Where do you get your ideas?

I'm always curious about how writers come up with their stories--one reason I really enjoy "How I Came to Write This Story" over at Patti Abbott's blog. Most of the time when I come up with an idea it's because of some sort of collision between something I've read or seen on TV and something that has happened in my daily life.
Right now, I'm writing a story called "Failure to Communicate." It's about a crazy cat lady that thinks her cat is sending her secret messages via the cat box.
The idea came to me one morning as I cleaned up after the cat and found a perfect letter L left for me in the cat sand. Eeeewwww. 
Nothing is ever wasted.

Nightfalls anthology

The Nightfalls anthology is in its final editing cycle and it's a terrific group of stories. The anthology will be priced at $3.99 (a bargain for 29 stories), with all proceeds going to Para Los Ninos, an organization that helps at-risk kids and their parents succeed in education and in life.
The cover design is by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services, who donated her work to the project, She will also be designing both the ebook and the print version.  The stories range from speculative fiction to horror to humor with side trips to science fiction and noir-flavored lit fic.

Everybody I asked to participate in this anthology said yes, and then they gave me wonderful stories (and one poem). It's been a pleasure to work with everyone and I hope to do it again soon. More details to come, but just to whet your appetite--here's the TOC:

Acapulcolypse

            Thomas Pluck

Some Say the World Will End in Fire

            Sidney Anne Harrison

Forward is Where the Croissantwich Is

            Chris Rhatigan

Somebody Brave

            Kat Laurange

Our Lady

            Dale Phillips

Greene Day

            Nigel Bird

Isabel

            Megan McCord

The Memory Keeper

            Sandra Seamans

Bon Appétit

            Barb Goffman

Déjà vu

            Christopher Grant

It's Not the End of the World

            Matthew C. Funk

A Sound as of Trumpets

            Berkeley Hunt

Supper Time

            Col Bury

Blackened

            Dellani Oakes

The End of Everything

            AJ Hayes

Last Shift

            Steven Luna

Into the Night

            Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

Blackout

            Richard Godwin

Amidst Encircling Gloom

            Scott J Laurange

Devotee

            G. Wells Taylor

Princess Soda and the Bubblegum Knight

            R. C. Barnes

The Last Wave

            Kaye George

The Dogs on Main Street Howl

            Allen Leverone

Call the Folks

             Alex Keir

The Knitted Gaol Born Sow Monkey

            Peter Mark May 

Crossfade

            Christian Dabnor

The Tasting

            Jesse James Freeman

The Annas

            Patricia Abbott

Night Train to Mundo Fine

            Jimmy Callaway

Pulp Ink 2 is here!!

Huzzah--thanks to editors Chris Rhatigan and Nigel Bird!! These stories have a horror and a fantastical edge. Buy it here for kindle for just $2.99.  Buy the print version here.
Here's what you need to know about it:  Pulp Ink 2’s got beautiful killers, visions of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty rats, and one severed arm on a quest for revenge. No half-assed reboots here, just some of the finest writing in crime and horror today.

Featuring stories by Kevin Brown, Mike Miner, Eric Beetner, Heath Lowrance, Matthew C. Funk, Richard Godwin, Cindy Rosmus, Christopher Black, Andrez Bergen, James Everington, W. D. County, Julia Madeleine, Kieran Shea, Joe Clifford, Katherine Tomlinson, R. Thomas Brown, Court Merrigan, BV Lawson, and Patti Abbott.

Patti Abbott's Drabble Contest

Over at her blog, Patti Abbott has posed a challenge--write a drabble using one of several photographs for inspiration. (A drabble is a story that is complete in exactly 100 words, a fiendish literary form.) The links to the entries are posted at Pattinase, check out the others.

Here's mine.

Image of Unknown Cultural Artifact

The T’andoor’ii explorers had not thought it likely they would encounter any standing structures remaining in the explora-zone, so they were thrilled when they came across a ruined building that still had an intact roof.

There was much debate about the purpose of the building, which was too large to be a single-family dwelling but too small to contain a whole community. The youngest of the explorers suggested it might be some sort of house of worship but his-her suggestion was dismissed. From what the explorers knew of the dead civilization they were studying, it had been a godless one.

Feminist Fiction Friday--bits and pieces

There's still time to get in on Patti Abbott's "drabble contest." She supplies the prompts, you write a story in exactly 100 words.

