downstairs is a mess right now.”
Clemmy came out from under the rack of clothes and sat in front of Sarah. She hugged her knees to her chest.
“I like the history of this house, the isolation. It’s pretty out here in the country. My dad says after he fixes up the house he might even fix up the barn so we can raise sheep.” Sarah smiled and crossed her legs. “Can I ask you questions?”
“I guess,” said Clementine. No one had asked her questions before; Abigail and Jacky had just just accepted her. They had been much younger than Sarah, though. Perhaps small children are just quicker to accept people, thought Clementine.
“How did you die?”
“What?” The word scared Clementine.
“Die. How did you die?”
Clemmy recoiled. She suddenly felt chilled and weak. “I don’t know.”
Sarah clutched a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you...I just thought...you already knew.”
Clemmy scooted backward until she bumped against the closet wall. She looked down at her hands. She didn’t think they looked dead. “Am I dead?”
Sarah’s face screwed up into a look of concern and sadness. Clemmy thought Sarah might cry. “Yes, Sweety. You are.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not like me,” said Sarah. “I can just tell by how you look.”
“Maybe you’re wrong.”
“Look at your pajamas,” said Sarah. “They’re
old, very old. They don’t make pajamas like that. When was the last time you put on a pretty dress or something other than pajamas?”
Clementine couldn’t answer that. She had always just worn her nightdress.
Sarah asked, “Where are you parents?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Do you even think of your parents anymore?”
“I...I don’t know.”
“Do you remember how you died?”
“I don’t know. I...didn’t think...” Clemmy felt like she was about to begin sobbing. She felt scared and out of place. Sarah was making her sad. Clemmy pushed back once more and she was suddenly in the crawl-space. It was dark and musty and it made her feel safe. She could hear Sarah calling out to her, wondering where she was, but Clemmy didn’t move. She stayed huddled in the crawl-space and tried not to think about being dead, but that was the only thought that she could hold in her head.
In the crawl-space, there seemed to be no passage of time, but Clemmy heard Sarah calling to her, begging her to come out and play. Clemmy was hesitant, but she eventually left the sub-attic and emerged in the closet. She saw Sarah on her hands and knees peering under the bed.
“I’m here,” said Clemmy.
Sarah spun around, clutching her chest. “You frightened me!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Come here, look! I went to the library after school and did some research. Look at this.”
Sarah spread some books and papers on the bed and Clemmy came and stood next to the bed. “This is the original land plot for this property,” said Sarah, pointing to a form that was replicated in a book. “It was purchased by a man called Davis Wheeler. He arranged to build this house and barn. Does that name sound familiar?”
“No.”
“Well, look at this,” said Sarah. She found a book with faded sepia-toned and black-and-white photographs. “Do you know what these are?”
Clemmy nodded. She had seen a few photos; she liked them. They seemed magical, like people frozen in time.
“This,” said Sarah, pointing at a photo, “is Davis Wheeler.”
The photo was of a handsome young man with a square jaw and deep-set, piercing eyes. His hair was a little wild and untamable, but he had a kind face. The picture triggered memories in Clementine’s head. She had flashes of that face, simple images: that face smiling at her, that face laughing as she was thrown high into the air and caught again. She remembered his pipe and the lush smell of the cherry tobacco he favored.
“I think that is my daddy.”
“I know,” said Sarah. She turned a page in the book and pointed to another picture. It showed Davis Wheeler standing with a pretty young woman in a white dress and a flower-sprigged apron. Between them stood a little girl, a girl who looked exactly like Clementine. “This is your family. And that little girl is you.”
Clementine stared at that picture for a long time. She remembered that picture. The man who took it was kind and let her see under the heavy velvet hood of what he called a magic box. Weeks later, when he came back to the farm, he had that picture. Clementine’s mother cried. Clementine had never seen it properly. Something happened. Something wasn’t right.
“I found this, too.” Sarah had a large book with old newspapers bound in it. One of the first newspapers had a small article with the headline, “Wagon Accident Kills Girl.”
“Can you read?” she asked. Clementine shook her head.
Sarah cleared her throat. “It says: A spooked horse ran off the road, overturning the buggy it was pulling. The daughter of Davis Wheeler was thrown from the wagon and died shortly thereafter. She was only six.”
Clementine couldn’t say anything. She felt like the world was suddenly spinning.
“And look, I found this today before I came upstairs,” said pointed out the window. Clementine walked to the window and looked where Sarah’s finger was pointing. At the corner of the yard, just below a large tree, a small limestone rock was stuck in the ground. Clementine could barely see it from the window.
Sarah said, “I cleared the tall weeds away from it. The stone is pretty worn, but I think it said your name on it. I think that’s where you were buried.”
“I’m dead,” Clementine whispered.
“You are, Sweety.”
“That’s my mommy and daddy.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Why don’t I remember them?”
“I don’t know, Sweety. It seems...strange. I don’t know the rules for dying. Do you remember anything?”
Clementine closed her eyes. She tried to remember. She remembered Jack and Abigail. She remembered the house. She remembered...nothing else. It was like there were storms in her mind, wild, raging lightning storms that obscured passages of time and made her mind foggy. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Well, this article is dated 1888. That’s when you died. You were six, so you were born in 1882. Do you know what year it is now? It’s 1978. That’s almost a hundred years after you died.”
It was suddenly overwhelming. Where was her daddy? Where was her mommy? Why weren’t they here with her? Why couldn’t she see them? Why didn’t she miss them? Why didn’t Abigail ever come back to her? Where was Jacky? The world seemed began to crumble around her. She collapsed in a heap on the floor and cried. She could faintly feel Sarah’s hand on her back, stroking her hair, like she used to do to Jacky when he fussed.
When Clemmy stopped crying and looked around, Sarah was gone and it was daytime. The books and pictures were gone. Footsteps crept down the hallway. Clemmy tried to hide in the closet. Sarah’s mother came in and changed the sheets on Sarah’s bed. Clemmy watched her movements. It triggered memories of Clemmy’s own mother. She could see her own mother in this very room changing bed sheets. She could see her mother sitting on the edge of her little bed, singing to her. She could see her own self laying in the bed, thick cotton bandages wrapped around her head. The accident. The blood soaking through the bandages. Her parents crying. Then, there is a storm in her memory and the next thing she knew, Abigail was living in her room.
Clemmy stayed on the floor of the closet. She didn’t feel like playing anymore. She didn’t think she would ever feel like playing again. When Sarah came home from school, she called for Clemmy, but Clemmy stayed hidden. She didn’t want to bother Sarah anymore. Sarah was alive, Clementine was not. Clemmy had to accept this.
