Ink Well--One writer’s process explained for the reader with Donnette Smith + giveaway

Ink Well--One writer’s process explained for the reader with Donnette Smith

So…the beginning of a new manuscript for me starts in a separate word document apart from the document I will be writing the manuscript in. The title of that document is called The Outline.

What is an outline and how do you go about writing one? Ask any author who uses one, and you’ll get a different answer every time. The process of my outline is as simple as I can make it. That’s because I’d rather save brain explosions for the manuscript. And there will be brain explosions. Clean up on aisle seven kind of brain explosions. But first things first.

The Outline
This nifty, little roadmap is a quick scene-by-scene summary of the guts of the manuscript. It goes something like this.

Scene One
Undercover DEA agent, George (this may or may not be his name. I’ll explain later) runs into ex-police officer, Sarah (who may or may not be Sarah) during an undercover sting operation to take down an infamous drug cartel. She is a flash from his past because they were madly in love once, but the affair ended in tragedy thirteen years ago when she called off the marriage to his brother on the day of the wedding. When she came clean with his brother and admitted she was in love with someone else, everything fell apart. His brother hung himself from the rafters of the church, and when George’s father discovered Sarah called off the wedding because she was in love with his other son, George, he vowed never to speak to his son again. And Sarah was forced to quit the police department because of the ridicule and backlash she received from her former officers. She ran as far away from George and that town as she could get. This is the first time George has seen her since the day she ran out on him thirteen years ago.

Now, he wonders what the hell she’s doing involved with a drug cartel. Even worse, how could she be romantically involved with the kingpin himself? But the pressure is on him to act like he doesn’t know her, or risk blowing his cover.

Knowing they are at the kingpin’s palace for a grand party, George keeps his cool, even though watching the kingpin paw all over Sarah evokes the kind of jealousy in him that could cause him to become careless and make sloppy mistakes. She was his one true love, and he’d never gotten over losing her.

However, when the kingpin gets down on one knee and proposes to Sarah in front of everyone, it’s the final straw for George. He excuses himself to use the bathroom, and stumbles onto the terrace to collect his muddled thoughts and calm his pounding heart. Just as he convinces himself Sarah is not the same person he knew, and he’s on the cusp of letting his feelings for her hinder the sting operation, she finds him on the terrace, and by the appearance of her, she remembers those hot summer nights they’d spent together just as clearly as he does.

He demands to know how she’d gone from being a respected police officer, to a drug lord’s lover. She refuses to answer, but instead makes it clear she knows he’s working undercover for the DEA. She warns he’s playing a dangerous game, and if the kingpin discovers who he is, he’ll not only kill him, but torture him in ways he could never imagine.

He is stunned she knows about the undercover operation. And when a tense argument causes her to get a little too close, he can’t resist drawing her into his arms and taking her lips in a heated kiss. He’s surprised when she doesn’t wrestle out of his embrace. But when the intimate moment passes, she chastises him for such reckless behavior and insists that he go back to his superior at the DEA and inform him that double crossing the drug lord will get them all killed.

The first scene in the outline is not like the others.
I always add a little backstory to the first scene of the outline. Of course, that much backstory doesn’t make its way into the first chapter. I will sprinkle the characters’ history throughout the story as I should. But slipping a little bit of their past into the first scene of the outline is a good reminder. it’s there in a quick glance if ever I must go back for reference.

So, what’s up with the temporary names?
By the time I finish with the outline, which usually takes me two to three weeks, I know how many characters will be in the story and can decide on official names for everyone, including the wicked kingpin, Sarah, and George. Because let’s face it, George is not the sexiest of names for a leading man. I apologize in advance to all the people out there by the name of George.

It’s manuscript time, baby!
Rarely do I have the title of the story in mind when I start writing the manuscript. The title will come to me…maybe…at some point. Sticky note to self…come up with a name for the story because you don’t want to revisit that time you got desperate and ran a contest on your Facebook page for the person who could come up with the best title within a twenty-four-hour period. Wait, that worked out okay.

No matter what they tell you, editing sucks.
Now that I’ve finished the first draft, I’m going back to the beginning to rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite some more. Or perhaps, there’s a needle lying around somewhere I can stick in my eye, because that would be less painful than writing this manuscript on repeat. Ever hear writers complain they can’t submit their story because it’s not good enough? Here’s the dirty little secret they don’t tell you. If you stare at your words long enough, you will develop an aversion to them so acutely you’d rather pluck out your nose hairs than allow your brain to absorb them for another second.

I say, save your brain and your nose hairs and let’s multitask. That’s why, as soon as I finish writing a scene, I go over it at that time and edit. Once I finish a chapter, I edit all the scenes in that chapter again before I type another word. Then I move onto the next scene and the next chapter. You get the point. I’ve found if I edit as I go, I can use my time more wisely. Plus, I won’t end up hiding in the basement where people with mush brain go. And my kids won’t have to coax me out with a king size Hershey bar.

At last, the manuscript is finished. What’s next?
Did I say editing sucks? Well, hold on to your pants because we’re about to take it to a whole new level. May I introduce you to what I call the mother of all edits? I’m referring to the five-hundred-page editing guide my publisher provided for me. Okay, so it’s more like thirty pages. But at this point, who’s counting?

I must check the manuscript for weak verbs such as
· Move
· Bring
· Brought
· Look
· Push
· Pull
· Press
· Walk
· Reach
· Went
· Came (as in came and went)
· Turned

Then find a stronger, more visual verb so the reader can better picture the action.

There are, of course, redundant words we need to remove while in the POV of our character. And we are always in the POV of our character. My sticky note even says so.
· Saw
· Watched
· Heard
· Thought
· Felt
· Knew
· Moved
· Reached

Here’s an example of passive POV
She heard Steve slam the door and felt a tremor of uneasiness run through her.

Here’s an example of active POV
Steve slammed the door, and a tremor of uneasiness ran through her.

We can do away with the words, heard and felt, because we are in the character’s POV and to say she heard and felt something is unnecessary. We are already experiencing the scene through her senses.

Now that we’ve run a search for all those words and made the corrections, we get to search for a thousand other writing dos and don’ts. Check for misused words, grammar & punctuation, cause & effect sentences, comma placement, dialogue tags, flashbacks, head-hopping, and so on and so forth. And here all you wanted to do was write a book, not map out astrophysics. Buy hey, who’s keeping score.

Once I’ve given the manuscript a final read-through, then and only then can I email it to my editor. I hit the send button and drink a large glass or bottle of wine…for the next two weeks straight. This is not a celebration. This is preparation for the torture my editor has in store for me when she tears apart my manuscript and sends it back to me in bits and pieces. If I remain in a drunken stupor, I find the whole process much more tolerable.

And that, my friend, is how I write a book. More or less. 

