Flash! Friday: Finding Peace

by Michael Seese

I feel pretty good about this week's Flash! Friday. (Which means I've doomed myself.) Seriously, I like this piece but, like any writing, its quality is important. But ultimately, it comes down to the reader's opinion. So let's see if I can become a four-time winner.

Here is the photo:

It's Yugoslavia.

And here is "Finding Peace."

Each dawn gives birth to more than just a new day. She also spawns hope.

My father taught me to fish these waters, as his father taught him. I now share the secrets with my brother. The recipe, though, is no secret.

Patience and understanding.

Patience.

You can’t simply cast a line, pull it back, and expect to find a fish obediently attached to your hook. You must finesse it. Work it. Gently, slowly...perhaps painstakingly so. But there must be movement. The universe never rewards inertia.

Understanding.

The waters can be treacherous. Unforgiving. But if you learn to read the currents—and time your journey to take advantage of their grace—you may navigate them safely. Without fear. Such bravery begets a contagion known as confidence.

Let the politicians say we are enemies. Let them say what they will. I say a son of Israel and a son of Palestine can be brothers. I say all sons can.

With patience and understanding.

Please share your thoughts.

PS: So far, "October Madness" is off to a good start. I submitted a No Strings to an agent (who already rejected it), a short Halloween story to an anthology (which I'll post on Halloween), Nightmares to a book reviewer, and this.

The New Phone Book Is Here!

By Michael Seese

 

This is a pretty accurate depiction of how I feel. 

A while back, I gloated...um...casually mentioned that I won author / editor  Chuck Sambuchino's inaugural WD’S TUNESDAY contest. If you want to try your hand, he has another contest open until December 19. I'm not allowed to win; nonetheless, I gave it one pass and scored 9 out of 12.

In addition to allowing me to now mention in my agent queries that I won -- adding, "it proves nothing about my writing ability; it just says that I ROCK!" -- I earned an interview in Chuck's blog.

Here it is.

So, as Mr. Martin said, "I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity...your name in print...that MAKES PEOPLE." 

So the emails from agents should just start pouring in.

They will...won't they?

Please?

 

.

3... 2... 1... Lift Off!

By Michael Seese

Happily, super agent Janet Reid is accepting "Chum Bucket" submissions tonight. (She had said it would run "through August.") Despite the fact that we were at my Mom's for dinner, I managed to send it at 7:04. (What...you thought I would wait until 8:00?)

So, as I said in a previous, post,  cross your fingers, burn some incense, and lob some good karma my way.

I really would appreciate it. 

In the meantime, I ran No String Attached through the random number generator, and came up with the following page. It's the first page from the final story, "Pulling Strings."

Enjoy.

Twelve peals from the bell of the tower of the church of the town. 12 o’clock. Neither a.m., nor p.m., because there is no 12 a.m. nor 12 p.m. Only noon and midnight. So it was midnight. A new day. It was time to rest.
    The puppet master stared at the mangled marionettes at his feet, and sighed. He couldn’t help himself. He loved to throw his little wooden actors together in his little theater, and see what happened. But sometimes he played too hard. And the results were always the same. Broken puppets. He wanted to fix them. He always wanted to fix them, and make them as good as new, complete and whole again. But more often than not, they were too broken to fix. So he would sweep then into the fireplace, bid them farewell, and give them to the flames. Then he made more.
    He gazed down at the mess below, and vowed not to give up on these ones, but rather, to fix them this time. In due time. But for now, it was time to rest. It had been a busy week. The puppet master put down his tools, and turned to look out the window. He loved his view.
    From his aerie, he could behold the majestic mountains, their winter blankets of snow just starting to expand. Above them, the endless, wondrous firmament twinkled with stars of so many subtly different hues. Closer lay the river which feeds into the lake, both now black with night, and slightly rippling with the light breeze. Though in his mind, it would always be the bucolic blue of the first time he witnessed it. He loved the view from his window.
    It was paradise.
    The puppet master put down his tools and contemplated the collection of empty wine glasses and coffee cups scattered across his work area. Wine glasses. Coffee cups. But no plates. No food. It apparently had been some time since he had last eaten. It was time to eat. It was time to eat, and rest. And drink more…more wine, he thought. Perhaps I should clean up. No, the apprentice will be in later today. He can take care of it. Now, it was time to reflect. Reflect on the day’s work, his life’s work…

Feel free to comment on "Pulling Strings."

