Archive for the ‘ General ’ Category

Full Size Mystery – in a short read

Hannibal logoHannibal Jones is a tough-talking, Washington DC-based, African American private eye. I’ve been writing novels about Hannibal for a decade now. I’m quite proud of the five published novels – start with Blood and Bone from Echelon Press to get the full flavor – But I got to thinking about all those folks who don’t want to gamble the hours a novel absorbs to find out if they like him. So, to tempt you all to enter Hannibal’s world I decided a short story was in order. The result is “A Little Wildness.”

In “A Little Wildness” I tried to create a typical Hannibal Jones story. That means it had to be a fast-paced tale of mystery set in the gritty, dark world of hardboiled fiction. The story needed to have social relevance, since hardboiled detectives often have to walk between the worlds of the haves and have nots, the upright and the professionally criminal. It had to have action, but be rooted in well drawn, solid characters. And it had had to be a true mystery, with clues the sharp reader would pick up, an “Ah ha!” moment when all is revealed, and an ironic twist at the end. Oh, and I needed to do all that in about 7,000 words, not the 80,000 or so I was used to working in.

And of course, it had to be a good introduction to Hannibal Jones. Like most hardboiled detectives, he’s a guy who knows there’s a job to do, and he’s the only one who can get it done. He may be a tough guy, but he knows what’s right and wrong. He’s on a quest for the truth, or justice, or simply against the evil of the world. He has a clearly defined moral code, even if it’s only clear to him. He may shoot a man in cold blood, but he’ll never park in a handicap space, dishonor a lady or turn his back on a person in real trouble.

A Little Wildness

The story kicks off when a femme fatale strolls into Hannibal’s office to hire him. An innocent man is being tried for murder and she could be his alibi except that her husband, the mobster, should never find out about the other man. Hannibal gets on the trail of the facts and is closing in on the truth when the second murder takes place. There are plenty of suspects and lots of good clues but the killer’s identity will still surprise you.

Did I manage to pack it all into a short story? You can only find out if you buy “A Little Wildness” now. Read it, and let me know if I succeeded by writing to ascamacho@hotmail.com. And learn more about Hannibal Jones mysteries here.

BUY LITTLE WILDNESS AVAILABLE NOW!

2009
10/14
CATEGORY
General
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The Spookiness of Shorts

October is my favorite time of year.

The leaves are changing, it’s getting darker earlier, Halloween is just around the corner…

I always find myself reading Poe at this time. Favorites are “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Oval Portrait.” Poe is widely accepted as the father of horror and (American) gothic fiction, and his medium was short stories and poetry.

A singing siren, a shade-boy of smoky dark, and zombies. Lots, and lots of zombies.

A singing siren, a shade-boy of smoky dark, and zombies. Lots, and lots of zombies.

In my humble opinion, short stories are a lovely medium for spooky. By virtue of their nature — brevity at its’ highest art form — short stories are able to possess things a novel, couldn’t think of: a highly emotional, visceral experience. Perfect for writers like Poe, who specialize in giving readers that little frisson we all search for at this time of year when the vampires and zombies go shambling about in the dark corners of your hometown.

Speaking of zombies, my latest story from Quake — “Requiem” — has got lots of them. You can check it out here at the Echelon Store.

And if you find yourself looking for that satisfying little shiver at other times of the year, swing on by my website (http://ingemarwrites.wordpress.com/). I’d love to tell you some tales.

Next week Heather will be blogging at Beyond the Invisible, as part of her Rise of Gothic Blog Tour.

2009
10/07
CATEGORY
Events
General
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Mommy, Where Do Stories Come From?

Where do you get your ideas?  This seems to be one of the most common questions that writers get from readers and aspiring writers.  And the answer to this can be just as difficult for a writer to explain as it is for a mother to explain to her small child where babies come from.

 It depends.

 Everywhere.

 I don’t know. 

 All of these are true answers, but they are not very satisfying for the person who asked the question.  The truth is, in most cases by the time I have a final draft that I’m happy with, and I’m ready to send it out for the rounds of magazine and anthologies to try and find the right home, I rarely remember what or who originally sparked the story.  

mds-tch-cvrBut when it comes to my short story, “Tony Came Home,” I do remember.  In early 2002 I found a list of writing prompts put out by a magazine named Thema for their upcoming publishing year.  Each magazine they put out would center around one of the writing prompts.  One of those prompts was simply, “Tony Came Home.”  It piqued my interest.  Who was Tony?  What was so special about his homecoming?  Why did he leave home in the first place? 

