Stories from Nothing: The Spies

Catalyst:
This one actually got its inspiration from a Cracked article about games you should give a shot playing in your own head to make life more interesting. One of these was to have a look at people on the street or train platform or bus and figure out which one of them was a spy or assassin and who their target was.

Story:
She stepped down onto the platform and took up her place next to the air conditioning vent, to the right of the small conductors' office. Her mark was already standing there, as was her second sent by the Agency.
She threw a casual glance at the two of them. After a day or so of not being up close to him, the mark was much fatter than she remembered. And the agent was a short, handsome man with small glasses. Like they had organized, he was reading that free gossip newspaper they hand out at train stations.
The rumble from underneath the platform told her that the train was almost here. She put her bag down onto the air conditioning vent and dug around and found her black day planner. She opened it and began writing. Hopefully the Agent would notice. This was the signal that everything was a go. A chattering group of school children passed her and she watched them go. Made eyes with the Agent. She turned away. On the bench, the Agent put the newspaper into his satchel bag and took out a small black book of his own and had a look at something, nodded, and replaced it in his bag.
The train pulled up to the station. The Mark checked his watch. It was late. The doors opened and the Mark went on. She followed and right behind her, the Agent stepped onto the crowded train.

Week 18 - Catching Up!

Though in previous weeks I've been behind on my short story writing, this week marks a wonderful turn; I'm ahead. Yesterday, I spent most of the day scribbling out stories, which caught me up to this week's quota of 18 in total. I punched out the finish to a story I'd started weeks ago which desperately needed an ending; I wrote a short film which - as it is a short piece of fiction, totally counts - I'd been fermenting in my head for days; and the best one of all, I revisited an old favourite and wrote a new pulp piece featuring the heroic Captain Horatio Silverthorn. Anyone who'd like to read that joy, please just comment and I'll pass it along to you. This one's a doozy - airships!

I even started a new one today. A new story, when I don't have to! I've decided to get a head start on Week 19 so that way I don't fall so behind again.

All of this, of course, means I've fallen desperately and perhaps irretrievably behind on NaNoWriMo - but you know what? I don't care. I didn't really feel the impetus when I started this year's one and so I'm not perturbed by being so behind. It's been good to revisit the old story that I'd started so many years ago, work on that world again, but I think I'm going to do it at my own pace. When I have days where my mind just isn't conducive to writing and yet I am forced to, I just write out schlock that I know I'll have to remove or edit later, and I'd rather not do that labour. So, for now, I'll work on that beast when I feel I have the right reigns.

Mahalo.

Weeks 15, 16 & 17 - And NaNoWriMo

Jesus it's been another intense month. I've been terrible at updating and I apologize. I was doing so well there at the start, too.

In Week 15 I caught up to where I was supposed to be and started a Zombie short story but for some reason I couldn't finish it. It was just going to be too damn long and I didn't have the energy to sit and write a long piece. Then Week 16 rolled around. Just like I knew it would.

I started another story but it, too, I soon lost the taste for. I was losing my impetus. Starting to want to give up on this whole nasty, diabolical business. Sometimes, I still do. I know I did when Week 17 came upon me.

I managed to pump out a pulpy story about an explorer and quicksand and etc, etc. It was fun to write. Really fun. I miss writing pulp, so I think that'll be the case for the next few weeks.

And November started and so came NaNoWriMo again. For the third time. I wasn't going to do it initially - why do that when I have so much Bradbury-ing to do, right? Wrong. When so many people assaulted me with "are you?" and "why aren't you?" and "you should", I said what a madman says when asked if he hears voices, "yes".

I'm seven and a bit thousand words in now and I'm honestly not regretting it. I'm working on a story that I'd given up on a few years ago and it's good to settle into something like this. I'd clearly been reading a lot of Bukowski at the time. That feels good. Fun to write, too.

And then there's the comic. But that's a story for another blog post.

Mahalo.

UPDATE: 
I don't know how I forgot to mention this, but it seems I did and apologies to all those involved!
It was around week 16 that a friend, Mr. David Sander of Surfaces Rendered, came to me with a proposition. He gave me some work on editing his screenplay. I accepted and began to devour and twist and edit! That was something nice and different from my usual fare. With Final Draft open on my desktop each night, it was certainly a fruitful labour that continues!

