Nokia, Goodbye

3 Sep

Goodbye to my Nokia,
that trustworthy rock!
It was bulky and sturdy
and dad said “It’s time we
upgraded, updated,”
and I thought, no way did
my father insult it!
It’s vintage, it’s purty,
Who cares if it’s dirty?
It’s simple design has
always worked fine!
Ah Nokia, ah Nokia,
how can dad not see a
master of engineering,
how you keep persevering
despite bangs and crashes
from drunken mad dashes?
You’ve lasted six years,
you’re a survival pioneer!

Then I met Xpress,
a phone quite complex,
which now comes
with camera and colour,
and touchscreen, recorder…
It says I should upgrade,
it says my phone’s decayed
and useless! How ruthless
of Xpress to suggest lest
I ditch my old phone
my social life’s blown.
Well I’m going to upgrade
to the Xpress 58-hundred,
send my old phone to bed,
so now three cheers
to my Nokia dear,
wipe the tear from my eye
and say Nokia, goodbye!

I have a new phone, and was feeling silly.
Yes, my new phone is also a Nokia. Shh.
Inspired by a childhood nursey rhyme.

A Lone Baker

6 Aug

They tumbled out of her apron and on to the counter—twenty of them, thirty, he wasn’t sure. They looked so innocuous lying there on the counter, the very same counter upon which he rolled out his bread every morning. Rob just stared, gnarled hands ready for action, his fingertips gripped tightly around the handle of a serrated bread knife.

Nothing. No movement. It was hard to believe these were the very same pests that were infesting local stores, where innocent shoppers picked them up without realizing. Every single shop had succumbed to the infestation except his bakery, and now here he was with thirty of them on his own turf. He’d have to scrub the counter for hours to get it clean.

Rob scowled at the girl. “How dare you bring these… these monsters here!”

She had the audacity to shrug. “Everyone else’s got them.”

“I am not everyone else. I refuse to be brainwashed and stand idle while they take over the world. My bakery has standards. I thought you understood that when I hired you last week.” When she just shrugged again, Rob threw his hands up in disgust. Young people these days had no common sense.

“I’ll take them away then, yeah?”

“Yes. Now!”

Rob could not watch her gather the pests back up into her arms, could not watch the way they rolled limply, feigning innocence. He wasn’t going to be fooled; their diminutive size in no way lessened the evil they carried. He waited with his back turned until he heard the tinkle-tinkle of his shop door opening and closing, then let out a long sigh. Their influence was growing daily. His shop assistant had been clean the week before when he’d hired her—all the tests had come back negative. Now she too had succumbed.

Rob shook his head and turned back around, only to freeze in disgust. She’d forgotten one. It was in the corner of the counter, half-tucked behind an empty bread basket. He stared at it, could hardly bring himself to touch it, but the curiosity won through. He had to know how they were doing it, how they were brainwashing the townsfolk into singing their praises.

Rob used the tip of his knife to prod the pest into the centre of his counter. It moved along obligingly, and came to a rest upright, staring at him. There was no time to hesitate: he brought his knife down hard and sliced through the beast’s exoskeleton—or what he thought was the exoskeleton. It had the same composition all the way through to the middle: a spongy body studded with hard white squares. He almost stopped breathing. What manner of beast was this?

He crouched down, brought his face level with the dissected parts. Rob hated to admit it, but looking at this cut up pest he could feel Mother Nature’s guiding touch. Its body, its scent…. It was perfectly engineered to seduce mankind. And the pests continued to develop, to evolve, each generation even more perfect than the last, to the point that Rob felt sure even he would soon be under their thrall.

He was but a simple baker: what he could he do to stop their advance? His wife…. She would have known what to do, would have had a weapon up her sleeve to fight back. But all Rob could do was stare at this sliced up monster and wonder whether he was better off giving in and letting them take their rightful control over his shop. He was nothing without his wife—all of a sudden the solitude of being the last man standing overwhelmed him, and Rob sank down to his knees and wept.