 

The Taken
by Donnette Smith

November 6th 2023

Published by: The Wild Rose Press
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romanc
All Jenna Langley wanted was a chance to finally marry the man of her dreams. But when the spirit of a dead girl shows up at her wedding that only she can see, it becomes clear Jenna’s latest brush with death has caused the heightening of her psychic abilities to reach an unfamiliar and frightening level. Her new husband, Detective Cole Rainwater, vows to do whatever it takes to get to the root of Jenna’s disturbing sightings. But before he can investigate this mystery, his bride is taken right under his nose.

What started as a romantic honeymoon has turned into a fight for Jenna’s life. And the only path to freedom is through the help and guidance of a dead girl who was once the victim of the sex traffickers that have stolen away with Jenna.

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Although not a native Texan, Donnette Smith has spent more than half her life living in the Lone Star State. She is an entrepreneur and former business owner of Tailor Maid Services LLC. After spending a few years working as a journalist for the Blue Ridge Tribune, she realized her love for writing romantic detective novels. Her stories cover a wide range of genres, from horror, time travel, mystery, fantasy, paranormal, and thriller. But one theme stays the same, there is always a detective solving a crime, and a gorgeous victim he would lay down his life to protect. Donnette’s biggest fascination is with forensic science and crime scene investigations. Her novels include, Cunja, a horror/mystery/suspense that debuted in 2012. Book 1 of The Spirit Walker Series, Killing Dreams, a fantasy/romance story with a paranormal element became available in September of 2021. Book 2 of The Spirit Walker Series, Buried Alive, was published on March 14, 2022. And her latest, book 3 of The Spirit Walkers Series, The Taken.

Giveaway:
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a golden book box with books 1&2 of the Spirit Walkers Series. Book 1 Killing Dreams, and book 2 Buried Alive. One book will be autographed. The book box will come with a specially designed bookmarker, a Spirit Walkers Series coffee mug, Chai tea, and a scented, therapeutic candle.

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Ink Well: YA urban fantasy author Alyssa Roat + giveaway

Everyone’s writing process is different. Some outline. Some build mood boards and playlists and maps before even beginning.

I word vomit on a page and see what happens.

Now, don’t get me wrong. When I write with my coauthor, we spend about an hour talking on the phone, outlining the basics of what happens in each chapter and divvying up who writes what. For our chat fiction books, we divvy it up by character, and for our romances, we split each chapter in two by POV, and I write from the point of view of one love interest while she writes from the point of view of the other. We plan out our characters, their traits, their backstories, their motivations and how they’ll change and grow throughout the story.

But by myself? Oh boy.

My current release, Mordizan, is the second book in The Wraithwood Trilogy, a YA contemporary fantasy series. When I started writing the first book, Wraithwood, I thought I would write a cute, whimsical book for kids about a magical mansion. Just a short book, a little break from more complicated projects.

I ended up with a YA trilogy with high stakes battles, espionage, morally gray antagonists, and Arthurian legend.

I start with a general idea—like that magical mansion—and some characters —what about a mysterious uncle named Merlin and his protagonist niece who unwittingly comes to live at the mansion for the summer —and begin writing.

By about halfway through the first draft of book one, I knew I had a trilogy on my hands. By three-quarters through, I knew how the trilogy would end. Characters appeared and introduced themselves to me. Often, I knew as little of what would happen next as a reader would. I was just along for the ride, just as shocked at plot twists as anyone else would be.

It’s a chaotic way to write, and it requires plenty of editing to make sure the story is cohesive and properly employs foreshadowing, but boy is it fun. I just write what’s next, what I think will be fun, and go from there.

And along the way, I find my themes. I learn what issues I’m processing through writing, I confront moral dilemmas, and I watch my characters grow.

As an editor and former literary agent, it’s my duty to tell you not to do this. I must tell you to start with a marketable idea and workshop from there. That this is an inefficient and unwise way to write.

But as an artist? I encourage you to chase whatever works for you, and enjoy it.

Mordizan (The Wraithwood Trilogy, #2)
by Alyssa Roat
Publication date: March 15th 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
The bane of Mordred, the son of Mordizan, and a millennia-old prophecy—together they may provide what Brinnie needs to defeat the world of magic’s greatest threat.

More than a year has passed since Brinnie left Wraithwood, never expecting to see it again. But when Mordred captures her sister, she is thrust back into the world of magic. She flees to Wraithwood, where she learns of a prophecy located in the dark wizard capital of Mordizan that reveals the identity of “Mordred’s bane,” something that could destroy Mordred for good.

Brinnie agrees to a rendezvous with Mordred to exchange herself for her sister, going undercover at Mordizan as a spy to find the prophecy and Mordred’s bane. There, she weaves a complicated web of secrets, lies, and tenuous friendships. She makes an unexpected ally in Marcus Vorath, son of the Master of Mordizan, who fears the implications of Mordred’s growing power. But in Mordizan, friends and foes may be one and the same.

In the midst of court intrigue, battle, ominous new depths to her power, and searching for Mordred’s bane, Brinnie struggles to draw the lines. How far is she willing to go to destroy Mordred? And how much of herself is she willing to give up along the way?

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Alyssa Roat grew up in Tucson, Arizona, but her heart is in Great Britain. She has worked in a wide variety of roles within the publishing industry as an agent, editor, writer, and publicist. With 250+ bylines and 9+ books under contract in genres ranging from YA chat fiction to fantasy to sweet adult romance, you could say she dabbles in a bit of everything. Her name is a pun, which means you can learn more about her at www.alyssawrote.com or on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as @alyssawrote.

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Ink Well--One writer’s process explained for the reader with horror author Jaydeep Shah + giveaway

One of the most frequently asked questions is how you get ideas for a story. What is something that inspires you and helps you to write a story?

Sometimes I get ideas naturally. I know what I want to write about. The type of setting for a story. How I want the characters to act toward their goals. I just need some more time to modify the setting and the characters slightly to make the story gripping. However, it’s not always the same case, especially not when writing a novel.

The point to be noted: whether I get ideas naturally for a story or endeavor to plot a story, I follow a distinct writing process. This writing process includes four steps:

Prewriting

Drafting

Revising

Proofreading

* * *

Before I continue explaining these four steps, I’d like to answer the most frequently asked question: how do I get ideas for a story?

When traveling, I observe the nature. I work as a front desk agent in a hotel. There, I have learned a lot of things about various cultures. I have seen people going through their happiest moments of life and even the worse troubles.

When talking to someone, if I find something interesting, I take note of it. I even take notes about how I feel when I’m hiking and also when I’m traveling in a city with friends and family. All these help me get ideas to write a story. Every kind word that comes my way about me and my work and every artist out there inspires me to keep focusing on my writing career and continue doing work hard enough to achieve my goals.

* * *

If you want to have a salable story, always follow this writing process. Believe me, this process has helped me gain more readers.

