Friday, May 28, 2010

Critique/Beta Read: Gladiator

I don't know if this is the right forum for something like this, but what the hell, I'll try it anyway!

I'm getting pumped about my next piece, The Gladiator's Son, and I've been hacking away at the first couple of chapters dialing in the voice, pitch, tone, pace, POV, and so forth. Once I have the first two chapters, the rest take care of themselves.

(My son loves Legos, thus the picture...)

What I'm looking for are honest opinions and critiques on the opening hooks and tone of the story. Is it interesting? Is it clear? Is the POV strong enough to place you in the setting?

Is it getting there, even if not yet there?

Did I manage to weed out all the summary information I had on my original draft? Please say yes, I had a ton of summary.

This is the opening chapter. The second chapter will introduce the soldier. Setting is near-future Bolivia.

Ignore italics. I lost my formatting when I pasted it into blogger.

I will DELETE THIS POST in about a week, or when I feel it has run its course.

Again, honest opinions.

DISCLAIMER: Please only read if the story makes you WANT to continue reading. If you aren't enjoying it, add a comment and say, "Eric, I couldn't get into your story, sorry. Not my thing." Or bounce out without commenting, thanks for stopping in.

Thanks all.

- Eric

(c)2010 Eric W. Trant
The Gladiator's Son hook line

On the isolated slopes of the western Andes, a soldier guarding America's supply of lithium awakens an earthly Andean spirit that attacks his child, and is cast into a dreamlike battle to save his son thousands of miles away.

EXCERPT 3,400 words

The Yatiri's Flame

Lucida rose with her husband before dawn and while she poured the morning chocolates into their molds, he gathered their wares into a llama skin pack that he laid on the counter next to her baking stone and a pair of llama skin vests. He disappeared outside into the morning darkness carrying his lantern, and Lucida heard the water bucket scrape against the stone and the flutter of chickens.

Lucida poured the last of the chocolate into its wooden mold and warmed her feet against the hard-packed dirt near the oven. Her toes curled against the floor as if digging. The heat pressed against her thighs.

After her warmth recharged, Lucida walked lightless through the house to their bedroom, the floor growing colder as she moved away from the oven until it shot icy pangs up the back of her calves. Clouds covered the moon and stars, and no light filtered in from the bedroom window, open-aired to the night with the whistle of a gentle breeze and the clacking of wooden wind chimes drifting in from their front breezeway. Lucida plucked her lantern and a box of wooden matches off the wooden stand next to their bed and striking a match she touched the flame to the lantern and the shadows sharpened and crouched to avoid the light.

As she walked back to the kitchen with her lantern, the flame withered into a black stump and she set the lamp next to the chocolates and stared at its empty glass. She soaked up heat from the warm floor and the oven's fire against her legs. Lucida relit the lamp and again the flame seemed to leap off the wick. A trail of smoke bled up from the wick and out of the lantern's bottleneck, angling toward the doorway.

"Mi amor?" she heard her husband say.

Lucida looked up and saw her husband in the doorway holding their morning bucket of water. The lantern's trail of smoke disappeared before it touched his chest. "Are you well?" Seferino asked.

"Mi llama es muerto." Lucida nodded at the empty lantern.

"No, mi amor, your flame is not dead." He lifted his lantern and showed her. "See, our flame burns bright."

"That is your flame."

"It is our flame."

"No, my husband, mine is dead, chufirmi."

Seferino set the water bucket at his feet and twisted the lantern's wick until the light bled out. "Now I join you. No worries, mi amor."

***

By the flickering light of the baking oven they ate a breakfast of bread and goat cheese while the chocolates cooled and the sun began to rise. They ate in silence, the stone floor cold on Lucida's bare feet, and when they were finished she cleaned his plate and laid it next to the sink with her own.

Lucida wrapped her chocolates in a cheesecloth and twisted the corners around her left hand and tucked them into her llama skin pack with their other wares. She hefted the sack onto her shoulder and spit on the floor, rubbed the spittle into the dirt with the sole of each of her bare feet, and then slid her feet into a pair of llama skin sandals.

Seferino pulled a Fedora hat onto his head, hooked his left hand through the llama skin vests on the counter, and led her outside. Lucida squinted against the morning sun rising, it glaring at her from between the mountains this time of year.

From the walkway spanning the front of the house hung wooden wind chimes and a torn Bolivian flag and two llama fetuses. Seferino unhitched a fetus from its drying hook and threw it over his shoulder. In his right hand he carried a wooden hiking staff topped with half a dozen Fedora hats.

Lucida followed her husband along the trail leading around the house and down the mountainside. Goats and llamas bellowed at them as they passed, bells clanging from beneath their neck. They walked south with the mountains and the rising sun on their left cheek. Her husband removed from his pocket his chuspa, and handed her a pinch of the coca leaves, which she pressed between her lip and gum and sucked as they walked. Her mouth and tongue tingled where the bolear juice touched.

Lucida walked near to her husband to share in his warmth, pulling closer to her chest her llama skin coat. A tin cup they shared for water jangled against her pack. Hard desert rocks crunched beneath her feet. Her dozen necklaces kept time with the tin cup and crunching rocks by ticking against her breasts.

After a while, tin sheds began to rise up out of the desert landscape. A man stood inside his doorway smoking, watching as they passed. Lucida and her husband nodded their heads and the man raised his hand.

A Volkswagen appeared and rattled them out of its way with its sputtering engine and turned between the houses and the sound of it bled into the city. Soon a truck passed, carrying men and tools in the flat bed, all of them dirty and cracked. They passed by a series of empty lots where already men and children played soccer, kicking the beaten ball against a wall decorated with wooden goalposts. A painted goalie held his hands to his sides, crouched, an amazing likeness on such a crude surface. The men dodged the boys and passed the ball, none of them laughing nor needing to when the ball slapped the wall inside the posts and bounced back into play and was passed downfield with a high arcing kick that sounded like a faraway gunshot.

They turned left after the parking lot and walked three more blocks, passing by a warehouse with shattered windows and stacks of boxes nobody cared to count or steal. Behind the warehouse in another empty lot stretched a single roof of patched and knitted tents of green and red and yellow and blue, one joined to the the other by tawdry strings, a long row of sails propped on rotting masts stagnant in the desert doldrums.

Lucida and her husband nodded to the vendors as they passed, taking note of the empty shops. She glanced at Seferino when they passed Huayna's shop and they shared a silent admittance that after all this time she would not return. A wooden cross had been laid on her table, atop a swath of llama fur, next to a candle that no longer burned.

They moved along to their stall, and in Quechua she greeted Evita and Julian. "Imaynalla."

Their husbands nodded and Evita said, "I have something for you, mi amiga."

Lucida and her husband took their place in the booth next to Evita and Julian. Seferino hung the llama fetus on the hook in front of their shop and balanced his staff with its Fedora hats in front of their station and spread the two llama skin vests on the table. Lucida slung her pack onto the table and opened her chocolates on the cheesecloth and turned to Evita, who was holding in her hand a necklace of orange and yellow beads.

"This is wonderful," Lucida said.

Evita smiled. "From Joaquin and little Julian for their other momma."

"For my other children." Lucida laid a handful of chocolates on Evita's table and turned away before Evita could refuse the offering.

Lucida pulled the necklace over her head and showed it to her husband. Seferino smiled his toothless grin and kissed her cheek and pressed his hand to the necklaces on her bosom.

***

By mid-afternoon the tourists had combed through most of her chocolates and taken up two of her husband's Fedora hats, including the one he had removed from his head. They seeped out from the hotel across the street, their faces so pale and their eyes so blue that Lucida squinted in the glare of their reflections.

Lucida knew enough German to haggle, she knew her numbers, and her husband could speak a bit of English for the British and Americans who stopped by, laughing, drunk by lunchtime. Evita's husband helped with the French, though there were fewer and fewer of them as the years passed.

A tall woman with a short man stopped and smiled at Lucida and her husband. "Allin sukha," the woman said in Quechua. Good afternoon.

Lucida smiled back at them, as did Seferino. "Allin sukha," she said.

The tall woman with her short man edged up to the booth and ran her fingers across the llama vests laid beside the remaining chocolates.

Both were hatted with Fedoras, the tall woman in a traditional blue-green summer dress and a llama vest and many necklaces about her thin breasts, the short man in jeans and a sweatshirt that looked like a university shirt, though Lucida could not read it. She knew the shape of Texas, though, behind the letters, with a powerful bull standing atop the state.

"They look Runa," Lucida said to her husband.

Seferino smiled and nodded and pulled one of the Fedoras off his staff and placed it on Lucida's head, and then another on his own.

Seferino waved to Evita to come out from behind the booth, and dragging Lucida around the table he wrapped his arm around her waist and stood next to the white couple and motioned with his hands for Evita to take a picture of them.