Huzzah--Gillian Flynn has a new book out. Gone Girl. About a marriage gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Coming at the end of the month is a debut novel called The Age of Miracles by  Karen Thompson Walker. It's a combinatin of science fiction, thriller and coming of age story. 

in July, there will be another entry in Tana French's excellent Dublin Murder Squad series. It's called Broken Harbor.

Free Download--Here Be Monsters

Just in time for Halloween, Here Be Monsters, eight tales of vampires, werewolves, demons, zombies and other horrors. The anthology includes the story "Figs" by Jeremy C. Shipp and you can find all the details on his blog.

Still bloodthirsty? Check out John Donald Carlucci's collection 11 Drops of Blood, eleven stories for 99 cents. That's nine cents a story--a bargain in any currency.

Patti Abbott has a new collection of fiction out from Snubnose Press called Monkey Justice. (The title story was originally printed in Dark Valentine with an illustration by Mark Satchwill.) You can find the book (only $2.99)  here.

And of course (shameless self-promotion), you can get my first collection, Just Another Day in Paradise free right now on Kindle and Smashwords.

Patti Abbott's Flash Fiction Challenge

Patti Abbott hosts some terrific flash fiction challenges and this one was irresistible. Choose any work by American artist Reginald Marsh and write a 1000-word story inspired by it.  II spent an excellent hour clicking through decades of Marsh's work. All of it was extremely evocative and lively. (See Sandra Seamans' blog about choosing her picture for the challenge.)  Here's a link to some of his work to give you an idea.  (The painting across the top of the page  reminds me a bit of my friend Joanne Renaud's work.)
The painting I finally chose, "Red Buttons," was painted in 1936 in egg tempera on board.  Coincidentally, it's now in the Huntington Library's collection, so one day soon, I can visit the original.

My story is called "A Friend in Need" and it's 992 words long.  If you go to Patti's site, you'll find links to the other stories participating in the challenge.

A FRIEND IN NEED

Nancy met Bea at Child’s Cafeteria when they both reached for the last piece of lemon meringue pie. “Let’s share it,” Bea suggested, and simple as that they were sitting at a table, talking like old friends.

Bea told Nancy she worked for an insurance company as a comptometer operator, making $28 a week, which sounded like a fortune to Nancy.

Nancy’s father ran a general store back in Ohio and delivered mail as a rural route carrier too. Gas was only ten cents a gallon but there were times when scraping together enough to fill the tank was hard because he let so many people run tabs at his store.

Nancy knew her parents were worried about her living in New York City, even though she was sharing a place with her cousin and her husband.

Nancy’s parents were one generation away from farm folk and had a deep suspicion of the big city.

Still, they knew the only work available to her in Ohio was back-breaking farm labor and they didn’t want that for their only child. Nancy had skills. She could type-write and she knew Gregg shorthand.

They were sure she’d be able to find employment in New York, so they sent her off with their blessing and $48 they’d saved up.

Her father had also sent her off with the admonition to stay away from Harlem—“No good can come of associating with colored people,” he’d told her—and her mother had added her own, vague warnings to avoid “mashers” and “men who only want one thing.”

Bea had laughed when Nancy imitated her mother’s warning about men, and taken another bite of the pie.

“How fast can you type?” Bea asked.

“Seventy words a minute,” Nancy replied proudly. She could actually type a lot faster but if she did, the keys started jamming.

A Numbers Game

There's a seasonal rhythm to the freelance work I do. It gets busy in May and in September and in January because I'm prepping my clients for the big film markets--Cannes and American Film Market and the Berlinale. Hollywood is dead in August (there's a crime story title) and again from Thanksgiving to the New Year. This year the summer slow-down started early, which has left me with a lot of free time. You know what they say about the devil finding work for idle hands...

I should have been working on my novel--my self-imposed deadline is my birthday in mid-September--but instead I've been writing short stories. A lot of them, as it turns out. If you count the two a week I write for NoHo Noir, I have written 16 short stories this month, or one every two days. I haven't been that productive in years.

Patti Abbott's questions about a short story writer's process have me thinking about what was different this month. Part of it was simply that I had more time. While I don't have a traditional "day job," I still have to meet my monthly nut and that means stringing together income from a number of sources--the book reviews, the story reports, the editing gigs.