Prewriting
· Prewriting is all about thinking and deciding.
· Here you choose a genre you enjoy the most, a topic you want to write about.
· At this stage, you brainstorm and outline your ideas.
· Create the world you think readers will love.
· You research, talk to other people and take notes.
· You gather all the information you think will help you write a story.

Drafting
· At this stage, you start writing your story.
· You turn your outline into a manuscript.
· You don’t focus on any type of errors.
· You write, write, and write to complete the first draft of your story.

Revising
· This is the most important stage of the writing process.
· Here you focus on solving all the grammatical, developmental, syntax, mechanical, and any other minor and major errors.
· You make sure the plot runs smoothly.
· You perform line edits to make the story reader-friendly.
· If needed, you even rewrite the entire story.

Proofreading
· The last stage of the writing process where you make sure the story is reader-friendly.
· No more errors in the story. Everything is correct.
· It’s all about checking your work is free of errors.

Finally, you have a story worth sharing with the world. Now you can choose a route to share your story with the world: Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing.

The Haunting of Black River Forest (A Horror Adventure Short Story)
by Jaydeep Shah
12/14/2021
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Jaydeep Shah
ISBN: 978-1-7349826-3-3
ASIN: B08V4ZY7QY
Number of pages: 86
Word Count: 8611
Cover Artist: Jaydeep Shah
A spine-chilling story in which adventurers struggle to survive on the land of a cold-blooded psychopath who enjoys slashing humans.

A forest of blood and corpses. The land of a cold-blooded psychopath.

In Black River Forest, it’s best not to wander too far off the beaten track. There’s no telling what you might find.

Mia and Oliver have long wanted to explore the forest, and one cold, rainy October day, a week before their fifth anniversary of the day they met, they finally make the trip.

But they’ve heard the rumors as well. The haunting. A psychopath hidden somewhere amidst the towering trees. Too many missing. Too few answers.

It’s only rumors, though. Stories. And stories can’t hurt you. Yet as Mia and Oliver venture deeper into the Black River Forest, they’ll soon discover that there’s more haunting this quiet woodland than hikers and bears.

The psychopath is very real. And he’s excited to meet them.

From Jaydeep Shah, author of Tribulation, the first book of the Cops Planet series, “The Haunting of Black River Forest” is a bloody, spine-chilling story best read with the lights on.

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Excerpt:

Oliver looked around in terror, believing the bear had attacked someone nearby and that they once again would be in danger.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

“The scream came from that way,” said Mia, pointing to the right.

They slowly walked to the trees alongside the path. They saw the ground sloped down to the valley. Mia tried to take one more step forward to have a clear look, but Oliver pulled her back before she could slip.

The three of them stood by the trees and looked around to find the source of the scream.

A few seconds later, what they saw made their hair raise in horror.

Mia’s hands flew to her mouth as a scream tried to make its way out. She was looking at a man thrusting a machete in a teenage boy’s gut and dragging it horizontally to the right and then to the left with all of his force.

“So, the psychopath story is real?” said Mia.

The boy’s severed body lay on the ground beside the bank. Next to him lay a girl’s body. Blood was streaming from her stomach.

“Yes. The psychopath is real,” said Oliver. “I hope we return safe and alive.”

The killer bent, having finished with the boy, bent down to the girl, and started to take off her clothes. There was an X symbol cut into her stomach and a hole near the belly button. It seemed like the killer first had thrust the knife into her stomach and then carved the X symbol.

The killer checked the girl’s pulse and then held a hand under her nose as if to check for breath.

“Dead bitch!” he said.

He looked around.

The trio was frozen in silence in the trees, hidden from sight. They were lying on the ground, taking a position of concealment just like a sniper as they watched in trauma from the top of the valley.

Oliver grabbed his hair, perhaps feeling some type of pressure in his brain. Trying to stay silent, he walked away, slowly. He stumbled as if he would lose consciousness.

He leant against a tree across the path, bending forward to be sick at its roots.

Petrified, Jany remained lying on the ground, gaping at the killer, who was perhaps preparing himself to have intercourse with the corpse.

Mia stood up, keeping behind a tree to stay hidden. She looked at Oliver and Jany with tears flowing down her cheeks. She tried to speak but couldn’t let the words out of her mouth.

She took a deep breath. Then she cleared her throat.

“Jany!” she said in a croaky voice.

Jany remained the same, unresponsive.

Mia cleared her throat once more.

“Jany,” she said, her voice clear but soft, as she was afraid the killer would hear her, despite him being down in the valley. She bent and gently shook Jany, holding her by the shoulders.

Jany opened her mouth as if about to scream, but Mia swiftly clasped her mouth.

“Don’t! He’ll hear us!” she said.

Jany stared at her for a moment and then nodded. Mia took her hand from her mouth.

“Get up!”

Jany stood up and followed Mia toward Oliver.

“We will die. He will find us,” said Jany. She was speaking too loudly, panicked. “I hope my friends are safe.”

“Be brave, Jany,” said Mia, swallowing the fear. “Think positive. Just stay together, and we will find a way out of the forest.”

All the while, Oliver stood watching them. For a moment his terror had paralyzed him. He had no answer, no solution, only the storm of horrifying thoughts of their death in his mind.

Oliver took a deep breath and removed a water bottle from his backpack. He drank a few sips.

He cleared his throat. Then he said, shifting his look between Mia and Jany, “Mia is right. We can get out of here.” He paused. “We must hurry and try to find a way back to our original path before dusk.”

A silence fell for a bit as the trio exchanged a look, nerves clear on their faces. They looked around them at the different paths.

“Where did we come from?” asked Mia.

“I’m not sure. I was so scared,” said Oliver.

“And everything looks the same to me,” added Jany quickly, looking at the paths on either side, both covered with branches and leaves littered from the storm.

Mia unzipped her backpack and slowly, quietly pulled out her axe, still glancing around for signs of movement. “Alright! Let’s go this way,” she said, adjusting her backpack back on her shoulders.

They set off up the chosen path, but Mia grasping the axe strongly.

Just a few steps on, Jany slipped on some wet leaves. She fell and let out a scream that rang through the air.

Oliver scanned the area in a panic.

Mia swiftly helped Jany back up.

Jany hissed in pain as she stood, clearing the dirt from her scratched elbow while Mia brushed off the dirt from her clothes.

“I hope he hasn’t heard your scream!” said Oliver.

Jany and Mia looked toward the valley, following his eyes.

They waited for a few more seconds in stillness.

The psychopath didn’t appear.

“Keep moving!” said Oliver in a very soft voice, only audible to Jany and Mia.

They resumed their walk.

After a few minutes . . . Mia began to feel that someone was following them. She looked through the corner of her eye, but she could only see trees.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled as her senses still signaled someone’s presence.

She stopped.

All the while, Oliver and Jany kept walking hurriedly without glancing back.

Mia turned around slowly. Still no one, only the emptiness of the forest. When she was sure she couldn’t see anyone, she turned back and strode on to catch up with Oliver and Jany.

