It Was a Muggy August Night

  • k-avatarshe’s not your typical Russian.
  • fishing on the banks of a river in Delaware
  • flitted from the gloom into the light
  • use Pavlovian conditioning for sex
  • large enough for a man to pass through

It was a muggy August night much like tonight when I was fishing on the banks of a river in Delaware and she flitted from the gloom into the light of my lantern, showing me a smile like a croc and a tunnel in the riverbank large enough for a man to pass through, which led to her den, where she taught me how to use Pavlovian conditioning for sex, and that’s why I disagree with anyone who says she’s not your typical Russian.

bonus points for using them all in one sentence

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In The Utility Tunnels

  • by jenranged themselves in front of a small apple tree
  • flying swiftly and steadily
  • ended up eating mostly side dishes
  • very intricate evolutions
  • an abandoned bomb shelter deep beneath the city

In the utility tunnels that emerge from an abandoned bomb shelter deep beneath the city lives a strange race of creatures that, before radiation caused very intricate evolutions in their DNA, were once the sort of lower-teir relatives who ended up eating mostly side dishes at Thanksgiving because they lacked the nimbleness and fortitude that led to their dominant cousins flying swiftly and steadily up the buffet line, gorging themselves on the turkey and the various pies, and when these creatures finally found their way to the surface they ranged themselves in front of a small apple tree and scratched their heads, for they had never seen its like before.

double bonus points for using them in reverse order in one sentence

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Keeping With Tradition(al Marketing)

r-avatarThe frustrations of sending query letters do sometimes have their compensations, such as when an agent asks for a full. That happened to us this week, which (a) makes us both extremely happy, and (b) feels a little spooky considering that just last week we vented about marketing.

Now we need to generate a properly formatted manuscript of the Science Novel and get it sent!

In related news, we’ve also registered to go to a conference next month. It’s been a while since we attended one, and we’re excited to do a little networking with industry types and our fellow wordsmiths.

Meanwhile, the first draft of Son-of-Music-Novel continues to move along. We’re at 80,000 words and into our fourth batch of stubs, which takes us more than halfway through the outline.

Haus of Haunted Smellz

  • k-avatarbitten by a green lizard
  • just take rotten eggs
  • if you don’t want to cry today
  • painstakingly coded virtual replicas
  • no better than a haunted house

Video Game Review: Haus of Haunted Smellz

If you don’t want to cry today, don’t spend any money on this game. There’s not much to it, and it’s lame. You just take rotten eggs, well, painstakingly coded virtual replicas of rotten eggs, and throw them at things. The setting is supposed to be creeptastic, but it’s no better than a haunted house in the kiddie section of a milquetoast theme park. The ghouls in the mansion are easy to evade, but getting to level two without being bitten by a green lizard — which sends you back to the start — is nearly impossible.

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At That Moment

  • by jendo not leave a trace
  • the best-looking guy in the room
  • the adults took turns
  • “That was a game, wasn’t it?”
  • I know you’re part Indian!

Tune In Next Time Part 8                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

At that moment Tessa’s eyes rolled back and she slumped to the floor, the giraffe-hide briefcase slipping from her grip. She should have remembered that I’m quite partial to contact-tranquilizers (especially the kinds that do not leave a trace on a tox screen), and always smeared them liberally on the handles of all of my briefcases.

I pulled a pair of soggy gloves from my pocket and wrung the seawater out of them. I may not be the best-looking guy in the room, but I’m usually the cleverest. When I was young and the only child in the cult, the adults took turns teaching me the many skills they used to evade the authorities. No matter how challenging the lesson I always laughed and said, “That was a game, wasn’t it?” That attitude got me far in life.

But enough about me.

John still stood just inside the doorway, eyeing Tessa on the floor. Or, more likely, eyeing the briefcase.

“I can’t let you have it,” he said without looking at me. “I know you’re part Indian! I know you’ll sell it to your cohorts back in Mumbai!”

I chuckled at his total misapprehension of my motives, and that’s when he pounced.