Through his tears he could smell the scent of the sliced-up beast, enticing even after death, sweet like chocolate and smooth like banana. Rob struck out angrily and scattered the body across the shop floor, one last moment of defiance. Tomorrow he would submit to their dominion, but for now—for now…. He stood up, walked around the counter, and ground the pest’s body into the floor.

The tinkle-tinkle of the door announced the shop girl’s return. She took in the scene quietly, glancing from his face to the floor.

Then she shrugged. “Get with the times, gramps. They’re just muffins.”

Written for alphabete
(“chocolate chip banana muffin takes over the world”)

Web Series Writing Month!

20 Jul

Web Series Writing Month 2010

WeSeWriMo’s 4th birthday fast approaches.

I’ve never taken part before. I was a rebel NaNoWriMo participant last November (working, as a matter of fact, on my webfiction), but sadly life issues got in the way and I never completed my goal.

This August I have the chance to challenge myself again, and this time alongside a group of like-minded writers of online fiction.

The only question that remains: will you join the party, too?

MCM’s Summer Train revisited

16 Jul

A while back I posted a short story MCM had written for me as part of his challenge to write 1,000 short stories this summer.

As MCM currently has writer’s block suck, and I have writer’s block distraction, I thought to kill two birds with one stone by making an audio version of the story he wrote for me. If this doesn’t cure him, nothing will.

 

Read the text to Summer Train here — and if you click the “Like” button, you’ll make two people happy.

Publishing Without Publishers: A closer look at Stephen King

10 Jul

To the unenlightened, the word ‘e-publishing’ immediately brings to mind vanity publishing, where (awfully written) rejected manuscripts find their home. With the growing number of independent authors who consciously choose to self-publish online (yours truly included), this perception is hopefully being changed. Take for example Graham Storrs’ amazing ebook TimeSplash, or MCM’s entire publishing venture. Great fiction, and not published by commercial powerhouses.

However, electronic publishing need not be limited to the lesser known authors. Given the global reach of the internet, it seems obvious that an author with an already established fan base would find e-publishing a viable alternative to print. However, to my knowledge as of yet few famous authors have focused their attention on the e-publishing route. But I did a little digging on one famous author who has: Stephen King.

As far as I’m aware, Stephen King was the first prominent best-selling author to attempt exclusively web-based publishing. His debut in the field of electronic publishing was the novella Riding the Bullet published March 2000 in association with Simon & Schuster. Riding the Bullet is a 16,000 word story of Alan Parker, who is hitchhiking to see his dying mother and is picked up by a mysterious stranger. During the drive, Alan discovers a terrible secret about the stranger, and must make a difficult choice, a choice that can mean life or death.

The novella was at first exclusively available online to ebook and PC users, in a downloadable format for a fixed price of $2.50. Funnily enough, Stephen King himself, as a Mac owner, could not download his own book! As a publicity stunt, the ebook was freely downloadable for the first week of its release, with the result that the web servers hosting the novella were overloaded by the sudden surge of traffic and crashed. While a headache for the web servers, the crash was a clear sign of popularity, and over 100,000 internet users bought the ebook. The ebook is still for sale online today.

The novella was a definite sign of success for both Stephen King and his publisher. Riding the Bullet was deemed to be the dawn of a new era, and of the growing importance of ebooks. However, the venture was not entirely problem free: the ebook was originally encrypted to prevent both printing and electronic copying and thus protect the story from copyright violations, but hackers cracked the feature within hours of its release. Unencrypted PDF files made their way onto numerous websites, and are still accessible today. While the monetary losses were likely negligible given that many booksellers had given the novella away for free, it did raise concerns about piracy issues with electronic formats.

It is due to these very concerns that Stephen King’s following attempt at e-publishing was based on an entirely different business model, and he attempted publishing a serial novel on his own website. It is possible that Stephen King assumed it would be a more lucrative pricing model, as it was back in the 19th century when used by Dickens and other authors, although the author claims that financial returns were only a secondary interest to his attempt.

Thus Stephen King began to publish his serial novel The Plant, a story about an editor working at a publishing house. The editor rejects a rather odd manuscript, and, unsettled by the realistic photographs which accompanied the manuscript, gives the police the author’s address. Enraged, the author sends the editor a mysterious plant, and horror ensues.

