Run For Your Lives!

Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse?

I’m an active supporter of being ready for the end of the world — but while there’s been a lot of literature published on the subject, there hasn’t been much chance for hands-on experience.

However on October 22nd, 10,000 brave souls will have the chance to participate in Run For Your Lives, a first-of-its-kind and completely unique race that takes participants through a series of 10 obstacles over a 5K course, all while being chased by zombies.

Unfortunately for me, it’s happening on the other side of the pond (in Darlington MD to be precise). I guess I’ll just have to stick to my books, then….

The 4 Basic Elements of a Story

Writing is like baking a cake.

There are thousands of different kinds of cakes, thousands of different ways to make them. But the basic ingredients remain the same: flour, sugar, eggs, butter…

So what are the basic ingredients every story should have?

Baking A Sponge Cake Story

Ingredients:
• Plot
• Characters
• Setting
• Theme

Instructions:
1. The plot is the flour of the story.
It’s the basis, the foundation — more than just a chain of events. A plot needs conflict and a satisfying resolution. Throw in a mediocre, cliched or predictable plot and your story will sink like an undercooked sponge and utterly bore your reader’s tastebuds.

2. The characters are the sugar.
They add flavour, but that’s not all: they add volume and keep your story fresh. Characters provide leavening, ensuring that the plot doesn’t come out tough and chewy. If your characters are flat and unappealing, no one will care what happens to them.

3. The setting is the butter.
It glues the characters and plot together, it provides texture and depth. A lumpy, inconsistent setting will make your readers wonder whether they’re reading a story, or eating badly mixed dough.

4. And the theme is the egg.
It’s the hidden ingredient without which everything would fall apart. The theme binds all the ingredients together into one smooth story, elevating your humble cake from mere entertainment to something sublime.

Master the art of mixing these four ingredients together, and you’re on the road to story-making greatness.

Don’t forget to garnish as desired.

Images courtesy of stock.xchng.

THE GIANT BUTTERFLY

Once upon a time there was a butterfly named Bonnie.

Now Bonnie was no ordinary butterfly, she was a GIANT butterfly. She was bigger than all the other butterflies. She was bigger than the dragonflies. She was even bigger than your two hands put together!

Bonnie was so big that when she landed on a flower, the flower would break. When she drank from a puddle, water would splash everywhere. And when she flew through the fields, the wind from her wings would knock all the other butterflies off-course.

None of the other butterflies wanted to play with Bonnie.

Bonnie was lonely.

One day a zebra arrived in the forest.

Now this was no ordinary zebra, this was a KILLER zebra. His tail was thin and whip-like. His hooves were sharp and strong. And his teeth were very large, and very white.

The zebra trotted into Bonnie’s field. He hit all the butterflies with his tail. He squashed all the flowers with his hooves. And he ripped up the grass in great chunks with his teeth.

“Help, help!” cried the other butterflies, watching their home get destroyed.

And Bonnie, because she was big and because she was brave, went to the rescue.

She flew right up to the zebra and landed right between his ears, where he couldn’t see her. Then she leaned over and shouted into his ear: “LEAVE THIS FIELD, ZEBRA!”

The zebra jumped. “Who’s that? Who’s there?” He turned round and round on the spot, but couldn’t see anyone. The field was empty. He shook his head nervously, and Bonnie had to hold on tight so as not to fall off.

“I AM THE MIGHTY LION!” roared Bonnie into his ear.

Oh, how the zebra jumped now! “L-l-l-lion?” he stuttered, his hooves knocking together in fright, because zebras and lions were mortal enemies. He galloped to the edge of the field and hid behind a tree.

The zebra shook his head again, and again Bonnie had to hold on tight.

“THAT’S NOT FAR ENOUGH!” she shouted, growling angrily.

“Eep!” yelped the zebra. He ran even further from the butterfly field, and hid behind a large rock.

Bonnie took a deep breath and said: “NO, THAT’S NOT FAR ENOU–”

But as Bonnie was speaking, the zebra shook his head again, and she fell splat onto the rock!

“You’re not a lion!” the zebra said angrily. “You liar!”

