Tag: horror (Page 1 of 2)

10 Stories, 10 Samples

Monsters at Dusk

Alternate title for this post: The Monsters at Dusk sampler platter.

Why? Because, with short story collection Monsters at Dusk just 11 days away from release, I’d like to add something new to the menu. Today, I’d like to share the titles of all 10 stories. In addition, these titles come with a brief peek at each story.

If you like the sampler, don’t forget to order the main course on September 6th. Here we go!

Several Messages from Abby to God (Regarding Her Cat)

Dear Mr. Satan,

My name is Abby Thymes and my cat Pickles just died. I herd about you at Sunday skool and they said you’re kinda meen but also kinda magical I guess so I thought I’d say hi. I think Mr. God’s maybe taking a nap becuz he didn’t anser me.

Have you seen my cat Pickles down there? If you have could you send him back? If you do I would like you a lot and I would lissin to loud music with screeming and screechee gitars and stuff. My brother lissins to that stuff and he says it’s your favrit music. I’m sorry I don’t spell very good.

Anyway please send Pickles back. If not I’ll be really really mad at you.

Sincerealy,

Abby Thymes

Unbelievable

Anyway, once back at his dorm room, [Toby had] thrown on his clothes, some flip-flops, his backpack, whatever, and he’d dashed out the door. He smelled like his childhood dog Ambrose used to smell after rolling in the mud, but there was no time to care. If he was late again, the honorable professor Simon R. Briggs would fail him. And then probably murder him, just because he had tenure and he could get away with it.

We Remember

In my dream, I lie in bed beside you and I remember the outdoor concert where we first met, how hard it poured during the encore. I remember watching Troll 2 with you, our first B-movie, and laughing hard enough that cream soda gushed from my nose—still the only time it’s ever happened. I remember how hot it was the day we got married, how we all (especially me) sweat through our clothes. I remember the first time we kissed, and how my heartbeat never quite slowed around you since.

Large Coffee, Black

Some people flavor their coffee with sugar, milk, creamer, and the like. Osbourne truly hates those people.

A Good Fit in Penbluff City

Pren isn’t royalty, by the way. But that doesn’t mean she can’t feel like royalty. After all, she’s the closest thing to it these days. She’s a billionaire: first as a player, then as a landowner, now as a team owner in a sports league. And there’s no bigger sports league than the Greater Questing League.

Alice

Why would it do that? Never heard of an animal crying before, have you? That would require being sad, and being sad means you’ve got emotions. Animals only have about three: they’ve got scared, they’ve got hungry, and they’ve got horny—and don’t tell Gram I told you that last one. Animals don’t have the mental know-how to feel anything else.

Thespian: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in Three Acts

I was jobless, worthless, a base wretch and nothing more. My tyrannical landlady ousted me from my apartment, you see, just a day after my release from the theater company. The old bag cited three months without rental payment as motivation. She even cast me aside without so much as a “Good luck, and break a leg!”

Virus / Affliction / Condition / Curse

“Yeah, I worked on the werewolf Super Bowl commercial.” Giovanni Fressi frowns for a moment, then says, “Why? You wanna complain about it?”

Wings

“I can give you wings,” he said.

That was all. That and an enigmatic smile, a smile that might’ve been warm or predatory or indifferent. All he wanted was an answer. A yes.

I gave it to him.

The Megrim

When the first child vanished in the night, I called on the High Temple for aid.

Piebald the Cobbler laughed at me for doing it. “You’re always worrying, Pureman,” he said the following day as we trudged over fresh snow. “Too much for a young man like you. I’ve got a boy of my own. These children, they go wandering, they come back. Once this one starts missing his sweets and his bed, he’ll return.”

Yet a day passed without sign of the child.

[You can read even more from this one here.]

That’s all for now…

But you can buy the entire book on ebook or paperback September 6th. Look for it then!


Kyle A. Massa is the author of the novel Gerald Barkley Rocks and the forthcoming short story collection Monsters at Dusk. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. He lives somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats.

An Early Look at “Monsters at Dusk”

Monsters at Dusk

I’ve been teasing a new book for the past few months. I’m happy to say it’s nearly here.