 At the time, I was in grad school at Towson University and I was trying to play it straight with my fiction.  Fantasy and Science Fiction, or any genre fiction really, tends to not be well respected by academia.  The word “commercial” is spoken with a sneer by many.  I wanted to please my professors, so I tried to be literary.  I tried to make the story about the emotional undercurrents between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law during the birth of the first grandchild.  The baby would be Tony and his birth would be his homecoming. 

 I played it completely straight.  I wrote a realistic, mainstream story.  And it had about as much life to it as the Sahara after a nuclear detonation. 

 With a sigh, I shelved it.  It earned me a B for that class assignment, but there was no way I could proudly try to sell it to anyone.  I knew it was not my best work.  But the effort I put into the story was not lost, it played an important part in making me realize that a story without fantastic elements just doesn’t suit my style or voice, academic snobs be damned. 

 Years later, on the advice of a writing buddy, I pulled it out and tried to massage some life into it.  I knew it needed something otherworldly, something strange, something just plain weird to make it work.  And then it came to me – a ghost – what this story really needed was a ghost. 

 Now all this story needs is a reader….

Buy “Tony Came Home” Now

Vist me at my website www.michelledsonnier.com

Become my fan on Facebook here

2009
10/05
CATEGORY
General
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Any Storm in a Port

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys

This time things are going to be different.  It’s what I do, it’s the way I write.  My only rule, and I’ve said it a thousand times, is “Never repeat yourself!”

Consider, for example, the story that was released last month by Echelon Shorts (‘Chasing His Own Tale’, read about it here) as compared with the story that is being released this month, which I call ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, mainly because, well, that’s the title.  ‘Chasing His Own Tale’ began with a dark and stormy night.  ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ starts with a…um…

Okay, different example:  ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ began with a contest, held by a very nice little convention out in Pittsburgh called Confluence.  Every year they have a contest for a story to be published in their convention guide, and the contest has a theme.  The year I discovered it, the theme was ‘Hard Port’.  Any interpretation of those words was a good one, but the story had to include them somewhere.  As you can imagine, the story does not progress in a straightforward fashion.  No book written by me does, but this story really fed into my tendency to take an idea and go off thattaway with it.  Cybernetics.  Seamanship.  (You know, ‘port’ means left, ‘starboard’ means right, that sort of thing.)  (No, I don’t know where ‘starboard’ comes from.)  Wine.  Which one should I choose?

In 3500 words I managed it five times.  In five different ways.  I should have a contest of my own, see if anybody can find them all.

I didn’t start out with the idea that it should be another comedy, either, although it isn’t one, quite.  I don’t usually start out with any idea what a story should be or where it should go.  I usually start with a character, somebody doing something, and the story spins out of what he’s doing, and why he’s doing it.  Usually I’m lucky enough to figure out what that is before I get to the end.  A short story lends itself to comedy, though, at least I’ve found it so.  Or maybe that’s just the kind of guy I am.

Nah.

So if you’re in the mood for fiction that makes a couple of good, sharp left turns (ha!  Get it?), you can find it right here.

2009
10/01
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Why Go Short?

by Tom Schreck, author of The Duffy Dombrowski Mysteries

Aspiring writers often suggest that they ought to start out writing short stories before they dive into a full length novel.

Bad idea.

Tom's "The Right Choice" is featured in "Missing"

Tom's "The Right Choice" is featured in "Missing"

You see, though the word count of the short story might be less daunting than the novel, the plotting, the foreshadowing, the symbolism, the plot twists and turns and all that other literary crap is harder.

Why?

Simply because you’ve got less room to maneuver. You can’t bury red herrings in early chapters and hope readers don’t see them as obvious. You can’t drop in some long winded subplot to explain what the hell your main character is all about.

That means the writing has to be super tight, tighter than–hold it, something tells me I better not complete that metaphor.

But it means that you’ve got to be good and quick without hurrying the reader or telegraphing the point of your story. You have to tip off your characters main features in brief phrases and mannerisms and hope the readers get it.  You have to be economical with not only your words but your points and where you want to go.

The very best short stories make every word and sentence count. Every inflection, everything done and not done means something. When its good it gives the reader a great meal filled with scrumptious calories that excite, inspire and intrigue. When its bad it’s short, forced, predictable and bland. The reader may be filled because of the time invested but they’re left starving for something with some punch and meaning.

