INTRODUCTION: Here in Oregon City, we have a fifteen year old phenom named Brendan Swogger. He’s a high school student with a passion for writing dark and twisted stories that rivals my own. He recently wrote a short story based upon on idea that came to him during a visit to the dentist. I don’t know what type of dentist Brendan goes to, but the end result wound up being something straight out of the movie Saw.

I had an idea. In order to help stimulate a budding young mind, I presented Brendan with a writing exercise. If he could concoct such a deliciously devilish story based on something as routine as a trip to the dentist, I wondered how he would do with something even more mundane, such as waiting on an oil change. I submitted my challenge to Brendan, and he had responded with a completed story within a couple of hours. You can read Brendan’s story Acid Eyes here.

It wouldn’t have been fair of me to make Brendan do this challenge alone, so I decided that I would take part in the same exercise. Below is my offering. Happy reading!

Oil Change


Brendan Huntley leaned in through the rolled down car window and kissed his wife on the lips.

“You’re sure you don’t need me to stay and wait with you?” she asked.

“No, honey. I’ll be fine.” He smiled and stroked her cheek with the tip of his finger. “I’ll be home in just a little bit.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” She took her foot off the brake, letting the car roll forward a few inches before bringing it to a stop again. “Oh, and you have your keys just in case you beat me back home?”

“Yes, dear.” Brendan patted his pants pocket. “Go on. I’m fine.”

Brendan’s wife blew him a kiss and drove away. Brendan stood and waved, watching until her car became a tiny speck in the distance. He turned to face the mechanic’s garage, surprised to find all the bay doors closed. He checked his watch.

12:54 p.m.

They said to be here at one o’clock, he thought. Maybe they’re not quite back from lunch.

Brendan approached the main entrance and placed his hands on the glass to block out the sunlight as he peeked in. The door was unlocked and pushed open. He stepped inside the building and found the lobby unoccupied. There was no one behind the counter either.

Brendan heard voices. A TV in the corner of the waiting area was playing clips from NBC sitcoms at low volume.

“Hello?” Brendan called out.

A man entered from the garage through a swinging door, wiping his hands clean with an oil-covered rag.

“Can I help you?” The man slipped the dirty rag into the back pocket of his navy blue coveralls, then grabbed a toothpick tucked behind his ear and put it in his mouth.

“Hi, I’m Brendan Huntley.” Brendan reached out to shake the man’s hand, but he just stared at it, chewing on the toothpick between his front teeth. Brendan retracted his hand. “I’m here to pick up my car. It’s the red two thousand seven Kia Rio. You guys told me it would be ready at one o’clock.”

The man mashed a few buttons on the keyboard without looking down at the screen. “Doesn’t look like its ready yet. Why don’t you take a seat and wait a few minutes while I go check on your vehicle.”

“Uh…” Brendan glanced down at his watch. “Well, do you have an estimate on how much longer it’s going to be?”

“Sir, if you can just wait for a few minutes, I’m sure it won’t be much longer.” The man scratched the back of his slick, black hair. “I’ll go check on it now.” The man exited back through the swinging door. The words EMPLOYEES ONLY were stenciled in bright yellow paint.

Brendan walked into the lobby and took a seat on a plush, leather chair with a chrome frame. He looked around at several displays of car parts, but could only recognize the windshield wiper blades. He leaned forward and sifted through a pile of magazines on the table in front of him. The covers of periodicals such as Mopar Monthly and Gearhead were adorned with slender women in short shorts making love to the camera while holding metallic cylinders up to their mouths.

Maybe it’s a car guy thing, he thought. Or I’m too old to find this type of thing appealing.

The crashing sound of steel spilling onto cement came from the direction of the garage, causing Brendan to drop the stack of magazines in his hands. The noise was quickly followed by a bloodcurdling male scream.

Brendan sprang to his feet and ran toward the front counter. He was met by the same toothpick chewing mechanic from before. The man entered the room with complete calmness, leaning against the door with his hands behind his back.

“My Lord! Is everything all right out there?”

“Yes, sir. Everything is fine.” The man slid his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Just a little accident.”

“A little accident?” Brendan rubbed his forehead. “You about gave me a heart attack! I heard a scream and I…”

A spatter of blood across the chest of the mechanic’s coveralls caught Brendan’s attention and stopped him mid-sentence. He didn’t remember seeing it on the man before.

“Are you bleeding?” Brendan pointed at the man’s chest. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

The man looked down at his coveralls, then wiped off the blood with his bare hand.

“That won’t be necessary, sir. Like I said, we just had a little accident. Happens all the time.” The mechanic grinned.” It’s a… hazard of the job, you could say.”

“Oh… okay. So, about my car?”

