28 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Lagrange Books, Self-Promotion
The Kickstarter campaign for The Wand that Rocks the Cradle is about to end, and we have blown past our goal with room to spare. I can’t wait to get to work publishing these great stories!
If you were thinking of backing this anthology, now is your last chance. See you there…
09 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Lagrange Books, Self-Promotion
Thanks for supporting The Wand that Rocks the Cradle! For our next exclusive story excerpt, we have the beginning of “Bellwethers Know Best,” which discusses the trials and tribulations of raising a young, powerful daughter when all the rest of the family want to get their two cents in. Enjoy!
Eulalie skipped down the hall, an amulet wrapped around her head to hold a cataract of lacy blue silk in place. Bracelets and tripled strands of beads ringed her arms. “Mom, I’m going out to play!”
Eden stood before the front door, one hand outstretched. “The Bracer of Erishkigal, please.”
Eulalie rolled her eyes and slipped a red-and-black cuff off her wrist. As she held it out, a small book slid out from underneath the satiny stretch of lime green scarf she wore as a chiton and plopped onto the floor.
“And the grimoire,” said Eden.
Eulalie handed it to her.
“And the Orb of Chios, while we’re at it.”
Pouting, Eulalie handed them over. “Grandma says she doesn’t know how she raised such a killjoy,” she said.
“Tell your grandmother that she’s not helping.”
07 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Lagrange Books, Self-Promotion
Thanks for supporting The Wand that Rocks the Cradle! Today you’re in for a treat: the first of our story excerpts! You’ll be happy to know that the stories are nearly finished with the first round of edits, which let’s us raise the curtain just a little bit. As the days go by, we are going to be periodically posting excerpts from the stories in the anthology to give you a little taste of the full package. Our first excerpt is the beginning of the short story “Dead in First Grade,” by P.L. Sundeson. Enjoy!
As an only child who did not play with many other children, Emma Peters had no one to tell her what school was or should be like. She was sure, though, that your teacher was not supposed to be dead.
* * *
Emma knew the days of the week, and she knew Thursday was a Work Day. So she was startled to see Daddy, in his dark gray suit and tie as always, waiting outside their gate that cool September morning. She threw herself down the steps and hugged him around his waist. “Daddy! I’m glad you came. Mommy said you had work.”
Daddy stroked her head. “I couldn’t let my little girl go to her first day of school without me.”
03 Friday May 2019
Posted in Lagrange Books, Self-Promotion
Thanks for following our campaign as we launch The Hand that Rocks the Cradle! In our quest to help you get to know our authors better, today we will be interviewing W.O. Hemsath, author of the short story “Coffee Break.” Enjoy!
What attracted you to writing?
I don’t have the skills to draw or sketch, and that’s always made me a bit sad. But I loved to read and I loved to talk, so I developed a big vocabulary when I was little. When I learned I could paint with words to create art the way others paint with lines and colors, I realized I had a medium that allowed me to transfer the ideas in my head into someone else’s. From that point on, I was hooked. I’ve been writing stories and telling stories ever since.
How did you get to this point in your writing? Did you take classes, or intensively study particular authors, or simply do a lot of writing and learn as you go? All of the above?
When I was in grade school, I wrote for fun—short stories, poems, song lyrics, choose-your-own-adventure serial pieces for a friend’s on-line magazine, anything I could find. In college, I went to film school and got my degree in screenwriting. After that, I took off about ten years to serve a mission for my church, get married, have kids, etc. I dabbled with writing here and there during that decade, kept a journal of all the story ideas that kept popping up, but didn’t write much. I did start a Master’s program in Creative Writing during that time, but I quit towards the end of the first semester. I wasn’t learning enough from it to justify the commitment at the time.
In late 2016 I got serious about my writing again and was at a point in my life where I could dedicate some time to it. I joined a writing group, went to writing conferences, read various craft books and blogs, watched Brandon Sanderson’s online lectures, listened to podcasts on writing—anything writing related I could get my hands on, really.