The tall woman understood and together they stood in the street while Evita studied the camera and then took two careful pictures before handing it back to the tall woman.

"You have nice, mmm, chocolates?" the tall woman asked. She tried it in Quechua, using the Spanish word for chocolate.

"Si," Lucida answered in Spanish. "You like to try?" The four of them standing in front of the booth, Lucida broke off a piece of her chocolate and handed it to the tall woman.

"You are Runa, chufircha?" The tall woman licked her finger to clean the chocolate.

"Si. We are from the mountains. My husband and I have lived here many lifetimes. Always we return to the dirt and regrow from between the rocks, chufirmi. You are American, chufircha?"

"Si. Students. I study ethnology. That means I study native peoples. I went to Guatemala last year. We just got back from Chile."

"Si, si. You like the chocolate, chufircha?"

Seferino spoke to the short white man, his eyes slitted and gleaming. "She is Yatiri, my wife, chufirmi."

Lucida nodded when the tall woman squinted her green eyes at her. "Si. My sisters do not have the gift. Their wombs lie within their bellies, while mine lies within Pachamama." Lucida knelt and patted the dirt beneath her feet. "My womb lies here, chufirmi."

"Would you show us?"

"Si, si." Lucida stood and slapped her hands against her dress, the same neon blue as the American woman's dress, but with deep red patches about the neck and shoulders. "I will bless you with a safe trip."

"How much?"

"You buy chocolates. You like, chufircha?"

"Very much."

"Then you buy chocolates."

Lucida sent the men off to buy beer for the toast, and with the tall American woman hovering over her shoulder and scanning her fingers with her sharp green eyes, Lucida arranged the chocolates and rocks atop a llama skin pad. Beneath each rock she placed a pinch of coca leaves, forming a circle around a candle she borrowed from Evita's booth next to them.

"You have sisters?" the tall woman asked.

"Si. Three. Our brother died in the coup. Do you have a lighter? It is better if we use your flame."

The tall woman shook her head.

"This is okay. I will use my flame. This will be okay, chufircha."

The tall woman tugged on one of her necklaces and fished out a recorder from the bosom of her dress. Her green eyes flicked at Lucida, and when they saw no protest the tall woman pressed a button. "Which mountains are you from?"

"To the north. We walk two hours from here."

"Valley or higher up?"

"We are mountain people. We are Runa, chufirmi."

"Do you speak Quechua?"

"Of course. This is my tongue. Do you speak English?"

"Si, of course," the American said.

"That is your tongue. Your parents spoke it to you, and in time you learned other languages, chufircha, but always you learned English first. This is true, no? And you learn Quechua from our instructor, no? And he learned Quechua from his studies after his parents raised him in Spanish. My husband and I learned Quechua from our ancestors. It is the language of Pachamama, and it is all we speak in our home, and our home is everything you see. This makes us Runa, chufirmi, and buries our souls in the dirt so that we may be reborn among the stones. Ah, here come our husbands."

"Oh, he's not my husband." The tall woman straightened to her full height and the men set two beers on the table.

Seferino removed one of the beers from the table and placed it in their pack and stood next to his wife, his hands behind his back. He watched her work in silent patience.

The two couples put the table between them. Behind the Americans a half-dozen onlookers collected, and they stood drinking their afternoon beer and shifting their eyes beneath their newly-purchased Fedoras. They spoke German.

Lucida removed a box of matches from her pack and checked each of the rocks atop their crushed coca leaves. She rotated her chocolates, the candies formed in the shape of llamas kneeling and standing and grazing, such that each of them faced away from the candle. She would rather this be on the ground, in the dirt, out of the shade beneath the sun, but the Americans would not understand this, and so she satisfied herself with the arrangement and lit the candle.

The candle took a strong flame and the smoke rose straight up in a smooth corkscrew. Lucida nodded at the Americans. "This is a good sign. The smoke is true. This means you will have a good journey, chufirmi. There are no storms on your path."

Seferino leaned across her and scooped up the beer. He opened it and handed it to Lucida, who took a sip and handed it to the American woman. "Drink," Lucida said to the woman. "Pachamama blesses the ground beneath your feet."

The American woman sipped and Lucida motioned her to hand it to the short man who was not her husband. "Drink. Pachamama blesses the ground beneath your feet."

Lucida motioned for the man to hand the beer to Seferino. Seferino sipped and handed the beer to Lucida and nodded.

Lucida removed the rocks from the dried and crushed coca leaves and placed a pinch between her gum and lip. She motioned for the Americans to remove a rock and take up the bolear. Seferino took his own pinch and Lucida led her husband into the market street in front of their table, beneath the sun warm on her neck and raising the hair on her arms as the shadows released their chilling grip, where they spat at their feet and toed dirt over the spittle. Lucida poured a few mouthfuls of beer into the dirt between them. The German observers pooled behind her as the beer foamed at her feet and the Americans bent their heads, unsure of how to posture themselves during the ritual. "For Pachamama, we return your blessing." Lucida rubbed the beer into the dirt and motioned for the others to mimic her.

The ritual finished, Lucida took another sip of the beer and handed it to the American woman. "You buy chocolates, si?"

The American woman looked to her male companion and back at Lucida, holding the beer in one hand and in the other the recorder away from her neck beneath wide green eyes. With the beer she pointed at the table behind Lucida. "Is that okay?"

Lucida turned and saw the candle had died out. The suffocated wick glowed orange and threw up a thin stream of smoke that drifted westward across the table, across Evita's booth and into the street where it gossamered into an invisible trail that only scent could follow.

"It is okay," Lucida said. "This is our flame. This is why we should use your flame and not ours." Lucida knelt and clutched a fistful of the loose dirt and walked around the table. Seferino stood beneath the tent as she trickled the sand out of her palm in a brown cascading dustfall. The sand feathered westward with the smoke. A cool breeze grazed across her bare arms and down her neck and chased away what sun's warmth she had adsorbed.

Lucida clapped her hands together to clear the dirt and said to the American woman, "You buy chocolates, si?"

"Si. We'll take them all."

***

When the Americans left and the Germans dispersed and the street calmed, Lucida leaned over the table with her husband and struck a match and touched it to the candle. She felt Evita watching, her womb safe and calm and empty in her belly, while Lucida's trembled beneath her feet.

Her husband stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes seeing the flame Lucida felt in her belly, beneath her feet, in the dirt and rock. The flame took to the candle searing yellow and red, but after a few breaths it winked out. A healthy wick atop the handmade candle leaked smoke swirling up and westward into the street, past the warehouse and back the way they had walked this morning, the way they walked every morning.

Straightening, she handed the candle to Evita and said, "Your flame burns true, chufircha?"

"Si."

Evita's husband took up the candle and set it on the table in their booth. Julian flicked open a steel lighter and passed the flame to the candle and they all watched it glow unwavering for several minutes.

Lucida moved into the sun to watch, Seferino aligning himself in her shadow with his hand still on her shoulder as if to feel what she felt. She spit coca juice and slid out of her sandals. With her bare feet she pressed the spittle into the earth, digging with her toes into the dirt. "This is not good, chufirmi."

"Si," Evita said.

"The smoke, she goes west, seeking the flame, chufirmi. Mi amiga, you will watch our booth, si?"

"Si," Evita said.

Seferino's hand moved across Lucida's back and patted and rubbed her between the shoulder blades. I am ready, the hand said to her. When she turned to face him, Lucida saw that her husband was already reaching to unhook the llama fetus.

Evita extinguished the candle and offered it to Lucida.

"Thank you, mi amiga," Lucida said. She emptied the molten wax and pressed it into the dirt and then turned to her booth to clean and load up their wares. Lucida rolled the leaves and llama vests and strips of llama skin and the cheesecloth and tucked these into her pack with her rocks. She found a place for the candle near the top.

Seferino took up his walking staff and stacked the Fedora hats on the table in front of Evita and Julian, switching one on his head for another on the table before he wrapped the llama fetus around his neck and with his free hand clutched its fore and hind legs together.

Lucida dug out the extra beer Seferino had placed in the pack and opened it. She poured a little at her feet and rubbed dirt over the top and took a sip. She passed the beer to each of them, to Evita and Julian and finally her husband, and they all poured some at their feet and drank.

"For Pachamama," Lucida said. "Bless the ground beneath our feet."

Lucida slid on her sandals, and walking near to her husband, she passed by the other booths, by the abandoned warehouse and the soccer field, empty and quiet, through the afternoon streets that faced the sun half-dropped on the western horizon, following the trail of smoke that she sensed within her womb. They passed a man in a doorway, smoking, shirtless in the cool shadows. Lucida and her husband raised their hands in greeting.

The man nodded as they passed.

***



END EXCERPT

- Eric W. Trant

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Who is the sexiest real-life monster?