“Right. The o-seven red Kia Rio. Let me just go grab the keys for you. Please, have a seat and I’ll be right with you.” The mechanic once again left Brendan alone in the lobby.

Brendan took a deep breath to regulate his pulse, then sat back down as instructed. A few minutes of silence passed before the slow whine of a hydraulic lift filled the lobby.

“No! No! No!” a voice begged from the other side of the employee only door, followed by a deafening crunch.

Brendan stood up and walked over to the counter slowly. The mechanic re-entered the room, accompanied by the sound of his shoe soles sticking to the tile surface with each step. His face, hands and the upper portion of his coveralls coated with droplets of crimson.

“Oh my God!” Brendan’s mouth dropped open as his face went pale. “Is that…?”

“No, sir. A carburetor exploded on us out there. Spewed fuel all over the place.” The mechanic pulled the rag out from his back pocket and wiped his face. “We’ll be mopping up that mess for days.”

“I’m sorry. I feel so foolish now.” Brendan put his hand over his heart as color began returning to his cheeks. “I’m not much of a car guy, so I have no idea what all goes into what you guys do. Sounds pretty intense, though.”

“It sure is, but once you have the love for the job, it gets easier over time.” The mechanic reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Your vehicle is parked outside and ready to go, sir.”

“Great! Thank you very much.” Brendan reached for his wallet. “So, what do I owe you?”

“No charge today, sir. On the house.”

“What?” Brendan furrowed his brow. “That can’t be right.”

“I promise, sir. It’s right. It’s a… a repeat customer special.”

“Wow. I, uh, I don’t know what to say.” Brendan put his wallet back into his pocket, then collected his keys from the mechanic’s moist, grime-covered fingers.

“No need to say anything, sir. Have a great day.”

Brendan headed for the door. He stopped and turned back as he reached the exit. “Say, I don’t believe that I caught your name. I’d like to tell your manager how happy I am with the star treatment that you’ve given me today.”

“Me, sir?” The mechanic pushed open the swinging door halfway and stood in the threshold. “I don’t work here.”

I didn’t become an author because I wanted to make tons of money, which is good, because I haven’t. I became an author to escape the doldrums of a corporate retail job as the company slowly drifted toward bankruptcy. There were literally days toward the end of our existence where my only requirement was to fill a seat so that the office didn’t look empty. Needless to say, I played a lot of solitaire. Then when I got home at night, I wrote a little bit more of the manuscript that would eventually become Noble.

It’s hard to believe that was all two years ago. I’ve written and published four books since then. It wasn’t hard, not really, because I quickly discovered that I had a passion for it inside of me all along.

I loved creating! Inventing characters, setting up obstacles for them to deal with, and of course, trying to think of the compelling twists and turns that the characters would experience along the way. I felt as though I had finally found my calling after years of banging my head against the wall in the real world.

Then a funny thing happened: My books started to sell. Not in droves, mind you, but as an unknown independent author without an ounce of reputation, even a trickle of sales is flattering beyond comparison. I joked with my fiancée, telling her that someday I was going to take her out to dinner with the royalties check I received from my book sales.

And that’s exactly what I did.

I received my first royalties check in early 2011: $17.63. I took my beautiful girl to a little place in Vancouver, Washington called Sheridan’s Frozen Custard and treated us both to one of their peanut butter and chocolate milkshakes—our favorite. We had scarfed down countless Sheridan’s milkshakes before, but in my mind, not one of them had ever tasted as sweet.

WARNING: Contains minor spoilers about the NOBLE series.


“What do you want your cover to look like?”

I drew a blank. I felt like an idiot. The Noble series is my creation, my brainchild, and yet I couldn’t generate a single image inside my head as to what the cover should look like.

And that is how James McDonald and I began working together on the cover for Noble: Bloodlines.

I’ve always been fond of isolating a harrowing moment from my books to serve as its cover, but I found the selection process to be particularly difficult with Bloodlines. There are so many pivotal moments. So many twists and turns to capture without spoiling its secrets. So many essential characters to the plot—any one of which deserving of the spotlight.

However, in the end I came to the conclusion that there had been one key character I had neglected to consider: Alyssa Noble.

When we’d finally met Alyssa Noble near the end of Noble, we’d already heard a great deal about her. We knew that she was violent. We knew that she was a remorseless killer. We knew that she walked as a human, but wasn’t one. We knew that she was… naked.

However, there was still so much about her that we didn’t know. It had been my intention all along to bring her to the forefront of the story for the second book, so it made sense that she should also become a prominent fixture of the key art. The only question I needed to answer was, “What does she look like?”