Sarah called for Clemmy every day, but Clemmy pushed herself back into the crawl-space and stayed curled in a ball. After a few days, Sarah stopped calling for her. Clemmy began to creep out at night to watch Sarah sleep. During the days, she would sneak onto the stairs and spy on Sarah’s father. He had made a large mess of the downstairs. It looked nothing like what Clemmy remembered. There were sawhorses and boards everywhere coupled with strange, loud tools that ran under their own power. When Sarah returned from school, Clemmy went back to her hiding space.
During the night, Clemmy wondered what would become of her. Was this what she was to do forever?
The downstairs kept changing as Sarah’s father changed the structure of the rooms, opening up the small rooms by removing walls and making them one big room. He fixed the kitchen, stripping out old wiring and installing new. It was a fascinating process to Clemmy. She began to watch the strange machine that Sarah’s dad would have on while he worked. It showed moving pictures of strange people who did things like play games and talk to each other. She began to become obsessed with a show he watched in the afternoons where very pretty people carried on about relationships and kissed a lot. It was called “All My Children,” although there weren’t a lot of children on the show.
One day, while Clementine was watching the strange moving-picture box, Sarah’s dad was running a strange sort of saw across some wood. It screamed while it cut, but it cut very fast. Halfway through the plank he was cutting, there was a loud pop and the moving picture box went dark and the saw fell silent. Sarah’s father swore. He found a strange sort of torch, a heavy metal tube that made light, in a drawer nearby and then disappeared into the basement. After a moment, the picture-box came back on and the saw that he had been using screamed back to life. There was another loud pop and Clemmy saw a fireworks explosion of sparks. The sparks fell into little piles of sawdust and immediately became flame. The flames greedily devoured more sawdust and bit deeply into the old, dry wood floor.
Here, Clemmy had something like a memory storm. She remembered seeing flames. She remembered how quickly those flames spread. They weren’t hot. They couldn’t hurt her, but she saw nothing but fire.
When the fire was gone and the memory-storm subsided, Clementine stood in a charred, blackened house. She was in her old room, Sarah’s old room. The bed was gone, the desk was gone. The windows were smashed-out and empty. Sarah peered out into the yard. The oak tree had fallen at some point, the trunk a splintered mass of wreckage, the branches barren of leaves. The oak lay across the driveway, the driveway that no one had used in quite some time.
Clementine went down the charred stairs. Some of the stairs were missing and she could see into the empty basement. There were leaves all around the first floor. The windows on the first floor were mostly boarded up with large sheets of wood, but someone, at some point, had pulled down the sheet over the back door and had kicked in the door. Clementine felt like she should feel indignant about that; she should be angry that someone violated her home. But she couldn’t. She didn’t feel anything.
Clementine went back to the second story. All the windows were smashed up, but none were covered with wood. She could see the barn from some of the windows. The grass all around the barn and the house had grown to wild heights, all tangles and snares. There were thistles and arctium growing everywhere.
Clementine stared at the world so long that she had another memory storm. When she was cognizant again, the house had fallen further. The floor of the second story had mostly collapsed. The barn roof had caved in and only a messy skeleton remained in its place. There was water damage throughout the house from rain and snow. There was no one there anymore. Clementine called out over and over, for Abi, for Jacky, for Sarah--but no one ever answered. Only mournful crows would call back from the branches of the dead oak tree. Clemmy sank against the wall and buried her head in her hands.
Another memory storm led Clementine to awaken standing in the remnants of the house. The walls had all caved and the infrastructure of the house had collapsed. The house was merely a pile of rubble, a heap of old, lichen-covered boards and distant memories.
Eventually, Clementine came out of her memory storm long enough to realize that a large, scary machine--a bright yellow machine with a toothed bucket at the end of a long, mechanical arm--was biting deeply into the wreckage of the house, scooping some of the rubble up, and depositing it in the back of another machine--an equally monstrous thing with huge rubber wheels and a large, empty container on its back. Clementine fled into the basement and hid in a corner. Slowly the two machines took all the rubble of the house until there was only the empty cement of the basement left. When they finished the house, they took apart the old barn. Clementine watched them do the barn with particular interest, hoping that maybe she would see Jack.
When the machines left, Clementine could stand at the top of the carved-stone stairs of the basement and feel like she was outdoors for the first time in more than a hundred years. She couldn’t leave the basement, though; she didn’t know why. When she tried, it was as if a wall as still there, pushing her back. It frustrated her, but she eventually decided that it was enough to see nature all around her.
That first night, it rained. Water flooded the foundation, but Clemmy didn’t feel a single drop. She continued her vigil on the steps. She wondered what happened to Sarah. She hoped that Sarah would come back to see her again.
The memory-storms started to become more frequent. Clemmy would haze in and out of periods of foggy isolation back into the clear world. All around her, the landscape was changing. Eventually, rains broke down the masonry of the foundation and the walls collapsed. Mud and sand filled in the foundation until there was no visible stone, only a sunken recess in the landscape. After that, weeds began to grow. During a period of one the memory-storms, tall grass covered the depression, a few thistles populated the depression, and a tree began to grow.
Clemmy sat under the little tree and looked down the little lane that led back to the big road. She couldn’t see the road from where she was, but she could hear the occasional car, the sound of tires on pavement, the hum of engines. The lane was already becoming overgrown with weeds, the former ruts where car tires drove were hidden.
Melancholy filled Clemmy to the point where she felt like she would burst.
Then, the memory storms returned and Clementine simply sat and stared.
And stared.
This one is a ghost story. I hope you enjoy it.
Forever Clementine
Sean Patrick Little
Clementine liked to play with Abigail. They were the same age, roughly, and Abigail was a pretty thing, blonde and rosy-cheeked. Clementine was shy at first, unaware of how to act around this stranger, but Abi was friendly from the start. She invited Clemmy into her room and asked her to sit at the play table strewn with tiny, child-sized dishes. They would have tea poured from a fine China set that Abi’s father had bought in New York and pretend to eat biscuits and talk of things like kittens and toys they liked and what it was like at Abi’s school.
Abi and Clemmy were the best of friends, often talking in bed long after Abi was supposed to go to sleep. When Abi finally did sleep, Clemmy would watch over her, keeping the covers from shrugging off her shoulders and making sure Abi’s cat, Snowball, never jumped on her during the night, waking her.
On sunny days, Abi would play out in the yard and Clemmy would watch her from the window. Abi’s father hung a swing in the grand oak tree in the front yard. Clemmy remembered the old oak as smaller, healthier. Now it was large and skeletal, with as many dead branches as living ones. Abi would swing back and forth, sometimes so high that Clemmy thought she might leap off the swing and soar into the bedroom window. Abi always wanted Clemmy to come with her, to explore the woods with her, but Clemmy could never oblige.
