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Flash Fiction Challenge: On Patrol
Every so often, we happen upon an image that screams flash fiction challenge. We then post it in our authors Facebook group and get out of the way. The following is one such image and the flash fiction it inspired our amazing authors to write.
PUNCH LINE BY ALYSON GRAUER
Spud wiped the condensation from his visor and grinned.
“So the bartender says,” Marnie continued, her voice crackling in his headset, “‘I don’t care whose dog it is, but Rip Van Winkle!'”
Spud guffawed. “Marnie, that’s TERRIBLE!”
“I know,” Marnie chuckled on the other end of the line, and Spud could hear the smugness in her voice even through the interference.
“Where do you even get all of these jokes? I don’t even think I’ve heard you repeat one yet.”
“I gotta have something to keep you going out there,” she replied, cheerfully. “You need to keep up your morale while on patrol, and laughing helps you stay sane.”
“Sane?” Spud shook his head as he stepped over a number of broken crates, the rusty vessel docked alongside the pier motionless and silent in the fog.”It’s been a long time since any of us were sane, Marnie. You should know better.”
“I know,” Marnie said again, but her voice softened. She paused. “Listen, Spud, I… I know it’s awful out there. But it’s been ages since anyone actually saw anything.”
Spud slowed to a halt, standing on the eerie, silent dock. He studied the scene, the remnants of a busy day in the cargo business torn to pieces all around him. “Yeah?” he prompted her. “Go on.”
“Well… I just. Do you never wonder why?”
“Why? Why what?” Spud squinted up at the top of a signal tower which still gleamed faintly red in the daylight. “We destroyed ’em all ages ago, that’s why.”
Marnie was quiet, and for a moment Spud only heard the faint crackle of her breathing, and the faint shifting of rusted metal in the breeze. Then there was a clang from somewhere within the cargo ship, as though something had fallen from a great height and clattered to the ground. Spud whirled, weapon raised, heart suddenly pounding. It’s nothing, he told himself. Nothing left. Nothing’s left. It’s just the wind. It’s just my mind, and Marnie talking about the past.
“Spud?” Marnie’s voice was small.
“Yeah, Marnie?”
“I think . . . some of them are still out there.”
“Marnie, stop this talk. It’s not worth scaring yourself.”
“Oh Spud, I wish . . . I wish it weren’t so. But I think they’re still out there. And I think they’re coming back.”
“Marnie, I think I heard something,” Spud heard himself saying before he could help it. He was moving slowly towards the cargo ship, squinting through his visor, his heart pounding.
“Spud, I’m sorry I brought it up.” Marnie whispered. “Do you want to hear another joke?”
There was a much bigger noise from inside the rusted ship, and Spud stopped in his tracks. “Sure.”
“Okay . . . What’s big and gray and doesn’t like humans?”
Without warning, the ship split apart as easily as a banana being peeled from the inside out.
Spud dropped his weapon with a clatter, his insides releasing with numb terror. He stared at the thing as it unfolded, rising up before him and stretching its many limbs, jaws straining as though in a yawn.
“Spud?”
The thing looked at him. Spud stared back, in blank disbelief.
“Spud, copy. What’s big and gray and—”
The thing made a terrible noise, and Spud said, “Marnie!”
“Spud?! Do you read me? What was that sound?”
The line went dead. Marnie sat very still, her heart thundering in her chest, and her hands white knuckled around the radio transmitter, unable to let go.
•••
Grauer’s short story, “Lavenza, or The Modern Galatea,” appeared in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology. Her first full length novel, On the Isle of Sound and Wonder, will be released the spring of 2014.
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PEST CONTROL BY S. P. MOUNT
Eerie. To think this is where it all began, the rudimentary shipyard that will see the creation of a fleet of sophisticated Starships in less than half a millennium; computerised monsters that will evolve to become sentient predators to supersede the brilliance of the minds that created them. To bite not only the hands, but also humanity itself, spraying it as an infestation with vitrifying beams, no more than an army of glass statues where it stood against them.
Yes, so primitive, such humble beginnings, yet a beauty in this ugliness; the sky turbulent; a veritable canvas of oil; the earth, soiled, all in the monochromatic influence of the Homo sapiens; not a weed to colour their dingy world even without the annihilation of all things organic. And hard to believe, once upon a time, that people could breathe this atmosphere without a bionic respiratory system.