Weeks 11, 12, 13 & 14

Argh! Well this has been the worst month for writing.
I missed one week and then another and another and before I knew it, three short stories behind. I managed to get one down but then a new week flipped over (14) and then I was still three behind!
I scribbled out another one, just something short and weird and kind of erotic and I don't know why but it's there and it's done and it's something to mark on the tally.
I was debating starting to write an issue of the comic or the pilot of my TV show I want to do but that seems like cheating. It is, right? Right.
I'm pushing out the last two now and it's just a fierce bastard to do. It's amazing how you completely reset to absolute zero when you miss out on a couple of weeks of this. Shit. It builds up like NaNoWriMo and resets your mind to NOTHINGNESS.
Irritating.
Once again, if anyone wants to read these things, let me know.

Mahalo.

10 Weeks: Reflection

This is it - the big ONE ZERO. I've hit ten weeks of this taxing writing experiment known as the Bradbury Method. It's been something, that's for sure. Only forty-two more to go.

I find, as I finish my late-in-the-week story for this week - a short piece that I wrote in a rush because my mind wasn't ready for other things - that I am enjoying the act of writing more and more. The process itself makes more sense to me, feels better. I'm more willing to expand on certain paragraphs and ideas. The stories feel fuller, when it strikes me anyway.

I'm also finding that I'm becoming less afraid. Each time I think of a new story idea, I no longer shy away from starting it for fear of ruining it. I just let 'er rip. I've been thinking of more of them than usual, too, which is nice. Kind of bombarding my mind it's hard to always keep track.

Anyway, thanks for sticking through this bastard of a thing with me.

Mahalo.

And that's Week 9...

...and what a week it was!

All in all, not a bad one. I started one story only to realize, after a discussion with my fellow Bradbury Method partner, that it could be taken to all of these wonderful places and would be far too long to be able to finish this week.

Luckily, though, I had a half-finished piece from last week that I hadn't had the energy to really look at. Fortunately for me, this week was better for it. Nailed it to the wall tonight. That felt good.

Mahalo.

Weeks 7 & 8

So, I know I said that a) I would post more and b) that last week (Week 7) I was totally catching up. Well, I was, but the third story I started for the week completely eluded me and made itself far too intangible. Completely untouchable.

Today, however, midway through Week 8, I have written two stories. Two. Today. Two brand new stories that brings my total back up to in line. I've caught up! The stories came to me today and I just shot them out through my (now sore) fingertips!

I didn't finish the one I started at the end of Week 7, but now I have a bit of wiggle room in being able to work on it properly without too much stress, so that feels pretty good.

Mahalo.

Weeks 4, 5, 6 & 7!

Agh! So I have just been the worst lately. Due to sickness/food poisoning during Week 4, I didn't write a story, so I didn't update. Then I had a family crisis in Week 5, so I didn't write anything and then I decided why bother updating? Week 6 I was lazy because of unemployment and only did two of the three stories I had accrued over that time; and now we're into Week 7 and I'm only just catching up!

I'm back to work as a labourer and I managed to get some time in today after work to write a full story, so that's nice. I have the start of another story that I have to finish before the end of the week to get back on track. I like the start of it, but I don't want to rush it just to get it done. I want it to work.

It's been tough to catch up. It's like NaNoWriMo where if you miss one day of writing, your tally is doubled for the next day. I'm almost back to normal output, but yeah, thanks for sticking through this with me and sorry I haven't been posting! I promise I'll do better.

Mahalo

The Third Week

Holy mackerel has the time just flown by! It's already the end of the third week of The Bradbury Method, although it feels like it's been going forever. I managed to punch out a short, short story which I'm quite pleased with and with the help of Luke and Omar I managed to make it even better. So, thanks a LOT to those guys for putting up with my pestering.
I'm so pleased with it, actually, then I'm going to send it off to a mag shortly, once I've gone over it for the bajillionth time.

It's tough actually sitting down and finding time to write at the moment, what with life being what it is with all its necessary insanities. If anyone wants to read them, feel free to contact me with your email in the comments - or, if I know you, just get in touch with me however.

Back to it! BRARGH!

Mahalo.

The Second Week

Today brings a conclusion to the second week of The Bradbury Method and the start of the third. It's tough, this deal. Making me realize some things about the style of short story that I write. I know the types I like to read and obviously there is a certain imitation to the styles of those in search of my own voice. Etgar Keret and Joe Hill have been particular inspirations, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. And Raymond Carver. Neil Gaiman. Charles Bukowski.