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Jaydeep Shah is an avid traveler and the author of gripping horror, thriller, and romance stories. As a bachelor’s degree holder in Creative Writing, he aims to entertain as many as people he can with his stories. He is best known for Tribulation, the first book in the “Cops Planet” series.

In addition to those books, The Shape-Shifting Serpents’ Choice, Jaydeep’s first young adult flash fiction written under his pen name, JD Shah, is published online by Scarlet Leaf Review in their July 2019 issue. Currently, he’s endeavoring to write a debut young adult fantasy novel while working on a sequel to his first apocalyptic thriller, Havoc.

When Shah is not writing, he reads books, tries new restaurants, and goes on adventures.

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A spine-chilling story in which adventurers struggle to survive in the forest of death from a monstrous psychopath who enjoys slashing humans.

https://jaydeepshah.com/the-haunting-of-black-river-forest

#horrorfamily #ripperstory #horrorcommunity #shortstory #scaryforest #horroradventure #psychopathstory #slasherhorror

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UF Author Louis Corsair: The different ways a writer of fiction can screw up First Person POV? + giveaway

And here I am again! I liked my last post on I Smell Sheep so much that I decided to do another.

Hooray!

That wasn’t a true statement. I don’t think the people who run this blog would have me on just for the hell of it. But, it was a nice fantasy, wasn’t it?

***This is I Smell Sheep...we would love to have you anytime you want to visit! You're out kind of crazy ;)***

So, what is today’s flavor? Hmmm. It has been a while since I’ve shared my (cough) wisdom about writing. The last post I wrote for my blog, which was about the myth of Show-don’t-tell, went pretty well.

I don’t want to revisit that topic.

It’s long and dull. Except to writers. They’re easily amused. True story!

How about…the different ways a writer of fiction can screw up First Person POV?

That sounds great to me (since I’m writing it). And it’s short. I’m limiting these ‘errors’ to just ten. Or maybe five. Yeah. My hand’s arthritic joints are liking five better.

FIRST-PERSON POV:
I am using First Person POV right now. You do have to wonder: Who is speaking? Who is this “I” persona? Is it the author whose name appears on the blog post or is it a stage persona?

Typically, most often, most stories, usually, the “I” in the story is the main character. And, if you use the First Person POV, you typically, most often, usually, stick with that person’s thoughts and observations.

This makes sense because, let’s face it, we can’t read minds and we can’t project ourselves to other places and observe what’s going on there.

So, how do writers “screw” this up?

1) The “I” persona is actually the Third Person narrator, who acts like a character—and sometimes he/she is a character.

It’s the ultimate sleight of hand.

The “I” persona knows it all and sees it all. They are the all-seeing “I.” A Third Person Omniscient narrator.

Except they’re not content to simply describe. They will often pause to give you their two cents about what they’re describing.

Third Person POV with attitude!

It’s two stories for the price of one. Lucky you.

1 Example: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2) The “I” persona can read minds; they accurately tell the reader what other characters are thinking. This mostly happens in literary books where it’s cool if you do this.

Just to be clear: This type of “I” persona isn’t supposed to be all-knowing, like the narrator of The Book Thief; they somehow know the thoughts of others.

The novel starts out with a character telling you about some event that changed his/her life forever. They start narrating the events of the story and oops!

They tell you what some other person is thinking. And they keep doing it throughout.

Writers like to include these Professor X clones in stories where a Third Person narrator would have been adequate, but not as fun.

2 Examples: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie; Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

PRO TIP: One way to get a big literary prize, like a Pulitzer, is to write First Person POV this way.

3) The “I” persona can describes events they couldn’t possibly have witnessed—and they do it like they were there. Well, shit, if you’re going to have a character that can read minds, why not break the laws of physics?

It happens like this: The narrator starts to tell you about his/her life and what’s going on in it. Suddenly, they break from the Present and go back in Time to tell you about a family member.

And they don’t just summarize the event. They describe it in great detail, including the thoughts of the characters.

Again, the main culprits of this type booboo are literary authors. Those bastards get away with everything!

3 Examples: Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne; Moby Dick by Herman Melville

4) The “I” persona disappears and secretly starts to narrate in the Third Person.

This usually happens in genre books with lots of action. One minute, you have the narrator telling you his/her innermost thoughts and then a fight breaks out.

It is remarkable that the “I” narrator tells you how his/her fight is going and in the following paragraph, how his/her mates are doing and what cool things they said.

During a fight, you want to focus on what your opponent is doing. Not. Not. Not. Not on the fighting style of the other people in your group.

If you suddenly look away while you’re kicking ass (to check out the way your pals are kicking ass too), you will likely get your ass kicked. Rightly so, for being a dumb ass.

4 Authors who do this: Jim Butcher (Dresden Files); Simon R. Green (The Nightside); Kim Harrison (The Hollows); Louis Corsair (The Elohim Trilogy)

5) The “I” persona can recall events in astonishingly clear detail.

This one is difficult to notice. You open a book and expect the narrator to describe events clearly. As a reader, you want the author to walk you through the story, to keep you engaged. This doesn’t change just because the narrator is describing events in the First Person.

But damn, they have good memory! If you asked me to tell you about my day, I might do it in a summarized fashion.

I woke up and my foot hurt. I went to visit a friend in San Pedro and we watched a movie and had some beers. I think I nodded off during the movie, but I’m not sure about that.

Talk about an unreliable narrator.

Just imagine reading a book like that! No Bueno.

Okay, okay…this is only a “screw up” because it’s impossible for humans to recall events clearly, especially all the events that go into a novel. It is part of the convention of the First Person POV.

But it is one of those necessary evils we writers have to put up with.

Examples? Try every writer who uses First Person POV. Ha!

TO SUMMARIZE:
These aren’t really mistakes. I hope you got that.

I know…

I know…

Sometimes it’s difficult to read the sarcasm in the words.

Anywho…

We writers like to experiment. And that usually leads to breaking conventions—I won’t call them rules.

It’s not really a new phenomenon. Look at novels from the 17th century. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes). Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne). Those are some of the first novels. Their authors didn’t hold anything back.

I guess you can say that for writers, breaking established conventions is an established convention.

Ha. Haha.

LC

Absolution: Redux (Elohim Trilogy, #1)
by Louis Corsair
September 15th 2020
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
At the end of the original Absolution, the Executor traveled back in Time and altered Reality. But by doing so, he set in motion a plan to end his existence and collapse Creation. Because of his actions, there is Absolution: REDUX…

In 1947, a gangster murders private investigator Raymond Adams. In 2011, he’s brought back to life for 24 hours to solve the supernatural murder of a Hollywood Adult film star.