26 Tuesday Mar 2019
Posted in Writing
Tags
After I had finished making selections for Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, I wrote a post discussing some of the recurring patterns in short stories that did not make the cut. And now that selections have been made on two more anthologies (official announcement coming soon!), it seems a good time to expand that list. (I am proud to say that this time, every author did get personalized feedback—which apparently is not common these days.)
Variations of the “And” Plot
In an “And” story, something happens, and something else happens, and something else happens… but each event seems meandering. There is no progression from one episode to the next; and no buildup to a theme’s culmination.
This time around, there were a few subspecies of the “And” plot that deserve special note:
Nihilism
Yet again, the grimdark emo plot makes an appearance. It seems like many authors believe that fiction ought to be depressing and to reiterate the meaninglessness of life. This often leads to flabby stories in which a series of bad things happen, with no real theme or point.
A useful contrast would be HP Lovecraft. His stories were unrelentingly grim, of course; but they were not truly nihilistic, to my mind. Rather, in the Lovecraft mythos, human experience was approximately trivial in comparison to the vast ancient powers who battled over the cosmos. On some level, meaning still existed; it’s just that humans rarely mattered!
And this does not mean that grim, depressing stories are verboten. But they need to have a point. The Grapes of Wrath, 1984, or Old Yeller were all grim; but the grimness was in service to the story, not its focus.
***
So there you have it. The recurring theme of all of these entries is that stories, in my opinion, ought to have conflict over important stakes. The conflict need not be big and pyrotechnic; small vignettes can also be good. But it has to illustrate something that matters. At a time when we have literally millions of books to choose from, a good story needs a reason to demand the reader’s time. Tell a story worth reading.
16 Friday Feb 2018
Posted in Better Fantasy, Self-Promotion, Writing
Tags
call for submissions, Fantasy, free market, short story, short story anthology, writing, writing contest
Amazing news—the short story anthology of military fiction that I’ve mentioned before just got placed under contract!
Hopefully, I’ll have more news to report before long. In the meanwhile, it’s time for another Call for Submissions…
The theme for the next anthology is “Ye Olde Magick Shoppe.” Full rules are here, and the deadline is June 1. Your stories must include the buying or selling of magic as a plot element. Be sure to read the full rules, or risk the slush pile.
I look forward to reading your submissions! Good luck!
21 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in Self-Promotion, Writing
Tags
anthology, edited anthology, fiction, Kickstarter, military fiction, publishing, request for submissions, Self-publishing, short stories, short story, short story anthology
Last month, I put out a request for submissions for an anthology of short military fiction. Now, the time has come. The first three authors have been selected, and the Kickstarter project is live!
We’re still accepting story submissions until April 1. The more money gets raised, the more that chosen authors will be paid, and the more stories we can publish. Join me to make this a reality!
01 Wednesday Feb 2017
Posted in Self-Promotion, Writing
Tags
anthology, aspiring author, call for submissions, fiction, Military, military fiction, NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, short stories, short story, writing, writing contest
If you have visited this blog since the new year began, you might have noticed a new series of pages in the top menu. It’s part of a new concept I would dearly like to develop, which should provide more opportunities for authors to find paying work as well as giving readers more influence over the books that get written. I blogged about audience-driven book writing at the end of December, and now you can join with me to make the concept a reality.
I am accepting submissions for a new short-story anthology in the genre of military fiction (chosen mostly because it seemed to be underserved, compared to its reader base). The deadline for submission is March 1. Stories should be between 3,500 and 7,000 words long. Selected authors will be paid for publication rights. And in a few weeks, I will be launching a Kickstarter project to raise the funding for publication.
If you want to learn more about submitting your writing, check out the full description and short-story requirements here. And if you want to be notified when the Kickstarter project goes live (whether you are an author or a reader), sign up here. (If you want to suggest a new genre for the next anthology, please do so in the comments below.)
The full vision is for groups of readers to pool their funding, and pay authors to produce the works that they want to read. This anthology is Step One towards fully realizing that vision. For it to work, we need your stories—your talent, your craft, the vivid characters and gripping situations that you want to show the world.