The book is called Monsters at Dusk. It’s a short story collection (well, technically six short stories, three flash fiction pieces, and one novella). Each story concerns a different monster, some literal, some metaphorical, some you’ll recognize, others you won’t. A handful of these stories have been published around the internet; most are unpublished and original. Here they are, together for the first time. Kinda like The Avengers in 2012.

But you can’t have a book without a cover. So that’s why I asked my good buddy and eminently talented designer Nathan Rumsey to do this:

Nathan did the cover for my first book, Gerald Barkley Rocks, as well. Don’t ask me which I love more—it’s like choosing between kids. To learn more about the making of this one, feel free to read last week’s blog post, “Creating the Cover of ‘Monsters at Dusk’.”

Now what about the cover copy? I’m glad you asked, kind reader. Here’s a little more info about Monsters at Dusk:

There’s no monster under your bed, but there are several in this book.

The first short story collection from “Gerald Barkley Rocks” author Kyle A. Massa, “Monsters at Dusk” offers answers to several important questions, such as:

Do vampires use Snapchat?

What happens when a demonic cat declares war on God and Satan?

Is someone drinking your memories? If so, are they tasty?

If a mad scientist offers to build you a set of wings, should you accept?

Can sports franchises set in epic fantasy worlds make better hiring decisions than real ones?

How would the American legal system handle werewolves?

What is a Megrim and why does it keep taking everyone’s kids?

Balancing fantasy, science fiction, horror, and humor, each of the collection’s 10 stories concerns a different monster—some familiar, some original, some literal, some metaphorical, all strange and wonderful in their own way.

Monsters at Dusk arrives Friday, September 6th, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and in paperback.


Kyle A. Massa is the author of the novel Gerald Barkley Rocks and the forthcoming short story collection Monsters at Dusk. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. He lives somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats.

The Curious Case of Why Short Story Collections Don’t Sell

Short Story Writer

“Short stories are loose change in the treasury of fiction.”

That’s what J.G. Ballard wrote in the introduction to his Complete Short Stories collection. Considering the dwindling attention spans of many readers, you’d think that short stories would be more popular than ever. But when’s the last time you saw someone reading a short story collection? Just like Ballard wrote, it seems short stories are the pennies, nickels, and dimes of literature.

So why don’t short stories sell?

First, I think it’s about the characters. Take a series like A Song of Ice and Fire, for example. Fantasy fans and non-fantasy fans alike revere that series in large part because of the characters. They’re dense, they’re layered, and they evolve over the course of many volumes. In short stories, however, you don’t have hundreds of pages to devote to character development. That’s not to say that short stories don’t have good characters—it’s just that, with such limited space, writers must focus on a few key characteristics rather than many.

Furthermore, I think agents and publishers are less likely to go for collections because they don’t have the potential for a series. This one’s a no brainer: once readers get attached to the first book in a series, you’ve got them locked in to buy the rest. The Harry Potter series, for instance, only got more and more popular with each new release. And once the series ends, publishers can package the whole thing into a box set for even more sales. All told, that’s a heck of a lot of money.

And another thing: authors often use short story collections to explore different styles and genres, which is the opposite of what they do with novels. Another truism of the publishing industry states that once an author makes it big with one book, she/he should pretty much rewrite that story, only make it a little different this time. For readers, this is a good thing; you can pick up a novel by an author you know, and you’ll probably end up liking it.

Short stories don’t necessarily follow that rule, though. Things like second person narrative and interview style, which rarely work in long-form narratives, suddenly spring to life in a short story. Authors also tend to explore subjects they stray away from in their longer fiction. Roald Dahl is a great example. Sure, you know him as the guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But have you ever read his short fiction? Just to get a taste (sorry for the pun), try Lamb to the Slaughter. It’s a clever short that includes murder, adultery, deception, and dinner.

Or, in other words, good fun.

Will short stories ever sell like novels do? Maybe not. Historically, the novel has always been far more popular, and, for the reasons listed above, I can see that trend continuing for a long, long time.

But don’t let that stop you from trying short fiction, if you haven’t already. There’s an elegance to a good short story, a brevity and directness that many novels are missing. Some of the greatest short stories I’ve ever read say much more with far less.

So, for J.G. Ballard’s sake and the sake of short story writers everywhere, always hold on to that loose change.


Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction.

