Well, here we are in mid-November, and my Mylar balloons reminded me that I hadn’t blogged since the October Frights promo. The promo went well, and I settled into a routine with Night to Dawn, working from noon to 8:00 p.m. most days, with weekends off. I started some work on the website, cutting expenses and was about to install a different, more reasonably priced SEO. All that changed on October 30th when I had my car accident.
First up, I’m okay; my bruises and abrasions have mostly healed. I’ve gone back to the gym twice and was able to do the Pilates plank for the first time. I can’t say the same for my car; it was totaled. This means time spent with insurance agents and online researching cars. There are also trips to the doctors, to the stores to test drive cars and follow-ups with the insurance people. That meant cutting hours back to 4:30 to 8:30. I’ve had to hold off any work on the website, except for posting announcements and doing updates. Night to Dawn 35 is on schedule – I’ve always been obsessive-compulsive about getting the stories edited, so this helped.
My takeaways: If you’re ever in an accident, see a doctor fast. When you’re in shock, you don’t feel pain, and the docs may catch a problem before it gets out of hand. You can replace a car. Second, if you’re contemplating retiring from the day job, think twice. No matter how much money you’ve saved, it’s never enough. I had no choice on retiring because the lack of night vision and other health issues prohibited my working at the hospital, but I do plan on signing on with upwork.com once the dust settles.
I hope to be back in business fulltime in December. I’ve got a blog in mind on revising, too. We’re supposed to have a harsh winter—Pennsylvania winters usually are—which means I will have my butt in a chair working on Night to Dawn projects and routine chores, and my Mylar balloons to supervise me.
Lately, the sequel for Steel Rose and When Blood Reigns has been haunting me. Okay, I’ll confess, I used the pantser style for writing this book. I tried to outline—actually summarized chapters but then found myself lapsing into writing scenes, and I couldn’t work from an outline. The balloon lady in me wants to work on everything else—chapters for Darkness Within Magazine (love doing this); blogging, documenting my latest Mylar Balloon adventure on Facebook.
Why this sequel should give me a problem I can’t say. One of the protags thinks about, buys, and sleeps balloons, but she can quiet zombies in short order. When you get down to it, a book consists of nine types of scenes. The opening is the hook should be written within the first few paragraphs. This will set your story in motion. For the Night to Dawn magazine, I’d better see some tension on page one—you can’t pussyfoot around with a short story. All the same, I find opening scenes the hardest to write, and each book requires multiple revisions for the opening scene.
Set-up scenes are used to feed in primary background information such as the characters’ careers or motivations. It’s nice to know where your protag works, especially if the bloodletting takes place at the work site. What’s more, your protag’s career and family life may influence how he or she approaches the horrors in your story.
Verifying scenes establish the evidence for others you’ve set up and will reinforce the information you already included. I’m thinking along the lines of foreshadowing, but also if you mention that your protag is a nurse on page one, you might want to include reminders especially if that detail is essential to the story.
Conflicts are critical for every fiction work. The battle could be with another person, an inner demon, or nature—perhaps a snowstorm, hurricane, or earthquake, and your character’s reaction to it. It must come across natural; with what you know about your character, ask if he/she would really act in a given way.
In the hindrance scene, your protag takes one step forward, then one or two steps back. Every time he/she making progress, throw a wrench into it. For example, maybe your protag finds an escape route, but the villain, being one step ahead, plants a minefield along that path.
In your turnaround scene, you’ve got the darkest moment. The character thinks he/she’s come thus far when something horrible happens, and it appears all is lost. For example, the serial killer traps the protag, their spouse, and children and pulls out a gun.
Flashback scenes should be used only if necessary. Perhaps something happens which causes the protag’s mind to flash back to previous events. This should appear in the early part of the story and have more dramatic action than what is happening in the present. If the flashback is too long, you may have started your story in the wrong place. Consider weaving this information into the story some other way.
During the climax, all conflicts are resolved. Perhaps the protag managed to slay the villain responsible for releasing the zombie infection; in a romance, the hero and heroine reach a commitment.
You’ve got your conclusion once you’ve reached a satisfying ending and have tied up all the loose ends. Endings are really tough to write. I’ve used up two or three of my best curse words, plus several Mylar balloon purchases to get the ending right.
Your thoughts?
I will be sending a $10 Amazon gift card to a random commenter.
