MADONNAS, WITCHES, AND WEREWOLVES, OH MY!

Fiction. I’m known for writing it. What is the nature of fiction, in the Digital Age? Stories are whatever the hell you want them to be. I have slight trouble with the word novella. To me, the term signifies a story around 50,000 words.

   When I decided to put out short stories, I wondered if I’d call a 30,000-worder a novella. I didn’t wonder long. No. At that level, my tale is an extended short story. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a short story stuffed to brimming.

   I do what I can to gather my work for sale. My Amazon author page appears at the end of my blog collections. Blog posts are bundled with fiction – on the off-chance that my blog vanishes. I always write blog posts with the intention of publishing them in e-book form. Whether or not that improves the quality, I leave to the muttering of others.

   Familiar readers of this blog may have noticed that I mentioned a factory for my fiction. The phrase seemed ripe for exploitation. I wanted to write, edit, and publish rapidly. Format? Stories around 30,000 words. I felt like throwing in a few pages of notes. Behind the scenes. FICTION FACTORY was born.

   I created a red stripe for the top of each cover. Initially, I used black lettering. Black on red. Must be a winner. At thumbnail size, I saw white on red had a slight edge. I ditched the winner and backed a horse I wouldn’t normally give a second glance.

   Red stripe. White lettering. Hell, I’d just created a mini-brand for handy doses of tale-tellery. Here’s the blurb for the first three stories in my FICTION FACTORY…

*

WITCHES.

Selena Salem spins tales o’ witchcraft, and worse. Mystified strangers are invited to her kitchen table to hear uncanny stories. Fanning the blood-spattered cards, Selena casts her storytelling spell into the rainy Scottish night.

   Tonight’s tale is one of war between greedy clans. The clan o’ the Hand hires the man in the scarlet cap to do the clan’s bidding. His task? Destroy the clan o’ the Eye and the clan o’ the Tongue. No easy feat for mortal man. A difficult job for a warlock.

   Enter Rory: bandit-killer and lover of married women. The Laird o’ Tongue sends Rory to redress the balance of power by hiring witches. Rory stands on the brink of destruction at the cottage of Selena – prentice witch. Selena’s uncle may be too tired for the fight to come. All the while, the clan o’ the Eye keeps watch. Who will triumph, in this devilish tale of magic gone awry in the service of mortal men?

   35,000 words, plus notes.

*

THE MADONNA GAMBIT.

Harvey lingered, in case the rain concealed someone tailing from the weather’s depths.

   Come on. Is that likely? A tactic you’ve used, true. If they are sharp enough to keep an eye on you, they’ll do so from here. Not on the exposed walkway by the shore. Leapfrog ahead in that red car, and hang around the streets. Around the spare wheels. No one knows about the contingency except her. Your link to the outside world. If she’s suspect, throw yourself in the lake now.

   Placing the spare car here was a thin point generating weakness. Getting the keys to him constituted another thin spot. Forget this crisis of non-confidence. The only way to compromise the alternative exit is by going there to check on things. You are a tourist, remember. Lurching from puddle to puddle. Doing touristy things on a rainy day.

   They are watching me.

   Snap the hell out of it.

Harvey Yale is a hired killer. He wonders why the Madonna Gambit isn’t going according to plan. Is revenge really reaching from beyond the grave to spoil Harvey’s appetite, this job, and the rest of his day? Perhaps there’s more to his paranoia than his paranoia.

   Someone marked him. Coincidence. He was offered a gun he wasn’t sure about using. Uncertainty meant nothing. This wasn’t a high-profile job. He could walk away from the pittance they’d offered him, claiming the set-up looked bad.

   Set-up. The phrase needled him. When in doubt, run with your gut before your gut is wrapped around the other guy’s cutlery. Is the mission compromised? Has paranoia won over instinct? Join Harvey on the treacherous slopes of the rock, to find out…

   37,000 words, plus notes.

*

WEREWOLVES.

Two men died. The third man faded. SHE spoke to the police. The police looked into that connection. Nothing connected. Trailing over old ground, cold ground, SHE thinks SHE’s on the right track. The trouble with following tracks? Sometimes you meet trains coming the other way.

   SHE has little to go on but instinct and a curiosity that’s already killed the cat. On this mad little adventure into the unknown, it’s the dog SHE should worry about. No full moon. Little sign of silver bullets. Maria Ouspenskaya checked out of that hotel a long time ago.

   Follow in the footsteps of two, or three, dead men. Take a walk into the alleys just off Maldine Square. Ignore the café chatter. Find your way to that place, where the brass dragon shakes two silver bells as you tumble through the door. Take a look around. See what you can find. Be wary of anything that finds you.

   39,000 words, plus notes.

*

I don’t feel the need to blog about my work at every turn. Relentless plugging is dreary. If I automated the process, relentless plugging would be just as dreary.

   BUY MY STUFF!

   HEY, BUY MY STUFF.

   ZZZ, HUH, WHUZ, UH, BUY MY STUFF.

   Automation has its place. I automate the blog to cover for a few weeks if I’m out of the country, ill, or otherwise missing in inaction.

   If you want to check out my fiction, root around the blog. There’s the Hallowe’en page. Free story. There’s also the free novel listed under DOCTOR WHO FAN FICTION if your taste runs in that direction. My commercial wordsmithery is on Amazon, for the Kindle…

   The first ten per cent of each tale is free. That’s the Amazon sampling system for you. Click to LOOK INSIDE! The system can take a week to kick in after publication. If you don’t see a free sample, have patience. Give it a few days for Amazon to ferry the free slice to a book-hungry public.

