I managed to take a short micro-vacation around Thanksgiving where I wandered out to Victoria to see the Robertsons. While I was out there I did some diving, ran the Victoria Marathon, drank lots of beer, and relaxed. I love visiting there!

At the same time there was a nasty fire downtown Calgary what knocked out the power to our office. Last week was a pretty big mess coping with disaster recovery and such. Never a dull moment.

On the writing front I have been plugging along with all of my projects. I was registered to take a fun one night writing course on ‘Forming Fictional Characters’ with Simon Rose, but sadly it seems to have been cancelled. I guess I’ll look for another one.

Recent Writing

• My sword and sorcery story ‘Old Bones’ is now up on QuarterReads.com
• Wrote a story called ‘Idiom’ for my wife for her birthday. It’s about a teacher and various literary devices.
• Wrote a flash story called ‘Christmas Past’ based on a prompt from my boy. I’m going to send it out with Christmas cards this year.
• Completed and posted a race report for the Lost Soul 2014 Ultra-Marathon.
• Completed and posted a race report for the Victoria Marathon 2014.

My Current Writing Works in Progress

• Wrote part of chapter 5 of my Frostbyte novel. The story is taking on a life of it’s own and needs a bit of rework to it’s structure. Need to think about this one a bit more.
• Completed a solid outline for the sci-fi/horror story called ‘Catacombs’ and started the first draft. Loving this one!
• Sketched some of the first draft of a ‘true tale’ about building a cannon. My kids seem a little too interested…

//

I can’t believe it’s the last day of September already! I love the Fall colours and the crispness of the air. I’m just afraid that Winter is Coming soon.

I mentioned last post that I’d written a short story called ‘Red’. I thought I’d talk about ‘how’ I wrote that one. I didn’t have a kernel to work from so I decided to start with three ‘nuggets’.

I asked my friend three questions:

1. Who is your favourite author?
2. What is your favourite colour?
3. Where haven’t you been that you would love to visit?

The answers were:

1. Margaret Atwood
2. Red
3. Ireland

An interesting collection so I went for a run (something I love to do to get my brain working creatively) and put something together. My female character (based on my friend and who appears in some of my other stories) would be at a writing retreat in Cork where Margaret Atwood would be talking. She would keep having misadventures that would prevent her from actually meeting her idol, each one involving her notebook and something red. It was a lot of fun to write and I’m happy with the way it came out. I’ll have to try that type of story again soon.

Since then I’ve done lots of other writing work.

• I finished my dark humour/horror story and submitted it. Just a waiting game now!
• I completed a sword and sorcery tale called ‘Old Bones’ for QuarterReads.com and submitted that one. It’s part of a semi-connected serial but it can stand alone if needed.
• I finished chapter 4 of my Frostbyte novel. It’s moving along. I did a pile of outlining and plotting for the first half of the book. Just working through some character arc’s now.
• I wrote the initial draft of another sword and sorcery tale called ‘The Game’. It’s connected to ‘Old Bones’ and is part of my Stars and Stones world.
• I’m still working on a race report for the Lost Soul ultra-marathon.
• I wrote the first draft of my superhero story (for another submission). I like it but it’s going to need a TON of work to make it great.
• I wrote a really rough outline for a science fiction/horror story called ’Catacombs’ about space marines and archaeologists. It came to me in a dream. A very nasty dream…
• I have an outline for another ‘true tale’ from my sorry youth. This one is about model rocketry, smoke bombs, cannons and better living through chemistry.

Till next time! Take care.
//

An action packed and busy vacation week. It was the final gasp of summer before the kids go back to school so we made the best of it by getting out for a couple of camping trips. Comfort camping is now a ‘thing’ so we tried that in Banff. A couple of days in a luxurious yurt/tent cabin on the shore of Two Jack Lake. Fantastic. Then I took one of my sons on our traditional annual tenting/fishing/camping trip. It was a great time punctuated with one mishap. A snagged fishing hook came loose unexpectedly and became embedded in my arm. Given it still had a bit of a barb, it was a challenge to extract. I ended up cutting it out with a jackknife and a multi-tool. Battlefield surgery! I’m sure some of this will make it into a story or two.

I found time for writing every day. After chatting with my Mom and Brother I got ‘The Lord of Corn-Town’ written up and posted. It has some fun memories.

The third chapter my Frostbyte novel had been sitting there nagging at me so I finished a rough draft. It just needs some time to age and I’ll get it cleaned up and up on the site.

A dark sort of horror/crazy/bizzaro horror anthology I like is accepting submissions. I had a tiny bud of a story idea that blossomed. It practically wrote itself in a few hours. I love it when that happens. It’s twisted.
//

It was a lot of fun writing my last short story The 8th Slice. I’ve been reading a fair amount of darker material lately. Tales written in a Lovecraftian style and others containing subtle understated horror. This is a genre that I would love to study in depth.

The story itself came to me while running. They often do. There is a point of singular focus on a long run where my mind clears and an idea appears. If I can pull it in and wrap some structure around it, I can spend the rest of the run writing it in my head. When I get home I dump it all into a file to work on. I know other runners take dictation devices. I think I’d feel self conscious talking to myself (as opposed to cursing or repeating a mantra) but it might be worth pursuing. It is the worst feeling to get to the end of a run, exhausted, and have the great bits slip away in the fog of pain and exhaustion. Like waking from a dream and grasping as the threads blow away.

Back to the story. A friend once admitted she had a dream in which she poisoned me. We played online games together and it became a running joke for years. It was her birthday and I thought it would be a cool idea to write her a story. Naturally it had to involve poison. I wanted it to be set in a dreary Scottish town and include other characters from our gaming guild. I worked in a few subtle references to various events and assassinated some personalities. I think it turned out pretty well.
//