Indie Writers Monthly--Issue of Horror

The weather around here may be more like Indian summer instead of fall, but it's not too soon to start thinking about Halloween--and horror. Indie Writers Monthly's latest issue is therefore devoted to horror. Briane Pagel offers advice on how to write horror, and several authors, including me, wrote flash fiction horror stories specifically for this issue. I also wrote an article about the different levels of editing that authors need to be able to do. As a bonus, this is a double issue, packaged with the April 2014 issue that's no longer available. If you were "foolish" (sorry, that was the theme of the April issue) enough to miss it before, you can get it here. Best of all, if the issue isn't free yet, it will soon be. (And if it's not, it's only $0.99). Check it out at this link.

ETA: It is currently free and should be free for the next five days (until next Monday).

More Details About the IWM Flash Fiction Contest

Here's the official announcement for the flash fiction contest I mentioned last week. I will be awarding a copy of either Twinned Universes or Seasons' Beginnings (winner's choice) to my favorite story.

Hey, writers! Want to challenge yourself and win a free book? Indie Writers Monthly is holding a flash fiction contest!

We're going to put out a special issue of horror stories and horror writing just in time for Halloween, and we need YOU to help us, because we do not have enough horror stories to fill out a whole special issue.

So we want your 200-word-or-less horror stories submitted to us by September 30, 2014.  You can submit them via attachment or in the body of the email to litaplaceforstories[at]gmail.com.  Any subject, so long as it's scary -- try to avoid excessive gore or sex, if you can.

The top five stories will each get a free ebook from one of the Indie Writer Monthly authors!  That's a $3.99 value, which is like... how much is that per word?  Where is my calculator?  Somebody get Stephen Hawking on the phone!

Indie Writers Monthly Flash Fiction Challenge

October will arrive before we know it, and with it, the next issue of Indie Writers Monthly. The theme will be horror, and we are thinking of running a flash fiction challenge. Unfortunately, the important details, such as maximum word length and deadline, haven't been decided yet. I'm mentioning it now to let you start thinking about the story. I'll post an update as soon as I have one. The prize will be one (or more; again, this hasn't been determined) of our stories.

Speaking of stories, today's the last day to get Twinned Universes for $0.99. Don't miss the opportunity! You can get it here.

Next Stop on the Temporary Anne Blog Tour

Day EIGHT of the release tour for Briane Pagel's newest book, Temporary Anne, is up on Jess' Book Blog!  You read part seven here the other day, so go see how the story went on. (Trust me, you want to!)

And while you're at it, you can get Temporary Anne for just $0.99; you can get it by clicking here,  today, and Briane is throwing in a free book:

Just Exactly How Life Looks: rated 5-stars by every reviewer on Amazon, this collection of short stories earns its praise with thoughtful stories about cowboys wandering in the desert, an artist trying to capture the world in a single line, terrorists, single mothers, ridiculous scientists, and more.  You won't forget a single character you meet in this book.  GET IT FREE TODAY BY CLICKING HERE.

I can personally recommend Just Exactly How Life Looks, as I read it earlier this year. It's shaping up to be the best short story collection or anthology I've read in 2013.

See you tomorrow for Science of the Week!

THE "Temporary Anne" TOUR CONTINUES

We're in between Blog Ring of Power interviews today, but today I have a guest post from Briane Pagel instead:

I've been live-writing a horror story that has grown to include Beasts, bagpipes, flaming spiders, and more!  It's all to support my book "Temporary Anne", about a woman too evil to escape hell -- but so evil she JUST MIGHT. 

At each stop of the tour, I put another installment of the story up, and readers help decide what comes next. If you missed part of the story, here's the complete blog tour list:

1. Life Is Good: Friday 9/13

2. Strange Pegs: 9/16

3. Laws Of Gravity 9/18

4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/20

5. Nigel G. Mitchell Author, Blogger, Geek 9/23

6. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/26

7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Speculative Fiction Author 9/30

8.  Jess' Book Blog 10/3

9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation For Creation 10/7

10.PTDilloway.com 10/10

We're up to part SEVEN, and it's a doozy:

_____________________________________________________________________________

"You've got, I'd say, ten minutes," the man says.