 

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New Frontiers in Marketing

r-avatarAh, what is there to say about marketing? We don’t know any writers who like doing it, even those who are good at it. It’s an essential element of a writing career, though, and a mere glance at the paltry tally of posts in that category here at the Skelleyverse gives you an idea of how we feel about it.

We’ve focused our efforts (“focus” and “effort” being two things our marketing activities do not have much of) on traditional publishing. We send queries out to agents whose profiles and portfolios indicate we might be a good fit. As everyone who’s ever done that knows, it’s a slog. There’s really nothing to say here by way of encouragement, it just sucks.

  • It relies on a different type of writing than the product you’re trying to sell.
  • There’s practically zero feedback to tell you if you’re on track. Miss by an inch or miss by a mile, it usually looks the same from your desk.
  • It’s time consuming, especially if you’re conscientious about researching the agents and sending your query selectively.

Authors today of course have many new options for self-publishing. This is something we’ve been reluctant to embrace, partially due to a sense that traditional routes offer greater validation of the work but mostly because the landscape was in such perpetual flux that it was difficult to know how much faith to put in any of it. Things have matured substantially in recent years, although we do still live in exciting times. The interesting twist is that the new age of technology is actually pushing publishing models back in time. The future will probably look a lot like two centuries ago, before there were such things as publishing houses.

No matter how you go about it, getting published seems to entail taking on a shit-ton of work that’s not the writing you want to do, not the stories inside that are trying to get out. It’s business. It’s different.

But it’s also how a writer connects to readers, so it’s a gotta-do-it, however much it sucks.

Who Are These People?

  • k-avatar“Revenge.”
  • Clayton and his wife simultaneously noticed
  • did not attempt to check her tears
  • She was alone.
  • visit him every weekend

Tune In Next Time Part 7                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Who are these people?” John shouted over the throbbing music. “This is supposed to be a law firm!”

I wagged my head and held up my empty palms, but I did have a faint notion what was going on. Officially, this place was the offices of Gallows-Clayton, Ltd., but when Clayton and his wife simultaneously noticed that they could make more money renting it out for parties, and that said parties would bring in droves of lithe, horny young people, they shifted their business model from corporate law to glowsticks and ketamine.

A stage had been constructed over the hidden floor panel. John searched along its lip for some way to get underneath, while I sought the improvised backstage area. Inside a corner office being used as some kind of dressing room, I discovered Tessa. She was alone. Looking up when I came in, she did not attempt to check her tears. In her lap was the giraffe-hide briefcase, so I knew she’d found a way to the hidden compartment.

“Tessa, why?”

“Revenge.”

I just stared at her, unable to conceive of what wrong would drive her to madness in the name of vengeance. With each turning of the diabolical wheel that was my business partnership with John, through all our betrayals and stupid macho games, we both had always looked out for this woman.

“You want the case,” she spat. “You want it before John finds us. That’s all you care about.”

She had me there. I had been edging forward, compelled by my desperation to control the destiny of the items in that case, to deprive John — and Tessa — of them.

She stood, and John burst in. He froze in the doorway and his eyes locked onto the briefcase. After a tense second he said, “Girl, you’re cornered. So just hand it over and we’ll all go join the party out there.”

Tears still flowing, Tessa began to laugh. “I’m in charge, now! I have the briefcase, and what I say goes unless you want me to open it.” I shook my head and saw John doing the same. “Good, then we understand each other. I’m afraid one of you will be taking the fall, but the other one can visit him every weekend.”

 

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First an Ocean Swim

  • by jengross little brine-loogies
  • despite the morning’s embarrassment
  • wearing sloppy clothes and tennis shoes
  • breathless from her bootyshaking
  • many strange and fanciful masks

Tune In Next Time Part 6                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

First an ocean swim while chained to cinderblocks, then a ride on a child’s bicycle, and now running up stairs, I thought as I took the steps two at a time, heaving for breath and coughing up gross little brine-loogies. It’s like some sort of triathlon of the absurd.

