Vote for Me

 My short story, "Floorboards" is currently in the top 25 on Storybilder and you, you lucky person you, can vote for it by clicking this here hyperlink!

Thanks in Advance!

Excerpt from "2012/21," the First-Draft-Completed-Editing-in-Progress-Novel

This is not where I truly belong. This is a nightmare of epic proportions, the kind of bad dream brought on by late night drinking and total despondency. 

The smell is the first thing to hit me, followed by the sight of bodies stacked as high as the eye can see. I shouldn’t be able to smell anything in this state and I for damn sure shouldn’t be able to handle such a smell without gagging. That means I’m being allowed to experience the stench of death and decay without becoming overpowered. Unlike me, the living walk around in those yellow containment suits you see in movies when there’s been some type of outbreak. 

Somewhere not too far away, somebody cries. It is impossible to tell the sex or age of the person because the despair they express transcends any of that. The grief stretches throughout the street as refrigerated trucks are loaded with body after body. The loaders aren’t even using gurneys, they’re just grabbing the dead people from both ends and tossing them inside the truck into the storage beds like sacks of wheat.

Someone yells, “Christ, Craig! This one’s still alive!”

I can’t see who said this or who they are talking about, but the flurry of activity points to one of the trucks further down the line. 

“What the fuck, Craig?” a female voice says. “How many times do I need to tell you to check them before you shuck them?”

Craig utters a sheepish, “Sorry.” 

That’s the last thing I hear before the scene shifts to what appears to be the outside of a hospital where, if I’m not mistaken, a group of angry people are brandishing protest signs and yelling at medical staff. What could these people have possibly done to incur such rage?

“Fucking crisis actor!” the big guy in the red baseball cap nearest me says, spit flying from his mouth.

The woman in scrubs standing like a statue before him wears a surgical mask and says nothing as he keeps accusing her of lying to the American people and calling her a pedophile.

Where the hell did that come from?

None of the medical folks are reacting to the angry men screaming in their faces like demented toddlers. It’s probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, except I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Where is my guide? I don’t care how hideous it is, I would welcome its presence right now. It would be far less nightmarish than what I’m witnessing from my fellow human beings. 

I decide to walk on, past the unmoving medical staff, past the angry, mostly unmasked protestors, past the news crews who are obviously eating all this shit up. I need sanity, peace, something that makes sense. I find the exact opposite on the next block.

Pamphlet-waving, saliva-spewing men and women beckoning all of us who pass by to come hear what they have to say. Most of them want us to sign their petitions for this group or against that group or for no group at all. They have markedly different beliefs but they all somehow sound the same. This whole scene feels less like reality and more like metaphor, but there’s a gritty realism to the whole affair that stubbornly keeps me from dismissing it as such.

Ignoring the shouting would-be activists, I glance to my right and stop dead in my tracks. On the side of an abandoned brick building, somebody has painted, in giant red letters: THE MAYANS WERE WRONG!

It’s all too much. I don’t feel myself hit anything when I pass out, but everything goes black

 

Excerpt from "This Evil Sky" a Novel-in-Progress

 Sleep does not come easy for a killer with a conscience. In fact, it remains ever elusive following a job. The more successful the job, the less likely there will be sleep. Alan is no exception to this rule, which is the only reason he isn’t rudely awakened by the pounding on his door. Throwing on a bathrobe and grabbing a nearby pistol, he walks to the front door of his apartment and stands off to the side as he gazes through the peephole. 

Wonderful. 

He opens it and breathes a heavy sigh.

Detective Moran. To what do I owe the displeasure?

The detective sneers and looks Alan up and down. Still awake, huh?

I’m a light sleeper.

Moran nods and asks if he can come in. Alan tells him he can, but may he?

Moran sneers again, his bearded face a mask of annoyance. How about we cut the crap?

(Shrugging) Fine. Let me just open my robe up nice and wide.

(Face contorted) Excuse you?

Well, if you’re gonna bust my balls as usual, I might as well grant total access.