James McDonald is an amazing and gifted artist, but he does lack the ability to plug into my mind’s eye and download the mental images that I create. As a writer, you might think that describing Alyssa’s physical features to an artist would’ve been easy for me, but it wasn’t. I’d given her form in the book, but that didn’t guarantee that James would read my words and see the same picture. Thus began the Alyssa Noble collaboration process.

Alyssa may be heartless and bloodthirsty, but in my mind, she also needed to have sex appeal. I mean, I’ve made her the physical embodiment of death and destruction, so it would only be right to bless her with assets that balance out her flaws, right? Ahem…

The first concept James came up with was a basic sketch to see if he was on the right track. She looked a bit like Aeon Flux to me, but for a rough sketch? Not bad. The next phase was to create a 3D model of Alyssa and determine how she would be worked into the cover shot.

In Bloodlines, we get to see more of the sinister inner-workings of Alyssa’s psyche. Miller is scared to death of her, and I felt as though the reader needed to be clear on that fact. I really wanted the reader to grasp just how dangerous she is. Although Miller had survived his encounter with her at the end of Noble, it wasn’t out of an act of kindness. She wasn’t looking to turn over a new leaf.

So, I selected a scene from the book in which Alyssa and Miller have an encounter. Alyssa’s physical appearance has evolved since he last saw her, which only adds to his fear. Since Alyssa walks around without clothing, I told James that a delicate approach was needed. I remember specifically saying to him, “Some alien side-boob is okay, but let’s not get banned from book stores,” which I must admit is a sentence that I never thought I would utter.

I then gave James a challenge: I wanted a lean, mean, fighting machine, but not at the sacrifice of Alyssa’s femininity.

When James submitted concept #2, he was right on the money. Alyssa was ripped, yet still feminine, just as I’d asked for. She had sex appeal, yet Miller was down on his knees with an intense look of fright upon his face. The fogging effect was intended to help mask some of the nudity, but was also a part of the scene that James had been able to glean from my description.

With a look and feel for the cover decided upon, all that was left was to add in the text. Since the title treatment for the Noble series had already been created, it was an easy implementation. To make sure I was happy with it, James threw together a test image to show me what the text would look like on a dark background. In the center of the sample image was an alternate version of Alyssa Noble, knelt down in the shadows. Even though it wasn’t quite right for a cover, I still thought it was a great piece of art. Maybe I’ll find a use for it somewhere else down the road.

As James was working hard to finish the cover image, I started having second thoughts about the concept. I loved his design, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was missing something. I felt like there was too much negative space, and I worried that it didn’t capture enough of the story’s mystery. If you’ve ever read any of my books, then you already know that creating intrigue is my primary goal. With Bloodlines, I’ve upped the ante, and it was crucial that the cover reflected that.

I ultimately decided that the cover needed something else: The first glimpse of a mysterious new character in the series. Once again, James knocked it out of the park. After I saw his updated submission, I knew there was nothing left to do to it. It was ready to go. Perfect.

And just who is the massive winged-creature lurking in the background of the final cover image? Well, you’ll just have to read it and find out for yourself.

Upon my acceptance into the Kindle All-Stars last year, it didn’t take long before I met the other authors and got the opportunity to read their work. Before I knew it, I was up to my eyeballs in unpublished works-in-progress written by my fellow KAS crew—some of which I still haven’t gotten around to.

I became a fan of several of the other writers in the group, one of which is my guest poster today, Tony Healey.

Even though Tony is best known for the characters that he has created as part of his The Stars My Redemption series, it only scratches the surface of his talent. With each new story that Tony releases, I am in awe (and maybe even a bit jealous) of his creativity, and his ability to shift between genres with minimal effort.

Tony is imaginative, and his pool of story ideas is vast. If you like the subject matter of your reading material slightly left of center, then you need to be reading Tony’s work.

I could go on and on, but I’m going to let Tony himself talk a bit about the creation of his recent release, Burial. Following that, be sure to read the included excerpt and see for yourself why Tony is a modern day master of the strange and unusual.


Tony Healey: On Writing Burial

I thought of the twist in the story first before sitting down to work out the rest. So in a way I worked backwards. I do that sometimes when it comes to writing. I don’t always start at the beginning. That’s the fun of it sometimes, I think.

I remember reading an interview with a writer where he described writing the very last chapter of his novels first before going back to the beginning and working his way toward that end point. I find that to be an interesting approach. It doesn’t always work to do it that way, but with Burial it did.

Burial is a short story of roughly 35 pages, written in pulp horror/thriller tradition, with an ending that will split readers right down the middle. They’ll either love it or hate it. It was edited by Laurie Laliberte, of the Kindle All-Stars, and it was our first time working together as author & editor.

To say that we took every approach possible with Burial would be an understatement, but it was worth all the hard work, though I’m sure I had Laurie pulling her hair out at times.

