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Printheads: [Closed] NOVELISTS: Show Me Your Bits
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Hello all! I'm Dylan Alford...protonovellist. I'm in the process of doing a cafe press run of a collection of three longish stories for sale at the alternative press expo in SF. One is a biographical sketchbook of freaks, bums, and millionaires that I ran into in Hawaii (not the real world), one a first person narrative from a methadone survivor (cyborgs vs. zombies), and a story about a highbrow weird drug user and his compulsive liar Iraq vet brother...
1. We first met him in the parking lot of the Hawaii Island Community Federal Credit Union's North Kohala branch, where the battery died on our 87 Isuzu Trooper. He hobbled out from under a tree and tried to persuade us to push start it (rolling it in neutral, shifting to second, hitting gas and clutch) but we were chicken. He bullshitted with us while we waited for a jump.
"Horse accident in Costa Rica twenty years ago." He gestured at his hip, which prevented him from standing upright or walking much. "You get all crippled up, it pisses you off to see these joggers... running nowhere just cause they're stupid when you got to sit down after ever couple steps." He wore hand made Guatemalan vests, turquoise cowboy boots, and a different feather in his felt hat every time we saw him... sort of a classier, homeless version of Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.
Homeless is a vague term in Hawaii. Unconventional living situations abound.... we were trading 15 hours a week for a room in a barn. Some construction workers just park their trucks at the beach and sleep there... shit at the jobsite. Everyone in America is homeless in a way... who belongs anywhere? I'm a foreigner in Flint... a foreigner in Marquette, Berkeley, Winnemucca, Sacramento... I've never felt at home anywhere. These people with their suburban castles, condos... they're just trespassing.
2. I headed into Berkeley to fight against the long odds of locating a used Sun City Girls album. Sentences from halved cell phone conversations passed through my blood/brain barrier.
"I'm going to the woods..." a chubby college girl spoke with dark finality.
"What kind of smoothies?" came from a purse wearing cyber-dandy.
I got a coffee and sat at the window of a place on Shattuck, looking at an aggregation of tight jeans waiting for the bus. I thought of maybe screaming or something. The coffee was a few degrees too hot to drink. Two lobotomized college girls, also too hot to drink, approached the empty chair next to me, the only empty seat in the place. They looked at each other, their noses wrinkled and top lips curled desperately. I got up..."by all means..."
I went out in the rain and took a bench on the other side of the glass from where I had been sitting, and the girls were laughing at me. A teenage, headphone harnessed hip hop enthusiast with a jacket covered in bright corporate logos pointed to the ground behind me.
"You dropped your pocket."
I turned around and looked mechanically at the ground... wait... my pocket? I watched him do it to a few others, comically confusing an elderly white couple. I had an idea. When he finished his rounds and leaned against the bus stop partition, I walked over to him and stood about a foot away. I removed the lid of the scalding coffee, and changed my mind. I looked into his face. "I want pussy so bad."
3. If there were an international prize awarded for recreational drug abuse ingenuity, Tim would be a perennial front runner. Swallowing the medicated cotton tubes from Benzedrex inhalers proved to be so unpleasant that it became impossible for him to dose at work, which was the only time he enjoyed using the substance. Eyebrows get raised at the guy who's always sweating and comes back from the bathroom smelling like lavender-infused vomit.
Through trial and error, he worked out a hydrochloric acid/dichloromethane/diethyl ether titration scheme that yielded propylhexedrine freebase, and from there, made the quantum leap to tampering with a metered dose asthma inhaler in a way that allowed him to breathe in roughly 100mg per inhalation. This was a cynical reaping of wasted years as a physics and chemistry major at Cal. -
- CommentAuthorliquidfiction
- CommentTimeMar 5th 2008 edited
My debut is Liquid Fiction Volume One: Have You Experienced?
It's an anthology of hybrid stories where I've mashed genres like bastard pop. Superhero meets American Gangster, Medieval Fantasy meets Speculative Fiction, Comedy blended with Horror. Flash Fiction, one act Plays, even a tele sitcom. It's available at , , and . -
Back in 2003 I had a novel published called Man Bites Dog. It's a comedy-detective story about a twentysomething inner city urban arty boy whose day job is being a mailman. Sample chapters and other bits in the books section of my website.
