New Post in Adventures in Writing
Like the accuracy of the US Atomic Clock, you can find me over in Adventures in Writing every Wednesday.
This week, I smoother you with Speed Reading for Fun and Entertainment.
This Book Sure Looks Like Plant Food to Me!
In the world of semi-automatic firearms, when a pistol or rifle fails to move a round into the chamber properly, causing a malfunction, we call this a “failure to feed.”
Not to be confused with my cat Iris, who, if I fail to feed when her dish is empty, will whack me alongside the head when I pass the kitty condo.
But I digress. Failing to feed has consequences.
I’ve blogged about this topic before, but sometimes, as a writer, I have this instinctual need to read, and if I ignore it, my creativity suffers. But there is always the “time thing.” I have a job, I have kids, a dog and the Wife Unit who loves to play video games with me (how awesome is that? It’s awesome, I tell you). There are so many hours in the day, and I when I get tired, I go to bed.
I never suffer from writer’s block (anymore), but yet again, I’ve caught myself slowing down in my editing and writing.
That is, until I increased my reading. It was fuel to the fire.
I love books. Sometimes, even bad ones are inspirational. I just finished a book, from a much respected author, and the ending was so terrible. So very bad. We’re talking I will probably never buy another one of his books without reading a review again, and I have every single one of his hard covers in my library.
But it had value, to me, as a writer. Creative value. It fed the mechanical side of the narrative, sacrificing the entertainment. Indeed, if I wasn’t a writer, I would have stopped reading right when I saw The Big Lazy Cop-Out.
But this book fed me. It made me think about the mechanics of storytelling and how vital the contract with the reader is. There are many ways I draw inspiration, I will never lack it, but the core of my literary soul is a book in my hands and a good story, and failing that, inspiration to not fail in the same way.
Feed me Seymour!
New Post in Adventures in Writing
Like a stripper needing rent money at the end of the month, you can find me every Wednesday at Adventures in Writing.
Today, I talk about elements of style, horror, and science fiction.
New Post in Adventures in Writing: The YA Girl
Every Wednesday you can find me over at my second favorite blog, ever. Today, I point people over to Moonrat with what I want to see in a YA heroine. You haven’t done interweb if you haven’t done Editorial Ass Whooping!
Sooner or later, grief will get us all
Chapter 24
Barney did what any modern man would do when sitting next to a hysterical female on a suborbital flight to Orlando. He gave me Bloody Marys until I shut up.
So now I’m grief stricken, feeling guilty for fucking Pride—and drunk—when I meet Cazandra at the airport.
“Oh, Lexus, you’re drunk.” Her eyes hold pity rather than condemnation.
I almost tell her, about what I just did. But I can’t.
“This day isn’t about me, Caz. Don’t make it about me. I’ll get through it. But it isn’t about me. It’s about her. This is her day. She deserves a nice day. She does. She does. She doesn’t deserve me!”
Grief as I never have felt it slams into me like a fist. I scream, a primal scream of pure loss and pain, and the room goes dim as the floor rushes up to meet…
Saturation Point
I’ve bottled up a lot of snark. I am not sure how much longer I can keep it inside.
Contest Entry
Contest entry for author Natalie Whipple’s Weather Contest.
Post a link to yours in the comments!
***
Terrance was dreaming about the war again. Each one was different, and this one carried with it an aura of menace, taunting him in his sleep. The only thing constant about the dreams was the weather.
In this dream, the tank wing stopped at the start of the carnage, and they all got out and shut down the tanks, so it was quiet. Sixteen men walked through the blasted Iraqi armor, trucks and tents. The Iraqi dead lay everywhere. In the blasted tanks, the blown trucks, lying out of the tents, strewing this way and that, bodies mangled unbelievably, hundreds of bodies all in name only. To an objective observer, they were just parts. The sand was wet with their blood, the air smelled like burnt metal, burn bodies, burnt fuel, the tang of blood and viscera, and yes, even fear and terror. The wind carried an eerie sound, mostly the tenor of burning accompanied by the whooshing and whirling moans of the breeze low across the sand. When it blew across his face, he could taste death. The sky was a sickly gray-yellow, the sun more of a suggestion.
Perhaps, if it rained in his dreams, he would stop coming back to the desert.
It never rained when he was in the desert, and so his memories would never wash away. All they did was congeal, like blood.