But what of those Starships now; what of the future? Will the destruction of this place and others like it be enough to save humanity from eradication; such as it’d evolved with its mechanical encouragement? Or will those celestial marauders simply be constructed in other times, places; man intent on self-obliteration in any event?
How will what we’ve done here today change what I have known history to be? Will there even be an Earth when I return? Restored? But how can it be? For here begins a different path. What will I find there? Will I have a wife, children? Or will I simply disintegrate, never having been born at all? Will those attentive beasts still glide the skies intent on destroying anything even slightly organic that dares to waver in the breeze?
But more to the point, will those b**stards still inject my visor with shaving foam? Yeah, happy frikkin’ birthday Azeurus! Hilarious.
•••
New to The X, Mount’s first short story, “Black Ice”, will appear in our winter Back to the Future anthology, slated for release January 2014.
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BOUGHT AIR BY DAVID W. WILKIN
The world goes to pot, and I get stuck with this. Twenty paces, turn left. Twenty paces, turn left. And again, and again. Walk the effin square.
Herbert talked to himself. What else did you do when you walked post. There was a time when he didn’t do this, but then there was a time, when running water was clean and you could drink it. When air was free and everyone breathed it. Well, maybe it wasn’t so clean here in the motor city. And a place which made its money on gas polluting clunkers…
Fools he thought again. If the world had paid more attention to pollution and less to global warming… Both had contributed to the way things were. Plagues that took nine out of ten people in the industrialized nations. Less in the others, but an imbalance and a destruction of the infrastructure.
The Northern USCAN Coalition Government, stepping in to preserve what little there was, as those wanting to breath sucked on canned air. And with not enough people to work the steel mills, stripping ships and skyscrapers for their metal was a way to making yourself a millionaire. Herbert was paid 7.75 an hour to make sure that no one here in Detroit thought they could become a millionaire at the Nuscan Coal’s expense.
Far too much had gone the way of the Dodo bird. Reminded him of his friend Scott…
•••
David W. Wilkin’s short story, “Micawber and Copperfield,” appeared in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology. Wilkin has several published works and a project under development with The X.
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THE CLIENT BY BENJAMIN IRELAND
They never told us who the clients were, and we never asked. I got my gold and that’s all I really cared about. But that one day I saw a client, I wish I hadn’t.
I walked around the warehouse for the eighteenth time that day, ignoring the ache in my heels. Twelve years on the job and I could still feel the skin coming off my feet after a day of perimeter duty. One circuit of the facility took about thirty minutes.
I looked to my left. My HUD recognized the gesture and pulled up the time and weather information.Seven minutes until the end of my shift. I smiled despite myself, flexing my fingers around the heavy blaster rifle in my hands. Five kilos of Lair batteries and graphine got hard to hold after nine hours.
They didn’t tell us who the sail barge was for, and I didn’t even think to ask. But I was just about to put in for the night when the client arrived, their galactic cruiser’s landing lights lit up my visor like Coruscant.
I stepped to the side as the prettier guards in their shiny white armor approached. The guys that looked good, but really didn’t count as soldiers. The door of the ship hissed open and lowered to the deck with a thud. Then the weirdest looking alien I’d ever seen slithered out. That’s when I knew I’d had my fill being a guard for Ubrikkian Industries.
•••
Ireland’s short story, “Kissed a Snake,” appeared in Dash of Madness: a Thriller Anthology. He will also have a short story in our upcoming Back to the Future anthology. His first full novel, Kingdom City, is slated for release January 2014.
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RETIREMENT PLAN BY J. M. SALYARDS
“Halt the tank.”
The sixty ton beast shuddered to a stop and began its rough idle, the turret rocking once under the weight of the massive main gun before the vertical stabilizer did its work.
Fellings, the driver, sighed over the helmet comm-link. “What’s up, Sergeant? We’ve got a deadline. Battalion is supposed to assemble in forty mikes, and we’re still fifteen clicks out.”
“I know,” Sgt. Reine replied. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?” Gunner Haley asked. He and loader Bullman, sharing the turret with their commanding NCO, glanced over at Reine, who crouched down from the cupola to look at them.
“It’s just rumors, but if they’re calling the whole division in, there must be some truth to ‘em. Look, fellas, it’s been a long-ass war. We’ve been through a lot together. But I ain’t goin’ in for no “special re-education” or whatever it is. Nobody’s putting a pill in me.”
