2015 WORD COUNT = 4882
words
Well that’s January out of the way.
FIRST THERE WAS THE ZOMBIE TALE
Many years ago SFX magazine ran an
annual short story writing competition called Pulp Idol. 1500 words for a
sci-fi, fantasy or horror story. I entered three times, twice being mentioned
in the back matter as making the final fifty.
And then it stopped and that made
me sad.
Last year, the magazine laid out
a similar contest but this time themed solely around zombies. It was tough
going as I struggled to get a 2500 word version down below the contest limit of
1500. It was a throwaway comment from a work colleague that saved it (see here)
and I ended up with a nice little story called CONDOLENCE (available to read here).
I didn’t get the result I hoped
for (winning, obviously) so it’s cool that I get to have another go this year.
The limit remains 1500 words but they’ve added the extra requirements of
including a zombie dressed like Santa as well as using Christmas lights as a
prop. Once again the final five entries will be judged by author Darren Shan
with the winning story being published in the magazine.
I created a core concept almost
straight away but have had trouble over the last couple of months fitting it
into a working story. I’ll have to wait until #260 of the magazine hits
newsstands on April 1st to find out how I’ve done but, once the
results are out there, I’ll take a post to discuss how I got to the final
version.
THEN CAME THE FANTASY TALE
As I post this I’m still busy
editing the first entry to the FALLEN SWORDS
saga, an episodic fantasy that I started writing back in November last year.
The plan is to release an episode every fortnight here on the blog starting
this Friday.
But what’s it about, I hear you
ask. Well, let me explain.
A
man wakes on a beach to discover two things; he is without memory and he has a
piece of purple stone embedded in his chest.
He
soon finds himself dragged from one conflict to the next as he becomes
embroiled in the politics of the land. But it doesn’t take long for him to
realise that some people are more interested in the stone and its powers than
helping him find out who he is and where he’s from.
The idea started off last year as
its own thing. I’ve used events from the last three years of my job to lay out
a rough timeline of events as I’ve met new people, learnt new things and moved
from office to office. It all sounds boring to anyone who doesn’t know what it
is I’m referring to but it’s helped me plan an epic, multi character plot,
something I’ve always struggled with.
I’ve always wanted to write an
epic fantasy story but I find it hard to create plots that twist and turn and
cover a large cast. I’ve tried it before
but given up after drowning in the world building.
This method, however, has helped.
It’s a little like when special effects artists put a suit on an actor, one
that has the little yellow balls stuck to it. They use the balls to mark
certain points of the actor’s body so that they can track his or her motion and
match it to a CG character. Here I’m taking a real event; converting it to a
fantasy staple (assassination, war, fleeing a country) and slotting it back
into place.
After finishing the first part in
draft last year I decided to mix things up a little and merge the project with
my previous failed attempt.
That version came about after I
read the intro in Stephen King’s Dark Tower books. In it he describes wanting
to write a novel that “contained
Tolkien’s sense of quest and magic but set against Leone’s almost absurdly
majestic Western backdrop”. In other words, with the Dark Tower, he wanted
to mix ‘Lord of The Rings’ with ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’.
I too wanted the quest and magic
of Tolkien but I wanted to add it to something else, something I had more of an
interest at the time than the writing itself; superhero comics.
And that’s what I tried writing
almost ten years ago; a series of fantasy novels set in a fantasy realm during
the time of the first superheroes. There would be castles, forests and
mountains but it would be the backdrop to super teams, super villains and super
powers.
Of course with everything I
start, it never got finished.
While working on FALLEN SWORDS over Christmas I thought
it would be silly to create one fantasy world and then go back to the older one
and try and write different stories. Wouldn’t it make more sense to combine the
two? It would mean that one wasn’t a complete waste and it would steer it away
from the whole based-on-work thing enough to keep it interesting for everyone.
Like when a TV series based on a graphic novel occasionally steps away from the
source material.
So that’s what I’m doing. The
plan is to release an episode every fortnight (Friday). Each episode will
probably be around 2000 words (that is loose) so that it’s not over to quick
but it also won’t take up too much of your time.
Check back here on Friday evening
and (hopefully) the first episode will be up.
AND FINALLY THERE WAS THE FLASH TALES
A quick round up of last week’s
Flash Friday contests.
Micro
Bookends – CHRIS AND MIKE
vs THE FOREST OF DEATH
This was a struggle until I
realised that the story I had in front of me was just screaming to be the
follow up to last week’s CHRIS AND MIKE
vs THE WORLD. Perhaps tomorrow will produce the final part of the trilogy.
I’ve talked before that sometimes
I’m not happy with all my pieces but it’s rare for me to love a story. I’m a
perfectionist who can’t stop tweaking my stories and struggle to see them as
complete even when they’re posted. But this piece, a story of revenge between
two brothers set against a stark, desert landscape, is probably my favourite
piece of flash fiction that I’ve written to date. I’m not saying it is amazing;
only that it’s amazing to me.
Due to a busy weekend working on HUMBUG and a photo prompt that failed
to spark anything, I didn’t write anything for Angry Hourglass. I also won’t be
writing a piece this weekend but that’s because I’ve been asked to judge the
contest. It’s a scary prospect as I don’t think I’m always good at describing
the gut feeling I get when reading other peoples work. Sometimes I just know if
I like something or not. But it’s a side of the process I’ve not done yet so
I’m looking forward to giving it a go but trying not to think of all the people
I’ll make miserable by not picking them as the winner.
ROUND UP
And that’s the lot. Fingers
crossed FALLEN SWORDS goes up on
time, fingers crossed it doesn’t suck and fingers crossed people like it and
spread the word.
From this week I’m changing the
format of the blog a little. The format going forward now will be Blog post on
Wednesdays, FALLEN SWORDS on Fridays
and my various Flash Fiction entries now collected together on a Sunday.
See you in seven.
(Fallen Swords in two!)
No comments:
Post a Comment