The dead groaned loudly, their fists batting the hospital windows. A deadly prion similar to mad cow disease infested their bodies, but no cure loomed in sight. Serket set her back to the windows, eyes on her computer, charting her evening rounds. In another week, she’d retire. Her home was a townhouse at the Gables, windows secure with bars. Her sister had invited her to her house near the beach, where the dead didn’t bother people. There, Serket could lay low until the doctors found a cure, and if not, then at least she was with family.
For now, Serket had to stay alive. Seven more days …
Serket stood up. As she did so, tingling and a sharp pain knifed through her ankles. She’d worked a four-day stretch on the floors, doing respiratory therapy treatments, and long stretches wrought havoc with her feet. She looked forward to her drive home, even if it necessitated quieting zombies along the way.
An hour later, as she headed toward the time clock, her boss Frank materialized from his office, his face beet red. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Home. My shift’s over.” Serket met his gaze, braced for an argument.
“I can’t let anyone go home,” Frank told her. “I need you for sentry duty.”
Shit! Sentry duty meant four hours of standing post, something not easily done on numb feet. “I can’t. I’m not feeling well. I’ll get you a doctor’s note, okay?”
“Not okay. If you’re sick, don’t come in,” Frank said between clenched teeth. “Since you’re here, take some aspirin and move it. Kristin and another had mishaps on the way here.”
Serket heaved a sigh. “Mishap” was Frank-speak for becoming dinner for the dead. After shooting her boss a scathing look, Serket hobbled to her locker. She swapped her lab coat for a balaclava and donned her gun belt.
Sentry duty took place in the open-air courtyard facing the hospital entrance, several rooms away from the respiratory therapy offices. According to Frank, sentries had to walk the grounds keeping their eyes out for dead visitors. After catching two sentries sitting on the benches playing with their phones, as he put it, he ordered the benches removed.
“Bastard!” Serket whispered. “Didn’t it ever cross your pea brain that they’re worried something happened to their kids?”
Outside, Serket scanned the garden, shining her light. So far, no visitors. She hobbled over to an immense ceramic planter. The rim of the container was wide enough to allow her to sit, and she could watch out for dead visitors in relative comfort. The damaged nerves in her feet had taught her about watching. She had to watch that her shoes and socks weren’t too tight. Watch out for loose mats and sharp objects on the floor. Watch when she wriggled through tight spaces to get to her equipment, lest a loss of balance threatens a back-breaking spill.
Uh, oh. Movement by a crab apple tree, along with the stink of flyblown meat mixed with incense.
Incense? That’s different. Serket’s light washed over the roses and bushes, and to her left, a figure wearing tattered rags. Half of its face looked as if gnawed by rats. She raised her sidearm, barrel trained toward the walker.“Take that, Ank-Soo!” she shouted, and explosive gunfire sheared off the figure’s head. Another figure materialized from the shadows. Ditto silence by gunfire. By the time Serket’s watch ended, she’d lost count of the number of zombies she’d quieted. It was too late to drive home tonight. Instead, she headed to the fourth floor, used by people who needed to sleep overnight. It wasn’t the first time she’d slept on a cot.
At the fourth floor, Frank stood by the elevator, glaring at Serket with eyes of quicksilver. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
“I came up here to sleep.” Serket smiled, but her voice edged with anger. “After all, people do go to bed.”
Asshole, she thought, then collapsed on her cot. In the moments before she drifted to sleep, the musty, spicy smell haunted her. Where had she smelled that before?
****
When Serket was ten, she rushed into the pavilion facing Atlantic City’s ocean, intent on playing Skeeball. Instead, a poster beckoned: See Ank-Soo, a Live 1000-year-old woman. Behind the sign stood a dais enclosed with black velvet curtains.
Inside, the people ahead of her formed a C-shaped ring around an ornate bathtub. Later on, she’d learned that the tub was a sarcophagus. Further ahead, she made out jet black hair and a shriveled face. The aroma of incense and dampness crawled down her throat like smoke, making her cough. Ank-Soo had on a sequined vest, but nothing else. Serket walked up to the tub. Not a live woman after all, but a dried dead body. Gleaming bone peeped between the tears in her skin. Serket stood frozen, gazing toward the exit, but the room was oh, so crowded. The grownups around her laughed and chatted as if they were at a party. Seconds later, the decayed woman turned her head and raised her right arm, extending her hand. She pointed a bony finger at Serket.
“You. You are the goddess,” she said. Her voice sounded as if sand had lodged in her windpipe.
