Tag Archives: fiction

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Twelve

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Today’s the first time in a long time I’ve slept in on my day off. I mean actually, properly slept in. Woke up at 10a.m. and everything. As it turns out, my body no longer likes sleeping in, so it was less of a pleasant series of stretches as I woke from my peaceful slumber, and more like me slowly dragging my ass out of bed when I realized I’d definitely slept far too late for my own good.

I miss the days of staying up until 5a.m. for any number of reasons, followed by sleeping until noon. Except not really. I’m full of self-contradicting shit today because it’s almost 1p.m. and I chose writing and breakfast over showering, so I’m probably the most disgusting person alive right now.

As promised, I’m going to write at least twenty short stories for this blogging misadventure I’ve embarked on, and I’d hate to make myself a liar. Before I get too caught up in how happy I am with this story, overall, despite the high chances it still has a couple typos, I need to point out two things.

Thing One – The stories I’m posting here are, in all probability, first drafts with only some polishing from my editing efforts. I miss a lot of my own screw-ups, but this feels like my best option given the time restraints I have imposed upon myself.

Thing Two – In the event I miss a Day of Blogging, I will rest the counter back to Day One, and then sob uncontrollably for at least an hour for being such a complete and utter failure. And because starting over and doing anything for one hundred days sounds like a special kind of Sisyphusian Hell.

Speaking of Hell, here’s today’s post/story. Enjoy, and I apologize for my slightly-more-vulgar-than-usual language (only to my relatives who may be unaware I use such foul words). Continue reading →

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Eleven

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Today’s post is certainly cutting it close to the deadline, but I’m mostly okay with that. Probably. Maybe freaking out a little. However, this late posting is partially thanks to going out for ice cream and watching unexpected fireworks, and suddenly I have an unexpected lead-in to the topic I’d wanted to write about.

The Universe works in mysterious ways, while I speak this rhyme of clichés? Yeah. Let’s go ahead and wipe that last sentence from our collective memory. No looking back. Don’t you dare, damn it. Continue reading →

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Ten

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Today was a frustrating day, with much potential wasted thanks to a lingering writing funk. The writing funk made a peculiar transition to a different issue, in which I had three short stories fighting for my attention at once. I’ve had this happen before, but I could never quite sort it out on my own. I either let it sort itself out, or I just went without writing for a while.

Forgive the moment of fanboying, but I instead took this opportunity to tweet C. Robert Cargill (best-selling author of Dreams and Shadows and Queen of the Dark Things) and ask him for advice. He’s an author, so I figured 1) he would have some pretty solid wisdom he could impart, and 2) he wouldn’t respond because best-selling authors have more important things to do. And then he responded, and I melted into a shrieking jelly-like blob of star-struck dumbness.

He suggested I write the story most ready to be worked on, and let the other two wait. This story, a mini-series just for this project, happened while I was taking a short drive earlier to try clearing my head a little. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope it proves fun to read as it was a little out of my comfort zone (the humor is more subdued compared to the fantasy aspects of this piece). It’s only the beginning so far, but I promise there will be more before long. Continue reading →

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Seven

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It’s my day off, and I’m currently spending it waiting, quite anxiously, for my car to be inspected. My default mindset is that the mechanic will no doubt find at least ten somethings wrong with my little black Toyota Corolla. At least five of those things will be problems of a cataclysmic order, which will require special parts to be shipped in from overseas or across galaxies, and they will be very expensive and time-consuming to fix.

Maybe I’m being a little ridiculous. Only a little.

The walk back from the garage was nice. Here are some fun observations I made, and general thoughts I had, between dropping my car off and getting home.

  1. Hm. Was it supposed to rain today? Shit. I should’ve checked the weather.
  2. The buildings in Hollidaysburg are really charming.
  3. I hope I didn’t forget anything important for the inspection. Did I tell them I’m going on a trip in August? Yeah, I think so.
  4. Shit. It’s starting to rain.
  5. When did my house get so damn far away?
  6. The obvious joke to make is how I’m perfectly in shape, except that the shape in question is a pear. Or a hippopotamus, if they can be considered a shape.
  7. Thanks, guy who parked right on the crosswalk. Very helpful of you.
  8. Better call Brianne, because someone made me leave my house key on my car keys. What an asshole.

There were other thoughts and observations, too, but my trip back home from dropping my car off isn’t t0day’s focus (though it might as well be with how much time I devoted to it). Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures

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It’s been a mostly-exciting, somewhat headache-inducing week. Let’s just leap into the actual post. I’m entirely too tired for this early, which is embarrassing, but I want to finish this post before I fall asleep on my Surface 2.

Writing

Do tweets count here? They still don’t, do they? Damn. Ignoring that, there’s “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice”, “Another Starstruck Misfit”, the cannibal story I still haven’t officially named…something else. My brain’s gone a bit soft. I need to get back into setting goals for myself in terms of weekly writing, which sounds mildly suicidal since I’m working on my One Hundred Days of Blogging posts as well. “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice” doesn’t count towards the goal of twenty stories posted, by the way, because I’m apparently challenging myself to write and rewarding myself by making it as punishing as possible. On the plus side, I’ve received so many new commenting readers. Mostly spammers writing comments in Russian, but I’m not too picky when it comes to comments.

