When There is No More Room in Hell, The Zombie Fiction Will Walk The Earth

Hey blog readers, it's time for some ZOMBIES.

Do you like zombies? Can't get enough of The Walking Dead? Need more zombies in your life? Well here are some ways to fill your life with the undead until Season 6 starts up in October 2015.


The Black Tide Rising Series, by John Ringo - 5/5 stars

This four-part series was written by John Ringo, who is usually a military science-fiction author. One of those military sci-fi authors whose world-building immerses you so deeply into the world of his novels that you always get pissed off when the series ends because, damnit, you just don't want to stop reading it. This series is the story of the Smith family, a family of doomsday preppers who get themselves out to the Atlantic after a zombie-apocalypse breaks out. After some time at sea, they decide it's time to start saving the world. Between Captain Steve Smith, an Aussie ex-special forces officer, his wife and two daughters, they start saving the world, one boat at a time, then one island at a time, looking for survivors and fighting zombies for supplies. My favorite part of this series, though, is one of Steve's daughters, Faith Marie Smith, aka She-wolf. This 13-year old turns into the world's premier expert on zombie killing, and she is AWESOME. Seriously, Michonne has got nothing on She-wolf. Pick up the first book in this series, Under a Graveyard Sky, and get ready for an awesome, well-written, sometimes funny, always badass zombie adventure.


The Ex-Heroes Series, by Peter Clines - 5/5 stars

Zombie fighting is awesome. You know it, I know it, and Peter Clines, author of Ex-Heroes knows it. But he decided to take zombie fighting, and crank it up to eleven by writing a series of books that has SUPER-HEROES FIGHTING ZOMBIES!!!! Yes, ladies and gentlemans, you read that correctly, but I'll repeat it again because it's that awesome: SUPER-HEROES FIGHTING ZOMBIES!!!! I seriously geek out every time I think about it. An awesome concept does not a great novel make, but Peter Clines delivers with excellent world-building, inredible characters, and a great story in each entry into the series. Some classic zombie tropes and some classic super-hero tropes (especially super-hero show-downs), but they are always applied in original ways, and there are some incredibly creative differences thrown in. Go buy Ex-Heroes and get ready to geek out and have a blast as you experience what one critic called "Marvel's The Avengers meets AMC's The Walking Dead" .



Some notes on the above series: Both of these series have a ton of geeky references, including D&D, The Matrix, Aliens, and many more. Perhaps both authors assume SFF fans will be a majority when it comes to Zombie Apocalypse Survivors? In addition, neither one uses the most annoying Zombie trope ever, (sorry Mr. Kirkman) "Call them anything but Zombies". An interesting thing is that both authors have completely different styles (and different ideologies) but both make their series work incredibly well. I would highly recommend either of these series to anyone who enjoys a good Z-A throwdown.

Typical Shadows

                Awake from another dreamless sleep. Roll out of bed. Get ready for another dreamless day. Brush your teeth and tie your tie, drive through the snow to walk through the taupe-colored door. Pour a cup of coffee, cheap and black and strong. Walk into your box and sit down, watch the typical shadows flutter by as you stare at the screen.

                Stop on the way home, buy a bottle of whiskey. Open your door and pull off your tie. Ignore the urge to throw it into the fireplace and toss in a match. Step on to your porch and pull out your cigarettes. Stare over the railing and into the trees. Watch the smoke curl into the cold, stale air and disappear like the hours behind you.

                Open the bottle and pour a glass. Drink it in one. Wash it down with your last can of Coke. Take another drink. It won’t hurt anything. Have another. Wash them down until the Coke is empty and your head feels light. Now go for a walk.

                Keep walking. The air is cold, but you have a coat and the whiskey keeps you warm. When the cold starts to bite, stop at the coffee shop on the corner. Order it black. Smile at the barista. She smiles back. Sit and drink your coffee and stare at your cell phone. Read some email, catch up on that blog. Now step outside for another cigarette. There are people walking in and out. Go around the side of the building before you light up.

Book Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

Today I get to review one of my favorite books by an author who I only discovered about a year ago, but has quickly become one of my favorites. If you've ever read John Scalzi, you'll know why.

Today's review: REDSHIRTS

Introduction - Fever Dream

This is the first page of a novella I wrote called "Fever Dream"

Amit knew the physics of the place were off, but there was no way they should have survived that crash. The Jeep had rolled three or four times, he wasn’t sure, and now it was sitting on all four wheels. Granted, it was apparently stuck in a big pile of rocks, but it was running, and it shouldn’t be. He wondered if the girls were having better luck. It was starting to get dark, just that twilight time when the sky is a pale purple-blue just after the sun sets, and Jordy hit the overhead light to check out the inside of the car. Amit looked out the window and there was something weird about the landscape. Well, weirder than usual. He couldn’t place it until he switched focus to his own vague, transparent reflection. Or rather, the reflection that should have been his own. He was looking into the reflection and instead of seeing a transparent version of himself returning his gaze with Jordy in the background, there were the girls. A transparent Shay was in the passenger seat and Kelly was further back, behind a spectral steering wheel.