More than anything, Clementine wanted to follow Abi, but she never could. She didn’t know why; she just couldn’t. Clem would wait for hours until Abi finally came back. Then, they would play with Abi’s dolls or take turns riding her rocking horse and pretending that they were cowboys.
Clementine loved Abigail, and she thought that Abigail loved her as well.
Abigail grew into a fine, beautiful young lady. As she grew, she no longer had time for the tea parties and pretend. She stopped talking to Clementine for the most part. Some nights, when Clementine was feeling bored and naughty, she might play hide-the-trinket with Abi, taking Abi’s favorite hairbrush and stowing it in her toy box or under her bed. On those days, Abi would comb over her room until she found the brush and then she’d smile and make a clucking noise with her tongue and say, “Oh, Clemmy.”
That always made Clemmy happy. She missed her friend.
When Abi grew even bigger, she stopped even thinking of Clementine, even when Clemmy hid her brush. Abi spent hours in her room pouring over her school books and writing long papers. Clemmy sat on Abi’s bed and quietly watched. She didn’t want to interrupt her when she was so intent on her studies.
One day, Abi and her mother came into her room with a giant old steamer trunk. Clemmy hid under the bed that day. She watched from beneath the dust ruffle as they loaded the trunk with clothes and other items. They left most of her childish things: the tea set stayed in its wicker case in the closet, the rocking horse, dusty with disuse, sat idle in the corner, and the porcelain dolls, forever staring straight ahead with cold, dull glass eyes, stayed on their shelf.
When Abi and her mother left, Clemmy came out from under the bed and sat at Abi’s desk. She didn’t feel like playing.
Clemmy watched out the window for Abi’s return. When Abi did return, she was different, older. She had a baby--a real baby--in her arms. A handsome young man in a smart suit and bowler hat stood by her. They were climbing out of a clever contraption, a wagon-like machine that propelled itself without a horse. Abi’s mother and father rushed out, exclaiming wildly over the baby. Abi and the young man and the baby came into the house, but Abi never came up to her old room. Clemmy had to sneak down the stairs and hide in the pantry to watch Abi visit with her parents.
Abi’s visits became more and more infrequent. Clemmy felt terribly sad. Some days, she did nothing but cry for hours. Some days she tried to play with the tea set or hold one of the dolls again, but it wasn’t the same without Abigail.
On a cold, fall day, men came into the room and slowly took apart Abi’s old bed. Piece by piece, they moved the bed out, the desk, and then all the toys and trinkets. Clemmy hid in the closet, smushing herself into the tiny crawl-space behind the wall. When the house was quiet, Clemmy emerged into a barren home. All the furniture, the pictures from the walls, and all the odds-and-ends were gone. The house was completely vacant.
At first, Clemmy liked running through the house, not worried if Abi’s parents could see her or not, but after a few days, the loneliness was unbearable. Clemmy took to hiding in the upstairs closet, the one in the hallway. It was a small, square closet with no window. When she closed the door, the darkness pressed in on her from all sides. When she couldn’t see the emptiness of the house, she felt less alone.
One day, Clemmy heard voices again. When she emerged from the closet, there were boxes and furniture cluttering the house again. When she ran back to Abigail’s old room, there was a new friend, little Jacky. Clemmy hadn’t played with boys very much, but she was so happy to see someone her own age, that she would not have cared if it had been a boy, girl, or dancing dervish.
Jacky was a sweet boy. He wore knee pants and smart, white shirts. He had wonderful toys: building blocks and metal cars and tractors. Jacky was as happy to see Clemmy as she was to see him. Together they played for hours, laying on the floor of his room, building sprawling mansions with the blocks and crashing tractors into the base to make it topple. When it would fall, they would howl with laughter, laughing until they had to wipe tears from their eyes. Then, they would do it all again.
At night, Jacky slept and Clemmy stayed crouched next to his bed. Jacky talked in his sleep and he had nightmares. When he cried out, Clemmy would stroke his hair and whisper in his ear until he stilled. If a dream woke him, Clemmy would be right there for him. She would cuddle next to him in his bed and they would talk of islands in the Caribbean and digging for pirate gold. They would talk of adventures they would undertake together.
When Jacky grew older, he became Jack. Jack was quiet and earnest. He would still talk to Clemmy, at least more often than Abigail had, and at night, before turning out the lamp, he would read to Clemmy from a large book of tales. He would read stories of medieval knights who fought with honor and brave farm-boys who battled witches. He read fantastical stories of men who built machines that allowed them to fly to the stars. He told Clemmy stories of warriors and soldiers, of love and war, of boys and girls who became great.
All too soon, Jack left the house. The room became empty again. He came back on occasion and slept in his old bed for a night or two, but he seemed like a stranger. One day, after Jack had been gone for ages, he came home again. This time, his beautiful hair was shorn close to his scalp and he wore a crisp suit of drab green. He carried a large duffel. When he came to his room, he tossed the duffel on the bed and sat next to it. He rested his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his fists. For a long, long time he did not move; he just stared. Clemmy hid in the closet and watched him. It didn’t seem like a time to play.
Jack’s mother came to his door and asked him if he wanted anything. He roused from his staring for a moment. He flashed a broad smile at his mother and told her that he was fine. His mother didn’t seem to believe him, but she left the doorway. The second she was gone, Jack went back to staring. His eyes filled with tears and he wiped them away with his finger. He took deep breaths and tried to keep from crying again.
Clemmy wanted to soothe him. She wanted him to go to sleep so that she could stroke his head and sing lullabies to him. He never did sleep. Long after the house went dark and quiet, he calmly stood and left the room. Out the window, Clemmy saw him leave the house, walking past the oak tree (which was now almost all skeleton and no leaves), and toward the barn.
For long, terrible, dreadful minutes, Clemmy only heard adverse silence. Then, she heard footsteps, heavy, hollow footsteps on the rickety wooden stairs.
“I wanted to see you again,” said a voice behind her. Clemmy spun from the window and saw Jack standing in the door, still in his green suit. He seemed to shimmer in the light from the window. He stared at her with eyes like pools of black tar. “I hadn’t seen you in so long. I missed you, you know.”
Clemmy couldn’t say anything. She stared at him in the shadows and moonlight. She saw a large, red burn around his neck, a burn that was patterned with the outlines of a coil of hemp rope.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Jack. “I...couldn’t. I saw things in Europe--that’s where I was, you know: Europe. I was trying to make the world better, fighting for a good cause, I though...but it was horrible. The things I saw, I couldn’t stop seeing. I saw things whenever I closed my eyes. I wanted to stop seeing those things. Even now I still see them. Will it ever stop?”
