Post #109 January 29, 2018

“Fear and Wonder in Genre Writing”

As of this post, I’m working on two books at once.  One is science fiction (The Farpool series) and one is an older horror story (The Specter) I’m rewriting and editing for release later this spring.  Working in both genres at the same time has caused me to ponder the differences and similarities of the two.

The central dimension by which we can analyze sf and horror comes in how the reader relates to and reacts to the ‘unknown.’  I view science fiction as a genre that put the reader in the position of an explorer of the unknown.  What comes to mind when we think science fiction?  Here are some ideas:

1. Sense of wonder
2. Big ideas
3. A (semi) logical approach to narrative
4. Often grounded in some kind of (possibly extrapolated) science.  To wit:  If this goes on….
5. No magic.  Harry Potter is not science fiction.
6. Often places the reader in a different, alien world (even if it’s Earth)
    
   I view horror/mystery stories (and some could quibble that there is a difference between horror and mystery…but that’s for another time) as a genre that puts the reader in the position of being a victim of the unknown. What comes to mind when we think horror?
    

1. Fear: an expectation or anticipation of danger
2. Dread (not quite the same thing as fear but close)
3. Foreboding
4. Engaging characters you care about (to be honest, sf should have this as well)
5. Blood and gore
6. Often places the reader in a seemingly familiar world but emphasizes the dark side of that world (there’s menace everywhere)

Clearly there are both similarities and differences.  Think of it like this: Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey versus Stephen King’s The Shining. 

Author Stephanie Saulter has written a nice post on her website about another way to look at the difference between horror and science fiction.  I quote:

“All three genres posit a reality that is different than the humdrum, everyday “real world” that we all inhabit; the writer has to create that reality and draw the reader into it. But there are some key differences between these categories of the unreal. I find them in the measure of internal coherence required of the fictional world; the degree of continuity between it and the “real” world; and the amount of explanation that needs to be provided to the reader.

“In horror, the reader is given little or no information about the hidden mechanics of the story world; it often appears to be the same as the “real” world (and therefore to require no explanation), until weird things start to happen. Then the inexplicability of events, and their disconnection from a rational, coherent framework wherein they make sense in relation to other events is what drives the sense of apprehension and terror. (A caveat: this applies more to modern horror writing. Classic novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula were written following what we would now think of as a science fiction or fantasy approach to worldbuilding.)

 

“In fantasy, the reader is given a greater degree of explanation for how the world of the story works, which is necessary as it is usually immediately obvious that it is not the “real” world. These explanations are often elaborate and detailed, but they only need to be internally coherent – in other words they only need to make sense within the covers of the book, within the world of the story. The laws and logic of the fantasy world can be completely disconnected from the “real” world, as long as the story obeys the special rules of the fantasy world.

 

“In science fiction lots of explanation is required, and it needs to be both internally coherent and to have some continuity with the “real” world. The physical reality of the science fiction story needs to follow the same basic rules as the “real” world, or at any rate to provide a rational explanation for any discrepancies. Science fiction need not always be set in the future; but wherever and whenever the story occurs, and however profoundly different the world it inhabits, the reader needs a plausible connection between the “here” of the real world and the “there” of the science fiction world. A fantasy world does not require the same degree of plausibility.”

So we can compare and contrast science fiction and horror along the dimension of how the reader relates to the unknown described in the story.  And another axis of comparison (as Saulter describes it above) is how much explanation the reader is given about the world of the story.

Each genre makes somewhat different demands of the reader and each places the reader in the fictional world of the story in a different way.  They both require a certain amount ‘world-building’ by the author but the nature and purpose of the world-building differs.

Both can be a challenge to write and both can be rewarding (in very different ways) to read. 

Do you want to be amazed or terrified?  Some books bridge these dimensions and work in the nether world between the genres.  A good example of this is Stephen King’s novel November 22, 1963, which has elements of both.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 5, 2018.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

Post #108 January 22, 2018

Excerpt from The Specter

Last week, I promised you a brief excerpt from my horror/mystery novel The Specter. This story was originally written in the early 1980’s and after several re-readings, I decided it’s still a good story, well-told, and worth putting up for download on Smashwords.   I’m in the re-write, edit and cleanup process now.  Look for it around the end of May, or early June, at Smashwords and at fine e-book retailers everywhere.

Herewith… an excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Specter:

 

  Lucille Perry’s house was dark when Alex stopped by the curb and cut the engine. He looked at his watch: a little after 10 P.M.

