New Story Published

New (at least, new to publication) story has found itself a home in Robbed of Sleep Volume 5, published by BigHugeGiant (@bighugegiant) and edited by Troy Blackford, who can be found lurking on Twitter under the handle @TBlackford3.

'Mr. Chop's House of Credit' is a story I wrote some time ago and it's always been a fond favourite, but has never found a home. Maybe its mix of gore and humour isn't for everyone, but if you like the idea of a pawnbroker's with a penchant for human organs, then it will be for you.

According to our editor, this latest anthology offers:

"Thirty-three fearful, fretful, and freakishly fanciful stories fresh from the minds of some of today’s most unstable speculative fiction authors"

I do so like this description of us RoS lot.

Click here for the e-version. Print to follow very soon.

New Story Out

The Morpheus Tales Taboo Special issue has landed! My story 'Apron Strings' is amongst the pages of what promises to be, "No limits, no holds barred." @morpheustales

I'm pretty pleased with this story. It shaped itself quite naturally around a quick snippet from a friend. She had just given birth to her son. The midwife asked if she wanted to keep the placenta. The midwife still had her own son's placenta in her freezer 22 years later...

From the publishers:

"The free preview of the magazine is available here:
https://issuu.com/morpheustales/docs/taboo_special_issue_preview

The ebook in various formats is available here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/648109?ref=morpheustales

The ebook will also be available on amazon for the kindle soon.

The printed digest size edition is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue/paperback/product-22778122.html

The printed perfect-bound edition is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue-perfect-bound-edition/paperback/product-22778129.html

10% off print copies for a limited period!"

It Was Nothing More Than Once Upon A Time

A wise man (that would be Chuck Palahniuk, who knows a thing or two about visceral storytelling) said, 

"Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you."

Chuck Palahniuk may remember me from such 'Stan'-style letters that ran, 'I'm a really really big fan of yours', 'I want to be a writer TOO' and 'How do you do what you do?' 

I have his delicately typed, 'Chill the fuck out, hunny' responses still saved in their envelopes. Maybe I'll frame them. 

He does makes an excellent point. So many times past memories, triggers, fears, anxieties feel like real and present danger. They make fingers go totally numb, chests cramp, bowls unleash, heads explode with pain, arms shake, voices stutter and language and sometimes actions unfold into some confusion of fighting something that is no longer happening. 

Though memories can leave great imprints, leave keloids on the heart, they are no more real than a Netflix box set or a really long novel. A detailed tangled story. Your story, but a story. And stories live only in the mind.

But those feelings. Oh, those feelings are fried gold. If a traumatic/weird/hysterically dark past can be separated from present-day living, then we have that thing some writers bitch that they cannot find. 

Plot. 

Plot is story. Plot is narrative. Plot is the tale of a person or people navigating life. Plot is someone's past formulating a future. Plot runs a book, a TV show, a film, a play, a poem.

I cannot claim that I do not get sudden shooting pains through my jawbones or numb fingertips when I get caught in the past. I can't claim I don't think something terrible is about to happen. And then I see I am stood still at a bus stop, waiting to go to work. There is a lone teenager with exploding acne sloped against the lamppost, half-awake for college. A man wearing ADDICTED sweatpants idles past me and lets their elderly dog shit on the grass verge. Life is just life as it should be.

Then I know I can gather up those scraps of past that have screeched through my head like serial killers on Spice and twist them up into fiction like horrible origami.

I think this is my way of saying today was a difficult 'aspie' day. But I went to work, hid my hand-flapping, only had mild outbursts and right now I'm in front of the laptop, favouring fiction over planning my wedding. I have fourteen months until I'm wed. I've been waiting my whole life to turn hours of cramped typing into more than something that just makes me want to sleep through my day job.

Ctrl + N. 

Now. Begin tying.

Squishy Pages

A smushing of short stories is now a complete collection. Break out the glitter and Jaffa Cakes.