When you first work with an editor, you have to sort of hit the ground running when developing a relationship with each other. But, you know, we got there in the end, and now we’re back working on another short story of mine, Dark Orb, which should be out soon. Maybe David will let me hijack his site again when it’s ready!

Editor’s Note: Dark Orb released this week. Tony has a standing invite to take over my site any time he’d like.



An Excerpt from Burial

By: Tony Healey

His name was Fred Aniello. Six months ago his wife walked out on him. At least that’s what he told anyone who asked. No, I don’t know where she is. Another man? Maybe. No I didn’t suspect anything. I thought we were happily married. No she doesn’t have any friends out of town that I’m aware of… and so on and so on. That’s how it always seemed to go. Over the months he’d become very fluent in the continuation of the same story, embellishing it when needed with the occasional show of water-works.

A little while into the lie, he imparted the bad news on his neighbour ‘the old man Rickett’ who laid a heavy arm around Fred’s shoulders. “There there, don’t worry about it son.”

But he wasn’t worried. Not in the slightest. It was all done, dusted… buried.

Or so he’d thought…


BURIAL is a short horror story of 7,000 words available on the Kindle Store for only 99c.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oregon author readies ‘darker, grittier’ third book, Noble: Bloodlines, for release on April 17, 2012

Oregon City, Oregon – April 11, 2012 – Oregon City author David K. Hulegaard will release his third book, NOBLE: BLOODLINES, on April 17, 2012, available exclusively on Amazon.

NOBLE: BLOODLINES is the next book in Hulegaard’s smash hit Sci-Fi series about Miller Brinkman, a 1940s private detective who, while searching for a missing girl, makes contact with the last survivor of an ancient race that predates mankind.

“BLOODLINES will take the series to a whole new level,” says Hulegaard. “Miller wants to leave the memories of his last case behind, but it doesn’t take long before his past catches up to him and forces him out of hiding.” Adds Hulegaard, “Fans of the series should expect a darker and grittier journey into the NOBLE universe.”

NOBLE: BLOODLINES will be available on Kindle for $2.99. A free five chapter sample is available for download at www.davidhulegaard.com.

About the Author

David K. Hulegaard resides in Oregon with his fiancée and their Welsh Terrier, Tobi. He is the author of critically praised books NOBLE and THE JUMPER. David is currently preparing his next book, a short story collection entitled STRANGERS, for release this spring.

###

David asked me one of those hard writer questions that you hear and think will be easy to answer. But then, once you actually sit down to write the answer, you realize it might as well be “where do your ideas come from?” as far as complicatedness. He had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to ask me how I knew when my story ideas were ready to become actual stories.

I think it might be a bit gauche to just copy and paste I HAVE NO CLUE over and over when I promised an actual blog post. So here goes.

Just like every other writer, I have a comp notebook. Now, they might not have an actual comp notebook, but that’s just because they’re buck-toothed hillbillies who don’t know what’s good. Regardless, it’s the repository of all rough ideas. Snippets of dialogue, rough plot hooks, basic character concepts, doodles, unfinished poetry, or whatever takes your fancy. The notebook holds the kinda junk that wakes you up at 2am so you can scribble down what you’re sure is genius, only to find even you barely know what the heck you were thinking when you jotted it down.

For me, those are the story seeds. Sometimes it really is gibberish from the middle of the night, but sometimes it’s whole plots in bullet points. However it starts, it doesn’t usually take up a whole page. Like I said, sometimes it’s one line. But I leave that idea, however thin and flimsy it may be, on its own there.

Now and then, I flip through the notebook and reread the ideas and see if any of the other stuff floating around my head that’s too amorphous to even be in the notebook yet sticks to the page. If it does, I scribble it down wherever it’ll fit and then connect it to the rest of the stuff on the page with underlines, different colored ink, or enough squiggly lines to confuse even Jeffy from Family Circus.

When I have a page or two of that mess, it’s probably time to go to the Pre-Writing Package bequeathed unto me by Aaron Pogue of the titular blog and the writing advice repository Unstressed Syllables. The ideas have gathered enough momentum that I need to let them keep rolling and see if they become an actual story. The PWP helps me connect the dots, flesh out characters, make sure there’s an actual Story Question I’m answering, that kind of thing. If I can make that leap, then it’s ready to graduate to a story.

As you can imagine, this is a far from perfect process. That said, I’ve only had it explode in my face one time. I wanted to knock out the first draft of a sci-fi neo-Noir story called Copper Lincoln, Robot Detective in The Big Sleep Mode. I had three or four pages of notes, so I knew it was time for the PWP. I filled that out in painful graphic detail. Courtney Cantrell, my Acquisitions Editor, and Aaron Pogue, my publisher, looked at it. They both declared it detailed, well thought out, and ready to be written. I had a long car trip and I attacked it with gusto.

