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Featured Friday: A Date with the Devil
BY A. F. STEWART
Author’s note: This bit of flash fiction is a sequel, of sorts, to the short story, “Conversation in the Country Club”, which appears in my book Passing Fancies.
Jonathan Kellar poured the wine into the crystal decanter and smiled as he surveyed the table. Succulent oysters, the finest pâté, brie with wedges of apple, and sliced baguette with a herbed butter. Yes, a delightful midnight repast for his expected guest, Mr. Abaddon. As he stood there, taking pride in his creation, the doorbell chimed.
“Wonderful, he’s here.” Kellar crossed his spacious and lavish condo to answer the door and ushered in his caller. “Welcome, sir. I’ve prepared a late meal in anticipation of our appointment. If you would follow me.”
Kellar led his visitor to the table, saw that he was seated and poured them both a glass of wine. Then he settled into the chair opposite his guest.
“You set a lovely table, Mr. Kellar.” Abaddon sipped his wine. “And a fine vintage.”
“Thank you.” Kellar spread a bit of pate on a slice of baguette. “You must be curious as to why I invited you.”
“I will say, I am intrigued. Your invitation was, well, surprising. I am not often surprised.”
“You were referred to me by some members of my country club. They said you were good at removing life’s obstacles for a certain price. I am in need of such a service and willing to pay your price.” Kellar grinned. “If you can deliver what I want, you are quite welcome to my soul.”
“Well, Mr. Kellar, you truly are an astonishing one. Rarely am I approached, usually I make the offer.” He sipped his wine again. “Why, may I ask, did you believe your friends story? Generally a confession of selling one’s soul leads to doubt in the person’s sanity, not recruitment.”
Kellar laughed. “Let’s say I’ve done some extensive research which opened my mind to possibilities.” He reached out, picked up an apple wedge, smearing a chunk of brie over the fruit. “So can we do business?”
“A pity, but I cannot accept your contract.” Abaddon leaned in, a wicked smile on his face. “For you see, your nephew and heir already engaged my services. His soul in exchange for your death, Mr. Kellar. So he can inherit your sizeable fortune.”
“What!” Jonathan Kellar sputtered, swallowing the piece of brie and apple.
Mr. Abaddon laughed and snapped his fingers.
Kellar felt his throat constrict, as the food lodged in gullet, choking off his air. He gasped for breath, his face reddening. His fingers scrabbled against the tablecloth, pulling at it, spilling his glass of wine. The liquid soaked into the fabric, staining it crimson, as Jonathan Kellar collapsed to the floor, dead.
Mr. Abaddon rose, and waved his hand over the table. His wine glass, his place setting, all evidence he had been there disappeared. Then he vanished, in a waft of smoke and sulphur.
A. F. Stewart was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada, and still calls it home. She has always had an overly creative mind, and an active imagination. She is fond of good books (especially science fiction/fantasy), action movies, and oil painting as a hobby.
Stewart’s short story, “Our Man Fred”, appeared in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology in April, 2013.
Editor’s Notes: Introductions, Please
BY JESSICA SHEN
Getting to know your characters:
Arguably the most important component of your story are your characters. You may have a riveting plot and beautifully written story, but if your characters are unlikeable, unrelatable, or worse, one-dimensional, your audience just won’t care.
One mistake many beginning writers make is using a character solely for the purpose of moving the plot forward. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, your characters propel the story—but they do it for their own reasons, not for yours. For example, Johnny can’t go to the store because you, the author, need him to be there when the zombie apocalypse hits. Johnny goes to the store because his son has been coughing all night and there’s no more Robitussin in the house. My point is, you have to treat your characters like they are real people, with their own hopes, dreams, and motivations.
Perform a quick search for character development exercises on Google and you’ll see that the Internet is rife with them. I find that they are mostly split between two different types of exercises. The first is the survey. This is typically a series of questions asking “surface” level questions—how old is your character, what is his favorite food, how may siblings does he have—that type of thing. These exercises are a great way to introduce yourself to your character, like an icebreaker at a party.
The second type of exercise will help you dive deeper into the character’s soul, if you will. These exercises tend to ask more difficult questions. You may learn from the survey that your character’s greatest fear is to be alone, but these questions will help you find out why. Exploring these answers will give your character depth and roundness.