When the son of a Pit Lord is murdered in Hollywood, the celestial beings in charge of the Realms ask Raymond Adams to figure who did it and find the victim’s missing soul. Without memories of his life, he accepts the case to gain eternal peace. But the job is daunting:

24 hours to nab a killer…
24 hours to find a missing soul…
24 hours to unravel the victim’s exotic private life…
24 hours to stop a plot to send the universe into chaos…

With only the help of a possessed cop and a medium, Adams must trek through a Hollywood underground filled with pornography, prostitutes, and sadists, along with supernatural monsters. But can he solve the case when his own haunting memories keep surfacing, telling him exactly what kind of man he was in life?

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About the Author:

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Louis Corsair is an eight-year veteran of the United States Army. Currently living in Los Angeles, California, he spends his time reading books, going on walks, writing, and enjoying the occasional visit to the beach—while trying to earn an honest buck. As a Los Angeles writer, he feels the weight of famous Los Angeles novelists, like Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Nina Revoyr, among others.

In 2021, he hopes to finish the Elohim Trilogy and its connected novels, including The Wizards Collide, and Apotheosis: Book Three of the Elohim Trilogy.

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Fantasy Author Ivy Keating: Ink Well--One writer’s process explained for the reader + giveaway

I found there are 4 basic steps to reaching a goal. If you’re a writer, creating a novel and finding an agent or publisher can be daunting. These steps can help you succeed. They are: identification, research, action, and reward.

1-Identification
It helps to know the goal you are trying to achieve. Let's say you want to write a book. Is finishing the story the goal or is getting it published? Be specific. When I started writing, my goal was to find a publisher and not self-publish my story. I wanted it to go through rigorous editing and I felt working with a publishing house was the best way.

2-Research.
What will it take to reach your goal? I looked up everything from the desired average length of a fantasy to which acquisition editors wanted to see this genre. Don't let this step hold up your progress. I didn't look up publishing houses until the novel was complete.

3-Action
Do the activities that will help you reach your goal. To write a book you have to have a story and create a novel. This is the step that is most likely to stand in your way. The key is to understand that goals are often not reached in a day, however, they require movement in the right direction. It is a step-by-step process. I did not get overwhelmed because when the task seemed too great, I focused on only what I had to do next. For example, while I was writing—all I had to do most of the time was to write the next sentence. I could do that!

4-Reward
Acknowledge your accomplishments. You can even give yourself a gift, praise, or both. It will help reinforce the concept that you can obtain your goals.

Sarana and the Dark King
by Ivy Keating
March 22, 2021
Genre: Fantasy
ASIN: B08Y81T7C4
Number of pages: 268
Word Count: 82,700
Cover Artist: Sevannah Storm
The time for hiding is over.

The fearsome Dark King of Bounten, with a magical creature known as a Valomere by his side, is on a quest to find the rare metal tarilium. His brutal ways incite the powerful psychic Allani. But when news of his plans to invade the kingdom of Attaveer spread, a new opponent emerges---Sarana, the daughter of a farmer…or is she?

At birth Sarana was sentenced to death for her "cursed" white hair. The delivery nurse, Meriden, whisked the fair-haired babe to a loving home across the waters from Bounten. Her entire life she hid her appearance to avoid prejudice. Things changed when she discovered she too had a Valomere. She strived to learn the creature's magic and master fighting skills with the hope of becoming a warrior. Her dreams came true when she was allowed to join the Attaveerian king's network of spies--a group poised to help defend the kingdom from an invasion by the Dark King and his powerful army.

When word of the white-haired messenger reached the Dark King he vowed to stop at nothing to capture or kill his opponent.

The time for hiding is over.

Can Sarana save herself and her kingdom? Follow Sarana from death to destiny as she joins forces with psychics, Valomeres, and the power of inner strength, to defeat an evil king.

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Teaser Excerpt:

“The sight in the dark space under the platform made her gasp. Storm! The Shiny golden eyes of the king’s Valomere. The creature that led a pack of gray wolves. It was the size of a jackal and had the narrow snout of a fox. The thought of its magical ability to kill with undetectable speed made her tremble. Everyone in Bounten knew, at the king’s whim, Storm could pass through her victim’s soul and destroy it.”

About the Author:
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Motivated by nature’s mysteries and the complexity of human behavior, Ivy Keating writes science fiction and fantasy novels that explore the relationship between mankind and the natural world. A master’s degree in social work helps her understand the nature of her characters as they struggle with the repercussions of their actions.

Her first novel, Camouflage, was inspired by the landscape and natural beauty of New England. Sarana and the Dark King, was imagined from a mental picture of the Great Lakes. The proximity of these bodies of water and the land that surrounds them conjured the images of separate kingdoms—at least they did in her mind. Ivy believes that her challenge as a writer is to take a setting that intrigues her and create a plot that is both clever and surprising.

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The Dark King ravages his kingdom in search of a rare metal known as tarilium. His power is enhanced by a mystical creature known as a Valomere. Only one thing can stop his reign of terror—a commoner with a secret past and a powerful Valomere of her own. https://amzn.to/3eoeKGx

#fantasybook #magiccreatures #wizards #fantasycreature #fantasynovel #fantasylovers #evilking

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Fantasy author Connor Coyne: How to Tell, and Show, Like a Champ + giveaway

HOW TO TELL, AND SHOW, LIKE A CHAMP

“Show, don't tell.”

From high school creative writing courses to graduate-level MFA programs, this is some of the most ubiquitous advice given to aspiring writers.

And often, it is good advice for writing.

Telling is a staple of day-to-day conversation, whether we're giving a friend directions to our house or asking our kids to wash up before dinner. After all, you wouldn't show your mother-in-law when she should get to the concert: “Find your seat as the sun finally plunges behind the horizon and all of the shadows converge into a great gray mass.” No, you'd say, “the show starts at 8, so meet us at 7:30 so we can all get seats.”

But the demands of fiction and poetry are quite different from our day-to-day routines. Writers seek to share a memorable, even changing experience, and in so doing it is more important to convey meaning, not data, through their words. To let readers know that this experience is different from any other, and must be read, and read carefully.

“Olga arrived at 7:30,” is a serviceable way to move the plot forward, but it says nothing of the unique experience of that moment in a character's life. But if you wrote, “Olga stepped from her car right as the sun plunged behind the horizon, and all of the shadows converged into a great gray mass,” you are sharing something a reader can imagine themselves, and that brings readers, writers, and characters all closer to a common experience.

Hence, “show, don't tell” is good advice for writers to orient themselves toward the job they need to do.

But once this lesson is absorbed, once writers are comfortable communicating with readers via their senses and observations, is it always good advice?

The greatest assumption in the dictum “show, don't tell” is that these modes are fundamentally different and always in opposition. Neither is true.

One could reasonably argue, that “showing” is just “telling” with a different emphasis. In the above example, the writer isn't telling the reader that “Olga arrived at 7:30,” but that “the sun plunged behind the horizon.” The writer is telling the reader about a sensory experience, not the time of day. Or, to put it differently, the reader has the opportunity and responsibility of greater experience and interpretation, but the writer is still supplying the raw materials that the reader will interpret. In that sense, “showing” and “telling” aren't different kinds of communication so much as the same kind of communication with a different emphasis.