“Damn,” Amit said. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog that had settled over his mind, “something weird is happening again.”

“No shit,” said Jordy, “what gave it away, this mountain that appeared out of nowhere or the road that turned into quicksand fifty yards back?”

“No,” said Amit, “I mean something new. Do you remember when we split up with the girls?”

“Bro, that was like half an hour ago.”

“But do you remember?”

“Sure, we were deciding whether or not to split up,” Jordy’s brow knitted and eyes narrowed, “and we… decided not to…”

“Right,” said Amit, “I think we should get out.”

“You want to go out there?” asked Jordy, incredulous, “We don’t know if those... those big dog things are still out there!”

“They’re wolves.” Said Amit in a flat voice, “Just call them what they are. It doesn’t matter, though,” and he started cranking the manual window.

“Wait!” said Jordy, but Amit was already climbing out the window.

Jordy looked out his own window, and saw the strange red desert that they hadn’t been driving through until a split second before the crash. He sighed and rolled his eyes. This place was getting ridiculous. He turned back toward the passenger seat to shout out to Amit, but instead he saw Shay sitting in the passenger seat, looking a bit excited.

“Whoa,” he said, “when did you get here?”

She looked at him, not his eyes but a spot just a bit below and to the right. She was mouthing something with enthusiasm, and pointing out the window toward Amit, but there was no sound and he couldn’t make out what she was mouthing.

“Just get out of the car!” he heard Amit say through the open window.

Caltech Scientists Develop New Method for Producing Space-Age Material

Here's the story

So some scientists at Caltech have developed  a new method to produce Graphene, which is a space-age material that is orders of magnitude better at conducting than Silicone, and can be produced in the thickness of a single atom. That means that it can carry data and information and information at higher speeds and in higher quantities than anything we can currently produce. Imagine power that can be stored and transferred in quantities like that! Solar panels could be literally 100,000% more efficient than they are now. Hard drives are already ridiculously small, but imagine supercomputers the size of a dime.

Not only that, but if Graphene can be produced cheaply and in enough quantity, it could be used as a building material. It is 200x stronge (by weight) than steel. Carbon-fiber has got nothing on Graphene.

This is the material that sci-fi stories all use as futuristic, almost impossible materials, and it's happening now. To me, that's as cool as it gets.

Merriam-Webster Releases Statement: List of words that don't offend any group is alarmingly short.

In a press conference earlier, officials from Merriam-Webster confirm that after months of looking into the offensiveness of individual words, their researchers threw up their hands, yelled, "Fuck it" and got rid of all adjectives, verbs, and nouns. The only words now that don't offend anyone are gender-neutral pronouns and indefinite articles. When asked to comment, representatives from Oxford Dictionaries said, "Merriam-Webster? They're a bunch of fucktards."

Genius from a Pizza Commercial – OR – Show, Don’t Tell

This post is about some writing advice. It does relate, I promise, just bear with me for a minute.

In the small town of Bloomington in southern Indiana, home of Indiana University, there are a shit-load of pizza places. I haven’t been back to that town in several years, but I can remember several off the top of my head: Pizza Express, Mother Bear’s, Crazy Aver’s, Bistro, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Uncle D’s, Buccetto’s, Rocket’s and Café Pizzeria. I got my degree in Economics there and I actually wrote a paper on the market for pizza in town. Needless to say, there were a lot of commercials on TV for the various pizza places. But I only remember the commercials for two of them: Mother Bear’s and Crazy Aver’s.

I remember the Mother Bear’s commercial because it was ridiculous. It had a grown man with stubble wearing fairy wings, a blonde wig, and a tutu. It was weird, but not terribly effective except for being memorable for its weirdness.

The commercial for Crazy Aver’s, however, was just fucking genius. The commercial was just dead silence with non-moving images of delicious pizza. The reason this is so brilliant was because TV is full of noises. When the TV goes silent, it grabs your attention. If you’re having a conversation, or if you are watching and nodding off, you turn back to look at the TV to make sure it didn't turn off. These commercials always played late at night. In a college town, that usually meant a drunk and/or high audience that was easily distracted.