An Excerpt from “Monsters at Dusk”

Monsters at Dusk

For the past five months, I’ve been working on a new book. Today, I’m thrilled to share a piece of that book with you.

Just to be clear, this is a real thing (not like that April Fool’s joke a while back). It’s a short story collection and it’s called Monsters at Dusk. About 40% of the book is comprised of previously published short fiction. The other 60% is original material.

As the title implies, this collection is all about monsters. They range from real to imaginary, folkloric to original, and literal to figurative. The “dusk” part refers to the transitional state of all these monsters; each undergoes a significant change. (Also, I think Monsters at Dusk just sounds cool.)

In the coming weeks, I’ll share story titles, the book cover, and further information about the collection. For now, I’ve got an excerpt for you.

This sneak peek comes from a story called “The Megrim.” Weighing in at nearly 20,000 words (or 75 Google Doc pages), “The Megrim” is the collection’s lengthiest piece. I began writing it late last year while concluding edits on Gerald Barkley Rocks. It was one of those rare instances where I simply started writing without any specific story in mind. I imagined a snow-covered village, a bookish priest, an always-hungry mercenary, and a mysterious monster lurking in the woods surrounding them. The name of that monster came to me immediately: The Megrim.

“Megrim” is not a made-up word, by the way. I first heard of it here:

Megrim

Anyone who knows me knows of my love for the OG trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. One of the game’s most underrated elements is its use of language; there’s no shortage of obscure and interesting words in card titles. With names like “Avaricious Dragon,” “Abhorrent Overlord,” and “Immaculate Magistrate,” the game has no shortage of evocative words. So when I discovered “Megrim” wasn’t copyrighted, I stole it.

Not only did the word sound right for my monster, its definition aligned as well. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, megrim is an archaic noun that means “depression” or “low spirits.” (Megrim also refers to “a deep-water flatfish of the European Atlantic coast,” but we’re not talking about that.) The words fit the monster, and so its title—and the story’s—were decided.

From there, the initial ingredients mixed together to form an epic fantasy/mystery hybrid, with a bit of horror sprinkled in. I loved writing it. In my (admittedly highly-biased) opinion, it’s the best story I’ve ever written.

So, without further ado, I give you an excerpt of “The Megrim” from the collection Monsters at Dusk. If you’d like to read the entirety of both, make sure to check back in the coming weeks for the official release date. Enjoy!

 

The Megrim

by Kyle A. Massa

 

1

When the first child vanished in the night, I called on the High Temple for aid.

Piebald the Cobbler laughed at me for doing it. “You’re always worrying, Pureman,” he said the following day as we trudged over fresh snow. “Too much for a young man like you. These children, they go wandering, they come back. I’ve got a boy of my own, you know. Once this one starts missing his sweets and his bed, he’ll return.”

Yet a day passed without sign of the child.

Halfmoon was his name. He had a permanent smile and a skill for mimicry. His imitations of Asrith the Librarian, Glubb the Builder, Murple the Veteran, and myself always drew laughs. Our little town felt colder after his disappearance, and not only due to the constant snowfall.

Each day I awaited a response to my message from the High Temple. Though I sent my fastest bird as courier, there were many leagues between our village of Greengrove and, well, anywhere. What’s more, we were surrounded by the Creaking Wood. Had my bird fallen prey to some creature of the forest? An owl? A hawk? Or something worse? Each day I waited. Each day I worried.

The second child disappeared three nights after the first. Her name was Zel and she was Bregna the Butcher’s daughter. She used to cry when her mother cut meat because she pitied the dead animals. I inspected the ground outside her home for tracks, but the night’s snowfall left nothing behind.

“I know who took them,” Pia announced one afternoon while we prepared the Temple for evening prayers. She was my apprentice, a girl of 11 with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. “Obviously, this is the work of a cannibal. Probably likes the meat from the young ones. It’s more tender, I’d wager. Easier to mince.”

I tipped my head to the sky. “My apologies for her morbidness, Goddess. She reads too many fictions.”

“Not so many as you,” Pia snorted. “When will you tell the Goddess I’m ready to be a Purewoman? You said I was the other day.”

“I did. Though I believe I used the word ‘soon.’”

“Soon. Maybe. Someday. Never. When adults say them, they all mean the same thing.” She sighed. “Who do you suppose took the children, then?”

