A Furniture Monarch Has Feelings

Sofa King happy, Sofa King sad.
Sofa King greatful, Sofa King mad.
Sofa King sleepy or Sofa King wired,
Sofa King glad just to be admired.
Sofa King gloomy, Sofa King bright
Sofa King heavy, Sofa King light.
Sofa King bad or Sofa King good,
Sofa King acting best as he could.
Sofa King time to say nighty-night
Hush hit the bed, sleepy-bye, nighty-night

NanoWriMo Fail, editing pass

Well it's Nano time and I had this "big hairy audacious goal" of writing ten short stories of about 5,000 words each, so, how's that going?  I have five stories started and the focus of a coked-out ADHD jack russel terrier, needless to say 50,000 words is not really in my grasp this year.
NANO-fail
In order to refocus I have decided to edit something I finished last year pre-nano (my nano project was lost when one USB stick disappeared and another one decided to do a remix of its bits and bytes).  Its a story called "Death By Putts". 
The story follows a moderately sucessful writer (ie. one who can afford the odd six-pack of imported beer) who suddenly finds himself screwed by his publisher, agent and editor and discovers that his writing was the release for a very, very dark side he didn't know he had.
Its been so long since I looked at it I almost forgot how the story goes which is making editing almost fun!
So I may have failed at nanowrimo but this is turning out to bed almost equally rewarding!

Thanks For Reading.

Blog Tour With B.C. Young

Web Site/Blog

Facebook Author Page

Twitter

Google+

I am pleased to announce that I am the first stop on a great author's Blog Tour!  He has published a volume of short stories entitled Unspoken Stories Volume 1.
B.C. YOUNG

He was kind enough to answer a few questions ---here--- and get in on a scavenger hunt ---here--- to win a free copy of Unspoken Stories!
You can also find a review of Unspoken Stories ---here---
What do you do when a story bounces around inside your head for three or four years? You need to get the story out to people, and the writer needs to tell it. Author B.C. Young had this exact thing happen to him. He was tired of driving back and forth to work everyday, conceiving a story in his head that no one could hear. Before long, he started to work on his stories. He decided on a simple approach that he felt anyone could read. His decision was to tell the stories he writes through shorter stories. The shorter stories end up telling a bigger story, and the bigger stories tell the final story. As a result, each story feeds off the next and the previous.
Currently his work involves the Miscorrection series and other science fiction stories. This is a favorite genre of his because it allows for so many possibilities in storytelling.

Unspoken Stories Volume 1.

A collection of five short stories to entertain and stimulate the mind. These stories were almost never told, but they were saved from being unspoken.  The collection includes the following science fiction stories.  Click the titles to read a 50% excerpt of the story, you'll be glad you did and even happier if you buy it for 3-tacos (that's $2.99).

Copy Bird: Bill is trapped and lonely. He breaks free of his prison and finds something he doesn’t expect.
“Now you sound like a broken record. I get the point. You can’t have a conversation–only copy. You’re a copy bird. Can I call you that? Copy Bird?”
Despite the fact that the bird doesn’t talk, he imagines that it likes the name. He reaches out his hand for the bird to perch on his finger. The bird does as expected and jumps to his finger. He thinks to himself that the bird is as light as a feather, but in reality it’s two hundred.
“Now you sound like a broken record,” the bird repeats, mimicking his voice perfectly.
“Wow. That’s quite a feat. Sounds just like me, Copy Bird. By the way, my name is Bill.”
“My name is Bill,” the bird says.
“You certainly are a copy bird.”

Going Home: Promises are important to keep, and Commander Patrick Murphy never wants to forget that.
When he got to the dining room, he looked out the window. As he knew would be the case, his dad was in the backyard trying to fix the lawn mower. He kept pulling on the cord, the engine would begin to kick in, and then sputter to a dead stop.
“Hey, Dad,” Patrick called out, after opening the window.
“Patboy! What are you doing here?” his dad asked, excitedly. He moved away from the mower and started walking towards the window.
“They gave me short leave time. Why don’t you come inside? It’s getting dark. Even if you get the thing working, you won’t be able to mow.”
His dad turned back to the mower, and had a look of defeat on his face. Patrick knew he never would get it working again.
“I guess you’re right,” his dad said. “I’m sure your mother’s got dinner just about ready anyway. I’ll be right in.”
Patrick closed the window and knew his dad would have to give it one last try. As he went to sit at the dinner table, he heard his dad make a final attempt, but the mower didn't start.