He lifted up a hoof to squash her, but Bonnie cried out, “I had to lie! You were destroying our home! You squashed all the flowers and ripped up all the grass and hit my friends with your tail!”

The zebra was shocked. “I did? I… I didn’t realise. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bonnie said. “Just don’t do it again.”

And she gave the zebra directions to Africa, so that he could travel there and hang out with all the other zebras, where he belonged.

As soon as the zebra left, all the butterflies gathered around the rock, fluttering their beautiful wings. “Oh, Bonnie! You saved our home! Thank you, thank you!”

“It was nothing,” Bonnie said modestly, embarrassed by the attention.

She tried to flap her wings, to join them in the air, but nothing happened. Her wing was broken!

“Come on Bonnie,” said the butterflies. “Let’s go home!”

“I can’t!” she cried, trying to flap her wings again, wincing at the pain. “I can’t fly! I must have broken my wing when I fell on to the rock,” she said sadly.

And then all the other butterflies went away, because they knew Bonnie couldn’t be a butterfly anymore.

Inspired by and written for Bonnie Sparks.

Welcome to Webfiction World!

Because I am insane and like to take on more projects than I can handle, I am now involved in a brand new venture: a podcast.

Introducing Webfiction World!

Myself and my publisher sidekick MCM are co-hosting a podcast dedicated exclusively to the joys, wonders and intricacies of online fiction. We’re both staunch supporters of indie publishing and the Creative Commons movement, and generally enjoy insulting each other while hopefully being informative.

Two episodes are up so far:

Each episode is roughly an hour long, with updates expected bi-monthly. The full archives will be permanently available here.

So if you write, read, or would like to know more about online fiction, swing over to Webfiction World and listen to our pearls of wisdom!

p.s. If you’re a webfiction author and would like to be featured, check out my call for submissions on Web Fiction Guide.

Impressions of New York

There’s something very unreal about travelling.

You look at countries on a map, you know they’re there, that they exist and people live there, but somehow the knowledge remains as intangible as a dream. It’s only when you clamber off the plane and start paying for things with Monopoly money that it begins to sink in.

I’ve spent the last two weeks haunting Manhattan, pounding up and down the avenues, my shoes worn thin by the hot tarmac. The first week was for work (my day job), the second holiday — the two combined long enough for me to slip into the smog and bustle of NYC as if it were a second skin, my life in London all of a sudden a distant dream.

Midtown Manhattan is a true concrete jungle, hard flat lines of asphalt, angular buildings, thousands of windows. There is little space to breathe between the ever-open shops and restaurants. At night white vapour rises from the manholes and twines with the wheels of the ubiquitous yellow taxis, curling long, hot fingers into the air. Gothic churches snuggle up beside sleek skyscrapers, and there is always, forever, the droning hum of air conditioning.

By day, you can escape to Central Park and within minutes lose sight of all buildings and traffic. Yet from the top of the Rockefeller you realise that Central Park is but a tiny carpet in the living room of NYC, an ornamental rug neatly placed in the centre of the room.

Little Italy is laughably fake, Chinatown is surprisingly grimy and bewildering. East Village is rough around the edges but with a flair of style, West Village is low-storied and peaceful. And the only word I have for the nightlife in the Meatpacking district is ‘eurotrashy’ (although I’ll admit that Soho House does a mean burger).

The little I saw of Brooklyn was more akin to a bedroom—residential, quiet, restful. From the shoreline you can look on to the furore of Manhattan and wonder why anyone would live there.

And yet… for two glorious weeks the city was mine. I saw the Statue of Liberty. I crossed Brooklyn Bridge, I went to the Natural History Museum. I picnicked in Central Park, ate bruschettas at Inoteca and ventured into the bowels of the underground. I walked far more than my legs care to remember and ate a lot of (very good) food.

Yet here I am, back in London, fighting exhaustion, dreading work tomorrow morning. I’ve only been in the country for six hours and the memories are already fading, ephemeral, as if I never travelled at all.

There’s something very unreal about travelling. It feels like the last two weeks were a dream, and a part of me wonders whether — during the flight over — New York has simply evaporated into a thin mist.