If you have friends who are authors, or who are readers, please share this post and let them know of this opportunity. Again, this is a paying gig—and if the Kickstarter goes well, we may be able to publish stories from more authors than the minimum, making the anthology even more attractive for readers. This is not a zero-sum game; there are no limits. The more people who join together, the more that everybody wins.
Show the world what you can do.
10 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in Politics, Self-Promotion, Weapons, Writing
Tags
fiction, government, Guns, Kindle, politics, short story, writing
[Note: This is one of the short stories that can be found in my Kindle collection, The Best Congress Money Can Buy: Stories of Political Possibility. Given recent events and the political debates that have accompanied them, I figured it would be appropriate to revisit this story. Let me know what you think!]
Beth had scarcely come home from the massage clinic where she worked when her smart phone beeped at her, with the news that Handgun Defense, Inc., was lobbying for more changes to gun-ownership laws. This time, they wanted to weaken the exemptions for pepper-spray.
“Ridiculous,” Beth snapped to her friend Donna, who had come by with a satchel of tomatoes from her garden. “Why should they force me to carry a gun if I don’t want to? What’s wrong with pepper spray?”
“It says here that they don’t think it does a good enough job against criminals,” Donna said with a sniff, reading from her own phone. “I think they just want to end up with everyone owning a gun, whether we want it or not.”
19 Monday Aug 2013
Posted in Self-Promotion, Writing
Tags
chanuka, Fairy tale, Fantasy, fiction, Hanukka, Judaism, new book, Self-publishing, short story
[What follows is the text of an illustrated children’s book, now available on Kindle and in hardback. The artwork from my artist collaborators is absolutely stunning! Check it out!]
Once, long ago in a faraway land, there was a wise princess who lived in a magical castle. The princess commanded a large fearsome dragon, who was strong enough to do all sorts of work that people needed. If the people needed fish, the princess would tell her dragon to carry a giant net to the ocean and fish there. If the people needed a new road, the princess would have her dragon melt rocks with his fiery breath and pave the road with them. And the people were happy, because their princess took care of them.
But the dragon was not happy. Not only was he doing all the work, but he was always hungry, because the princess wouldn’t let him eat people. Imagine you were a dragon, and you were surrounded by happy people all the time, and you couldn’t even eat one of them! So the dragon was very sore at the princess, and dreamed of a day when he could break free of her control.
At last, his chance came. The dragon used a powerful magic spell to send the princess into a deep sleep, and hid her away in her castle. Then he flew out into the land, and ate dozens of sheep and cattle and even a few people. And the people were afraid, because their princess was gone and could no longer take care of them, and because the dragon’s hunger was insatiable.
Many heroes ventured into the castle to save the princess, but none of them ever returned. The people lost hope that they would ever have their princess back. But one man had not lost hope. Yet he was no great warrior, but a simple baker named Chanoch. And he had a plan.
One day, Chanoch came up the road to the castle, carrying a big heavy backpack, and cautiously crept inside. He found the main hall covered by thick darkness; he couldn’t even see the great throne where the princess sat, but he knew in his heart that she was there. Looking around the edges of the darkness, he saw four great oil lamps on the left side of the room, and four more on the right.
“If I light those,” he said, “I’ll be able to see the princess. Maybe then I’ll know what to do.”
But scarcely had he taken out his flint and tinder to light a torch, when the room rumbled as the dragon swooped down from the roof and landed on the floor with a thud. “Oh no you don’t!” he cried with a mighty roar. “I suffer a terrible hunger, and the princess would never let me satisfy it. So as long as the hunger remains, the princess will stay my prisoner!”
Oddly enough, this was just what Chanoch had expected. “Good sir dragon,” he said kindly, “of course I don’t want you to go hungry. But have you ever tried eating something other than people?”
The dragon paused and cocked his head. Normally, the heroes just went straight to the stabby stabby, and then he ate them. Chanoch’s politeness was unusual. “Well,” he said, “the princess fed me nothing but lettuce and tofu. It was all so bland. I needed something more. I needed to eat people!”
“I can understand that,” Chanoch said. “But what if there were a food that was better than people?”
“Like what?” the dragon asked, curious.