Monsters in literature are based on real-life models. Don't believe me? I'll show you, and I'll prove to you why Frankenstein is the sexiest real-life monster.

Let me first knock out the myth that vampires are sexy. That one's easy.

The original vampire was Vladimir Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler. He was a brutal ruler in -- where else -- Transylvania. He impaled prisoners of war and criminals in front of the castle gates. He was obsessed with impaling, even impaling birds after he was imprisoned.

But you can't argue with the results! So effective was the impaling punishment in inspiring fear that he placed a golden drinking goblet at the public fountain and left it unguarded. Anyone could drink from it. Nobody stole it.

Folks, that's called being tough on crime.

But he wasn't sexy. He was a sick bastard. Not someone you'd want to sneak into your bedroom for a three-hour impaling.

Let's move on to zombies. I know, they aren't sexy in myth, though that'll change soon. Who are real-life zombies?

The homeless, of course. Our beggars. Tattered. Torn. Arms out with empty cups and empty skulls. By and large these people are not right in the head -- ergo the zombie-ish moaning in their fictional counterpart, and the denial of intellect.

It's sad, I know, and I'm not picking on the homeless. They have trouble keeping their meatball on their plate, but the fact is, they're not sexy.

"Ooo! Ooo!" A question from the back. "What about real-life ANGELS!"

What about angels, huh. Surely their real-world inspiration is sexy. Nope. Angels are inaccurately portrayed as having bird wings, which is downright ridiculous.

Angels are human and humans are mammals and the only mammal that can fly is the bat and the bat ain't sexy and neither are birds so put your hand down and let me finish.

Which brings me to Frankenstein's creation being the one inspired by the sexiest real-life model of them all.

Now ask yourself this: Who wrote Frankenstein?

Ironically, a chick, Mary Shelley. That in itself says the inspiration must have some sexuality associated with it, since females are the resident pervs here in Earth (ladies, don't make me prove that point -- look at your literary genres, nod, and move along).

Now, the premise of the book is this: Medicine can stitch together something more beautiful than the womb and God's thread and needle.

You see where I'm going, right.

In Shelley's day, (early 1800s), modern medicine was crowning its head. Today we dream of unrealities in medicine -- eternal life, cures for silly things like baldness and short stature. Surely Shelley could imagine the non-existent benefits of cosmetic surgery.

A beautiful nose. Pretty bosom. Fine legs and perfect eyes.

Shelley never lived to see her creation walk downtown Hollywood or strut up the New York byways, but by God, her creation walks and talks and strips and struts.

And nobody can deny how sexy the Frankensteins are.

- Eric

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

What is your QUESTION!

Just finished another short story. Gads. How many is that? I dunno. Lots.

This one is called A Dog Named Scat and I didn't quite get the ending snippage I wanted, which means a future re-write before I submit it.

What's the problem with Scat? Its story question is the problem.

See, I like stories with a big QUESTION about them.

A mystery.

A certain pull that keeps the reader turning pages. A what the hell happens! tingle on the back of their neck.

Suspense. I don't care what the question is, it just needs to be a question.

Will they survive? Will she leave? Will he win?

What's going on with Grandpa and the dog? That's my Scat question.

And the answer to that question is simple and predictable, even though I tried to upend the reader there at the last with some topsy-turvy writing.

So, later I'll go back a re-write Scat. This is the second time I've written that story. The first time I got the first scene and a rough draft. The second time I nailed the story, but not with the umph I want.

Now don't say, Third time's a charm or I swear by all things Holy I will reach through that computer screen and smack you. Not in writing it ain't. Fifteenth or twentieth time is the charm.

And that's if you're doing it right.

Gutpunch. Savvy. Witty. I need all that in my writing.

And a question. What is the QUESTION? I need my question.

For Scat, and for EVERY story I write, every chapter, page, paragraph and sentence, the question is this: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

So I ask you, my fellow knuckers: WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION? And what is your goal with that question?

My goal is that Holy Grail of questions, the Reader Question, the big RQ. Dear Reader hits those two words (THE END) well before they are ready and responds with: Dude, what happens next?

- Eric

Monday, May 24, 2010

Stating the obvious about critiques


 Let me tell you, I've read quite a few posts on giving and receiving critiques, most recently over at Query Tracker, and there's one piece of advice I fail to see posted upfront and in bold-ass letters on every single ever-loving post regarding giving and receiving critiques.

So let me say it upfront in bold-ass letters:

KNOW YOUR SHIT!

Sounds obvious, doesn't it. Click on Query Tracker and look for my comment. Here, I'll repost it:

A poor critique can ruin a good piece.

It can also ruin a good writer.

There should be a license for critics.

Personally, I don't indulge in critiques, because there are so few people out there who can do it well.

It's bloody word-surgery for anyone who can hold a knife. Yeah. Eff that!


To which Ms. Kaufman responded:

Eric, work with a number of different critique partners, listen to what they say politely, and dismiss what you can't use. But if they all say the same thing, it's time to check your ego at the door. I suspect that never getting critiqued is the surest route to never getting published.

She's right, you know, especially that last wonderful sentence. You need a good critique partner, or some good eyes sifting over your work. She is absolutely correct.

I fully agree with everything she said in the article. I'll summarize in two words: Be professional.

The thing is, some folks learn how to critique nicely, with gentle words, use the sandwich -- compliment critique compliment. They offer up a thorough critique of your work, well-written and professional-sounding.

But they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

That my friends is why I have trouble finding critique partners. I have high standards. I want someone who knows at least as much about writing as I do.

I need someone who understands the mechanics and structure of writing a good story and doesn't spend all their time poking out the simple grammatical errors.

Grammar errors are the LAST thing you look for, after everything else is squared away. Sure, it's the most obvious, but it's like the floors in your house. The floors in your house are the biggest and most obvious things to clean, right? Vacuum. Sweep. Mop. Obvious, right, everyone knows that.

The floors are also the last thing you clean in your house, NOT THE FIRST! Shutters, windows, the fans, the baseboards, beds, bathrooms, dust, wipe, declutter, those all come before the floors, which you knock out last thing.

Grammar's the same thing in a critique. Don't critique grammar until the structure is refined, the plot makes sense, the characters are well-defined, the scene is CLEAR and CONCISE, the words are punchy, the story is interesting and entertaining.

I'll say it again: KNOW YOUR SHIT!

So my participle is dangling. Thanks for noticing, but that did not help me improve my story. You just helped me make a paragraph much better before I delete it and rewrite the whole chapter.

See my point about doing the floors last?

Anyway, this is why I've had such a tough time finding crit partners. I found an Honors English teacher who was critting my work, but she met a boyfriend turned fiance and I haven't heard from her in a while. Man, she is great. Man, she's happy, and that makes me happy.

She never mentioned grammar. Never said I misspelled a word. She never brought up my red-ink -1 infractions.

Nope. She read the piece, front to back, and offered up a few one-liners that helped me improve my piece.

She was nice. She was professional. She used the sandwich technique.

And she knew her shit.

See my point?

To my fellow bloggers, I'm still getting around to all the Log Line blogfest entries. What a great exercise that was and is. Thank you all for your critiques on my entries.

Some of you sure know your... craft.

- Eric

PS. Ronald McDonald has nothing to do with this post. I simply thought the picture was funny.

Friday, May 21, 2010

BLOGFEST: Tagline

For Bryan's Hookline Blogfest at Time Guardian.

Thanks, Bryan, for suggesting and hosting such a useful blogfest.

The Gladiator's Son
On the isolated slopes of the western Andes, a soldier guarding America's supply of lithium awakens an earthly Andean spirit that attacks his child, and is cast into a dreamlike battle to save his son thousands of miles away.

Walk With Me Into the Darkness
Set in rural East Texas, Walk With Me is a disturbing look at the lives of two children abandoned by their parents, one trying to escape a life of abuse and rape as a Beaumont prostitute, the other forced into solitude as a lone specter haunting the East Texas Piney Woods.

Evander's Forge
Centered around the idea that everything happens for a reason, Evander's Forge follows a pair of men bent on ending their lives to kill their emotional pain, one obsessed with shooting himself, the other haunted by dreams of a blue-faced and emotionless God who will not let him die.

New Texas
When the agrarian culture of New Texas is threatened with extinction by Earth's Consensus, the Sutter sons must unite the planet's most powerful ranching family with the outlaw band of Black Raiders, and resurrect the skills of a dying breed of cowboy.

The Keeper
After making a hole-in-one on his golf course, greenskeeper Harold Murphy realizes his greatest wish is granted -- the power to kill anyone he names -- and his obsession with killing threatens not only his soul, but that of his daughter.

- Eric

PING DALLAS WRITERS: Crit Groups

Dallas writers: Do you know of any crit groups I could join?

I've been an anti-social writer for might near 20 years, and but for the past few-teen months I've neither sought nor cared about publication.