Rita must be as tired as any of us.  She ought to be asleep.

   He got out of the car and shut the door slowly, letting it latch with as little noise as possible. The street was deserted except for a few cats prowling the sidewalk. One of them, a black and white tabby, stopped by the car and glared up at him, eyes gleaming yellow-green in the light of the streetlamp.

   Alex opened the wrought-iron gate and walked the twenty paces up the brick walkway to the front steps. He stopped there, listening, for what he wasn't sure.

   It was a three-story affair, Lucille's house. A Georgian row house, built in the latter 19th century. There was a small balcony at the third floor, opening onto the master bedroom. his grandmother's since 1932. Ornate black wrought-iron trim. Brass dolphin-shaped rain spouts. Massive bay windows by the steep front stairs. The stonework had been painted recently-- by the light of the streetlamp, it was a dull, lifeless gray. He listened again.

   Nothing.  Nothing but the faint gurgling of the creek-canal behind the block. The sound was the same as it had been, fifteen years before.

   Alex had a key of his own, that Rita had given him and he used it now. The door was a sturdy oak slab but it opened easily and Alex stepped into the dim candlelight of the foyer. He shut the door carefully and a rush of memories came flooding back.

   He shuddered and felt his way to the banister of the stairs. Its heavily lacquered post was a welcome sensation in his hands and he rubbed a little sweat off on the wood.

   Rita would be upstairs.

   The wood groaned a bit under his weight but Alex didn't stop. He held his breath at the top--a faint murmur could be heard. To the left. He stared for a moment at the double doors shut tight at the end of the hall.  The nautical design carved into the face of the door was invisible in the darkness but he could still see it nonetheless. In his mind. It was the shipwreck and serpent's head crest that had once frightened him so badly. He could laugh at it now, all these years later but back then, it hadn't been so funny. Even Grace admitted that the red-daubed reptilian eyes and flaring nostrils of the monster gave her goose bumps.

   But Alex didn't venture into that pool of black at the end of the hall. Instead, he moved cautiously into the short hall at his left. The murmuring grew louder.    Rita's room was dark. Alex placed his fingers around the door knob and gently nudged the door back. Through the crack, a faint shaft of light from the high window cast a twilight pall on everything in the room. He moved the door back another inch and saw a hand and arm, draped limply across the edge of the bed.

   Thank God, she's asleep.

   Alex listened. The murmur was a voice. an indistinct whisper issuing from the pale amber face of a clock radio on the nightstand.

   He breathed a little more easily and yet felt vaguely disappointed too. He had come here not knowing what he expected, a feeling perhaps, a freshening of the memory of that terrifying yet captivating night in the fetid sewage pipes under the back yard. It was fifteen years ago and could have been fifteen centuries in a way. Grace would not speak of what they had seen anymore, at the end of that pipe, behind the iron door of the cellar. He was no longer even sure it had happened. Time was a trickster when you got a few years on you; it reshuffled memories like a deck of hot cards.

   Alex eased the door shut and felt like the prize fool of the day.

   The funeral’s got us all cracked.

   It was somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, along about where the great picture of his gaunt, sour-faced grandfather Jacob would have been, that Alex heard it.

   He stopped immediately, his left foot inches from the floor beyond the last step. It was what he had been expecting, what he had been hoping for, and fearing. What he knew had to come.

   The low growl returned.

   Alex caught hold of the banister to steady himself. He hadn't the slightest doubt that he would investigate the sound. And he didn't even have to listen--though it came again—to know where it came from. But he took a moment to collect his wits, to get a breath and calm his racing heart. A rush of blood made his face hot and flushed.   He found himself standing before the cellar door with no memory of having moved a muscle. The brass knob was cold to the touch.

   He opened it.

  There was a string dangling in his face and he pulled it. Instantly, a single 60-watt bulb on the wall flooded the wooden stairs with light.  The steps were black and splintery with age, disappearing into the well of darkness at the bottom.   Alex stepped through and descended, his left hand squeezing the balustrade tightly.

   At the bottom, his loafers made a reassuring thump on the cement. He stood still and listened, not daring to move, even to blink, until he was sure.

   The rattle and hiss of labored breathing swelled in his ear.

   He turned around and stared hard into the musty depths of the basement. At the limit of vision, he could see the cement ended in a ragged line, running off into a dark brown bed of dirt.  As he followed the edge further around to his left, his eye was attracted to the dull sheen of something metal, a post it seemed from where he was. A column.