   Free samples. Blurb is free. Product description.

   I wanted a home for my blurb. A place that wasn’t Amazon. Right here. A blog post must be built around any blurb-fest. I thought I’d talk about the nature of product descriptions. Self-published digital writers have the power to fashion blurb. I control the content. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? In the world of movies, I often feel the need to shoot the people who come up with trailers.

   Rules for movie trailers?

   Never show a serious heavy-duty plot-point in a trailer. By that, I mean one that thunders into sight when people sit to watch the movie. They’ve seen the trailer, and guess the cunning part of the plot once they take in the first half hour of the film. Your shitty trailer gave away the last half hour. Awkward.

   Don’t put stuff in the trailer if it doesn’t make the final cut. Annoying.

   Please don’t show half the film in the trailer. Pointless. A tactic used for thrillers, mysteries, and suspense flicks. Trying too hard.

   Comedy trailers. Don’t show five jokes in the trailer. Especially if there are only four jokes in your movie.

   Please don’t tell us HEROES WILL RISE. That makes the movie sound as though there’ll be a catastrophic start to the good guy’s tale, followed by an extensive training montage/landscape-hopping journey, ending with a bare-chested revenge fight in rain. With knives.

   There’s nothing wrong with films like that. Just don’t tell us heroes will rise in them. DOUGH WILL RISE. VILLAINS WILL RISE. DOUGHY HEROES WILL RISE. Don’t confuse doughy heroes with doughty heroes. They’ll all rise.

   Don’t show any snippets from the final scene of your film. Let it go.

   Time for a DO, instead of a DON’T. Do use James Horner’s music from Aliens in your trailer. Hell, we won’t spot that tactic. Year in, year out.

   I give away my plot for Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords right there in the blurb. Our hero is sent to kill seven bastards. There’s an immediate betrayal and all bets are off. A good example of product description, or not?

   Go to Amazon’s Kindle Store to check the blurb. If you’re reading this in the collected edition, you’ll find blurb for Neon Gods under the heading ALSO AVAILABLE. Judge for yourself. I tell you everything, yet give nothing away.

   The plot outlined in my product description is divulged inside the first ten per cent of my book. You get the basic idea from the blurb, true. That plot surrenders to the reader of the free sample. I’m not giving out a major twist that upsets the customer.

   Did I say too much in my blurb for WITCHES, THE MADONNA GAMBIT, WEREWOLVES, or any other story I’ve written? Those FICTION FACTORY pieces are short stories. Should I say less that’s plot-related when describing shorter works?

   Rory enters a deal with witches. Harvey Yale is an assassin. SHE is a curious investigator of strange doings. Well, I have to tell potential customers SOMETHING. What am I saying? There’s a skill to writing, and there’s a skill to writing blurb.

   If you are a self-published scribbler, you must develop the skill of writing blurb. In the paper publishing world, this skill was thought too dangerous to be left in the hands of authors. There are times, glancing at paper publishers, when I thought those publishers wanted to do it all – even writing the books.

   You know. Do away with authors.

   This is the Digital Age, and many of us simply chose to dispense with the paper publishers. If I’m going to have crappy blurb attached to my stories, I may as well be the piss-artist responsible. Excuse my bias – I don’t have crappy blurb attached to my stories.

   Sometimes this sentiment feels right – if only the people who made the movie had made the trailer.

   Occasionally, the view runs in another direction – if only the people who made the trailer had made the movie.

   What to do, about blurb? I’d advise adding the word-count to product description. Be transparent. For my REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE editions, I make it plain that I’m bundling around 30,000 words of a free blog with paid-for fiction. The FICTION FACTORY line consists of stories that aren’t going to be reissued in larger collections – that’s transparent on the product description. (See any FICTION FACTORY story on Amazon or the ALSO AVAILABLE section of this collection for the main mission statement.)

   Transparency. Be honest about the product without giving away the goods. Have I altered product descriptions? Yes. The only way to know you set the blurb down straight is by studying the text live on Amazon. I’ve had to correct glitches and deal with gremlins that popped up.

   Don’t mislead customers. That’s a rule for writing blurb. When constructing novels, feel free to misdirect readers – that’s different. It’s also a topic for another time. Leaving me just enough space for a spot of blurb plugging the next blog post…

NEXT BLOG: SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN.

RETURN OF THE REVENGE OF THE RETRIBUTION OF THE SITH.

Wicked self-publisher Darth Sinister lies bleeding on the floor of his refurbished DEATH STAR. His Jedi foe Young Vanderkarr shakes off unconsciousness. In a shameless attempt to introduce a flashback, both struggle to remember WTF just happened…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Overcome these obstacles. It doesn’t have to be about you and the blank page.

DARTH SINISTER: Oh but it does, my Young Apprentice™…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: There is good in you.

