2011: A Writing Odyssey

Don't forget the review contest...entries aren't due until the end of the month, but plan ahead, 'kay? Right now, the entrants have a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Make it harder for them.

Okay...on to my goals for 2011...

What I can do:

1. Always have at least one story in front of a pro paying market. Right now, I have two. I plan on adding another by the end of the week.

2. Sub one new story each week (Write 1/Sub 1). I plan to submit "The Good Daughter" this week.

3. Finish Borrowed Saints. I aborted the weekly updates last fall because I needed more time to edit. Will this happen? I don't know. But it is a goal.

4. Finish How We Die in a Hungry Town. I need to edit, edit, edit. I have a self-imposed deadline for this.

5. Write one review each month for Skull Salad. Minimum.



What I'd like to happen in 2011:

1. Sell at least one more story to a pro paying market. I need one more sale of 1,800 words or more to make "active" level for the HWA. I'd like that.

2. I'd like to sell a book. Right now, I have How We Die in a Hungry Town...hmmm...

WIP Wednesday Has a Crush

I'm doing a good bit of editing this week, both the dark, weird novella How We Die in a Hungry Town and a humorous (I hope) short monster tale, "The Monster, the Lake, and Megan Manning".

Some of you may have seen my first line of the later as I tweeted on Friday:

There was a time, many summers ago, when a beautiful seventeen-year-old interrupted my quest to pull the Sleeper from the murky depths of Lake Lotawana.

Pretty clear the narrator had a crush, no?

And then...later in the story:

The Sleeper yanked hard, and the stern rose above the water. Megan clasped the gunwales on either side, her ruby-red fingernails garish against the moon-glow of the whitewashed boat.

“What the hell was that for?”

“I didn’t do it. Bass,” I said.

She turned on me, glaring. Her eyes flicked to the rod and taut line, then back to my face. “Are you…fishing?”

I might as well have been masturbating, the way she spat the word “fishing.” The line jerked back and forth.

“Um…”

“Are you?”

Funny...both the novella and story feature a young woman named Megan. I think Fred (my subconscious) and I need to have a talk. (Did I mention I have two stories due for publication in January with Megans at center stage? Yikes. Somebody get me a baby-name book...)

WIP Wednesday: Winning and Winners

First things first...

Thanks to our good friends at Random.org, Alan W. Davidson has won the grand prize in the Very Loathsome Contest ($25 bucks to spend at an online bookstore of his choice, Heart of Darkness, and Robert Frost's poems) and Gef Fox has landed second prize (Heart of Darkness and a copy of 52 Stitches 2010). I'll be in touch soon, gentlemen. And as a big thank your to anyone who played along, I'll send those singed bookmarks soon (I just placed the order yesterday). If you entered the contest and I don't have your mailing address, please drop me a line at aaron.polson(at)gmail.com.

Wait...did the Canadians just sweep the prizes? I think they did. I'll post rules for another opportunity to line your pockets with cash next week. Until then, thanks for playing along and getting the word out about Loathsome, Dark and Deep.

Speaking of winners, Erin Cole is a big winner with her Holiday Book Blog Catalog. Check it out and support some small press folks. I'm thinking about putting one together...suggestions from the cryptkeeper and all that. Extra signal boost never hurts a small press author (or any author). The time frame is short as I'll post my holiday buying suggestions on Monday, December 6th. (I don't have a snappy name yet) Interested? Drop an email to aaron.polson(at)gmail.com with a cover art jpg, blurb, and buying info. Deadline is Friday, December 3rd.

Yes, and I have a real WIP, too. I hope to wrap up How We Die in a Hungry Town by the end of December. Astute visitors will note the title is a wee bit longer now.


Just a little way to the river. A short drop.

[Mike] climbed on the edge of the railing. His sister smiled in the darkness and held out her hand.

“It’s easy,” she said. “Just a little jump and we’re both free.”

“Free?”

“Out of here at least.” She smiled.

Did I mention Mike's sister is dead?

WIP Wednesday: I Can Has Plot

Yeah...okay...sue me. I think the LOL cats or whatever-the-hell they're called are kind of lame, but I had a black cat like the one in the picture when I was growing up, and well, I miss him sometimes. Cat's can be so primal, y'know? Like, if they were bigger, they'd eat us.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the "States" (yum), so I'll just leave you with this (it's not as plot spoiling as the black cat):

“You been up to the cemetery tonight?” Deputy Harrison’s black mustache froze, and his tiny eyes punched two holes in the pale sheet of his face. Dry ice pumped into my stomach at the mention of the cemetery. The ghost of limestone gates flashed past as Megan and I drove home. It’d looked quiet. A breeze cut across the yard, rattling limbs like old bones. Harrison scratched the side of his face, but he never even shivered.

WIP Wednesday: Brow Furrowed in Confusion

But its not because of my WIP. I'm sure I'll have something to say tomorrow. I'm trying to temper my words.

Thanks to everyone who has tweeted, retweeted, blogged, etc. about the Loathsome, Dark and Deep contest. Remember, you have until November 30th to enter.

My WIP, now titled In a Hungry Town, is now at a whopping 12K. Limping along happily, though:

Even the children die in a hungry town.

Some, like Johnny Foster who died because of complications related to a brain tumor at age seven, were tragedies. Unfair, the people say. Unfair. Poor Johnny faded before us, thin and skeletal by the end with only a thin coat of flesh-tone plastic covering his bones. His picture haunted the local paper, a black and white specter of a boy, for more than a year. Funds were collected at local businesses, tin cans with Johnny’s photocopied face pasted on the side. Help with Johnny’s medical bills scribbled in black marker below the picture. The elementary principal let school out on the day of Johnny’s funeral. Tragic.

The town labeled other deaths as divine judgment, like when Casey Hoffman and Julie Tanner died on the way to prom. Alcohol, the rumors circulated. They’d both been drinking that night. Too much alcohol and reckless driving. Thank God they didn’t hurt anyone else. Seventeen years old, Casey and Julie were guilty and received their sentence. Whispers circulated in the church basement at Casey’s funeral. Julie’s parents held a private affair with only family and close friends, erecting a wall to keep the cold sneers away.

There were others, like Gwen Stebbins, whom the town ignored. Even a hungry town doesn’t know what to do with poisons which rot a beautiful girl’s mind, convincing her to starve herself until her walking skeleton collapses on the hard tile of the lunchroom floor. Doctors at Spring County Memorial jabbed clear tubes into poor Gwen’s veins, trying to pump nutrients into a body already starved to living death.

There were plenty of deaths, small deaths and large deaths. A car hopped a curb and crushed a little girl while she walked home from school. One boy shot a friend while hunting, tearing open his friend’s chest with a handful of shot, crying with clenched fists while his buddy bled out on the cold November ground. The football team’s only all-league linebacker hanged himself from the rafters of an abandoned farmhouse only two-hundred yards from the pond which supposedly claimed another life fifty years earlier.

If you listened carefully, especially on cold nights, you could almost hear the crack of the ice and squeak of knotted rope pulled against the rotten beam.

People discriminate. A hungry town does not discriminate.