Drumming My Fingers

By Michael Seese

For a child, the longest night of the year is Christmas Eve -> Christmas Day. For me, it's...right now.

A few posts back, I mentioned my latest sprint. Agent Janet Reid offered up a new wrinkle to her really wonderful suite of ask-for-nothing-in-return services to aspiring writers. Called the "Chum Bucket," an homage to her "Query Shark" persona, she pledged that if you send a query to her on Saturdays between the hours of 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., she will respond. But, as she warned, "The queries need to be for real.  If I request something and you tell me it's not ready, or you were just kidding, I will come to your house and gnaw on you till you realize the error of your ways."

I had No Strings Attached close enough that I could taste the finish line, if I may horribly mix and mangle metaphors. So I dove in and finished it, then began the arduous task of proofreading. 118,580 words later, I was done. (No Strings is by far the longest piece I've written; for comparison sake, Dear Diary is 74,400 and Nightmares is 67,800.)

I was ready for Saturday night, and then she posted the following that morning:

ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!

Initially, she had said the experiment would run through August. Technically, Saturday is September. So I hope she extends it one more week.

So once again, I ask you, dear friends, to cross your fingers, burn some incense, and lob some good karma my way around 7:00 p.m. this Saturday.

No Strings Attached...Finis!

By Michael Seese

If you are reading this blog, it is because of No Strings Attached. 

Huh? Let me explain...

Back in April 2009, I came up with an idea which has since become "Obsession," one of the stories in No Strings Attached, a collection of seven interconnected literary fiction short stories woven around the theme of strings, and how different lives, places, and times can be tied together. As I concocted the different pieces, I really felt as though I had something special. It was that realization which made me believe I could be an author. And authors these days who are not named Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling need to blog. So here I am.

I spent a little over a year writing scattershot, contributing a line here, a paragraph there, wherever I felt like adding something. By the summer of 2010, I had enough of an outline to work on a story to completion. By December, I had completed four of the seven.

I then put No Strings on the back burner for a while. I needed a break, and decided to let myself get distracted. Of course, these "distractions" were the completing of Udopia and Nightmares, as well as writing numerous short stories and poems, some of which have been published or are slated to be.

So what's next? As it turns out, my favorite agent (who STILL isn't my agent) Janet Reid has come up with a "new wrinkle in the query game-rules of the game." In short, if you send a query to her on Saturdays between the hours of 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., she will respond. But, as she warned, "The queries need to be for real.  If I request something and you tell me it's not ready, or you were just kidding, I will come to your house and gnaw on you till you realize the error of your ways."

I'm now putting the polish on No Strings, and hope to have it ready by next Saturday.

Wish me luck.

Distractions

By Michael Seese

Boy! Time does fly when you're busy.

Back in 2009, I conceived and began work on a book of interrelated short stories, No Strings Attached. I worked on it piecemeal -- filling in sentences and paragraphs here and there, based on whim -- for about a year. Then in the summer of 2010, I focused in and worked on it diligently. The end result was that I completed three of the seven stories; my word count went from 40,000 to over 100,000.

At the beginning of 2011, I decided to take a break from it, and worked on a few other things: Udopia, which I finished, and Nightmares, which I finished. I also wrote a few short stories.

Earlier this year, I resumed work on No Strings. I was making decent progress, but then a few other projects came up: "Worm Herding," "Never Mind The Nonsense, Here's The Sex Truncheons," "Tinkerhell," plus a few others I'm keeping under wraps. The first two have been published (Amazon link 1 & 2); the third is being reviewed. So it's not as though these distractions are bad. Quite the contrary, I think they've been worthwhile detours which have helped my writing resume.

But...

Yesterday, I went back to No Strings, and was amazed to see that the last time I had touched it was April 19. But I'm looking forward to continuing it, because the story I'm on now, "Obsession," is really funny.

Like I said, time does fly.