My gaze drifted out the window to the trees beyond. “I am not certain we’re dealing with a ‘who.’”

The snow fell, our village of Greengrove slept uneasily, and the next morning, my bird returned bearing a note. It was sealed with the mark of the High Pureman.

For Pureman Wendyll, it read on the outside. On the inside: Help is on the way.

#

2

A woman strode into Greengrove three days later. When she saw me, she spat.

I was certain she was a woman, yet she had the frame of a man: broad in the shoulders, thick in the arms, legs of solid rock. Her smile revealed several missing teeth. Her black hair was shaved on either side but lengthy down the middle; it formed a braid that hung to the small of her back and appeared heavy enough to double as a whip. She wore two axes, the heads of which peaked over either shoulder like stern metallic faces.

Again, she spat. I cannot say it was the best first impression.

The woman’s next action, after the spitting, was to squint at me with a combination of curiosity and distaste. “Is this Greengrove?”

“It is,” I replied. “Are you journeying to the capital?” I loved my town, but I had no illusions of its appeal to outsiders (or lack thereof).

“Been there before. It reeked. You the Pureman here?”

“I am. Wendyll is my name, Pureman Wendyll. And you are?”

The woman extended a hand. The hand was missing a pointer finger. That gave us something in common, for I too was missing fingers. Three, from my right hand.

“Name’s Nairn Lockwood,” she said. “Sent by your High Pureman to solve your little mystery.”

Nairn Lockwood. Nairn. Lockwood.

I’d heard the name before—or rather read it. Nairn Lockwood was a mercenary from distant lands who’d fought battles and liberated prisoners and dared to accept missions no sane person would take. Nairn Lockwood was the subject of countless books ranging from fact to fiction to somewhere in between. Nairn Lockwood was called Life-Ender, All-Warrior, Death-Blessed, and, for reasons I’d never discovered, No-Leftovers.

Nairn Lockwood was, in a word, legendary.

“Forgive me,” I said, taking her hand and shaking it. “I had not expected…”

“What? A woman? And an ugly one at that?” Her laugh sounded like a boot scraped over gravel. “And I hadn’t expected a schoolboy in a holy man’s robes. How old are you, Pureman? Eleven?”

“One and twenty,” I said, forcing a smile. “You misunderstand me. I had not expected the Temple to send someone of your reputation. Is it true you defeated the Champion of Luxdale in single combat?”

“Aye,” she said, dipping into a pocket and retrieving a strip of dried meat. She chewed, swallowed. “Thrice. I killed him, then someone claimed his sword and called himself the new Champion of Luxdale, so I killed him too. Then a third one named himself Champion—killed that one next.” She squinted at the sky. “Hmm. Was there a fourth one in there? Can’t recall.”

“And the conflict in the Nightlands. Did you truly negotiate the peace yourself?”

“More’s the pity. That war was good fun. But Empress What’s-Her-Name offered me thrice my weight in gold. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m a hefty lass.”

“And what of the Ventillion Mystery?”

“Wasn’t much of a mystery,” she mumbled through a mouthful of jerky. “Not after I solved it.”

“And now you’re here.” I pursed my lips. “Which I’m happy for, truly happy, but…isn’t this job a bit mundane for someone of your reputation?”

Lockwood said nothing. She only stared at me. The sound of wintry wind spoke for us.

“Lady Lockwood? Did you not hear me?”

“I did. But I don’t answer stupid questions. Now…” She finished the rest of her jerky in three titanic bites, then plunged her massive hands into her coat. “Shit on a brick, where’s that damn writ? Supposed to get me free lodging. And more important, free food.” (By now I was beginning to understand the “No-Leftovers” title.)

I inclined my head. “I’ll take your word for it, Lady Lockwood.”

“Oh no. No more of that ‘Lady’ shit. Lockwood is fine enough. Say that.”

“Lockwood, then. We thank you for coming.”

“Aye, whatever. Now where’s the dead boy?”

I blinked. “Girl. The latest is a girl. There are three of them in total: First a boy named Halfmoon, then a girl named Zel. And a third one just last night. My…my apprentice. Pia.” I swallowed down tears—I’d cried enough of those already. “They’re not dead, Lady—I mean, Lockwood. They’re only missing.”

“If you say so. Show me where the last one disappeared.”

