A New Story! Cheap Novellas! Crazy Writing Plans! EXCLAMATION MARKS!

ZOMBIE STORIES

I had a new story out at the start of November. The folks behind the mobile/tablet game Dead End Alley commissioned a bunch of Australian horror writers to put together a micro-fiction based on the prompt:

A blind alley, a swarm of hungry zombies, a chainsaw, and you.
What could possibly go wrong?

Naturally, when asked to write a story about an apocalyptic zombie uprising, I went and wrote a love story. Originally I’d intended to dedicate it to my friends Al and Nic, who did actually have a zombie survival kit in their house when I first met them, but it ended up being a downbeat for that kind of thing.

In any case, you can my contribution over on facebook, along with zombie stories from Alan Baxter, Deborah Biancotti, and the delightfully creepy Kaaron Warren.

CHEAP NOVELLAS & E-BOOKS

Exile, the first novella in the Flotsam series, has been added to the Under an Enchanted Skyline boxed set, featuring eight e-books of magic, adventure and mayhem for under $1.

Over seven hundred pages of epic reading, featuring:

• Exile by PETER M. BALL–Keith Murphy kills things from the Gloom. On his latest job, he swallows a bullet with his victim’s soul trapped inside. The thing’s followers want the soul back…
• Demonspell by EPPIE award-winning novelist PHOEBE MATTHEWS–“My trip toward death began the morning the realtor bugged me.” Elaine’s immortal relatives need constant attention, even when she’s struggling with a band of demons.
• John Golden: Freelance Debugger by DJANGO WEXLER–John Golden is a debugger. He goes inside the computer systems of his corporate clients to exterminate the gremlins, sprites, and other fairies that take up residence. With the help of his sarcastic little sister Sarah (currently incarnated in the form of a Dell Inspiron), everything from man-eating genies to disgruntled Dark Lords is all in a day’s work.
  • BONUS! John Golden: And the Heroes of Mazaroth by DJANGO WEXLER–In the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, players battle the forces of evil. Nobody ever asked the forces of evil how they felt about it. John Golden find a depressed Dark Lord and then finds himself playing a villain, with an army of adventurers ready to thwart his “evil schemes.”
• Dream Along the Edge by CEDAR BLAKE–Mermaids, dolphin-men, and New Age weirdos collide in this rather salty tale of love, lust, and the bracing cold at the borders of sanity and risk.
• Fire and Frost by DOUG BLAKESLEE–At the intersection of our modern world and the world of Fae magic, fiery changeling Theonious March stands at a different type of crossroads. To save the woman he loves, he’ll have to storm the frozen gates of Arcadia’s Winter Realm. Will the meeting of Fire and Frost steam up, or fizzle out?
• Eye for an Eye by ERIK SCOTT DE BIE–A restlessly retired Stardust meets Lady Vengeance, on the run from a vengeful former ally. Can he diffuse the situation before Cobalt City burns around him?
• getAvailable until December 30 on Smashwords, Nook, Kobo, and Amazon. It’s a great chance to pick up Exile cheap before Frost comes out next month.

CRAZY WRITING CHALLENGES

I’m nineteen days into my attempt to write 600k in a year and still confident that I can achieve my goal and prove Alan Baxter wrong. My standard writing day seems to have settled at about 1,800 words, which is achievable without feeling like I’m pushing myself, and even on my “holy crap, I don’t feel like writing today” days, I’m still managing to get a couple of hundred word’s down.

After a couple of discussions with people about the project, I’ve set up a publicly accessible Google Doc where I track daily word counts, writing patterns, and potential disruptions to my workflow, as well as a list of projects worked on as part of the 600k (this blog post, for example, doesn’t count).