  He felt his mouth dry up as a human-like shape shifted slightly, silhouetted in the glimmer of that post.

   Another growl, this time deeper, with volume.

  Alex paced forward, a step at a time, his skin tingling. His eyes never left that shape and, as he stared with mounting horror, it moved again. The growl softened into a voice, recognizably human, almost a whine.

  He was at the edge of the cement now, his shoes poised above the dirt. He took another step.

  The thing jerked violently and a sharp clank rattled through the cellar. Alex froze and veered sideways, along the edge of the cement, unwilling to approach until he could see it better.

 He realized that his own shadow was blocking the light from the bulb by the stairs.

   He bumped into another post and hurt his shoulder. Rubbing it, he took a step forward, letting his foot find purchase in the loose dirt.

   Suddenly, the thing charged him.

   Alex couldn’t move.  His muscles failed him and he stood stiff and still, blood roaring in his ears.

   The thing burst into the tiny pool of illumination and squatted in the dirt on its haunches, unable to come any closer.

 He could now see the dull glint of metal that had first gotten his eye—manacles. It was manacled to a post by the far wall.

  And the face! Alex turned his head involuntarily and fought back a wave of nausea.

   It was human, he saw. Or at least, had been at one time. Maybe four feet in height, almost as wide around, the creature had no arms, merely scarred stumps of pale, shriveled tissue.

The thing did have legs but they were gnarled, misshapen skeletal bones, blood-encrusted and covered with fiery red pustules and sores.

  The worst part was the face. What eyes it had were no more than pinpricks, scabbed over and surrounded with a thick webbing of scar tissue. Even as he watched, the beast gouged at its face, opening a wound which dribbled fluid freely. Its nose was sunken back into the skull and its mouth was sealed partly shut with gray, fungus-like skin growth and more scar tissue.

  The whole effect was that of a decaying skeleton or some kind of hideous caricature of a large human fetus. Blood veins stood out clearly at or near its skin, especially around the tiny eyes. Many of them were burst, giving its face a cruel blotchy look. Its skin was otherwise a waxy yellow, where it was visible through the gray crusty mold at all and its legs were smeared with foul-smelling dung.  Alex couldn't bring himself to look at the thing for more than a few seconds at a time. His mind railed from the thought that it might be human.

   Yet it was. Once.

 

And that’s the excerpt.  I hope this will intrigue you enough to take a look at the whole book, sometime in late spring or early summer of this year.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on January 29.  In this post, I hope to look at some of the major differences, genre differences, between writing science fiction and mystery/horror. 

See you then,

Phil B.

 

January 15 2018

Year End Summary and What’s Up for 2018?

This post will be devoted to a summary of book downloads and other projects for 2017 and a look ahead for what’s coming in 2018.

Below, I have broken down book downloads by series and category.  The numbers are cumulative, from the time of first publication to 1-2-18.

Tales of the Quantum Corps = 4766

Nanotroopers = 6141

The Farpool Stories = 977

Others = 1076

In addition, I completed one sf short story in September 2017.  The title is “In Plutonian Seas.”  I have not yet been able to place this story, but it’s currently at Analog SF magazine, being looked at.  Here’s hoping….

So that’s 2017.  Oh, and I did retire from my full-time job (23 years!) in September 2017, so I am writing full time now…and loving every minute of it.

As for 2018, I have 3 main projects underway.

First is my current novel and 3^rd in the series called The Farpool Stories.  The book is entitled The Farpool: Exodus.  I’m about 85-90% done with the first draft.  Look for this title to be uploaded to Smashwords in early March 2018 and be available for download there and at fine ebook retailers everywhere.

The fourth title in this series will be titled The Farpool: Convergence.  I expect to be underway on the first draft in April and likely done in the fall.  For now, expect this one to be available to readers in November 2018. 

My third project for 2018 is a major effort to take an older work I did some 35 years ago, a horror/mystery story titled The Specter and scan it into proper document file format, then edit and rewrite and update it for modern readers.  I have re-read this story several times the last year and I still believe it’s a well-told story and worthy of some effort to bring it to interested readers.  Toward this end, over the holidays, I purchased a high-end document scanner and its working pretty well, but there is still a lot of work to be done. 

I’ll post a brief synopsis of The Specter in next week’s post.  I hope to be able to make this one available to readers in late May or early June 2018.  Look for it. 

