Category Archives: writing

the long way ’round again, again [it burns! it burns!, writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

WritingLook, I didn’t mean to be gone for so long. I took a wrong turn on the expressway, and next thing I knew, I was in Tijuana, herding llamas and putting worms in those little bottles. You know how it is. I only just now got back.

Well, ok, maybe not. Maybe I just took an ill-advised two-and-a-half-year detour into buying, owning, and then ultimately selling a house someplace I shouldn’t have considered in the first place. Maybe I made a few starts at writing during that time, but couldn’t keep it going because of the constant distractions and pressure. Maybe there were llamas, but they were herding me.

Whatever the case, all those maybes are in the past. I’m in a new place, the lessons are learned, the pressures are lessened, the llamas are on their way to Hollywood, and I’ve carved out a regular block of time when I can just write (or edit, or blog, or whatever). I’m finally back to writing.

I’ve revamped the blog, and this site–added a new picture of my meaty mug, and cut down on the clutter of the sidebars. I also added a mobile theme for people viewing the site on their magic rectangles, figuring it was about time the site joined this decade.

As far as my books go… I regained the rights to my novel Brutal Light at the start of this year, and plan on self-publishing a new edition later this summer. I took down all my self-published short stories at the same time, and am planning on publishing my first collection in the spring of 2018.

Writing-wise, my top goal for the last seven months of this year is to finish my next novel, Redscale: Severance, though I’ll likely do a couple short stories in that time as well.

Finally, I do have a new short story, “The Path of Needles,” that will soon be published, in The C.A.M. Charity Anthology: Horror & Science Fiction #1 in a couple days. I’ll ramble on about that in another entry.

It’s good to be back! Watch out for llamas!

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthologies Fairly Wicked Tales and The C.A.M. Charity Anthology: Horror and Science Fiction #1. His blog originates here.

Get Fading Light before it fades away! [Fading Light, Fairly Wicked Tales, writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Fading LightIn case you haven’t read the news, Angelic Knight Press, which published two anthologies featuring stories of mine, has been acquired by another press (and is set to become that press’s new horror imprint).

That’s good news for Fairly Wicked Tales (which includes my story “Sweetheart, the Dream is Not Ended”), which will be reissued in early 2015. Not such good news for Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous (which includes my story “Goldilocks Zone”), which will be going out of print at the end of the year.

So… if you’re still hoping to get a copy of Fading Light, either ebook or dead-tree version, you don’t have a lot of time left. Get thee hence to a bookseller!

(If you’re into the whole actual physical book thing, you hardcore antiquarian you, you can get a copy of Fading Light from CreateSpace for 25% off with this coupon code: EQHG7CPV )

Happy Christmas! Merry holidays! Hail Krampus!

Edit (4/24/15: Removed links, as Fading Light is now out of print)

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthologies Fading Light and Fairly Wicked Tales. His blog originates here. Fading Light cover art: Jesse Lucero.

Fabulous Beasts (a dark fantasy short story) [e-stories | writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

(Edit 4/24/15: Updated buy links)

Fabulous BeastsReeling from a breakup with his girlfriend Jean, Paul Miller encounters Cyane, a wealthy model who wants to hire him to create disturbing paintings for nameless clients. But that work is only the start of what she wants from him. With her seductive song, she lures both he and Jean past desires for flesh, into a hallucinatory hunger for ecstasy and transcendence. To save Jean, himself, and his unborn child, he must learn who and what Cyane really is, and make a harrowing choice.

Here’s an excerpt of the start of the story:

The ropes that held me to the mast of the ship were loose. I found that as frightening as the dark shapes that thrashed just over the side. The men around me rowed on, ears stopped with wax, oblivious to the howls that rose above the roiling waters. I pitied them, for they wouldn’t know what they missed–voices sharp enough to cut thought and honeyed enough to clot the wound.

Though I could have easily freed myself, I remained still. In this place, I could hear the song. If I moved, it would dissolve into feral noise. My understanding of this grew with every change of the vast and beautiful voices that wove through the near-liquid air.

My ropes fell to the deck with the fading of the last octave. The men stopped rowing and stared with fearful eyes at the sea.

I walked toward the bow. The rush of her feathers came as a gasp of hungry breath that voided every other sound.

“Not this way.”

Her voice held a quiver from the song.

The wooden deck barked my knees when I slumped. She landed before me, dark brown wings in angelic spread, eyes locked with mine. Her human face could have been real, though my instincts whispered that it was not. Her sinuous body moved in ways more reptilian than avian. Her sharp red lips drew back into a grin.