“Her home? I think it best not to disturb the family at a time like this.”

“Do they want the boy to be found?”

“Girl. She’s a young girl.”

“Whatever. Do they want her found?”

“Beyond a doubt.”

“Then I’ll do some disturbing. Lead on, Pureman.”

Reluctantly, I led her through the streets (well, street) of Greengrove, to the home of Pia and her parents, Lara and Lorn. Our houses and shops were buried in snow, yet still I knew them: the leaning old library, Bregna’s box-shaped butcher shop, Glendon Glubb’s small abode, Mollo Murple’s even smaller one. And, rising above them all, the looming bulk of Lendo the Versatile’s mansion.

We reached the house a minute later. It was a modest dwelling, humble even for our little slice of the world. We stood on the edge of the village, mere yards from the trees of the Creaking Wood. Their bare branches reminded me of exposed bones. I dared not look too long.

“Here. This is Pia’s home.”

“‘Is’? You speak of this girl as though she’s still alive.”

“I pray that she is, and the others. The Goddess shall protect the young and innocent. I’m sure of it.”

Lockwood spat, then produced a blue sphere from another hidden pocket. “The Goddess protects nobody and nothing. In my experience, missing is usually dead. Cockatrice egg?”

I shook my head. Lockwood shrugged, then cracked the shell upon her knuckle and slurped the contents. “Mmm. I like them raw. Toughens the tummy.” She tossed the remains aside, approached the house, and thumped the door.

I hurried after her. “Pia is a curious girl. Insatiable. No matter how much she knows about a subject she always wants to know more. She reminds me of myself in that way. One day she’ll lead a Temple, and I’m sure she’ll do a better job of it than I have. She’s a kind child, a resourceful child, and she’s only just gone missing. I do hope you’ll be soft with her parents. This is a trying day for them. Will you promise me that?”

I stared at the mercenary. She stared back at me.

She said, “Sorry, did you say something? I wasn’t listening to any of that.”

The door swung open to reveal a woman and a man. The woman had thin lips and hair like straw. The man had a round belly and no hair at all. Both had red-rimmed eyes.

Lara and Lorn. Pia’s parents.

“Pureman,” said Lara, inclining her head. She then regarded Lockwood.

“This is our investigator,” I explained. “Nairn Lockwood. She’s come to help us find Pia.”

“Greetings. You know the name. A pleasure to meet me, I’m sure. Yes, all the stories are true. By chance do you have any pickled basilisk tongues? I’m fresh out of snacks and still feeling a bit peckish.”

Lara and Lorn gaped at Lockwood as though she was a speaking bear. “We…no. We have none.”

Lockwood shrugged. “Show me the last place you saw her.”

The couple led us through their house. It was a compact space, just a common area, two bedrooms, a hearth. The floorboards groaned with each step Lockwood took.

“Pia’s room is here.” Lorn pointed to a door, and then he began to weep. That made his wife weep, and together they excused themselves.

“Why do the bereaved always start crying before I can ask them questions?” Lockwood muttered.

I frowned at her. “Have you no compassion?”

“Com. Pash. Un.” She shrugged. “Never heard of it.” She pushed me aside and pressed into the room.

I am not a large man but Lockwood is a large woman. In that room there was barely enough space for us both. The window stood ajar, a detail which was common to all three disappearances. I relayed this information to Lockwood. “No noise in the night. No evidence of forced entry, not with any of them. Only open windows, like this.”

Lockwood poked her head out the window. She looked left, right, up, down. She turned, leaned over the child’s bed, and sniffed. “Are we to assume nothing’s been touched since last night?”

“I believe so.”

“Then look at the sheet. Tossed aside as if she rose from bed for a late-night pastry.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about thinking. Hush.” Her eyes bounced about the room: the bed, the door, each wall, back to the window. They stopped there. “A sleeper would have a clear view out that window, yes? Don’t answer that—I’m thinking aloud.”

She wasn’t wrong. From her bed, Pia would see…

“…The Creaking Wood,” I murmured.

“Aye. That.” Lockwood poked at a gap in her teeth with her tongue. Then she sprang to the bed and dove under the sheets.

“Lockwood!” I cried. “What in the name of the Goddess are you doing?”

“Putting myself in the victim’s shoes. Somewhat literally. Children don’t wear shoes to bed, do they?”