Clemmy didn’t know how to answer him. She stepped toward him, but he held out a hand. “I can feel something happening. I did something real bad. Real bad. Something is going to happen to me because of it. Don’t get too close in case something goes wrong.”
They stood in the dark of the room and stared at each other. Jack’s face became more and more in shadow, a deep, liquid gloom that seemed to swirl like a wild river. “I wish I could stay with you,” he said. “We always had fun.”
The swirling shadows began to churn. Jack’s mouth opened as if he was screaming, but no sound came forth. His back arched like he was in agony. A terrible howl began to shriek in Clementine’s ears. It wasn’t coming from Jack. It seemed to come from the air around her. It was louder than anything she had ever heard before. She put her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. The howls increased. It seemed like there were thousands of wild, screaming Indians in her room, or howler monkeys. Clemmy was scared. She closed her eyes and crouched in a tiny ball, unable to take her eyes off of Jack and the shadows that were enveloping him, fighting him. In moments, the swirls of shadow surrounded him completely, writhing like snakes, like dragons, and then he was simply gone.
Clemmy ran to the attic crawlspace and hid, hid for ages. She clutched her knees to her chest and wept for Jack. She wished and prayed that Jack, little Jacky, her friend, would come back to her, but he never did.
When Clemmy finally emerged from the crawlspace again, Jack’s room had changed. A garishly bright wallpaper was plastered to the the walls. A bed with a bright yellow bedspread was in the corner where Jack’s bed had been. A white desk, messy with notebooks and magazines, was against the wall. A girl sat at the desk, she had a long ponytail and wore a bright red shirt that seemed thicker and cozier than any shirt Clemmy had ever seen. The girl was older than Jack or Abigail had been when Clemmy had met them. She had an odd contraption on her head, a sort of pair of black metal earmuffs with a cord that came out of them. The cord was attached to a strange box that spun a waxy black disc in circles.
Clementine had never seen anything like that. There was also a strange contraption on the desk, a glass cone with strange globs of illuminated color that seemed to boil and stretch in the liquid. The blobs spun and elongated, separating into two blobs and each set swirling. Without thinking, Clemmy walked toward it. She wanted to touch it, to see if it was warm. She extended her hand, fingers trembling, and reached for the lighted cone.
The girl in the chair suddenly grabbed Clemmy’s wrist. Her touch crackled through Clemmy like lightning. Clemmy felt her very core prickle with energy.
“Who are you?” the girl said. She was wide-eyed and shaking. She removed the strange metal earmuffs from her ears. “What are you?”
“I’m Clementine.”
The girl dropped Clementine’s wrist and Clemmy backed away from her, angling toward the closet.
“Don’t go,” said the girl. “I’m Sarah.”
Clementine froze.
“Sarah Winkler. I live here.”
“I’m Clementine,” Clemmy repeated. She didn’t know what else to say.
Sarah swiveled around to face her. “Have you been here a long time?”
Clemmy nodded. It had been years and years.
“Why are you here?”
“I...I live here.”
“You poor thing,” Sarah’s face softened. “You poor, poor thing.”
Clemmy felt strange. The look on Sarah’s face made Clemmy want to cringe.
“How long have you lived here? When did you...you know?”
Clemmy felt like she was going to cry. Her lower lip trembled. She felt shaky.
“Oh, don’t cry.” Sarah slid off her chair and knelt in front of Clemmy. “It’s okay. It’s all okay. I was just curious.”
There were footsteps in the hallway. When Sarah turned her head to look into the hallway, Clemmy dashed into the closet.
“Who are you talking to, Sweety?”
“No one, Mom. Just...rehearsing for the play auditions.”
“Oh, you’re going to try out this year?” asked Sarah’s mother. She was a pleasant woman, thin and willowy. She wore her hair in a braid that looped around the back of her head.
“I think so.”
“That’ll be fun.”
“I hope so.”
“Well, come downstairs when you finish your homework. M*A*S*H is on in ten minutes.”
“I will.”
Sarah gave her mom a smile and her mom left. Clementine listened to the footsteps disappearing down the hall.
“Where did you go?” Sarah looked around the room. She looked under her bed and then checked the closet. Clemmy pressed herself against the wall. “It’s okay. Honest. Come out and talk to me.”
Clementine squatted down so that a rack of Sarah’s clothes covered her. “You want to be my friend?”
“I totally do. You’re amazing.”
“Older kids usually forget about me.”
“I’m not like most older kids. My mom says I’m special. She says that I have a touch of magic like my grandma did. She could see the future, my mom said. I guess I have some special abilities, too. Don’t be scared. Come tell me about yourself.”
“I don’t have anything to tell.”
“What’s your last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
Sarah smiled at Clementine, a wide, genuine smile that made Clemmy forget the years of loneliness and isolation.
“I like your house,” said Sarah. “We moved here not too long ago. It had been empty and nearly abandoned. My dad is trying to fix it up. The downstairs is a mess right now.”
Clemmy came out from under the rack of clothes and sat in front of Sarah. She hugged her knees to her chest.
“I like the history of this house, the isolation. It’s pretty out here in the country. My dad says after he fixes up the house he might even fix up the barn so we can raise sheep.” Sarah smiled and crossed her legs. “Can I ask you questions?”
“I guess,” said Clementine. No one had asked her questions before; Abigail and Jacky had just just accepted her. They had been much younger than Sarah, though. Perhaps small children are just quicker to accept people, thought Clementine.
“How did you die?”
“What?” The word scared Clementine.
“Die. How did you die?”
Clemmy recoiled. She suddenly felt chilled and weak. “I don’t know.”
Sarah clutched a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you...I just thought...you already knew.”
Clemmy scooted backward until she bumped against the closet wall. She looked down at her hands. She didn’t think they looked dead. “Am I dead?”
Sarah’s face screwed up into a look of concern and sadness. Clemmy thought Sarah might cry. “Yes, Sweety. You are.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not like me,” said Sarah. “I can just tell by how you look.”
“Maybe you’re wrong.”
“Look at your pajamas,” said Sarah. “They’re
old, very old. They don’t make pajamas like that. When was the last time you put on a pretty dress or something other than pajamas?”
Clementine couldn’t answer that. She had always just worn her nightdress.
Sarah asked, “Where are you parents?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Do you even think of your parents anymore?”
“I...I don’t know.”
“Do you remember how you died?”
“I don’t know. I...didn’t think...” Clemmy felt like she was about to begin sobbing. She felt scared and out of place. Sarah was making her sad. Clemmy pushed back once more and she was suddenly in the crawl-space. It was dark and musty and it made her feel safe. She could hear Sarah calling out to her, wondering where she was, but Clemmy didn’t move. She stayed huddled in the crawl-space and tried not to think about being dead, but that was the only thought that she could hold in her head.
