Month: April 2015

Why I Fall In Love With a Manuscript: It Feels New

Standard

Read other writing advice blogs on my writing page!

During my time as a developmental editor, I longed to fall in love with a manuscript. I wanted to read stories that spoke to me, that haunted me when I went to bed and I woke thinking about. Almost every submission had something I could fall for. But far too often I rejected the submissions I read and critiqued.

The attributes that spark a love affair with a manuscript are not the reasons you might think. Sure, I recoil at the twelfth adverb in a paragraph, pervasive passive voice, misspellings and its/it’s mistakes. I grumble at stories that start in the wrong place or have superfluous exposition. But these are lover’s spats. An editor cleans up language, recommends moving scenes and cutting unneeded characters or chapters. I can love a manuscript despite these faults. But the reasons I fall for them are much more fundamental.

No matter your genre, editors want to love your manuscript. Make sure your submission delivers on the following things, and I guarantee they’ll love yours.

 New

Why I Fall In Love With a Manuscript 1: Your Story Feels New

I guarantee your story has been written before.

Think of your favorite book. Game of Thrones? Try Lord of the Rings, George MacDonald or Arabian Nights. Twilight? Anne Rice, Romeo and Juliet, Dracula and Camilla. Eragon? Star Wars, which was in turn influenced by every hero’s journey myth ever. Every plot and story has been told before, and by a master. The manuscripts I love feel refreshing and new, despite having been told before.

How do you accomplish this? First, by reading. A lot. Not only will this inspire you and teach you the craft, it will expose you to tales already written so you can avoid being the carbon copy.

Second, bring something new to the story, like a new setting or theme. Weave two existing stories together in unexpected ways. George R. R. Martin made his fantasy world unique by getting rid of fantasy races, making magic rare and adding realism and nuance to a world more gray than black and white.

Never rest on one or two unique elements. Add as much as you can at every turn and breathe freshness into your tale.

Power Grid: Why You Must Play This Game

Standard

image

I know what you’re thinking. A game about building and maintaining a power grid? That’s it?

You: Does it include bribing officials for permits?
Me: No.
You: Then assassination of said off-
Me: No.
You: Is it during a war?
Me: No.
You: On Mars?
Me: No.
You: Is Gojira, zombies, a plague or an imminent asteroid impact involved in any way?
Me: No.
You: Then this sounds dumb. Let’s just play Ken’s Job: The Board Game. (Yes, I have a friend Ken who works for PSE.)

Yes, Power Grid sounds dumb. But for all you board game players out there, Power Grid is like Ticket To Ride and Puerto Rico had an illegitimate baby who was raised on Wall Street by his wacky uncle Small World.

Granted, I have played the game only three times. And each time we have discovered major rules we didn’t use or screwed up in previous plays. But each game got better and more fun.

Power Grid is a game for 2-6 players and takes about two hours. The players pick connected regions of the US equal to the number of players (forcing interaction between players a la Small World) and bid on the power plants in the marketplace. Players buy coal, natural gas, oil or uranium based on what runs their power plants (and what is cheapest) and build generators in cities to form a power grid. Then they spend the resources they bought and earn money for how many cities they can power. The winner is the first player to power a certain number of cities.

This game is all about money and resource management, bidding up opponents for power plants they want while getting yours on the cheap, nabbing cheap resources, blocking opponents by connecting strategic cities, and manipulating the turn order to be first to bid, buy resources or place generators as your needs demand. There is a load of strategery at each stage.

image

Yes, Smithers, we’ve taken over every Springfield in the heart of America!

The best thing about this game for me, beyond the abundant ways to strategize, is there are no dice. The only randomness is the beginning turn order and the generators in the market. It mixes the best parts of so many games that I can’t help but love it.

With the deluxe edition, you also get the Europe map on the other side of the board and nice wooden pieces. We have also had players as young as ten play and do just fine.

At first, the game may seem daunting with its complexity. But after you get the hang of it, it moves really fast and is super fun. I highly recommend it for your next game night!

Refine Your Prose: Don’t Let English Get In the Way

Standard

Read other writing advice blogs on my writing page!

Refine Your Prose 5: Don’t Let English Get in the Way

This tip may be the most crucial for breathing life in your narrative and making it your own. But using it without the utmost care can destroy the readability of your prose.

weird-al-word-crimes-2-970x0

When James Ellroy sent his novel L.A Confidential to his editors, they told him he needed to cut the length. Not wishing to remove any of the scenes or plot of his story, Ellroy went through and removed every verb, adverb and adjective he deemed unnecessary.

I feel you recoil. Sentences need these words! Verbs in particular are one of the two pieces of every complete sentence. How can you publish a novel that ignores major structural underpinnings of the English language?

Ellroy did. And his prose full of sentence fragments and verbless narrative –which he uses to accentuate the speed and rhythm of his story – created a unique writing style, called Ellrovian prose, that redefined the genre. He would later refine the style with White Jazz and his proceeding works.

Prose is rife with examples of broken English rules. Forgoing rules when necessary can lift your prose to an unforgettable level. But forgoing those rules too liberally, too grossly or without care can ensure no one will read your work.

I wrote a story in college without punctuation or capitalization. It was new! It was fresh! No one wrote this way! (Except every other college creative writing student in existence.) And it was unreadable.  I broke the rules of punctuation and capitalization just to break them, not for any reason that added to my voice or the work.