I wrote the first act and it was…not very good. I mean, all the pieces were there, obviously, it had been through the process. But it was too short, too obvious, there was no subtlety. I had great sheet music but it had left me with no funk. So I did the only thing I could do. I rewrote it.

I didn’t scrap it, though! I didn’t start over from scratch because there was gold in what I’d written. I went back to the PWP, I figured out that all I had to do was tweak some character relationships and, in one case, change the relationship wholesale. It left me with something much more interesting, much longer, and, best of all, much more Noir.

So the process failed me. But I guess it hadn’t failed me all that hard. Not really. Oh, I didn’t finish the first draft on schedule (or at all, yet). And it was difficult to move bits around, write new connective tissue, and then stitch the existing good stuff I’d written into a new whole. And I’m positive you can still see the stitches and scars. But the new monster runs rings around the villagers where the old one lumbered. Instead of frustrated, I’m energized to finish it. In fact, I should really get back to work on that thing…

Here’s the thing about my process: It’s totally mine. I don’t actually expect it to work for anybody else EVER. There’s a ridiculous amount of Zen mixed into my notebook pages so that, in some way I can’t entirely explain, the entire story is represented in the first pen stroke in the notebook. Sorta like how every cell in my body holds the DNA that makes me, me. That sounds like hippy crap, and I know it, but there also isn’t anything I can do about it.

Anybody else’s process look like this? If not, tell me what yours looks like.


Visit Joshua’s official website: JoshuaUnruh.com

Check out The Consortium, a non-profit organization that supports the arts by encouraging the development of local talent and generating high-quality works of art that directly benefit the community.


About the author

Joshua Unruh is a stay-at-home dad and professional author who refuses to think of either as being unemployed. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, his son, his father-in-law, two dogs, and absolutely no peace. Still, he manages to write a little bit. He strives to make everything he writes clever, interesting, or funny. Like Meatloaf said, two out of three ain’t bad.

Though he has been a professional liar in the fields of advertising, sales, and private investigations, it is only recently that Joshua has turned his love of fiction into a writing career. Joshua is a lover of genre fiction, especially superhero comics and hardboiled detectives, and this comes through in his genre-bending style. Weird Westerns, nihilistic Norse-style fantasies, YA espionage stories, and hardboiled Noir tales with shades of fantasy or science fiction are just a few examples of the twisting and warped hallways of his imagination.

My latest project is a book called Idiot. The title is not supposed to be offensive to its readers or anything, if that’s what you first thought when you saw it. I did have a slight dilemma when I came up with the title, because I was thinking about walking into a bookshop and seeing my book on the shelves with the word “IDIOT” scrawled across it, and I realised it may put people off buying it. But, I called it Idiot nonetheless because the word is very significant in the book.

Idiot started as something for my eyes only. But, as the narration progressed, I realised that I was really enjoying writing the story. Then, when I sat back to read what I had written, I found myself enjoying reading it, too. Even having read the book about seven times, I still enjoy it. It’s the kind of story that never grows old. It doesn’t have an expiration date.

As a writer, I often find potential scenarios interesting. Say a fight broke out, or a guy didn’t return my affections, I would sit and write the alternative “what-if” scenario. What if that fight hadn’t happened? What if that boy had felt the same way? This was the same for Idiot. I’ve always wanted a friendship like the main two characters have in the book, and so I wrote about a friendship I wish I could have had.

Idiot follows the lives of Dennis Wellington and Susannah Watson who meet at a train station when they are thirteen-years-old. Their lives become inextricably ensnared as the book follows their lives at random points in time.

Idiot is not a love story. It is about friendship. Whenever I give anyone the synopsis, they always laugh at me.

“It’s about a boy and a girl, and they’re best friends,” I’ll say.

“And let me guess,” they’ll say in response, “they spend the entire novel hating one another until they realize they’re supposed to be together and live happily ever after.”

Well, no. My story is about a boy and a girl who are best friends, but showcases the more realistic side to friendship. I’m not saying that films like When Harry Met Sally, or books like One Day are not very good because they’re not realistic. Not at all. What I am saying is that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you planned. Sometimes you think you know someone, but they’re not who you thought they would be. Sometimes you spend your whole life thinking something will happen, but it doesn’t. That’s life. My book isn’t based on a true story, but I wanted it to seem like it could be.

Dennis is from a poor background. His parents don’t earn very much. He lives in an ex-council house on the dodgy side of town. He can’t afford to buy new trainers, even though his have huge holes in the toes. He’s small, but good-looking for his age.