Short pieces of fiction that are not only self-contained but satisfying in their own way. I've realized about myself that I don't write very long short stories. Now, I know it may seem counter-intuitive to have a "long short story" but it's not, really. A short story can go anywhere, it seems, from 500 to 15,000 words. After that, it's really a novella. My peak seems to be anywhere up to and including about 3000 words. Anything longer than that and I feel I might as well make it a damn book. I don't even really like reading short stories that are more than about ten pages. I like them short. That's why I like Keret and Bukowski especially - easy bite-sized chunks of interesting dialogue and happenstance.

I wrote a story on the first day of this week. One I'm pretty happy with. I think I might chop off the ending; I think I just wrote the last paragraph because I felt the story was too short but it doesn't really fit. Some parts in the middle could maybe use some expanding or made to flow better, but it's there on paper. It's written. That's two for two so far. I have to start a new one tonight or at least sometime this week. I have the idea, at least.

Mahalo.

The First Week

It's the end of the first week of the Bradbury Method - 52 short stories in a year - and so far, things are actually going pretty well. The point of the...experiment I guess is the best word, is to just get the stories out, not necessarily have them polished.

So, on that front, I'm succeeding. While I didn't allow myself as much writing time as I would've liked this week, I still managed to churn out what I consider to be a pretty good - if unpolished - short story. It needs some tweaks and some expansion on certain points, but I got out the beginning, middle and ending.

Amusingly enough, it wasn't the story I initially sat down to write. I started writing it and got a page or so in when I had to drop it because I had started it in my Gmail drafts at work when there was nothing to do and then I left for home. I don't have the internet at home so it was a few days before I finally got it off the email to be able to work on it at home. By the time I did that, I had completely forgotten the road I was originally going to take with the story.

I just stared at it. For what seemed like an hour. Just looking at this thing I had written that clearly started with some intent and then just stopped. It stopped on an important, twist moment, too. One that I didn't remember where I was taking it.

So, I made something else up. I took up the tattered bottom of the story and I stitched it up with something new and came up with a pretty appropriate ending for the story. What's great about this, is that I've rarely ever done this before. Usually, if I start a short story and come back to it some time afterward and I've forgotten what exactly I had originally intended, I leave it and start something else. Not this time. I swore to myself if I started a story, I would finish it. And I did. And it felt good.

I've been reading a lot of Etgar Keret recently as well and he showed me that no matter how bizarre the idea is, it can totally work in the story as long as the language is good enough and the story takes you somewhere deep. Also, that it doesn't matter how short the story is.

Okay. I got this. Maybe.

Mahalo.

The Bradbury Method

If you read this blog, you know I like to write fiction. Sometimes it's based in reality, sometimes not. I want to be a writer, is what I'm saying.

Well, I've decided to take up a challenge.

My friend Omar has decided to start up doing The Bradbury Method and do one short story every week for a full year. Ray Bradbury would write one short story a week; write it on Monday, edit it Tuesday through Saturday and send it off on Sunday. We're going to attempt to do just that.

It's going to be a slog and I might not make it the whole way, but I know I'll at least have something to show for it by the end - like a year long NaNoWriMo.

I'll probably need some support before this thing is through, so thank you all in advance. I'll keep you posted on how it's going and anyone who wants to read anything I've got just let me know.

Here goes nothing.

Mahalo.

Stories from Nothing: Crying at Work

The Catalyst: No too long ago, I saw someone walking through the corridor at work, crying on their mobile phone. So I got to thinking...

The Story: "Yes, I understand," she said, covering her face as she walked past a workmate in the hallway. He looked at her but said nothing and walked on. The tears burned down her face. "I'll be there."

"Damn right you will," said the voice on the other end of the line. "For, if you are not, you shall not see your husband again."
The line went dead and she was left hanging there, holding onto the phone. She leaned against a nearby wall and collected herself, wiping her tears away on her sleeve. No police, he'd said. They always said that in the movies. She'd always screamed at the characters that didn't call the police, or turn on the light in a dark room in a horror flick.
She looked down at her phone and pressed the "emergency call" button and dialed 000. A bored sounding operator spoke down the line.
"Hello triple zero, what is your emergency?"
She told her everything. The man, her husband, the demands - everything.