Stephen King was actually recycling material, as he had actually begun writing The Plant back in the 1980’s, sending what later became the first instalment to his friends in lieu of a Christmas card. He put the first part on his website, available for anyone to download, and asked people to pay $1.00. The payment was entirely based on an honour system, and with the incentive of future updates should a certain target be met. There were supposed to be thirteen instalments total. On his website, Stephen King outlined his payment plan: the first three instalments would cost $1.00, parts four to eight would cost $2, and all subsequent updates would be free of charge, capping the total book cost at $13.00.

Over 150,000 users downloaded the first instalment, and 120,000 paid. For the first three instalments, the target was met. To offset the increased price of subsequent updates, Stephen King doubled the update length from 27 to 54 pages. However, with the fourth instalment, the total number of downloads fell to 40,000, and the number of paying readers dropped to 46%. The drop in numbers may have been partially due to multiple downloads by the same user for different platforms, whether their laptops, e-readers, or phones, but the rising costs most definitely were a factor as well. The fifth instalment followed much the same route, possibly exacerbated by the fact that Stephen King had warned readers of the situation and there was a growing expectation that the book would remain unfinished. Ultimately Stephen King posted the sixth part for ‘free’ to reward users who had paid for the first three parts. He then abandoned the novel to complete other projects, promising to eventually return to the story.

Outsiders blamed the project’s outcome on untrustworthy readers who wouldn’t comply to the honour system, and from the publisher’s perspective, The Plant was considered a failure. After all, 40,000 downloads–whilst a sizeable number–hardly compared to his millions of print readers. Yet the New York Times claimed that The Plant failed not because e-publishing wasn’t viable, but because King did not understand his readership, and that his novels were not made for serialization; a ridiculous claim considering the success of King’s serialized version of The Green Mile, which had dominated the New York Times’ bestseller list for weeks.

Stephen King had an entirely different outlook on the matter. He views the venture as a success, stating that while the revenue generated is not big in the context of the bookselling market, The Plant is not a book. It had no printing cuts, publisher costs, or agent fees. His business model simply needed tweaking.

[EDIT] In July 2008, King experimented with a brand new business model with his short story N, brought to life as a video series that combined story, film, and comic book styles. Of the venture, King said, “I’m always interested in new delivery systems for stories, and always curious about how those systems work with the old story-telling verities. This one, it seems to me, works extraordinarily well.”

In February 2009, Stephen King, working in conjunction with Amazon, released an ebook available exclusively on the Kindle, priced at $2.99. The novella, UR, follows a college professor who, via his pink Kindle, finds a newspaper that tells of a future event he feels compelled to forestall. While Amazon was tight-lipped about its success, there were rumours that the sales of the ebook reached ‘five figures’ within three weeks. Over a year later, the ebook remains in the top 200 paid bestsellers list and they’ve actually upped the price to $3.75.

The publishing industry may be scorning authors who shun tradition and self-publish online today, but I remain hopeful. We’ve just got to keep on tweaking.

Re: Vampire Vacancy

9 Jul

Dear Evan Pyre,

I’d like to express my interest in the vampire vacancy as advertised on The Guardian website. As a current employee at Preternatural News, I believe my substantial familiarity with vampire society and culture makes me a competitive candidate for the position.

I have had the privilege of partaking in the development of three newly commissioned vampire-focused publications on behalf of Preternatural News. My current role is that of researcher and writer, and as such I have gained considerable experience in keeping abreast of the latest supernatural developments, writing topical editorial, and liaising with leading vampires across the world. In light of these responsibilities, my strong interpersonal and communicative skills have been a definite asset. Furthermore, the high level of independence within this position highlights my organizational abilities, which are so crucial to the vampire identity.

Previous experience includes an internship at Triptych Corporation, during which one of my responsibilities was to identify market trends amongst humans and propose new commercially viable areas for expansion—a skill set which can only contribute to the virile underground vampire economy.