Josie Dorri And The Coffee Ban: What if the government banned coffee? See what happens to Josie Dorri when they do.
She went over to silverware drawer and pulled out her coffee scooper. She had used the scooper for three years, and she wouldn't make coffee without it because any other scooper didn’t make the coffee as she liked it. A scoop for every cup she always said and it made the coffee strong, but not too strong; bitter but not too bitter; perfect and you can never have too perfect.

As she put the scooper into the coffee bag, she stopped when she saw the headline on the kitchen monitor screen. It read, in big bold type:

COFFEE PROHIBITION STARTS TODAY

Consumption Prohibited, Possession Prohibition Pending

The Present: Miles Gray has a good life, but doesn’t realize it. Often, a trip through time is all that is needed to open up a person’s eyes to how good they have it.
As he did every Friday before getting home from work, he stopped at a local bakery call YumYum. They were only five minutes from his home, and a dozen doughnuts every weekend was Miles’s treat to himself for making it through the work week. (He didn’t actually eat all of the doughnuts—his wife and kids would always help out with that.) YumYum’s doughnuts were definitely the best a person can buy and did not compare to any other bakery. The particular doughnut Miles always enjoyed and loved was the Buttermilk Stick. It was the perfect doughnut to warm up on Saturday morning, sit on his front porch, and eat with a hot cup of coffee.
After buying his doughnuts, Miles enjoyed the last five minutes of his drive. The vehicle had the aroma of the doughnuts filling it, and every time, Miles would give in to eating one of the doughnuts as he drove. More often than not, the Sour Cream doughnut accompanied him on the last leg of his journey home. He’d eat it slowly, making sure it lasted the entire five minutes to the point before he was walking through the door of his home. He often thought how he wished life would stick him in that moment with no return. It’d be a wonderful place.

Running To Keep Her: Neil is obsessed with exercise and eating right, but it’s not for his health that he does it. He does it to keep her.

That’s when Neil saw her. The shadows cast by the moonlight made it difficult for him to distinguish her features. She had long hair, and stood slightly shorter than Neil. She bent down and took a drink from the fountain, and a whole minute passed before she came back up for air. He noticed something familiar. Her silhouette looked like something he’d seen before. It had been dark. The street lamp outside the bedroom shone through the window and cast a seductive shadow on his wife’s body as she moved towards the bed. He remembered the night well because he thought about it often. What he saw now, reminded him of that night.

Available at:

US

UK

DE

Interview With B.C. Young Author of Unspoken Stories Volume 1

Web Site/Blog

Facebook Author Page

Twitter

Google+

I am pleased to announce that I am the first stop on a great author's Blog Tour!  He has published a volume of short stories entitled Unspoken Stories Volume 1.
B.C. YOUNG

Read a short snippet of each of his stories ---here--- and get in on a scavenger hunt ---here--- to win a free copy of Unspoken Stories!
You can also find a review of Unspoken Stories ---here---


What do you do when a story bounces around inside your head for three or four years? You need to get the story out to people, and the writer needs to tell it. Author B.C. Young had this exact thing happen to him. He was tired of driving back and forth to work everyday, conceiving a story in his head that no one could hear. Before long, he started to work on his stories. He decided on a simple approach that he felt anyone could read. His decision was to tell the stories he writes through shorter stories. The shorter stories end up telling a bigger story, and the bigger stories tell the final story. As a result, each story feeds off the next and the previous.
Currently his work involves the Miscorrection series and other science fiction stories. This is a favorite genre of his because it allows for so many possibilities in storytelling.

Unspoken Stories Volume 1.

A collection of five short stories to entertain and stimulate the mind. These stories were almost never told, but they were saved from being unspoken.  The collection includes the following science fiction stories.  Click the titles to read a 50% excerpt of the story, you'll be glad you did and even happier if you buy it for 3-tacos (that's $2.99).

THE INTERVIEW

First of all, did you know that using Google docs you can send, share and update in real time?  I watched as Ben answered my questions which I posted as a document there.  That was pretty cool.

Obviously you think while you drive, how do you keep story ideas from flying right out the window?

I find the best way to do this is NOT sticking my head out the window when I drive. This is especially the case when the window is up. I tried it once, and there was a lot of shattered glass and blood. 

Good Call!

The Quality/quantity debate really isn’t a debate at all is it?  I have often had the same misconception that you had, how has your writing changed after realizing that writing a great story like Copy Bird in six hours is possible?