Here are some questions I think will be particularly helpful at getting you to think critically about your characters:
1. Consider the limitations of your character’s loyalty to the people they care about. Describe one situation in which they could be moved to betray these people.
2. Write a scene in which a character does something while alone in a setting that is extremely significant to that character. Have the character doing something (dishes, laundry, filing taxes, playing a computer game, building a bird house) and make sure that YOU are aware that the character has a problem or issue to work out, but do NOT tell your reader what that is.
3. Your character’s arch-enemy is in grave peril and the only person around who can save him is your character. Does he let his enemy die or save his life?
4. The following exercise is much longer and potentially more difficult, but very interesting and helpful if you’re still trying to get a grasp of who your character is as a person (each section could be relatively short):
- Write a character sketch strictly as narrative description, telling your reader who the character is without having the character do or say anything.
- Revise the above to deliver the character to the reader strictly through the character’s actions.
- Revise the above to deliver the character strictly through the character’s speech to another character.
- Revise the above to deliver the character strictly through the words/actions of another character (the conversation at the water fountain about the boss).
You may not be able to answer these questions right away, but the point is to get yourself thinking of and treating your characters like they are real people. Your ability to do that will come through in your writing, and they will become real to your audience, too.
Jessica Shen lives, works, writes, and edits from her laptop in northern California. Her latest project, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013. Her next project, Kingdom City by Benjamin Ireland, is slated for release in February 2014.
Featured Friday: Her Father’s Herd
BY J. AUREL GUAY
Editor’s note: as a fresh approach to introducing our authors to their audience, Featured Friday will now include their short stories, in addition to their insight and commentary. For our inaugural offering, J. Aurel Guay has allowed us to repost this from his blog. Find the original here.
Author’s note: ‘Her Father’s Herd’ is the product of a writing challenge where I attempted to write 1000 words based on five random images. The result was one of my better stories.
Andair looked over the level asteroid field, feeling the silence and emptiness of space. Her long, graceful build matched that of the lance she leaned upon. Through her narrow visor, her deep amber eyes watched carefully over her herd of dromonids.
‘That bastard of a brother should have been here by now,’ she thought to herself.
The goliath beast she stood on moved suddenly, forcing her to regain her balance despite her exo-suit’s automated gravity simulation. This dromonid had always been her favorite. She wasn’t quite sure why but, ‘Big Ben’, as she called him, had caught her attention the first day she went to check on the herd with her father. She was still small enough to fit in the shuttle beside her father back then. ButFather never came to the asteroid fields any more. In the wake of his failing health, Andair and her brother Olen had taken it upon themselves to watch over the herds.
‘Poor Ben,’ she thought, walking to the edge of his rocky dome. Looking down, she saw the nearly endless stretch of tentacles that trailed down to the stars from beneath the beast. Ben had been uncommonly listless and slow of late, even for a dromonid.
“Shuttle,” she commanded as she stepped off the edge and floated weightlessly beside her favorite pet. “Tell Olen to hurry up, one of the drom’s is sick. I’m doing an inspection.”
An affirmative tone chimed in her ear while the space craft that idled nearby carried out her command. Andair motioned gently with her hands as though she were swimming. Her automated suit responded in synchrony, moving her down alongside the massive dromonid. Dwarfed by its eye-spot she couldn’t help but feel some connection with the creature as she passed below him.
“Don’t worry big guy, this won’t hurt a bit.”
Her father had always talked to the dromonids too, despite their deafness to sound. Finally nearing his underside, Andair un-holstered a tranquilizer gun from her hip. Between the rings of tentacles thicker than her own body, she could see the burning glow of his rock-eating furnace. 85% of a dromonid was refined rock, but here, near his fiery mouth, she could find a suitable place for her dart.
Andair held her breath and pulled the trigger. The gun shuttered silently and the dart sped toward its mark. Her aim was good. On impact, the dart released a second burst that drove the needle and its sedative deep enough to reach the creature’s living tissues.
Slowly the red glow of Big Ben’s mouth faded and the swaying tentacles ceased their movement. Andair moved among them, swimming gracefully like a wrasse among sharks’ teeth. Approaching his slumbering core, she shone her spectral torch up into the beast.