Screaming, Serket pushed through the crowd and bolted from the dais. Laughter echoed behind her, but that seemed so unimportant. What mattered was that a dead body had come to life. On the way out of the pavilion, she darted into a restroom. She locked the door, gasping for breath.
Thumping rattled the knob. “Serket,” a woman’s gravel-chewing voice intoned. “It’s time.”
The fist thumped harder, splintering the wood.
****
Serket ’s eyes snapped open. The knocking persisted, not in a bathroom stall but at the door to her makeshift room at the hospital. The voice faded, replaced by knocking and a panicked cry. “Serket, wake up!”
Damn what a nightmare. Serket rubbed her forehead. She opened the door and found her coworker Kristin standing outside, clad in her work scrubs.
“I’m sorry for waking you.” Kristin blushed. “I heard you screaming. You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I got mandated into sentry duty,” Serket told her. “Frank said you’d had a mishap.”
“What the…?” Kristin shook her head. “I came in late because there were roadblocks, that’s all. Frank gave me a lot of grief about it, so I agreed to do sentry duty this morning. That shut him up. Are you okay?”
Serket nodded, then told her about the nightmare. “Something like that happened when I was ten, but my mom drove me home when she realized how scared I was. The garden smelled like incense last night, and I got to thinking about Ank-Soo. I even called the zombies Ank-Soo.”
Kristin shrugged, then sighed. “This whole place is a nightmare. Steer clear of Frank, Serket. People notice that he’s putting you on sentry duty more and more. It’s not right.”
“Agreed, since I have a doctor’s note in my file that says I can’t work overtime.” Serket shrugged. “I guess with the zombie outbreak, doctor’s notes don’t count. It’s okay. In six more days, I’m out of here.”
“Let me tell you something.” Kristin drew in a sharp breath. “If I were you, I’d go home and stop showing up for work. Your Social Security and pension are guaranteed. The only money you lose is for the last three days and your vacation hours. Better than losing your life!”
“What?” Serket started, then sat on her bed, eyes on Kristin. “Anyone can die when they go outside if they’re not careful.”
“Sending someone outside to fight when they can hardly walk is brutal. He may as well have signed your death warrant.”
“It’s not like he singled me out. He does that to you and Joe, too.” Serket contemplated the last days’ assignment sheets, tracking times she and Kristin had done sentry duty. She regarded Kristin’s features. Gray-streaked hair and fine wrinkles around the chin. “He doesn’t like older workers, does he?”
“You’ve got that right. I overheard him screaming about the budget, and how it was wrong having to pay out millions of dollars in pensions when the hospital needed the money for security.”
Serket ’s brown eyes widened. “But these are vested pensions.”
Kristin shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Management is too cheap to hire regular officers, so they make the staff buy guns and do the job. I guess they target older workers, hoping the zombies get them and save them money.”
“Well, thankfully, the zombies move slower than me, and …” Serket clapped her head, then understanding dawned. “Frank was furious when I showed up last night. I never got any thanks. Was he mad because I came back alive?”
Kristin nodded. “That’s why I’m telling you to go home and not come back. Joe and I are only 60, so we can’t get Social Security. We have to stay, but you have the option of leaving.”
Serket got up and peered out the window, Kristin beside her. The zombies paraded the streets by the hospital in single file. “Damn.” She lowered her head. “I carry two guns, but I’m getting nowhere this morning.”
“It looks bad.” Kristin nodded with agreement. “Where’s your car?”
“In the garage across the street.”
“Hm. If you go out through the back entrance, you can head through the alley to get to your garage. If you can walk home, you can get around the roadblocks. Things might still get weird, but doable.”
“Not doable.” Serket frowned. “I live too far to walk, so I need my car.”
Frustration crinkled Kristin’s eyes. “Then take your car, but you’ll have the roadblocks.”
“That’s okay. I agree with you about the back alley. That way I won’t have to take any stairs. Thanks for the heads up.”
After Kristin left, Serket donned her gun belt, then headed to the café for coffee and a bagel, and her morning medicines. She went to her locker, praying that Frank wouldn’t be near the respiratory therapy offices. He wasn’t. She put on her jacket, leaving it open to give her access to her guns. After retrieving her purse, she took the rear elevator to the ground floor.
Serket crept out through the exit facing the alley. The area reeked of something dead about to explode in the gases of its own decay. People riding bikes once used this alley, but the narrowing path didn’t accommodate cars. Along the way, she shot down two shambling zombies.