“Come on, Chuck. That’s just for the prisoner regiments,” Haley said. “The war’s over. We won.”
“Yeah? You taken a look around, lately? Is this what winning looks like? Naw, man. Something else is going on, here. I tried to keep us clean of all the messiest stuff. Like what went down in Harrisburg, and Dover. You guys can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed more and more of those ‘penal’ regiments, and less and less of our guys—regular line guys. I’m through watching those guys in black murderin’ kids, shooting dogs for fun, and burnin’ up women.”
Cpl. Bullman snorted. “We had nothing to do with that sh**.”
“But we didn’t stop it, neither. And what if we’d tried? They’d have turned on us,” he snapped his gloved fingers, “like that. We need to face facts here, gents. We’ve always been expendable. Now, we’re obsolete. So the way I figure it, we either get an ‘upgrade’, or we end up in the trash.”
“So what, Sarge?” Fellings asked. “If we don’t show up at Battalion, it’s not like they’re just gonna shrug and say ‘What’s one missing tank?’ They’ll come looking for us.”
“They can have the tank. My enlistment was up two months ago. They ain’t getting no more of me.” Reine unbuckled from his commander’s seat. “Hand me the rifle.”
Bullman did as the Sergeant asked. “Where you going, Chuck?”
“I’m hoofin’ it. West. To the mountains. Y’all can come, if you want, but I’m not giving, or countermanding any orders. You gotta decide.” He threw the latch of the cupola and opened the commander’s hatch to the overcast sky. “I ain’t for sentimental goodbyes. Take care, boys. See you in hell.”
He climbed out of the hatch and slung the rifle at the low ready, before hopping down to the abused pavement. A great weight grew wings and lifted off his shoulders, and it was that exact moment that he realized he’d been carrying it for years.
Orienting himself, he began to walk.
He’d not gone twenty meters before he heard the background rumble of the tank cease, as the engine cut out.
Sgt. Reine smiled for the first time in the longest time. He stopped to let his crew catch up.
•••
Salyard’s first full-length novel, Shadow of the Last Men, was released in August 2013 to excellent reviews. The second installment of The Next Man Chronicles is already well-underway and is slated for release in August 2014.
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Find more from the above authors in these great titles:
Editor’s Notes: Getting at the Truth
BY JESSICA SHEN
One of the best pieces of advice given to the beginning writer is write what you know. And, you should! Arguably one of the most difficult parts of writing is getting your reader fully immersed in your story. You are your own best resource, and drawing on your own experience gives you a leg up on doing that.
However, there’s a fine line between using personal experience as a muse and attempting to retell a story from your past. I recently edited a short story written by a friend of mine. He had just come out of a very difficult period in his life, and had written about an experience he had during that time.
Because I know him, it was a hard story for me to read, but as I finished it, one thing became very clear: there was no way anyone who didn’t know him would be able to understand what was going on, or be able to empathize with his main character.
He was too emotionally tied to the events, and spent more time trying in vain to explain to the reader the facts of what was going on, rather than trying to convey the truth of what had happened.
As writers, we often battle between telling the facts, and telling the truth. Here’s what I think: unless you’re writing nonfiction, always go for the truth. The reader doesn’t care if the chronology of events doesn’t exactly match what happened in your life—what he cares about is the experience, the feeling.
You will never be able to recreate exact recollections in your stories. Your reader will never know the story of your life, so there’s no use trying to pluck a moment in time out of it and try to get your reader to understand it.
Facts can explain the who, what, where, and how, and they are great for setting the scene, but what readers care about is the truth, the why. Without the why, the story will have no heart.
Think of your life as works of art in a museum. You will be much more successful in studying the exhibits and using them as inspiration rather than taking a single painting down from the wall and tracing over its lines in an attempt to duplicate it.
When she’s not at her day job at a local college, Jessica Shen keeps busy encouraging writers to find their own inner truths from her home in northern California.Her latest project, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013.
Her next project, Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, will be released October 31, 2013.
Featured Friday: Lone? Ranger
BY MEGAN WISEMAN
They say that when you have a major heart surgery, when someone quite literally touches your heart, you may experience a profound change in your life thereafter . . .
My first attempt at writing came mere weeks after my own open heart surgery at the age of 21. The same week that I returned to work, I picked up my pen and a handful of yellow legal pads and never looked back.