So you turn to the TV to see why it has suddenly gone silent, and you see a picture of a delicious, melty-cheese, pepperoni covered culinary masterpiece. Your mouth starts watering. Another pizza appears, this one some kind of specialty with meat and vegetables. Another pizza appears, this one with a cold, sweating glass of soda next to it. Then the voice comes on: “Crazy Aver’s Pizza, Order now!” and the phone number appears on the TV.

Fucking. Brilliant.

I have no idea how many pizzas they sold me this way, but everyone I knew said the same thing. That commercial is genius. This doesn't even consider that this was probably the cheapest commercial to make in history.

Anyway, there are two writing-related points to this:

First, with regards to the opening line(s) of a story: You don’t have to make a lot of noise to grab attention. Your story doesn't have to open in the middle of an epic battle. You don’t need to curse like a sailor, or say something poetic, or paint beautiful word-imagery to hook someone. You just have to give them a reason to look. A few examples:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.” – George Orwell, 1984

“The trick to walking around in someone else’s body is not getting caught.” – Rick Wayne, The MinusFaction

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Aliens suck at music.” – Rob Ried, Year Zero

They make you want to know what the fuck is going on, don’t they? I've noticed a lot of sci-fi novels drop you into a battle right at the beginning. Anything by Dan Brown is probably going to open with a grisly murder scene. A lot of classical literature will try to open with a lot of detail of the setting, or what the author wants to be a clever and memorable line, usually one that doesn’t really have a lot to do with the plot (This does not apply to Jane Austen, that woman was a genius). I'm not saying any of these books are bad, but you don't HAVE to start your story that way. The lines above, they hook you without trying to throw a lot of noise at you. They get your eyebrow raised and your eyes locked on the page.

The second bit of wisdom from this commercial is something you’ve heard a thousand times, “Show, don’t tell.” Aver's didn't have to tell me anything about their pizza. They just showed it to me and made my mouth water. This little nugget of wisdom is tough, because we are using words. Using words, by their very nature, is pretty much the definition of “tell”. Confusing? It was to me for a long time, until I figured it out by watching one of the greatest movies of all fucking time, Star Wars. It does a great job of showing a lot of information without having to tell you anything. Let’s novelize that scene:

As the men in faceless white armor examine the bodies of their recent kills, a heavy robotic breathing sounds from the blown-open doorway. Both stormtroopers immediately drop what they are doing and come to rigid attention. A tall figure, dressed all in black, face covered by a black mask, and figure shrouded by a black cape steps onto the ship. He looks down at the corpses littering the hallway. None are who he is looking for. He moves on, followed by his guard.

What did I just show you about Darth Vader? First, he’s important. The troopers came to attention. Second, he’s a cold bastard. He took just long enough to see that his prey wasn’t among the dead. Third, he’s scary looking. I didn't say he was scary looking, but the description, with a few choice adjectives (shrouded, repetition of “black”) pretty much ensures you know he’s scary looking. That paragraph is 82 words, and it advances the story while also conveying what I want you to know about Darth Vader. If I wrote the next few scenes out, you’d know Darth Vader is powerful, evil, and someone you do not fuck with. I wouldn't have to say any of that, because what he does, along with a few short descriptions, will get the point across.

I hope you enjoyed this, now go write something!

Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor! - OR - On Writing a Good Ending

The title is a Ghostbusters reference. If you don't get it, shame on you.

For the last ten days I've been writing a story for The Writers Arena. The idea for this site is that two writers, one representing the Arena (I think just the four site admins?) and one challenger (in this instance, ME) receive a prompt and have ten days to write a story for that prompt. The readers get to vote on their favorite. Then there are two judges who each pick a winner, and the readers vote makes the tie-breaker. This week I think I'm facing off against Joseph Devon, who wrote my favorite Writer's Arena piece so far, "Self-Reflection". I stumbled on to this back in October when I came down with a serious case of procrastination from working on my novel (which is up to 85,000 words, go me). There are new stories almost every week, and they are all very creative and fun to read. My story prompt was:

"Water is life. For thousands of years civilization has clustered along seashores, followed rivers, and huddled around lakes. Water dominates the surface of our planet. It provides us with food and transportation, and of course it quenches our thirst…

Go down to the water, find what dark things may lurk there, and tell us their tale."

So I have to write a story about some kind of body of water. Awesome. Spending the last 17 years in the land-locked Midwest is finally going to pay off! But seriously, this was really hard. I’ve seen the ocean maybe a dozen times in my life, the only river nearby is a joke, and there just aren’t any good lakes around. Water is not my forte.

So what did I do? I procrastinated and hoped an idea would come to me. I stuck Fellowship of the Ring in the blu-ray player, and closed my laptop. Fortunately for me, I picked the right movie. There is a scene near the end of the film where the fellowship (sans-Gandalf) is riding on boats down a river, and they come to a pair of absolutely massive statues as the river passes through a gorge.

