Tag: Short stories

A Writer Milestone – My First Short Story Published

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update
The Lost Anthology by Galileo Press.
The Lost Anthology by Galileo Press.

“There are love stories in the underground. I’ll tell you one if you want. It’s a tired old boy meets girl, but it’s got some power to spark in the dark. You can sit and listen, can’t you? You look like you’d like a good love story.”

The other night I sat in my living room with my roommates and stared at a book in my hand.

The Lost Anthology had arrived. And inside is my first published short story ever.

The book has a gorgeous cover, designed by the talented Jeff Himmelman, who is also the designer of Kingdom of Nothing, the tabletop RPG setting in which the anthology is set. It’s published by Galileo Games, one of my favorite indie publishing houses, run by the fantastic Brennan Taylor. The volume was edited by the phenomenal JR Blackwell. Inside are short stories by many amazing writers, including my friends CJ Malarsky and Peter Woodworth.

And the first story in the book is “The Case of George the Curious” by me. It’s even got a quote from me on the back cover.

It’s a surreal thing to see your work in print for the first time. This isn’t my first publication – I’ve had a short scenario published for Cthulhu Invictus before and have had numerous blog posts and newspaper articles published over the years. Yet this story is my first short piece of fiction in a collection and right now, the book is in my hands. It hadn’t sunk in until that moment that this was a thing that happened. I’m so happy that it happened in this anthology as well. First, it was an anthology for charity for a company whose work I’ve adored for years. Also, I was around when Jeff Himmelman first started talking about Kingdom of Nothing as a game and got a chance to alpha and beta test the original tabletop, so seeing this in print now down the road from that design is a wonderful experience.

But also, I’m reminded of all the great writing coaches and teachers who pushed me along when I thought for sure that I couldn’t do it. Teachers like Helen Phillips at Brooklyn College and Maya Sloan at NYU, as well as John Adamus my ever-present editor and friend (dare I say mentor?), all made me a better writer. And because of that, this story exists.

Damn, this is starting to sound like some award ceremony speech. But victories and successes are always like that in my head, because no piece of work just came from a single person. The folks who get you there deserve the celebration as well. So thanks to all of those who helped make this moment – my first short story publication – a reality. A first achieved, bucket list item ticked off, much more to come!

Short Story in Progress and Genre Research

by Shoshana, posted in On Reading, Workshop update, Writing Update

I guess it can’t be called a completed piece because it just got workshopped in class, but it is almost completed, I believe. This was a departure from my usual fantasy and sci-fi writing, which I don’t do very often. I went ahead and tried to write a story that is one we’ve heard quite often: woman gets into a relationship, relationship is abusive, woman runs. But I wanted to do it with a new twist, and out came a story called “Of Ghosts and Sky.” It’s a departure for me because even the tone sounds different, turning it into something else that I haven’t really written before.

Completed (almost?): “Of Ghosts and Sky”

Word Count: 4,777

Pages: 16 (double spaced)

It’s a good feeling to get something different out there. I can’t describe exactly where the story came from, but when my roommate read it she said she nearly felt a panic attack coming on. Apparently, my work still does the heavy feeling of anxiety/horror well, even when I’m not aiming for overtly horrific, and that’s what I wanted to bring across. So I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve. It’s not finished, of course – my workshop in class said I had some things to adjust to make it more effective, but I think that with some changes it can be a really effective story.

Speaking of doing effective stories: I am working my way through Stephen King’s non-fiction book, Danse Macabre, his analysis of horror in not only literature but television and film. It is right up my alley as part of my studies at college have been film and television as well as literature. I’m hoping that it gives me a better appreciation of what to look for to create more effective horror. It’s given me a lot to think about in terms of what kind of psychology and themology should be going behind every story, and where the horror in a story really comes from. I really love his analysis of classic monster/horror books such as Frankenstein and Dracula as well as his recommendations about things to go out and ready/see. I am certainly tracking down a copy of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House after everything he said.  I can’t believe the mess they made of the movie by comparison to what the book describes… though should I really be surprised?

I now have a list of stuff I need to go read, but I’m tearing my way through this book as best I can. I seriously recommend.

The antithesis of good writing juju…

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

There is nothing in the world that can make it hard to write like being ill. Since last January I have been battling massive stomach/intestinal issues which have knocked me on my ass, coupled with the problem of ye olde migraines. And you know what I’ve found? Being sick drives the old muse away. It just kicks it right in the ass and sends it running in another direction, far far away. Today however, I managed to write something finally, and I think I may be  on a roll.

The piece was originally named ‘Anie’ and now I’m not sure what it’s called, about a Muslim immigrant woman who ends up in an abusive relationship. And you know what? It’s not about anything supernatural. AT ALL. I managed finally to knock out a story that didn’t have anything supernatural in it and I did it on a sick day, recovering from not feeling well. So hah. I can do it after all.

