My exercise output has been nonexistent this month. And I have made no real headway on my robot story. Sigh. I did, however, produce and submit a flash piece that I’m rather proud of, so that’s something. And “Crush” was met with generally good response.
Exercise: Your character receives a text message from an unrecognized number. The text says, “I have the money, and I’ve hidden the body.” Write the story/scene of what happens.
I had a lot of fun coming up with this one. I could see this becoming the hook of a longer story. It almost works as a flash piece, but I think readers would be annoyed that I didn’t reveal what the delivered items were for. I hate the title, but couldn’t really come up with anything good. About 780 words. (more…)
I’ve made some good headway into planning out my robot noir. At least enough to really get started past the first few paragraphs I’ve already got. The main character, a bitter private detective, is started to shape up in my mind. His interactions with Asta should be fun to write.
Since I haven’t really worked on any exercises lately, I’ll just post this quick little review I wrote for the department newsletter. Normally I’d review something new to theaters, but there hasn’t been anything out that I cared to see, so I went with one that’s new to video. Man alive, it’s five bucks to rent a movie at Blockbuster now. Are they kidding? Glad I have Netflix. (more…)
I seem to be having some trouble getting into my robot noir. Not sure why. I think maybe I’m not getting into the Raymond Chandler I’ve been looking at. I think I’ll switch to the Dashiell Hammett book I’ve got. May be more inspiration there. It’s not that Chandler is bad, but I think Hammett might be a little closer to how I tend to write.
As part of the celebration of “Crush” I received 3:10 to Yuma on DVD. I’d seen it in theaters back when it came out and loved it (even wrote a review of it for the company department newsletter). I loved it even more this time. It’s a fine film in pretty much every regard, and if you haven’t seen it you should do yourself a favor and check it out.
Unfortunately, that plus the fact that I just wrote a flash mystery piece, kind of puts me out of the mood to write the story I’m supposed to working on. Oy. And I just made a mistake of cruising through some space western sites. It’s kind of strange, but when I was a kid I never really could get into westerns. They all sort of looked the same I guess, and it seemed like everyone really needed to take a bath. It probably didn’t help that most westerns are old and a dated. But over the past few years I’ve come to appreciate the genre a lot more. I could probably list High Noon, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Unforgiven as some of my favorite films. And do I really even need to mention Firefly?
So I have a sneaking suspicion as to what my next story may be.
Now if I can just get back to work on this robot mystery…
Slip on over to Every Day Fiction and spend five minutes checking out my flash piece “Crush.” This is my fist published work! It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time. While you’re there, sign up for a subscription, there’s great stuff over there.
Speaking of EDF, I’ve gotten excellent feedback and very positive reaction to “Aftershocks,” my flash mystery story. I’ve already polished it up some, so I’ll probably tweak it a little more today and submit it. I’m quite proud of this one.
I believe I have my 1000-word mystery. I need to finish it up, but I should be able to get it out to the writing group by the end of the week. This weekend we’ll be hosting my tiny human nephew at our home, so I would like to have it done by then.
It is completely different than my original idea, which is good because the original idea was terrible. It’s not exactly a traditional mystery (no cops or line-ups or jealous whoevers), but I think it’s interesting and intense. It’s more about desperate strangers trying to figure out who they can trust. We’ll see if it works, I suppose.
It was inspired by a conversation I overheard on the street yesterday, which reminded me of a story I wrote when I was in middle school. You never know where these things come from.
Sorry for the lack of posting. I haven’t worked on any exercises, and am thinking hard about my 1000-word mystery. I have started something, but it looks more like the end of Clue or Murder by Death than I’d like.
I’ve received another acceptance, from, wait for it…OMG! The Book of Awesome Stuff. It’s a funny and surreal flash piece involving ice skaters and robots called “Justin’s Ice Dream,” very loosely based on an actual dream I had years ago. It was rejected (under a different title) by a couple of places before, and I’d pretty much given up on it as being simply too strange. It seems I was wrong! OMG! should be out this summer.
Joining me in OMG! will be Stephanie from the writing group (a link to her blog is over there on the right somewhere). Her story involves an island of hawtsome women, which automatically makes it better.
Eh? Thunderbolts? Eh? Anyone? Too obscure? Hmm.
Anyway, I have been challenged by the denizens of the Every Day Fiction forums to write a mystery story. The catch, of course, is that it must be under EDFs 1,000-word limit. And I presume it must be good. I imagine it has been done, but it seems difficult to me for some reason. I am purposely not googling “mystery flash fiction” so as to not spoil myself.
And I actually have something of an idea for it. So we shall see.
Is this an excuse to not work on my supernatural story? You betchya.
