My mates Robin LeBlanc and Neil Struthers have posted the first page of their new comic REMNANTS. And being smart cookies, they introduce the main character in the middle of something, getting the reader curious and hungry for more. As usual, Neil’s art is exceptional. Click to enlarge.
Six hundred word flash fic I wrote. So far I’ve written only comedy pieces for Protagonize, so I decided to shake things up a little.
I’ve been writing for this interesting website called Protagonize. It’s well-designed and rewarding. As a result, I’ve been shamefully neglecting Weaponizer, to which I plan to return very very soon before they find out I’ve been cheating on them.
The four stories I’ve written for Protagonize so far are satirical comedy. This is the kind of fiction I find easier to write, and for a website I was still unsure of, it seemed appropriate. But now that I’m growing fond of it, I might move on to more serious, challenging stories that will actually require intense brainstorms.
The stories I’ve written so far are PROFESSOR MAGNANIMUS (about a poorly-medicated History-distorting History teacher), PROFESSOR MAGNANIMUS ON ROME (about him distorting the history of Rome), PLANET PIXAR (about the unnoficial story of Pixar) and the one I wrote today is CREATIVE DIFFERENCES (about a Hollywood director determined not to be a tyrant while being a visionary, and failing).
(click here to read A LIFE OF ILLUSION)
A serious, surreal piece of fiction, for a change. I noticed I tend to write black comedy stories, and there’s enough of that already — hell, I post a webcomic here three times a week that’s nothing but that. Also, it’s the longest story I’ve ever done for WEAPONIZER and, well, the internet: 8113 words. I think the previous longest one was MELVIN T. BAGGER’S ROCK HARDICK (5658 words), which couldn’t be farther in tone and genre from this one, obviously.
I hope you enjoy. If you can, do let me know your opinion, positive or negative.
In the last weeks, I’ve had three stories published online: a comedy called MELVIN T. BAGGER’S ROCK HARDICK, for Weaponizer, another comedy called LISTEN TO YOUR HEART and a horror story called A HEART FOR A HEART, the latter two for a writing challenge in Looking For Strange.
The last “Heart” story has now been published. It’s called HUMAN 2.0, a science-fiction piece. Maybe my personal favorite of the three “Heart” stories I wrote. Which simply means it’s the one I have the least amount of regrets about, I guess.
Thanks to Emmy Jackson for publishing all three stories, to everyone who retweeted them and/or left a comment. It’s very appreciated.
Now, to come up with a serious story for Weaponizer, and to hammer some common sense into my novel…
A few days ago, the first out of three stories I wrote for Emmy Jackson‘s HEART challenge was published.
Now, the second story, a horror called A HEART FOR A HEART, has also been published.
Writing horror feels very new to me. I suppose you can tell from reading A HEART FOR A HEART, actually. Of the three stories I wrote, that was the hardest one to revise, as I kept finding paragraphs that were unintentionally funny instead of disturbing, or clunky descriptions, or inconsistencies. I have an opinion on everything I write (which I keep to myself, and which has a tendency to change drastically — usually for the worse — as time goes by), but A HEART FOR A HEART is an unknown quantity for me. I’m proud I finished it and I’m generally satisfied with the overall idea of it, but I genuinely have no personal author’s opinion on this one. Probably due to my inexperience with horror. Emmy likes it, though, which is why he published it. So thanks, Emmy!
Hope you enjoy. I always welcome opinions, negative or positive, on the things I do; this is a story where opinions will be really appreciated, so I can have a better idea of whether or not I’ve fucked up in my personal Andre Fuck-Up measurement.
… because sometimes all the filth and darkness in my mind needs a way out.
ROCK HARDICK is a comedy noir (or noir comedy, or something) with a very dark and depraved sense of humor, written with so little self-restraint I had to use a ridiculous pseudonym just to indicate that “yes, I’m aware of that.” Rock Hardick is the protagonist, a detective who gets involved in a plot involving hypnotism, girls with big breasts and ninjas.
It was also one of my favorite writing experiences, as I had immense amounts of fun with it. I could tell I was influenced by the work of Warren Ellis and Luís Fernando Veríssimo. The former wrote the brilliant novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, which shares a little of this story’s premise, however what Ellis truly influenced me with was his sharp sense of humor that is present in a lot of his work. And the latter is the Brazilian short story writer who created Ed Mort, a private detective whose stories I love. So I dedicate this story to Warren Ellis and Luís Fernando Veríssimo.
MELVIN T. BAGGER’S ROCK HARDICK is published here on the brilliant Weaponizer. (yes I’m linking it a second time on the same post because I have no shame at all.)
Enjoy.
… I hope.
Emmy Jackson proposed a very interesting challenge on Whitechapel , two months ago:
“Based on the sentence below, write a story of anywhere between 500-5000 words. As before, genre, etc. are wide open and I’ll post the best stories at Looking for Strange. Using the sentence in the story itself is a plus, but not necessary. Meaningless bonus points are added if it’s the first sentence:
Melissa looked from the gaping wound in her chest to the still-beating heart in her hand, and said, ‘Fuck.’”
I had four ideas. One of them sucked beyond belief, so I wrote the other three — a comedy, a horror and a sci-fi — and sent them.
I was very happy to see the comedy, LISTEN TO YOUR HEART, being published today on Emmy’s gorgeous website LOOKING FOR STRANGE.
Then I was pleasantly surprised and honored that, by the end of the story, Emmy says he’ll publish the other two in the next days. Which is wonderful, since I consider LISTEN TO YOUR HEART the least polished of the three — probably because it’s the one I had the most fun writing.
So — in the next days, I’ll have three more stories published — A HEART FOR A HEART, HUMAN 2.0 and MELVIN T. BAGGER’S ROCK HARDICK — that last one on Weaponizer. You can probably tell by the title what kind of heatwarming, sophisticated humor it goes for. Also, I don’t think I ever had more fun writing a story as I did on ROCK HARDICK.
(Ah, and in Weaponizer’s front page this month, that’s me pencilled by the amazing Paul Sizer. It will be replaced by another artist’s work next month, so here it is from another source, Paul’s website. It used this picture as reference. There’s also the horribly cocky version of that pic.)
So, I hope you enjoy LISTEN TO YOUR HEART. Here is the page with the other challenges and stories. You’ll notice the excellent William Ellwood, who provided the script for this and this, wrote two great pieces, one for each challenge.
(This post had more links than a Wikipedia article, but hey, that’s what happens when it involves so many awesome people.)