Talons flashed. Blood ran down my neck.

“There is no easy way,” she said. “If you want it, it will hurt.”

(continued…)

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Fabulous Beasts cover art: Sergey Nivens/BigStock.com.

Long Time Gone [it burns! it burns!, writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

PersonalLAST TIME ON GARY’S BLOG: Our hero, the looming yet strangely beguiling Writer Lad, was hip deep in writing a first draft of an urban fantasy with talking raptors and flying sharks and things like that, unaware that he was moments from being captured by Amphi-dodecahedron, the Avatar of Fish-Based Geometry, to be used as an oblique angle in his decidedly fussy war against Cartanga, Finder of Small Pebbles, whose underhanded tactics and undercooked pasta were the subject of thousands of savage Yelp reviews, all written by Professor Ivan Sharpski, ex-KGB tap dancer and girl friday to Gummo Lemmingsnort, noted New York Times Bestselling Author of “That’s Not Chicken, and Probably Not a Taco, Either” and several not-so-bestselling horror novels featuring occult detective and part-time spatula Bacon McGee, a concept derived from a 1923 article on Bootlegging Badgers and the Flappers who Love Them, as mis-transcribed by Randall Everwood, a.k.a. the Shadow Over the Breakfast Nook, aided by a ratty English-Klingon dictionary, a vole paid off by Joe Don Baker, and Dr. Leslie Ann Cartier, inventor of the least joyful whoopee cushion ever documented.

We join Gary, already in progress.

Hmmm, guess it’s been a while since I last wrote a non-repost blog-entry. See, what happened was I broke free from the chains that bound me to the black pit and roamed the moors, slaking my thirst for blood just got busy with a lot of stuff, both writing and non-writing, and something had to give. Also, an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls, some car crash and replacement car buying drama, work stress, and so on. I’ve moved on, why can’t you?

Ha! Seriously, though, you don’t want to hear my lame, lame excuses. You want to know what’s going on now. And that is… writing. I’ve got a steampunk horror story I’m trying to wrestle into shape, and another short that may or may not get written after that. Redscale is on hold until the new year. Possibly longer, if I go and rewrite/polish/finish off/ship out The Morpheist, the biopunk novella I first-drafted more than a year ago. I’m putting together another short, Fabulous Beasts, for self-publicational glory later this month. My next non-self-publication is coming in January, with a story in Angelic Knight Press’s Fairly Wicked Tales.

Plus, December is eating my head, and we’ve barely started the month. So there’s that.

Reading-wise, there’s a lot of good stuff out there that I’m gonna take this opportunity to push at you. If you’re an urban fantasy fan, you’ve gotta check out Manifesto: UF edited by Tim Marquitz and Tyson Mauermann. It’s got twenty-three envelope-pushing urban fantasy tales by the likes of Lincoln Crisler, Jake Elliot, Teresa Frohock, and many more. If ghost stories are more your speed, check out Bryan Hall’s The Girl. It’s an evocative and compelling story heavy on atmospheric dread that I enjoyed a lot.

My friend Eric Burns-White has been putting out entries in his Mythology of the Modern World series on Amazon and Smashwords. They’re short, sharp, sometimes satirical, sometimes haunting mythological stories composed as answers to reader questions posed to him. The Sky of L.A. is Yellow/Gray is my favorite of these so far, but all of them are highly entertaining.

Another friend, Angi Shearstone, put out the second issue of her BloodDreams comic not too long ago. It’s a sharp tale of a conflict between vampires and hunters that ensnares a troubled punk rock singer and his friends, with gorgeous fully-painted artwork. Absolutely no sparkling going on, I promise. (I reviewed issue 1 a long while ago.)

Bryan Thomas Schmidt, meanwhile, has two anthologies out, both of which began life as Kickstarter projects. Beyond the Sun, which features science ficton tales of colonization of new worlds, has a number of outstanding stories (by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Cat Rambo, and Maurice Broaddus, among others). Raygun Chronicles, an anthology of golden-age-style space opera stories, just recently came out, and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of books I’m really looking forward to reading, Emmy Jackson’s second novel, Empty Cradle: Shiloh in the Circle (set in the world of his previous novel, Empty Cradle: the Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson, which I reviewed a long time ago). The first one was damn good, and I’m expecting this one will be as well. Plus there’s Greg Chapman’s new horror novella, The Last Night in October… holy crap I have a lot of reading to catch up on!