Yeah, an unpublished collection, but it's mine, it's gross and it's dark. And funny in a way that a really noxious fart makes you laugh and retch at the same time. I've spent a long time hunched over this laptop or scribbling in B&M notebooks and then carving it up with red ink until it's taken a nice twisted shape, like a cherry blossom tree subjected to bindweed. 

Side note: 

I've long-since discovered that chain coffee shops are not the place for writing and plotting. For a start, who has a spare £4 for a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte when fun writing takes hours and a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte takes about fifteen minutes to drink? 

And, also, these shops are choked with office workers, hipster students and yummy mummies so it's not the best place to slam your fist down on the table and shout:

'Of course! Eric and Lauren didn't know they were brother and sister until after their first child was born!'




I mean, you could. But who has the time to explain?

And if you did, most people don't like discussing incest plot twists over blueberry muffins.

Glad I'm not most people.




So, a preview of story gunge to come:

• A small South Bank pawn shop that focuses their business on human organs

• A woman getting over a particularly sickening break-up bumps into one of her students at the GUM Clinic

• A palliative care nurse is spending the last hour of her shift concentrating more on her patient's earrings than her patient

• A man frozen in a coma from catching snowflakes on his tongue

• A psychiatric registrar doing a rotation with a maverick consultant in behavioural therapy

• A man addicted to A&E

• A couple who find that their newborn gives them a new taste for life

• An artistic mother intent on fashioning a famous life for her perfect daughter

• A teenage boy at his girlfriend's wake who is more distracted by his erection than by mourning relatives

And more!

Now, time to edit, edit, edit. And drag a worthy synopsis together. And find an agent or publisher. And maybe have a blueberry muffin, because now I'm sort of hungry. 

Barista! Fetch cake! And a maroon gel pen!

#Amwriting

Two stories knocked out for recent submissions. Two others remain under consideration. Two others published recently. It would be nice if publishers still took on collections of short stories because I've clocked up over 90,000 words of the bad boys, but until that era comes again I'll print and staple them for my friends, my poor poor friends who were expecting...nicer stories. 

I'm rediscovering a real joy (does that sound right?) for horror-speculative fiction. Weirdness, grossness, what-the-fuck-ness. It's what I'm all about right now.

One story clocked in at just under 10,000 words (perhaps I got lost with the plot) and another just under 2,000 (perhaps I never found the plot). 

We'll see what the editors think. I quite liked them, but would love any feedback and a chance for editing with fresh eyes. We shall see.

Now. Recently I watched Sinister. Since the age of 15, I've struggled to watch horror films. I can read it, write it, discuss it and not be disgusted when a client shows me a video on their iPhone of their leg being operated on. But viewing a horror film, particularly one with a supernatural element, freaks me the fuck out. Give me straight up psychological gore any day.

But I got through Sinister, albeit looking through an inch gap of the blanket draped around my head. I earned my bravery hugs. I thought that at a 15 rating it couldn't scare me that much. I stand (and shiver) corrected.

I bought What Really Frightens You? on a whim at Asda. The blurb sounded good (horror writer throws out a call for readers' fears and then all hell lets loose) and the cover seemed to imply excellent effects.

I switched it off within five minutes. I genuinely thought the beginning was a spoof, like a film within a film. The next scene of exposition was a huge infodump, somewhat akin to a porn film trying to ram (pun intended) a plot line into the next gratuitous hour or so. Even the acting and camera work screamed of an open casting call and being shot in a trailer in a motel-ridden part of Hollywood.

So what really frightens this reader? That I paid five fucking quid for that DVD and now I can't return it because I took the plastic off.

Crossover: Colossal Fun or Rat's Nest?

In my ongoing little quest, whereby I have lost many a dinky shoe in quicksand, to write something that can hold my attention longer than 20,000 words (without resorting to fluffing from there on) I am abandoning all the ridiculous notions I've picked up over the years of what 'good writing' looks like, what 'worthwhile writing' looks like and what 'sellable writing' looks like. I'm going rogue.

Of course, it would be more than delightful to be a published novelist, to have my stories looked upon with an air of validity. But, by thinking so highly of those things I have managed to squidge out the fun of the actual thing: writing. Since studying Creative Writing, all I have done is worry about the final 'thing' when the 'thing' is not even written.