It’s freed me from the slow, over-thinking process of writing. Now, when I sit down to write fiction, I let the creativity flow, and don’t get hung up on word use, grammar, and spelling. It’s made my writing quicker, and I feel, better because I’ve allowed my creative voice to speak in my writing, rather than my technical one.

It’s a lot easier to edit after you write and I find it doesn’t interrupt the flow.

Josie Dorri and the Coffee Ban reminds me a lot of some of the more off the wall short stories that Stephen King writes (that is a compliment and not part of the question :D)  Are you a coffee fiend, or what is that the story behind it?

Yes, I do drink coffee, but I wouldn’t consider myself a fiend. The story idea came from my brother-in-law. He thought it would be a funny to have a story about a person who doesn’t have their coffee for the day, and a bunch of bad things happen as a result. As you can tell in the story, I morphed this idea a bit by adding in a coffee prohibition by the government and giving a reason for the bad day. I had a ton of fun writing that story.

And I loved it!  I can relate to her, without that morning cup of coffee I may as well be a square tire!

What made you decide to sell “All My Fiction”?  What if someday you become a world renowned writer with a large publishing house?

I took it from a reader’s perspective. What if for a flat rate I could get everything a writer published? I’d love it. So I figured other people would, too. It’s definitely less of a risk for the reader. How often have you read a book only to not like it and feel like you wasted your money? I have. But of course, my stuff isn’t bad like that. I think you’ll like it. Still, for the pessimistic reader, All My Fiction is just the ticket!

If I become world renowned, All My Fiction will still be around, as long as distributors like Amazon, Smashwords, and others allow it. Anything written under the B.C. Young name will be in there. The only catch is you want to get in early, because the price goes up every time a new story is added to the eBook. Translation: Buy it now before it costs $1,000,000!

I know I have read a book by an author who I liked a story of only to be really disappointed and never bothered with him again.  Your idea is brilliant!  Maybe not all of your stories will appeal to a reader but they won’t stop reading you (and recommending you as well) We should get in now I think!

Who inspires you? 

Many things inspire me. When it comes to writing, friends and family give me ideas. Past writers like Isaac Asimov, and current ones, too. Sometimes, the guy standing in front of me in line at the grocery store inspires me. A box of doughnuts on the table in a scene of a movie I watched inspired me to write my short story, The Present. Characters and stories are everywhere, it’s just a matter of looking for them.

Do you see your self as a short fiction writer or do you think someday you will find yourself immersed in a novel?

Let me put it this way: I see myself as a fiction writer. Currently, my works are short stories, novelettes, or novellas. We tend to differentiate the length of a story to give people some perspective as to what they suggest. But at the end of the story they are all stories. It just so happens that some are longer than others.

I can also say that I am currently working on a novel length work. I’m doing this under a pen name, Desmond Shepherd. It’s entitled Fram Gage and The I.A. (The “I” and “A” in the title are still secret, but will be revealed in the coming weeks on my site).

Cool!  I can't wait to read it!

Did you know I can watch you type?

I didn’t until I saw you type. Then, I wondered if there was a ghost in Google Docs. Once I stopped freaking out that my computer was talking to me, I accepted it and decided you might actually be stalking me. Are you?

Not me, I pay people to do that!

Thanks for taking the time to do ask me a few questions and reading Unspoken Stories - Volume 1. I really appreciate it!

And thank you for allowing me and my readers an opportunity to get to know you a little bit better!  I would have to say that short story collections are my favorite!  I love all of the stories in Unspoken Words Volume 1.

Available at:

US

UK

DE

This Complete Idiot's Guide to the Galaxy (and Beyond)

I am working on putting my theory of the universe that has been rattling around in my head and brewing up since I was a teenager (which wasn't that long ago, in relation to the age of the Universe).  This is how the Synopsis may read:

Anyone can have a theory. Many express their views in print, but never before has it been done like this, at least not in this small corner of the galaxy. It's a theory of the universe from the eyes of a complete idiot who knows nothing about science and even less about good science. Using popular science and pop culture, this essay delves into this very deep subject with social commentary, a bit of logic and a few potty jokes thrown in for good-measure.
The universe has never been twisted such.