Bingo. That image was my inspiration.

So now all I needed was a story. One thing about my writing is that it is heavily influenced by whatever I happen to be reading at the moment. It makes my writing kind of eclectic, but also versatile. I recently finished reading  John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, which is a militaryscience fiction/zombie apocalypse mashup (and it’s fucking awesome). And so my mind immediately jumped to some kind of military story.

So I came up with a pretty good outline for a story and got to writing. I finished the story at about 3000 words, and it sucked. Hard.

I re-read it to try and figure out what sucked about it. Most of it was actually pretty good, it was just a terrible ending. Not bad writing, just a bad ending. Like, worse than The Sopranos ending. So I saved it as ‘draft 1’ in case I couldn’t come up with anything better by the deadline, and started thinking of a better ending. It wasn’t working well. For three days I couldn’t come up with an even slightly better alternative. Sunday night came and I only had two days to finish, and I had to work 12-hour shifts at my day-job, so I was pretty much out of time. I sat in front of my computer, and came up with nothing.

Tuesday came, the deadline was mere hours away, and all I had done was polished up a garbage ending so that it was a nice, shiny garbage ending. In desperation, I turned to the internet, hoping to find some inspiration to save my story. I turned on a podcast I had recently discovered, Mur Lafferty’s “I Should Be Writing,” and the very first thing she said was exactly what I needed.

She said she took a workshop that said if you are stuck on an ending, just write out ten endings. Five will come quickly, three will be harder, and by the last two, they are going to be very difficult to write. One of those last two should probably be your ending.

So I opened up my word processor and started just writing (summaries) of endings. I got the one I had down, and another slightly better one, and then I was stuck. There really wasn’t anywhere else the story could go. Except, I realized, that was exactly the problem. My main character didn’t have any choice in how the ending played out. She was pretty much an active spectator. Nothing she did for the last thousand words effected the ending at all.

And so I thought about my main character. Was she going to just sit and let events roll out, or was she going to take charge? Well, obviously she would take charge. She’s an army officer, after all. And would she choose to go with the flow and let things play out the way they were? Fuck no she wouldn’t. She would fight it. And that is exactly what she does. She fights the inevitable until the inevitable backs the fuck down, and in the process single-handedly saved my ending.

The point I’m trying to get across is that your character needs to have a choice. Without being able to effect the story, your character is really just a prop, and nobody wants to read a story about a prop.

If you want to see how this ended up, go read my story at The Writer’s Arena, and then read Joseph’s, because it’s surely awesome, and then vote for your favorite. Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it.

Slogging through the Dead Marshes - OR - Those Fucking Middle Chapters

This is a continuation of me writing about writing a novel. (Warning: If you haven't read/seen Lord Of The Ring, just go ahead and skip this post)

I'm in the mushy, flabby middle part of my novel, and let me tell you, the beginning was easier. You remember Lord of the Ring, where Frodo and Sam were on an epic quest with the Fellowship, but then left them, and ended up trekking through Mordor and eventually destroying The Ring? Of course you do, because the Fellowship had a wicked awesome adventure, and the Mordor thing was so dramatic because HOLY SHIT THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS ON THE LINE!!!!

BUT -

Do you remember the parts in between those two? The Dead Marshes and climbing the stairs and whatever those confusing maze of mountains were? I'm betting the answer is "Barely". Because this is the saggy middle between an epic beginning and the Giant Spider Fighting event that kicks off the end-portion and climax of the story. You only kept reading those parts because the beginning was awesome enough to get you hooked and wanting to know how the story ended. Sure Tolkien threw you a bone here an there, introducing the crazy dragon things that the Nazgul ride and throwing in some Samwise and Gollum drama, but overall, it was not nearly as engaging as the parts that preceded and even less engaging than the events in Return of the King.

Well let me tell you: Writing that middle shit is even harder than reading it. Hell, I threw in a random ninja vs knight fight just to keep myself entertained. But I'm pounding through it anyway, because I really like the beginning and the characters I've written so far. It's a good start, and I want to see how it ends. I have a pretty good general idea, but I don't know the words that are going to hit the page yet.

Also, HOLY SHIT the ending is awesome. Maybe it's just because it's mine, or because I'm a huge nerd... whatever. The ending is SO FUCKING COOL and I CANNOT WAIT TO WRITE IT. But I have to, because I know if I don't get through the middle first, the ending won't make enough sense, and I owe my characters (Matt, Jenny, Siri, Walker and Phalanx) a shitload more respect than writing the end before I finish the middle section.

Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-place, to read me writing about writing about writing a novel.

