My short story “Assholes with Guns” is out in The Literary Hatchet #13.
It’s a story about dangerous men, both young and old. I wrote it in a Noir class taught by Benjamin Whitmer (Cry, Father) that was hosted by LitReactor.com.
The magazine is available now in both a free online PDF and in print. You can pick up a copy here: http://lizzieandrewborden.com/HatchetOnline/LiteraryHatchet/issues.htm
My Christmas horror story “The Gift of Flesh” is now available at The Confabulator Cafe. It’s the story of a man who receives a strange cardboard box on his doorstep, and the madness that ensues. I hope you enjoy it. Have a great holiday season!
I’ve been sick for a week, and it has significantly impacted my NaNoWriMo progress. You can read all about it in this weeks NaNoWriMo update at The Confabulator Cafe.
Ray Bradbury’s birthday is today. My writing process is essentially borrowed whole from Bradbury. His book Zen in the Art of Writing inspires me every time that I read it.
My son’s birthday is tomorrow. Eight years ago, his birth changed my life, and he continues to inspire me every day.
In honor of them, my book All Manner of Dark Things is on sale as a Kindle Countdown for the next week. Drop by Amazon and pick up your digital copy for 99 cents.
Thanks for reading!
A couple of months ago, I woke up from a dream. All the rich people in the world had hopped on rocket ships, destined for some Martian colony.
I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t speculate on the mental mechanisms that caused such a thing. Was it all the talk of the one percent? NPR stories on Greece? Conservatives saying that the rich would leave if taxes were increased? I really have no idea. I’m not particularly interested in politics and I don’t dwell much on the organic nature of creative development.
After playing with the concept for awhile, I came up with preliminary ideas for a science fiction novel titled The Rest of Us, which is the story of those left behind.
This month, our Confabulator Cafe prompt was to write a story that takes place entirely in a dining room. I started a totally different story about a student at Miskatonic University who is back home in Kansas for spring break. That story, “The Cow of Cthulhu,” got away from me a bit and didn’t want to stay in the dining room.
I started out again, approaching the assignment like a one-act play. Somehow, The Rest of Us got stuck in my head, and I wrote “Bottoms Up.” The story takes place in that world, and the protagonist will likely be one of the main characters in the novel. I haven’t even started on the actual novel, yet. God knows, the last thing I need is another project to work on. That being said, you can get a really early sneak peek at one of my future projects.
I hope you enjoy the story. You can read it here.
Some of you might not know that The Confabulator Cafe has a meeting once a month. In that meeting, we decide what prompt we are going to use for the stories the next month. Around the same time, Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke shared a wordle of the story titles submitted to his magazine.
It’s pretty common for me to start out with nothing more than a title, and that is what we decided to do. We’re using titles created by that wordle as prompts. The only rule was that the words had to be touching. I created several titles from the wordle that will probably get used for one thing or another in the future. For this story, I used “red” and “house.”
“The Red House” is sort of a haunted house story, but not quite a traditional one. It’s pretty brutal, but I am proud of it. You can read it here.
Welcome to the new website. I’ve migrated over to a new host. The new site has more functionality and will improve as I work my way through the available options.
The first thing you might notice is that I have a newsletter subscription form on the right side of the screen, just below my name. Please, sign up for the newsletter. I promise that I will not spam you. On the contrary, my newsletter subscribers will be the first to know about new books, new stories, and upcoming personal appearances. You will see the covers and tables of contents before the general public. I also plan on sending out free stories to my subscribers from time to time. You won’t receive emails that often, but when you do, they will be full of good stuff. You can also find a button to sign up for my newsletter on my Facebook page. It’s on the left side and looks like a little envelope.
The storefront has also improved. If you go to “The Store” in the top menu, you will see more than just a link to another site. New books will be added to the storefront as they are released. I will personally sign and ship any books ordered through my site.
Thank you to my good friend, science fiction author Kevin Wohler for helping me with the site migration. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the site should be much better for it. Like anything in writing, it’s about getting a little bit better every day. Thank you for being here to see it.
-Jack
ConQuest is a big deal for me every year, both as a fan and as a writer. In honor of ConQuest, my collection All Manner of Dark Things: Collected Bits and Pieces is going to be on sale for 99 cents. This is the lowest that the price will be, so it is a great time to pick up the e-book, if you haven’t already.
The sale will run from 8am this morning through my birthday, May 26th, and ending at midnight. If you are at the con, I will have paperback copies for sale, as well. I can take cash or credit through Square. Otherwise, they are always available on Amazon or through my online store.
I hope to see everyone at the convention. It will be a great time.
In other news, “C Was for Cat” has been purchased by Body Parts Magazine for their upcoming issue. I will have links when the issue goes life.
It’s April 7th, and that means it is the official release of my horror collection All Manner of Dark Things: Collected Bits and Pieces. If you pre-ordered the e-book, it should already be heading to your Kindle. If you haven’t bought it, yet, here are the details.
Twenty-nine pieces containing a wide variety of horror: gory monsters, humor pieces, emotionally-brutal literary works, poetry, vampires, werewolves, cannibal hordes, ghosts, serial killers, and all manner of dark things.
Some of the pieces appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. Some are original to the anthology. They encompass a sampling of my entire writing career.
The e-book is a part of Kindle Select, which means that if you have Prime, you can borrow it from the lending library. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it is available for free in that program.
The e-book is priced at $2.99, but it is a part of the Kindle Matchbook program. That means that if you buy the print edition from Amazon, priced at $9.99, you can get the e-book for $0.99. You can have access to the book anywhere, at any time.
I am extremely proud of this book and the amount of work that went in to it. Check it out. If you read it, review it on Amazon and Goodreads. I would really appreciate it.