Even writers that break rules with purpose can be difficult to read. It took me several chapters to grok Ellroy’s style in White Jazz. Cormac McCarthy routinely dispenses with apostrophes, commas and quotation marks. Though McCarthy’s prose is beautiful, I can’t get through many of his books because the lack of punctuation plain bugs me.

This post does not advocate breaking the rules of basic English just to break them. A writer needs to know how to correctly use a semicolon, when to use less versus fewer, where in a sentence a comma belongs, and what the difference is between its and it’s. This comes well before a writer should even have an inkling to consider suspecting that she might want to examine investigating the development of a style that might occasionally contemplate breaking rules. You need to know the rules before you break them. And even after you have a great handle on English, you can develop a memorable style without breaking a goddamn thing. Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner and Vonnegut have styles all their own and don’t go out of their way to mess with English rules.

English rules are rules for a reason. They allow people to understand the writing of others. Our job as writers is not just to communicate with our readers, but to connect with them. When done with skill and forethought, breaking an occasional rule can connect more fully and make prose more beautiful without sacrificing communication. But when those things distract your readers, your work will be relegated to the reject pile.

 

My Star Wars trailer takeaway: Han Solo is a grumpy old codger

Standard

Everybody has seen the latest trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In case you are that one person who didn’t see it (or not, in which case it’s likely you want to see it again), here it is:

I admit it, I loved it. It’s already better than the prequels. (And yes, despite popular opinion about Revenge of the Sith, I think they’re all terrible movies.) But I found myself ruminating afterward not on all the awesome in the trailer, but on the end, specifically the moment when the one and only Han Solo says, “Chewie… we’re home.”

Before you jump to share my excitement, I focused on it not in the way that most of the fan boys and girls do. Han Solo is… old. It’s been close to forty years, man. And it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. He’s wearing an outfit almost identical to the one he wore four decades before. Hell, it might be the same ol’ trusty duds that saw him through that unfortunate carbonite incident back on Bespin. He’s still driving the same jalopy that was a piece of junk forty years before, when he still had the edge to keep it in top form with his special modifications. To put it in terms of a time right now, in a galaxy we’re in right here, he’s driving and wearing this, today.

car

Sell old blue? They don’t make ’em like her these days! Let’s see you play my 8-tracks over your Blueteeth thingamawhatsit or whatever the hell you kids are using.

In short, Han Solo is my grandpa. The old codger on his porch with his blaster pistol screaming “Get off my lawn!” at the rascally Ewoks that have moved in to his neighborhood.

I may be wrong. Along with Captain Kirk and James Bond, Han Solo defined manhood and cool for me growing up. The first two examples have aged quite well. I can only hope Han will do the same.

But until I see Han once again shooting first in the cantinas of The Force Awakens, the image of the grumpy old smuggler that time has passed by won’t leave me. Let’s just hope Lando Calrissian doesn’t show up in the next trailer, kicking back a Colt 45 and playing holographic cribbage with his buddies Han and Chewie in the Falcon’s assisted living compartment.

Refine Your Prose: Use The Landscape

Standard

Previous Refine Your Prose Posts:

Be a Sadist

Build by Scenes

Learn Dialogue

 

Refine Your Prose 4: Use the Landscape

Landscape should mean as much to a story as the characters. When used with purpose, landscape is invaluable in creating and emphasizing emotional tone. What would The Great Gatsby be without the landscape of the nouveau riche of the ‘20s, or The Grapes of Wrath without the Dust Bowl? The landscape in these works and countless others is as much a character as the protagonists.

 

221b_Baker_Street

Exactly.

 

In general, I loathe description of landscape, and over-description in general.  It is a prose sinkhole. No other facet of writing gives an author more opportunity to encumber the flow of the story. But many well-known authors describe a lot. Both Raymond Chandler and F. Scott Fitzgerald go to absurd lengths to describe. But they are brilliant at it because their descriptions always matter. Everything described in their works serves the narrative and tone of the story.

Whenever you describe a country, a room or a twig on the ground, make sure it serves the narrative. Use it to establish the emotional tone of your story and reinforce it along the way. When you edit, add description that strengthens your tone, and delete description that doesn’t. Does your detailed description of the rain highlight your story’s themes? If yes, keep it up. If not, rewrite or delete it.

Good description establishes and reinforces emotional tone. It does not show the beautiful picture in your head or act as filler. And it can be deadly for the beginning of a novel. Done well, description can take your narrative further than the characters can alone, and heighten your themes beyond what your protagonists do or say.

 

 

A Remodel Ain’t A Remodel Without Pestilence

Standard

You may remember from a previous blog that our house is trying to kill us. We found this out before our remodel. Now, the offending vinyl (shown below… two flavors!) has been removed and we’re down to the sub-floor. The cabinets have been demolished and our kitchen now looks like the photo at the top of the article.

20193_10152830354140784_6944547304440249434_n 20386_10152830353885784_2799301474430478581_n

Who needs new floors with classy 60s asbestos death vinyl like this?