The light revealed the inner network of organic tissues that spread through the rocky creature like a fine web. In his very core, she finally caught a glimpse of what she was looking for. While the raw ore accumulated by the dromonids was the larger bulk of what they would be harvested for when mature, it was their crystalline core that was of the most value.
Big Ben was quite old and should have had a large enough crystal to power a frigate cruiser. Andair sighed at the thought of giving up Big Ben, parting out his corpse to the highest bidder. But without the credits gained from the herd, her father would never be able to get the treatment he needed.
Shining her light across his crystal Andair paused. Something wasn’t right. Instead of a large solid crystal brimming with energy, Andair saw fragmented shards scattered around his core.
No, it couldn’t be. One by one the fragments began to twitch and move. Flipping a switch on her torch the image changed and she could see the writhing elongated shapes twisting and twitching within her beloved dromonid.
Scabers.
For a brief moment fear and grief threatened to overtake Andair.
“SHUTTLE! Call the herd away!” again the affirming tone responded, this time followed by the musical trills representing the replication of the electromagnetic dromonid language and their responses translated back in her ear buds.
Already the scabers were becoming restless inside their silent host. Their energies churned as they writhed. Before Andair could escape, her beloved dromonid was burst open spilling his infectious cargo into the void.
Exposed to the unimpeded radiation of space, the scaber’s eel like bodies burned with a brilliant orange and left trails of glowing debris. With only moments to survive outside of a host, the parasites wasted no time.
Andair was caught in a swirling tumult of rock, dromonid tendrils, and streaming scabers. She would not get out of this by mere space swimming. Using the propulsion unit in her suit, she sped out of the debris. Once clear, Andair quickly took stock of the situation.
In the distance, she saw her small shuttle diligently leading the herd away as it continued its musical calling. Closer, she saw the slow herd of dromonids marching silently after the shuttle; between herself and the herd, a glowing swarm of spiraling worms was speeding toward her family’s livelihood.
She had to stop them. Without a hesitation she hurled herself after the swarm. Racing ahead, she positioned herself between the scabers and her herd. Readying her father’s blast pistol, Andair fired a series of blasts. A few of the creatures burst and fell behind the accelerating school, but there were too many.
Adair couldn’t let them past her, she couldn’t let them infect her family’s herd, her father’s only hope. The creatures approached. Andair holstered her blaster and raised her lance. In an instant, she was enveloped in a swirling glow of undulating creatures that raced past her. Her lance swung and cut down a swath of scabers, their bodies bursting open on contact with her pointed spear. Again and again, she swung and struck. The space around her became scattered with the broken and dead corpses of the creatures. A pitched cry rang out in her ears buds.
One of the Dromonids had been hit.
She had drifted much closer to herd than she had realized. Another dromonid cried out as a scaber impacted its thick hide and began to bore its way within. Ignoring the shuttle, the dromonids responded. Instead of hanging down like lazy strands of ivy, their long arms stretched out in every direction. Moving their bulky heads into a cluster they formed a massive tangled net of swaying tentacles. Their out turned mouths created a burning core with which they tried to incinerate and devour the scabers before they could infect. Many of the parasites burned up or were deflected by the swaying limbs, delaying their journey just long enough for the extremes of space to do their work. But it was not enough.
Scaber after scaber found its mark, and bore into Andair’s herd with their own fiery mouths. Motion from beside her pulled Andair back from the horrific scene. A massive tentacle was swaying toward her, she dodged just in time, only to be impacted from behind. But it was not a dromonid that had struck her. With a burst of energy the scaber opened its fanged mouth and began to tear through her exo-suit. Twisting and turning she could see the burning tail of the creature swaying behind her, but she could not shake herself free.
Andair swung her lance wildly behind her back. With relief she felt it make contact, and a small puff at her back as the scaber’s fire went out. Red alarms flashed in her visor and alert tones sounded in her ear buds, but instead of fear, a strange calm blackness overtook her and all was silent again.
Awoken by the noise of gurgling, hissing, and monotonous beeping, Andair’s eyes snapped open. Directly in front of her, above her rather, was positioned a small square window. Through it she could see the gold tinted shapes of people looking down at her.
“She’s awake! Oh, thank God.”