"Before the egg sacs hatch?" one of me says.

"Before the poison paralyzes us?" another of me says.

"Before that guy" -- I gesture up -- "Gets away?" I say.

"Yes," says the Bearded Man.  "And also..."

All of mes are waiting for him to finish the sentence.  The pause goes on for long enough that I, or one of me, anyway, finally grows impatient.

"Well?!" I or someone like me says.  "What, you need more dramatic effect?"

"NO!" snaps The Bearded Man.  "SHUT UP!"

We all are quiet then.

He looks sad for a moment.

"Did you hear that?" he finally asks.

"Hear what?" me and another me say.

The third me says "I heard it. She's dead."

"Who's dead?" I ask but there's been only one female around here anyway and I know the answer to it.

"So there is a bottom," says the Bearded Man, "And that's not good for us.  Not good,  at all." He looks around at us again.

"What I was going to say, and it just got more urgent, is that you need to gather up as many of you as you can so that the antivenom can meld you back together.  We've got enough problems without you running around creating more problems."

"ME?" all the mes say.  "I didn't do any of this!"

The Bearded Man looks directly at me, the real me, or at least the first me: the me who is telling you this.

***WE TOLD YOU NOT TO TALK DIRECTLY TO US****

Look, I'm sorry, but I...

***SORRY IS NOT AN OPTION****

What does that mean?

***IT MEANS WHAT IT MEANS****

But that's true of everything. Except puns, I think. Because with puns you really mean something other than...

***GO ON WITH THE STORY****

Do I have to be upside down?

***PROBABLY, YES****

Probably? Or Yes?

***...****

What's tha...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

*** NOW, GO ON WITH THE STORY****

I... I...

I looked back at The Bearded Man, who says to me:

"Who do you think is creating all this?  Stephen King? Well he's not, he's dead, as are hundreds of others, thanks to you!"

There is the sound of an explosion from the top of the pit, followed by the faint echo of someone shouting "WOW! THAT REALLY BLEW ME AWAY!"  I ponder, briefly, how loud the explosion had to be to reach down here so quickly, and so audibly.

"...probably thousands," The Bearded Man says, "And our only-- our only -- chance to stop them is to gather up as many of you as we can, and grab The Beast, damn, we could really have used the Drum Major, maybe... NO. I can't let you make more."

I realize, then, that he is pointing one of the bagpipes at me.

"The Beast?" I say.  "But he's down there," and I point to where the egg sacs are heaving.

"Yes," The Bearded Man says.  "And that's where we're going.  All of us."

The other two mes all join me in shaking our heads.

"No way," I say.  "We'll just be heading in the direction that is not full of spiders and monsters."

"Don't make me use this," The Bearded Man says, menacing us with the bagpipes.

"Yeah, by all means, lets not force you to play Scotland the Brave while dancing around in a kilt."

The Bearded Man blows into one of the pipes, inflating the bag. As the windy, whirly strains of bagpipes begin to sound, the pipe that had been pointing at me is lifted, slightly, by his hand, and a flare of something very much like a laser shoots over my head.  There is a flash, a pop, smoke, and a bit of rock-dust floats around me.  I turn around and most of the wall of the pit has been disintegrated, to about twenty feet back.

"Wow," I say, as we all fall through the web, which is suddenly unsupported, and we drop into the blackness below us, The Bearded Man using his grappling hook/jetpack to stay with us, shouting directions.

"You!" at one of me "Push that egg sac off the net!"

"You!" at another of me. "Get by him!"  The other me did what he was told and stood next to me, as the first me began pushing at the writhing, swollen egg sac.  There were many more below us.

"Use that disintegrator on them!" I tell The Bearded Man.

"Doesn't work on things YOU make up," he says.  "That's why I have to do this!" And he pointed the bagpipe at me, and started to play it again.