My lack of hands-on experience in being supernatural is offset by the extensive theoretical knowledge gleaned during my MA in Vampire Literature at Hertfordshire University, which covered all aspects from the initial making, diet requirements and procreation, to the final resolution. Furthermore, my intention as an immortal is to establish a sister publication to Preternatural News, focusing on delivering high quality reports not to humans but to other supernatural beings, thereby enhancing the profile of the vampire community I join.

I believe that both technical knowledge and practical ambitions are equally important: a human needs a deep biological understanding in order to become a vampire, but needs long-term ambitions in order to become a successful vampire. Thus the opportunity to join an already thriving society such as the London ‘Pyres is of great interest to me.

I think my unique combination of interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and experience developing cutting-edge vampire-focused publications makes me an ideal person to help expand the London ‘Pyres dominion. But most of all, I thrive on challenge and change, and look forward to new and exciting opportunities which will allow me to develop to my fullest potential.

I’d welcome the chance to provide you with any additional information to supplement my CV (attached). Please do not hesitate to let me know should you have any further questions.

Thank you very much for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Wanabi

Zombie Luv Flash Fic Contest: Promises

1 Jul

I dropped Eva on to the kitchen table, too tired to carry her up the stairs and into our bedroom. Her head thumped against the hardwood surface but she didn’t notice, lost in her fever dreams, cheeks flushed, eyelids fluttering weakly. I took off her glasses and hid them in my pocket, then gently ran a finger down the side of her face. Lying there so prone and helpless, Eva looked good enough to eat, but coming from a zombie that didn’t mean much.

The others would be coming soon. They’d smell her. They’d want a bite. I shuffled out of the kitchen and back down the hallway, gathering up the spit in my mouth to try cover up the traces. When I got to the front door, I spit so hard a tooth fell out. The lump of flesh and bone landed smack in the middle of the pale brown welcome mat we’d bought together in John Lewis. I shrugged. There’d be other welcome mats.

Front door locked and bolted, I made my way back towards the kitchen. On either side, the hallway was decorated with holiday photos. One caught my attention: her in Brighton, two months before the plague. There was a hesitant dimple in her sun-kissed cheeks as she peered slyly at the camera. She’d just made a joke about my sock-and-shoe combo, I remembered. The memory helped stave off the hunger.

Eva was stirring weakly by the time I came back into the kitchen. Her eyelids fluttered, once, twice. Then she opened her eyes and looked right at me, squinting. “Robert?”

She wasn’t supposed to wake up. She was supposed to stay unconscious until it was over. I’d seen it happen before. I’d felt it happen. The gnawing pain stretching from your limbs to your stomach to your heart, like someone was pushing a pincushion through your veins. Eventually it reached your throat and you’d scream until your larynx tore.

“Robert?” she repeated. She tried to sit up but her arms were too shaky. Eva flopped back down on to the table. “It hurts,” she moaned, clutching at her side where I’d sunk my teeth into one of the love handles she so hated. The memory made my gums tingle. I took a step closer. I could feel the growing hunger, the excitement, the urgency to eat and eat before her flesh went off. I could smell the decay spreading; she was already half gone. Hurry, hurry, the little voice inside said. I took another step forward.

“Thank God you’re alive,” Eva said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. The words brought me up short. It’d been hard enough to stop the first time. If I bit her again all my hard work would have gone to waste. And I wanted her by my side. What was it we had promised? For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health… I opened my mouth to tell her I loved her but all that came out was a moan.

“Oh, Rob.” She held a hand out to me and I shuffled forward to take it. Her flesh was moist against my dry, leathery skin. “Your laryngitis still hasn’t cleared up?”

It was as good an excuse as any. I nodded and kept my mouth firmly closed so she wouldn’t see the missing teeth. Being freshly made I looked more human than most zombies but it was better to play it safe.

“My glasses,” she muttered, frowning, before a spasm of pain overtook her and she clutched her stomach with a cry. I squeezed her hand gently, aching to tell her that soon she wouldn’t need her glasses. She’d so hated wearing them; how her face would light up!

As the wave of pain subsided, Eva forced a smile. Brave girl. It’s why I’d married her. She looked at me and said, “Remember when I lost my glasses?”

I smiled back. Go on, tell me.