In the crawl-space, there seemed to be no passage of time, but Clemmy heard Sarah calling to her, begging her to come out and play. Clemmy was hesitant, but she eventually left the sub-attic and emerged in the closet. She saw Sarah on her hands and knees peering under the bed.
“I’m here,” said Clemmy.
Sarah spun around, clutching her chest. “You frightened me!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Come here, look! I went to the library after school and did some research. Look at this.”
Sarah spread some books and papers on the bed and Clemmy came and stood next to the bed. “This is the original land plot for this property,” said Sarah, pointing to a form that was replicated in a book. “It was purchased by a man called Davis Wheeler. He arranged to build this house and barn. Does that name sound familiar?”
“No.”
“Well, look at this,” said Sarah. She found a book with faded sepia-toned and black-and-white photographs. “Do you know what these are?”
Clemmy nodded. She had seen a few photos; she liked them. They seemed magical, like people frozen in time.
“This,” said Sarah, pointing at a photo, “is Davis Wheeler.”
The photo was of a handsome young man with a square jaw and deep-set, piercing eyes. His hair was a little wild and untamable, but he had a kind face. The picture triggered memories in Clementine’s head. She had flashes of that face, simple images: that face smiling at her, that face laughing as she was thrown high into the air and caught again. She remembered his pipe and the lush smell of the cherry tobacco he favored.
“I think that is my daddy.”
“I know,” said Sarah. She turned a page in the book and pointed to another picture. It showed Davis Wheeler standing with a pretty young woman in a white dress and a flower-sprigged apron. Between them stood a little girl, a girl who looked exactly like Clementine. “This is your family. And that little girl is you.”
Clementine stared at that picture for a long time. She remembered that picture. The man who took it was kind and let her see under the heavy velvet hood of what he called a magic box. Weeks later, when he came back to the farm, he had that picture. Clementine’s mother cried. Clementine had never seen it properly. Something happened. Something wasn’t right.
“I found this, too.” Sarah had a large book with old newspapers bound in it. One of the first newspapers had a small article with the headline, “Wagon Accident Kills Girl.”
“Can you read?” she asked. Clementine shook her head.
Sarah cleared her throat. “It says: A spooked horse ran off the road, overturning the buggy it was pulling. The daughter of Davis Wheeler was thrown from the wagon and died shortly thereafter. She was only six.”
Clementine couldn’t say anything. She felt like the world was suddenly spinning.
“And look, I found this today before I came upstairs,” said pointed out the window. Clementine walked to the window and looked where Sarah’s finger was pointing. At the corner of the yard, just below a large tree, a small limestone rock was stuck in the ground. Clementine could barely see it from the window.
Sarah said, “I cleared the tall weeds away from it. The stone is pretty worn, but I think it said your name on it. I think that’s where you were buried.”
“I’m dead,” Clementine whispered.
“You are, Sweety.”
“That’s my mommy and daddy.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Why don’t I remember them?”
“I don’t know, Sweety. It seems...strange. I don’t know the rules for dying. Do you remember anything?”
Clementine closed her eyes. She tried to remember. She remembered Jack and Abigail. She remembered the house. She remembered...nothing else. It was like there were storms in her mind, wild, raging lightning storms that obscured passages of time and made her mind foggy. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Well, this article is dated 1888. That’s when you died. You were six, so you were born in 1882. Do you know what year it is now? It’s 1978. That’s almost a hundred years after you died.”
It was suddenly overwhelming. Where was her daddy? Where was her mommy? Why weren’t they here with her? Why couldn’t she see them? Why didn’t she miss them? Why didn’t Abigail ever come back to her? Where was Jacky? The world seemed began to crumble around her. She collapsed in a heap on the floor and cried. She could faintly feel Sarah’s hand on her back, stroking her hair, like she used to do to Jacky when he fussed.
When Clemmy stopped crying and looked around, Sarah was gone and it was daytime. The books and pictures were gone. Footsteps crept down the hallway. Clemmy tried to hide in the closet. Sarah’s mother came in and changed the sheets on Sarah’s bed. Clemmy watched her movements. It triggered memories of Clemmy’s own mother. She could see her own mother in this very room changing bed sheets. She could see her mother sitting on the edge of her little bed, singing to her. She could see her own self laying in the bed, thick cotton bandages wrapped around her head. The accident. The blood soaking through the bandages. Her parents crying. Then, there is a storm in her memory and the next thing she knew, Abigail was living in her room.
Clemmy stayed on the floor of the closet. She didn’t feel like playing anymore. She didn’t think she would ever feel like playing again. When Sarah came home from school, she called for Clemmy, but Clemmy stayed hidden. She didn’t want to bother Sarah anymore. Sarah was alive, Clementine was not. Clemmy had to accept this.
Sarah called for Clemmy every day, but Clemmy pushed herself back into the crawl-space and stayed curled in a ball. After a few days, Sarah stopped calling for her. Clemmy began to creep out at night to watch Sarah sleep. During the days, she would sneak onto the stairs and spy on Sarah’s father. He had made a large mess of the downstairs. It looked nothing like what Clemmy remembered. There were sawhorses and boards everywhere coupled with strange, loud tools that ran under their own power. When Sarah returned from school, Clemmy went back to her hiding space.
During the night, Clemmy wondered what would become of her. Was this what she was to do forever?
The downstairs kept changing as Sarah’s father changed the structure of the rooms, opening up the small rooms by removing walls and making them one big room. He fixed the kitchen, stripping out old wiring and installing new. It was a fascinating process to Clemmy. She began to watch the strange machine that Sarah’s dad would have on while he worked. It showed moving pictures of strange people who did things like play games and talk to each other. She began to become obsessed with a show he watched in the afternoons where very pretty people carried on about relationships and kissed a lot. It was called “All My Children,” although there weren’t a lot of children on the show.
One day, while Clementine was watching the strange moving-picture box, Sarah’s dad was running a strange sort of saw across some wood. It screamed while it cut, but it cut very fast. Halfway through the plank he was cutting, there was a loud pop and the moving picture box went dark and the saw fell silent. Sarah’s father swore. He found a strange sort of torch, a heavy metal tube that made light, in a drawer nearby and then disappeared into the basement. After a moment, the picture-box came back on and the saw that he had been using screamed back to life. There was another loud pop and Clemmy saw a fireworks explosion of sparks. The sparks fell into little piles of sawdust and immediately became flame. The flames greedily devoured more sawdust and bit deeply into the old, dry wood floor.
Here, Clemmy had something like a memory storm. She remembered seeing flames. She remembered how quickly those flames spread. They weren’t hot. They couldn’t hurt her, but she saw nothing but fire.