DARTH SINISTER: Your plot is lost, your characters are weak, and your description is about to collapse under the ponderous weight of its own gravitational field. Search your feelings. Soon you will turn to the Dark Side of Publishing™. Join me, my Young Apprentice™. Face your Publishing Destiny™. Short stories. Quicker. More seductive. Take the swift path to the Dark Side™. Embrace your fear of editing. And Trademark signs.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Er…

DARTH SINISTER: Your Jedi ways are well-suited to the do-gooder meandering across the surface of a novel. But there is a darker path. Strewn with the bones of the well-intentioned. No room for vacillation. Little time for exposition. Zero space in which to wax lyrical.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I dunno…

DARTH SINISTER: Cut your writing to the bone, Young Vanderkarr. Sample the discipline of plotting a short story with all the power and ruthlessness that true editing commands. Lose those sub-plots. Kill excessive characterisation. Abandon description of every minor character’s clothes. Do not tell us what he said or she said. Banish those phrases from your vocabulary, and your journey to the Dark Side™ will be complete.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Ulp. We-ell. Maybe I could veer a little to the Dark Side™. You know. A teensy bit. On a trial-basis. Worked for Luke Skywalker. He seemed to do okay. What harm is there in a short story, after all…

DARTH SINISTER: Good, good. Fried Ewok?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’ll pass. What of the threat Darth Biozarre poses to your personal carer, Darth Phibes?

DARTH SINISTER: Leave that to me.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: And allow all these Darths to run free in the publishing universe? You can loosen up. Take the day off. Walk by the creek.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Pardon me, Your Munificence. A transmission from the Star Destroyer Prophylactic. It would appear that Darth Phibes has ordered full steam ahead in the desire to wipe Darth Biozarre from existence.

DARTH SINISTER: My plan proceeds as anticipated.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Only one will survive. Though which? Things don’t look good for me either way. They are all Darthtastic. I’m going to have to…

NOISES OFF: Bzhwwzumm.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Holy Eff! Put that Typesabre away. I don’t want to fight you.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: If no one objects, I’ll shut down before I’m cut in half by razor-sharp wordsmithery.

DARTH SINISTER: I am composing a ditty.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: How…unDarthlike. If there is such a word.

DARTH SINISTER: You have coined a word. Good. Now use it at every opportunity. Then mercilessly edit the word from your work.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: No! Wait! Using and unusing unDarthlike would be Darthlike.

DARTH SINISTER: Yes. Give in to temptation.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Never. Not when I can flick this handy switch that throws your entire DEATH STAR into cataclysmic overdrive.

NOISES OFF: CLICK.

DISEMBODIED VOICE OF GLOOMY FEMBOT: WARNING. CATACLYSMIC OVERDRIVE SEQUENCE INITIATED. ALL PERSONNEL NOT COVERED BY DEATH STAR INSURANCE PLEASE MOVE TO THE EMERGENCY FIRE ESCAPE. THANK YOU FOR USING THE FAST LANE.

DARTH SINISTER: A momentary glitch, young fool.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Now you’ll pay for all the clichés you’ve used. Dark Lord™ on his Dark Throne™. What’s that? The Fried Ewok Stand. Also serving bagels. Ew. There’s not a force in the universe that…

NOISES OFF: MAN NARRATING SOUND OF EXPLOSION FOR REASONS OF CHEAPNESS.

*

YOUNG VANDERKARR: What the Holy Eff just happened?

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Excuse the mess, Your Commendableness. I appear to be leaking oil. My big end’s gone, I’m afraid. Now I’ll have to seek emergency maintenance round the back.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Where the fudge am I? What the fritz is going on? Who the flip skewed with my sense of reality?

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: The DEATH STAR is deep in the Censored System. Profanity is heavily-shielded here.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Motherfudgers! You’ve got to be flipping kidding me. And this ledge?

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: I believe we were blasted from the control room to the maintenance platform over the main reactor shaft. The platform doubles as an ice cream counter. Would you care for some?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Fudge, yeah. Wait! The last I remember, I was caught up in my own little world with that motherfudging fear of editing. Say. I didn’t turn to the Dark Side™, did I? There’s this short story on the ground and…

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Oh, that belongs to Darth Sinister. It appears that you’ve intercepted a transmission meant for Darth Biozarre.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Why the fudge would Darth Sinister send a short story to Darth Biozarre? And why the fudge would he leave a copy for me? That’s just not his way. Why, his whole Darthtastic persona is based around this antiquated notion that it’s just him and the blank page.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Is there such a thing as robot wee? I think I may have to visit the lavatory.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: He’s sent out a sample of his fiction. There’s hope for us yet. Darth Sinister may turn to the Light Side™ after all.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: As I understand things, only his own fear of his personal carer, Darth Phibes, prevents Darth Sinister from acting in this way.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Yes. That’s true. I sense a disturbance in the Force. As though an Evil Presence™ yelled out in pain after taking a sword of buzzy light to the face. Could it be that Darth Phibes and Darth Biozarre clashed? Who won? Does that concern me? I have to face a Darth at the finish, no matter who kicked butt.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Fudge?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: What happened?

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: I was offering you ice cream.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Fritz, I knew that. Fudge.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: What now?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I was accepting your offer.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Ah.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Just give me some fudging ice cream while I read this story. Hm. I know the Dark Lord™ tried to turn me to the Dark Side™ with talk of short stories, but…wow. This really is short.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Pardon me, Your Commendableness. I believe that’s only the opening page. There’s a whole chapter here.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Darth Sinister has gone off the deep end. Maybe it’s an Evil Ploy®, designed to lure me to the ways of the Sith. By doing good deeds, he, er, does more evil. Somehow. I dunno. Must think about that.