It's sold out, but there is an e-book version available, and second hand copies still float around here and there.
Working on a second novel very slowly, a spy story set in Melbourne about 80s electropop and time travel. Very slowly indeed.
Looking forward to working through this thread and reading other people's stuff. -
still working on my first novel; until I get published, I have nothing to link to and am not posting excerpts. just wanted to say I'm enjoying everyone else's stuff.
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CommentAuthormattmitchell
- CommentTimeMar 6th 2008
I'm Matt. Mostly I write horror (sometimes with a little humor thrown in) and modern-day fantasy. I'm working on some new stuff, a novel that's in the finalized third draft and another that's in its first stages. A little macabre, usually based in Florida (doesn't Florida need some horror stories based in it?), rarely with traditional monsters (I like to make 'em up as I go). Keep up with me at my website.
Most recently I had a story of mine published in Down in the Cellar. It's called The Ghost of Tom Johns. It's a free read, and here's an exerpt:
Slick chuckled, “You’re double-crossing the guy you were going to double-cross me with. This is rich.”
“Quiet,” Rushdie said. With his free hand he pulled a purple amulet from his shirt. “Put this on,” he said to the ranger.
The ranger slid the amulet over his neck, and Rushdie closed his eyes and said, “Mary,” releasing the ranger and taking a step away from him.
The ranger’s face twisted into a mask of terror and then his body opened up like a sleeping bag from top to bottom, with a splash of blood and entrails, and Mary stepped forward as if she’d been hiding in there all along.
“Mary,” Slick said, pinching his nose against the strong, rotten odor of the ranger’s guts. “I had a feeling you’d show up tonight, but damn what an entrance.”
Mary, by appearance a short, fat black woman with a huge halo-like afro, surprisingly had no blood or flecks of tissue on her at all. She was wearing dark brown pants and a tan shirt that was v-necked and strained around a pair of gigantic breasts. The v-neck wasn’t what would be considered low-cut but still bared a full foot of cleavage. As she strutted her breasts bounced with each step, and her lips were pursed as if somebody in the room had just said something immensely stupid.
“What you playing at, Slick?” she asked, picking at the lipstick at the corner of her mouth with one long, curved fingernail.
“I don’t follow, Mare,” he replied. Rushdie remained silent, standing beside the door, as if none of this concerned him.
“My nigga is over here sulking like you won’t play the deal with him. You gon’ play the deal or not, Slick?”
“I’ll play the deal, Mary. I just don’t want to get screwed.”
“Screwed?” she spun around and looked at Rushdie. “Who’s gon’ screw you?”
Slick shrugged, looking at Rushdie, not knowing exactly how to play this, just wanting to get it over with. Finally, he decided that nothing could be gained by admitting the attempted double-cross Rushdie had been planning. In fact, knowing Mary, it could turn out even worse for him if he did.
“Want a beer, Mare?” Slick asked.
“Well, it’s about time somebody around here remembered how to treat a lady. I would love a beer, darlin’.”
“It’s the last one,” he said, handing it to her.
She waited for him to open it and took a sip. “So,” she said, pointing at the coffin. “Is that mine?”
Slick nodded and took a step toward the coffin.
“Hold up,” Mary said.
Slick stopped.
“What you hidin’, boy?” Mary asked, taking a few steps toward him.
Slick shrugged, a fresh blanket of sweat dampening his entire body. It was one thing to play these games with cops and demi-humans, but Mary was a demon of some standing, and if he didn’t play his cards just right, by daybreak he would be strapped to a nice piece of lava rock, screwed in one end with a thorned penis and being pissed in the other end with black, acidic lava-urine. It really didn’t matter which end got which. -
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CommentAuthorRadio Saturday
- CommentTimeMar 6th 2008
I've written several novels, none of which have gotten past a few good friends.
However, I did publish a short story at Morbid Outlook.com and I have another one coming out in The Open Vein (such cheerful people).
