Scary Stories

Subtitle, that you can, but probably shouldn’t, tell in the dark.

I’ve discovered several new short stories of the pants-crapping variety. And what else can I do but share them with you?

Tomb Of The Builders

By one of my favorite writers. Ninety nine percent of his work is the kind of stuff that grosses you out. This story is not, and it’s also way more horrifying.

Daycare

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Honestly, I thought the first part was the best and a creepier story on its own. But feel free to check out the rest and see for yourself.

The Little Girl That Cheated At Everything

It’s actually a poem, and a surprisingly good one at that. Really well done.

My Rich American Family

It reminds me a lot of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Finally, be sure to check out these two sentence horror stories. I can’t really talk more about them since that would give everything away. I mean, they are only two sentences after all.

Future Tense

This doesn’t actually have anything to do with tenses—it’s not Thursday, so it’s not word time. It’s just a title.

I believe I have the idea that will turn into the book I write this year. It takes place in the far future and, shockingly enough, there’s not an apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) thing about it.

I can sense your shock. After all, this is me we’re talking about here. The last four books I’ve written have been varying degrees of apocalyptic. But not this one. Could it be…that I’ve finally run out of apocalyptic scenarios? What a depressing thought.

Anyway, while my not writing an apocalyptic story is clearly a tragedy, it does give me the chance to explore something else. Really, my new project isn’t all that different from my other works. It’s an action story with a sci-fi bent, just like four of the previous five (the fifth being an action story with a paranormal bent). There’s a little more sci-fi this time around, what with it taking place about five hundred years from now, but it takes place on Earth and there are no aliens of any kind, so it’s a far cry from hard science fiction. Plus, the biggest shocker of all, it’s not YA.

I know. Let that sink in for a minute.

I’m really having a lot of fun with it—a bit too much, since I haven’t been keeping up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing for REMEMBER. But I’m using being stressed out by querying as an excuse. It’s a lot easier to get lost in a new project than an old one.

What have you guys been up to lately? Do you stick to one genre, or do you like to stretch your writing muscles in other ones, too?

Halloween 2013

Only five days until Halloween! Yay! Can you tell I’ve been excited about it? So in keeping with this month’s tradition of sharing scary things on Saturday, here’s the most frightening things I’ve come across this year:

Scariest Video Game

The Last Door, chapters 1 and 2, a gothic horror game about a man trying to determine what happened to his boarding school friends. Has the bonus of also being a great story in its own right.

Scariest Horror Short

Proxy. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you about the Slender Man shows on YouTube? This is another one, but it’s just a short and only about ten minutes long. Totally creep-tastic.

Scariest Horror Short Story

Candle Cove, by Kris Straub. It’s about a bunch of people reminiscing about a bizarre show they used to watch. Trust me, it’s a good one.

Well, share: what are the scariest movies and stories you’ve come across?

Scared Yet?

And in continuing with this month’s theme of things to be scared of, I tracked down a bunch of short stories that are both scary and written by the person you least suspect. Don’t worry. They’re not too scary : P.

                                                                   

The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann. If that name isn’t familiar, he wrote The Nutcracker. He’s not an English writer so it’s a translation, but I think it’s a good one. It’s the longest story I have here, but it’s worth it.

The Birds by Daphne du Maurier. Absolutely nothing like the movie. It takes place in England, the main character is a middle aged man with a family—if you’ve read REBECCA, you know what you’re getting into here.

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. The horror of this story isn’t fully realized until the end, but it’s skillfully foreshadowed. Like most of Faulkner’s work, it’s full of bitterness and heartbreak, but in this it’s taken to an extreme conclusion, hence the classification as horror.

The Landlady by Roald Dahl. Yes, that Roald Dahl. Like most of the stories here, it’s not straight up horror, but more subtle, and definitely not like any of his children’s books. The best part is, the scare doesn’t sink in until you’re done with the story and have time to think about it.

Miriam by Truman Capote. I’ve always considered Capote to be a literary writer, but here he flirts with the supernatural. I absolutely love this story, because even if you don’t believe in the supernatural, you can still be afraid of what’s going on here.