But now I've got the itch. I found a local publisher and he took up two of my shorts and now I want a novel with my name on it, by goddengolly.

I've never been in a crit group. I'm an engineer by nature (chemical) with a mathematical brain prone to obsessions with algorithms, programming, woodworking, beer, my woman, and above all else: writing.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll fit in with an artsy or subdued crit group. I always assumed the answer would be negatory. I'm the guy who shows up at Bible study with a "Don't Tuck With Fexas" tee shirt. I'm the guy whose last three bosses all said to him: "You're too crass. Tone it down."

To which I respond: "Did I get the job done. Yes? Case closed."

I can be over-bearing, and I didn't want to subject my crit partners to that bullish nature.

I also never wanted to subject my writing to crits, satisfying my analytical nature by sifting my words over and over through the gray matter.

Now that I'm blogging and surrounded by writers, though, I'm starting to see value not only in offering up my wrists for the slitting, but in sucking the blood from other wrists as well.

Any leads? I'm in North Dallas, already called around locally but haven't found much.

Any thoughts on crit groups? Positive? Negative?

- Eric

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Thoughts on Dialogue

Inspired by Roni Griffin's excellent Let's Talk Dialogue blogfest, I'd like to make a few notes on dialogue.

Tags
Tags come to mind first. Modern tags are limited in scope and are not used to advance the story. Historically the writer could pen this: she exclaimed excitedly. Now you're better off using she said without the modifier.

That's just an opinion, though, and since it changed once before, who's to say it won't revert back as a new generation of writers come up to speed. Write however you like.

Also, if you can eliminate the tag with action, it's popular to do so. For instance:

"Good night, son," she said. She kissed her son on the forehead.

That's how not to do it. The more popular and modern method is this:

She kissed her son's forehead. "Good night, son."

Subtle. Take your pick. Again, that's just an opinion, but it's a popular opinion. So popular, in fact, that many writers will make it a goal to eliminate all tags via action. Some on this blogfest did just that, with great effect.

Grouping Action and Dialogue
I'm not sure how many of us mind this rule. I suggest you group your action with action, and your dialogue with dialogue. This was the biggest violation I saw on this blogfest. Self-included.

For instance:

She tucked the covers over her son's chest. "Good night." She kissed his forehead. "I love you."

Her son rolled over. "Stop it, Mom, I'm too old for that."


Again, that's how not to do it. Try this instead, grouping action on action, dialogue on dialogue:

She tucked the covers over her son's chest and kissed his forehead. "Good night, son. I love you".

"Stop it, Mom, I'm too old for that." Her son rolled over.


If the body language is necessary for the dialogue, insert it, but try not to break up the dialogue with needless nodding, gesturing, shrugs, and so forth. For instance:

"I don't know." He shrugged. He nodded. He waved his hands and squinted and smiled and please stop the needless action and continue with the dialogue. "Maybe I should have known better."

Instead, write this:

"I don't know. Maybe I should have known better."

Anyway. Just a couple of quick thoughts on the dialogue stuffages as inspired by the blogfest.

What are your thoughts? Did you learn something new? Re-learn something old you'd forgotten?

I sure did. I realized I'd been getting lazy on my tags... some of yall humbled me with your dialogue constructs.

- Eric

Monday, May 17, 2010

BLOGFEST: Let's Talk Dialogue

Excerpt for my fellow Dallasite Roni Griffin's Let's Talk Dialogue blogfest.

THANK YOU RONI for hosting such a useful blogfest!

There are a TON of bloggers on this blogfest, so to anyone who actually reads my junkie entry, THANK YOU! I'll try to read your crappy excerpt, too, and then neither one of us will feel so bad, eh.

I am mixing foreign languages. What I know about the language I'm writing -- Quechua of Bolivia -- they say almost every sentence ends with a modifier, such as I know for a fact or I suppose. I figure it's similar to the way Canadians might use Don't you know or Southerners would use If I recall.

In any case, it's challenging! Any help is much appreciated.

This is an early draft, and it's even a bit confusing to me the writer. Either that, or the beer's doing its job, eh.

Context: Bolivian street market. Two Americans discussing with a Bolivian husband & wife at their booth. POV is the Bolivian wife.

The Gladiator's Son by Eric Trant


By mid-afternoon the tourists had combed through most of her chocolates and taken up two of her husband's Fedora hats, including the one he had removed from his head. They seeped out from the hotel across the street, their faces so pale and their eyes so blue that the woman squinted in the glare of their reflections.

"You take Euro?" they asked.

She nodded. "Si. I take Euro."

The woman knew enough German to haggle, she knew her numbers, and her husband could speak a bit of English for the British and Americans who stopped by, laughing, drunk by lunchtime. Evita's husband helped with the French, though there were fewer and fewer of them as the years passed.

A tall woman with a short man stopped and smiled at the woman and her husband. "Allin sukha," the woman said in Quechua. Good afternoon.

The woman smiled back at them, as did her husband. "Allin sukha."

The tall woman with her short man edged up to the booth and the tall woman ran her fingers across the llama vests laid beside the remaining chocolates.

Both hatted with Fedoras, she in a traditional blue-green summer dress and a llama vest and many necklaces about her thin breasts, the man in jeans and a sweatshirt that looked like a university shirt, though the woman could not read it. She knew the shape of Texas, though, behind the letters, with a powerful bull standing atop the state.

"They look Runa," the woman said to her husband.

Her husband smiled and nodded and pulled one of the Fedoras off his staff and placed it on her head, and then another on his own.

Her husband waved to Evita to come out from behind the booth, and dragging his wife around the table he wrapped his arm around her waist and stood next to the white couple and motioned with his hands for Evita to take a picture of them.

The tall woman understood and together they stood in the street while Evita studied the camera and then took two careful pictures before handing it back to the tall woman.

"You have nice, mmm, chocolates?" the tall woman asked. She tried it in Quechua, using the Spanish word for chocolate.

"Si. You like to try?" The four of them standing in front of the booth, the woman broke off a piece of her chocolate and handed it to the tall woman.

"You are Runa, chufircha?" She licked her finger to clean the chocolate.

"Si. We are from the mountains. My husband and I have lived here many lifetimes. Always we return to the dirt and regrow from between the rocks, chufirmi. You are American, chufircha?"

"Si. Students. I study ethnology. That means I study native peoples. I went to Guatemala last year. We just got back from Chile."

"Si, si. You like the chocolate, chufircha?"

Her husband spoke to the short white man, his eyes slitted and gleaming. "She is a healer, my wife, chufirmi."

The woman nodded when the tall woman squinted her green eyes at her. "Si," she said to the Americans. "My sisters do not have the gift. Their wombs lie within their bellies, while mine lies within Pachamamma." The woman knelt and patted the dirt beneath her feet. "My womb lies here, chufirmi."

"Would you show us?"

"Si, si." The woman stood and slapped her hands against her dress, the same neon blue as the American woman's dress, but with deep red patches about the neck and shoulders. "I will bless you with a safe trip."

"How much?"

"You buy chocolates. You like, chufircha?"

"Very much."

"Then you buy chocolates."

***

- Eric

Friday, May 14, 2010

Internalization: Showing v. Telling

The recent Internal Conflict Blogfest hosted over at Alliterative Allomorph brought up an interesting question in my mind.

See, I didn't enter the contest because I don't write a lot of internal conflicts. I herky-jerky looked through some of my work and couldn't find much. I found some, sure, but I didn't like it. If I had the patience, I probably would go back and edit it out.

And I didn't read many of the entries, either. I read some, sure, and I liked em, but it made me realize something: I don't prefer the use of internalization during storytelling.

And that got me to wondering why? Why don't I internalize? Why do I skim over passages in books that are hardcore internalization?

This morning laying on the couch with my wife -- we're sleeping on the couches because she's pregnant and she's more comfortable on the couch -- I got to thinking (internalizing) about show v. tell, and internalization.

Cue the epiphany!

Internalization is telling, not showing. There's no action associated with it. It's stagnant, a pause in the story.

Not that there's anything wrong with telling. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle told all of his Sherlock Holmes stories. You never saw Sherlock in action, but you heard about it.

Now let me demonstrate my point.

Internalization: Telling

Should she go to his house, knock on his door? Would he even care that she still loved him? Would he forgive her? The thoughts swam in her head with the wine and she couldn't decide if she'd be better off knocking on his door, seeing him standing there with that look on his face, her being humiliated, or if she could live with herself never knowing whether he'd sweep her into the foyer and forgive her sins right there on the carpet.

But she couldn't just walk up to him, not after what she'd done.

Still. She had to know.



Okay, that was telling internalization. Hardcore, right? That's a typical scene in some genres. Nothing wrong with it, but there's no action associated with it, and I'd skim through it during a read.