I guess that kind of gives away the kind of stuff I usually write -- weird horror. :D -
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CommentAuthorWill Couper
- CommentTimeMar 6th 2008
Well. I've been prodded, cajoled and threatened with violence into this. I'm repeating myself, but my MySpace is here. If you look around in the blog you'll find a first draft of a sci-fi action adventure novel there.
I also have sitting, and have done for the last two and a half years, a horror novel that needs some attention.
There. Happy now?
Will -
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@Radio Saturday. Morbid Outlook are great. They were one of the first people to take something from me, years ago. They had some lovely artwork done too.
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- CommentAuthorSullyEliot
- CommentTimeMar 6th 2008 edited
Black Spiders (I doubt Google will help you find it, so don't even try) was posted on a website a year ago, and several people encouraged me to turn it into a book, and since university work is rather unfulfilling at the moment, I don't see why not. Almost a year out and it's gone from a cruel experiment on the members of a pbprpg (I wanted to write a novel so I'd see what my peers thought, and what better way to do it than online?) into a serious book draft. I would love it if it is as deeply polarizing as the original version was, which had people either loving or hating it, and no one had an opinion in between. Anyways, Black Spiders is written for a genre that doesn't even exist (think Kafka/Eliot, but written so you can enjoy it as both a story and a literary puzzle at the same time). It's got a lot of references to classical works of literature. Black Spiders is the only thing I'm writing with the intent to turn into a novel at this point, so perhaps that makes me a wannabe Novelist. If a wannabe isn't what was wanted, oh well. My ass is always available for kicking or eel invasion.
The following segment is told by a very wordy, full-of-himself character, which is why written the way it is.“The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life & the sources of all activity...”
It is a television.
This stark truth is revealed to me in a way that is immense, yet counter-actively insignificant. I feel cynical, but then, who would feel otherwise in this place? Oh yes, I should probably tell you about it—my location, I mean. It’s probably important to you, since you're not here, and therefore, can't see it. As such, I will grace you with my own description: I am in a desert. This is my first time in a place that is not man-made, but I do not mind–well, that is a lie. In fact, it is a two-part lie. First, I doubt anywhere I have been is truly man-made, due to the fact that man came from nature, just like the rest of nature is, and therefore anything man-made is all natural. Second, I mind it terribly much. I do not like this place at all, and I find myself muttering many uncouth words that I would otherwise be shocked to hear myself speak. I suppose I am justified.
I said that this desert was not man-made, and I lied; this must be expounded upon. The desert seems man-made, almost artificial in nature–certainly not a real desert by any means. Of course, one reason it seems man-made is due to the fact that the desert is only about twenty feet long and twenty-feet deep. If I recall correctly, the average desert is a lot larger, and doesn't have cactuses painted on the walls. Cactuses? Cacti? Cactuses. You see, there are several rather nice cactuses painted on the three walls around me, and clouds are painted on the ceiling (though they manage only to remind me of real clouds, for true clouds flit about the skies with a finesse that these impostors can only dream of achieving).
(Do clouds dream?)
There is a nice, grand cactus in the middle of the desert, and slightly to the left—stage left, I mean. I have some experience in the stage, you know, for I spent a short stretch in London on one. I played the part of an extra in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I got to kill him, too, but nobody enjoys talking about that part of the play.
Anyways, the cactus. It is a nice cactus, as I said, and grand, too. I said this as well, I believe. Yes, I did. If I knew better, I would probably call it something else, but for now, I will proclaim that it is a saguaro cactus. I say as much, and no one corrects me, because I am right, although I might be wrong and nobody corrects me simply because I am all alone in this desert, this man-made desert.
The only downside to such a cactus is that it has to be made of paper mache. You see, when someone makes a desert, they—out of necessity, you must understand—must take shortcuts that the various deities who sculpt natural deserts (wind, rain, and all the others) try to avoid at all costs. One of these is the creation of cacti; man cannot make cacti unless said cacti are made from paper mache. Another shortcut, which I briefly mentioned earlier, are painted walls.