Two floors below I heard John enter the stairwell, and despite the morning’s embarrassment that led to this evening’s murder attempts I was glad to have him around. Even wearing sloppy clothes and tennis shoes saturated with seawater he was an intimidating guy, and I thought that the two of us working together might be able to defeat Tessa. If we got really lucky. And if John didn’t betray me again.

I got to the fifth floor and pushed through the fire door into some sort of rave. A gorgeous woman in silver body paint stood on stage, breathless from her bootyshaking, and the people in the crowd wore many strange and fanciful masks. I pushed through the throng, John hot on my heels, looking for Tessa. She had to be here somewhere. The secret compartment that was her ultimate goal was hidden under the floor.

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Leaping From the Turnbuckle

r-avatarThe Skelley Method for Excellent Fiction Writing™ advocates the use of stubs, our proprietary step between outline and fully composed prose.

During writing sessions we manage our workflow by divvying up the stubs. The choice of who writes what usually comes down to which characters are prominent or what kind of subject matter is involved, and we’re both pretty versatile. The thing that almost never happens is handing the scene over to our partner partway through.

Almost never. But that’s exactly what we did just recently, and it was quite successful. It’s an example of the benefit of flexibility in your process. In this case, Jen did the first half and then Kent stepped in to finish it. He likes to bat clean-up, so it was a smooth experience.

Last night we had a variation on the theme, where Jen went back to a scene Kent wrote a few weeks ago and filled in a spot where he’d inserted a placeholder. It was a case where we knew conceptually what should go there, but the implementation was turning into a speed bump. Now that Jen’s revised the scene it’s in great shape. (Side note: a lot of advice books would say not to fiddle with any of your completed scenes until you have a completed draft, and that’s often wise counsel. With a partner, things can work a bit differently. Also, this revision counts as forward progress even though we had to go back to do it — plus now we can see how the concept actually works, so our new scenes don’t have that question hanging over them.)

This tag-team approach to our recent scenes has allowed us to rack up 72,000 words in the first draft of Son of Music Novel. 72,000 words so far. We’re nowhere near done.

“This Doesn’t Mean I Won’t Still Kill You Later”

  • k-avatarplanning to take the bus
  • , mostly prostitutes
  • No one knew whose they were
  • regarding an unnatural sex act
  • up through the asphalt

Tune In Next Time Part 5                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

“This doesn’t mean I won’t still kill you later,” John said as he helped me move up the beach. He unlocked the chains from my ankles, freeing me from the concrete weights.

“Tessa has a huge head start,” I pointed out. John said nothing as we jogged up to the boardwalk. He paused at the edge of the street, watching the oncoming traffic. I wondered if he was planning to take the bus.

“This is 13th,” he said. “It’s 40 blocks to the place. We need wheels, man!”

I was still out of breath from my near-drowning. We were both dripping seawater. No way a cab would pick us up. Scanning the people around us, mostly prostitutes, I hoped to find some kind of transportation inspiration. I did, in the form of two bicycles laying beside the fortune teller’s kiosk. We asked if they belonged to anyone, we even asked the fortune teller. No one knew whose they were.

John said, “After the things we’ve done, you’re worried about stealing a bike?”

“Borrowing,” I corrected as I threw a leg over the red one and started pedaling. “After the things we’ve done, we really need to do better.”

John caught up and passed me, forcing me to pedal harder. I wanted to get in front again, to get to Tessa first. Also, the view from behind, of John pumping furiously on the undersized bike, was like a pantomime performance regarding an unnatural sex act.

By the time we reached the 50th Street Overpass, it was well past midnight and we were both gasping for breath. The only traffic I saw was a single taxi that swung into the avenue a couple of blocks ahead of us. It pulled up to the curb at the place, and the rear door flew open. “It’s her!” John yelled, his absurd exertions increasing as he poured on speed.

I shifted gears and started gaining. I couldn’t allow those two to be alone together, and I hated to think what John might resort to as a way of stopping Tessa. Suddenly John’s bike wobbled to a stop, both tires flat. I veered around the small cluster of nails poking up through the asphalt and leapt from my bike without stopping, dashing straight in through the revolving door in time to see Tessa in the elevator as it closed.

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