I have, in the subsequent decade that has followed, filled several dozen yellow legal pads, broken my word processor with the length of my manuscripts, and ignored any number of friends and family in pursuit of this new passion. Alone.
Alone until recently when, through chance, I happened upon Xchyler Publishing’s steampunk anthology submissions. For two weeks I wrote until I thought my fingers would fall off or my brain would implode. Neither of these things occurred, thankfully, but one equally surprising thing happened: my story was accepted.
Joy! Happiness! And a good deal of trepidation . . .
Trepidation?
For all the writing I’d done, all the mad scribbles commuting on buses, at lunch hours alone, or in the dark recesses of my room, I was untrained, untaught, a fey writer who’d long railed against the advice of friends: Join a writing group, take a class, attend a workshop, they’d cried.
Bah! I was a lone wolf, my own writer. Why do any of these things at all? I knew inviting others into my little writing world would only provide angst, fear, pressure to please others, edit my work, my thoughts, to fit what the Reader might find palatable. I did not want to be taught! I wanted to have “It” or not.
Community. Bah, humbug! Writing is a solitary enterprise, and I was going to make sure it stayed that way.
But here I was now with an accepted work, a total noob, shy to boot, thrust into the center of a room full of other authors—people who knew what they were doing. Pros. The kind of people I should have been communing with, learning from.
I had no craft, just a bunch of ideas and half-completed manuscripts. I had no Art, just a change of heart nine years ago.
And so I fringed, afraid to expose myself for the dabbler I felt I was. Never mind my passion. Never mind the need, absolute need, to write.
Technical terms flew past my ears. (What the heck is a “proof copy”?) Excited chatter over WIP abounded . . . while I stayed silent, fearful of exposing my carefully guarded ideas. Afraid to look like the newcomer I was.
But over the course of days, weeks, I found I was eager to read and respond to Facebook posts because it was fun. I had . . . dare I say? . . . colleagues. Even now, months later, I hesitate to claim such privilege. But, darn it all, what a lovely group of people I’ve found for support.
And with courage has come better writing. Bad habits that I didn’t know I had (and so staunchly defended at first) are being broken. I’m expanding what my brain can do when it has a story to tell. I’ve discovered I have a voice (what is the sound of one hand clapping?). I have even (gasp) let people read my work!
What a waste of nine years.
Cutting to the chase: get thee a community!
We’re all excited about writing. Build from there.
A Wisconsin gal with a Southwest soul, M. K. Wiseman can generally be found wandering happily amongst the pages of the largest book she can get her hands on. She came upon writing rather accidentally, finding that, sometimes, there are stories that simply must be told.
Megan’s short story, “A Clockwork Ballet”, an expansion of Phantom of the Opera, appears in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology, released in April of 2013.
She tweets @FaublesFables. Connect on Facebook at www.facebook.com/faublesfables.
Editor’s Notes: Learning the Language
BY PENNY FREEMAN
In the digital age we live in, thoughts fly around the world at the speed of light, to last forever, buried away in some hard drive or other until it’s long forgotten; only to be unearthed at the most inopportune and embarrassing moments conceivable.
Our smart phones not only correct our spelling but anticipate what word we’ll need next. Our word processors try to decide what we really mean. We often exchange information in real time using our fingertips more than we do our voices.
In gregarious outflows of too much information, assuming everyone on our contact list wants to know exactly what we’re doing at that very instant, we tweet, update, upload and share the trivia of our lives with little to no thought of the true message we are sending out into the world.
In instant communication, we let our fingers do the talking, and we attempt to do that as quickly and with as little effort as possible. Common (or not so common) phrases become acronyms. Vowels and punctuation fall by the wayside in favor of speed and perceived efficiency.
And typeface has become integral to the conversation. It has become our emphasis, our exclamation! *our stern command*, our SHOUT. We tell others to sit. up. and. take. notice. with our punctuation. The expression of our exuberance is in direct proportion to the number of extraneous letters we insert into any given word. Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!! With a few letters, we send a strong message of incredulity or hesitation. Ummmmm . . . Emoticons replace the visual signals the person on the other end can’t see on our faces.
But, that’s instant communication. It has as much place in a manuscript as text speak . . . which is none, just in case some question remains in your mind on that score.