Pondering my Novel

 As I am now 6,000-8,000 words away from finishing my novel, "2012/2021" I have begun noticing the themes that I wasn't necessarily consciously aware of until I'd been working on it for several months. My intent was always twofold: To write my own Vonnegut-type of novel and to write the novel I wish I'd written when I published "Dreamers at Infinity's Core." And all it took was a global pandemic, idiots who thought it was fake despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and unbelievable amounts of selfishness and self-entitlement.

Funnily enough, the COVID pandemic is only mentioned sparingly in the novel and never by name. I felt keeping it more abstract and ominous worked better as a plot device. Besides, the main protagonist is from the year 2012, so he really has no idea what's coming in 2020. This is a novel packed with ideas and images and connections that bridge time, space and reality itself. Making it about COVID would defeat the purpose and run the risk of becoming preachy. This is not a preachy book. It doesn't slow down long enough to preach.

It does, however, deal with themes that are sure to make some people uncomfortable. It also offers answers that many would resoundingly reject for fear of feeling as if their entire lives were pointless. Others will feel emboldened by the purposefulness they find in the narrative.

Without going too deeply into the story itself, here is a list of themes I have noticed as I close in on the novel's intentionally 

• Selfishness
• Greed
• Lack of Empathy
• Self-righteousness
• Corporate dominance
• The nature of creation
• Cult-like mentalities
• Doppelgangers
• Regret
• Redemption
• Helplessness
• Courage
• Dream logic
• The soul-crushing experience of retail work
• The inherent shallowness of thoughts and prayers
• Revolution
• The death of objective thought

And that's just off the top of my head! "2012/2021" isn't so much a story as an unraveling that feeds on itself like my own mind.

I can't wait to see it get rejected over and over!

Sticktoitiveness

 

This has been me for many, many years. Obviously I'm not alone or nobody would have created this meme. Okay, maybe I would have, but nobody else.

This year I resolved to begin and complete my novel "2012/2021" and I am on track to see do. All other ideas and short stories have been set aside and this book is literally the only fiction I have worked on since the year began. 

I fully expect to be finished with the first draft by no later than mid-June.

The writing of "2012/2021" has been incredibly rewarding, perhaps the most rewarding writing experience I have ever had. It is the novel I've always felt I had in me but was not yet able to capture it the way I wanted. The pandemic changed that. 

So, if anyone still reads this blog and was wondering why I don't post as often as I used to, that's the reason. 

Some Chapter Titles from my Work in Progress "2012/2021"

 

Chapter One: Those Wacky Mayans

Chapter 4: Displacement, Dat Placement or de udder Placement

Chapter 5: From Better Best to Sweater Vest

Chapter 6: Ain’t Nobody Got Time for DAT

Chapter 8: Opinions are Like Maskholes...

Chapter 11: Memories & Other Things That Never Happened

Chapter 13: At the End of the World Resides Myrtle

Chapter 15: Absolute Truth Ain’t Always Absolute Proof

Chapter 16: Symmetry at the Cemetery

Chapter 20: What are you doing, Daves?

Chapter 22: A Tale of Two Psychos

As you can see, I've been rather busy. Nearly 60,000 words as of this writing and I couldn't be having a better time. This is the novel I've been wanting to write for years without actually knowing it and I hope, when the time comes, it will be well-received and given a chance to be read by others.

To Hell with Preciousness

 

The Evil Gatekeeper 

A message for all you would-be fiction writers out there who think your words are too precious to alter: Be prepared to rewrite or be prepared to self-publish. It's that simple. Don't wanna work with the so-called "Gatekeepers" who don't "get" you or who you believe want to squash your vast talent? Cool. Keep banging away on those keyboards and tablets and maybe, just maybe, you will find one or two people willing to publish your work as-is every single time. You might even hit the Big Time that way, except you most likely won't.

Writing for an audience doesn't mean whatever you write is what the audience should accept. While I'm no fan of writing specifically for other people, I am aware that other people are the ultimate goal for anyone sending their work out for consideration. Do you think singers only want to hear themselves in the shower? Of course not. And any singer who wants to leave that shower and be heard isn't going to tell everyone they audition for how stupid they are and how they don't recognize talent when they hear it.

