Monday, April 20, 2009

The Character that Killed Three Markets

Yes...you steal from me, I steal from you. Danielle Ferries took the "favorite stories" post and made something different. Now I steal her something different and present my five favorite characters (in no particular order).

Spider - a vampire, but not one of those modern day/emo/sexy vampires. No, Spider is a monster, a creature that loves blood and will drain a pet dog or a small girl in one meal. He has no eyelids but a mouth full of jagged, broken teeth. His surrogate son, a homeless boy named Jack, has to make a tough decision in the end of "Spider and I" (The Devil's Food, TBR).

Gerald Karnowski - AKA "The Surgeon of An Khe". I've killed three markets with this story. (Subbed to one, didn't hear back=market dead; subbed to another, shortlisted=market dead; subbed to a third, accepted, project scrapped...hurm).

Pete Archer - Featured in two tales, "Catalog Sales" (Necrotic Tissue, October 2008) and "Lullaby, Little Monster" (Champagne Shivers, TBR). Pete is a traveling book salesman from the '30s. His books are...magical. Pete isn't exactly evil; he's just misunderstood. Everybody has to eat, right?

Gary Sump - an angry god and strange neighbor. I pity the little people that look up to Gary. All hail Gary Sump. Two Gary Sump stories have been published by Everyday Weirdness.

Tic Toc - a wind-up gorilla who ends up inside a man's skull, pulling the strings. I wrote his story--"The Brass Menagerie" (Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, August 2008)--as a weird riff on The Glass Menagerie. This time, the "gentleman caller" doesn't leave Laura in the end...

My favorite character from a novel is probably iPorn (Shane Willits) from Rock Gods and Scary Monsters. I'll let my dear readers sort out how he earned his nickname.

7 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

Some very interesting characters there especially Spider and Pete Archer. :)

Fox Lee said...

iPorn is my favorite ; )

Jameson T. Caine said...

Spider sounds interesting. I'm looking forward to reading that one.

K.C. Shaw said...

Okay, I know what I'm going to blog about tomorrow.

Hey, I used Spider for a character name once too! Only my Spider is a dragon, and, well, not as interesting as your Spider. But a lot nicer, I suspect. :)

Aaron Polson said...

...Spider is nice to Jack. That's about all I can say.

Hey...a monster's got to eat, right?

Danielle Birch said...

I'd love to read about Gerald Karnowski. I hope he finds a home.

BT said...

What market is Gerald Karnowski at now - I don't want to send anything there...just in case.

I haven't joined in on this round of memes because I don't have anything to add.

I have very few stories I love. I have no characters I've used more than once, because they haven't left an indelible mark on me.

Don't get me wrong. I love the stories I write when I write them. One or two linger, but I imagine that will only be until I find them a home. I just seem to move on once I'm done with them. I invest, work with them, and then move on. With the way my head works, I imagine if I continued to invest, I'd not be able to come up with anything new - there's not that much space left inside my skull ;c(

I'm very envious of you all. One day I'll find my serial character and that will be the end of me. I just haven't found them yet.