Author Archives for Anna

Page Readers interviews A. M. Harte

April 7th 2010 — Nanci Arvizu of the US-based BlogTalkRadio show Page Readers will be interviewing A. M. Harte.

Tune in next Wednesday at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST to listen in live and have the chance to participate via the show’s chatroom (requires free registration).

Anna will discuss Above Ground and other upcoming writing projects.

Not in the US? Neither is Anna! Listen live through BlogTalkRadio’s website!
Visit the interview’s page.

Not going to be able to listen in? There’ll be a podcast version available to listen to at your convenience.

For more information see here.

THE ROAD TO HELL

Another two gunshots, closer this time. Bullets whizzed past Quinn’s head, splintering the tree trunk. Cowards, he thought, swearing under his breath. Damn cowards all of them angels, shooting an unarmed man, seven of them and just one of him. Even though they knew he’d never willingly hurt a soul, knew he took the transition from life to death seriously, they were taking — what had they called it? “First class offence preventative measures”.

God himself could testify that Quinn had never — would never! — commit a first class offence. How anyone could bring themselves to guide a soul astray by leading them to Hell instead of Heaven was beyond him. If he had nearly done it once himself, well, that time had been an accident!

Just ahead of Quinn was the river, his boat moored firmly against its closest shore. Keeping behind the protective cover of the trees, Quinn edged closer to the boat, his every step cringing with the anticipation of another gunshot. Loud shouts echoed through the woods behind him, underscored by the beating of wings, the cracking of tree branches. Mouth dry, Quinn licked his lips, took a deep breath, and made a beeline for his boat.

No gunshots rang out, no shouting nor triumphant singing. Only when Quinn had slipped into his boat and pushed off did he find out why. Poor Gabriel’s robe was tangled in the tree branches; his wings beat uselessly as the others circled him, shouting suggestions and waving their guns, like children at play.

Quinn patted the hull of his boat affectionately, confidence restored. “Ride on slow, lass,” he whispered, lying down to avoid being noticed. “Should be able to escape these galumphing angels now.”

Then a great and terrible cry rose out from behind him, sending chills down Quinn’s spine. Uriel had caught sight of him, of the boat, was rallying the others back into the hunt, leaving Gabriel to his fate. Very soon the six angels swooped down on him, brandishing their guns, circling the boat as it approached the critical junction — the two smaller streams, one to Heaven, one to Hell.

“Will you surrender now?” Xaphan said, white teeth flashing. Xaphan had always been the most exuberant with his arrows, now with a Smith & Wesson in his hands he looked all the more dangerous.

“Yes, I surrender!” Quinn cried, willing to do anything — everything — to escape the frighting burn of those eyes, the heaviness in his chest as he was Judged by creatures that had no understanding of life, had no right to be judging.

Zacharael smiled, cruelly, beautifully, and pushed his boat down the stream towards Hell.

******

Yet another ABC Challenge-inspired story. Slight cop-out by using lots of odd names, but oh well!

WAR WOUNDS

Having a depressed parent isn’t easy. Especially when said parent is the alpha werewolf of your pack and controls every minute detail of your life.

You don’t love your father. You don’t think you ever have, or maybe it’s just been so long that any feelings have faded. Sure, you feel responsible for him, you feel some kind of bond, but love? It’s hard to love someone who’s depressed. Especially when you’re depressed yourself, and you struggle to start every day with a smile. And him? Nothing. He wallows in it. He likes his position of power, manipulating everyone from the bottom of his dark hole.

“You didn’t answer my howls,” he said this morning, his joints creaking from the recent full moon.

You wanted to reply: can you blame me? But you apologized instead. “I was really busy.”

“With your boyfriend?” He stuck his nose in your direction and sniffed the air, a tantrum already brewing.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He just scoffed. “Everyone has a boyfriend. No one thinks about me. No one cares. I’m the alpha of this pack but I may as well be the omega.”

There was nothing to say. You stared down at your toast and counted the crumbs.

“You’re a whore,” he said from the doorway, leaning against the frame as if gravity had somehow abandoned him. “Just like your mother.”

It’s a familiar rant, one you desperately try to block out. You can’t even remember a time when your father was nice. You look at old photos of your parents, grinning happily together, young and fresh-faced, and it is like looking at two strangers. The couple in the photos have all these hopes and dreams and haven’t yet become disillusioned by life, jaded and weary of the day-to-day tedium, of the monthly forced changes, of the shedding fur and aching backs.

Now all your father cares about is himself. And your mother does too, to a lesser extent. Both wrapped up in their little pity parties, no longer interested in watching their children grow.

Oh, they ask you questions. How was school? What did you do today? They don’t listen to the answers. Sometimes you wish they were all dead. Dead, dead, dead. And things would be better, or at the very least different.

On good days, it amuses you to think you have taken after them, and are an expert pity partier yourself. On bad days, you lock yourself in the upstairs bathroom with a silver spoon in your gloved hands, and burn ovals into the inside of your thighs. The fur there when you change is getting patchy, but no one has thought to look or to ask, which fills you with a sick, shameful pride.