“Father!” Her voice sounded muffled in the dense air of her confining cylinder. ”What happened? Where am I?”
“It’s okay, ‘Dair, you’re at the Medic post.”
“Scabers! The herd…” Weakness started to overtake her. She saw Olen by her father’s side, guilt and worry written on his face.
“It’s okay, it’s okay—” Her father paused to cough coarsely before continuing. ”All that matters is that you are safe. Don’t you worry, my dear. We will be okay… We’ll find a way.”
But his face betrayed the lie. Coughing again, he slumped back into a chair, clearly exhausted. Darkness overtook Andair once again. Drowning in the noise of the life-supporting machinery, she closed her eyes in restless sleep—sleep filled with broken dreams and lost hopes.
A graduate student in microbiology, J. Aurel Guay hits the books in Maine where he lives with his family. An author of Steampunk, fantasy, and science fiction, Guay’s short story, “The Death of Dr. Marcus Wells,” anchors Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, released in October 2013.
Editor’s Notes: Shifting Focus
BY TERRI WAGNER
Paragraph development is a tricky affair. How many of you took speech class in college? I ask because that’s the same MO as terrific paragraph development. Staying focused on what your paragraph is supposed to convey. Easy? Should be. But reality tells us no, people tend to chase rabbits.
What the heck is shifting focus anyway? (Find more info here.)
Let’s say you want to set the scene or paragraph about a specific football game, my favorite being college. (And yes I’m in mourning over the Alabama loss). Start by making a list of things you would need to know about a specific game: for example, names of teams involved (don’t muddy the water with other games, other teams), specific time period or the whole game (keep in mind it’s probably one or two plays that shifted the momentum to the winner), the names/numbers of the involved players (depends on the focus here), temperature (only if it was a contributing factor), etc.
Using our example above, ask yourself what is the focus? What do I want to say? Why would this be important to my novel, article, review? Stop for a minute and re-read what I just wrote.
Is this necessary? Does it have a place in your piece? And, if so, what place? The answers to these questions help you to decide if this paragraph (or scene) is helpful. If you were writing a crime novel, would a specific college game have anything to do with it? Does your character learn something from it to use later or is it a red herring? You have to know the answers to this before you consider continuing.
Now, write your paragraph and then consider this. Have you shifted focus by adding in things not needed but that sounded good? In other words, if I went off on a rant about the Crimson Tide being the national champions for the past two years, would that have anything to do with a specific game or play in my paragraph. Does add or detract? Am I actually chasing a rabbit?
When I took speech in college, my professor was a tyrant about focus. Sometimes you think it’s a nice little throw in when in fact it is a detractor. So let’s see if I can “show” you instead of “telling” you.
Paragraph: I had a bad feeling about this play. It’s the end of the game. Alabama has too much on the line. I mean, we are talking chance for a national championship, possible Heisman trophy winner, SEC championship game. This counts. And besides, it’s our rival. The big one, the one that means something around here for the next 364 days. Our special kicking team lines up. This is far, really far—I mean miracle far here. Shouldn’t we just spike it and go into overtime? Oh no! He kicked. I can’t see through my fingers, but I can hear the absolute silence. Then screams of noooooooo! What???? Can you do that? Snatch the ball in the end zone on a kick and run it back for a winning touchdown? Gone . . . all our dreams for our awesome seniors. The ones we will miss next year. And another decade of Kick Bama Kick. I am in mourning.
Let’s say my review is on miracle last second wins. What was rabbit chasing? Did it matter who the teams were? Did it matter what was on the line? Did I chase so much that the actual event was boring? Why did it matter if I had my face covered?
In comments, tell me how you would have written it from a proper perspective. And all condolences will be appreciated.
Terri Wagner works, writes, edits, and cheers the Crimson Tide from her home in Alabama. Her latest project, Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013.
Hot New Release: A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk
In anticipation of this Friday’s release of the Steampunk action/adventure A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk, we offer this interview of its author, Scott E. Tarbet.
The X: Tell us a little about yourself.
Tarbet: The #1 thing to know about me is that I am easily bored. That makes me an adventurer and an omnivorous reader. I love arcane knowledge; finding someone willing to keep playing the ‘80’s board game Trivial Pursuit with me was a real challenge.
