Short Story: Lifeblood

    I completed a second of my stories this week, and we are getting really excited about the progress we're making. With several of the stories now having been sent out to beta readers (thank you all), we're about half-way finished with our short story collection. So, here is your second sneak peek.

    You remember distinctly the very first life you ever took. At twelve years old, you participated in the traditional rite of passage into adulthood by dueling and killing a prisoner of war who had been starved enough to give you a good chance. Of course the prisoner was fighting for his life which added a serious danger to it.
    But it wasn't the battle that you remember so well. It was the feeling when the body collapsed and the blood pooled at your feet that gives you chills to this day.
    It had been too easy.

    These are not the opening lines of the story, but this gives you a good taste of what the story feels like. This is actually my favorite story that I've written for this collection, I think. It started off as an experiment that I wasn't sure would really work. I wrote the first draft of this story for a creative writing class in which we're supposed to write "literary fiction", which basically means the story is supposed to be character driven and basically a character study rather than a piece of action or plot-pumping entertainment. I wanted to know if I could write a story that was centered around action and violence and still make it character driven. It took a lot of time and a lot of revisions, but I think I have succeeded (and my professor does too).

    This story follows a viking chief named Orvar on a battlefield, trying to get vengeance for the murder of his family, but it's a lot more than that. It's about a father-son relationship. It's about a chief-village relationship. It's about manhood, and what coming of age really means. It's about honor, responsibility, and what it means to really be a leader.

    Some other information abut this story. You may have noticed in the passage from the story that I used the 2nd person point of you saying, 'you did this, you did that', This was the second most experimental part of this story. I wanted the story to feel like an epic poem. I wanted it to feel like a story that is told around a campfire about a legendary hero, like the vikings would have done. And I wanted to see if the 2nd person point of view would work since I've always wanted to write a story like that.

    If you want to know more, stay updated here or contact me with questions, comments, or concerns. Next week, the sneak peek will be about one of my wife's stories, Thanks for taking the time to read this and be part of our process, and let me know if you still want to beta read. It's not too late.

Short Story: Nyctophobia

  So I said in my last post that I would be giving sneak peeks into the stories we're writing for our short story collection. Here's the first one. This is one of my stories that is the first to reach it's almost-final draft (meaning I need a final beta reader to give me fresh insight). So here we go.

  Everyone is afraid of the dark. At least to some extent. As a kid I remember whenever I shut the light off in my room in the evenings, I would run out of my room before the monsters could eat me. Or when I'd finally go to bed, I would beg my mom to turn the nightlight on. I wouldn't be able to sleep without that little bit of light.

  These are the opening lines of the story. This short tale surrounds a young man, age 24, as a police officer investigating a potential meth lab. He struggles severely with being afraid of the dark (hence the name of the story), as well as with the physical and mental abuse of his father and older brother from childhood.

  Themes of this story include fear of the dark, damaged relationships, madness, un-forgiveness, and confronting your fears.

  This is one of the slightly darker stories I've written for this collection. The story started off as a writing exercise from one of my creative writing college classes. It was about building tension in a short period of time. Eventually it turned into a story about a young man who wants to do the right thing and be a good cop, but because of the psychological scars he has from childhood, he goes a bit insane.

  Most of the stories I write are more fantastical than this, but this one was actually a lot of fun to write as I explored exactly what it would take to realistically knock this character off his rocker.

  Again, let me know if you have question, comments, or are interested in beta reading.

Update on the short story collection

  My wife and I have finally decided which eight stories to publish and even have a theoretical order to put them all into. Over the next several weeks, as each story nears completion (which means being completely rewritten at least 3 times), one of us will be posting about the story and giving a sneak peak as to what exactly the story is about, what inspired it, and how it fits into this collection. We will also need a few beta readers when we've put the almost-final draft of the collection together, so let us know if you're interested.
  Here is the list of stories (though neither their location in this list nor their names may actually by final):
1 - Neverland (his)
2 - Middle of the Desert (hers)
3 - Lifeblood (his)
4 - Slip (hers)
5 - Nyctophobia (his)
6 - The Bathtub (hers)
7 - On the Wing (his)
8 - The Boy (hers)
  This collection's genre will probably be considered Modern Realistic Fiction, which basically means the stories are written in the modern style (preset day grammar, comparisons, literary devices, etc), and all the stories could theoretically happen in real life, though some are a bit more far fetched than others.
  Some of the stories are more whimsical than others, and some are certainly darker than others, as the subjects addressed in a few concern heavily disturbed people or very traumatic circumstances. The reason for some of these darker stories is thus: My wife and I are enthralled with the idea of moral fiction and the fact that everyone has a choice, which basically means that on occasion we explore exactly how far someone can go before they break. And if (usually rarely) the person(s) are able to redeem themselves or not. Thus some of the stories explore a darker side of humanity that is not always child friendly. However, we attempted to balance out all of the stories as much as possible so they hopefully are still enjoyable. Please feel free to ask questions and comment as you like.

Profession: Novelist

     I have always wanted to tell someone that my occupation/profession was a novelist, but that time hasn't come yet. I'm still more or less unpublished when it comes to creative fiction (meaning I've been published in newspapers and magazines as part of nonfiction stories). My wife always had the goal of being published before she was twenty, and she reached that goal on May 29th, 2015 when she self-published a short collection of poems through Amazon. I turned twenty over a month ago, and am still yet to be really published. I have goals however, and I am hoping to self-publish before I start college classes again at the end of September.
    My wife and I are working together to publish a collection of eight short stories. At this point, we have titled it "What It All Means: The Red Collection". She will write four short stories, and I will write four. The themes are: Love, Guilt, Honor, and Blood. At this time, we have a number of short stories written and are trying to decide which ones to include in the collection, as well as rewrite a few of the rawer ones.
     I know this isn't a novel, but this is a sure start. I'm also creating a website from scratch to publicize our work. Then I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it all takes off from there. And even if it doesn't, I have other stories in the works, and can always shoot to be professionally published by the time I'm thirty.