When the fire was gone and the memory-storm subsided, Clementine stood in a charred, blackened house. She was in her old room, Sarah’s old room. The bed was gone, the desk was gone. The windows were smashed-out and empty. Sarah peered out into the yard. The oak tree had fallen at some point, the trunk a splintered mass of wreckage, the branches barren of leaves. The oak lay across the driveway, the driveway that no one had used in quite some time.
Clementine went down the charred stairs. Some of the stairs were missing and she could see into the empty basement. There were leaves all around the first floor. The windows on the first floor were mostly boarded up with large sheets of wood, but someone, at some point, had pulled down the sheet over the back door and had kicked in the door. Clementine felt like she should feel indignant about that; she should be angry that someone violated her home. But she couldn’t. She didn’t feel anything.
Clementine went back to the second story. All the windows were smashed up, but none were covered with wood. She could see the barn from some of the windows. The grass all around the barn and the house had grown to wild heights, all tangles and snares. There were thistles and arctium growing everywhere.
Clementine stared at the world so long that she had another memory storm. When she was cognizant again, the house had fallen further. The floor of the second story had mostly collapsed. The barn roof had caved in and only a messy skeleton remained in its place. There was water damage throughout the house from rain and snow. There was no one there anymore. Clementine called out over and over, for Abi, for Jacky, for Sarah--but no one ever answered. Only mournful crows would call back from the branches of the dead oak tree. Clemmy sank against the wall and buried her head in her hands.
Another memory storm led Clementine to awaken standing in the remnants of the house. The walls had all caved and the infrastructure of the house had collapsed. The house was merely a pile of rubble, a heap of old, lichen-covered boards and distant memories.
Eventually, Clementine came out of her memory storm long enough to realize that a large, scary machine--a bright yellow machine with a toothed bucket at the end of a long, mechanical arm--was biting deeply into the wreckage of the house, scooping some of the rubble up, and depositing it in the back of another machine--an equally monstrous thing with huge rubber wheels and a large, empty container on its back. Clementine fled into the basement and hid in a corner. Slowly the two machines took all the rubble of the house until there was only the empty cement of the basement left. When they finished the house, they took apart the old barn. Clementine watched them do the barn with particular interest, hoping that maybe she would see Jack.
When the machines left, Clementine could stand at the top of the carved-stone stairs of the basement and feel like she was outdoors for the first time in more than a hundred years. She couldn’t leave the basement, though; she didn’t know why. When she tried, it was as if a wall as still there, pushing her back. It frustrated her, but she eventually decided that it was enough to see nature all around her.
That first night, it rained. Water flooded the foundation, but Clemmy didn’t feel a single drop. She continued her vigil on the steps. She wondered what happened to Sarah. She hoped that Sarah would come back to see her again.
The memory-storms started to become more frequent. Clemmy would haze in and out of periods of foggy isolation back into the clear world. All around her, the landscape was changing. Eventually, rains broke down the masonry of the foundation and the walls collapsed. Mud and sand filled in the foundation until there was no visible stone, only a sunken recess in the landscape. After that, weeds began to grow. During a period of one the memory-storms, tall grass covered the depression, a few thistles populated the depression, and a tree began to grow.
Clemmy sat under the little tree and looked down the little lane that led back to the big road. She couldn’t see the road from where she was, but she could hear the occasional car, the sound of tires on pavement, the hum of engines. The lane was already becoming overgrown with weeds, the former ruts where car tires drove were hidden.
Melancholy filled Clemmy to the point where she felt like she would burst.
Then, the memory storms returned and Clementine simply sat and stared.
And stared.
March 1, 2018
A Mindless Rant for a Thursday Morning...
I went to Barnes & Noble this morning, not on purpose, but it's the quickest access to the mall from where I like to park at East Towne. I was running errands, and figured I'd poke around and see what was new. I try not to spend money at B&N, preferring to give my book money to small, local stores like Mystery to Me, but I do love poking through the shelves at B&N to find new books, new authors, and just see what's out there.
When I go to bookstores, I'm always struck by two thoughts:
--There are more books that I WANT to read than I will ever be able to read in my lifetime.
--There are far more books that I DON'T want to read than I actually want to read.
This is a curious fact, and I think it speaks to the diversity of the human spirit. People have a wide range of tastes, interests, and likes. There are books out there for everyone, especially if you go beyond the big chains and look into smaller stores. In a store like B&N, there are no "small" books. A few years ago, B&N purged its independent and small press books in favor of courting the big cash from the Major Five (almost all traditionally published books in stores like B&N come from five publishing conglomerates).
These major publishers are a major gatekeeper. These five corporate entities, who are in it for money and money, alone, are constantly looking for not the best books, but rather the books that are the most marketable to the largest section of the audience. There's a lot of risk in book publishing, so the broader they can get with their publishing, the more likely they will be to strike gold and find a massive audience. Sometimes it works out very well for them. (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, John Green, etc...) But, more often than not, a major publisher takes a stab at a new author or new series, and it dies. It dies not because it isn't "good" or because it's "bad," it just failed to find an audience and the publisher scrapped future plans for the series/author. Happens all the time.
I am always impressed by the books and authors that do hit it big. It's like winning the lottery, really. It's the right book being able to find the right audience at the right time. It has a lot to do with skill and talent and perseverance, but it also has a lot to do with luck and coincidence.
I always cringe when celebrities tell people to chase their dreams. I think we all know that most dreams never come true. Just because Taylor Swift gets a successful and amazing music career doesn't mean that a ton of women just as talented as she is will get the same career. Instead, they'll be relegated to playing coffeehouses for the price of a free cup of tea after a six-song set. There are men and women stuck in regional dinner theater productions who are just as talented and charming as any A-list actor in Hollywood, but for whatever reason, their stars didn't line up and they don't get the rich-and-famous package. There are only a limited amount of slots for that sort of thing, and I think most of us out there are pragmatic enough to know our roles.
However, that doesn't mean we don't have to stop chasing at least a modicum of our dreams. I have friends who are in bands. They play weekly in front of crowds. True, they're not headlining Coachella, but at least they're out there doing something. I have friends who act. Maybe it's only in small, independent films that get put on YouTube and only get fifteen or twenty views, but at least they are out there acting. I have friends are artists. They can't live on sales from their work, but that doesn't stop them from creating new paintings.
When you go on Amazon and look at the sheer volume of independent books out there, it's overwhelming. Literally millions of books PER YEAR being done as eBook-only editions by people with as much, if not more talent, than myself. Those books are out there for a buck or two per copy. They might only sell a few hundred copies over the lifespan of the book. But, the authors keep writing.