"Out Cold" coming from Echelon this December

"Out Cold" coming from Echelon this December

I’ve never understood why more people don’t read more short stories. Maybe it’s because there are far fewer anthologies around these days. I love the idea of online downloads. I have to believe that traveling business people are looking for something better to do than watching a TV reality show while eating bad pizza on the hotel chain bed. There’s gotta be folks too busy to get out to the bookstore or people who can’t commit to the 400 page novel who would love to treat themselves with quality fiction. For them wouldn’t a quick, cheap download be perfect?  Shouldn’t they just gobble up short stories all the time?

I hope so.

And I hope they appreciate how freaking hard it is to write too.

BUY MISSING HERE!

2009
09/28
CATEGORY
General
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Scars

The Heat of the Moment

The Heat of the Moment

When I was asked to write a story for Echelon’s Heat of the Moment anthology, I wasn’t sure what I’d come up with. There was a lot of latitude and I found myself wondering just what I’d focus on. Heat. Fire. Flames. It took a while for an idea to form but thinking about what flames can do and the scars they can leave eventually helped me write “Scars” and I’m glad I did.

I decided that “Scars” would be a piece about vengeance, about the scars a fire can leave on the surface but also the scars that can be left on a soul. Vengeance has always been an interesting theme for me though I’d only delved into it once before in a play I’d written a while back. It was called Mimi and was about a teacher in the Philadelphia public schools. The play was given staged readings and one of those readings was the centerpiece for the opening of an art exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. The exhibit was produced by a women’s organization here and was centered around a concept that just happened to match the theme of my play. So someone who’d seen one of the readings, chose the play. And it was given a very professional reading that was more than a reading since it actually had the actors moving about on the stage and following the stage directions as much as possible. The play came to life there. I also have to say that the Art Alliance is the classiest setting one of my plays has ever been produced in.

In Mimi I explored revenge and the toll it takes on a person. Perhaps I got it out of my system for a while with that play. But do we ever get rid of the feeling that we need to exact vengeance for wrongs done to us? Years later when Heat of the Moment came along, I had the opportunity to revisit the idea of vengeance in my story “Scars.”

In the intervening time I’d been studying writing at a variety of institutes, schools, and conferences. At one theater writing conference, I remember someone saying that a writer should always leave a reader with hope. Whatever we write, whatever themes we explore, the reader should always be left with the arc of hope. I’ll never forget the small but huge-in-spirit woman who spoke those words. At the time, I listened intently and it seemed there was only that woman and me in that room and that her words were meant for me and the work I would do. I’ve never forgotten.

When it came to writing “Scars” I was flat out going to do a revenge piece. Someone hurt my character and I was going to let her get even, the consequences be damned. But something happened as I wrote that piece. My character wouldn’t just take revenge and leave it at that. No, she was better than that. At least that’s what she said to me. She couldn’t just hurt someone as she’d been hurt then walk away as her tormentor had done. When you read “Scars” you’ll see what I mean.

In my latest book, Murder on Camac (http://www.murderoncamac.com), I don’t exactly get into the revenge theme, though, there are plenty of reasons for my characters to want to get even for things.

2009
09/24
CATEGORY
General
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Young Alchemists

nv-tr-high

The world is not as it is now. A tumultuous place, war is rampant, alliances are shaky and steam driven dirigibles, armed to the teeth with dozens of cannons rule the sky.  To add to the mayhem, crazed sky pirates roam the air unchecked making anyone a target at any time.

Knox Wallingford lives in the war torn country of West Canvia. The city is so perilous that even the walk home from school can be life threatening. Knox’s heroes are famous inventors, alchemists and government sponsored weapons designers, Thomas Riley and Cynthia Basset. We wants nothing more than to apprentice with their company Mercury Craft Industries and one day build machines to help conquer their enemies in the neighboring country of Lemuria.

Knox’s parents and his entire family are  in the military so he spends many nights alone, preparing his own supper, putting out his own clothes for the next day but most of all he cherishes the alone time to go down in the basement to work on his own inventions. With his final piece in hand, Knox takes his newly completed steam car out of the basement laboratory for it’s first test run. One malfunction later, Knox meets fellow inventor Elizabeth “Lizzy” Strauss.

While they attend rival schools, they quickly find common interests in inventing, which lead them on a perilous adventure that puts them on the same path as their heroes Thomas Riley and Cynthia Basset.

The Young Alchemists will be out soon on Echelon Press Shorts, but in the mean time, take a look at http://www.sirthomasriley.com to go on your own adventure with my first novel “Thomas Riley”. You can even sign up to be one of those crazed sky pirates.

BUY IT SOON HERE!

2009
09/22
CATEGORY
General
New Releases
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