I'm sure you can find a story or two to "prove me wrong" as if such an infinitesimal number proves anything.

Ultimately, writing is a craft. Crafts involve being scrutinized and going back to the drawing board. I'm sorry if your parents told you everything you wrote was brilliant and refused to stifle your imagination when you were out in public and should have been in the moment. Participation trophies are awesome, but they don't mean much more than, "I showed up and failed to distinguish myself." Translating that mentality to submitting fiction will not get you far.

Recently, I submitted a short story to a publisher who wrote back telling me they enjoyed the story but felt it dragged in the beginning and needed some rewriting to fit better with the types of stories they publish. Well, I don't mind telling you I was offended as all hell! I fired up the old PC and let loose with a string of invective that would make John McEnroe blush! I told this gatekeeper they were a fool with limited vision who didn't understand the brilliance they had been handed. How dare you, I wrote, tell me my story needs work? That's just an opinion! You are not worthy of my time or my very stable genius.

I don't mind telling you all of that because it's absolute bullshit. I would never and have never done that.

Have I encountered publishers and editors I determined were not very intelligent based on the feedback they provided? Of course. This field is like any other. Not everybody deserves their job. But I kept my mouth shut and moved on to someone else. That's how it works. Anything else is a temper tantrum.

So, yes. I am rewriting the story for this publication. Within the context of this publication's esthetic, the feedback is spot-on. There's a reason an editor would write the following, "You are a very talented writer and I have published you many times because of that. Would you be willing to rewrite your story to streamline it and pick up the pace?"

I earned that by taking feedback and applying it. Preciousness gets you nowhere except the back of the bitter barn.

That's my feedback. Take it for it's worth or condemn me for misunderstanding your stunning brilliance. it's up to you.

Another Place to Order Some of My Work.

 I happened upon "ReaderIQ" which has some of my work available for sale.

Click here for the link.

Told'ja I used to do Stuff!

 

A Brief Excerpt from a work in Progress

 My novel, "2012/2021" hit a stall due to work obligations but I am now reading what I've written so far and resuming work on it. It is my hope that it will be "Slaughterhouse Five" or "Breakfast of Champions," which is what "Dreamers at Infinity's Core" was originally intended to be.

Below is an excerpt:

I nodded. It made sense in a...nothing-makes-sense-anymore kind of way. Tampering with the laws of nature, interrupting the flow of what Taoists call “The Way” had to come with repercussions. I had practically winked myself out of conscious existence. I couldn’t do shit about vanishing physically, so of course some meathead from the Bronx had arrived to cause me further distress.

You could set your watch by it, if people still used their watches to tell time.

Anyway.

I suppose some part of my rational being knew that didn’t explain a pudknocking thing. The very notion that the two had anything to do with each other was absurd, sort of like clown porn. It sounded interesting until the floppy shoes and wigs started bouncing up and down.

A Poem Upon Returning

 Concrete Beat

By

Christopher Nadeau

Stretching, spreading, growing,

Everywhere at once.

Weeds between the cracks, mothers with broken backs.

Cold. Hot. Always changing,

Footfalls echo, fade, recede, back and forth,

Blood everywhere, unnoticed, unrecognized, unacknowledged.

Bodies soften the surface for those whose feet,

Rarely tread upon roughness.

Sounds fill the air, the mind, the soul,

As dim light hits the eyes just right.

Addictions abound, stenches surround,

Who cares?

Does anyone care?

Did anyone ever care?

It has always been here, unfolding, enveloping.

Leading nowhere, sometimes somewhere, rarely and always

Everywhere. There. Up ahead. 

More.

Enormous, jutting things, filled with

People. Empty, unfulfilled people.

Dwelling and toiling inside the same

Material that leads to them.

Who cares?

Who gives a fuck?

Where does it end?

Shall we go for a stroll?

When The Darkness Internal was a Thing

 With all traces of the once bi-monthly magazine I used to edit slowly vanishing from the inter-webbings ether, it's gratifying to still find a link that hasn't. 