Susannah is from a rich background. Her parents are divorced, but they both still earn a lot. She buys new clothes every week, and can afford to go on holidays to exotic places. Her boots cost her a hundred pounds. She’s tall and slim and has tacky blonde hair.

They are from two different worlds, but have many things in common. They both like reading, writing, Star Wars, and arguing. They both hate Chinese food and books with disappointing endings. They think of each other as best friends, though they would never admit it.

As in real life, there are sad parts, and moments that will make your heart crack. I found myself screaming at my computer screen when reading through the first draft, wanting something so badly not to happen, but then there were the good parts to balance it all out. The happy moments. The amusing conversations that anyone can relate to.

It may seem ironic to call a book about the importance and closeness of friendship Idiot, but sometimes the people we love the most can be the biggest idiots. I think the sign of a true friendship is being able to call someone an idiot and having them say it back. We’re all idiots sometimes, and this is the story of two of them.

Unfortunately though, I am now facing a challenge that stands in the way of my book being completed: I do not have an editor. I do not have someone to tear the stories I have created to pieces. I have many proof readers. I have teachers who are willing to sit and read my manuscripts for hours, picking out the occasionally sloppy punctuation. I have many brilliant author friends, such as David, who are willing to give me the advice and support I need, but I don’t have an editor.

You’re probably thinking it’s not that important, and I was the same. “I don’t need an editor,” I told myself. “I’ll edit my own work.” I wish it was that simple.

Editors are very awesome people. They help you tidy up that masterpiece. They tell you the bits you should cut, and the bits you should keep. They’re not afraid to tell you when your writing has lapsed, or where you need to improve.

Editors are important, and it’s only now when I’m a bit stuck in a rut that I’ve realised how much I really need one. However, as I am a student just managing to afford to go to university, paying an editor is out of the question right now. However, without an editor I’m going to have all of those weeds of text that I don’t need, or I might miss that vital splash of water that will allow my apple tree to soar. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation, really.

I don’t mean to bum you out. I’m just trying to explain where I’m coming from. Editing is essential for my writing, and writing is essential for my happiness.

So, where do I go from here? I guess I’ll have to wait and see. I’m trying to contact as many agents as I can to try and get myself out there. Usually the things we want most are often the hardest to get. However, I’m not the sort to give up easily. I’m going to fight for my place on those bookshelves, or those spaces on the Amazon website. I’m going to fight like there’s no tomorrow. So, watch this space. You haven’t heard the last from me!

Over and out,

Natasha Whearity

Follow Natasha on Twitter: @NatashaWhearity


About the Author

Natasha Whearity is a published independent author and teenage phenomenon living in the United Kingdom where she attends college. Her debut short story, The Endgame, is featured in the anthology, Kindle All-Stars: Resistance Front. When not indulging her love of Harry Potter, or reruns of the television show Friends, Natasha can be found out on the Go-Kart race track, or spending time with her close friends and family.

Part two of Natasha’s guest post will be featured later this week, in which she discusses her latest project, a novel entitled Idiot, which explores the complicated lives of two best friends, and the trials and tribulations they must face.

I don’t know why I write. I know that sounds really daft being that writing is one of my favourite hobbies, but the truth is that I really don’t.

Think about something you love more than anything: A person, a hobby, or just a general feeling. Now try and explain how you feel about it. It’s hard, isn’t it?

Until the Kindle All-Stars: Resistance Front project, I’d never had anything published. Sure, I wrote almost every day, but everything was always for my eyes only… or my unfortunate friends who asked how my writing was going only to receive a manuscript of my latest ‘masterpiece.’

Before Resistance Front I’d written a play called Suns and Stars about a world in which people are judged entirely on the way they look. I performed the play at my school and had such positive feedback that I decided to adapt the play as a novel. Unfortunately, as with a lot of “would-be” authors, I was rejected by seven agents. It didn’t shake my confidence thankfully, although I decided to put Suns and Stars off to the side. I guess when you love something that much, you won’t stop at anything.

When I found out about the Resistance Front project, I sat in my room for hours trying to come up with an idea for it. I remember telling my mum that I couldn’t do it because I’d never written a short story before. And then the idea literally just popped into my head. The next thing I knew, I was writing a story that was better than any story I had ever written.

I still think of The Endgame as one of my best pieces of writing. I’m so proud of that bad boy. I’m also proud to be featured within a collection amongst so many talented writers, one of whom is David himself. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and just smile because not only have I had something published (which was one of my dreams anyway), but it was published alongside other phenomenal writers, making it even more special. The whole KAS team are all so lovely. They have helped me, guided me, and looked after me in the big, scary, writing world. They have all been supportive, and they are all awesome.