Final page count: 16 (double spaced)

Final word count: 4603 words

And all it took apparently was a few weeks. This is the first work I’ve done really and it feels really good. I may keep it up right now.

Short story explosion- Javi’s story

by Shoshana, posted in Uncategorized

In the spirit of my insomniac-induced writing mania, I submit for your approval the following recounting of this evenings insanity. I took a nap due to having a headache for three hours, woke up at 9:45 and realized  I could get some work done for a while. I went to the little writer’s room for a powder and came out, having an idea for a short story. It was sort of inspired by Avatar, which I saw recently (and was amazing) and by this article I read in National Geographic last month about a tribe in Africa which had no concept of time because they lived in a pre-agricultural, hunter/gatherer society.

Out came a story I’ve named Javi’s Story. It is twenty-five pages, which I wrote in three hours at 9,841 words. I cannot BEGIN to tell you how incredible this writing experience was. The words just seemed to flow out of me and though the story is not unique (how many coming of age stories can be?) I think this one has its own ups and downs. I’m not sure I like the ending, to be honest, but I don’t have the heart to revisit it right now. I jut want it to sit… and be what it is right now. Which is a piece of writing born in a bleery-eyed whirlwind.

The biggest part about all this? It is COMPLETED. Revisions be damned, this one I did beginning to end in one sitting. And that’s a big deal for me. Tomorrow, I will celebrate my birthday with some people, have a good couple of days, and get back to writing the other story I was working on. For now, this one is completed and that’s enough for me.

Now to get to bed. I have to be up in less then five hours.

The Writing Project Load

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So a new part of this blog project is going to be writing up a little bit about what I’m writing right now. There isn’t much of a purpose in it, really, except to sort of check in every once in a while on projects that I’m going through and to keep my progress. It helps also to look at the sort of accomplishments I’m going through and getting them tallied for me to see. What I’m in the middle of right now is as follows:

  • A longer novel about a young woman who goes to rescue a friend and gets into trouble with werewolves because of it, which I’ve written myself into a bit of a corner on and I’m waiting for the inspiration fairy to visit.
  • A longer story about a character I wrote up for a roleplaying game when I was younger and couldn’t put down, which has so far stalled out due to lack of inspiration.
  • A short story set in a world that I’m creating for a novel called “The Death of Scarling”, though the title is still sort of fluid. (This one is in editing stages, as the short story is done)
  • A short story I completed for workshop called “No Hero” about an original super-hero concept in a world me and my friends recently used for a roleplaying game. (This one is all but finished, just needs the finishing touches from editing suggested in the workshop). 
  • The beginnings of a story about a girl, her relationship with her father, and his death in Israel.

It’s this last project that I started today and I’ve got already five pages on. Now I like it, it has some oomph, and could be finished right now if I was satisfied with it remaining a short story. There is something to the place where I stopped in it, right now, that could make it a short story about death and grieving, but I think there is more to it than that and I might want to explore it. I’m drawing a lot from my own visits to Israel years ago to sort of address some of the issues in it, and one of the important ones is the disconnect one can get from their religion while their family might be more connected than they are. I think that’s a fundamental and interesting concept to tackle and I’m not sure it would be addressed in the five pages I’ve already got. I think this could go a little further and I think its maybe the most normal thing that I’ve ever written.

One of the jokes people make about me is that I’m incapable of writing something that is completely normal. I have never really written a story that wasn’t about a supernatural thing or a spiritual thing or a horror thing or a ghost thing or whatever. I got dared to write a short story about two women having coffee and set it in a post-apocalyptic urban city. I tried to tell a story about some girls in college in a convenience store job and made one of them a superhero. I’m not good at normal. This story, about the girl in Israel, might actually be the one normal one. I haven’t decided. I think there might be something supernatural in there, or at least have some kind of magical realism to it, but I haven’t decided yet. There is something to leaving it just the way it is, dealing with important issues of family and religion and death and heritage, without dealing with something blatantly supernatural. I can’t decide yet but something about this story seems really different for me, very good. It feels, to sound like a kid for a second, like grown-up writing. The story has no name so far.

So the tally is really:

  • “The Death of Scarling” – In editing with 6 pages total
  • “No Hero” – In final editing with 10 pages total
  • Untitled Werewolf Story – In progress with 27 pages in
  • Untitled Roleplaying Character Story – In progress with 15 pages in
  • Untitled Israel story – In progress with 5 pages in

That’s not all too bad for works in progress. I’ve had a lot more ideas for short stories since I started reading all of these anthologies so I’m focusing a lot on getting that refined too, so there should be more of those than anything else. I’m going to keep churning those out and see if that helps with the longer stories. 

And all this, plus NaNo is coming up. Heh. I’m so doomed.

The Mania of Short Stories

by Shoshana, posted in On Reading

It long ago came to my attention that the writing and reading of short stories was an acquired taste as well as a dying breed. It wasn’t until I read the introduction to a collection of short stories that I realized that published authors felt the same way that I did about it. Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union edited a collection of short stories called McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and expounded on the following idea: short stories with a substantial plot are hard to find these days. 