DROID ESS-H-ONE-TEE: Incoming transmission from Darth Biozarre.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Yeah, I’ll take the call.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Greetings, Darth Sin…aren’t you a little tall to be a Sith Lord?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’m Young Vanderkarr – I’m here to rescue you. From yourself.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Scoffing ice cream won’t save you.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’ve been mocked by more sarcastic holograms than I care to mention. There was this glazing sales-droid…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Zip it, motherfudger. What the fudge? You’re in the Censored System. How did you end up there?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: A bunch of cocklesuckers designed this DEATH STAR, and…

DARTH BIOZARRE: You know censoring profanity in that way only draws more attention.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Fudging right I do. Long story short…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Taking up the short story. Good, good. Your Destiny™©® grows ever clearer. With each passing second, you make yourself more my servant.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Your servant.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Yes. I’ve just split Darth Phibes in half.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Fucking hell!

DARTH BIOZARRE: Shielding couldn’t contain that outburst. Impressive.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Darth Phibes is all that stands between Darth Sinister and the concept of sharing fiction ahead of publication.

DARTH BIOZARRE: All that stood. Darth Phibes is now in the past tense. If a corpse can be described as tense. Well, maybe going by the look on his false face. Wore a mask. A tense-faced mask. Odd, even by my standards. I’d go for the cliché of the jolly clown.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: You find the task of creeping people out a tad easier dressed as a jolly clown?

DARTH BIOZARRE: Mm. In a paper ruff. That way I crêpe people out, too. Nice use of tad, BTW.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Appreciate that.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Darth Phibes is no more. Well, he’s in two pieces on the floor.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Poetry, now.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Coincidence breeds creativity. Darth Sinister is free. An end to tyranny. Until I take over, with my own evil ideas.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: He’s not that free. Looks like he only sent the opening section of a story to you.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Yes, a mere pittance.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: So it appears. Nice use of pittance, BTW. Commendable.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Well shucks. Look closer, Young Vanderkarr.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Just as the droid said. Darth Sinister’s gone mental. He’s produced a whole chapter. Just for us. I may cry.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Stifle a sob. Turn to the Dark Side™. Write short stories of your own.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Wait!

DARTH BIOZARRE: Am I really meant to fall for that ploy again?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Duh, yeah!

DARTH BIOZARRE: Bought you some time. I have to cross galaxies to reach you, in any case.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: This isn’t about my turning to the Dark Side™. Fudge no! This is about Darth Sinister having some good in him. And. Redemption. And…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Were you going to mention kittens? Don’t make me destroy you.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Redemption, not revenge. Recovery, not retribution. And kittens, darn it!

DARTH BIOZARRE: Fudge. Appears to be the fucking ice cream you’re eating.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’m drifting clear of the Censorship System, or your hologram would’ve been affected just now.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Why, I’m practically on your doorstep.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: This is the end. Darth Sinister fled the DEATH STAR. His enemy Darth Phibes is dead. I’m still a good guy. You could pack the whole Darth persona in a box and write your own stuff.

DARTH BIOZARRE: That’s a pretty pat ending.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Yeah. Until Disney comes along and resurrects the whole thing.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Sounds like our cue to fade.

NEXT BLOG: MADONNAS, WITCHES, AND WEREWOLVES, OH MY!

REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

At the very last moment, I decided to continue blogging. That is a lie – even this last-minute post is written ahead of the game. Time travel at work, once again. The eighteen-blog cycle ends, and starts afresh. That, too, is a lie.

   Somewhere along the way, I was forced to write an emergency blog post – with those words in the title. Meaning I’ve blogged nineteen times over this eighteen-post stint. Let’s blame someone. Kacey Vanderkarr. She dragged me into an internet writing game. I released unpublished fiction on the blog.

   Another post told my audience that I’d turned my back on nonsense like that. This caused a disturbance in the realms of space and time. Now I’m left unsure. I prefer not to release snippets of fiction on my blog…

   Been there. Done that. My personal carer, Dr Anton Phibes, is employed to prevent this foolishness. There’s me, and there’s the blank page. Then there are the readers who tackle my work in e-book form. I don’t feel an overwhelming desire to share fiction at an intermediate stage.

   True, my blog opened with a short story on a stormy Hallowe’en. I had to put something on there. True, I believe a fiction author’s blog should contain fiction. But not too much. Admittedly, you can read an entire novel on this blog…

   Yes, I’m in two or three minds about placing fiction on the blog. Dr Phibes holds to one view. None of that nonsense, now. I participated in a novel that ran from blog to blog. How I managed that without seeing my carer run amok, I’ll never know.

   He’s there to ensure that I don’t go wild with the concept of social networking. I’m permitted to go mild with social networking now and again. That’s it. Blogging is pretty much my limit. And I almost quit blogging today. Dr Phibes would approve if I crashed my blog into the sea. My 0.75 readers may object. I can see my in-box being flooded by a complaint.

   What’s next? More blogging. Thoughts on publishing, from an author on the run. The same thoughts. Don’t stop writing. Keep going. I almost stopped blogging so that I could tackle more writing. And I may yet abandon blogging, if Dr Phibes gets his abominable say. So what happened to that intergalactic space cockroach porno I was working on? Knew that would raise a smile.

Yet another disruption to a blog post. I spent an evening wavering. Not contemplatively. I just didn’t feel well. My choice was to shut down and recover. See if I could recharge anything. Overnight, dreams told me that I was placing things in order. Symbolically.

   Quite how I came to that conclusion after being stalked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, travelling on the London Underground, I’ll never know. There were many lost socks scattered in those subterranean passages. Women dressed as knights assisted.

   Imagination at work. Even lying down in a dark room last night, my mind was sparking with ideas. Ill, the imagination rattles on. I feel better today. Feeling better hasn’t suppressed the imagination, fortunately.