Another factor was fear. Like everyone else in the country, I've been frustrated by the debt ceiling debate. I don't care what side of the debate you're on, it's been surreal (in Suze Orman's words) watching the country's elected representatives posture and pontificate without regard to how their actions affect real people.

I've seen my projected Social Security payout figures and assuming I hold off drawing checks until I'm 70 or so, the pay might just cover my rent if I move to Panama. In theory, America celebrates the entrepreneur, but in reality, self-employed people get double-taxed, without the benefits of paid vacation and sick time. The upside is you don't have to deal with office politics; the downside is if you don't work, you don't get paid. And so this month I embarked on a submission frenzy--writing to prompts, writing to markets, writing just because an idea entered my head. I even went back to old notebooks filled with "half-baked" stories and finished them.

Remember Heinlein's rules of writing? The first one is, "You must write." The second one is, "You must finish what you write." This month I was all over that.

Now I just have to do it again next month. And work on that novel.

Patti Abbott's "Scarry Night" Fiction Challenge

Here's my entry into the fiction challenge posted here.

SCARIFICATION

Ned knew she was sensitive about her appearance. The fire had barely touched her face but it had left her right hand nothing but a fingerless knob, sheathed in taut shiny skin. She still had the nubs of three fingers on her left hand, enough to hold a pen, enough to pull a zipper, enough to handle a fork. She was clumsy with them, though, because she had been right-handed.

Ned admired her for using her hand in public, for defying the stares and the curiosity of strangers. He knew she was self-conscious and applauded her courage. It was just one of the things he loved about her. When he took her to bed, he kissed the fingers of her left hand tenderly and then kissed what remained of her right hand.

As he stroked her from shoulder to hip, she trembled at his touch. She quivered and moaned, making noises in her throat in her rising excitement. Ned liked that. He liked a vocal woman.

He undressed her gently, delicately, peeling back the layers of clothes like the rind of a succulent fruit. The scarred skin on her torso was so textured and tortured it seemed like an alien substance, like the melted remains of some plasticized machine.

He traced his finger down the worst of the wounds, a thick, calloused ribbon of flesh that marked the edge of a graft where some dead stranger’s skin had been used to cover the raw redness left when her epidermis burned away.

“I really don’t mind the scars,” he said as she turned her head away from him as if ashamed. “They mark you as special,” he added, twining his hand into her hair to turn her face back towards him. “They are why I chose you.”

She began to cry then, her tears leaking silently down her cheeks and soaking into the duct tape that gagged her. He had stuffed her underpants into her mouth before sealing it with the tape and so the only sound she could make sounded like a baby mewling. It excited him even more than the scars.

He hadn’t been lying when he told her it was her scars had attracted him to her. Scarification was his thing.

By the time he finished with her, she would be beautiful.

Winter is Coming!

The winter issue of Dark Valentine Magazine that is. This issue has 15 tales that are guaranteed to chill you to the bones and freeze your blood. The illustration here is by Natasha Killeen, an 18-year-old Aussie artist who was up for the challenge of illustrating Eric Dimbleby's incredibly dark story "Baby on Board." He seems like a nice fellow but after reading the story--I'm not sure I want to run into him in a dark alley. Other stories include Patti Abbott's "Too Beautiful," Edward A. Grainger's "Justice Served," Brian Trent's take on a Poe classic, "Down Memory Line" and much, much more. The cover story is Christine Pope's inspired twist on the classic "Snow Queen" fairy tale. In other words, there's a little something for everyone. The winter issue of Dark Valentine Magazine will be available on the site tomorrow, December 3.

Dude Looks like a Lady

Here's my entry into Patti Abbott's Sweet Dreams Challenge. Here's what we were given--Eurythmics Sweet Dreams is playing in a restaurant of some kind when a red-headed woman wearing an electric blue dress walks in. Under 1000 words.

Check out her blog to see the other entries which will be posted Monday, May 3, 2010. If you don't know her blog, you should.

Let me know what you think of Dude--

Dude Looks Like a Lady

I was deep into my second plate of Chilaquiles Verdes, hoping the cheese and fried tortillas would soak up some of the alcohol in my stomach before I had to go on duty. I hadn’t had much sleep and I’d been up early to run some errands and I was in a foul mood to start with so the 80s music pumping at ear-bleed levels didn’t help.