After The Endgame and becoming engrossed in the world of short story writing, I gradually became more and more fond of them. I discovered that a good way to write a short story is for it to have a twist at the end, and so I laid in my bed one night thinking of all the possibilities for twists. That’s when the idea for another project hit me (not literally though).

I wanted to write a trilogy of short stories based upon World War One. They would each be from different viewpoints of the war, and at least one of them would have a twist. I wrote all three, one after the other, and sent them to my top proof-reader: Sandie Slavin. Soon I had come up with the title for the trilogy: Those We Would Never Know. The title was dramatic. It told the truth. I liked it, and Sandie did too.

Writing gets on my nerves more often than not. Whenever I want something to happen with it, or for something to come to me, it never does. I will sit there trying to reason and bargain for an idea to spring to mind, but nothing ever appears. Still, if my house was on fire and my writing was still inside, I would run in to get it. Not because I’m stupid, but because that’s how much it means to me.

Writing can be infuriating. I’ve found that my most inspirational time slot is when I’m just about to nod off. Not very convenient, I must admit, but it has its redeeming moments that make it all worthwhile. Like that split second when an idea literally pops into your head and explodes like a cheap bag of popcorn from Tesco. Like those moments when you come to the end of your half-plan of a story and want to know what happens next. Then you realise that what happens next is up to you.

Writing, for me, is like a best friend.


Over and out,

Natasha Whearity

Follow Natasha on Twitter: @NatashaWhearity


About the Author

Natasha Whearity is a published independent author and teenage phenomenon living in the United Kingdom where she attends college. Her debut short story, The Endgame, is featured in the Kindle All-Stars compilation, Resistance Front. When not indulging her love of Harry Potter, or reruns of the television show Friends, Natasha can be found out on the Go-Kart race track, or spending time with her close friends and family.

Part two of Natasha’s guest post will be featured later this week, in which she discusses her latest project, a novel entitled Idiot, a story that explores the complicated lives of two best friends, and the trials and tribulations they must face.

I don’t believe that you have to give up television to be a good writer. I love television. I love entertainment in any form, really. To be honest, some of the greatest modern day stories come from the minds of TV scribes. Imagine being given an hour once a week for six straight months to slowly unfold your story. As a writer, my mind races when thinking about the possibilities.

As with any well-crafted story, its secrets must be protected so that the big “ta da!” moments do not lose their impact. This wasn’t really an issue during life before the Internet, but now days it’s nearly impossible to hide from them. Divulging the carefully guarded twists and turns of a story has become a favorite past time among a frighteningly large chunk of the population. So much so, in fact, that scripts and unedited footage are stolen all the time and posted on the Internet for others to find.

Why is that?

What is the obsession with knowing the big finish without experiencing the journey to get there?

What is the motivation that drives the people to comb the Internet in search of spoilers?

To cut down on our monthly bills, my fiancée and I made the decision about a year ago to live without cable television. It was a tough decision, but a low-cost Netflix solution has eased most of the pain. Unfortunately, a lot of good television shows got left behind, and won’t become available through Netflix for an exorbitant amount of time.

We want to be watching The River or Game of Thrones along with everyone else, but can’t. We’re patient enough to wait for DVD, but the challenge we face is that of our friends and family that don’t seem to want to let us wait. People can’t seem to tell us about the shows they love without leading off with the biggest plot twists first.

Here’s an example:

FRIEND: Hey, did you catch that new episode of The Walking Dead last night?

ME: Nope. We don’t have cable right now, so we have to wait until it’s on video.

FRIEND: Oh, lame. Well, anyway, I hope you didn’t get too attached to ________ from the first season because the zombies just killed her.

Here’s another example:

FRIEND: You watch Chuck, right?

ME: Yes, but I’m only through season three. I have to wait until season four is out on video.

FRIEND: Didn’t you meet Joshua Gomez once?

ME: Yeah. He’s a really nice guy. Very humble and happy to chat with fans.

FRIEND: That’s awesome. Did you ask him if he likes using the Intersect?

ME: Huh?

FRIEND: Oh, you’ll get there. Morgan gets the Intersect at the end of season four.

Sigh…

If avoiding potentially spoiler-filled conversations with friends was the key to our dilemma, it wouldn’t be such an issue, but the whole practice has become a staple of pop culture. I can’t even read Entertainment Weekly anymore, one of my favorite magazines, because each issue offers up spoilers before I’ve even flipped past the table of contents.

I don’t expect people not to talk about television shows simply because I don’t have the means to watch them, but I wonder how difficult it would be for us to revert back to a simpler time: A time when people didn’t feel the competitive need to race onto the Internet and be the first person to spill all the secrets. It wouldn’t take that much. Would it?

I dream of a day when a conversation can be carried out more like this:

FRIEND: Hey, did you catch that new episode of The Walking Dead last night?