Why I Write - OR - Why I Put Myself Through This Torture

I’ve been writing stories off and on since I was 8 years old. I was a weird kid, in that I read a lot. I had the entire pantheons of several different mythologies memorized as a kid, and I had read a lot of western* classics (e.g. Verne, Wells, Dickins, Dumas, Twain, etc.) by the time I was in middle school.

*not western novels, I’m talking Western (European, American) as opposed to Eastern (Russian, Chinese)

As a young kid, I wrote a story about how volcanoes were actually prisons for gods that had pissed off other gods, and Link from the Legend of Zelda Series accidentally released one of these gods (actually a goddess, as she was based on Tiamat, the Sumerian/Babylonian goddess of chaos and the sea), and had to team up with the Ninja Turtles and Gambit (of the X-men) to stop her. I never showed anyone this story, which is disappointing, because you can bet my mom would have kept it, and I would be able to go back and look at it. It’s gone now, but that right there, that is why I write. Because I am still eleven years old on the inside, constantly thinking of how many awesome things there are in the world, and wondering how I can write awesome stories about them.

This is an old world. There are prophecies and myths and gods and legends and heroes and magic and technology and plots and secrets and bodies and explosions and conspiracies. There is joy and sorrow and regret and rage beauty and ugliness and hate and love and passion and lust. There are sociopaths and assassins and accountants and spies and ninjas and CEOs and presidents and construction workers and secretaries and models and transients and hunters and farmers. There is so much damned material to work with, how can I not try to make up awesome adventures?

 Fuck, I mean, just look at the upcoming Christmas holiday; There’s virgin birth and infanticide and eastern mystics and portents in the sky and prophecies and saviors. AND THAT’S ONLY THE STRICTLY CHRISTIAN VERSION! That doesn’t even take into account Santa Claus or Father Christmas or Crampus or Jack the Pumpkin King or BlackPeter (aka Zwarte Piet, a Dutch thing, look it up, it’s ridiculous).

Basically, I write because I can’t fucking help it, there is too much awesome stuff that hasn’t been combined into an even more awesome monstrosity of a story. 

Writing a Novel: Part One - OR - A Much Needed distraction From Writing This F@$%ing Thing

Hello, all you blog readers out there. You probably stumbled across this by mistake, or I click-baited you, or you like my Ello posts and thought, "Hey, let's see what else this guy's got."

Well, I got you now, sucka.

I am writing a novel right now, and let me tell you, it SUCKS.

Not the book - the book is damn good. I personally think it's a masterpiece in the making, in my more delirious moments. What sucks is writing the thing.

Have you ever said something, and then everyone you were talking to just stared at you, and you think, "Wow, that sounded waaaaaaaaaaaay better in my head."? That's what writing a novel is like. It's putting word after word after word after word down on your computer screen, and desperately trying not to wonder if it's actually good, or if it just sounds good in your head. And you want SO BADLY to show it to people and say, "Hey, this is the novel I'm working on, what do you think?"

BUT YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT'S NOT FUCKING FINISHED YET.

So I keep plugging away*. Just keep adding words and sentences and dialogue and paragraphs and chapters, wondering if my characters sound like real people (or at least good fake people) or if it's all just flat dialogue moving my ridiculous plot forward. I'm pretty sure I had my main character get some kind of injury in the second chapter that I completely forgot about, so that will need to be fixed in editing, along with a bunch of other crap. Also, do you know how hard it is to come up with good character names? Probably, if you're a writer, you do. Or maybe it comes naturally to you. In that case, lucky you, now go away. Just kidding. Stay. Sit. Good writer.

*Yes, I realize that I just switched from "you" to "I", but this is MY blog, damnit, and I will incorporate all the verb-tense and POV confusion I want to. If you don't like it, well this blog doesn't have any readers anyway, so it doesn't matter.


And yes, ladies and gentlemen and daleks, my plot is ridiculous. I mean, the very first chapter is pretty much a Cloverfield-ish crocodile monster attacking New York City, and getting thwarted by an inept private investigator. Then the teenage ninja shows up. Then it just gets weirder.

So far, I'm about 20,000 words in, with plenty of the rest outlined and even about a 4000 word chapter already written. That leaves me with about... 40000 to 50000 words to go. And if that figure doesn't depress you like it depresses me, then no whiskey for you. I'm keeping it all. And it's good whiskey, too. Woodford Reserve Bourbon. That's right, be jealous.

And another thing: I have to write a sex scene pretty soon. I have never written a sex scene before. I don't want it to be 50 Shades of Gray (grey?) explicit or anything, but damn! It's hard writing something you've never written before. Okay, maybe I've written a couple sex scenes, but those weren't for serious or anything. I want to get this shit published!