Here's a re-write with more action.

Internalization: Showing

She cut off the lights as she turned into the cul-de-sac and darkness swept over his house. She parked across the street and wrung her hands on the steering wheel and then she opened the door, left the engine running and took two steps away from her Civic before she got back in and closed the door, quietly so nobody would wake up.

She played with the radio, but nothing on sounded good. Billy Idol on the oldie station. Limp Biskit on the modern rock, if you could call them modern. She turned off the radio and stepped out of the car again and this time made it to his front door and stood there beneath the burnt-out porch light, her hand a palm's width away from the doorknob, the doorbell, the knocker, her house key in her hand and then back in her pocket, jangling with the blood through her temples.

Turning away the tears came this time and she let them. She deserved the tears.

Metallica rang out on the oldie station. "Anywhere I roam. Where I lay my head is home."

"Fuck it," she said to the radio, and crying she turned on her headlights, pulled into his driveway, shined the lights straight through his front windows, stepped out and when he answered the door all she could say, over and over: "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."



See the difference? Showing. Telling. I'm not against telling -- I believe in breaking rules, trust me -- but at least keep some action in the scene.

I think Donna did a good job of mingling internalization with action: Donna Hole's Conflict.

That's just an example of mixing the action with the internalization. You can check out AA's full list of entries and see what other writers did a good job of mixing the two.

Me? I don't mix well. I like action in my stories.

But that's just me.

How about you? Actionator? Internalizer? Is internalization telling the story, and does is slow down the pace? Or is it a necessary part of storytelling that increases a character's depth?

- Eric

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Writing what you don't know

We've all heard that old adage: Write what you know.

I've read that advice any number of times in books, on websites, heard it muttered by arr-teests beneath their pretty beret from smirking lips.

You've heard it, too, haven't you.

Don't use adverbs. Avoid cliches. Use punchy action words. No passives. No gerunds. Complete sentences. Write what you know.

And all that other parrot blah blah.

How is it a parrot can shit out both ends, anyway?

Beware the parrot. Don't stick your nose too close to either end.

Moving along.

Now what happens when you want to write something you don't know?

Tom Clancy never killed anyone using a sniper rifle or a knife or a pistol.

Anne Rice and that new chick with her Twilight series never raped or went oral on a vampire.

I'm sure of all that. How could they? I'm just as certain that Tom, Anne, and Ms. Twilight all fantasized about whacking, stroking, and mounting their characters, respectively.

That's part of how you write what you don't know -- you fantasize about it, endlessly, walking through the scenes, speaking with your characters, interviewing them, letting them live and act while you watch and take notes.

Add to that fantasy some research, or if it's a pure fiction, get on with some world building like Ms. Harley shows over at Labotomy.

Pack that fantasy on top of some research, tap it down and add a plug, then cock, fire, aim.

Or aim first. Doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure the best writers never aim at all. That's the only way you can hit the moon, see -- when you're not trying to.

Anyway. Here's me not aiming. I'm writing about a guy in, well, you guess where he is, but it ain't East Texas, and it ain't the Gulf Coast, and it ain't Austin or Dallas or Oklahoma or Arkansas or anyplace I could claim to know.

So I fantasized. I researched.

And I wrote what I don't know.

Take that, Parrot Boy.

 - Eric

***
1

The Yatiri's Sacrifice


The woman rose with her husband before dawn and while she baked the morning chocolates, he gathered their wares into a llama-skin pouch that he laid on the counter next to her baking rack. He disappeared outside into the morning darkness and when he returned he laid next to the sack two vests of llama fur. He caressed her back as she leaned into the oven. I am ready, the touch said to her, and with towels wrapping her hands she extracted the chocolates to cool on the stone countertop next to the llama-skin vests.

By the flickering light of the baking oven they ate a breakfast of bread and goat cheese while the chocolates cooled and the sun began to rise. They ate in silence, and when they were finished she cleaned his plate and laid it next to the sink with her own.

She wrapped her chocolates in a cheesecloth and twisted the corners around her left hand and took up on her right shoulder the pouch with their assorted stones and necklaces and llama-skin pads and llama teeth and wooden dice and a knitted blanket she had finished the night before. Her husband pulled a Fedora hat onto his head, hooked his left arm through the two llama-skin vests on the counter, and led her outside. She squinted against the morning sun rising, it glaring at her from between the mountains this time of year.

A walkway spanned the front of their house, and she and her husband would sit here in the evenings and blend with their stone house into the desert landscape, silently watching the mountains darken while she knitted or scraped a llama skin or played with her rocks, and he drank and shared his beer with her, passing it over every few minutes for her to sample. From the walkway hung wooden wind chimes and a torn Bolivian flag and three llama fetuses. Her husband unhitched a fetus from its drying hook and threw it over his shoulder. In his right hand he carried a wooden hiking staff topped with half a dozen Fedora hats.

They walked south with the mountains and the rising sun on their left cheek. Her husband removed from his pocket his chuspa, a pouch of coca leaves and handed her a pinch which she pressed between her lip and gum and sucked as they walked. Her mouth and tongue tingled where the bolear juice touched.

She walked near to her husband to share in his warmth, pulling closer to her chest her llama-skin coat. A tin cup they shared for water jangled against her pack. Hard desert rocks crunched beneath their feet. Her dozen necklaces kept time with the tin cup and crunching rocks by ticking against her breasts.

After a while, tin sheds began to rise up out of the desert landscape. A man stood inside his doorway smoking, watching as they passed. The woman and her husband nodded their heads and the man raised his hand.

A Volkswagen appeared and rattled them out of its way with its sputtering engine and turned between the houses and the sound of it bled into the city. Soon a truck passed, carrying men and tools in the flat bed, all of them dirty and cracked. They passed by a series of empty lots where already men and children played soccer, kicking the beaten ball against a wall decorated with wooden goalposts. A painted goalie held his hands to his sides, crouched, an amazing likeness on such a crude surface. The men dodged the boys and passed the ball, none of them laughing nor needing to when the ball slapped the wall inside the posts and bounced back into play and was passed downfield with a high arcing kick that sounded like a faraway gunshot.

They turned left after the parking lot and walked three more blocks, passing by a warehouse with cracked windows and stacks of boxes nobody cared to count or steal. Behind the warehouse in another empty lot stretched a single roof of patched and knitted tents of green and red and yellow and blue, one joined to the the other by tawdry strings, a long row of sails propped on rotting masts stagnant in the desert doldrums.

The woman and her husband nodded to the vendors as they passed, taking note of the empty shops. She glanced at her husband when they passed Huayna's shop and they shared a silent admittance that after all this time she would not return. A wooden cross had been laid on her table, atop a swath of llama fur.

They moved along to their stall, and in Quechua the woman greeted Evita and Julian, and their husbands nodded and Evita said, "I have something for you, my friend."

The woman and her husband took their place in the booth next to Evita and Julian and her husband hung the llama fetus on the hook in front of their shop and balanced his staff with its Fedora hats in front of their station and spread out the two llama-skin vests on the table. The woman slung her pack onto the table and opened her chocolates on the cheesecloth and turned to Evita, who was holding in her hand a necklace of orange and yellow beads.

"This is wonderful," the woman said.

Evita smiled. "From Joaquin and little Julian for their other momma."

"For my other children, my friend," the woman said. She laid a handful of chocolates on Evita's table and turned away before Evita could refuse the offering.

The woman pulled the necklace over her head and showed it to her husband. He smiled his toothless grin and kissed her cheek and pressed his hand to the necklaces on her bosom.


***

Thursday, May 6, 2010

BAD GIRL BLOGFEST!

Folks, Write Runner's (Andrew Rosenberg's) BAD GIRL BLOGFEST IS ON! I posted this early -- way early, I couldn't wait -- so I bumped FOUR ENTRIES to the top, just below this post. Read on... that's right, scroll on down, that's the spot... just a little lower.

Yeah, baby, that's it, that's where daddy likes his bad girls. All four of ya.

 - Eric

BAD GIRL Blogfest: Ms. Black


This is a BAD GIRL SCENE from The Devil Gave Me Autumn, currently being considered for publication.

Ms. Black. Oh my God, how I LOVE Ms. Black.

From Write Runner's Bad Girl Blogfest: click

- Eric

***

Dylan glanced over his left shoulder, checking his blind-spot, and saw a stunning face in his window: a black-haired woman, smiling, wearing a satin brown blouse and black skirt, floating next to his car. The woman's black hair and blouse were unblown by the wind. Glancing down at Dylan, her arms folded across her chest, the woman glided with Dylan's Mercury down Highway 66.

"What the fuck!" Dylan instinctively pressed his foot against the accelerator, and the Mercury surged forward at an incredible speed, well beyond the aging engine's capability, slamming Dylan against the seat.