As time permits, I have another science fiction short story idea I’d like to write (in my spare time!) and I need to update my website or transfer it over to a more professional host and show a greater range of my work and make it more easily available to fans and readers. 

I’m also maintaining this blog for the year and corresponding with fans and readers every month to keep everybody satisfied and interested in what’s coming.  I like to think of The Word Shed as a dialogue between me and my readers and anyone else interested in understanding the writing life and what’s involved in grinding out stories left and right.

An interesting, yet really rewarding profession, if I do say so.

The next post to The Word Shed will deal with The Specter. 

See you on January 22.

Phil B.

 

“Novels and Short Stories”

I’ve been writing novels and short stories since the late 1970s.  I’m more comfortable with the longer form.  I’ve often asked myself why this is. 

Short stories can range in length from a few thousand words to maybe 15,000 words.  Anything longer tends to be called a novelette or a novella by industry.  For round figures, let’s say a short story should be less than 10,000 words.  That’s about 30 plus pages using average type and font.  So the whole story has to be set up and delivered in that length.

For comparison’s sake, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) calls a short story something no longer than 7500 words.

Whether a novel or a short story, any story has to have some kind of plot, with one or more characters, some kind of problem to solve and some obstacles to solving it.  A novel is more expansive in laying this out.  Here’s one of the main differences between the two forms:

1. A short story sets the character right in the middle of the problem immediately. 

A novel has some luxury in the way it opens, setting the character in his setting and presenting him with a problem.  In fact, there may be a rising crescendo of problems in the longer form.  You can’t do that in a short story. 

Short story writers have to be sparse with words, extremely selective and make every word count and carry the story.  No long soliloquys, no luxuriating in philosophical discourses about the meaning of life and “what I did when I was four years old to make me the murderous sociopath I am today.”

1. In a short story, the character usually faces one problem.  It could be a big one or a small one, but there isn’t room or time to build a number of problems up to some cataclysmic ending.
    
   Short story characters run headlong into their predicament pretty quick, ideally on page one.  Fiction editors say (and most readers would agree, I believe) that they want to be grabbed from the very opening sentence.  There’s truth in that for novelists too, but with short stories, lay out the problem early and plunge the main character in it like he’s taking an ice bath in Sweden in January. 
    
   Novels can have subplots, all of which hopefully contribute to and lead to the main character encountering and resolving (or not) the big problem.  Short stories have one plot line and one or a few problems.  There isn’t time or space for more.
    
   Literary historians say that short stories evolved from our oral storytelling traditions, that is, from parables, fables, even anecdotes.  They’re compressed and concentrated, though they should have the same elements as any good story: exposition, complication, crisis, climax, resolution.  Sometimes the resolution part is pretty abrupt, unlike a novel.
    
    Short stories are not little novels. 
    
   The third main difference between the two forms is this:
    
2. Short stories get written, published, critiqued and turned around faster in the marketplace.  Writers get faster feedback from short stories.
    
   In my own case, I have found that my particular talent, such as it is, needs a longer form to stretch out and become manifest.  A short story is a closet, a novel is a veranda or a screened porch (if you grew up in the American South as I did).  You can’t relax with a short story.  You have to squeeze every bit of story you can out of every single word.  Thus, writing short form fiction is a great discipline for any writer, however successful they may be at it. 
    
   Now to answer my original question: why do I personally prefer novels to short stories?
    
   I like being able to explore a fictional world (especially important in science fiction) in detail and I like being able to explore more than one character and from more than one direction.  I particularly like developing parallel plot tracks that intertwine and support each other and come together in the end to slam the reader with one big aha!  It’s like juggling a lot of story “balls” at the same time but when it works, it’s a sight to behold.  It resonates.  Hell, it virtually twangs with meaning, like a guitar string vibrating with harmonic frequencies.  I know that sounds corny but the great novelists can do that.  As for me, I’m still learning. 
    
   I write novels more than short stories and enjoy them more because I feel comfortable in them as a storyteller.  One day, I’ll put more of my short stories up on Smashwords.com as a collected work and you can judge for yourself.  Some of them still read pretty well.  For now, check out Colliding Galaxies at Smashwords.com.
    
   But I still like the novel form better.
    
   Next week, we’ll look at how my upcoming horror/mystery story The Specter is coming along.  I’ll be uploading this sometime in late spring 2018.  Look for it at Smashwords.com under  Fiction > Horror.  The next title in my Farpool series, The Farpool: Exodus, should be available in early March 2018 as well.
    
   See you on January 15.
   Phil B.