Click here for proof that the Darkness Internal did indeed at one time exist.

The above link is from when D.I. was a special edition, as evidenced by the description below:

Voluted Tales is currently reading for its first special edition, entitled “The Darkness Internal” which is hosted by guest editor Christopher Nadeau. Christopher is looking for the following kinds of submissions

“The Darkness Internal”- Looking for stories that are outside the norm. They can be horror, dark fantasy, science fiction or even mainstream lit as long they meet the following criteria: Tales of inner darkness. Think Kafka or Phillip K Dick or any U.S. Congressional hearing. Stories should focus on an internal struggle or occurrence. Not looking for genre staples such as vampires, werewolves, and especially not zombies. More interested in tales of torment and struggle as defined by the classic “Man Versus Himself” approach to writing. Still, if you can find a fresh and exciting way to tell the story following the criteria and using those fabled beings, knock us out!

Rediscovering Vonnegut, Rediscovering Me

It's been a while since I posted anything here. New job responsibilities and a decision to go on a writing hiatus made it seem pointless. I even made the announcement on Facebook that I was going to stop writing for an indefinite amount of time. Then something truly miraculous happened: The world somehow went even more batshit crazy than it had before. At least, the sizable corner of it known alternately as the United States of America and 'Murica did. It was those who tend to employ the latter term whose insanity and gullibility were on equal display January 6th.

In case you're living in an alternate universe that I would very much prefer to live in, you know that was the day a horde of Donald Trump's supporters descended upon the U.S. capital and did their best French Revolution impression. People were hurt, some died, and property damage and theft rounded out the horrific triumvirate of insipidity. We had, to my way of thinking, officially entered a time where all the surface-level  BS would never return to its subterranean depths again. It was here to stay and it was only going to get worse before it got...I didn't know that it would ever get better. However, the writer in me watched with cool, dispassionate interest, cataloging and extrapolating.

I had no idea he was doing any of that. Having dived headlong into my new job, a job I love, by the way, I had, much like Luke Skywalker in "The Last Jedi," cut myself off from the Force. But the Force has other ways of reasserting itself. Much like how the character of Rey came into Luke's life to rekindle his heroism, another type of powerful influence returned to me in the form of a seemingly random audiobook selection on the shelves at work.

Those who know me, those who have read this blog, and those who have read my first novel all know my first real literary hero was Kurt Vonnegut. Despite an apparent hipster-led assault on his literary reputation over the past decade, he remains the singular influence on my writing voice and sensibility. The elitists can go to hell of they want to diminish me for that. 

Ever since the global pandemic started, I have experienced the urge to reread Vonnegut. I own most of his work. The urge usually occurs whenever I am feeling lost or needing to find my center. Other authors have come along since that fill a similar niche, but none has the powerfulness of Vonnegut's simplistic prose and grand yet grounded notions about the human condition. For most, his best work is "Slaughterhouse Five." It was the first thing I read thanks to an English Lit class. Of the five short novels we read in those 7 1/2 weeks, his was the one that prompted me to run out and buy another novel of his during the semester. 

My favorite Vonnegut novel remains "Breakfast of Champions." My own novel, "Dreamers at Infinity's Core," was an attempt to mimic the approach of Vonnegut's work and put my own stamp on it. I believe that time has come again. 

I've been listening to the audiobook during my drives to and from work. Read by gifted actor Stanley Tucci, the reading is nothing short of incredible. Unlike Ethan Hawk's ponderous monotone on "Slaughterhouse Five," Tucci understands how Vonnegut's prose should be read. Somewhere in all that brilliance, I heard the basis for a novel I have wanted to write for several years. I didn't know it until recently, but I have grown tired of treading the same familiar ground. I want to write a novel that is about something, not just reacting to it. I want the idea to be the thing, not the plot device to propel characters from scene to scene. I want dialogue to be simple but resonant, meaningful. 