   There is something about feeling down or out-of-sorts that propels fiction. With my strict publishing timetable consigned to the dim and distant, I entered the loose planning phase. All part of my scheme. I took ups and downs and converted them into words.

   Instead of dealing relentlessly with the back catalogue of ideas, I found myself conjuring a lot of new material. My approach to writing is changing. Gradually. And it is the electronic publishing of my work to a strict timetable that set up all the changes.

   For the better, I hope.

   What advice is there, for writers thinking of following in my digital footsteps? It’s still the same advice. Read. Write. Experience the good and bad in writing. Find out as much as you can. It’s all there, on the internet.

   Read copyright law.

   Be prepared to act alone. For the sharp end of writing is done alone. Be prepared to publish as part of a writerly community. I’ve had conversations with countless authors. Sometimes you are just shooting the breeze. Occasionally, you become mired in technical discovery.

   For the most part, contact with other authors is limited. You say hello and ask a question or point something out, then you are off on your way again. Clicking links. Or setting them up. Try to avoid becoming lost in the maddening swirl of the internet. Though try to become lost in the maddening swirl of the internet at least once.

   The one place you should be lost is in the maddening swirl of your own writing. Just get through it. That advice applies whether you write fiction or non-fiction. It applies whether you plan to publish or not.

   I feel it is important to champion writing, no matter the purpose of that writing. You may be reading this thinking that you’ll write a novel and that novel will go out to the world. There are plenty of people who have no desire to publish. They write stories for themselves. Nothing wrong in that.

   Yes, I feel there is something wrong with people who want to publish yet declare loudly that they can’t bring themselves to. These cries for help are easily-silenced by the command – PUBLISH. What are you scared of? Shadows. Misty nothingness. Failure?

   Never be scared of that. Failure is important. Writing a story that draws to a clunk rather than a conclusion IS IMPORTANT. You’ll do better next time. Experimenting with the second person narrative, in which you describe everything using the word you, and failing in that experiment…

   IMPORTANT.

   Learning how to handle flashbacks within flashbacks, failing every single time, will be frustrating. Until you finally get there. I know the hardest advice to follow is the advice to keep going. Keep failing until success comes to you.

   I bang on about this, knowing I was going to end my blog. Ending a blog doesn’t end the writing. The Fiction Factory is still slowly grinding out material amidst a cascade of sparks. My doubt doesn’t diminish the advice to have doubt. Use your fear.

   Perhaps you are ill. Tragic events surround you. Life takes a sponge to your plans, and wipes them off the board. Declare yourself a writer and you must write. Never mind if the writing is crap. At least you are writing.

   Feeling low? Climb. Or sink, if sinking leads you to another route. Use whatever works. Even if something appears dreadfully negative, it may carry you to the place you find most useful. Lamenting the near-crash of my blog should be gloomier than it is.

   If I had ended my blog in these closing paragraphs, I’d still have encouraged people to write. Maybe blogging isn’t for you. I recommend it. Doesn’t make blogging the law. There’s a real feel of winding down, but I’ll still blog. Stay tuned.

   Perhaps it’s a sense of perspective that I’m seeing, as I cast this blog post adrift on the vast ocean that is the internet. After a year of blogging, I can see where I’ve been. I took a trip on a twisty road with many alternative routes. If I managed to get one person writing in all that time, I’ve done okay.

   About now, I should end on some fantastic upbeat message of hope and pastel-shaded sentiment. But that’s not my thing. I’m a grumpy curmudgeonly figure, fending off sentiment with a cauldron of near-boiling cynicism. Cynically, I couldn’t quite see my way to stoking the flames for the full effect.

   Over this year, I helped other authors. Often in minor ways. The minor ways are important. If you are stuck in a gremlin-packed avenue, you’ll appreciate the tiny piece of technical advice that comes your way and unblocks the traffic-jam.

   Occasionally, I helped out in a major way. Something I never thought it wise to do – until now. Publishing my own work was anti-climactic. I pressed a button. Job done. I’m going to be far more interested in seeing other authors publish. After the help I gave, I want to be sure that I didn’t ruin anyone as a writer.

   The internet has this unfortunate effect of destroying tone and concealing meaning. Often, I’ve seen advice handed out by writers as though the law. I know that these writers aren’t dictating. The internet is stripping warmth from their words.

   So I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being crude. There must be 50 ways to…whoops. Paul Simon reference. I’ll repeat myself. Advice freely given is free to be ignored. My advice is to read and to write. Read crap stuff. Learn from the crap. Write. Just get it down. Worry about how crap it is later. Stop worrying about how crap it is. But do worry.

   Worry about being unpublished when that van hits you. You might fall into a river laden with terminal levels of shopping. Two lorries, heading for a motorway collision, risk ending your literary career in a way that a poisonous review never could.

   Write your way through hell and back. Learn as much as you can on the trip through fire and brimstone. Perhaps most important of all – know when your story is finished. Let it go. I let my first few books go to a timetable. Deadlines are important for self-publishers. Stick to them.

   Learn from failing to stick to a deadline. See what went right and what went wrong. You are always going to be too close to your own writing – so damn well accept that. What is it you want to achieve? Ask yourself every time you write a story.

   The comic book writer/artist Howard Chaykin tackled western stories almost solely to embarrass himself into learning how to draw horses. He could have concocted a western without a single nag in the tale. But he went for it. To hell with the criticism he’d face. He could draw people. Why not horses?

   Ask yourself what you want to achieve, in writing a type of story you haven’t tackled before. You should ask yourself what you want to achieve in writing a type of story you’ve tackled many times. If you have to dredge the internet for advice, do so.