The floating woman suddenly became animated. Her well-manicured fist shattered the driver's-side window. Broken glass sliced into Dylan's cheeks, and hot summer air rushed into the car as the woman touched Dylan's steering wheel with one long finger, steering the car to the right as Dylan was about to cross the bridge over Lake Ray Hubbard, clipping Villanova's Civic before his Mercury launched off the pavement.

Dylan's Mercury missed the bridge railing and bounced down the embankment. At the bottom of the slope, the Mercury wedged into the muddy bank, then the momentum flipped the car upside-down into the shallow lake water.

Shaken, locked by his seatbelt into his overturned Mercury, Dylan disentangled himself from the airbag, and saw the black-haired woman, upside-down from his point-of-view, still floating next to his driver's side window, hovering over the mud. "What the fuck are you!" Dylan asked the woman.

The black-haired woman gripped Dylan's chin, holding his head beneath the water as his body dangled feet-up from the seat.

"I'm no angel, dear. Now hold still."

Bad Girl: Meet CHAVEZ!

This is a BAD GIRL SCENE from Walk With Me Into the Darkness. It's my latest work, 2010.

From Write Runner's Bad Girl Blogfest: click

- Eric

***

A knock on the door startled both Lee and Victor. For some reason, Victor stuffed his beer into the hole Lee had punched through the motel wall, and then he stood there with his arms cocked as if ready to charge out the back door.

Debbie turned away from the sink and Lee stood up and looked over his shoulder at her. His red tee shirt with its yellow demon face didn't look so intimidating anymore. He drank his beer and steadied himself as he walked toward the door.

"Peanuts," Debbie said, loud, issuing their code word for trouble.

"Who's at the door?" Lee said. He wasn't talking to the door, but to Debbie, quietly. "Who is it?"

"It's peanuts," Debbie said again. She accented the second word, speaking it louder, and then shuffled past Victor and Lee and bent over and picked up her radio. "Peanuts peanuts peanuts!"

Debbie straightened and was about to open the door, but Lee stuck out one of his stick arms and shoved Debbie's chest and she fell against the bed. Debbie bounced back to her feet and then stepped out of arm's length from Lee, holding the radio between him and herself, her back against the far wall next to the bed. Lee leaned into the door and looked through the peephole. His mangled hair fragmented from his demented mind.

"They got it blocked," Lee said, turning to Victor. Victor moved closer to Lee and was reaching into the top drawer of the dresser when Lee said to the door, "Who is it?"

"It's Chavez," Debbie said. "You'd better open up before he loses his temper."

"Who's Chavez?" Lee said.

"He's the motherfucker," Debbie said.

Lee stood away from the door and motioned for Debbie to come over. "Get over here, bitch. Open the door."

Lee took a few steps back while Debbie unlocked the door. He kept Debbie between him and the door, and when Debbie looked back, she saw Victor was holding a large hunting knife in his hand. "I'm opening up," Debbie said. "Be cool. One guy's got a knife."

Debbie pulled open the door and the hot summer air poured in, and the cold air swept out. The temperature inside the room immediately changed when the boys saw a mirror image of Debbie standing there with both hands on the 9mm pistol. Debbie's twin sister put her foot inside the door and swept the pistol across the room.

"Damn, girl," Lee said. These were the same words he'd spoken when Debbie had arrived earlier and he'd realized how good-looking she was, but now the words had a different tone and an opposite meaning.

"Meet Chavez, boys," Debbie said. "He's the real motherfucker. Back up, back up, back up. And don't fucking look at me or my sister. Face the wall." Debbie ducked under the pistol and held her empty hand up, backing up Lee and Victor to the bathroom sink. "Stay there, now. Quit looking at me."

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Chavez is the 9mm pistol. It's what the girls call it, introduced earlier in the story. This may not be clear in the scene snippet.)

Bad Girl: Iris

This is a BAD GIRL SCENE from the short story Digging, one of my earliest short stories, currently being considered for publication.

It's graphic, violent, brutal, and unapologetic, and with a constantly changing POV.

WARNING: Graphic content. It's not gratuitous. The graphic content is the story.

Hey, I warned you...

From Write Runner's Bad Girl Blogfest: click

- Eric


***

"Stand back, sweetie," she warned. When she was clear, Iris opened the trunk with her left hand while her right hand held the raised hatchet.

Iris was thrown back by the force as the trunk flew open. Malcolm bolted out like a rabid dog, hitting his head on the top as he tripped over the bottom of lip of the trunk. He landed on his hands and knees and scrambled apelike towards Iris.

"Run!" Iris screamed to her daughter. She hit the ground and nearly dropped the hatchet, but her death grip held firm against the surprise attack. Her head whipped into the dirt with enough force to stun her but not take her consciousness. A small tuft of dust formed around her head, and he was on top of her before it cleared.

"You fucking bitch!! You mother fucking frigid ass bitch!! I'm gonna kill you, you fucking bitch!!" Two large hands quickly held her down, one wrapped tightly against her soft throat, the other holding her hatchet hand to the ground with iron force. His right knee was jabbed painfully into her stomach until it pinned her spine against the dirt. She clawed at him with her left hand, but he elbowed it away casually. While his rage had ripened in the trunk, hers had been spent digging a hole in the dirt. Her strength was piled up in a mound not ten feet away, but his was on top of her and at his command.

Spit foamed at the edges of his mouth as he cursed her through his teeth. "Die you fucking bitch." He picked her head up by her throat, then rammed it down again to emphasize each of his words. "Die... you... fuck.. ing... bitch!!! Die... you... fuck… ing... bitch!!!"

Her eyes felt tight in her head as she struggled for breath. Thoughts scattered into the darkness until all she could see was his hateful face bouncing up and down as he pounded her into the ground. Her legs were gone, and her left arm was probably broken. She had nothing left but the ringing curses in her ears.

"Die... you... "

Then Iris heard a metallic whack as Tracy hit her father with the shovel. He lurched forward as she wound up for another swing, then brought it down squarely against his head. The flat part glanced off his skull, taking with it a small swath of his scalp and sending it flying into the darkness. More pissed than hurt, he slammed Iris down and rolled his daughter to the ground.

She screamed as his fist broke her innocent jaw. "God dammit!! You fucking want some of this too, you fucking little bitch!! Just like your frigid ass momma!!"

“Daddy, no!!” she managed to scream incoherently through her mangled mouth. “I sowwy!! I sowwy!!”

He grabbed both her small arms in one hand, then straddled her and spread her legs with the other. Barely able to breath through her mouth and nose full of blood, she was still able to feel that he was rock hard from all this excitement. He had probably been like that since he heard the trunk unlatch, she thought. Another cuff against her skull cleared any other thoughts she might have had.

"Shut your fucking mouth! Oh, you're gonna get it good this time, you little bitch!! You're better than your fucking frigid ass whore of a momma ever was. You're fucking tight, you know that??! Your momma's as loose as a fucking glass of water, but not you. I couldn't get this tight if I fucked your momma up the ass."

He mumbled most of the last part as his concentration switched from enragement to engorgement. A quick glance over his shoulder showed Momma was out, so he probably had some time with little baby, here. He continued the glance around. Damn, this was perfect. Middle of nowhere and two whores to fuck. He'd be here all day tomorrow, too, wearing them out before he dumped them into the hole they had so thoughtfully dug for him. Maybe even tomorrow night. He thought he had smelled food, so he could survive out here for a couple of days. This would be a nice little vacation, he thought.

He smiled at the thought of getting laid eight or ten times in the next twenty-four hours. That was more than that fucking bitch had given him for the past five years. No wonder he was driven to seek other satisfaction. If you ain't catching fish, better find another pond, he figured. And why not fish right at home.

He undid his belt and chuckled to himself. The stupid bitch forgot to take off his pants. She knew he always carried a pocket knife, but must have forgotten this time, thank God. They had fucked around long enough for what must have been a dozen sleeping pills to wear off him, and he had managed to get to his knife and cut the rope and tarp they had wrapped around him.

Then a thought crossed his mind. Were they going to bury him alive? Holy fuck, they were! He whacked Tracy again. "You little bitch!" His fist glanced wetly off her bloody face. "You're gonna fucking get it good, you little bitch. We'll see who gets buried alive, you whore."

He turned to repeat his threat to his newly deceased ex-wife. What he saw was a thin metal blade, roughly a finger's width, swinging madly from the end of a ghostly white arm. The light from the car winked off the shiny silver hatchet as it struck his right eye and the top of his brow.

With a scream he rolled off his daughter, pulling the hatchet out of Iris' hand as he did so. It was not buried very deep, but had painfully blinded his right eye. Iris found her legs and the shovel Tracy had dropped, then swung it club-like around, baring the edge of the blade to the side of the son of a bitch's skull. It sliced the side of his head and lopped off part of his left ear.