Most of all, I want to write about what's going on in my head before it takes me over. And yes, I mentioned the insanity of January 6th because it will be one of two framing devices for this novel. The other is the Mayan calendar. I already know the title and it isn't going to change:

2012
2021

It's time to make Vonnegut proud~

Writing for the Interwebs: The Perfect Way to Watch your Work Disappear Forever

 Readers of this blog know I have published both fiction and non-fiction, much of the latter online. There is an accepted axiom in today's culture that "the internet is forever" but that's only true if some third party decides to take a screenshot of your work. At least, in some cases. Sometimes that person is me, but more often than not, I don't bother and my work vanishes into the ether from whence it came.

I first realized the internet was not forever when a website I'd written dozens of articles for suddenly decided to shut down and gave all of is "content generators" thirty days to grab our shit and go. In the virtual world, that equates to finding ways to screenshot all of your work before it is unceremoniously wiped from all existence.

That's not to say that print is forever, but I've reached the conclusion that there is more of a likelihood that some physical copy of one's work will still be out there somewhere. 

What prompted this, you ask? Lately I've been listening to an audiobook about Robin Williams' life and tragic demise. When he died, I was writing for the now defunct The Movie Network, whose editors encouraged every single writer to flood them with Williams articles. It was that rare moment when repetition was desired and most of us rose to the challenge. And it was a challenge.

Having anticipated that every other writer working for the site would come up with some "What Robin Williams meant to me" article, I decided to watch the movie everyone was relating to his apparent suicide, "Father of the Year." I used my review of the film (Spoiler alert: I thought it was brilliant!) as a way of talking about my own father, whose adoration of Williams had been a strong influence on my childhood. I realized rather quickly that losing Robin Williams felt like losing my dad all over again, a mixed, jumbled torrent of conflicting emotions and uncertainties once more manifesting themselves in my mind. I was older now and better equipped to handle it, but it was no less significant.

I poured everything I had into that piece and while I was paid for it, I wrote it because I had no choice. These were thoughts and feelings I had to express or risk going mad(der). I considered it one of the better things I wrote for them, and I wrote over 200 articles for them in a six month period. Don't worry. I was well-compensated. I know you were worried. But more importantly, I was pleased enough with my body of work with them, the film reviews in particular, to guide readers to them even after several of us were unceremoniously and without warning, no longer needed.

The articles remained up for years and I suppose I gave into a false sense of eternity. How easily that sense is dispelled, however, for it is gone, gone, gone. Not just the article, mind you. The website itself. Gone as if it has never existed. I don't even have an original copy of the review; my fault entirely. I am often rather lazy when it comes to my non-fiction. 

My fiction has fared better in the longevity department, but it was particularly painful when the entire website that supported one of my high water marks in the writing world vanished seemingly forever. Voluted Tales, which published six issues of my beloved "The Darkness Internal" is, alas, no more. Most of the issues featured the works of other authors but I wrote an editorial for every issue. I also conducted all of the author interviews...HEY! More lost non-fiction! See how that works?

It hurts to know so much of my work will never be read again. That doesn't mean I won't continue to have stuff published online, however. There really isn't much of a choice to be had these days, but I will hopefully be a bit smarter about preserving my work in the future.

"After the Kool-Aid is Gone" Kindle Edition Available

 

With the Kindle release of the anthology pictured to the left that features my short story, "The Gipper Memorandum" and a host of other timely tales comes also the fact that it is being released during Domestic Violence Awareness month. Due to this and the fact that the publisher is a domestic violence survivor, a portion of the sale of each copy will go to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Order your copy now for only $2.99 by clicking here.

I'll return to update you on the paper copy once it's available for you old school types like me.

An Excerpt from "The Coming and Going of Rectus: An Infinity's Core Side-Trip"

 In 2009, my first novel "Dreamers at Infinity's Core" was released to mild acclaim and even milder sales. The sequel was written and ready to go within months. Titled "Echoes of Infinity's Core," it was vastly superior in every way and advanced the concept into new and exciting ways and directions.

Nobody read it.

Nobody even saw it because it was never published. Through a series of mishaps and external horrors, the publishing venture that published my first novel fell through. That left a finished sequel and a half-finished third and probably final installment languishing in literary limbo for years. 