So we are now kitchenless. And furniture-less. We pulled up all the carpet and molding to get to the hardwoods underneath and will be painting while the furniture is in the garage. There are nails, staples, tack strips and dust on every surface except in the bedrooms and bathrooms. Hence the dining on PB&J using boxes in the garage as a table. Today the electricians and plumbers are doing further destruction in the name of making the house less of a forbidden zone. Oh, did I mention the guest bathroom toilet has been plugged for the past few weeks? Good times.

11141143_10152836012850784_9050400012426817132_n

It’s like camping! In our own garage! Eating on a box!

However, Life decided living in a gutted house wasn’t quite enough of a challenge. During the asbestos removal, the abatement company cut a hot water pipe and we had no hot water for a couple days. Keep in mind everything was dusty during demolition, with now no ability to shower. Then on Thursday, my two year old Sebby came down with pink eye. This quickly moved to a chest cold, which he proceeded to spread to his sister and mother. Then, to top it all off, I had an MS flare up kick in Thursday night. This means that, for a brief period of time, my MS symptoms are cranked up to 11. I could barely get out of bed Friday morning.

So in addition to a house with no furniture, no kitchen, no hot water and no laundry room, four of the five family members were put out of commission due to illness. Remodeling FTW.

The silver lining is that treatment for an MS flare up is a three-day course of steroid infusions. Which means that 1) I feel much better than normal afterward, and 2) I don’t sleep for three days. Saturday night I used our shop vac to clean up the insulation, paint chips and nails in the kitchen and laundry/utility rooms. Last night I swept the living room, dining room and hallway starting at ten, and still had energy to pick up molding and watch the Game of Thrones premiere. So I guess having a day of MS suck was probably worth it in the end, after all.

Hunters: Chapter Six

Standard

Chapter Six of Hunters! After discovering Hinge has come to Seattle, Tricia wants to make sure her old master has not harmed her lone mortal friend. Feedback on this and previous draft chapters is appreciated.

Also,the anthology Saints and Sinners is now available, featuring the short story prequel to Hunters, Harsh Mistress! A pirate captain sails his ship into Hell to rescue the woman he loves.

Hunters

Previous chapters can be found on the Hunters page.

 

Chapter Six

Compare the latest version with the first draft here!

Tricia

 

Hinge is here.

Sebastian’s words thundered through my mind. He had spoken them with a casual indifference that showed he didn’t appreciate the horror it brought me. Or maybe he did know and didn’t give a shit. Or planned on it. Or fuck.

Hinge is here.

The memories of my old master seethed from the mental tomb where I’d buried them. His utter ruthlessness. His lack of compassion or mercy. The agony and ecstasy that shrouded everything he did. Each memory brought with it the humiliation of my complete servitude to him, and the temptation to luxuriate again in my Cursed nature.

Hinge is here.

The possibility terrified me. Again the hope tickled my thoughts that Sebastian was fucking with me, but I couldn’t risk assuming that. There was no reason the chain-smoking bastard would bother. And if my old master was indeed in Seattle, it was inevitable he would harm my lone mortal friend.

I strode invisible through one of the many homeless camps tucked beneath the I-5 overpasses. The torn fencing around the camp rattled against the breeze, dripped water from the mist that hung in the cold air. Vagrants huddled in a motley collection of tents and sleeping bags under the shelter of the freeway. A few gathered around harsh fires fueled by whatever detritus they could find. The slate gray light from the overcast sky threw a lifeless cast over the camp.

The reek of smoldering trash and unwashed bodies assaulted me, churned into a repulsive stew by the wind. Sound drummed from above as a steady rhythm of traffic poured into the core of downtown Seattle.

Through the thunder of cars I picked out a voice, faint but familiar. The tension in my shoulders relaxed for the first time since I’d left Sebastian’s apartment. I followed the voice through the camp toward the woman I sought.

Chaplain Rosangela Marinha do Carmen crouched on the mossy and trash-strewn gravel in front of one of the homeless men. She wore a beaten leather jacket and dirty black sweats, and silver crosses dangled from her ears. A pair of half-moon glasses hung from a beaded necklace around her neck. She carried nothing save a large black satchel hanging from her shoulder. I could have stood yards away and still picked out what she said, but Rosie’s warm presence always drew me close. I stopped just a few paces back. She was alive, unharmed. If I got any closer I was afraid I’d jump her in joy in the middle of her conversation.

A wall of body odor wrapped over me as I neared the two, but Rosie seemed unfazed by his stench.

“Are you positive I cannot offer you a ride to a clinic?” Her Brazilian accent melted her words together in a waterfall of sound. The gentle voice was striking coming from such an imposing woman. Even crouching, she was nearly as tall as me and dwarfed me in width.

The man shook his head but said nothing. The wind gusted curtains of mist under the overpass, drug the fog of his breath in an erratic stream. His skeletal, callused hands clutched his torn blue sleeping bag closer at his neck. The elements had beaten his reddened skin to a smooth shine beneath the shadow of dirt and stubble. His yellow, bloodshot eyes swiveled in their sockets to avoid her gaze.

She smiled sadly and pulled a black thermos from the bag hanging at her hip. “Well, at least let me offer you a cup of coffee. It will not be as comforting as a clinic, but it will ward off some of the chill.”