   Remember what I said about advice freely given.

   Time to end this blog post, though not time to end the blog. I struggled to hit 1,500 words this time out. Then, true to form, I managed to ramble across the finish line with words to spare. Keep writing. Don’t give up. Learn. Not just in an educational way. In a visceral way – by learning from mistakes. Enjoy writing. I do.

NEXT EVENT: REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE (VOLUME 2) IS PUBLISHED.

*

Update. I scrapped the collected blog posts. The blogs exist on the internet, but not as collected volumes. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

UNBLOGGING.

You cannot unblog that which you have blogged. Better to say, perhaps, you cannot kill that which does not live. A blog can be shut down. Left, mouldering, with a stake through its heart. Pull the stake out, and Blogula Lives!

   I’ve been staring at my electronic version of the blank page for a few minutes. The duration of a song playing in the background. Windows Media Player tells me I’ve been staring at the blank screen for a 4:06 chunk of my time on this world.

   Valentine Heart, by Tanita Tikaram. (From her debut album, ancient heart.) Eclectic doesn’t mean special. It means you are all over the place in selecting sources of inspiration. Those sources are quite meaningless.

   Blogger and Twitter changed my plans. I have a Zombie Apocalypse story to write. Why couldn’t I use that as a source for inspiration? Time plays its part. I had thoughts, in the dim and distant. Two novels. I’ll write these two novels. First, I’ll write other things. Become a decent writer.

   Kept two stories in my head for years. Then I kept more and more stories in my head for years. The two that sat side by side were untitled. One was the skyscraper story. The other was the Quaich story. They were novels waiting out in the street. Not waiting in the wings. They’d have to work up to that.

   I became a better writer. A feat that wasn’t hard. All I had to do was stop writing utter crap. Let me know how I’m doing. No. Don’t. Looking back, every twelvemonth, I sense improvement. And room for improvement. Your future self is always your worst critic. My future self will pour scorn on that last sentence.

   Events in 1993 and 1995 altered my views of what would be possible in writing the skyscraper story. By 1995, the Quaich story had become slim*thriller. I was a world away from these novels. Other stories concerned me. Stories I was writing down. In 1998 I may have written a note about coinage for slim*thriller. Coinage seemed important to me. By 2000, I must have started plans to write the book.

   Music plays in the background. Sometimes that’s a source of inspiration. I also take photos, or scan images from a wide range of sources. My archive is shot to hell. Migrating from one computer to another screws up the dates. Files are absorbed into other files. Occasionally, only the content of a file screams the original date of creation. All the statistics and properties are out of whack with reality.

   Still, I dig. There are some gems. A few images with intact dates attached. I must have made notes in early 2000. Before I laid hands on the coinage I sought. There are prototype scanned images with year 2000 date-stamps. Once the coins were in my hands, I set up plans for my novel in early 2001.

   Then I turned away to other things. I had a plan, and the plan didn’t involve the skyscraper story or slim*thriller. By the end of 2001, the skyscraper story was dead. I’d lost one. Yes, I’d lost short stories before. I’d vapourised an appalling novel, too. But now I’d lost an unwritten book.

   I am outraged amazed now that I’d advanced all those stories in my head after taking few or no notes. The Quaich story only just started to appear in files after a little over a decade in my head. Alongside the skyscraper story, the Quaich story burbled away at the mercy of traffic. One wrong step in front of a bus, and worlds are destroyed.

   My plans for slim*thriller were set aside in favour of other tales. At least I’d made a start. I returned to the prospect in late 2004. An arcane note concerning coinage became the chapter I’d always meant to write. The Quaich story became the book I’d always meant to write. Had the World Trade Centre not been destroyed, the skyscraper story would have been written. Knowing me, I’d have dropped a few slim*thriller references in there for readers.

   Stories stay inside my head for years. This is true of the Zombie Apocalypse book. Only a few years, in the case of the zombies. Preparing to publish books in the autumn/winter period of 2011/2012, I started to have ideas for something…new.

   Gasp. What am I thinking? That I’ll keep a story in my head for a few months and then write it? Not let it stew for years, forming part of the production-line. Just throw it out there? Of course not. Let it stew. Do the Zombie Apocalypse story.

   Then I remembered that I’d wanted to try something different, related to the zombie story. It would be good to throw a story out there. As a source for inspiration. I don’t mean to go all Japanese on you. As though I’m in a rock garden, poised over a parchment, waiting hours to strike. Creating the perfect poem.

   No. I’m far from that image. No rock garden, for starters. I write rapidly. My ability to edit is powered by the Dark Side of Publishing™. Many Ewoks died to fuel the process. So why haven’t I written a bajillion books? Life gets in the way.

   Ideas stay in my head as they aren’t ready for the world. I’m not saying learn to edit in your head. That may not be for you. To concoct stories, and conversations within stories, and keep them unwritten. Adding to them. Elaborating on the chatter. All that stuff might poison your mind. Doesn’t seem to affect me as I throw another Ewok on the fire.

   Plans change. But I don’t unblog that which I have blogged. Yes, I’ll still do the zombie story. It is easier to turn to fresh material lacking illustrations than to tackle the technical minefield that is slim*thriller. So I tackle short story collections, and blog compilations, novels in the backlist that constitute unfinished business, and…new ideas.

   My fiction factory is full of things I’m tinkering away at. Special projects. Not-so-special projects. The whole while, I’m looking at the business of business and not worrying too much about things that drag other people down.