So those are the greatest, most unexpected scary stories I’ve found. What about you? What kin dof rare gems have you come across?

Story Time

I always like to do something fun in my Saturday posts. Sometimes it’s just fun for me, like in one of my rants, but you guys have put up with that enough lately, so I decided on something that’s actually fun for everyone: short stories.

I love short stories. I love long stories, too, but this week’s about the short ones, namely those of the sci-fi genre. We’re lucky to live in a time after the explosion of sci-fi shorts left us with thousands of varying quality to choose from.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I actually mentioned this one before, but at the time was unable to find a copy of it online. The prolific Asimov calls it his best work. It’s certainly one of the smartest, most amusing ones.

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

If you prefer to be depressed by your sci-fi, look no further. It’s one of the most heart-wrenching, emotionally driven stories I’ve read period.

And He Built a Crooked House by Robert A. Heinlein

And He Built a Crooked House is par for the course time travel-y confusion. Seriously, you might need to write down detailed notes about what’s going on. Still fun though.

The Unreconstructed M by Philip K. Dick

It’s Philip K. Dick, so that right there should tell you it’s going to be cynical.

Ugh, I just realize there are all guys here. Lame. However, I’ve also been reading through MACHINE OF DEATH, a collection of short stories by various authors based on the premise set forth in one of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics. And lucky for us there are plenty of females in there as well as males. So it’s proof that women can A), write science fiction, and B) be funny. Suck on that, SFWA.

Something Completely Different

I suppose I should be editing (as much as I have to follow a self-made schedule anyway) but instead I started a new story. I kind of had to. It got a deep hook into my brain and if the words didn’t come out into a Word document then my brain would have exploded. So editing can wait another month while I delve into this madness.

And it is madness. It’s such a fun story to write because it’s so crazy. Time bending, reality is a blur, anachronistic order…basically one big mind trip, and all of it one hundred percent pantsed. At least for me as the writer. Most of the things I write are grounded in reality, even if they have sci-fi/paranormal twists, so it’s refreshing to escape into a place where those rules don’t exist. Plus, the actual writing style is different. It’s first person, but, gasp, in past tense. It’s been so long since I’ve written in that that I still catch myself slipping into it on occasion. The main character is also closer in age to me so I can put more adult traits in him. He swears a lot, too, and I have to admit it’s fun to go on a cursing rampage where no one can hear you.

So I’m having fun. I’m flexing my creativity muscle, which needs quite a bit of exercise. More importantly, I’m writing and I’d rather be doing that than sitting in front of a WIP, unable to muster any ideas with which to improve it. As an unpublished writer, the ability to do something completely different is probably the only luxury I have. Lucky for me it’s my journey and I can proceed as I please.

What are you working on right now? Do you always stick with a certain style or do you like to experiment every now and then?

Day One

I suppose I'm not quite sure what to say, perhaps because nothing I say hasn't been said before. A thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years might reproduce the works of Shakespeare, but a single writer most definitely will. Not on purpose, not even consciously. But it does happen. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No. Not if the writer is good.

Back in high school, I was taught there were only five types of stories: man vs. man, man vs. himself (or woman versus herself...I'm a terrible sexist! and a bit lazy), man vs. society, man vs. the natural, and man vs. the supernatural. If I've forgotten one or more, forgive me. It doesn't matter anyway as my point is that reducing stories to man vs. anything is a gross oversimplification. You can say The Scarlet Letter is a person versus society and miss the point entirely, because it isn't about Hester bearing the punishment for adultery. It's about Hester. It's about morality. It's about love. And it's about a million other things.

There are other stories that are man/woman versus society. Are they The Scarlet Letter? No! Are they even in the same genre? Nope! Because the real story, the real writing, is in the details, not the one sentence summation. That's the reason why John Steinbeck could write the story of Cain and Abel and have it come out a book completely different from the book of Genesis.

So, how was this for the first post? Maybe once I get some followers, it will be a bit more impressive. Maybe.