The path continued thinning out until it was barely wide enough for her to pass. Ahead, she could make out her garage. Almost there, but not quite. A pile of leaves blocked her passage.
Shit! Serket did some mental calculations, trying to figure out a way to get around those leaves. After a moment of consideration, she decided that the leaves would break her fall if she had one. Then she eyeballed the skeletal hand poking out from under the leaves. Heart thudding in her chest, she stepped closer to the leaf pile. A mummified dead woman with dark hair and leathery skin lay blocking the exit, her arms and legs straddled across the path. Up close and personal, the leaves only covered her torso. Although they’d met 55 years ago, Serket would recognize this demon anywhere. Ank-Soo had come for another visit.
Screams lodged in Serket’s throat, but she stifled them, lest she disturb a being better off dead. God help me if I stumble. I’ve got to find a way out of here without waking her.
On numb feet, Serket took slow, tenuous steps, hand braced against the brick wall. She focused her eyes toward the garage, intent on getting to safety, ignoring the voice that whispered that security was only an illusion with a zombie apocalypse in progress. One foot went over the other as she chose each step without disturbing Ank-Soo.
Serket lurched and landed on her knees. She’d seen the hand, tried to sidestep it, but lost her balance. Stinging flashed through both knees, but worse, the hand moved. In the next instant, Ank-Soo stood, pitted eyes bearing into hers.
“Your work has destroyed your feelings so you are already dead,” Ank-Soo said in her scratchy voice. “It is time I brought you home.”
Serket struggled to her feet, reaching for her gun. “Go to hell.”
With that, she fired, and though her bullet left a hole in Ank-Soo’s neck, she remained standing. She grabbed Serket by the arms and yanked her forward.
Screams tore from Serket’s throat. She forgot about Frank’s plans to dispose of his older workers. She forgot about her foot pain and need to watch. She forgot about everything except fighting for her life. Despite her thrashing, Ank-Soo was dragging her by the shoulders out of the alley, but not to the garage. Serket didn’t want to contemplate where the destination would be. Hands gripping her gun, she managed to wriggle sideways. She pistol-whipped her assailant, smashing ribs, hip bones, and at last her arms. Breaking free, she ran, loping awkward steps, but fast enough to get away from Ank-Soo.
Her car beckoned from the middle row, a Honda Civic that promised her ride home. Thankfully, the zombies thinned out, and the ones that remained didn’t approach her car. A half-hour later, she pulled up to her townhouse. Once inside her home, she tried to shed her jacket, but the skeletal hands remained wrapped around her shoulders.
“Damn it!” she cried.
Retrieving pliers from her drawer, Serket pried each hand off her shoulder, one finger at a time. She dumped the remains into the trash, then dropped the bag into the incinerator. She then balled up her jacket; another gift for the incinerator. Damned if she’d wear anything that monster touched. Afterward, she sat in her tub for an hour, washing away the stink and grime, but nothing would obliterate the memories. Bruises the size of dishes had erupted on her shoulders and legs. Every muscle in her body throbbed, but she’d made it home.
After she finished, she donned a nightgown. Perhaps she’d watch TV or take a nap. In her bedroom, the familiar stink of rotting tomatoes and incense overwhelmed her. Ank-Soo had left a parting gift.
On her bed lay a cotton draw sheet. Someone—or something—had etched Ank-Soo’s image in blood on the sheet.
In June 2018, Author Kelly Simmons gave a talk on characterization at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference. She listed the traits that a sympathetic character should have: desire, spunk, resilience, foolishness, disbelief, and wounds. That last stuck with me in particular as I worked on my material.
Fast forward six months later, I went through the Night to Dawn submission pile and read someone’s first chapter. His letter reported that he had already gotten rave reviews. However, I couldn’t get beyond the first page. The protag started off by declaring an urge to kill his teammate, who happened to be a class clown, maybe overly talkative, but basically harmless. I got the image of the protag as a bully straightaway, and I said so to the author in no uncertain terms. The author asked why, and I could tell from his letter he was hurt.
Damn, girl! I scolded myself. You’re a balloon lady. Balloon people are sweet, not mean.
Then I realized what had gotten into me. When I was in grade and high school, I was that class clown – and I’d gotten bullied in school. Junior college wasn’t much better. Those memories came to mind as I read, and that’s why I had to stop reading. So in my second response, I encouraged the author to keep submitting. I owned up to having been bullied in school, explaining that this may have biased my opinion, and assured him that another editor may have a different take on his work.