   So many people out there get sucked into the need to advertise. I do short plugs for my books on Twitter, and leave it at that. It doesn’t cost money. My advertising budget is ZERO. You may be shocked. Well, I’m darting around my factory, seeing to fiction.

   Yes, I will put out a book called Clanjamfrie. It’s proving a tricky customer to nail down. Without getting into it, the problems are technical, plot/character related, and not for public consumption. My personal carer, Dr Anton Phibes, sees to that.

   Nurse, the screens!

   I resolved some Kindle-oriented technical issues over my not hamlet adaptation, and hope to bring that to a semi-suspecting public one day. What do I have in mind, as I type? REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE as a blog collection featuring a giant space cockroach. Clanjamfrie, Clanjamfrie Tales, not hamlet, slim*thriller once I fix the pictures, REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE as a blog collection featuring a lost story I’ll recover from memory, JUST ANOTHER ZOMBIE STORY, and assorted volumes of Neon Gods. (Including a short story collection which will house The Chalice in the Snow.)

   Oh, and other stuff besides. How long will it take to put all this material out? It takes as long as it takes. Life gets in the way, remember. I’d like to spend a mad weekend bringing all this stuff to the boil. Then, on the Monday, I’d hit the big red button on the end of the machine and watch e-books roll out at a frightening rate.

   Mm. I wanted to write a story, rapidly. Not on the backlist of books. Nothing that constitutes unfinished business. Material I’d thought over, at the start of the year. Oh, I’m constructing a new story in my mind. How long will I let this stew in the old brainbox?

   Not long, I decided. The world has gone digital. Immediate. I could rattle this out as an example of how to do things. Yes, I’ll do that for Kacey Vanderkarr. And show her how easy it is. That was wrong of me.

   For starters, I’d already shown her that she had to confront her fear of publishing. No need to bludgeon her with a book. To finish on, I should be writing a book to write a book – not to help out a single named individual. What was I thinking. Clanjamfrie has a delicate mechanism at its heart, if I choose to wind it up and link it to the heart. I must tread lightly.

   But I see that I am walking close to the edge of the room, where visitors from the outside world pass by. There, my personal carer, Dr Anton Phibes, stands ready to foil my plans of discussing my plans. One day, someone will get at him. Without knocking me out of action, for he has radio-linked his heartbeat to mine.

   I just wanted to waffle in a blog post about my works in lack of progress. They all proceed in dribs, in drabs. Even though I write quickly. Something technical comes up, and my writing day is shot to hell resolving it. For the technical must be resolved. As must the writing.

NEXT BLOG: SPAM ALERT.

COLLEAGUES.

What use are colleagues, to someone who writes alone? I write alone, though publish as part of a community. The blog posts you’ve been reading reflect that. Some of my musing to colleagues was recycled for use in these blog posts.

   Other thoughts come to me in the night, and I fictionalise those by turning to characters Darth Sinister or Sergeant Jock MacBastard. I should have another character do that in the COLD WAR struggle with social networking, but nothing springs to mind. Hmm.

   I don’t look for consensus, and I’m not here to set down the law. Blogging is part of writing, and writing is about learning. In chatting to other authors, I bump into contrary views rather than consensual ones. These interest me greatly. The best example being that provided by…

   Kacey Vanderkarr. Coach Vanderkarr. Baby Seal. Young Vanderkarr. Potentially, Darth Vanderkarr. Crippled by writing fear. An alien specimen, this one. Studied under the microscope, she displayed unusual behaviour. I treated her as though a baby seal, ready for bludgeoning on the ice.

   Yes, I was a bit rough on Kacey. For those of you who don’t know the story, I’ll repeat it here with some amplification. I spent months researching Amazon Kindle in 2011. Self-publishing was for me. During the summer of 2011, I discovered there were writers out there scared of publishing anything. Yes, publishing anything. Ever. Aliens. These people were aliens, to me. I never found any of them. Kept reading about people who used to be like that. Not quite the same thing.

   Cut to early 2012, and one of these aliens follows me on Twitter. I’ve published twice, and am set to publish a third time. Anyway, I hike back to her blog where I discover she is an inspirational person in several areas of her life – just, not in her writing. She can write. But she is scared. Wife, mom, hospital worker, High School coach. Scared writer.

   I take the night off editing a book, and I write 5,000 words to her. To me, that’s a medium-sized e-mail. I try to get her to see that she should be scared of NEVER being published. She takes the advice and faces her fear. This is beyond odd, as I NEVER give major advice and she has a problem TAKING major advice from anyone. On top of that, I NEVER give major advice on WRITING.

   Somehow, the universe aligns and we put up with each other. She describes me as having given her the biggest lecture of her life. One she sadly needed. That’s how Kacey Vanderkarr and I started chatting about writing.

   You can’t mix those two views in a flask! There’ll be an explosion! A universe-shattering detonation. He doesn’t give advice. She won’t take it. He treats writing as an arcane alchemical art. She’s scared to go near the unexploded bomb of her own work.

   Tape off the area and mark the scene DOES NOT BODE WELL.

   I had the courage to send her that e-mail. She had the courage to act on it. Kacey faced her fear. What was I going to face? For my part, I felt that I couldn’t use critique groups, groups for writers, or Beta-readers. In all my time writing, I hadn’t even heard the term Beta-reader or the phrase critique group until I did my research last year.