ME: Nope. We don’t have cable right now, so we have to wait until it’s on video.

FRIEND: Oh, lame. Well, anyway, I am loving the second season so far. They have made some bold decisions that have really upped the ante. It may be a little early to be saying this, but I think this season could even be better than the first. I can’t wait to hear what you think.

My moral to the story is simple: Take pity on a fella a little down on his luck and in need of conserving his cash. I think it’s great that you enjoy the stories that you do, and I want to enjoy them too. Think about how you felt when you first experienced that one big death, or love gone bad, or secret agent’s true identity. Now imagine how you’d have felt if someone had taken that moment away from you.

In summary, don’t skip to the last page. Don’t deprive someone else of their enjoyment… or karma will find you. It’ll be waiting for you at the corner of [SPOILER ALERT].

Have you ever blinked and felt as though several weeks flashed by? That’s where I’ve been. I looked at my blog this morning and saw that I haven’t updated in over a month! I swear, it feels like I just wrote that last entry yesterday.

I’m not complaining, though. The time may have passed quickly, but it’s been an exciting and productive few weeks. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to and what’s to come:

Noble: Bloodlines



I started work on this sequel back in July of last year. I got about halfway through before I realized something very important: The book was much better than Noble. A sequel should always be better than the first, right? Well, that’s true, but the difference was so extreme that I knew I had to “fix” the issues that plagued Noble. I hired a professional editor to go through it with a chainsaw and fix it.

She did.

The changes resulted in over 7,000 words being cut from the original manuscript, as well as a thorough scrubbing of the 72,000 words that remained. With the exception of one nasty review, the overflow of positive write-ups has been staggering! In my wildest dreams I never imagined such support.

However, there are still thousands upon thousands of people that have no idea Noble even exists. With Bloodlines, I hope to change that.

Over the past month the manuscript has undergone the editing process and is now in the hands of the final proofreader. Once I get it back from her, all that is left is to make the necessary corrections and push the PUBLISH button.

Words cannot describe my excitement to share this book with you all! If you liked the story from the original, I can’t wait to hear what you think about the direction it’s going. Noble’s ending left a lot of unanswered questions, all of which will be addressed in Bloodlines… of course, there’s still a finale coming to wrap up this trilogy, so don’t go expecting everything to be tied up in a neat bow. I personally guarantee that Bloodlines will leave you scratching your head, but in a good way!

The official release date is still not set, but I expect it to be available on Amazon within the next two to three weeks. This is my most ambitious novel yet, and I’m investing in a significant marketing push to back it up! Stay tuned.


Strangers



What’s that? While Bloodlines went through the beta reading stage I quietly took on another book? You’re darn right I did! I am very excited about Strangers. Rather than write a novel, I compiled an anthology of short stories that all shared the central theme of train travel. Bloodlines exhausted my brain, and I needed a break from Miller Brinkman’s universe. I think Strangers reflects that, though not quite in the way you might think.

You wrote a collection of short stories about train travel? That sounds so boring!

Yeah, I suppose it does sound boring at first, but if you’ve read any of my other books, you know that I have a love for the strange and unusual. So, I took that love and applied it to an unconventional setting. Even though Strangers isn’t a Sci-Fi book, I am confident that fans of my writing will find something “familiar” to them. I mean, it is still me, right? I can’t very well write a book without some inclusion of the paranormal, can I? Based on the feedback I received during the beta process, I think my readers are going to come away both shocked and satisfied.

As I type this, Strangers is getting packaged up and ready to send off to my editor. Once I get it back from her, I’ll apply the edits and send a clean copy off to my second editor for the final proofreading. I don’t want to commit to a date yet, but I expect Strangers to follow closely behind the release of Bloodlines.

So, what’s next?

I’ve been fleshing out some ideas for Noble 3, but I’m not quite ready to begin work on it. I am too emotionally connected to the series right now and need to give myself a little separation to think about the creative decisions I’ve made and what impact they’ll have on the finale. I also want to allow time to collect feedback from readers and weigh their reactions and expectations first.

My next project will be a return to the paranormal. I love ghost stories! This story is set in modern day Oregon City, Oregon. Oregon City was founded in the 1820s by Dr. John McLoughlin, and was the first incorporated city west of the Rockies. It became the new home for pioneers that had traveled across the Oregon Trail. While much of the city’s historic past is well-documented and proudly on display, there is a darker past that people rarely speak of:

If you’re quiet enough, you can hear her. She’s out there right now, stalking her prey from the woods under the cover of night. There’s nowhere left to hide. She’s coming for me, and I’m powerless to stop her. Soon I’ll be dead, and no one will ever know why.

With love,

~ DKH