AND I CAN'T F@$%ING SHOW IT TO ANYONE UNTIL THE THING IS DONE!

Anyway, the idea is to get the first draft written by the beginning of February, let it sit untouched until around Valentine's Day, then start rewriting the thing. Hopefully by mid-March I can get it out to some beta-readers or an editor or something. I'm not 100% on how to proceed once the second draft is finished.

Anyway, that's enough musing for tonight. I've written about 2000 words today, which is pretty good considering I didn't get home until about 8:00. I'm sure I'll do another one of these pretty soon. Until then, go read a couple of my stories that I've posted here. I think they're all pretty awesome. Except "Asylum". That one kinda sucks, but it's short. I wrote that when I was drunk in about ten minutes.

Okay, for real this time, I need to go write.

Sucks to be The Chosen One

“Ugh!” grunts Zoe, “We’re lost, aren’t we?”  

“No, damnit! It’s just a detour!”  

“Just pull over somewhere!” she says, “Right there!”  

I pull the car over in a church parking lot. Zoe gets the map out and unfolds in on the dashboard. To be honest, I really don’t know where we are. I followed the detour signs, but damn! We’re in the middle of nowhere.  

“I have no idea where we are,” says Zoe after a few minutes.  

“Well, let’s go ask directions in the church.”  

“It’s midnight!” she says, “there’s nobody in there.”  

“Look,” I say, pointing, “the lights are on. Come on.”  

We get out of the pickup truck and walk toward the church.  

“I’ve got my pepper spray in my pocket,” she says.  

“Zoe, it’s a church!” I say as we approach the door, “You think we’re gonna get attacked in a church?”  

I pull the door open and see nothing but brilliant blue light, right before something hits me in the chest and knocks me onto my ass.  

“What the fuck?!” yells Zoe.  

“OOOPH!” I grunt as I push the guy off of me. Did this guy really come flying out of the church right as I open the door? I look up at Zoe, who picked something off the ground.  

“Is that a sword?” I ask, standing up.  

“Yeah, and it’s badass!” she says, “who’s that guy?” 

I look at the ground. There’s a guy dressed like an extra from a battle scene in Lord of the Ring lying on the ground. Then I see the blood.  

“Shit shit shit!” I yell, “This guy is hurt bad.”  

I drop to a knee by the guy.  

“Hey, man,” I say, “are you okay?”  

He looks at me for a moment, then at Zoe. His eyes go wide.  

“The… pink… haired… one…” he mutters.  

“What about her hair?” I ask.  

“She… the cho-“ he breaks off, coughing.  

“What?” says Zoe, “What are you trying to say?”  

“You are… the chosen… one…” he says. Then he looks at me. “You must… protect… the chosen one…” he says.  

“Okay,” I say, “I’ll protect her.”  

“Promise…” he says, weakly, “promise… me…”  

“I promise,” I say, “I promise I’ll protect her.”  

The guy passes out.  

“This guy needs help!” she yells. I check my iPhone.  

“Shit, no reception!” I say.  

“We should check inside the church!” says Zoe, frantic.  

“You mean the church this grievously injured man just flew out of?” I ask, “the one with the crazy blue light?”  

“Oh,” she says, “good thinking.”  

“We’ve got to bring him to a hospital.” I look down at the guy. 

“Okay,” I say, and take a surprisingly high-tech bow and a quiver full of arrows off the guy. I sling the arrows over my shoulder and take the bow. Then the doors of the church burst open, bathing us in weird blue light. I feel a pull, and try to run toward the truck, but then I feel myself actually leaving the ground, and see Zoe lose her footing. The two of us literally fly into the light. I close my eyes. Zoe is screaming. I am screaming. Then I hit the ground.  

I open my eyes. We’re in a weird place. It looks like we’re in front of an old Scottish castle, except that it was designed by MC Escher and Dr. Seuss while they were on a particularly bad acid trip. And there were people all around. I stand up. Zoe stands up next to me. We look at each other.  

“Um,” says Zoe, “What the fuck?”  

I look around again, my head a bit clearer. There are people, all dressed similar to the guy at the church. They look like they are arrayed for battle.  

“Um…” says Zoe, “we might have a problem.”  

I look the other way, toward the castle, and gulp. The Lord of the Ring comparison I made earlier was good, because across from the people, were orcs. Or possibly demons. Or both. I hear someone shout from the people side.  

“The Chosen One!” some people start shouting, then it turns into a chant. Then the demons start screaming. Then both sides start rushing toward us.  

“Fuck!” I shout, notching an arrow (I learned how to shoot from my uncle Paul, who is the definition of hillbilly). 