One of the reasons I never put much credence into modern short stories was this problem exactly. Most modern short stories, that is to say those written after WWII, seemed to be lost in the notion that a short story could only capture a single moment in time, an epiphany or important moment in the character’s lives. There was usually no substantial plot to speak of, nothing to anchor it to any story, and mostly left you feeling as though you had just glimpsed into a world that lent you a little of its time and then sent you away wanting more. These epiphany stories, these single days, were all one kind of short story, but where was the short stories that made authors like Twain, Poe, Faulkner, and Lovecraft stand as classics. Where was the full story, the idea that went from start to finish, the adventure or horror or ghost or mystery or detective story? They all didn’t have to take up hundreds of pages, they could just be what they were, and they sure weren’t getting into the public eye.

Sure, there were the exceptions. You had authors like Stephen King, mightily carrying on the banner of plot-driven short stories, and his success proved that it was possible to take something that wasn’t being done and parlay it into not only success, but movies based on short stories as well. With the success of his films 1408 and The Mist it proved that short story writing did not take a backseat or sidecar to anthologies or giant sweeping opuses like Lord of the Rings when it came to the box office. Yet when it came to finding more stories with plot that weren’t just ‘days in the life’, there was very little to be found.

My creative writing teacher this semester, Ms. Phillips, is constantly telling our class that a story has to have one question answered: why now? Why are the things in the story happening then, what makes that story focus on that time period and that place and in that time. That is the kernel that brings a plot to life and takes the story away from the realm of just a rambling story about an epiphany, a discovery, a single moment of whatever it is, and turns it into a story with full substance that you can sink your teeth into. Somewhere down the line these stories might get called genre pieces but not if they’ve got oomph to stand on their own and sneer prettily at the critics.

(A side note: It’s been my experience anyway that calling a piece or writing a ‘genre story’ is just a snobs way of saying they’re afraid to use the jaws of life to ratchet their mind’s open any further. It’s what I like to call lazy reading habits, literary snobbery and general jackass-ery. )

So in the spirit of supporting the little short stories that could, I have been delving myself deep into the well of short story anthologies. Of course, being myself, I’ve chosen anthologies that have themes I enjoy. The few that I’ve got my claws on are the following:

  1. The Living Dead, edited by John Jay Adams, with stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, George R.R. Martin, Clive Barker, and more. As the title suggests, its an anthology of stories about zombies and has some amazing choices in it. My particular favorites are Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie, George R.R. Martin’s disturbing Meathouse Man, How the Day Runs Down by John Langan, and Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite. If you have a weak stomach, maybe not for you, but if you can stand a little core, this anthology has some stories that will knock you the hell off your feet.
  2. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, editted by John Jay Adams, which includes stories by Stephen King, Octavia E. Butler, Orson Scott Card and Gene Wolfe. While I’m still working through this one, the sort of wealth and breadth of the imagination people have brought to the interpretation of the end of the world here or post-apocalyptic worlds is absolutely intense. My favorite has been so far a story called Bread and Bombs, a post 9-11 take by M. Rickert. This one’s a little more bleak, a little more dense, and hosts a story that’s perhaps one of my favorites ever now, The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King.
  3. McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, editted by Michael Chabon, which focuses on bringing back the short story with some substance, adventure and excitement. Included in the stories in this volume are originals by Stephen King (sensing a pattern?), Glen David Gold, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman (another favorite of mine), Michael Crichton, Michael Chabon and Sherman Alexie. So far I haven’t gotten too far into this one, but the first two stories, The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter by Glen David Gold and Tedford and the Megaladon by Jim Shepard have managed to not only thrill me but positively nail me to my seat.

I’ve got two more short story compendiums, Who Can Save Us Now? which focuses on original superhero stories, and McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, also edited by Michael Chabon. I think that I will be purchasing more of this McSweeney goodness as time goes on, as it is fostering in me perhaps some of my best appreciation for short stories that I have found in a long time. That and The Living Dead has brought me back to the notion that while short stories aren’t always the most in depth when it comes to content, they can be brutally emotional in their quick punch to the reader. 

And as if it had to be said, this has only inspired me to more writing. That is, after all, what its all about.

Writing Update!

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

As of today, I have turned out one short story last night, entitled “Songs in the Dark”, which is a short story based on one of the larger projects I’m working on.

Pages = 9

Time it took to write = two hours

I’ve also been banging out the start of a new urban fantasy story based on an old roleplaying character that I really liked. That’s already on twelve pages in a few days of work, though for some reason I’m hitting some issues getting down the voice of this character… which is strange, because back in the day when I roleplayed her, I could go for days playing the character in an online text game, writing in the first person. It’s very strange, but I’m hoping the work I’m doing will get better. 

Anyway, just time for a quick update. Must get back to work.