For answer, Chanoch took out mixing bowls, a frying pan, and ingredients from his backpack: flour, water, sugar, eggs, and oil. He mixed dough, formed it into round balls, and put them into the pan with a little bit of oil. “Could you do the honors?” he said to the dragon.
The dragon was skeptical, but he breathed a short puff of fire onto the pan, frying the dough balls in the oil. Chanoch nodded in satisfaction and held one of the dough balls out to the dragon.
“What is it?” the dragon asked.
“It’s called a donut,” Chanoch replied.
“Hmm,” the dragon said. He snaked out his big head and snagged the donut with his long thin tongue, chomping on it with his giant pointy teeth. “Not bad,” he said, surprised. “Nice and soft on the outside, and sweet and chewy on the inside. Kind of like people.” But he hesitated. “It’s still not as good as really eating people,” he said. “There’s something missing.”
“Tell me,” Chanoch said, “and I’ll try to fix it.”
“Well,” the dragon said, concentrating on the taste, “when I eat people there’s a gooeyness to it. The donut is too dry on the inside.”
Chanoch smiled. “Easy enough.” He took out a jar of strawberry jelly and a large syringe. Sticking the syringe into the center of a new donut, he squirted jelly inside, and sealed the hole with a little dough. He held it out to the dragon. “Try it now,” he said.
The dragon ate the jelly donut, chewing slowly, little globs of jelly dripping onto his scaly lip until he licked them up. “Hey, this is good,” he said. “Even better than before.” But still he hesitated. “It’s close, but it’s still not quite the same.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” Chanoch agreed. “Fried donuts aren’t people, even if you put jelly in them. But I’ll tell you how you can make them even better than people.”
“Better? Really?” The dragon blinked his great shining eyes.
“All you have to do,” Chanoch said, “is say ‘thank you’ before you eat them.”
The dragon laughed, smoke trailing from his mouth. “That’s silly! How could saying ‘thank you’ make food taste better?”
Chanoch smiled. “Because saying thank you shows that you appreciate the food. Here, try it.” He held out another jelly donut.
“I still think it’s silly,” the dragon said, “but all right.” He snaked his head forward again, but before grabbing the donut, he said, “Thank you for this donut.” Then he chewed and swallowed. As he did, the dragon’s face glowed with delight. “Wow!” he said. “You were right! This is so much better than people.”
“So does that mean you’ll free the princess?” Chanoch said.
The dragon licked his lips, fidgeting. “Do you think the princess will let me eat these jelly donuts? Or will she make me go back to tofu?”
“If you say thank you for them, I’m sure the princess won’t mind,” Chanoch said. “And I promise you’ll get all the jelly donuts you need.”
“All right then,” the dragon said. “I sealed the princess with a word of power. When you light the lamps, you’ll be able to read it. Just speak it aloud, and she’ll wake up.”
So Chanoch lit the eight lamps, and their light drove away the darkness in the throne room. Just as he knew she would be, the princess was seated on her throne, fast asleep. Hovering in front of her was a glowing word, written in the air. Chanoch spoke it aloud, and it dissolved. The princess woke up.
“Sufgan!” she said. “You’ve been a very naughty dragon!”
“I know,” the dragon said sheepishly. “But it’s okay now, because Chanoch is going to give me jelly donuts to eat instead of people.”
“That sounds better, Sufgan,” the princess said. “Just as long as you’re sorry, and you never do it again.”
So everyone was happy. The princess was awake again and could take care of the people once more. This time Sufgan the dragon got to eat jelly donuts, so he didn’t mind working. And he always said thank you to Chanoch.
The people were glad that their princess had been returned to them, so much so that they made a holiday in Chanoch’s honor, which they called Chanuka. They even forgave Sufgan the dragon, and called his jelly donuts Sufganiot. Even today, we eat sufganiot on Chanuka to commemorate when the princess and the dragon started working together again.
So now, dear readers, have a happy Chanuka. And remember that when your own dragon get hungry, it’s better to eat jelly donuts than to eat people. And don’t forget to say thank you!
[If you liked the story, check it out in lavishly illustrated Kindle or hardback!]
Building Worlds 