We don't do it for the audience, because the audiences finding an independent books are highly unlikely. We certainly don't do it for the money. (I got my quarterly royalty check for hard copy sales the other day: $8.31...sigh.) Writing is a strange calling, and I can't explain why I keep tormenting myself at the keyboard, other than the fact that I can't stop myself from doing it. Maybe I only do it because I can.
I just bring it up because when I was in B&N, I looked at the pile of the new releases. Of all the books on the front table, there was only one that looked remotely interesting to me. The rest, I could not have cared less about. They're just books, written by people who worked hard and took a stab, and published by publishers who looked at the market and took a stab. How is that any different from what independent or small press authors do?
Sometimes people get lucky. (Andy Weir is the poster boy for this right now.) Most of the time, we will not. Most of us, we don't get to live our dreams. We know that in our hearts. It is what it is. But, that doesn't mean we refrain from trying.
In other news:
-Hard copies of LONG EMPTY ROADS should be available this weekend! I have not received them yet, but soon...
-At least sixteen people have reviewed LER on Amazon. I can't bring myself to read the reviews, but John Dean told me they're mostly positive. I'll take it. Thank you to all who have taken the time to do that. It means a lot to me.
-BLACK PANTHER was solid. Best Marvel movie in a while. Shuri stole the film.
-Check out Everything Hobby's Instagram feed. My buddy, Jack Quincey's puppet work is featured. It's brilliant marketing.
-I'm over two-thirds of the way through the third Teslacon novel, LORD BOBBINS AND THE CLOCKWORK GIRL. Ideally, I will put two new TeslaCon books this fall. The TeslaCon books are not moving at all. Steampunk is a very niche audience, I guess. I hold out hope for them, because they are fun and I like writing them.
-Speaking of Steampunk, I'll be at Geneva Steam Con next weekend, March 10 and 11. Should be a good time.
-THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES on Netflix--weird show, but good. Sean Bean is cool.
-EVERYTHING SUCKS on Netflix--another weird show, but it makes me feel that familiar high school cringe, and it is set in the 90's, back when I was in high school and college. I like it.
-Looking forward to Alex Bledsoe's sixth and final Tufa novel, THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE. It will be out April 10. I'm devastated that he's ending the series, but I'm glad he got to do it on his terms, and I'll look forward to his next book and series. If you haven't read the Tufa novels, jump on THE HUM AND THE SHIVER with all due haste. Support a talented Wisconsin writer.
-Started reading Myke Cole's new book, THE ARMORED SAINT. Only five chapter in, but it has hooked me HARD. The first chapter alone is so overwhelming and addicting, I think this book will be fantastic.
-Still unemployed, but I'm still hunting, and I've had a couple interviews. One looks promising, but the others--not so much. I keep applying, though. Anyone need an English teacher?
Yours in Reading,
-Sean
When I go to bookstores, I'm always struck by two thoughts:
--There are more books that I WANT to read than I will ever be able to read in my lifetime.
--There are far more books that I DON'T want to read than I actually want to read.
This is a curious fact, and I think it speaks to the diversity of the human spirit. People have a wide range of tastes, interests, and likes. There are books out there for everyone, especially if you go beyond the big chains and look into smaller stores. In a store like B&N, there are no "small" books. A few years ago, B&N purged its independent and small press books in favor of courting the big cash from the Major Five (almost all traditionally published books in stores like B&N come from five publishing conglomerates).
These major publishers are a major gatekeeper. These five corporate entities, who are in it for money and money, alone, are constantly looking for not the best books, but rather the books that are the most marketable to the largest section of the audience. There's a lot of risk in book publishing, so the broader they can get with their publishing, the more likely they will be to strike gold and find a massive audience. Sometimes it works out very well for them. (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, John Green, etc...) But, more often than not, a major publisher takes a stab at a new author or new series, and it dies. It dies not because it isn't "good" or because it's "bad," it just failed to find an audience and the publisher scrapped future plans for the series/author. Happens all the time.
I am always impressed by the books and authors that do hit it big. It's like winning the lottery, really. It's the right book being able to find the right audience at the right time. It has a lot to do with skill and talent and perseverance, but it also has a lot to do with luck and coincidence.
I always cringe when celebrities tell people to chase their dreams. I think we all know that most dreams never come true. Just because Taylor Swift gets a successful and amazing music career doesn't mean that a ton of women just as talented as she is will get the same career. Instead, they'll be relegated to playing coffeehouses for the price of a free cup of tea after a six-song set. There are men and women stuck in regional dinner theater productions who are just as talented and charming as any A-list actor in Hollywood, but for whatever reason, their stars didn't line up and they don't get the rich-and-famous package. There are only a limited amount of slots for that sort of thing, and I think most of us out there are pragmatic enough to know our roles.
However, that doesn't mean we don't have to stop chasing at least a modicum of our dreams. I have friends who are in bands. They play weekly in front of crowds. True, they're not headlining Coachella, but at least they're out there doing something. I have friends who act. Maybe it's only in small, independent films that get put on YouTube and only get fifteen or twenty views, but at least they are out there acting. I have friends are artists. They can't live on sales from their work, but that doesn't stop them from creating new paintings.
When you go on Amazon and look at the sheer volume of independent books out there, it's overwhelming. Literally millions of books PER YEAR being done as eBook-only editions by people with as much, if not more talent, than myself. Those books are out there for a buck or two per copy. They might only sell a few hundred copies over the lifespan of the book. But, the authors keep writing.
We don't do it for the audience, because the audiences finding an independent books are highly unlikely. We certainly don't do it for the money. (I got my quarterly royalty check for hard copy sales the other day: $8.31...sigh.) Writing is a strange calling, and I can't explain why I keep tormenting myself at the keyboard, other than the fact that I can't stop myself from doing it. Maybe I only do it because I can.
I just bring it up because when I was in B&N, I looked at the pile of the new releases. Of all the books on the front table, there was only one that looked remotely interesting to me. The rest, I could not have cared less about. They're just books, written by people who worked hard and took a stab, and published by publishers who looked at the market and took a stab. How is that any different from what independent or small press authors do?
Sometimes people get lucky. (Andy Weir is the poster boy for this right now.) Most of the time, we will not. Most of us, we don't get to live our dreams. We know that in our hearts. It is what it is. But, that doesn't mean we refrain from trying.
In other news:
-Hard copies of LONG EMPTY ROADS should be available this weekend! I have not received them yet, but soon...
-At least sixteen people have reviewed LER on Amazon. I can't bring myself to read the reviews, but John Dean told me they're mostly positive. I'll take it. Thank you to all who have taken the time to do that. It means a lot to me.
-BLACK PANTHER was solid. Best Marvel movie in a while. Shuri stole the film.
-Check out Everything Hobby's Instagram feed. My buddy, Jack Quincey's puppet work is featured. It's brilliant marketing.