I’ve got no particular plans for writing in this coming week, but I might just be lying there. We’ll see.

Reading

So many books, so little time. I’m rereading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), and I picked up The Long Mars. You may be saying “Phil, you buy a lot of books and you should probably read them instead of buying even more books,” to which I say I will never stop buying books. I should, however, get working on reading them. I think a great starting point would be to start over on The Long Earth, move on to The Long War, and then get to The Long Mars. I’m impatiently waiting for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new graphic novel, Seconds, which sounds like it’ll be a terrific fun read.

Important Miscellany

Car inspection happens this week, which is important for my planned Chicago adventure at the end of August. I’m anxious that something will go horribly wrong, but when am I not? Don’t answer that, anyone. It’ll be the longest road-trip I’ve ever taken, and I’m going solo so it’ll be something else. We’ll see, once all is said and done, what something else turns out to be (good or bad). I’m considering a travel journal to post on here, as there’s still enough time for me to actually plan it out. Or put off planning it and just haphazardly meandering through it like I do with many other things.

The plans for this week include writing, reading, and a little recovering from last week. I’m more excited, I’ll admit, for the week after this one, as I work three days (thanks to a couple leftover paid holidays). Making a trip home to see my family, and I’ll have plenty of time to work on getting some additional writing done. None of which will be spoiled here, of course.

Here’s to a pleasant, hopefully peaceful week for everyone, and remember to keep the Kaiju population under control by getting your Kaiju spayed or neutered.

PS: I’m sorry, but I refuse to see this post linger just beneath five hundred words. Nope. Had to fix that.

The Maskmaker’s Apprentice

Posted on by under Short Stories

This short story popped into my head a couple nights ago, and demanded attention when I was too tired to provide such thought-requiring things. I started working on it last night, and continued on it most of today. I’m very happy with the end product. I considered sending it out for publication consideration, but I’m instead opting to be a story-dragon and keep it in my hoard. That is to say that I wanted to share it with those of you who misadventure alongside me at Misadventures in Fiction. I really hope you all enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Without further rambling, I present “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice”.

Continue reading →

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Two

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Day Two – Creating Stories from the Chaos of Ideas

It only seemed appropriate to focus on the topic of creating stories from the chaos of my ideas, which are all over the place, for the second day. Mostly because I’m still convinced my Hundred Days of Blogging will be more chaotic than ordered.

My process isn’t new or revolutionary, and I’m pretty sure I’ve covered as much before. I’d like to say I sit down with a concept. Some sort of message I want to get across, maybe, or an image so powerful that won’t leave my mind until I share it. Deep stuff, right? Continue reading →

100 Days of blogging – The Misadventures in Fiction edition

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Or “Phil had an idea for a short story, but its quite stuck in his head” with strong notes of “If this week were a person, I’d set that bastard on fire and throw him off a goddamn cliff”.

I’ve seen One Hundred Days of all sorts of things. One Hundred Happy Days. One Hundred Days of Self-Improvement. One Hundred Days of Exercise (which I admittedly misread as One Hundred Days of Exorcise, which left me wondering who is going to the trouble of finding so many possessed people). And so on, and so on, ad infinitum. I also know that this Hundred Days of Blogging has been done before, and so I want to set up some basic guidelines for myself. Guidelines that are being made up as I type this, because I am the antithesis to planning and organization. With all of that in mind, let’s kick this off. Continue reading →

An unusually sentimental post

Posted on by under Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Or “Sometimes my little, frozen black heart does things that require being broadcast, especially since I write about ending the world a whole lot”.

A writer, I think, can only be as good as their support system. Like any other art-form, it’s a grueling, time-consuming labor of love, and there are days when I, like many, many others, would be all right with saying “Fuck it, I’m done,” (special apologies to my mother, grandmother, and any other relatives who maintain the belief I don’t use that word and its various conjugations) and closing up the proverbial shop for good. Staring at a blank document, an idea in my mind, and being unable to produce anything of substance is extremely stressful.

Thank god for my iPod in those situations, or I’d probably have gone mad by now. Continue reading →

A Remarkable Victory

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction

This is an exciting moment for me, though I suspect that goes without saying. All of my typical thought processes are trying to cheapen this victory, and so I’m trying my damnedest to shut them up.

I submitted two short stories–“Death at Teatime” and “Rebooting Everything”–to Remarkable Doorways. And then I waited. I sent a story off to another publication, and then focused on other things so as to not go mad.

And then I got an e-mail containing words I wasn’t familiar with from my previous misadventures in attempted publishing – that one of my stories had been accepted (spoilers: it wasn’t “Death at Teatime”). I reread it a couple times, just to make sure I hadn’t confused a couple words. Or had been hallucinating.

“Rebooting Everything” can be found here, as part of their very first issue.

More importantly, Remarkable Doorways is always looking for submissions. Their submission page spells out the important details better than I can, so meander on over there, and then send something remarkable.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be lost in a state of excited disbelief for the next week or so.

PS: Let it be known I didn’t fail to realize this and my last post were my 150th and 151st posts, respectively, and that I should’ve posted something about Pokemon. I’m going to honor that with a belated something or other. Unless I forget, which is entirely plausible.