I wasn’t the only one who winced when Sweet Dreams replaced Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. With its throbbing backbeat and Annie Lennox’s orgiastic wailing, the song was a musical root canal exposing every nerve in my head. I signaled Yadira to refill my coffee as Annie whispered, “Hold your head up” and drained it almost before she’d turned away.

The headache was kicking my ass. I was thinking about getting a Red Bull to go when Zelda came through the door.

Staggered was more like it. Her long red wig was askew, revealing about three inches of smooth, shaven skull. It looked like she’d been scalped. “Oh my god,” shouted the assclown in the corner booth, shrinking back as far away as possible. Frozen by the sight of the blood soaking her electric blue dress.

Blue was Zelda’s favorite color because it brought out the color of her eyes. “I’m a Technicolor woman in a black and white world,” she’d told me once, and it just about broke my heart.

I keyed my radio and called for a bus but by the looks of her, Zelda would be dead before the ambulance arrived. As I moved toward her I saw the busboy take a picture with his phone. I grabbed the phone and stomped on it. Crushed that plastic clamshell like an oversized roach. The kid said something to me in Spanish that made Yadira gasp. I told him in English to get back in the kitchen or I’d do the same thing to his scrawny illegal ass. He understood that and stood aside, pouting. I’d spoiled his chance to make points with his FaceBook friends by posting the picture.

Yadira gave me her apron and I balled it up and stuffed it into the hole in Zelda’s gut, putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding. “You’re hurting her,” the guy in the corner booth said. “You’re making it worse.”

What is it with civilians? Seriously. This guy hadn’t even bothered to dial 911 and now he’s telling me what to do? Like he’s a doctor and not a bottom-feeder lawyer who has to scrounge for court-appointed cases. I’ve seen him hanging around the court house in Van Nuys, mooching cigarettes from pissed-off potential jurors taking a smoke break after hours of waiting around to see if they’re going to get called.

“You’re hurting her,” the guy said again because lawyers never know when to keep their mouths shut. I stood up and walked over to his booth. Crowded him a little as I leaned in to him. “Shut up,” I suggested.

I’m a big guy and in uniform, I rarely have to ask twice. The guy looked like he was going to make me ask twice, so I knocked everything off his table—dishes, napkins, paper placemats, the little pitcher of maple syrup for his pancakes. He got wide-eyed then and he shut up quick. Yadira moved to clean it all up. “Leave it,” I growled and she backed away. I could tell I was scaring her.

I went back to see how Zelda was doing. Not good. She was barely conscious. I could hear the siren of the approaching ambulance but knew it would arrive too late. I told Zelda to hold on. I’m not sure she heard me.

Zelda.

She was a sweet lost soul wobbling through life in size 14 four-inch heels. She’d been born Bobby Zelda but reversed the order of her name as she worked on reversing her gender. She was in the final stages of pre-op, trying to raise money for her last operation one blow job at a time. If she’d gone to Vegas she could have been pulling down $200 a pop minus whatever cut her pimp took, but she didn’t want to leave her mother.

I gave her money sometimes and we both pretended it wasn’t charity. A girl like Zelda can be an asset to a cop. These street girls see everything. I told her to be careful. Some things you see can get you killed.

Zelda was a good girl but she should never have been in that alley this morning. She never should have seen me taking that money. I’d warned her what could happen if she saw the wrong thing. I’d told her. But she hadn’t listened. She had just laughed, with no concern for self-preservation at all. It was a self-esteem thing. She didn’t have much.

I had thought she was dead in the alley. I made sure she was by the time the ambulance arrived. Yadira was weeping as the EMTs took Zelda away.

Everyone was starting to mill around when the detectives arrived. They found the murder weapon wrapped in a napkin on the floor by the corner booth. Right where I’d left it when I’d swept everything off the table.

The lawyer was wide-eyed as he saw the knife and said the first thing that came into his head, which was… “I didn’t kill it.” Everyone in the room gasped. He fumbled around for something more PC to say but the damage was done.

That’s lawyers for you. Never know when to keep their mouths shut.

I gave my statement to the detective and managed to make it to work in time for roll call, the chilaquiles sitting in my stomach like a ticking cheese bomb. After work, I’d go by and say hello to Zelda’s mother. See if she needed anything. It was the least I could do.