Stupid. Incorrect. Whoops. Where did I ever pick up such bollocks? Answers on postcards to my tutors and careers guidance at school.

Now I'm throwing out all earlier efforts of what I thought fiction to be, where I thought I MUST be literary, where I thought I had to have a dazzling message burning into the retinas of Dear Reader. Instead I am going to have fun. Even if this new project is never published, is never even sent out to publishers, I am going to write it and enjoy it. I will take all the things I love, the strange things I have seen, the noise of places I've been and some seriously messed-up ideas of entertainment and grab it around the throat. What could possibly be more satisfying?

Back to the basics of writing for love, for the ride, for the thrill. Not with those dirty words 'editing', 'plotting', 'motifs' or 'marketability' sending copious amounts of nose blood onto the keyboard. The only dirty things here will be a special counter for the amount of times the word 'fuck' appears in the text.

Locate all previous 'manuscripts' [emits dark chuckle]. Ctrl + A. Del. Ctrl + N.

A new thing, now. Something that takes me back to my first loves: horror and comedy. The things that had my poor parents dragged into school because of Wednesday Adams attitude and chainsaw-heavy stories. Something that indulges my childish humour, my love of the shock and allows obsessional interests research to be fully indulged.

Basically, if Stephen King angrily rammed his car into Jasper Fforde's head and then they both went out and got drunk on Absinthe, ate too much cheese and headed out to save the world with quips and knives from hoards of deluded Londoners. That sort of thing.

Will it sell? Doubtful. Will I enjoy it? Oh, God, yes. This is something I am going to LOVE writing. 

Organ pawning, Rippology, bounty hunters, tattoos, lollipop ladies, kebabs and strangely cold steel cupboards, this is going to be something that will make me laugh. 

And then consult a psychiatrist as to if I should be laughing.

Operation TINA

Adult life is not what I imagined when I was a teenager. I have been Sectioned 13 times, been addicted to alcohol, and seen way too many deaths. But I also have two degrees, a wonderful boyfriend, and have spoken out on BBC Breakfast about mental health. 

My life is currently pending. I am unemployed, but have a job interview soon. I am working on a novel, but have been rejected from every competition and magazine I have submitted to since I graduated (one magazine, Black Static, has, to date, rejected me 5 times). The Boyfriend and I are looking for our first place together and I'm waiting to see if I get funding for a diagnostic assessment for Asperger Syndrome. He is a great artist and I want to be a great writer. 

Things I Like:

Writing

Reading

Tattoos

Rubber duckies

Deep pressure

Unusual facts

Medical information

Pepsi Max / Diet Coke

Japanese culture

Comic books

Things I Don't Like:

Fish

Green food

Bronze coins

Eye contact

Light touch

Insomnia

Headaches

Change

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I don't call my friends or family enough. I have collected every personal letter I have ever received since I was a child. I have 15 tattoos. I fractured my skull at 11 weeks old. I'm barred from entering the USA. 

Until I met The Boyfriend I succumbed easily to peer pressure. This is part of the Asperger's way. You do things you think might be wrong, but do them because social convention is all about fitting in. I've been trying to fit in all my life, with limited success. This is called 'passing'.

I struggle with personal care, managing money, bright lights / colours, noises, eye contact, and not being obsessive. For example, I struggle every day to overcome an entrenched ritual that I cannot leave my home more than once a day unless with somone. I do constant checks when I'm leaving the flat and when out and about. I get upset if I'm away from the flat for more than 3 days. I do a lot of things in 3s. I can spot small details, but miss the big picture. And when agitated I bang my head or thump my chest. My emotions are not well integrated and I struggle to understand my own and other people's, particularly when they are meant to link up. I don't know if I feel true empathy, except perhaps with The Boyfriend. If my friends or family cry I don't really feel the reflecting emotion. I act like I do, but I don't feel it. I can understand people's thoughts on a cerebral level. Is that a type of empathy?