A river of steam curled from the thermos as she filled a paper cup for him. The richness of its smell cut through the pall of body odor. Life touched the man’s eyes as he pulled himself to his knees, cradled the cup close to his face. He inhaled the scent deeply before taking a sip. More than for her compassion or ministrations, the homeless knew the woman they called “Sister Rosie” for her coffee.

Rosie twisted the thermos closed and placed her dark hand on the man’s greasy tangle of hair. Her massive grasp could have picked him up by the skull.

“I’m no believer,” the man said. His voice sounded like rocks tumbling over metal.

Rosie laughed. “That is fine. You do not have to be.” She pulled him close and whispered words in his ear even I couldn’t catch. He shuddered, fell against her shoulder, and she held him for several moments before patting his back and standing.

“I will be back tomorrow if you are here,” she said. The man didn’t reply and cuddled the coffee cup in his trembling grip. Rosie turned away, her boots crunching over the gravel and brittle weeds.

I could no longer contain my excitement.

“You’re okay,” I said.

“Mae de Deus.” Rosie spun with an alacrity I would have thought impossible for her. “Tricia. I did not see you. What are you doing here?”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into an embrace. “You’re okay,” I whispered, and stood on my toes to kiss her cheek. Errant strands of gray-streaked hair that had escaped her bun brushed my face, smelled of earth and sweat.

When my lips touched her cheek our minds entwined. Our physical contact wasn’t intimate enough for a strong mental connection, but I couldn’t see any tampering.

Her cheeks blushed and she hugged me back with a laugh. “Why would I be otherwise?”

I pulled away, breaking our brief mental contact, and fought back shame. It felt too much like a violation, not just of an innocent mortal but of my spiritual savior. Telling myself it was to make sure Hinge hadn’t tampered with her didn’t help. Using my demonic powers on anyone I wasn’t hunting, no matter the reason, felt like a sin.

Rosie’s expression darkened as her eyes passed over me. “Your face! What happened to you?”

I looked away. Every ache I had been ignoring started to groan. The marks of the Andrasi fight must still look terrible. “I’m fine.”

“How did you get hurt?” Her thick hands touched my bruises with surprising tenderness. “We should get you to a hospital.”

Her touch was warm, welcoming, but I jerked away from her examination. “I said I’m fine. It was just a bar fight.”

“You got into a bar fight.” She said it without reproach. I imagined the reproach anyway. She had never asked how old I was – I doubted I looked old enough to drink – but she had been my friend for almost a decade.

The nagging concern about my eternal youth grumbled, but I shoved it away. I couldn’t worry about that on top of everything else, and certainly not until she made an issue of it.

“You should see the other guys,” I said.

“Guys. Plural. You were assaulted?” She turned pale. “Dear God, were you raped?”

“No.” I met her concerned stare without blinking. “No. I swear to you I wasn’t raped.”

Then her eyes widened. “Wait. Were you in the stampede at the Trinity Club last night?”

I blushed. Even if Rosie didn’t take advantage of her police connections, that clusterfuck would be all over the news by now.

“You were there,” she breathed, wagging a finger at me. “Ten people died, Patricia. The survivors are either catatonic or in the hospital. What happened?”

I shrugged. “Everyone went crazy. I fought a few guys blocking my way out.” I gestured to the bruises on my face and the tears in my clothes and hoped that would be enough explanation for how I got them.

“You should give a statement to the police. They have no real witnesses.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know anything. I ran.”

“You don’t have to be scared-”

“I’m not scared,” I said, with enough force to cause her to take a step back. I looked away and spoke more softly. “I’m not scared. I just don’t know anything.”

She didn’t break her stare for several moments. Then she started walking toward her car and pulled the coffee thermos back out of her bag. “You could probably use some coffee. You do not look like you have slept since the bar fight.”

I matched her pace, took the offered cup. “Do you ever run out? It’s like loaves and fishes.”

For a moment I didn’t think she’d let the subject of the club drop. But then she let out a big, embracing chuckle that warmed me to the core. “Except with coffee and biscotti for today’s crowd? I have an urn in my car.”

I took a swallow of coffee. She must have seen my expression of pleasure and smiled. “My ex told me I needed to drink water as well as coffee to survive. I never saw the point.”

“He must not have been from here.”

“He was born here.” She frowned. “Even if he moved right after the divorce, he would still be more from the Northwest than me.”

“You don’t know if he’s still in the area?”

She shook her head and swiped at her eyes.

Passing traffic and the hiss of rain filled the silence. I knew hints of her life before we met, but she seldom spoke about her past before her religious calling.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I said.

She waved a hand. “What is there to talk about? I do not blame him. He thought he married a wife and instead married a job. I doubt any memories our children have are fond, either. But without the divorce, I would not have become a chaplain. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

I heard sadness edging words that were dismissive on the surface. More silence followed. The mist cloaked us as we passed out of the freeway’s shadow into the open.

She batted her hand in front of her nose. “You need a shower. You smell like cigarettes.”

Fucking Sebastian. Not only had he called me a blunt instrument, he made me reek like….

I nearly stumbled. After Sebastian’s warning I had rushed to find Rosie and make sure Hinge hadn’t harmed her. But Hinge had no way of knowing about her unless he had been watching me for a very long time… or if I had just led him to her.

Sebastian wanted me to provoke Hinge into action. He might have planned that I would go straight to anyone I cared about. Just like he could trust a blunt fucking instrument to do.