“Zoe, RUN!” I let the arrow fly and it hits a demon, then explodes.  

“Cool,” I say, then I see Zoe rushing at one of the demons.  

“Zoe, what the hell?!?” I shout, running after her, notching another arrow as I go.  

“There’s nowhere to run!” she shouts, “We’ve got to fight our way out!”  

Then she cuts a demon down, then the human people join the fight.  

It’s a pretty epic battle. I find an axe next a dead guy and a couple demons, and fight my way over to Zoe. She is cutting demons up like it’s her job. I’ll admit I’m a little turned on. Then I catch a demon in the chest with the axe as he’s about to skewer Zoe. Things go on like this for a little while, I pull back a little with Zoe, so we aren’t in the middle of the fight. It looks like the good guys are winning!  

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

A bunch of humans go flying. I look over and there is a giant motherfucker, at least fifteen feet tall, who looks like he’s made of shadows. He’s swatting people out of the way and they are flying like a meteor lands wherever it’s fists hit, and suddenly, Zoe and I are in the front ranks. The thing looks at us, and then it yells in a ridiculously scary voice.  

“Ah, the Chosen One,” it says, “I turn your bones into a crown!”  

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” yells Zoe.  

“ZOE, RUN!” I scream, “NOW!”  

I notch an arrow and shoot it at the things chest. It flies right through. Then I turn and run, probably screaming, I’m not even sure. I don’t see Zoe, but I need to run. I can feel the thing behind me. Then, suddenly, there’s Zoe. There’s a group of humans standing in a semi-circle around her, and it looks like they aren’t letting her through. Zoe is yelling, but I can’t hear her. She looks pissed. She swings the sword at a guy, and he blocks it with his shield. Then she lets out a rage-filled scream, and just throws the sword at the giant demon. I’m still running, but I hear a huge, ear-shattering, soul-wrenching shriek.  

I look back. The giant shadow monster is clutching it’s chest, right where Zoe’s sword-hilt is protruding, smoke billowing out of him. 

Asylum - Flash Fiction

His first thought as the door slammed was that it was too damn sunny outside. In the movies there would be rain pattering on the windows and a somber song playing quietly in the background to set the mood. But then, this is reality. In reality it’s bright and fucking sunny and he hadn’t smoked a cigarette in hours and he was crabby and the fatass on the other side of the (glass?) partition was listening to an oldies station that was 80 percent commercials. Figures. Yet another example of the universe out to crush what was left of his soul.

Then finally, after an obnoxious DJ lets them all know that they’re listening to the greatest hits of all time, a pleasantly minor guitar riff starts and the singer starts singing about travelling through the desert on a horse with no name. I love this fucking song. And now I have to listen to it while it’s too sunny and I’m pissed off and yes, he admitted to himself, scared shitless.

Then he started laughing. Loudly, almost hysterically. He laughed the laugh of the maniac that his ex-wife told everyone he was and that his friends were too polite to call him out loud. He laughed because he knew, not thought, but knew the universe was persecuting him relentlessly. He needed a way to get away. He needed a break, a place he could go to escape the universe that was after him. He was laughing when the word finally came to him.

"Asylum"

The MINUS Faction by Rick Wayne - Review

Before I slip into a turkey-phoria coma, I thought I’d write a quick review of Rick Wayne’s The MINUS Faction – Episode 1: Breakout

First off, this story has an awesome opening line. Right from the first sentence I was hooked, and I stayed that way all the way through. I rate this story a solid 9.5/10. In about 100 pages (I listened to it on audible, so I don’t have the exact count) the author manages to create several very likeable (plus one very hateable) characters, an awesome hero (one might even say superhero) and an action-packed Ludlum-esque spy story. The writing was excellent, the characters are deep and real, and the story is awesome. If I had to make on criticism, it would be that the hero is almost too perfect, but there are hints that this probably won’t be the case in later episodes. Seriously people, go get this on Amazon.

Oh, did I mention IT’S FREE???

Thanksgiving

It was a Thursday in late November when the Turkeys rose up to slay their human oppressors...

Excerpt from The Night Places

This is from Chapter 2 of the novel I am currently writing/editing entitled "The Night Places" which is based on (actually a continuation of) a short-story I wrote a while ago.

I wake up on the floor at 5:30 and turn on the TV to make sure there’s no Godzilla attack going on. There isn’t, there’s just lots of coverage of the last one. I finally get to see the thing falling. I didn’t think it was so light out when that happened. The thing fell so hard, I’m surprised more buildings didn’t fall when it hit the ground.

Siri is still asleep on the bed. I think I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I put on my shoes quietly, tiptoe to the door, and undo the latch. It sounds like a hammer in the quiet room, even with the TV on. I start to twist the doorknob, and then here the actual sound of a hammer. I turn around.