“But—but you’ll corrupt the scene.”

“Or I’ll have a sudden epiphany. Perhaps both. Now move, Pureman. You’re blocking my view.”

She was here to solve the mystery, I reminded myself. She was here to find Pia, and Zel, and Halfmoon. The High Pureman sent her to save our poor children. If she could do that, I could endure her rudeness. I released a breath, then stepped aside.

Lockwood stared out the window at the trees beyond. “I’m a little girl,” she chirped. “Imagine I’m just an innocent girl dreaming of candy and sunshine and whatever the hell else the little shits dream of. I’m dreaming, dreaming, and then—ah! Who’s that at my window? Pureman, stand outside the window for me.”

“What? Whatever for?”

“For the sake of authenticity. I must needs visualize the event, and you seem the sort who lurks outside rooms at night. I’m asking nicely.”

I don’t believe she was, but I stepped through and hauled myself outside anyway. “Does this suffice?”

“It’ll do.” She took a moment to consider me. “Are you sure of your age, Pureman? You still look like a child to me.”

“Now probably isn’t the time for such talk, Lockwood.”

“Very well, child. Knock on the window.”

“Knock? Why must I knock?”

“Must you question my every order? Just do it!”

I knocked on the window.

“Not so loudly, you dolt. You’ll wake the girl’s parents and be found for the villain you are.”

My face turned red. I do not often feel anger, but at that moment, it surged through me. “I did not commit this terrible deed!”

“Perhaps not, but you’re acting. You know of actors, yes? You have one here in town, I hear? Actors pretend, and so must you. Softly, please.”

I knocked. Softly. Lockwood nodded to herself. She rose, feigned drowsiness, then tottered to the window and climbed out, just barely squeezing through the frame. She stood there next to me and pondered. She stroked her chin with a finger—or would have, if the finger had been there.

“Sheets tossed aside, window unlatched, nothing broken, nothing heard. I do believe our girl went willingly to her captor.”

A fine observation, yet one I’d already deduced with the previous two disappearances. I informed her of this, and she glared at me.

“Fine then. A step further. I believe we’re looking for someone from your town, likely an older, charming presence. Someone others admire and respect. This is no stranger nor monster—this is someone the girl trusted, and trusted well enough to approach in the dead of night. What’s the population of this place?”

“Forty nine,” I said. “Or 50, if you count the babe in Lady Lobell’s womb.”

“That’s our list. Next comes a process of elimination. I suppose we can start by scratching off the babe.”

“But can you be certain we’re dealing with a human?” I countered. “Could it not be something more…supernatural?”

“Supernatural?” Lockwood made a face like I’d just removed my clothes and rolled in the snow. “What’s your evidence, Pureman? A sign from your Goddess?”

I pointed downward. Lockwood followed my gesture. Her eyes widened.

“Ah,” she murmured. “Interesting.”

Tracks. Tracks in the snow beneath our feet. Jagged, splayed shapes, monstrous and strange. Seven toes on the left foot, six on the right. Though our own tracks intermingled with them, these were significantly larger—perhaps two or three times the size. I had seen the tracks of the wyvern in a volume from the library, and the gray lurt, and the five-eyed lizapog. These tracks belonged to none of them. This was something much larger—and plainly not human.

I must admit, I relished the shock on Lockwood’s face, however briefly. “We townsfolk already tried following them,” I said. “They become lost among the underbrush of the forest. Yet their presence reinforces my theory. This was no human. This was the work of the Megrim.”

“The Megrim?” She laughed. “But why not the Wooly-man, or the Frostling, or the Naked Sprites of the Woods?”

I did not rise to her gibe. “Follow me,” I said. “I have something you ought to see.”

###


Kyle A. Massa is the author of the novel Gerald Barkley Rocks and the forthcoming short story collection Monsters at Dusk. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. He lives somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats.

 

© Kyle A. Massa, 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be duplicated or distributed in any form or by any means without expressed written consent from the author.

The Gunslinger and Character Backstory

The Gunslinger

When writing characters, where do you start? Maybe a name, or a physical description, or some basic personality traits. Before long you’ll probably wonder how your character got the way he or she is now. Which is why it’s important for the story to start before it actually starts, if you get my meaning. That means character backstory.