Here are the links:
To start the release off right, here’s the book trailer to get you in the mood.
Let’s do this! There will be more news soon. I have a couple of special things planned.
This is yet another blog about the MFA article that has caused great debate in the writing community. It popped up all over Facebook with people both for and against it. Chuck Wendig posted an entertaining and somewhat scathing critique on his own blog. People were all over the place, raging or praising.
I thought about leaving it alone. What else could I add? But divisive topics tend to produce ravenous support or condemnation. Instead, I offer indifference. I don’t mean that I don’t care. It’s just that neither side affects me. Let’s review:
1. Writer’s are born with talent.
As with anything, that is true. None of us start at the same baseline. Some people just run faster, but the idea that talent trumps all is an unfortunate and inaccurate statement. It steals credit from those who have succeeded by making it seem that they were gifted their skill by a simple combination of genetics and fate. It doesn’t work that way. Michael Phelps has a talent for swimming. He has the perfect physicality for it. He also spent eight hours a day in the pool training for the Olympics. Phelps wasn’t handed gold medals because of his talent. He earned them through hard work. All of your favorite writers have to work very hard to produce books. It requires hour upon hour of writing and revision, no matter how talented you are. I’ve known some very talented writers who could use less talent and more actual putting words on paper. But it doesn’t matter. My talent is my talent. I can’t control it. I just do the best I can with what I have.
2. If you didn’t decide to take writing seriously by the time you were a teenager, you’re probably not going to make it.
What is writing? It’s storytelling on a basic level. I didn’t start writing prose until I was in college, unless you count a couple of things here and there, including some ill-advised Fern Gully fan-fiction. I drew comic books. I told stories in a visual form. As with every other kid, I fantasized a lot, creating scenarios in my head. Isn’t that essentially writing? Books are a medium of storytelling on its most basic level. But that doesn’t matter, either. I can’t go back in time and tell twelve year-old Jack, hunched over a drafting table and drawing superheroes, that he should try some prose. The past is what it is. I can’t control it. I just do the best I can with the past I have.
3. If you complain about not having time to write, please do us both a favor and drop out.
People complain all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t do it anyway. I complain about dishes, laundry, traffic, and having to put on pants. I still do all of those things. As long as you are getting work done, who cares if you complain about it? Whether they complain or not doesn’t affect me, and quite honestly should not affect their teacher. If they are producing, great. If they aren’t, you are their teacher. Flunk them. Do you honestly think that there aren’t kids in the math department complaining that they don’t have time to do equations? Complain about writing time all you want. As long as you produce a good book, no one will care.
4. If you aren’t a serious reader, don’t expect anyone to read what you write.
I absolutely believe that reading helps your writing. You should read a lot. You should read across genres. I consider reading time to be writing time, because they are so closely-related. The post then goes on to further qualify that by saying you need read great works of literature. I love those books, but they aren’t for everyone. Further, no one cares what you read if you write a good book. They aren’t going to rush off to check out your Goodreads account before they read your novel. Besides, once again we are talking about something I can’t control. I write the story. I send out the story. I promote the story. I don’t control whether people actually read it or not. Will reading making you a better writer? I think so. But your reader doesn’t know whether you just read The Great Gatsby or 50 Shades of Grey. If your book sucks, no one is going care that you’ve read Moby Dick.
5. No one cares about your problems if you’re a shitty writer.
I’m not even going to touch this one. Who says this about their students?
6. You don’t need my help to get published.
Any writer who says they haven’t learned something from another writer is lying to you. You don’t need an MFA to get published. I don’t have one. What I do have is a very large collection of writing books. I’ve read literally hundreds of essays. I’ve been in workshops, critique groups, and every other type of writer’s group that exists. I’ve learned from them. They have made me a better writer. If you can’t teach your students to be better writers, then you are a shitty teacher. Beyond that, the comment places the focus on another thing that writers don’t directly control. You don’t decide if you get published. Neither does your teacher. Publishers decide if you get published. Write the best book you can, and then let it go.
7. It’s not important that people think you’re smart.
I agree, but what is this blogger’s obsession with other people’s perception? People only care if your book is good or if it sucks. I can’t control what people think, only what I put out there for them to read.
8. It’s important to woodshed.
But…but I thought you said I was talented! I’ve written a lot of things that never saw the light of day. I didn’t even finish some of them. I’ve got an entire folder full of beginnings that sucked. But the idea of not sharing your work with anyone doesn’t help, at all. I’m not saying you should upload your garbage first drafts to Amazon, but you will learn much more slowly in a vacuum than you will by sharing. Despite what this article said, you CAN learn writing from other people. You learned basic sentence structure. You learn punctuation. You learn to avoid passive voice. You learn to avoid overuse of adverbs. You learn to show not tell. Could you learn all of these things on your own? Sure. You could also learn that we drive on the right side of the road by using the left lane until you hit someone head on. The alternative is someone could just tell you “We drive on the right side here.” In an entire article of things a writer has no direct control over, the blogger pushes them away from the one thing they can control. Share your work. Get feedback, and make it better.
Writing is not a solitary endeavor, but it is an art form with a single product. A good book trumps everything. Write well, and none of the rest of it matters. Complain all you want. Read garbage paperbacks that you buy for five cents at garage sales. Don’t obsess over the time you should have spent on writing. For God’s sake, don’t worry about what other people will think about you. As long as you produce a good book, no one cares. Writing is a learned skill. If you want an MFA, go get one. It’s not the only path, but it is a viable one.
Every writer has their own skillset and their own experience level. Everyone takes their own path in this business. They all think their’s is the correct one. If Chuck’s way is compatible with yours great. If Boudinot’s way is compatible with yours, by all means, follow it. In writing, there is only what works and what doesn’t. That changes for everyone.