Moreover, showing and telling are not always in opposition, and the most powerful and effective writers know they can complement and enhance each other:

“Olga stepped from her car right as the sun plunged behind the horizon, and all of the shadows converged into a great gray mass. It was the beginning of another night. A longer night. Nights would go longer and longer for months and months, and the last thing Olga wanted was to sit with a bunch of strangers and listen to her granddaughter's faltering clarinet warbles.”

In the above example, the first sentence stresses showing: it allows a reader to see what Olga sees, from her own point-of-view. The middle of the paragraph, however, defaults to telling: it informs us of what the sunset means to Olga. It isn't describing this through physical observation, but it states, with the voice of authority, how Olga feels. In the end, the example returns to showing: now that we understand Olga's melancholy mood and her desire for solitude, a reader's ability to imagine and hear the dissonant music helps strengthen their empathy with Olga. There is no way to imagine this scene without showing, but it is the telling that supplies Olga's state of mind.

If you pick up any well-written novel or short story, you'll find examples of this, with the showing – the sensory details – tied to readerly imagination, and the telling – the information – tied to readerly knowledge. And to be sure, the relationship is negotiable. There are no hard lines. Some writers will attempt to convey all of Olga's thoughts and feelings through her actions and sensations, without ever describing her thoughts at all. This is a very useful exercise for any writer. Other writers will incorporate more information, more data, or reveries and memories and daydreams which, themselves, may be admixtures of showing and telling.

I have grown very frustrated, over the years, by this false dichotomy between “showing” and “telling.” What begins as a useful guide to writers learning to suss out imagination and vigor from the written word ossifies into a stale dictum that limits both imagination and vigor. I challenge all of my students to consider the many ways in which a story can be told – to consider what the reader needs from their story – and then to use both showing and telling to get it done.

In the end, the success of any story is not contingent on the writer's faithful obedience to a set of pre-ordained rules, but to writing that to which readers respond. Writers owe their allegiance not to abstract concepts like “showing” and “telling” but to apply their skills to tell the story that needs to be told in the way it needs to be told.

Urbantasm (The Dying City Book One)
by Connor Coyne

September 6, 2018
Genre: YA, Magical Realism, New Adult, Teen Noir, Lit Fic
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
ISBN: 978-0989920230
ASIN: 0989920232
Number of pages: 450 pages
Word Count: 85,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin,
Forge22 Design
Urbantasm is a magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

Thirteen-year-old John Bridge’s plans include hooking up with an eighth-grade girl and becoming one of the most popular kids at Radcliffe Junior High, but when he steals a pair of strange blue sunglasses from a homeless person, it drops him into the middle of a gang war overwhelming the once-great Rust Belt town of Akawe.

John doesn’t understand why the sunglasses are such a big deal, but everything, it seems, is on the table. Perhaps he accidentally offended the Chalks, a white supremacist gang trying to expand across the city. Maybe the feud involves his friend Selby, whose father died under mysterious circumstances. It could even have something to do with O-Sugar, a homegrown drug with the seeming ability to distort space. On the night before school began, a group of teenagers took O-Sugar and leapt to their deaths from an abandoned hospital.

John struggles to untangle these mysteries while adjusting to his new school, even as his parents confront looming unemployment and as his city fractures and burns.

“A novel of wonder and horror.”— William Shunn, author of The Accidental Terrorist

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Excerpt Book 1
Chapter 1
I have to become the Antichrist.

I realized this one night when I was standing on an overpass looking down through a chain-link fence onto the expressway below. Blue neon light shined off icy puddles. The gutters were flush with slush. Empty houses, ragged wrecks, hung out on tiny lots to my left and right. Beneath me, the cars that this city had built were leaving it – some of them forever. Across from me, on a rusted trestle, a freight train slowly passed, bringing in the parts for more cars.

As the train moved on through, I thought about Drake and about how God had fucked him over. How he’d fucked us all over. Then I thought about the house with Jesus graffitied on its side. Orange skin, blue eyes, green thorns. A welter of wounds. I clenched my jaw and my teeth squeaked together. Across from me, the train wheels squealed.

If I wanted to save my friends, I would have to murder God.

Chapter 2
This is mostly my story, but I’m gonna start out by telling you about what happened to Drake. Just so you know – just so you can see right off the bat – what a bastard God could be and why a lot of us had it out for him.

In the summer of 1993, Drake had just turned sixteen.

He was going to be a junior, and his horror-show-of-a-life finally seemed to be turning a corner. He’d been living with his dad and sister in the trailer park when his mom finally moved out of her little house in the Lestrade neighborhood. She’d given it to Drake’s dad. She knew damn well that he wasn’t going to pay any rent, but she didn’t care as long as he kept the kids. Now Drake would have empty houses next door instead of empty trailers. He, his sister, and his dad had filled a couple dozen Hefty sacks with all their stuff and dropped them in the trunk of their scraped-up Benedict.

One trailer over, Sapphire watched, leaning back against the bent wall, her narrow eyes shaded behind her too-big sunglasses. She was a white girl, also sixteenish, with hair so light it glowed like tallow dripping from one of my mother’s candles. Blue eyes too, quiet laughter, nervous all the time, but silently thrilled to be growing up as fast as she could.

“I ever gonna see you now?” she asked.

“See me at school,” Drake said. “Summer’s done next week.”

“Suck a dick,” she said and laughed.

“Come over to my new place tonight. Come over, what, nine? Bring DeeDee. I’ll get Jamo and TK. Drinks from my dad. We’ll bust up that hospital like we said. I got gold now, you know. Crazy gold.”

And he did. Drake wasn’t a Chalk – fuck those racist fucks – but they were a North Side gang wanting to sell some coke and E out on the East Side, and Drake was their man. Okay, their middleman. EZ set the whole thing up. Drake hated the Chalks but he liked the money and he also liked EZ. How could you not like EZ, talking the way he did? Dude had magnetism.

Even before Drake had unpacked all his shit at the new place, even before the sun had dipped behind the swampy trees shadowing the creek, EZ pulled up in his moon blue Starr Slipstream. A sweet make and model for a blue-collar beater. Rust patches shaped like Martian mountains silhouetted against a dusty sky. EZ called Drake over to the window.

“You straight over here, D?” EZ said. “This all new to you?”

“Naw,” said Drake. “I got all the fiends back on Ash and I’ll get some here too. See my moms lived here years. Lestrade Hood. I know it. Every street. Every liquor store. Every squat the kids go to fuck.”

“What about you?” EZ asked. “You gettin’ some, D?”

“Not now, you know,” Drake said.

“But you got plans on that.”

“I don’t...”

“You better stitch it up then. If boys don’t fuck they die.” EZ grinned without parting his pink lips. Crows feet in the cracks of his mellow yellow eyes. He was white-ish, but he had some black in him, too. It always struck Drake as funny when black kids joined up with the Chalks.