“I ran all over the house looking for them. A whole hour looking.” She panted heavily between each word. “Kept squinting everywhere, peering at every tabletop. Even this one.” She patted the kitchen table. “That’s when you told me… You remember?”

I nodded. Continue.

“You said if I promised to love you forever, you’d tell me where they were. So I promised. And they were on my head that whole time! I was so mad.” She chuckled, shaking her head slowly.

That’s when it happened. A knock on the front door. No—a thump. And another. The other zombies had arrived. Despite the stinking glob of spit, they’d tracked down the scent of living flesh. I wasn’t surprised. The others had been bitten far more times than I had: their senses were sharper, their muscles stronger, their bodies infinitely more decayed. There was a loud crash as the living room window broke under the dead weight of the Horde, and hungry moans filled the air.

Eva struggled weakly, tried to push me away. “Leave me here! You go, get away!”

I shook my head and she started crying. “I’ll always love you, Robert. I don’t regret that promise.”

I smiled understandingly. Me neither. Together forever.

The moans were getting closer. I could hear the shuffle-shuffle of feet dragging against the floor, could smell the sulphuric stench of rotting corpses. But Eva—the decay was nearly at her neck, it’d be over soon.

“My chest hurts,” she whimpered. Tears rolled down her face. “It really hurts.” She smelled less appetizing now but more familiar. Her nails dug into the back of my hand. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

“Honey,” I wanted to tell her. “We are the dead.” Instead I held her hand tight and watched her mouth open in a scream.

***

My submission to the Zombie Luv contest. I’m not sure whether it fits the bill, as it is love between a zombie and an almost-zombie, but oh well! Want to take part? The deadline is July 10th and guidelines are as follows:
Zombie Love

  • Word count: maximum 1,000.
  • The story must be a romance between two zombies. Make it as horrific as you like. Stories containing animal cruelty, torture, graphic sex or violence, any form of exaltation of violence, racism or other forms of prejudice will be immediately disqualified.
  • Post your entry on your own blog, with a title resembling this: Zombie Luv Flash Fic Contest: Story Title
  • Leave your story title and a link to the story entry post as a comment at mari’s randomities: http://marisrandomities.blogspot.com
  • Copy and paste the contest logo and the guidelines at the end of your entry post.

Authors as Brands

29 Jun

I received a friend request on Facebook from a man I didn’t know. I snooped through his profile, saw we had mutual author friends. Okay, I thought. Let’s help boost each other’s online platforms. What harm could it do? Minutes after accepting, he posted a thank-you on my wall, along with a message to check out his page, become a fan, and buy his book.

On Goodreads, I received an intriguing recommendation from a randomer who’d added me. I had a quick look, saw the book was the second in a series I had never heard about. Did he realize I hadn’t read the first? I looked a little more, then realized–the recommendation for the book had come from the author himself. When I politely pointed out the oddities of his recommendation, his reply was, “My apologies if my recommendation was awkward. Such is my lot….”

Some people don’t get it. They don’t get that the internet is a conversation. They think the message only goes one way—out. Things must be shouted. Things must be thrust in your face. Things must be sold. -Maureen Johnson

There is no surer way to dissuade me from buying your book than behaving like the two authors I’ve described. I cannot help but wonder—have they not realized? Has no one told them? Why such complacency in what is vomit-inducing self-promotion?

Maureen Johnson‘s blog post covers this issue far more eloquently than I ever could, but I wanted to chip in with my two cents.

Yes: being an author is about selling yourself. Publishing is at the end of the day a business. But by pushing your books in people’s faces, all you do is leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. The trick is to not sell yourself. To engage, to discuss, to let people learn about the person behind the manuscript. Nice people who make friends quickly have it easy. If you’re not nice, you better start pretending.

And hey — if I like you as a person, I’ll probably buy your book, even if it’s not my thing. Just don’t recommend it to me via Goodreads.

Many thanks to Merrilee for linking me to Maureen’s blog!