Castle: "Kick The Ballistics"

I could get used to writing something about "Castle" each week.

I enjoyed this week's episode. Of course. I liked that this show built upon a previous one, and that the story arc is still not finished, one would assume. I'm not saying a show should be a complete serial, like "Twin Peaks" or "Lost." But having one or two continuing threads keeps the viewer on his toes.

It was nice to see the focus on Ryan. Too many shows devolve into The Star(s), and the spare parts.

At one point, Ryan tells Beckett about the dumbest thing he ever had done as a cop: he had called out the name of a narc informant in the middle of the squad room, which at the time was full of busted drug dealers. Five minutes later, Beckett reveals the name of the undercover cop (he went by "Seth;" I forget the detective's real name) to Mr. Lee, head of a crime family. What's up with that? Careless mistake? Or was she setting him up?

On the downside, they did something that I had seen on several episodes of "Law & Order," which always made me shake my head way back when. In the L&O episode I'm thinking of, the police find a woman who has been tortured to within an inch of death. She's alive, but she's not yet able to talk to them. So they question her ex-husband. His alibi is that he was with a buddy at some high-society fundraiser. The next scene shows (we assume, then learn) the buddy walking out of his swank tennis club, talking back over his shoulder to the police officers. "Yeah, he was with me that night until around 2:00 a.m. Blah, blah, blah." As he gets into his car, one of the officers asks, "Do you know who could have done this?" "No," he says. "And I hope I never meet him. He sounds like one sick bastard." And then he drives off. And I remember thinking, "Well, I see you have decided that the police are done. I hope they feel the same way." The same thing happened on "Castle." At some point, the bar owner says, "You can wait for Seth. I've got to get to work." And then he walks away.

Finally, I liked the surprise ending. If I can some day convince someone that it's worth it to publish "Tarantulas On Leashes," "Swarm Summer Nights," Udopia,"and especially No Strings Attached, you'll see what I mean.

On To The Next Thing...

Grrr!

I haven't heard back regarding Udopia from either the Main Street Rag or any agents. Allegory Magazine hasn't said anything about "Tarantulas On Leashes." And still no word on what the folks at Manic D Press think about my poems.

It's been like, two weeks. What is wrong with this people? Have they no sense of urgency? Removing tongue from cheek, of course it's going to be a while. So what am I working on now?

Well...

I had planned on finishing No Strings Attached. I estimate I'm about 40,000 words away, which would be a couple of months of good, solid effort.

But then something else struck my fancy. I pulled the first novel I ever began out of mothballs and began re-working it. I'm intentionally being vague on the details because...no reason, really. Just deal with it.

When I first wrote it, I put each chapter in its own document. Therefore, I had no idea how long it was. The other week, I put everything together. It's 75,000 words. I always had thought I was about 2/3 to 3/4 done with the the story arc. Working the math, it would be around 100,000 words when done. But also, in looking at it, I saw it takes a while to "get going." The action really didn't start until the 45th page, out of 170. So I've been mercilessly hacking, and re-configuring some stuff (such as the age of my protagonist).

It's definitely a case of addition by subtraction. It's now down to 54,000 words. But the good stuff starts on page 22 of 164. The story really moves along better now. It's crisper.

As I mentioned, I want to keep a lot of the details close to me. But here's the prologue:

    I am a dream weaver. That is how I make money:
        I make dreams for other people.
      Not just any dreams.
          But good dreams.
        And not just any people.
             But weak people, scared people. Everyday people, normal people.
    People like your friends, co-workers, maybe even your wife.
        People who are so close to the edge in this increasingly frightening world, that their nightmares begin to interfere with their lives.
      Virtually stop them from functioning.
          Literally scare them out of their wits.
        But I help them through the night by sharing my dreams, a sort of mental tour guide, if you will.
              Dreams 'R Us.
    We go there together, bound by the thinnest of filaments, to the place where the line between reality and creation bends and gives ominously.
            I hold their hands as we dodge and outrun the monsters, demons, ghosts, and                         bogeymen.
    In the morning, they are reborn, happy, and ready to go on.
           All because of me and my dreams.
    But…
    Dreams sometimes can go astray, and when they do, that's what we call nightmares.