Siri is pointing a gun at me. It’s a small semi-automatic pistol, and I swear to God, the entire thing is pink. She is pointing a pink gun at me.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Good morning,” she says back, still pointing the gun at me, “Are you leaving?”

“No, just going to the bathroom,” I say. The hotel room doesn’t have a bathroom. Just a men’s room and a ladies’ room at the end of the hall.

“Oh,” she says, lowering the gun, “okay.”

I walk out of the room and head directly down the stairs. I walk out the front door and hear a “twang” sound above me. I look up, and the flagpole coming off the building is vibrating. Then I hear a thump in front of me. I look forward. Siri is crouching, ninja style, with a samurai sword out, on top of a car parked in front of the hotel. There’s a hipster guy with a leashed dog on the sidewalk, staring at her.

“Um,” I say after a beat, “hi Siri.”

“Go back into the hotel,” she says.

I look back up at the flagpole. It’s still vibrating. I see the open third story window that… Siri… jumped… out of? This is getting ridiculous.

I look back at Siri, see the glint of the streetlight on the katana, see the passive look on her face. The way I see it now, I can do what she says, deal with this acid-trip of a situation, or I can walk away, and risk being A) decapitated by a teenage girl or B) killed by a pink gun. I never really wondered what Alice felt like falling down the rabbit hole, but it had to be pretty similar to this. I make my decision.

“You got it,” I say, giving her thumbs up. I turn back around, and head into the hotel.

Ron-Man

A truly beautiful work of art by my brother Jack, age 14:

The Goddamned Chosen One

“You know,” Zoe shouts to me as she wipes the dragon’s blood off her sword, “Somehow I thought being the Chosen One would suck less after we saved the world.”

“I’m a little busy here!” I shout back as I dodge another one of the little bastard’s fireballs. I notch another arrow and let it fly. The dragon screeches and falls, landing in a big cloud of dust and sand a little ways away.

“What were you saying?” I say, panting, as Zoe walks up.

“I said,” she says, “that I thought after we saved the world from the demon army, being the Chosen One would cease to suck ass.”

“That’s what you get for thinking,” I say, “that’s my job. Your job is saving the world from… you know, whatever it needs saving from on any given day.”

She punches my shoulder.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s go find the horses. I bet they wandered back into town.”

An hour later we stroll back into Oasis, the little town that looks just like you’d expect an old west town to look like. I pull out my iPhone.

“Two o’clock,” I say, “still no reception. Any idea how we’re going to get back to our dimension?”

Before she can answer, Sheriff Cutler calls to us from down the road.

“Yeah,” Zoe shouts back as he approaches, “we killed the damn dragons. Did our horses come back here?”

“Haven’t seen ‘em,” he says, cigarette dangling from his lip, “Thank you so much. Our town woulda been doomed without y’all steppin’ in.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Zoe.

“You know,” I say to Zoe, “people around here are probably pretty grateful. Think we could parlay that into some free beers?”

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” she says, smiling, and we head toward the tavern.

Two hours later we’re drunk and having a grand ol’ time with some of the town’s rowdier citizens. Zoe is dancing with some big cowboy and I’m introducing some of the citizens to a game we called “asshole” back in my dimension. Then everything is ruined by a huge crashing sound from outside.

I look at Zoe.

“Oh Goddamnit,” she yells.

Then a guy runs into the tavern shouting.

“Come quick!” he yells, “some kinda flying boat just crashed into the post office!”

I look over at Zoe, who rolls her eyes.

“Got your sword?” I call to her.

“Yeah,” she sighs, picking it up, “let’s go check it out.”

"It Won't Save Them"

His eyes narrowed in hatred as he looked down at his own name carved into the lonely tombstone. He was  a bit surprised they'd given him the courtesy of a marked grave. "It won't save any of them," he promised himself as he departed, ready to take his revenge.

"The Far End of the Curve"

The Far End of the Curve

                Doctor Christopher Harvey sighed as he knocked on the door.

                "Mr. Hickenlooper, are you ready?" he called. There was no answer.

                "Mr. Hickenlooper," he called a bit louder, "it's time for our session, may I come in?"

                He heard a sound from the other side of the door, and decided that it was as close to an invitation to enter as he would get. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside a man wearing white pants and a white t-shirt sat on a bed with white sheets in a room with white walls. There was a wooden desk with a wooden chair in the room, both painted white, and on the desk was a stack of composition notebooks and a pair of fountain pens. The man was sitting, just staring at the wall. His face wore an expression of terrible  sadness, and a familiar aching of empathy for the man filled Dr. Harvey’s chest.