Now EZ leaned out of the car, looking forward, turning to look back, taking in the whole street with its tidy ranches and its burnt-out wrecks. “Le Strayed,” he said, the tip of his tongue probing his teeth like he was rolling a Werther’s.

How old is he anyway? Drake wondered. Older than Drake. Younger than Drake’s dad. It was hard to tell.

“You know,” EZ said. “Jesus was a fool to crawl up on that cross. God made the devil. Devil is God’s tool. Hammer in his hand. And the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the Earth, and don’t you think that was part of Yahweh’s plan too? What you think woulda happened if Jesus had just said ‘yes?’ I bet we wouldn’t be slumming in Akawe.”

Akawe is the name of this city.

A poor city. A beat-up city. A car-making city an hour’s drive from Detroit, but then the cars it made left, along with the money, along with the people. Akawe.

“I don’t know,” said Drake. “I ain’t religious.”

EZ laughed. “No, you ain’t,” he said. “Here. I got something new for you to test for me. Make some night special. Full of secrets.”

He beckoned. Drake leaned in through the open window. In EZ’s palm, a sandwich bag with five white pills.

“What’s that?” asked Drake.

“A new thing,” EZ said. “Chalks call it O-Sugar. Kinda like E. Kinda not. Try it out. Give it some time. Don’t go to sleep. Gonna see the world through God’s eyes. Feel like Jesus would if he’d said yes to his good friend the devil.”

After EZ signed off, Drake helped his dad and his sister unpack until the sun went down and his friends came over. They all sat on the front porch, passed a 40, smoked up, and put the pills of O-Sugar on their tongues and swallowed. They talked about music and cars and love and sex.

About big old TK who had built a Frankenstein sedan from the soldered guts of four different cars.

About DeeDee, sad-in-her-heart that this boy Shawn would never see a woman in her like she saw a man in him. “He’s on varsity, you know,” she said.

Then, there was skinny Jamo with his horn-rimmed glasses. He kept farting. He said he liked the kids’ urinals best because that way his dick didn’t brush the puck.

Drake didn’t talk much, though. He kept looking at Sapphire – her eyes, her face, her perfect nose – and he felt her laughter run his spine like blue notes down a keyboard. She was a song he hoped he might play some day, but not in a crude way. He hoped he was a conversation she might have.

The kids’ hearts started to glow in their chests with a slow, soft burn. That was the beer talking. They walked down the driveway to DeeDee’s Aubrey.

They left Lestrade and crossed the expressway into Anderson Park – brick houses, neat lawns, where the mayor and the college presidents lived – but even these exalted ones couldn’t keep St. Christopher’s Hospital open in crumbling Akawe. The hospital towered in the midst of the neighborhood, full of empty-dark windows and stern staring statues.

DeeDee parked on a side street of prim Cape Cods and the kids walked the last half block to the hospital complex. Above them, the moon waxed, and the whole sky – the everything – seemed to unfurl and offer itself to Drake, limpid and tender. Is that the O-Sugar? Or just the weed? Drake swelled into the wide space of that raw and thrilling moment.

TK led them across the cracked parking lot to the loading dock.

They hauled up the service gate, slipped inside, and descended into the fluorescent-lit basement. There were seven buildings in St. Christopher’s, but underground tunnels connected them all. After hitting a few dead-ends, the kids found their way to the central building. The six-story main building with a floor plan shaped like a giant cross. As they climbed, floor by floor, moment by moment, the shadows around them expanded with opportunities, with regrets redressed, and the future converging upon their pasts. Infinities of little universes hid in the dark corners of that empty space, clear of matter but clouded with tension, ready to emerge.

By the time they reached the roof, they all felt dizzy and disoriented. Before, their yearning spirits had stretched into each new second, each new room. But now that the potential for movement threatened actual motion – now that acceleration accelerated – they put their hands in their pockets and tried to slow down. The speed of everything was getting weird on them.

“Babies, I gotta sit down!” said Jamo.

They all sat.

“I feel like, like sad and sore,” said Sapphire and she plucked at her hair.

“Hold my hand, Saph,” said DeeDee, and they all held hands.

Far off, the sound of a train rang out and, at that moment, the city lights opened wide like eyes, and the stars glowed and exploded, and heat spilled like syrup from above. Dust and clouds, spinning and shining with lightning and friction. Planetoids and asteroids whirling with volcanoes down jets of solar steam. As the train whistle sang, its sound was compressed, compacted, tonally shifted upwards, higher, with panic. As the pitch got higher and higher, Drake felt better and better, and it terrified him. He climbed on top of himself – palms pushing down on his head – to hold his soaring heart in place, but the shadows everywhere slid up convex hypotenuses from the streets below. They weighed down invisible tightropes that connected to the tallest buildings Downtown. Everything kept turning bluer and bluer. Turning to blue and purple.

The shadows swung their arms. They were the remnants of that abandoned place, humanoid, with blue coins replacing their eyes. They had flown away when their owners checked out and went home or died at the hospital. Now, they returned, suctioned in, pulled back toward the points of departure.

But as the shadows converged and became more humanlike, Drake’s friends had been reduced to matter and residuals. TK and DeeDee and Jamo and Sapphire had all lost their eyes and their ability to speak. Their faces had become smooth planes of flesh and, finally, pure fields of electricity. Small blobs, data balls, started to grow and divide. Oxygen bloomed. The kids floated – impossible! – but happening, and as they did the lights got brighter and brighter, heightened and compressed, flattened and overheated.

“Sapphire...” Drake tried to say, and he leaned toward her, straining to see her features again. He wondered what had happened to him and his friends. What was happening around them. On every side. He imagined their height, sixty feet up. The death it represented.

Then, as if in response, space itself pressed in and Drake felt himself stretched out over the edge of the building. He fell. He was falling. Yellow-blue parking lot lines dropped away behind him and approached. They got small. The last thing he saw before he hit were black streaks of grypanian spirals, dotting away and multiplying.

The sky was a dome, but the parking lot was deep.

Urbantasm: The Empty Room (Book Two)

by Connor Coyne
September 26, 2019
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
ISBN:
ASIN:
Number of pages:
Word Count: 175,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin, Forge22 Design
Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the second book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

John Bridge is only two months into junior high and his previously boring life has already been turned upside-down. His best friend has gone missing, his father has been laid-off from the factory, and John keeps looking over his shoulder for a mysterious adversary: a man with a knife and some perfect blue sunglasses.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, John must now confront his complicated feelings for a classmate who has helped him out of one scrape after another, although he knows little about who she is and what she wants. What does it mean to want somebody? How can you want them if you don’t understand them? Does anybody understand anyone, ever? These are hard questions made harder in the struggling city of Akawe, where the factories are closing, the schools are closing, the schools are crumbling, and even the streetlights can’t be kept on all night.