I didn’t have a choice. I had to find Hinge as soon as possible. Demons could sense each other, but Hinge was powerful enough to mask his presence from anyone, even Sebastian. That left me precious few options for tracking him down. And I would not use Rosie as bait like Sebastian intended.

My mind scrambled. “You were a police officer, right?” I said in a rush, as much to break the silence as to cover my disgust at my stupidity.

Rosie looked away. “That was another life, Tricia.”

“Can you get me into the morgue?”

She couldn’t disguise her shock. “Oh, meu filha, why do you need to go there? I haven’t set foot in the place in years.”

“You must still know people from your time in the force.”

“After all this time? One or two, maybe, but….” She shook her head. “I am not going to try to get you into the morgue.”

“Why not?”

She stopped walking and turned to me. “Why do you need to go there?”

“One of my friends is missing. I want to make sure she’s not there.”

Rosie looked at me sidelong and resumed walking, with a pace fast enough that I had to jog to catch up. “She would be identified if she died.”

“I doubt it.” I started to dig the lie deeper, then thought better of it. “This is something I have to do.”

“Does this have anything to do with what happened last night?”

“No.” At least I didn’t have to lie about that.

We had reached her sedan. The necklace that held her glasses chimed as she slipped them on. She crossed her arms under her massive bosom and fixed her gaze on me. “We have been friends for years. Some of the most stimulating conversations I have ever had are our midnight talks of morality and spirituality. You seem genuine in your desire to become a better person. I thought we trusted each other. But you show up this morning bruised and in ripped clothes, looking like you were up all night, and all you say is that you were in a bar fight and want to get in to the morgue.” She set her mouth in a determined line. “Tell me the truth about what happened at the club last night – and what you are really looking for – and I will find a way to get you in.”

I could only hold her stare for a few moments before looking away. I had the power to break her face into a jigsaw puzzle before she could move, or twist her to my will in a fog of desire, but I felt like a child cowering before a woman as immovable as a mountain.

“I did not think so.” She maintained her glare for a moment, then her features softened. “You do not look as bad now that you are in the light.”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

She sighed. “You are always welcome to come by my apartment. I will make a pot of coffee and we can talk. But no morgue.”

I looked down at the ground, sorting my thoughts, then nodded. “Right.” I turned to walk away.

“Oh, no, we are not ending like this,” Rosie said, and reached out to me. I let myself melt into her embrace.

“You know I am always here for you, yes?”

I nodded. In her warm grasp, the weight of my worry, even the aches of my injuries, seemed to evaporate.

She gave one last squeeze, then released me and opened the car door. “Can I give you a ride anywhere?”

The morgue, I thought. “No,” I said.

“Then stay out of trouble,” she said. “Por favor. I will see you soon?”

I nodded. She winked and slipped into her car. In moments I was alone in the lot with the Seattle mist surrounding me.

The click of my boots as I reached the pavement fell dead in the rain around me. I needed to get back home to change, drag a comb through my hair, look presentable at least. I had hoped Rosie would get me into the morgue so I didn’t have to resort to using my powers. Fuck, I wasn’t even sure the place would reveal anything. But I had to follow the only lead I could think of. I had to confirm Hinge was here and find a way to track him. If I didn’t, I feared the next late night discussion at Rosie’s apartment would never happen.

 

Continue to Chapter Seven

 

(c) 2015 by William Reid Schmadeka, all rights reserved

Refine Your Prose: Learn to Write Dialogue

Standard

Previous Refine Your Prose Posts:

Build Your Story By Scenes

Be a Sadist

 

Refine Your Prose 3: Learn to Write Dialogue

 

“As you know, Bob…” is the worst dialogue phrase in existence. If Bob knows, why are you telling him? It’s so you can tell the reader. What follows is likely a patronizing infodump that takes the reader out of the story.

Good dialogue trusts the intelligence of the reader and lets them fill in the gaps without holding their hand. It breathes life, personality and individuality into your characters. Good dialogue hauls your reader into the story and doesn’t let go.

So what’s the secret to learning to write dialogue?

Eavesdrop.

 

eavesdrop

Dude, it’s cool. I’m a writer.

The very suggestion feels dirty. We’ve been taught since childhood not to listen in on private conversations. But it’s the key to writing good dialogue. Besides, everything a writer does is dirty in one way or another. And doing dirty things is a lot of fun.

Go to your local coffee shop, sit down next to a full table and listen to the neighboring conversation. Pay attention to each person’s voice, mannerisms and word choices. Take notes in the notebook you carry for story ideas. (You do carry one, right?) Listen to what they say… and more importantly, what they don’t.

Eavesdropping lets you absorb the nuances of real dialogue. It drives home how much you don’t need to know in order to follow a conversation. The people at the next table are not going to tell each other what they already know. Moreover, they aren’t going to tell you, the dirty eavesdropper next door. You have to figure out the backstory yourself based on context. And you’ll be surprised how well you do. They may make references you don’t understand, but you either figure them out based on context, or decide they’re not important and move on.

Readers are the ultimate eavesdroppers, able to spy on the most private details of your protagonists’ lives. By delivering dialogue that trusts your readers’ intelligence and makes your characters feel alive, you make your narrative that much more compelling.