"What the! No! I..." I start to protest, but then realize I had enough time to protest, or live, and I needed to do the latter more than the former. So I dove off the edge of this web, just as the disintegrator fires, and I hear not the whoosh of disintegration but some sort of zapping or popping sound, and The Bearded Man is yelling:

"YOU #$**#%&$ IDIOT!"

I fall to the next net, and seeing him looking down at me with his arm on the copy of me, I jump off that, too, and so I can barely see that something else has happened, that the me he's standing next to has become all stretched out and stringy and that The Bearded Man is having trouble letting go of him.

"YOU CAUSED ME TO INTEGRATE HIM WITH A SPIDER'S WEB!" I hear, but I'm diving off the next web, and the next, jumping my way down, and I'm about ten webs down from him when the spider's egg sacs hatch.

***YES, NOW WE ARE GETTING TO THE GOOD PART****

That depends on how you define good part.

***ENOUGH BACKTALK****

No, not agaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiii...

___________________________________________________________________________

OKAY, Readers, what happens next? Help Sandra decide by leaving your ideas in the comments.

___________________________________________________________________________

The FIRST REVIEWS ARE IN:  "It's fascinating. If you like horror, this is definitely a book worth reading."-- Andrew Leon

"Another chilling tale from the author of The Scariest Thing You Can't Imagine. ...Pagel's style reminds me a lot of Vonnegut's work in that while the narration seems jaunty with its humorous asides and such, there's a lot of hidden depth to that narration."-- PT Dilloway.

THANKS to everyone who's following the Temporary Anne blog tour!  

If you didn't already get it, "Temporary Anne" just $0.99 today, so click this link to download this excellent horror story. 

OH, AND ONE MORE THING: For being so great and all, I am going to make my book the After absolutely free today!

Saoirse's life didn't really begin until it ended: When a plane crashes, Saoirse wakes up in 'the After,' a place where everything is exactly what you want, unless what you want is to not be there.

Confused at first, Saoirse's new... life?... takes a turn for the (more) unexpected when William Howard Taft knocks on her door and says he knows a way out. From there, Saoirse travels through scenarios that are fantastical and mundane at the same time, trying to discover not just a way to end this new existence, but also whether she wants to do that in the first place.

'the After' is a heartbreakingly sad and funny mystical journey through one version of what happens after we die, told through the eyes of a woman clinging to the memory of a life she didn't know she cared about. Thoughtful but action-packed, 'the After' presents an entirely new and not always comforting view of what comes next for us all.

"A masterpiece of speculative fiction" -- author Michael Offutt.  GET IT FREE TODAY BY CLICKING HERE. 

Temporary Anne--Blog Tour Promo

SHE'S ALMOST HERE... and I'd advise not being here when she arrives.

My name is Anne. With each day of my life, my actions brought me closer to Hell. Now, with each day of what is left of my existence, I struggle to avoid the fate that was set out for me -- or rather, not just to avoid it, but to master it. 

 A contemporary horror classic, "Temporary Anne" presents the terrifying tale of a woman who avoids eternal damnation by sending others to take her place, scrambling to avoid the minions of Mephistopheles while searching for a way to allow her ravaged body to serve her indomitable will. The frightening images -- demons made of ice, babies' souls consumed -- will stick with you for as long as Temporary Anne exists -- which is FOREVER.

Get it on Amazon for $0.99!  And watch for the blog tour where you can win free copies of this book and all my others.  The tour will be:

1. Life Is Good: Friday 9/13

2. Strange Pegs: 9/16

3. Laws Of Gravity 9/18

4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/20

5. Nigel G. Mitchell Author, Blogger, Geek 9/23

6. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/26

7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Speculative Fiction Author 9/30

8.  Jess' Book Blog 10/3

9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation For Creation 10/7

10.PTDilloway.com 10/10

For this tour, Briane will not only be offering not only giveaways of Temporary Anne and his other books, but he'll  be writing a short horror story on the go: he''ll begin the story and each host and their readers will get to suggest where the story goes next.  It's a blog tour like no other!