After work she went to the mailbox on the corner of Kent and Broadway that the man on the other end of the phone had told her to go to. She waited until 6pm like she'd said she would. A black van pulled up, screeched to a halt and threw a brown box at her feet and sped off.
"Wait!" she screamed. "Wait! Where is he?!"
A police car, sirens wailing, zoomed after the van.
She looked at the box at her feet. She knew this part in the movie. She could smell the blood.

Stories from Nothing: The Family

The Catalyst:
There was a really serious, black-clad businesswoman walking in the opposite direction to me talking on her cellphone. As she passed all I heard was, "I don't want to see a family".

The Story:
"Did you hear me?"
The woman's heels clack-clack-clacked against the sidewalk in a steady rhythm. Silence met her on the other end of the line.
"Well?"
"Yes," came the raspy voice.  "Yes, I heard you."
"Good."
She hung up.

Not far from a family home, the man with the raspy voice climbed a local church tower. He whistled Ain't No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down) with a mournful gravity.
A small notched window gave him a clear line of sight to the family home up the road. Through his scope he could see into their dining room from the large plate-glass window on the east side. They always kept the curtains open.
He opened his briefcase and began clicking together the pieces of a Smith and Wesson sniper rifle.

John, his wife Sarah and their two children, Camille and Toby, were just sitting down to dinner when the first shot punched through their dining room window, his John in the chest and knocked him to the floor, a small geyser of blood shooting out of the wound.
Before Sarah could scream, before she could even react beyond looking at John's lifeless eyes as he lay on the floor, a second shot ripped open the front of her skull as the bullet struck the back of it.
Then the children started screaming.

When the man with the raspy voice begun separating the pieces of the rifle, Toby and Camille weren't screaming anymore. They were silent along with their parents as the dinner cooled with the breeze from the shattered window.

Stories from Nothing: The Proposal

Catalyst: 
A woman was proposed to at a table near my boss. While the husband was beaming, my boss and her friend were weeping and ordering champagne for these strangers, the bride-to-be did not look too enthused.

The Story:
The ride home was especially quiet that night. Mark was at the wheel and he was smiling into the horizon. He couldn't wait to get his new fiancee home. Fiancee. Man, he couldn't believe his luck. She had really said yes. He was so happy. The people next to them had bought them champagne, on top of the champagne he'd already ordered for the special occasion. He'd been planning this for weeks.
"You're awfully quiet," he said, turning to Brandi in the next seat. She was staring out of her window, looking at the long string of trees passing by on the side of the road. "How are you?"
"Jesus."
"What?" he said, his brow furrowing. "What's wrong?"
"This."
"This?"
"Yes! This!"
"I don't follow." A well of concern washed around in his brain.
"Of course you don't."
"Brandi, honey, what's wrong?"
They stopped at a red light, sitting there, the left blinker flashing on and off. Tick, tack, tick, tack, in a rhythm that never seemed to end.
"I don't want to marry you."
"What?"
"I don't want," she looked at him, now. Her blue eyes were cold. "To marry you."
"But," Mark felt his whole body open up beneath him in an empty zenith, "but then why did you say yes?"
"Are you kidding me?"
Mark only looked at Brandi, tears welling. She sighed.
"How could I say no?" she said. "We're in a restaurant full of people watching!"
"So?" Mark pushed the car forward. "You could have been honest with me."
"Oh really? And then, what? Said no and quietly slipped out of the restaurant, a carpet of silence following me as people say in hushed tones, 'how could she say no? He looks so lovely'!"
"So instead--"
"So instead," she cut him off, "I pretended to say yes so I could get out of there in one piece."
"Brandi, I--"
"Take me home," she was talking as if he wasn't there. "I'll come get my stuff in the morning."
The wind outside was colder than usual for summer.

Stories from Nothing: The Flower

Catalyst: L found a flower on the ground and put it in an open mailbox on the way home.