It’s Baseball time!

Standard

Seattle is a sports city.

I know Seattle gets some national backlash for the recent popularity and success of the Seahawks. But I don’t know of any team that has such a diversity of personality and talent. “Go Hawks” is synonymous with goodbye or have a nice day in the Pacific Northwest. And not to take anything away from the Patriots, but Seattle should have a second Lombardi trophy. Keep telling yourself Russell Wilson isn’t good, people. We don’t care. He’ll just keep beating you.

Even MLS is enormous in Seattle. I compare Sounders fans to drama kids in High School. They aren’t as ubiquitous as Hawks fans, but those that are in the club are WAY in the club.

(There are people still furious we lost the Sonics, too. I haven’t been into the NBA since the days of Michael Jordan. But it feels like a legitimate sports town needs basketball as well as the other major sports.)

But in my heart, I’ve always been a Mariners fan.

Seattle_Mariners-logo

When I moved to Seattle, I went to my first Mariners game in 2000. And that game? A nineteen-inning monstrosity against the Boston Red Sox. They had a second seventh-inning stretch in the 14th. They wheeled out the coffee urns at the top of the concourse steps and gave out free coffee to those of us still there. I didn’t get home until 2 AM.

And I loved it.

I lived through 114-win and 100-loss seasons. I watched Ichiro explode and Felix still exploding. Who won the Cy Young last year again?

Safeco Field is one of the finest MLB stadiums in the country, and I’ve been to over a dozen. I cannot confirm or deny that the baseball home game schedule might have affected my scheduling plans for events I organized.

We have Felix and Iwakuma. We have Robinson Cano, Kyle Seger and now Nelson Cruz. Last year, we were a game out of the playoffs. This year, I believe.

I think in October Seattle will meet New England in another championship. And trust me, Felix’s curveball is nastier than a slant pass.

Hunters: Chapter Five

Standard

Chapter Five of Hunters is up! Feedback on this and previous draft chapters is appreciated.

Also,the anthology Saints and Sinners is now available, featuring the short story prequel to Hunters, Harsh Mistress! A pirate captain sails his ship into Hell to rescue the woman he loves.

Hunters

Previous chapters can be found on the Hunters page.

 

Chapter Five

Compare the latest version with the first draft here!

Garrison

 

I winced as a cramp knotted the scarred muscles of my leg. I unfolded it as much as I could in the confines of the coach-class seats and finished the plastic bottle of vodka in my hand. For a moment the torturous memory of shattered bone gripped me. The cabin filled with distant, scouring winds that reeked of avgas and burning meat. Always the itch started with memory. It had been hours since I last dosed, and it would take me at least an hour to score in Seattle after landing. The fact I could, and often did, go without for longer didn’t help. That I had no option to indulge at that second prodded my nerves.

“Another vodka?” I asked the stewardess passing by with the beverage cart.

Her thoughts morphed to concern as I spoke.

“You won’t be a problem, will you, Mr. Decker?” She asked.

“I’m not interested in causing a problem, ma’am. Just another vodka.”

She frowned and exchanged a bottle in the cart for the twenty dollar bill I gave her. “This is the last one,” she warned, but it was an empty threat. She had made almost a hundred off me with the tips.

I smiled and waited for her to move on. Then I swallowed the two Vicodin in my palm and chased them with the contents of the bottle. The VA threw pills at me despite the warning signs. My problems were far easier to medicate than cure.

“How many bottles is that, bro?” Asked a thin, reedy voice through my earbuds. The digital image of a knight scowled at me from a window in the corner of my tablet screen. Red and orange pixels of flame licked the medieval cottages behind him.

“A few.”

“And how many pills?”

I scowled. “You’re not here to monitor me.”

“Mea culpa.” The knight raised his hands, palms forward. The veneer of corded muscle and shining armor hid his sallow skin, thinning black hair and prodigious weight, though I could see hints of Eugene’s body language behind the avatar. The Gluttony Cursed I had rescued him from had chosen him for a reason.

Eugene continued. “By the way, nothing made the news about Rothschild manor.”

“I didn’t think it would.”

“That’s because you didn’t torch the place. That seemed the smartest plan for taking on four demons.”

“There were at least a dozen humans in there. I wanted to destroy demons, not murder their thralls.”

“Crap. Then a big thank you from the ex-Cursed puppet crowd for no collateral damage.”

This was more casual conversation than Eugene had ever ventured. I scowled. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“I thought you couldn’t, you know, see things long distance.” Eugene wiggled his fingers as if using magic.

“I’m a psychologist. Give me some credit.”

“Fair enough. But,” he overemphasized the word, “then you jump on a plane and jet off to Seattle. How much did you pay for a last-minute flight across the country?”

“I thought you were a computer wizard. Just find out.”

“That doesn’t take any more voodoo than hitting up a travel site. It’s just I didn’t have time with the goose chase you sent me on. I’ve never seen you with a hard-on for a Cursed like this.”

I grimaced. His slight carried more weight than he understood. “So did you find anything?”

“With all that info you gave me?” Eugene scoffed. His avatar’s gauntlet, holding a leg of meat by the bone, moved toward his mouth. The crunch of chips rattled over the connection. “Tricia Praest is a ghost.”

“You found nothing?”