Here is an excerpt:

It’s A Trap!
In the movie In the Mouth of Madness, the main character, John Trent, finds himself unable to escape from Hobb’s End, a sleepy east coast village. No matter which way he drives out of town he always ends up back there. In the end he keeps his sanity while everyone else loses theirs, which makes him insane in relation. This is what will happen to you if you attempt to question my theories. Anyways, I digress.
We could look at the universe as Hobb’s End. No matter which way we travel we will always end up back where we start. You will never know when you’ve hit the “wall” of the universe because to pass through it, which you really don’t, you are on the other side of the universe. This is a bastardization of my theory but for exampletive purposes it will do. In the same way that Everything exists inside the universe, Nothing can get out. There’s no trap door, secret tunnel or passage ways that appear when you say the magic words, “Open Sesame!.” The wall might as well be impregnable, mostly because you don’t know where it is when you get to it, and because even if you did know where it is “breaking through it” would just start you on a path back to the beginning. I call this D. Ryan Leask’s Law of You’re Trapped Mother F**ker! or simply YTMF!.

Of course now you find yourself asking “What if you could?”
To which I reply firmly “You can’t.”
“But just let’s pretend you can.” You retort.
“There’s no place for ‘pretending’ in science!” I exclaim.
“But you said…”
To which I reply, “Shit, you got me.”

(The next section is titled nothing, just so you know)

Thanks for Reading


D. Ryan Leask

Do Stories Have Their Own Lives? My #SaturdayShorts are too big.

Tomorrow at 10am the contest #SaturdayShorts by Between the Lines closes.  The contest states that a story be written involving Cats, Frogs and Vampire Bats.  Easy.  Written from the persepective of a child.  Easy.  Be less than 500 words.  Easy.  WRONG.


The contest was declared on Wednesday and that night I quickly thought up the story and how it would go.  Basically the son of a God wanting a friend on earth.  Simple story.  Here is the question.  How many words is a thought?

   (∞ x π)³ⁿ + 42    

√(181-2(9x10)+1)

Approximately.

I am not obsessed with word counts.  I have never written anything worrying about how long it is going to be.  I use word counts merely as a sense of accomplishment when I have spend a period of time writing.  I let the story carry on as long as it needs too.  Characters are introduced, plots are laid out and shit happens. 

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog.

Eight words that tell a story, wouldn't be right if there were any more or any less.

I believe that every story has a word count already attached to it.  The problem is that until the last word is written, edited revised re-edited and published (or placed in a drawer or burnt in the fire place or put in a drawer) a writer does not know what that word count will be.

So here I am sitting with a rather lovely little story of 1200 words wondering WTF can I cut out?  Nothing but if I leave it at 1200 words it really has no life what-so-ever because I can't enter it in the competition.  Do I just shelf it?  It's too late to start again so perhaps I just say I tried, leave it for something else and try #SaturdayShorts next week.

BTW, if anyone wants to read it I will happily send it to you.

Thanks for Reading

D. Ryan Leask

Why I Prefer Writing Short Stories

Of course my ultimate goal is to write the not-so-great un-American Novel but in the mean time I just want to write some short stories. It’s so hard to have the uninterrupted time it takes to write a novel without losing your place. I write kind of like I read, start and can’t put the book down until it’s done. I need to break myself of this habit as it tends to leave a couple hundred pages of story with no clear direction and a need to read every page before getting back to it if I hadn’t looked at it for a couple of weeks.

Being able to write a short story in one or two sittings is much more preferable to me. I don’t need to worry as much about screwing up characters, messing up timelines or going too far into the back story and never coming out. All rookie mistakes I’m sure and anyone who reads this that happens to be an accomplished writer is probably rolling their eyes at me right now.

So where does that leave me?

I am in the middle of writing a book about a Serial Killer who gets off less in the murder and more in the watching others go to jail for it. I have wrote several detailed murders that in and of themselves could make for interesting stand alone stories.

I have my two related stories from Counting Down the Storm

A couple of things I wrote for a concept story I had involving the Devils Motel

I also have two new story ideas, one about a Hitman and his unstoppable and illogical need for a post kill burger
The other about an elderly man who finally gives in to his curiosity of how it feels to kill someone.

As you can see I have a theme. Sunshine and Lollipops!

Anyway it’s the weekend which for most would mean some time to relax and maybe sit at a keyboard for an hour or two but for me it means working my ass off getting ready for Baby Girl Evangelina, finishing the basement stairs, cleaning up and if given the chance, breathing.

Is it terrible that I almost hope my contract isn’t extended at the end of September just so I can really focus on what I want to do?

Saying that makes me feel really selfish.