Bag Girl: Michelle

This is BAD GIRL SCENE from the novel The Keeper about mid-book. It's self-contained.

From Write Runner's Bad Girl Blogfest: click

- Eric

***

Beth Muenster pranced toward her as Michelle rounded the corner of the Junior High building. Without reasonable cause, the two girls had gone from note-passing friends to hate-mailing enemies a year earlier, in the seventh grade; they'd been best friends since the third. Often together as a result of the monotonous, alphabetic seating ritual teachers were so fond of the first day of school, the two girls had been inseparable from first period to after-school activities. They'd paired for three-legged races, borrowed clothes during weekend sleepovers, shared projects and homework answers, and taken several summer trips with Beth's parents. Her mother had said it was an enigmatic breakdown, to which girls her age were unnaturally prone. Whatever that meant.

Beth stopped a few feet from Michelle, and her blonde ponytail swiped her across the face. She huffed. "What happened to your stepdad? I hear he had a hard night after doing your mom."

"Shut up, Beth. Why don't you go practice your rope climbing." Michelle had started the rumor that Beth found the gym ropes arousing when she climbed, which explained why they were always slippery; this had followed Beth's earlier tasty gossip that Michelle had already slept with a high school guy named Darren.

"Ha. Ha." Beth glared at Michelle.

Michelle turned and walked toward the gym, crossing the bus stop and the alleyway; she had no intention of carrying on with the crazy ex-friend.

Each day this week involved a particular activity for the Physical Education final: yesterday had been running; today it was swimming. Michelle cinched her backpack onto her shoulder and stepped over the curb. Hanna walked beside her, and Michelle held the door for the girl while they walked into the indoor swimming pool area.

Beth was close behind, followed by Jessica and Lindsey. "I heard it was your dad that killed him. The alcoholic's still jealous he isn't getting any of the good stuff from your mom."

Michelle halted. Hanna took a few steps and stopped, turned. "What did you just say?" Michelle said without moving. "Did you just say my dad killed someone?" Michelle swiveled to Beth; their faces were inches apart. "Bitch, I know I didn't just hear you say that, because if you did, I'm about to kick your ass."

"Go ahead and kick it, slut. Here it is. Or do you need Darren to come help you out. He says you give really good head—"

Michelle's backpack slid off her shoulder and down her arm as she swung it. Her hips swiveled as she slammed the pink canvas book bag into Beth's side, leading the angry arc with her thigh, the momentum flowing up her torso and shoulder, ending with her outstretched arms gripping the bag by its two straps like a Medieval bludgeon. It crashed into Beth's left arm just below the shoulder. Jessica and Lindsey jumped back, both faces twisted with surprise and fear.

Beth stumbled toward the swimming pool and grabbed the backpack to steady herself. But Michelle followed the force with her weight, let go of the backpack and shoved Beth—fully dressed, books and all—backward into the pool. Standing too far from the edge to make a clean entrance, Beth's heels caught and she first hit the smooth cement lip around the pool on her rear, then bounced over and fell like a diver from the edge of a boat; Michelle heard a loud crack as Beth's tailbone snapped with the fall. Beth clutched Michelle's backpack with the vain hope it would stop her fall.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Primal SCREAM: Blogfest

All right, this is for the PRIMAL SCREAM blogfest hosted by Raquel Byrnes at Nite Writer.

Lord, I hope I got that right. I screwed up the credits on my last blogfest... yall lemme know if I'm back on the crackpipe, or in this case, the 25oz bottle of Maredsous 10.

All right then.

Hope you're wearing your diapers. You know what I mean, eh.

Oh, and how bout that LAST LINE! Good one.

The Voice by Eric Trant

Claire Brigham reached around the doorjamb and into the black silence of her four-car garage, slammed her fist into the garage door opener on the inside wall—and nothing happened except she turned a French manicured nail into a bleeding-to-the-quick monstrosity she was limited to feeling rather than seeing in the stale darkness.

"Shit!" she said.

"Shit," was the immediate response from the unlit garage.

Claire froze. She smelled a strong, sulfurous stench.

Claire was absolutely convinced she was alone. Daniel had already left for work. He had a radio on his workbench he left on sometimes, maybe that was it—but radios don't answer back, now do they? There wasn't any music either, just the echo of someone else.

"Hello," Claire whispered, more out of instinct than logic. She didn't mean to say it.

"Hello." The voice was a little girl, or someone who did a damned good impression.

Oh Jesus I'm all alone! Claire had the feeling that were she to turn around she'd see a broad man in dirty overalls (they all wear dirty overalls), reaching for her. Grabbing her. She wished she'd left her hair down—then she wouldn't feel him breathing on her neck.

Claire already had her keys out. She crammed the butt of the Mercedes key, the longest one on the chain, into her palm, and decided getting back into the house was the best thing to do. Nobody was behind her. Couldn't be. She'd just turned off the alarm for God's sake. Every window, every door—except for the garage door, but that was about to change—was wired and monitored by Brinks Security. The panic code was 999, and Claire was about to use it.

Claire Brigham backed up a few steps (nobody there, see?), slow, watching the garage for someone to come rushing out of the black hole like a spider from its cave. She had her key ready, but what good was that, really? A scrape on the cheek at best.

When she took her first step back and didn't hit anyone, the heavy fear of not seeing behind her lifted enough for Claire to grasp the door and slam it so hard the hat rack fell off the wall. She peeled another nail off twisting the deadbolt into place, felt no pain, and worked the doorknob trying to get the doorknob lock into place. The lock was one of those tricky bastards that had to be turned just right to lock.

"Oh God!" Something heavy hit the door, a solid shoulder-thump, and the door strained to stay on its hinges.

"Oh God!" was the response from the other side of the door. The same little girl. Only she sounded big when she hit the door.

The doorknob twisted out of Claire's hand. They were trying the doorknob, leaning into the door when the knob was turned open.

"Stay away oh God I'm calling the police!" Claire screamed.

"Stay away oh God I'm calling the police!"

Claire tripped over the hat rack, the goddamned ugly hat rack, hit on her tailbone, and entangled herself in her briefcase as she pushed herself backwards, away from the door screaming, "Go away please God help me!"

"Go away please God help me!" Another heavy whump on the garage door. It buckled, and the wooden trim around the deadbolt split down to the fleshy wood. Claire half-expected the pine to bleed.

Claire's shoe wrenched off as she dug her heel into the stone tile in the kitchen. She scooted away from the door as fast as she could, quickly deciding she didn't have time for the phone, for the 911 call, for the operator and the explanation and the five minute response time San Diego's finest guaranteed. She had time for the knives in the butcher block, though.

Whump! The doorframe split out of the wall the full length of the door, and the long piece balanced for an instant before toppling, and then it slapped down on the kitchen tile with a sharp crack. The door held. One more lick was all it would take.

On her feet, unbalanced by her missing heel as she rounded the kitchen island, Claire heard another whump! and felt the rush of air as the garage door crashed open. The door slammed into the wall. She was almost to the butcher block.

"He told me to find you," the little girl said.

Claire prayed to herself—"Oh God help me..."—as she threw her keys on the counter and yanked one of the knives from the butcher block. It was the carving knife, the smallest thing in the whole damned knife set, and the most useless and embarrassing knife she could have grabbed.

"He told me to find you and tell you something," the little girl said.

Claire whipped around with the knife, still muttering her prayer—as little and useless a thing as the carving knife—and sliced the knife neatly across the top of her left forearm. Small, but not a dull knife.

From her place in the kitchen, Claire saw a black and empty garage, as silent as it had been when she'd first opened the door. She couldn't see the silver of her Mercedes from here.

Panic had its claws dug too deep into Claire's mind, and she had to unhook them fast or she was in worse trouble than being raped. Claire had a knife. She had a sharp knife with blood on it, and Claire focused on the stinging incision in the top of her forearm until she had some of her wits intact.

The door leading into the garage crept away from the wall under its own weight. On the floor in front laid the splinters of the doorframe and the deadbolt housing, the goddamned ugly hat rack Daniel built, Claire's shoe, and her briefcase. No way someone could have walked over all that without making some noise. They were still in the garage, had to be.

But the doorway could have been a sheet of black velvet it was so empty.

"You fucked up," the little girl said. She stumbled on the cussword a little, just enough for Claire to sense she'd never used it, or was maybe afraid to say it. "That's what he said tell you. You fucked up, Claire."


- Eric

50th Follower! THANK YOU!


Sweet! Last night I broke through 50 followers. I guess that means an award or something.

Blogfest?

Maybe later. I already have a great idea for that, but let's stay on-topic and talk about the ever-so-manly cherry cupcake award.

(EDIT) I modified the cupcake award to the BEER award. Much more my style... Sorry, but I had to warm up without you all.