Rescue Missions

25 Jun

Creative commons via stock.xchng

Dragon suitably beheaded, Prince Charming galloped across the castle moat, brandishing his sword with practiced flair. If only a painter could capture me like this, he thought, picturing the scene: his white stallion frozen mid-leap, neck arched in a perfect curve and mane and tail streaming through the air, him astride in a resplendent scarlet tunic, with a stern profile and smiling eyes.

Wexford—his horse—cantered onwards without instruction, straight into the castle courtyard, his hooves clatter-clattering on the mismatched cobblestones. There he wheeled to a halt and stamped his foot twice.

“Never fear, Princess!” Prince Charming called out, uncertain whether she could hear him but feeling exhilarated at the returning echo of his voice. “I shall rescue you!”

He dismounted, giving Wexford one solid pat on the neck. Wexford ignored him, so Prince Charming ignored Wexford back. He shook his head and walked towards the stairs leading up to the main doorway. “Stupid horse,” he muttered, not paying attention to where he was walking. His suit of armour was so heavy he tripped on the first step and crashed down on his face. Wexford’s loud whinny sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Not to be discouraged, Prince Charming leapt to his feet and stomped all the way up the stairs, pushing the castle doors open and walking inside. Once inside, he stopped and looked around in surprise. He had been expecting an abandoned castle, overrun with weeds and the lazy cobwebs of large, content spiders. Instead he found a neat entrance hall, candles burning brightly in the lamps, and highly polished wooden furniture that gleamed so brightly he could see his face in the reflection.

But there was no time to waste admiring the décor. He had a princess to save! He could already imagine the reunion: her lying asleep on her bed, golden locks cascading over one shoulder, face upturned, waiting for a kiss. He’d walk into her room, lean down and press his lips against hers. Only that could break the curse upon her. Her eyes would flutter open, she’d take one look at him and fall in love. Wexford would carry them home to live happily ever after. Prince Charming smiled self-deprecatingly. The things a man had to do nowadays to find himself a wife!

The highest room of the tallest tower—that’s where Sleeping Beauty was. Prince Charming huffed and puffed his way up the stairs, using his broadsword as a walking stick. When he’d finally reached the top, he was so tired he had to sit down for a few minutes and breathe deeply. Then he got to his feet and walked the last few steps over to the narrow wooden door behind which waited his prize.

Prince Charming put his hand on the doorknob, then hesitated. He pulled out his travel comb and a small towel, wiped his face dry and combed his hair into a neat side parting so that he would look good for the Princess. He knocked out of habit, then pushed open the door and walked in to meet his future wife. Except there was one small problem to his great plan: the bed was empty.

Prince Charming walked over to the bed, stared down at the neatly pressed sheets in abject confusion. Where was she? The instructions had been clear, this is where the wicked witch had left Sleeping Beauty, ready to be rescued. But this bed didn’t even look like it had been slept in! That’s when he noticed the note on the pillow.

He picked it up. Was it a love letter? It didn’t look like the love letters he had seen before. It was not pink, and it didn’t smell like perfume. It smelled like old newspapers, and—when Prince Charming turned the paper around to stare at the back—he realized it was a piece of an old newspaper. It had a completed crossword on the back!

He turned it back around and stared at the no-nonsense handwriting. At least it was easier to read than the usual girly cursive.

Dear Prince Charming, the letter said. I am very sorry not to be waiting for you as you wanted me to. The thing is, I knew the witch was going to poison me so I took an anti-sleeping-potion beforehand. At first I spent a lot of time playing and teaching myself languages like ogrish.  Then I got bored waiting for you to rescue me. So when I heard that Prince Dashing who was captured by ogres when he was out fishing, I thought I’d go rescue him instead. I hope you don’t mind. If you want, you can wait here until I get back.
Lots of love, from Sleeping Beauty.

Prince Charming sat down on the bed and let the letter fall to the floor. Now what was he going to tell his parents?

Inspired by the wonderful 7-year-old Alexia.

#fridayplahsh

18 Jun

I have no flash to offer this week.

But don’t worry — you’ve got scores of offers elsewhere so keep both feet planted firmly on the floor.

In other news, tomorrow is the last day to partake in Ergofiction‘s little Twitter fiction challenge — tweet an action/adventure story with the tag #EGF to join!

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