In the meantime, I returned to the "Infinity's Core" universe twice with very short stories designed to expand upon what was already a rather expansive concept. Neither of those stories featured the snappy dialogue and quick scene jumps of the novels, skewing instead in a more esoteric direction. Someday I hope to write a collection of Core-related tales. but not before the story of Ned, Ernie and the Narrator has been told.

A few years ago, I started wondering if I could even write in that style anymore. I feared I could not, an alarming thought considering how badly I wanted to finish book three. Could I jump back into that sardonic, self-referential type of writing after having changed my style to one more introspective? There was only one way to find out.

That was the birth of the short story mentioned in this blog's title. Considering how much time passes between each novel, I knew there had to be things happening to my characters while they waited for the next Big Thing. What better than a smaller-scale version of the first novel, stripped down to two rooms in one house and my three main protagonists dealing with potential Armageddon and discomforting full front male nudity?

Yeah. Naked Ernie convinced me I could still do it. Thanks, Ernie, you poor beleaguered, magnificently tragic bastard.

So without further ado and no more context than that, here is the excerpt:

“LET US ENTER YOU.”

“Not even in a prison shower.”

“WE DON’T WISH TO IMPRISON YOU.”

“Flew right over their zipper,” Ernie says with a chuckle.

I decide now is the time to go for broke and say, “Rectus? Why did you steal Ernie’s shiny new expensive pants?”

“WE REQUIRE A CONDUIT THROUGH WHICH TO—“

“Enter our world and achieve life,” Ernie and I finish.

“Conduit,” Core-spawn loves that word.  It was how some of them viewed Chad when they attempted to manifest into the physical universe.  Now these also-rans are applying it to clothing?  What’s next?  Condoms?

“Gimme my fucking pants, you little assholes!”

Clearly Ernie has lost patience with this situation.  I nod at him and he breaks into a trot, jumping onto the arm of my couch and into the air with a fluidity I’d have never expected from him.  As the pants try to scamper away from his sudden assault, I break into a less graceful trot and manage to grab hold of one pant leg.

If you’re thinking that’s all it takes to resolve this, you really need to go read the book!

The pants twist out of my grasp as if there’s oil on my palms, floating through the air like a kite as Ernie’s jump into the air affords him the opportunity to wrap his arms around his clothing and land hard on his knees.  I glance over in time to see not only a full moon but the cave entrance.

“GROSS!”

“Puke later, help now!” Ernie struggles on the floor with the writhing Rectus, clearly seconds away from losing the fight.

“Wait,” I say. “Hold on for a few more seconds.”

“No problem! Do you need to use the bathroom or anything while I’m doing that?”

Nobody likes a smartass and Ernie seems to have become the poster boy for sarcasm.  I think I preferred him when he was slower-witted; I’m still not sure how he changed but perhaps it has something to do with the Narrator’s arrival.  Speaking of whom, why should we have to suffer without our third wheel?

As if reading my mind, Ernie says, “Don’t call him! I’m half naked!”

Too late.  I’m already sending an emergency text to my alternate reality doppelganger.  What, you don’t have one?  I thought everybody did.

He arrives within minutes, having apparently already been on the way over.  Since he doesn’t belong in our world, a place he has dubbed rather arrogantly as “Earth-Redux,” he never likes to remain in one place for very long.  He spends a lot of his time trying to figure out why he’s here and whether or not he wants to go back to a world he makes sound like a chaotic shithole.  When he isn’t doing that, he takes advantage of the standing invitation to crash at my place.  Little did he know what to expect when entering the house.

“Holy full frontal, Batman!” he says.

“Godammit,” Ernie says.

“I tried to text you,” I say.

The Narrator, who looks a lot like me except a bit heavier and with less hair on his head, tries to address me without looking at me.  “I heard it go off but I figured I could check it when I…why is Ernie wrestling with those shiny pants? Is this the Earth-Redux version of Twister?”

I explain what’s been happening in as succinct a manner as possible.  In truth, the Narrator is far better at self-editing than I am.  The novel we wrote together was proof of that.  He listens stoically, nodding once or twice, before responding:

“This might have rated an actual phone call, guys.”