The takeaway? When workshop leaders tell writers to quit taking rejection personally, they’ve got it right. It would help, though, to explain why so here goes. Editors (and agents, for that matter) will arrive at the submission party with wounds of their own, just like your characters. Someone who’s been abused as a child may not appreciate a tale told from the abuser’s point of view. Alas, this type of information isn’t something you’ll find on AgentQuery Connect or the company website. Occasionally, if you’re going to a workshop run by said editor or agent, he or she may admit to a wound or two. Otherwise, if you’re submitting cold, all you can do is send and hope for the best, but have other publishers/agents in mind as well.
Your thoughts?
I will be giving a $10 Amazon gift card to a random commenter.
My visit to Atlantic City was a trip through time. At the Johnny Rockets restaurant, where I had my supper, they played oldies from my childhood, such as the Drifter’s “Under the Boardwalk.” I later headed to the candy shops, and they sold the coconut slices I loved to eat. So it came as no surprise, as I munched on my treat when ahead loomed a sign: Make Your Own Horror Movie.
Underneath, read another: “Simulated Production.”
A wrinkled, skeletal lady with wisps of jet hair sat in the display window to my right. I got some photos, but the sun was too bright to do the monster justice. Her blackened eyes sized me up, and I recognized the 1000-year-old denizen from my childhood. Dat’s wight, wabbits, the mummy from the Million Dollar Pier has paid me another visit. What’s more, the ten-year-old inside me was tempted to go inside the store and explore.
Come in and play, a voice whispered in my head. Maybe you’ll become like me, and we can both sit and watch the passersby.
I shook my head and backed away, but then tried to peer into the store. Someone had spray-painted blackout paint on the front glass door. The left window was also painted, but one clear section of glass revealed human bones. That, and a horrible zombie face.
Those things didn’t get me moving. The fact that none of the other passersby had stopped to check out the store did.
Perhaps the store intended a cheap Halloween thrill, but the possibility of snuff filming crossed my mind. In any case, I didn’t have my mom anymore to make it all better. Heck, I didn’t even have any Mylar balloons with me. Instead of exploring, I headed back to the candy shop to buy treats for my coworkers.
On my way back to the hotel, I looked for the store again but didn’t see it. Perhaps the heat had given me a case of the crazies. Maybe I stumbled into an alternate dimension.
Funny thing, later that evening, in my hotel room, I head the sound of exploding pipes. I assumed maintenance was doing some work. So when I went to take my bath, I was chagrined to see that black sand had blasted through the drain into the bathtub. Black sand! AC doesn’t have black sand, but some beaches around the Nile River of Egypt do.
I think the mummy was trying to send me a message.
I will be sending a $10 Amazon gift card to a random commenter.
Last year I gave a little history on the pumpkin and why it was so crucial to Halloween. This year I’m focusing on the Great Pumpkin that Peanuts character Linus reveres. To make things clear: 95% of me doesn’t believe the Great Pumpkin exists, but five percent suspects there might be an acorn of truth behind it, for the pumpkin fever is on me. But my version of the Great Pumpkin doesn’t fly around a pumpkin patch the way Linus’s version does. Instead, my Great Pumpkin flies into supermarkets in the form of a Mylar pumpkin. I have two small pumpkin balloons, but to get the Great Pumpkin, I’ve got to pay my dues.
Last October, I made pumpkin muffins, cooked pasta with pumpkin sauce, and drank pumpkin coffee every day. What’s more, I visited Wawa for pumpkin shakes. I kept this up for a while, but about halfway through October, I complained about having to eat so much pumpkin. My whining didn’t sit well with the Great Pumpkin, and while I had a lot of balloons, none of them qualified as the Great Pumpkin. For him to come, you’ve got to be sincere.
This year, it’s going to be pumpkin cupcakes and cookies, along with pumpkin flavoring in the coffee. I’ve started the ball rolling with pumpkin lattes at Starbucks, and I will frequent the Wawa as well. Since I’m newly retired from the day job, I’ve got no excuse, and I will stow my complaints.
The following blogs will feature my adventure at Atlantic City; a discussion with issues I’ve had writing, a short story. So while you’ll enjoy, I’ll head to the Mylar balloon aisle at all the supermarkets and keep my eyes open for the Great Pumpkin.
I will be sending a $10 Amazon gift card to a random commenter.