“I have a name and your drawing. Oh, and that she’s sexy as heck. That’s it. Not the best start for a search.”

“You’ve worked your magic with less than that before.”

“True. But there is nothing to find. There are no records of a Tricia Praest in Seattle,” Eugene said. “And before you ask, not in Washington either, or the whole country. No tax records, no utility bills, no licenses, no arrest records, no bank accounts-”

“She can’t live off the grid in the middle of a city.”

“Um, apparently she can. Plus no mentions of her in blogs or emails. No teen hotties with crimson eyes in the ‘I saw you at the club’ sections of the local papers. I even tried an image search, which was close to pointless going off a drawing. Did you ever take art lessons?”

“I told you there wouldn’t be any images.” Most Cursed had unique weaknesses I could exploit. But if Praest had one beyond lacking a reflection or electronic image, neither my wife Helen nor Ashlea Rothschild had known it. Even my drawing wasn’t worth a great deal. The memories of Praest from the two couldn’t be trusted with the raw sensuality that drenched every recollection.

 

Eugene shook his head. As he spoke, a woman with arms flailing and hair afire ran out of the blazing cottage behind him. “Think about that for a sec. She can’t get a passport, driver’s license or ID. That means she’s not flying or driving or renting an apartment, let alone opening a bank account or buying property. She probably lives off the grid because she has to, and uses thralls for anything public.” Eugene’s voice stumbled. His Cursed had milked his soul for months until I rescued him. “Which isn’t terrifying at all.”

I shuddered at the memory of my own enthrallment. My eyes drifted to the background image on my tablet, a photo of me and Helen at the beach. The picture froze us before I left for war, before she changed into the thing I had destroyed. Her skin held faint wrinkles and blemishes her transformation had erased, and her deep brown eyes were clear of the malice and lust that the Curse had devoured. Her beauty as a succubus had been unearthly, consuming, yet nothing close to that of the woman I had married.

I had changed as much as she since that picture. My reflection in the screen’s surface loomed wraithlike over my younger self, from a past more distant than four years would warrant. My hair was thick and vibrant instead of shaved and thinning. Face clean of stubble, fuller, eyes yet untouched by the horrors wrought by the demons I destroyed. Innocent of the months of demonic enthrallment and years of addiction to dull the memory of her euphoria.

“So, why go for this Cursed in Seattle?” Eugene said. A jeweled silver goblet now glittered in the knight’s hand, accompanied by the gurgle of a soda can and a rumbling belch. “I’m pretty sure we’re not out of demons over here.”

I closed my eyes. “Tricia Praest fed on my wife’s soul and let her become a demon. She Cursed my wife.”

Eugene’s avatar blinked. “Holy crap.”

“The succubus at Rothschild manor knew Praest was in Seattle.”

He cocked his helmeted head. “That’s random. Do all sex demons just know each other?”

“Random or not, she knew where Praest was. I can’t ignore her.”

“Beg to differ, bro, but you can. You should. I know how you work. You find, you watch, you plan, you destroy. None of which you’re doing here. You don’t run off on half-baked quests for vengeance.”

“She started it all. I destroyed Helen because of her.”

“Do you even have a plan how to find her? Or destroy her once you do?”

“Beheading and fire always work. As for finding her….”

I had been chewing on that problem since leaving the manor, but my voice trailed off before I could answer.

“Someone is watching me,” I said.

Eugene snorted. “Maybe because you’re drinking all the vodkas and talking demons with a medieval warrior.”

“It’s more than that.” I sharpened my senses. Most of the time I blocked the thoughts of others out of necessity. I would go insane if I eavesdropped on every stray thought. But focused attention on me could still draw my attention.

There, two rows behind me in the opposite aisle. A man held an airline magazine, but his eyes weren’t looking at the pages. He was paying attention to me.

“This guy knows who I am,” I said. “And he’s following me.” His thoughts were indistinct, and I forced myself not to look back at him. But his intent was clear.

“Um.” The knight’s face crunched in consternation. “You realize that’s crazy. You found Praest totally by luck, booked a flight and got on a plane in less than a day, and someone is following you on that same flight?”

“Yeah, I know how weird it is. Weird is normal in this job. I’ll let you know what I find out.” I closed the connection before Eugene could respond and slipped the tablet into the seat pocket. I had to push aside several bottles to make room.

“Everyone on our left will see the spectacular Mount Rainier,” the captain said through the overhead speaker. “With the lovely spring weather in Seattle, the mountain won’t be out when we land in twenty minutes.”

Movement and chuckles filled the cabin. My pursuer’s attention shifted from me for a moment, and I stole a glance back at him. He was pale, nearly an albino, and hairless. His head shone like a veined and dimpled egg. No eyebrows, facial hair or eyelashes I could see. The gray ridges of long-healed scars traversed his full cheeks with neither the carelessness of violence nor the traces of medical treatment. His brown sweater and jeans hung over a tall, thin frame. He would tower over me by half a foot standing. The dawn light glowed from his skin as he stared out his window.

My connection to his thoughts sharpened as soon as I laid eyes on him. His mind took in the glowing red and purple sunlight thrown back by the ice-capped summit. I shuddered. The reds he saw tingled my skin. The roughness of the purples mixed with the silken warmth of the whites. Thoughts seldom came with more than the recollection of smells, tastes and sensations, but this man had synesthesia. What he saw stimulated all his other senses, and those sensations flowed into me through his thoughts. Experiencing the sensations directly from my pursuer’s mind was disconcerting.