The Cover of my Next Anthology Appearance Finally Unveiled!!!

 

Here is the final cover for "After the Kool-Aid is Gone," the latest anthology to feature one of my short stories and, I assume, short stories by a bunch of other people. Okay, no assumption is necessary. I've met then online. They exist and they're extremely talented. But enough about them. My story is the one that features the true reason behind the Reagan assassination attempt and the inhuman creature that controls our destinies.

I love the retro political cartoon look, serving as a not-so-subtle reminder that we have been here before and will be again.

Soon to be released, "ATKIG" as the hipsters are calling it, is another timely anthology that really shows how well art and technology can work together, especially when the world is rapidly descending into the cosmic toilet.

More on this anthology once it's available for preorder~

To Every Story its Time

 It happens every time.

I hit a period of non-stop creativity where I crank out several stories at once, and then it comes to a screeching halt. Somewhere in that process, I start submitting my work to various publishers, sometimes scoring an acceptance or two early on and then...nuthin'. 

And that's okay. It stopped bothering me a while ago. My original strategy involved descending into self-loathing, rushing headlong into impostor syndrome and, when those failed, rewriting older stories until I got my mojo back. Speaking of older stories, I have a few I have been trying to get published over the years. One such work, titled, "The Gipper Memorandum," sat in my files since 2012, occasionally rearing its head whenever I felt a publisher might be interested in publishing it. 

Lately, my run of luck has been of the sucking variety. Rejections didn't exactly flood in but they definitely trickled water onto my forehead with each disappointing email. Reasons ranged from the generic "not for us" to the "man, that's good writing! Sorry, no" variety. At least one came with compliments for "parts" of the story, concluding with the painful "it's too preachy" opinion.

So, when I opened my email this morning and saw two emails from publishers to whom I'd sent stories, I assumed they too would be negative responses. The first one turned out to be simply a confirmation of receipt. The second one was an acceptance of a story that was written in 2012. 

I never lost faith in "The Gipper Memorandum" but I did reach the conclusion that it was probably a story for a short fiction collection. A so-called "Added treat" in the form of an unpublished story. But then some big shot editor had to go and accept it and ruin the surprise for everybody! 

I am, of course, beyond pleased to see one of my older stories finally get picked up. If anybodsy takes anything away from my post, make it this: Don't just leave those stories and novels in your desk drawers and on your hard drives. Assuming you tried to get them published, try again and again. Sometimes it's all about timing and, in my case, waiting until there's a fascist lunatic in charge of a country that should know better. 

I will post more anthology info for "After the Kool Aid is Gone" once it becomes known~

From the "Wish I'd Thought of That...Wait, I kinda did" Files.

   

Plot: The zombie apocalypse is over. The humans have won. Life is back to normal. And Rip is bored as hell. It's not much of a life sitting in a call center in the poor town of Spanish Shanty, Florida, answering emails like a drone and listening to customer complaints.

Rip was ruler of a tiny kingdom in the Lazy River waterpark, killing zombies by day and making passionate love at night. He misses the danger, the camaraderie, and the blistering love he once knew. He longs to feel Santana—his trusty machet—in his hand, and Davia—the fiercest woman alive—in his arms once again. He can still picture it—life on the razor's edge—and he would do anything to get that feeling back. But what if Rip could get it back?

 

I am intrigued by the novel pictured and described above, the advertisement for which I received from the SFBC  in an email. I love the idea of a post-POST-Apocalyptic tale where all the so-called "cool stuff" has already taken place. And that call center employee angle? Inspired as all get-out! The very concept swells to bursting with the cynicism of a Christopher Nadeau tale! If only I had thought of something like this!

Oh, wait.

In a now out of print edition of Ghostlight Magazine (Summer 2011 to be precise) my short story "Cubicle Dwellers" was published. The plot concerned a man who had spent the so-called zombie apocalypse in a mental institution, too doped up to realize the world was falling apart outside his room. Once the meds wear off, he awakens to an orderly who is no longer alive but still insists on doing his job...badly, of course. Our hero escapes with his life only to find out the world has changed as the dead have risen and...gone back to work. What else can he do except the same thing? Two guesses who the real zombies are.