John and his friends are only thirteen, but they are fighting for their lives and futures. Will they save Akawe, will they escape, or are they doomed? They might find their answers in an empty room… in a city with ten thousand abandoned houses, there will be plenty to choose from.

Amazon

Excerpt Book 2
In the perfect past, in the flushest years at Ellis Island, as overladen ships waked the gray waves and passed into New York Harbor, small groups of Greeks clustered at the prows  and pointed at the broad banks of twinkling lights in the distance.

“Είναι ότι η New York?” they'd ask a deckhand or whoever happened to be standing nearby. “Ya,” he'd reply. “That's Coney Island.”

“Coney Island,” the emigrants repeated in awe, leaning out over the churning ocean to get a better look at their new home. It was sparkling bright, shimmering, these ethereal, auroral sparks in the morning twilight, murmured invitations from the Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, to taste the delights of the Boardwalk, of Luna Park, Steeplechase, Dreamland, and rapture on off of the Parachute Drop. The lights preceded the long queues, the dirty work, the discrimination against these Orthodox Christians with their swinging censers and their woolly bearded priests. In the hard years to come, the emigrants always held that first vision of Coney Island in their memories, because it was their first, unsullied glimpse of the Americas, and it had seemed to confirm the promise of a better life here. That's why, days, or weeks, or years later, having saved up scraps from their factory jobs, or having snuck small fortunes overseas, sewn into their threadbare jackets, when they opened hot dog stands in the industrial cities of Southeast Michigan, they called them “Coney Islands.”

That's the story I was told growing up. Like so many of our New World origin stories, it's pretty much bullshit. The immigrants called their wieners “coney islands” because they bought them at Coney Island, and the local Chamber of Commerce banned the words “hot dog” because they figured the stupid immigrants might think their wieners were made from actual dogs.

But when the supposedly stupid immigrants arrived in Michigan and started selling their own coney islands in the nineteen teens, they decided to improve their product. Thus began a long process of prayer and experimentation, roots plucked from tiny backyard gardens, cattle slaughtered at the altar, with providential navigation toward the apotheosis  of the hot dog.

The core of this creation was the wiener itself, and from 1914 these were produced under arcane secrecy by the Richard Goerlich Bavarian Encased Meats Company, later known simply as “Goerlich's.” Perhaps as a nod to the melting pot that threw the German Lutherans in with the Balkanites, a Goerlich was made out of many animals. A puree of pork and beef with secret spices all pressed together in a lambskin casing, tied off and smoked over a hardwood grill. The pork content meant that these Viennas could be grilled for longer than other wieners without burning and shrinking. The spices were sweet and sour: traces of mustard, sugar, vinegar, and salt. When you bit into a Goerlich, you felt the skin snap before your teeth sank into its soft inner flesh.

A Goerlich alone, however, was not enough to make the superior coney. To turn a Goerlich into a coney, you had to top it with coney sauce, mustard, and onions, on a fresh bun, on a hot plate with a hot cup of coffee on the side. To do it right, everything must be fresh. Even the mustard, the simplest ingredient, must taste as sharp as a paring knife and shine as bright as the sun. The Balkanites didn't just chop their onions into large, trapezoidal chunks. Onions were precision-cubed by calloused hands at half the speed of sound before being swept into oak barrels and sealed and chilled and called into use. Akawe Ashkenazi bakeries supplied the buns, which the Balkanites steamed before setting them onto waxed paper gracing elliptical china plates. The thick plates kept your food from burning your fingers. The thick cups kept your coffee from cooling off.

I haven't described the sauce. I've saved the best for last. Finely ground beef heart and beef kidney, mixed with beef suet and more ground up Goerlich's, browned minced onions, and sanguined spices. Which spices? Cumin and chili powder and something else. Something magical. Nobody knows what but the coney chefs, and if they told then they would not be gods.

The truth is, they may not have realized at first the specialness of what they had created. These Greeks, these Macedonians, these Albanians, these Rumanians had arrived in factory burgs to take up jobs in the factories and to serve the factory workers. The immigrants hemmed trousers, cobbled clogs, thatched nobs. They sold their coneys on the side, to earn a little extra, but soon they noticed that the coneys brought in more ducats than their other trades.

This was filling food; as heavy as it was delicious. The X Automobilians, whether sweating in the foundries, grinding through midnight shifts at the metal center, or straining over dies and tools in bright light for hours, could fill up in five minutes with a coney and coffee. The perfect food for an assembly line town, as demonstrated by the ordering shorthand that sprang into life like a new language: “One up” meant a coney with everything; a milestone of verbal economy and the inverse relationship of calories to syllables. So coney stands became Coney Island Restaurants. They bloomed fruitful and fecund, increased in number. Multiplied across the earth and increased upon it.

By the mid-twenties some three-dozen Coney Islands in Akawe served up tens of thousands of coneys a day built by hundreds of restaurant employees. Balkan assembly line workers bent over their stations for hours: one man grilled the Goerlich's, another steered it to its bun and plate, where the next station assembled the dressing, nothing written down, everything achieved with hands and voice, as demanding of speed and rigor as riveting.

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that there were so many Coney Islands that they were served over the river; two restaurants opened on the midst of the East Street Bridge and stayed there for decades. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the Coney Islands were open 24-7-365. Once, during a flood, a Coney had to hire a security guard to watch the door because the owners had lost the keys years earlier.

The Coney Islands thrived along the factory zones. They pulsed along the Akawe's main arteries. They anchored each neighborhood and kept their street corners noisy all night long, from the wail of the evening whistle to the chiming of the church bells.

When the factories started to wither, the Coney Islands did too.

They held out longer than the factory jobs but, one by one, the great restaurants closed their doors. Midnight Oil Coney Island, Akawe Old Fashioned Coney Island, Delicious Coneys, Joe's Original Coney Island, and most of the others dried up through the 80s. By 1993, there were less than a dozen left.

About the Author:
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Connor Coyne is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan. 
His first novel, Hungry Rats, has been hailed by Heartland prize-winner Jeffery Renard Allen as “an emotional and aesthetic tour de force.”

His second novel, Shattering Glass, has been praised by Gordon Young, author of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City as “a hypnotic tale that is at once universal and otherworldly.”

Connor’s novel Urbantasm, Book One: The Dying City is winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2019 Young New Adult Award. Hugo- and Nebula-nominee William Shunn has praised Urbantasm as “a novel of wonder and horror.”

Connor’s essay “Bathtime” was included in the Picador anthology Voices from the Rust Belt. His work has been published in Vox.com, Belt Magazine, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere.

Connor is on the planning committee for the Flint Festival of Writers and in 2013 he represented Flint’s 7th Ward as its artist-in-residence for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town grant. In 2007, he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School.

Connor lives in Flint’s College Cultural Neighborhood (aka the East Village), less than a mile from the house where he grew up.

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2 signed print copies of Book One 

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