A well-written book allows the reader to submerge themselves in the world of the author’s creation and forget their own. The best allow those temporary inhabitants to bask in the beauty of it, tremble in terror, gasp in awe, revel in virtual neurosensory overload, all while remaining blissfully insensient of the Creator who dictates the fates of her characters.
The language of a good book is to character sets and typeface what a well-made composite picture is to the actual photographs from which it is composed. The work must be viewed as a whole. When broken down into its constituent parts, it loses its proper meaning.
Likewise, relying on actual typeface to convey those feelings or thoughts shatters the illusion the writer attempts to create, and with it, the reader’s ability to lose themselves in the tale. Moreover, the writer who relies upon instant communication tactics to communicate their message deprives not only her reader of the joys of beautiful language, but herself of the benefits of the skill of creating it.
Consider:
“Ssstella!” She heard the sound in the night. “Sssstella.” It came closer and closer. “Sssssssstella!!”
Or:
“Stella . . . ” The syllabic sound whispered on the breeze, hissing just beyond the audible register. Slow. Still. Sinister.
“Stella . . .” It sounded on the breath of night, with the rustle of the leaves. The subsonic sound of a snake sliding through the grass. Toward her. Coming for her. Swelling with increasing urgency as, shivering through her sensibilities, it slithered closer. “Stella . . .”
Ask yourself, which passage better conveys the sound Stella heard? Which better creates a sense of suspense? Which allows the reader to contemplate the thoughts and ideas conveyed by the letters on the page? Which more demands attention to the character sets themselves? Which more seems to be written by a grown-up?
As you write, when you are tempted to employ the same skill-set as that of texting or online chatting, consider everything you lose by taking that shortcut. Take the time to travel the scenic route. Revel in the beauty of the journey. Allow your reader to slow down and relish the experience. Most of all, don’t sabotage your writing by shoving a potato up your book’s exhaust pipe in an ill-conceived attempt to increase your gas mileage.
That will get you nowhere fast.
Editor-in-chief Penny Freeman writes, edits, and texts badly from Houston, Texas. Her most recent project, Shadow of the Last Men by J. M. Salyards, was released in August, 2013. Under her pseudonym of Neve Talbot, her short story, “Crossroads”, will appear in The X’s next anthology, Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, slated for release October 31, 2013.
Editor’s Notes: A Book Is Born
BY TERRI WAGNER
Getting your book to that final stage of publishing requires a lot of effort. You have to re-work, re-do, re-edit just to get to a final writing stage. But it doesn’t end there.
Manuscript in hand, you search diligently for just the right publisher and send it off. After an agonizing wait, you hear from the publisher that you have been accepted. Celebration.
Then a contract appears. You sign, more celebration. But it doesn’t end there.
Now you deal with an editor, maybe more than one. That editor may make you justify every statement, every word, and every voice in the entire story. You will be pulling your hair out. The finished product may vaguely resemble that innocent manuscript you sent in or may be not. But it doesn’t end there.
Several people will assist in the proofing stage. You may still have to make changes, alter some things, check spelling. Those small things well done tell the reader you have a polished, finished product. But it doesn’t end there.
Next on the agenda will be advanced reader reviews. And . . . no, it doesn’t end there.
Finally, the polished, well-checked, finished product is ready to roll out. Now the hard part begins . . . how to market your book.
On October 12, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia will hit an online bookstore near you.
Take my advice and RUSH to get your copy. This book has been put through the mill, checked, rechecked, and polished. It is a gem in the Steampunk genre.
Mr. Gunn will amuse you to no end. If there was a character I could relate to it’s him. He seems to drift from one crisis to the next, putting it all together just in the nick of time.
Gunn is aided and abetted by a fletching and delightful wife who can cook, nurture, and use a gun better than any one else, including the bad guys. And yes of course there are bad guys.
Dr. Bohemia is an enigma intrigued by devices he somehow knows are ethically wrong. He proves the old adage that you never really know who your friends are until there is a crisis.
When Mr. Ford sent his manuscript in, I doubt he knew the process it was going to go through; but I think he will agree it was worth.
Set in Victoria England, laced with steampunk devices and intrigue, it’s a a great twist on the always well-liked save-the-world-from-itself theme.
Editor Terri Wagner lives, works, and mentors authors from her home in Alabama. Her latest project, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, will be released October 12, 2013. Her next project, Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, will be released on October 31, 2013.