Raquel Byrnes

First off, THANKS to Raquel Byrnes over at Nite Writer for my blog award! She is my sworn enemy, folks, because of this post right here: Body Language Blogfest Entry.

Anyone who pulls that sorta stunt on me is going down. She has a wonderful blog, and despite her evil nature, she's a dangerously talented writer!

Don't let the smile fool you folks. Pure evil. I'm telling you. Read her Body Language entry if you don't believe me.

Christine H.


My 50th follower was Mrs. Christine H over at Writer's Hole. I love her blog's name, since, as you know, if you read my blog title, I'm Digging With the Worms.

I love digging! Deep!

So on to Christine I pass this award. Check out her site and keep her encouraged! She's trudging through a first-draft fantasy with heavy character development. My kinda book, actually -- no cliche cardboard characters allowed, JRR sorta scenes. I'd love to read some of it when it's ready for public consumption.

Harley Palmer


I'd also like to recognize Harley Palmer over at Labotomy of a Writer for her series on editing and revising. If you haven't already, go check it out.

Her series is currently on WORLD BUILDING. Go back in time a bit and you'll find all sorts of goodies regarding how an editor thinks when reviewing your writing. She was even kind enough to sponsor a Q&A a few Saturdays ago.

Andrew Rosenberg


And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Write Runner. That's Andrew Rosenberg, and for some reason I love his website.

Dig around Write Runner and look for his series on writing, and check out some of his careful methodology for analyzing your books. This dude, folks, is my sorta crazy. I'd be happy to share my padded cell with Andrew. Hell, we might write something great!

That's him in the pic. Look at the insanity in those eyes. What a great Steampunk getup.

Oh, and don't forget his BAD GIRL blogfest, upcoming May 7.






Anyway, there are a TON of awesome blogs on my sidebar. Check em out. Believe it or not, I do pass up blogs that are not interesting or seem too commercial, so if I'm following you, it means I want to hear what you have to say.

Thank you all!

- Eric W. Trant
Digging With the Worms

Monday, May 3, 2010

SIGNATURES! Folks, sign your dadgum name.

All right, this is a bit of a rant, but lemme say I've been doing the online thing for so long that I take it for granted that my fellow posters will use a surname, a pseudo, a webanated alter ego to surf the ether and post randy things on randy sites for randy eyes.

But this ain't a randy site, and it isn't some place you go to be ANONYMOUS!

You're posting on blogger to become KNOWN. To generate a crit group, to meet your fellow writers, agents, publishers. To NETWORK! To improve and grow. To discuss and discern and share.

Right? I am right, aren't I? I mean, I'm just guessing since the blogs I'm tagging are for writers who want to get their names out there.

So lemme let you in on a little secret, folks: Sign your dadgum name!

Wow. Prophetic, I know, freaking genius if you ask me, which nobody asks. So here I am, waving my cowboy hat and humping the elephant's leg, the one in the room that NOBODY NOTICED!

Look, when I post, I always have a signature at the end, don't I?

Why oh why would I do that? That's a lot of extra typing, I know, but I do it every time on every site, including facebook. I even post my pseudonym when I'm surfing with my mask on.

People on those sites know me as Saul. Saul Goode, to be exact. Don't google that, you won't like what you find. Saul's been kicked off a few sites, let's leave that yellow snowball on the ground, shall we.

Point is, folks, sign your name on your posts. ALL OF THEM.

Sign on your blog.

Sign on your comments.

Sign sign SIGN SIGN SIGN!

Otherwise you're a no-namer, and we only know you as your blog title.

Now watch me:

- Eric

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Who the Hell Are You?

What you're seeing here, folks, is a guy who's written in a vacuum for the better part of twenty years.

Sure, I posted online, but I would just post, mention my writing in passing, and then get back on topic. People usually guessed I was a writer, though, and when I confessed they said they already figgered as much.

Eh. Go figger. I do a lot of figgering, I figger.

But I wrote happily in this vacuum, letting the worms dig wherever they wanted, turn whatever earth they felt a mind to turn, if worms had a mind, that is, and they turned and turned and up popped all these weeds and flowers and an oak and this damned little china-berry tree I can't imagine I planted, but there it is, ugly and plain as the untrimmed nail on your left big toe.

Then, in 2009, I went to figgering again and submitted some short stories.

Just for the hell of it.

And wouldn't you know it, one got taken up. BING! SWEET! It was the first short I'd ever submitted.

The publisher took to me, and I took to him. I made it clear to him that I understand this is not a hobby for him, and I started pushing those books, selling em, and racking up author points toward a book deal. I'm just one short story in the book, but I've sold more than any of the other authors. Click here.

Do your own figgering on that one, eh.

Then he asks for another short, and I send it, and now it's in next year's anthology, too! Double-bing!

Then he asks if I'll head up a writing project for a De Lint-style Urban Fantasy series with two other writers, me being the lead author. Triple-bing!

Then he asks for a book. I send him three.

"Why me?" I ask.

"Seriously. Because I think you fucking rock."

His exact words.

Best words a writer can hear, too, especially if they're spoken over two pints of dark beer by two forty-year-old guys with pretty girlfriends, all as part of a master plan that involves one more round of dark beer and our names in The National Enquirer.

So I got real damned serious about this writing gig. It's going from hobby and early-morning obsession to business model. I own my own business, so I understand that part. Market penetration. Buzz. Know your market. Be the market. Find the weak spots. Don't fish where everyone else is fishing because those spots are fished-out.

That's why I don't want to go YA. Too many boats in that water.

But I've been ponderizing it for about a year, now, on what to do, how to move forward, finding my niche and defining my brand name.

And that brings me to my point: WHAT IS YOUR BRAND NAME?

My brand name for my business is this: Well Planning and Directional Drilling Software. I devote time and a website to that one effort, not programming in general.

So why devote Digging With the Worms to writing in general! I need a BRAND NAME HERE!

See, when a reader picks up your book, what do they expect? To what style writing is your website dedicated?

What do publishers and agents and bookdealers want to see in you? Clancy has his own expectation. King. Koontz. Bradbury. De Lint. JKR and JRR both elicit a unique image with nothing more than their initials.

I'm asking myself what the heck is my brand name? Fantasy? Fiction? Rural realism like Faulkner and McCarthy? Sci-Fi? Horror? I've dabbled in em all. I have the skills I need to publish.

But I don't have a genre or a business model.

It's go-time for Mr. Trant. I need to pick that brand name and stick to it.

But what is it?

Rural and Urban Paranormal, maybe. That'd be fun.

Folks, how did you pick your genre? If I stuck with what I know, I'd be writing backwoods fiction/monster/para stories with severe realism, and/or urban fiction about divorce and raising families.

(EDIT)

Check out this article on genres: Genre Rules


- Eric

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Last Line Blogfest: The Idear

This is for the last-line blogfest, hosted by your favorite stalker and mine, Mrs. Lilah Pierce.

This is from a short story I wrote a while back. I used to sit in the attic in this old chair, sharpening my knives and collecting dried snakeskins from where the floor met the eaves and reading this medical school dictionary I'd found up there.

See, this house we lived in for a while was infested with snakes, and rats, and you name it, a total shithole. I hated that house.

I used to climb up the carport, run across the roof, and then monkey-swing into an attic window that was just out-of-reach if you leaned off the second story. My parents fought a lot and this was the only quiet spot I could find.

Anyway. This short story is about Marty. One of the guys he hangs out with calls him Sugar, and Marty found a big-ass knife in the trash dump yesterday afternoon and snuck it up to his attic.

- Eric

Excerpt from The Idear by Eric Trant

***

The next day it rained, huge drops that fell straight-down without wind and without thunder. Marty sat in the attic next to the window as if beneath a waterfall, hidden behind clear sheets of water as the rain rolled over the eaves. He sat in a toddler's chair, one he'd found crammed into the corner of the attic when they'd moved in a year ago. The wicker seat was chewed-through, and the sharp corners of the broken straws sometimes poked him, but its legs were strong enough that Marty could lean back as he worked. The overhead light had long ago burned out and never been replaced. So Marty sat near the window. The cascading rain somehow amplified the light here.

Marty's fingers bled from where the wire brush had stabbed him; the wild-haired brush wasn't designed to be held, it was designed to spin on a grinder. He had taken a piece of his jeans (the part left over after his mom had made cut-offs) and used the fabric to pad his hands. It worked well, and during the past few hours, Marty had scraped most of the rust from the blade, and saved the rest of his fingers.

According to his mom's scale, the one she kept hidden beneath the bathroom towels so she didn't have to look at it, the knife weighed over a pound. The weight sat heavy in Marty's lap.

In his pocket was another weight, this one a few ounces he'd lifted from the knife-drawer in the kitchen: a battered and chipped whetstone.

Marty held the knife up in the shimmering light. "You're almost clean," he said. "Then I'll put an edge on you that'll cut through glass."

***