A flight attendant’s voice replaced the captain’s. “In a few minutes we will start our descent. Please take a moment to stow your baggage and use the facilities before we turn on the fasten seat belts sign.”

He unfastened his belt and rose. With last-minute tickets, both of us were seated in the back of the plane. I waited a few moments for him to start toward the plane’s rear bathroom, then stood. The interior of the plane swayed as if drifting underwater, and I gripped the back of my seat. I waited for the vodka-induced vertigo to pass, then followed.

A handful of passengers were in the aisles stowing bags, and the attendants were picking up headsets and trash. I used them for cover as I followed, but the man never bothered to glance back. He had no reason to suspect he’d been spotted.

When his hand pushed against the accordion door to the lavatory, I moved. Behind him in two quick strides. Quick glance to confirm the rear galley of the plane was empty. Plenty of buffer from sound and view. Palm against the back of his smooth head, a crack as I smashed it against the edge of the sink. He groaned and went limp. I pressed his bleeding head to the mirror and pulled the door shut behind us. Thick smells of urine and feces hung in the lavatory after six hours of use.

His pale eyes stared back at me in the mirror with surprise, but not fear. The sight of me smelled like curdled milk, which for a moment drowned out the stench of excrement.

His mind showed military discipline as he tried to sort out how I had spotted his tail. I wrenched his arm back in a hammerlock and kept his face crushed to the mirror. Pain scattered his thoughts, then a disturbing glow of enjoyment at the agony.

“You’re following me,” I growled in his ear. “Who are you?”

He tried to pull free but had no space to move. His lip quivered. “Not many can tell when I follow.” His soft voice was strained, but in a way that could have either pleasure or pain. The English carried only a thin Eastern European accent despite its lack of fluency.

The name sprung into his mind regardless. “Jesper Hoodjink,” I said. “Why are you following me?”

Jesper tensed again at the mention of his name, but his composure quickly returned. “I don’t expect you to be able to stand with all the drinks, Mr. Decker.”

I barely heard his reply through his rush of discordant thoughts. Ursula Filitov had him follow me. Thin to the point of malnourishment, with piercings, tattoos and artistic scarring across her body. The left half of her head was shaved bald, the right half a platinum curtain draping over her face. Her intense blue eyes shone from the depths of sunken sockets.

I had never seen or heard of her before.

“Who is Ursula?” I asked. “Is she following me for Tricia Praest?”

His mind stumbled on the name Praest. But his body turned rigid at Filitov’s name. “Ursula does not fear you. Nor do I.”

I ignored his bravado and wrenched his arm back harder. “Why are you following me?” I repeated.

He might have answered with words. His mind screamed the answer unhindered. Pain. Torture of every kind. Misery that under her hand was the ecstasy she paid him with. All while she leeched away his soul.

I swore at myself for the question. I needed to know why Ursula wanted me followed, not why Jesper obeyed her. But I stopped to digest the current of memories flowing from him.

“Ursula is a Cursed,” I said. “And you’re her thrall.”

He struggled against my grip. “You are seeing my thoughts,” he said. “You are demon to do these things.”

I clicked my tongue. “If I were a demon, you would be dead right now. They don’t bother to ask-”

For a moment I thought Ursula again sprung to his mind, but instead it was a man. Eyes golden, body broad and muscular, clean-faced with long unshaven hair, but in every other way a masculine duplicate of Ursula. Jealousy swathed Jesper’s thoughts of this one. Vasily.

“What does Vasily have to do with this? Why does Ursula care about me?”

The answers began to coalesce in his mind, but his terror at what I was doing drowned it out. He pulled his free arm up enough to press it against the mirror and slide his sweater back from the shirt underneath. A rough strip of wine-colored cloth with intricate geometric designs was sewn at the cuff Holy Christ agony at the sight of it I jerked away and withdrew from his mind.

Sweat beaded over his brow as he stared at the cloth. His expression froze in a disturbing mix of giddiness and agony.

“Quick thinking,” I said. “That’s not the only way to interrogate you, though.”

A bell rang through the cabin, followed by the voice of the flight attendant. “We are starting our descent….”

“Can you interrogate before we land?” Jesper said through teeth clamped together. Despite the pain of my arm lock and his synesthesia, a macabre smile spread across his thin lips. The agony must be luxurious for him.

“I have everything I need for now.” I released his arm and pulled the lavatory door open. The galley was still empty. “Let’s chat again. I’m staying at the Four Seasons, since you want to keep an eye on me.” I tugged a paper hand towel free from the dispenser and pressed it against his bleeding head, then turned away before I let my mind chew on the implications of what I’d found.

I returned to my seat and pulled my tablet out of the seat pocket. My hands trembled, and the need to land, to score, to dose, started to rumble again. Damn it. I tried to ignore the urge, ignore Jesper and the glares from the attendants as I typed in a last message to Eugene before shutting down.

“Ursula and Vasily Filitov. Everything you can find.”

 

Continue to Chapter Six

 

(c) 2015 by William Reid Schmadeka, all rights reserved