   Now, come on. That doesn’t make me a bad person. I just didn’t move in that world. Kacey dragged me along to the BLOGVEL so that I could meet other writers and join in writing a story by committee. Viewpoint? I don’t write stories by committee. But if I can make Kacey face her fear, she can make me face mine.

   First, I have to find out what BLOGVEL means. A BLOG NOVEL. I turn up. The list is handed out. I see that this is about writing a story and about blog-exposure. Social networking. So this is what I do. I look at every single blog on the list. If a contributor is on Twitter, I follow that writer. That’s what BLOGVEL is about, surely. Not just writing the story.

   This is also about writing a story, based on a theme beyond my control, to a deadline, and with a word-limit. I act as caretaker during the assignment, and have the responsibility of handing the tale to the next writer in line without utterly screwing the whole thing into the dirt at the speed of sound.

   My personal carer, Dr Anton Phibes, wouldn’t hear of this social networking nonsense. Which is why he was put off the trail. It’s quite clear to Dr Phibes that the transitory distraction of Nazi shark documentaries was a vicious ploy allowing my artistic freedom to flourish unchecked. Once he realised I’d been collaborating with authors behind his back, the equipment was deployed.

   I am writing this by the old pen-to-mouth technique which bypasses even the strictest straitjackets. The finished text will be typed up by my unseen accomplice. Dr Phibes has administered a jumbo-sized syringe of the green liquid, and I feel the effects hitting my kidneys as I scribble.

   His job is to bar my discussion of unpublished plots. To that, he has now added the function of preventing further communal silliness in the form of BLOGVELS, Beta-readers, and critique groups. There’ll be no more handing out pre-edited slices of fiction to people on the far side of the globe. Not on his watch.

   It may be some time before I venture near that territory again. If there were a way to bump Dr Phibes off without serious injury to myself, he’d be gone. Alas, given his penchant for spooky biological experiments, he has radio-linked his heartbeat to mine.

   The BLOGVEL experiment was for the benefit of others. After offering to compile short stories with several writers, I couldn’t then turn Kacey down in a stunning act of hypocrisy when she made the counter-offer. She was right. I had to participate in the BLOGVEL. Even if only to discover that awful thing…

   I worked out my part of the story in my head, based on a photo I took. This, I considered research. The whole idea was to read chapter one and build my thoughts on whatever I found. Plants. The woods. An evil brother. Right. I’ll look at that park I went through on a mock-train.

   The photo jumped out at me. I’m going to invent a story based around that. All I have to do is wait for the first few participants to do their chapters. Provided no one introduces the brother, I’m set for action. After reading chapter four, I slapped my attempt down on the night and seized the introduction of the evil brother for myself.

   Yes, it was great to write. I distracted Dr Phibes and sent the initial copy to the next author, Cat Woods. And I sent a copy to Kacey in advance. To let her see the initial piece. After that, I edited. So that Kacey would gain something from seeing the published version. Almost the same as the one I wrote on the night. Well I did that for Kacey, as she has problems with editing.

   Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story. Sending the unedited work to a relative stranger was a way of giving added warning to the next person in line. Cat Woods might have found my stint as storyteller jarring. Or events could have conspired against her, with life taking over. So, I gave her as much time as possible to write her own piece.

   Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t do that. If I wrote a piece of fiction for my blog, I’d read it. Edit it. And then my blog’s readers would be the next to see it. I wouldn’t usually hand over the goods to colleagues.

   (I have done so with some blog entries, as I had to clear permission on a few points. Also, I’ve written e-mails that I later plundered for blog entries. Generally, though, I won’t preview a blog posting by touting it around fellow-scribblers first.)

   Yes, I could use critique groups and alter my writing. But then I wouldn’t be me. It’s still one step too far for me. Only one step. But a giant leap, where I’m standing. I hope that my 0.75 readers won’t be disappointed by the sense of failure that I’ve taken away from the BLOGVEL.

   Part of me, open-minded, says that I tried – and that doesn’t count as failure at all. The same part of me says…maybe next time there’ll be a sense of achievement. There could be a next time. And one day, there might be a critique group too – especially after all the plans I made in that direction. I just didn’t flip the switch. The circuits are still in place.

   I feel my writing is floating somewhere in the 19^th century, where I’m not chasing after the latest fad. History has passed me by, but the passing of it is of little import. I just do what I do, and try my best to be me.

   BLOGVEL verdict. I think there was a sense of a letdown. Of letting my colleagues down. That awful thing…I’m here to learn, yet the BLOGVEL didn’t teach me anything. It’s shocking to feel that I didn’t learn anything from participating. But that’s what I carried away from it.

   Kacey would have been more disappointed had I not tried something different. Yes, better to try, to fail, than not try…never know. I’m left feeling unsure. As though, perhaps, I had to move a little way forward in a new direction this time out. And that I might make it that way once I’ve had time to get used to it. Even though I feel I did little more than tread water.

   Tennyson comes to mind. Ulysses. The closing lines of his poem.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

   This stirs in the wake of the sentiment that it isn’t too late to seek a newer world. So I’ll strive to seek, and hope to find. Convinced I’d learn something from the BLOGVEL, I walked away from it surprised to learn that I hadn’t learned a thing. If you call that learning. We’ll see if I can ditch Dr Phibes one day. Not today. But, even so, take this from my musing. Failure to learn doesn’t halt you in your tracks. Don’t give up. I’ll do my best not to yield. You should do your best not to, too.

NEXT BLOG: A STUNNING BRUNETTE BLOWS ME A KISS, AND I SELL A BOOK ON A RAINY STREET.