(Note: there are a lot of Amazon links above. I’m not participating in any affiliate thing here, I promise–it’s just convenient for me to link there, to show you I didn’t just come up with these things in a caffeine-and-pork-rind-fueled fever dream. Because I know that’s what you’re thinking.)

That’s all for now. I’m signing off and heading for the tub. Don’t forget to tip your server!

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: Elena Ray/Bigstock.com.

I hear the roar of a big machine [writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

WritingI don’t always write short blog entries, but when I do, it’s because I’ve been on a writing tear. And this month I have–about 19k words into a first draft of a new urban fantasy novel, Redscale. If I can sustain that pace, I expect to have the draft finished, or at least close to, by the end of the year.

Why it is that I always find myself of being in the position of either doing bloggy, tweety, updatey things or doing some actual writing, I don’t know. I mean, I’d always expected one or the other would take center stage at any given time, based on what was going on, but I didn’t expect right stage and left stage would be taken up as well! It’s a case of something’s gotta give, and better this give than the writing.

Among other things that can’t give: I’m working with my wife, Kristyn, on Onyx Fire, a short puppet movie based on a mid-grade fantasy book we co-wrote (but did not publish) a couple years back. It’s quite different than my adult horror and dark fantasy writing, and I really can’t imagine any sort of crossover audience, but I’m finding I’m enjoying the slow process of getting it ready for filming (with puppets and a greenscreen background)–doing the storyboards, working on the website, and so on. I probably won’t mention it (much) on this blog, at least not until the film’s done, but it’s going to take up some time for the next few months.

Finally, I’m reading. Not that this should come as a shock to anyone. But this reading is research–specifically, into Chicago circa 1893, the backdrop of a steampunk horror story I’ll be working on later this year. Not only will it be my first steampunk story, but also my first (alternate) historical fiction, which puts me under tremendous mental pressure to READ ALL THE HISTORY THINGS. Fortunately, many of these THINGS were already on my bookshelves, in the form of research I’d done more than a decade ago for a novel that got abandoned halfway through (one of the failed precursors to Brutal Light). And fortunately, 1890s Chicago is proving as fascinating to me now as it did then.

Oh, and I went to Cedar Point this month. Rode most of the coasters, and finished off with my favorite, the Top Thrill Dragster. And though I was kinda worn out by the end of the day, and a bit sunburned as well, it was a real good time.

Ok, I guess this blog entry wasn’t so short.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: Andres/Bigstock.com.

My brain has decided… [writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

WritingI don’t seem to be doing so well with the blogging; I suspect it’s because I’m too busy actually writing. Which is a good thing. Since my last missive (announcing a self-published short story, “The Body in Motion”), I completed three short stories–one of which (“Sweetheart, the Dream is Not Ended”) has already been accepted to an anthology, Fairly Wicked Tales, set to come out in late September or early October from Angelic Knight Press.

I’m also working on placing the other two, along with the one older work I’d really like to see land somewhere. Tunnel vision tends to overtake me once a work has left my hands… once I’m off to the next project, it can be hard for me to come back, dust off a piece, and send it someplace else. I’ve not always been the best for keeping at the slushpile shuffle, but of late I’ve gotten better at it.

Back when I was laying out my goals for the year, I tossed off the idea of writing four shorts. I’ve already got three done, and I know what the fourth one will be, which should mean I’m back to working on reworking The Morpheist, or plowing ahead on the first draft of This Island Monstrous, right?

Ha ha. Right.

My brain has decided that nothing would be so fine as to write an urban fantasy novella set in the world I created for one of the aforementioned short stories. I’d barely scratched the surface of all the ideas I’d had when writing that story, but they wouldn’t go and sit back down, so, out they come. No title yet, but I’m determined to get it out and on its way by summer’s end.

It’s also the first project I’ve started using the Scrivener writing program, which I downloaded from Amazon about a month ago when it was half-off its already reasonable $40 price. So far I’m really loving it. Instead of just starting at chapter one and seeing what came out of me, I’m using its corkboard setup to write up some character profiles. It started as just a way to consolidate what I already determined in the short story, but it’s blossomed into sort of an org chart of characters from that story, plus characters who’ll be appearing in that story, characters they know, and so on. I didn’t take this approach with This Island Monstrous, which may be why it foundered.

All this means, of course, that my other goals for this year are up in the air. I may or may not return to The Morpheist this year, but I’m definitely going to return to This Island Monstrous, this time with Scrivener to help me keep track of things. Plus one more short story to write, and a couple older short works to self-publish.

And then… light refreshments will be served.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: Andres/Bigstock.com.