Story: The flower lay in the mailbox, unexposed to the elements, atop the Morgans' electricity bill. Laura and Richard came home at the same time and, as Richard parked the car, Laura would go out to the mailbox and retrieve whatever lay within.
Reaching her hand in today, she pulled out the still-crisp flower and stared at it.
"Richard!" she said, stomping into the house. "Richard, come here!"
"What?" Richard put his keys on the kitchen counter.
Laura held the flower out to him. "Someone put this in our mailbox."
"Who?"
"I don't know, Richard, why don't you tell me?"
"Honey, I don't know who would do that," Richard moved to her, to take the flower. "Where was it?"
"I told you it was in the mailbox!" she held it away from him. "Was it her, Richard? Was it her again?"
"Jesus, Laura," Richard said, turning away. "It's over with her. I ended it. You know that."
"Do I? Because this says different!"
"No it does--"
"She's coming back! She's putting things in our mailbox now!"
"We don't know for sure--"
"Don't be a child!" she threw the flower across the room. "Who else would it be?"
"It could by anyone!"
"Why would anyone put a flower in someone's mailbox?" Laura began to cry. "You bastard," she said, then. "You bastard."
"Who would do this to us?" Richard said to himself, under his breath. He sat at the kitchen table. "Why?"

Stories From Nothing

I've decided, since I haven't posted in a while (sorry, by the way) that I am going to set myself a deadline for posting and each week I will have to post at least one what I am deeming, a "Story from Nothing".

This is where - with my mushy, crazy writer's brain - I extrapolate a plausible (or, hell, even an unlikely) story from a seemingly minute detail or event in my or my friend's lives.

This week's is brought to you courtesy of J.J., where she "[f]inally got [her] suitcase after 2 days...only for it to be delivered at 11pm last night by a creepy looking man in a suit. A suit. What kind of courier wears a suit? [She] half expected him to look at [her] with a scary grin before devouring [her] soul. Think slenderman meets the Gentleman from Buffy."

So, I extrapolated an (incredibly unlikely story) from this tiny event:

The Courier

Maybe he was going to a dinner where he was proposing to his wife-to-be but his boss yelled at him because he wanted to take off a minute or so early to swing by the ring place and pick it up before the dinner was supposed to start but his boss didn't let him and so he had to put on his suit in the car and drive super fast to get the suitcase to you so he could get to the ring store and pick it up before his dinner with his wife-to-be was completely ruined. And what if he didn't make it, huh? What if dinner was ruined? No one thinks about poor courier man!

Then he's hit by a truck just after he delivers your suitcase.

He's whistling. He's happy. Nothing can kill his feeling. Sure, he had to make an extra delivery and now he has to rush, but hell, he's gonna marry the love of his love. Sandra, he thinks to himself, God I love you. He goes around the side of his car to open the door but drops his keys. He bends down to pick them up when he hears the loud honking. Turns his head in time to see headlights. A truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel. Wham. G'night, Johnny.

Meanwhile, Sandra sits alone in the restaurant. She cries, wonders what she's done wrong. What could she have done to drive Johnny away? No, it's not her, she realises, it's him. He's a pig! She leaves the restaurant, but not before calling and leaving the most hate-filled message on his answering machine.

Little did she know, though, that the ringing phone was in Johnny's fingers, an unsent text saying he might be a little bit late. He pulls the phone to his ear to hear her voice for the last time, and it's an angry tirade. "I hate you!" she yells, rain starting to fall on them both. The same moon beams light down on them. "You're a bastard! I fucked Roger anyway!"
A tear streaks down Johnny's face. This is the last thing he ever hears. Sandra hangs up before she can hear his last breath.

The next day she gets the phone call. Johnny's been killed. Sandra's head is in a spin. A spiral of self-hatred and resentment destroys her life and she turns to alcohol. No one will speak to her - she has driven them all away.

Decades later, in her studio apartment above an old Chinese restaurant, she quietly dies from a heart attack in her sleep. No one finds her for days. When they do, it's because the chefs downstairs are complaining of the smell and a stain on the ceiling coming from her room.

They're not even buried together.

One Buck Zombie Horde

Do you like zombie stories?

If you read this blog, or know me at all, you must!

Check them out and the new anthology One Buck Zombies from indie mag One Buck Horror and chow down on the brains of some awesome prizes and short stories!

The shambling corpses of the undead call to you, to devour you, will you answer their bloody call?

Pierce Malloy UPDATE

Hey everybody!
Got a link so you can download PIERCE MALLOY: PARANORMAL DETECTIVE! Just click on this here link and download away!
It's a pulp piece written for a deliberately incredibly pulpy magazine! Within that folder is also the first piece I wrote for that mag THE TALL TALES OF CAPTAIN HORATIO SILVERTHORN!
Enjoy!

NOTE: All spelling and grammar mistakes are the fault of the editor, and not yours truly, some of which were deliberate to give the mag a more pulpy air.