It turns out, much to my surprise, that when creating an artificial desert, man cannot place such a vista anywhere, or any other scenery of the kind: He has to put it on the walls. Oh, yes, he can make a rock, but anyone can make a rock if he tries hard enough. I made one once, you know—but that was out of paper mache. No, when it comes to real plants, real life, and real scenery, nature wins every time. The one thing where man beats nature is in the realm of air conditioning. Man cannot create distance, but only the illusion of it, just as he cannot create space, nor can he create nothing. Still, air conditioning is triumph enough. -
- CommentAuthorI m out of here
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008 edited
I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.ROBATOMIK
And the evening and the morning are the first day
On the moon, there is ruins of our son. Under it, motionless since its birth, lie the shell carrying him. A skeleton of pure matter, for his flesh of infinite energy. His heart...
Now infected with an extra-dimentional being, his purpose arise and finally he is on his Path.
check out: myspace.com/viiirooo
for updates. -
- CommentAuthorsarianlives
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
hey there Warren and you other lovely Peeps...
I am Andi, otherwise known as the Erstwhile Elusive Sarianlives... I write a bunch of stuff, short stories, have a couple of novels on the go, as well as film scripts and a bunch of stage-plays.
To read some short stories such as "60 Million To One" - about the end of the world, when Angels are ordered to cull humanity, as well as "Monologue Duologue" - a two hander with a murderer explaining to his unwitting victim why and how he has killed him.
Both of these are available on my myspace page: , or my deviant-art page:
I will also have a website up soon with chapters from my novels, and also my in progress comic book about an exiled ANgel named Aurielle.
I also write music and film reviews for the fabulous webzine SUBBA-Cultcha, linked here: simply search for AJ Chamberlain.
Any opinions and thoughts greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Andi -
- CommentAuthorsarianlives
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
it would seem i fucked up the html....
this is because i am twat.
cheers!
SLx -
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CommentAuthorSpiraltwist
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
@WillCouper
There. Happy now?
Yes. -
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@WillCouper
Yes; we should threaten you more often. <em>Someone</em> has to drive the getaway car, and Spiral already said I could be Clyde just so long as I remember, 1.) that she could kick my ass, and 2.) she gets the bigger gun.
You'd be a very amusing getaway driver. We could nickname you .. but I'll leave the nicknames to Spiral.
- Z -
- CommentAuthorB. C. Bell
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
Holy shit, Does anybody actually have time to read all this stuff?
Anyway, Warren, I'm B. C. Bell, which it probably says right above this. I just finished my first novel, a heartwarming story about mental patients, the shifting of the magnetic poles, and lots of violence--it reminds me of my childhood--but I just started looking for an agent.
I was also a winner in SFReader.com's Annual Short Story Contest if anybody wants to read my stuff for free, here's the link
Thanks -
- CommentAuthorB. C. Bell
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
OK, one more try (begging),<a href="http://www.sfreader.com/contest-2007-2.asp"></a> -
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CommentAuthorWill Couper
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008 edited
@WillCouper
There. Happy now?
Yes.
You're determined to break me in some indefinable way, aren't you?You'd be a very amusing getaway driver. We could nickname you .. but I'll leave the nicknames to Spiral.
Bearing in mind that I can't drive, of course. Oh, the hilarity of that caper.
Will -
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I'll drive, but I still get to be Clyde. You can load the guns-
-better yet! You can be Spiral's gun wipe.
...
That sounded dirty. I think there's a very muscular slap in the face in my future..
- Z -
- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeMar 7th 2008
I'll drive, but I still get to be Clyde. You can load the guns-
I always suspect my roll in these stories is to die for humorous effect. -
I'm Geoff Thorne. I just had a Star Trek novel published. SWORD OF DAMOCLES. I enjoyed it so much I'm running around trying to sell original fiction and am about to launch a web-only novel because I wish I'd thought of it first.
I've got a bunch of shorts in various anthos.
Beats the crap out of a real job.
EDIT:
Here's a link to the prologue for the web novel.
Updates weekly until further notice.