Being a lover of the arcana of humankind makes me an ardent reader of history, and being a student of history makes me keenly aware of the turning points in history, albeit past, present, or future. A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk (AMNS) centers around one of those turning points.
How did you come up with the concept for A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk?
In Shakespeare’s beloved play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the tradesmen who put on a play for the Duke are called ‘rude mechanicals’, i.e., they work with their hands. The concept for AMNS was a quick and easily growth from the question, “What if the ‘rude mechanicals’ were actually ‘mechanical’ in the sense we use it today?”
Why Shakespeare?
To say I’m a big Shakespeare fan is a huge understatement. My Jewels and I share a passion for the work of the Bard, as embodied in our wedding garb. We honeymooned at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and go as often as we can.
Why Steampunk?
I’ve been a sci-fi fan my entire reading life, and only tapered off reading it when its bleeding edge became the dark and brooding ‘cyberpunk’. I was ecstatic when that faded away and the brighter, more optimistic and inventive ‘steampunk’ came along. And because of the relative youth of the subgenre it’s a fertile field for quality writing.
The cosplay is also a big draw (see those pics again—we had those wedding clothes custom-made), as is the creative immersive content at the cons.
What was your writing process?
Because I’m so easily bored I have to approach it like a job: I get out of bed and to the computer each morning with a defined goal in mind. The days I have to go out and do my ‘day job’, or when I’m at my opera ‘night job’, I take along an iPad and keep right on plugging.
That doesn’t mean I don’t get distracted. I’ve recently discovered and embraced the term ‘laterally productive’, meaning I’m doing meaningful stuff all the time (well . . . most of the time), but it isn’t always the stuff I assigned myself when I got out of bed. The business side of my writing ‘small business’ is very distracting, including the marketing side.
What character did you have the most fun writing?
I loved writing all my characters, even the bad guys. Each of them had their own charm and therapeutic value for me as a writer. But the mechs (micro-, mech, and mega-) were the most entertaining to write. It was intriguing and exciting to sit down to write each day and find out what they were going to do next.
That process is still going on, by the way, as I write out the short story version of one of the character’s back-story.
What is the most difficult part of creating a spinoff/adaptation?
Worrying about the fans of the Bard. I worried constantly what my Shakespeare-oriented friends would think. But as you can see by the quote on the cover from my friend Fred Adams, founder of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, people who love Shakespeare are attracted to Shakespeare partly because of his adaptability. We love seeing his tales told in new frameworks. Otherwise there would be no Shakespeare festivals. And there would certainly be no A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk.
What was your inspiration for this book?
I was actually inspired by the concept itself. What if the ‘rude mechanicals’ were actually mechanical? Mechanizing them, making them Cockney tradesmen from the East End of London, kicked off a creative process that rapidly filled the rest of the roles in the play. Of course to history buffs you can’t say “Bethnal Green” (a very Cockney area of the East End) without thinking “Jack the Ripper”, and that connection took on a life of its own.
The geopolitical plot line came from my understanding of just how pivotal this period was to the future: the 20th Century. If someone had taken Kaiser Wilhelm firmly in hand when he came prematurely to the thrones of Germany and Prussia, would the millions who died in the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust have survived? Would Communism have overcome Russia, and would the millions that perished in the gulags have survived and thrived in a world made more equitable by benevolent monarchies?
We’ll never know. But I think it’s safe to say the world would be a very different place today if Wilhelm’s grandmother Queen Victoria, and her daughter the Dowager Empress of Germany, had managed to get him in line. It was my pleasure to give them mech help to get it done.
What kept you up at night?
Deadlines, both self-imposed and from my publisher. I wanted to get this story out there and let others enjoy it as much as I do, and I knew that sticking closely to deadlines would help it happen.
That said, the entire process was a great joy to me. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for the world, and I look forward to lots more to come.
Scott Tarbet writes enthusiastically in several genres, sings opera, was married in full Elizabethan regalia, loves Steampunk waltzes, and slow-smokes thousands of pounds of Texas-style barbeque. An avid skier, hiker, golfer, and tandem kayaker, he makes his home in the mountains of Utah. His short story, “Tombstone”, was released in Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology to excellent reviews.
Join Tarbet and all The X Team at the launch party for A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk on Friday, November 29, 2013, on its Facebook event page.