I've only written two zombie stories and that was the one that was more open about my disdain for the sub-genre. The other story was a much more serious historical tale that dealt with racism and the self-entitlement of the ruling class. Oh, and cannibalism because why not? Think of it as an homage to the Donner Party, or at least the myth surrounding them.

I'm not saying Adams' novel is like mine beyond the basic idea of the mundane aftermath of a supposedly extraordinary event. What I am saying is I wasn't seeing fiction like this nine years ago when I received rejection after rejection for not writing in a tiny box that was the only thing most magazine and anthology publishers seemed interested in putting out. Now that winking self-awareness is all the rage, books like this are flooding the market.

Don't get me wrong. It's a good thing. Very good. The best. You've never seen a better thing. Someone said to me, "Sir, do you think this good thing is very good?" 

Trumpian self-promotion aside, I am glad to see a long-needed approach to these types of stories appearing. I just want you to know it didn't happen in a vacuum and that some of us were writing them when the close-mindedness of those with the power to say yes or no acted as a barrier.

Now, let's go read "Apocalypse Yesterday" with its admittedly heavy-handed title and in the meantime I'm going to take another look at "Cubicle Dwellers" and think long and hard about what type of retooling it deserves~

 

In my Day, it was Called "Straight Fiction"

 I usually write genre fiction, meaning for those who are unacquainted, stories based around some fantastical element found in science fiction, fantasy, horror and magical realism. Although the latter is often a technique used in literary fiction, it is in actuality thinly disguised genre writing. 

When I took creative writing in college, my instructor's  only hard and fast rule for our first short story was to write what he referred to as "straight fiction." That meant fiction written about the real world sans magic or extrapolated technology and for the love of Faulkner, nothing with monsters in it. It did not mean fiction without gay or bisexual characters. Being the crafty little rebel I am, I naturally wrote a thinly disguised genre piece about the end of the world by changing the cause to an exploded chemical truck and the reality to a matter of perception. I got an "A" and wrote several well-received genre pieces after that.

I have written "straight fiction" over the years but have had no luck getting it published. My sensibilities are just too out there, methinks. So, I don't write it often. 

I started one today, however, because of the death of my high school teacher. I had been searching for him online for years and finally found a death notice on Facebook posted by a relative. It hit me pretty hard. My relationship with him was complicated; I went from utterly despising him to being incredibly fond of him over the space of three years. I really wanted to know how his life was and him to see mine. 

His "sudden" death has made that impossible. 

I haven't seen him in decades and I'm not sure why I am so deeply affected by his passing. Is it because I only found him once he was gone? Is it because he was only twelve years older than me? I don't know. Maybe this piece of "straight fiction" will help me understand and deal with these feelings. It seems to be the only avenue I have available to me. 

Here's an excerpt. Feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section:

Gerry.

The nickname makes me laugh. He never knew we called him that until I was about ready to graduate and when we found out it was his actual nickname, we had the type of giddy fun exclusive to teenage boys. But as I mentioned, that was much later.

My earliest memories of Gerry are vague and corporeal. He was a loud, angry voice in the next classroom over from the one where French class took place. His Billy Badass routine often punctured a hole right through the middle of our own teacher’s rather low-key delivery, causing us to all stop and listen as he berated the younger class for not being compliant while he attempted to teach them about the past.

There were times when even the French teacher joined in the laughter in our classroom as Gerry threatened his class with going to the principal’s office and other ultimately meaningless punishments. At one point, Gerry’s tirades became an expected part of our French class experience, our French teacher having lost the battle for our attention spans weeks prior. Frankly, her French was atrocious anyway. My mother, one of the few highly educated parents, was fluent in the language of half my ancestry and flew into a rage every time I shared with her the teacher’s horrifying pronunciations.

I had seen Gerry, of course. It was a small private school with a mere few hundred students. However, since we were graded sixth through twelfth, some of the teachers didn’t teach tenth and eleventh graders. His day would come though.