That morning, when your father left the kitchen, you bit your tongue to push down the well of emotion, but it wasn’t enough, it’s never enough. So now you hold your breath and place the silver spoon just next to the freckle on your left thigh, the smoke curling up and singeing your nostrils. The smell of burning makes you smile.

A knock on the door. “You’re going to be late for school!”

“Just a minute,” you call out. A minute is all it takes for a new scar to form. And if you can handle this, you can handle anything.

First Impressions

You’re in a bar. You walk up to the bar, bump into an ex-colleague of yours. He’s there with a guy you don’t recognize: a dark-haired lothario in a sharp blue suit who takes your hand and kisses it, winking slyly.

Or you’re at a job interview. Your prospective boss arrives. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days, her suit is wrinkled, her hand is clammy and limp. On the top of her blouse is a stain of what looks like ketchup.

These moments last minutes — sometimes mere seconds — but in that short span of time you pass a judgement on their appearance, their body language, their mannerisms. First impressions. Love them or hate them, you can’t help make them.

There are thousands of books and articles dedicated to this very subject, counselling the hapless on how to make a good first impression (whatever good may be!). But how does this translate to writing?

I am currently re-reading How Not To Write A Novel by Howard Mittelmark & Sandra Newman, a tongue-in-cheek guide that not only makes me laugh, but offers occasional insight, too:

The reader knows everyone poos. But if the first thing a character does is poo in front of the reader, the reader will think of him as the Pooing Character forevermore. (Chapter 5, pg. 69)

In real life, you have a chance to reverse or undo first impressions. Not so in books. Fiction has got to be better than reality, remember? The reader’s first impressions of a character are very difficult to change, meaning that the introductory scene is extremely important as it’ll set the tone for the reader’s perception of that character.

Considering the main character is the most important character in your book, it follows that he or she must make a good first impression — good meaning not courteous and polite but good for your intentions, for the way you want to portray him or her.

In the first scene of my WIP novel, my main character is ambushed by an odd stranger on a dark road, who gives her cryptic warnings until she punches his nose and runs away. I hope to convey the fighting spirit that will see her through all the troubles ahead.

What is your main character doing when people first meet him or her?

DOWNSIZING

Zero. Yet again, a non-human customer had ignored the notice on his website stating that zebras only came in two sizes: large, or extra large. Xavier stared at the order form and wondered whether it was someone’s idea of a joke. What did size zero even mean?

Vanity was the bane of these newly rich types, he thought, staring glumly at the seven-figure sum on offer. Unless he sold eight regular-sized zebras by the end of the month, his business was going under, and he’d be thrown out onto the street with nowhere to live. This job alone — if he could somehow manage to fulfil it — would fix him up for the rest of his life. Stress-free lazing on the beach of a human-only resort for the rest of his life!

Really, he would have given anything to go back to his old life, to the days when gargoyles stayed fixed to cathedrals and medusas were hardly remembered, to the days when he’d been a simple butcher serving bog-standard cuts of meat to real down-to-earth Spaniards. Quail had been the most exotic meat he’d served, with none of these zebras and crocodiles cluttering up the aisles. Pity that humans no longer had the money to spend on meat, and he was forced to cater to the demands of these ever-hungry monsters.

Only now the monsters were demanding more and more, and expecting to pay less, using threats and blackmail as their preferred currency. Nevermind that Xavier could not pay for rent or food with those threats, and that he was slowly going out of business. Money had no meaning to creatures like these, trapped in the mindset of centuries past when they hadn’t been legal members of society.

Lately the situation had begun spiralling even further out of control with Xavier’s savings all but gone, and now this, this order that could save his shop if only he could fulfill it. Key word being ‘if’ — how he’d locate a size zero zebra was beyond him.

“Joder,” he cursed, making his way over to the cold room at the back, order form still clutched tightly in his hand. “Imposible, es imposible.”

Hands on his hips, he surveyed the latest delivery of zebras, chewing his lip as he took in their unsurprisingly large size. Good quality meat, all of it, imported live from Africa and butchered at the slaughterhouse down the road. Fashion now dictated, though, that the gourmet feeders — vampires and the like — consume only dainty portions of meat in public. Eating entire animals, which had been popular only a few months previous, was now outdated.

Dire action was called for. Calculating rapidly in his head, Xavier grabbed a knife and set to work one of of the zebras, cutting out the ribs, the back molars–anything to make the zebra look skinnier than it actually was. By the time he was finished, all that was left was a husk of the once proud zebra, a ghost of itself, bones protruding, skin stretched thin, a ghoulish grin answering Xavier’s smile.

And then he walked out of the room, wiped his blood-streaked hands on the front of his trousers, and decided fashion wasn’t so bad after all.

******

Continuing my ABC Challenge inspired #fridayflash stories, I decided to shake things up a little this week by doing the alphabet in reverse! (Although I’ll admit, I wrote the ‘A’ sentence first.) But overall it was a lot more fun to tackle the tricky letters first.