-I'm over two-thirds of the way through the third Teslacon novel, LORD BOBBINS AND THE CLOCKWORK GIRL. Ideally, I will put two new TeslaCon books this fall. The TeslaCon books are not moving at all. Steampunk is a very niche audience, I guess. I hold out hope for them, because they are fun and I like writing them.
-Speaking of Steampunk, I'll be at Geneva Steam Con next weekend, March 10 and 11. Should be a good time.
-THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES on Netflix--weird show, but good. Sean Bean is cool.
-EVERYTHING SUCKS on Netflix--another weird show, but it makes me feel that familiar high school cringe, and it is set in the 90's, back when I was in high school and college. I like it.
-Looking forward to Alex Bledsoe's sixth and final Tufa novel, THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE. It will be out April 10. I'm devastated that he's ending the series, but I'm glad he got to do it on his terms, and I'll look forward to his next book and series. If you haven't read the Tufa novels, jump on THE HUM AND THE SHIVER with all due haste. Support a talented Wisconsin writer.
-Started reading Myke Cole's new book, THE ARMORED SAINT. Only five chapter in, but it has hooked me HARD. The first chapter alone is so overwhelming and addicting, I think this book will be fantastic.
-Still unemployed, but I'm still hunting, and I've had a couple interviews. One looks promising, but the others--not so much. I keep applying, though. Anyone need an English teacher?
Yours in Reading,
-Sean
February 22, 2018
LONG EMPTY ROADS Hard Copies Are Ready
My second proof copy arrived at the house today. I flipped through it. It looks good. I gave the thumbs-up to distribution, and I'll be ordering a stack tomorrow. If you are the sort who wants a hard copy immediately, I'll post the link for you.
While I haven't read any of the posted reviews (I fear reading them), I see at least 15 people have reviewed it on Amazon, and ten on Goodreads.com. For that, I am grateful. I have checked the page counts for Kindle Unlimited, and I'm seeing some pretty overwhelming number of pages read there, so thank you to those that have that service and are reading the book. Everything helps.
I sincerely appreciate the positive feedback from people who have reached out to me, personally. It means a lot. I would write in an echo chamber; I would keep putting stuff out, even if I knew no one was reading it because I'm driven to do it, but the fact that people are reading and enjoying my little stories means the world to me.
I am over halfway through the first draft process of LORD BOBBINS AND THE CLOCKWORK GIRL, the third #TeslaCon novel. I have started the editing process for LORD BOBBINS AND THE DOME OF LIGHT, the second Teslacon book, and I hope to see both in hard copy this fall. Though, it may just be more practical to put them out on Kindle only. The book is just not moving, sadly.
I'm hoping to change that, slightly, in early March. Bill Bodden, good dude that he is, tossed out an invite to attend the Geneva Steam Convention and perhaps speak on some panels, so I will be looking forward to heading there, and perhaps getting some new faces turned toward #LordBobbins' exploits.
I have also started the first draft of the third Survivor Journals novel. I'm hoping there will be enough demand for it. I have more adventures in mind, and there's enough of a world there to make it work. I think a lot of where I want to go with it reflects the second book in Wilder's "Little House" series, though. I have made no secret of the fact that AFTER EVERYONE DIED, in its own way, is an homage to Wilder's THE LONG WINTER. Hell, I talk about TLW enough in the book that it should be a surprise to no one.
However, I've read/been reading two books about Wilder's life and times, the first, CAROLINE by Sarah Miller, was a fictionalized and historically accurate account of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, but told from Ma Ingalls' perspective. The second book, PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER by Caroline Fraser, is a non-fiction book about Wilder's life, painfully truthful and blunt in its depictions of some of the less-glamorous aspects of Laura. Both are equally fascinating, and both give glimpses into a way of life that I think we are better off remembering well. Because of that, the idea of having to farm, to hack out an existence on a bleak new frontier with absolutely no safety net appeals to me.
We'll see what happens.
Thank you for reading LONG EMPTY ROADS. Please tell friends, family, and post reviews.
Yours in Reading,
--Sean
http://www.lulu.com/shop/sean-little/...
While I haven't read any of the posted reviews (I fear reading them), I see at least 15 people have reviewed it on Amazon, and ten on Goodreads.com. For that, I am grateful. I have checked the page counts for Kindle Unlimited, and I'm seeing some pretty overwhelming number of pages read there, so thank you to those that have that service and are reading the book. Everything helps.
I sincerely appreciate the positive feedback from people who have reached out to me, personally. It means a lot. I would write in an echo chamber; I would keep putting stuff out, even if I knew no one was reading it because I'm driven to do it, but the fact that people are reading and enjoying my little stories means the world to me.
I am over halfway through the first draft process of LORD BOBBINS AND THE CLOCKWORK GIRL, the third #TeslaCon novel. I have started the editing process for LORD BOBBINS AND THE DOME OF LIGHT, the second Teslacon book, and I hope to see both in hard copy this fall. Though, it may just be more practical to put them out on Kindle only. The book is just not moving, sadly.
I'm hoping to change that, slightly, in early March. Bill Bodden, good dude that he is, tossed out an invite to attend the Geneva Steam Convention and perhaps speak on some panels, so I will be looking forward to heading there, and perhaps getting some new faces turned toward #LordBobbins' exploits.
I have also started the first draft of the third Survivor Journals novel. I'm hoping there will be enough demand for it. I have more adventures in mind, and there's enough of a world there to make it work. I think a lot of where I want to go with it reflects the second book in Wilder's "Little House" series, though. I have made no secret of the fact that AFTER EVERYONE DIED, in its own way, is an homage to Wilder's THE LONG WINTER. Hell, I talk about TLW enough in the book that it should be a surprise to no one.
However, I've read/been reading two books about Wilder's life and times, the first, CAROLINE by Sarah Miller, was a fictionalized and historically accurate account of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, but told from Ma Ingalls' perspective. The second book, PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER by Caroline Fraser, is a non-fiction book about Wilder's life, painfully truthful and blunt in its depictions of some of the less-glamorous aspects of Laura. Both are equally fascinating, and both give glimpses into a way of life that I think we are better off remembering well. Because of that, the idea of having to farm, to hack out an existence on a bleak new frontier with absolutely no safety net appeals to me.
We'll see what happens.
Thank you for reading LONG EMPTY ROADS. Please tell friends, family, and post reviews.
Yours in Reading,
--Sean
http://www.lulu.com/shop/sean-little/...
Still in Wisco
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I don't update often because studies show very few people actually bother to read blogs. Like podcasts, they're an oversatu ...more
I don't update often because studies show very few people actually bother to read blogs. Like podcasts, they're an oversatu ...more
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