Take, for example, Roland Deschain from Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. He’s a sombre, soft-spoken, mysterious type, and you probably would be too if you had a childhood like his—Roland’s mom was sleeping with his dad’s top advisor, for god’s sake. In fact, Roland’s past is so important to his present that we need to see it up close and personal. That means backstory.

But offering details on a character’s background is tricky. Constant flashbacks interrupt the flow of a progressing story, and dropping little details into the narrative can sometimes come across as expository. For example, Character A says, “Remember when you had more fingers?” Character B frowns and says, “Sure. I’ll never look at blenders the same way again.”

Of course these characters remember that moment. In fact, the only thing a writer does by including this exchange is tell reader exactly what’s going on. Which is about as subtle as a slap to the face.

King, however, handles the backstory of The Gunslinger perfectly. It’s a novel that’s very much about the past, a novel where each character is shaped and motivated by events which happened long before. These events are so important, in fact, that it won’t suffice to reference them through dialogue or brief description. So here’s what King does, and does very well: He references characters we’ve never met before, then explains who those characters are in subsequent flashbacks.

For example, a boy from New York City named Jake Chambers suddenly appears in the Roland’s world without explanation. Jake tells Roland that he can’t remember anything about how he got there, so we’re left to wonder. That, however, would be quite the fraying loose end. So King gives us a brief flashback.

Fortunately, it’s not just a flashback for the sake of a flashback. We learn two very important details from it: One, that Jake died before coming to the gunslinger’s world, and that is perhaps why he’s there. And two, that Jake was somehow sent there by the man in black, who is the gunslinger’s arch nemesis (excuse the lack of actual names—it’s all about the mystery, baby).

I’m drawn to this aspect of King’s novel because I struggle a lot with character backstory in my writing. It’s hard to know what to give and when to give it, but it’s a skill that can be developed through practice and careful study of the pros.


Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living somewhere in upstate New York with his fiancee and their two cats. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. To stay current with Kyle’s work, subscribe to his email newsletter. He promises not to spam you.

Why the Divide Between Speculative Fiction and Literature?

Floating Castle

Literature | ˈlit(ə)rəCHər | noun | Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. – New Oxford American Dictionary


According to a certain stuffy pocket of the literary community, science fiction, fantasy, and horror, collectively known as speculative fiction, don’t qualify as literature. Decent stories? Maybe. Cool ideas? Sure. But in the eyes of this snobbish literary elite, speculative fiction just doesn’t measure up to stuff like The Grapes of Wrath and Moby Dick

Would you ever read Moby Dick willingly? Yeah, neither would I.

Take the 2003 National Book Awards as an example. That year’s winner was none other than Stephen King, who of course mainly writes horror. The literary elite wasted no time in attacking him, no doubt because he’s just a lowly genre writer. Here’s a quite from critic Harold Bloom.

“The decision to give the National Book Foundation’s annual award for ‘distinguished contribution’ to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I’ve described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.”

You forgot chapter-by-chapter, Harry, but whatever. I disagree with you.

In an episode of my favorite podcast, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, host David Barr Kirtley led a panel on this very debate. Recorded to promote Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by John Joseph Adams and Joe Hill, the panel featured such influential SF figures as Adams, Hill, Carmen Maria Machado, Seanan McGuire, and Jess Row.

It’s interesting; Adams and Hill have starkly different opinions on the purpose of the volume. On the one hand, John Joseph Adams thinks of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy as a vehicle for speculative fiction to prove its worth to the literary mainstream. In his own words:

“I and other science fiction fans believe that the best science fiction and fantasy is on par with or better than any other genre. My goal with The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy was to prove that.”

Joe Hill, however, argues that speculative fiction has already merged with literature, and that it did so a long time ago.

“The instruments of science fiction and fantasy—the tools in that genre toolbox—have been out there in the literary world and being explored for at least a decade now, in work by people like Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy. Science fiction and fantasy is part of the literary mainstream, and has been for a while now.”

At first glance, Hill’s argument resonated more with me. There are so many novels out there—The Road, Fahrenheit 451, Cloud Atlas, and 1984, just to name a few—that are generally considered literary, non-genre works, yet are so clearly speculative fiction that it’s difficult to argue otherwise.

The more I’ve thought about this debate, the more I’ve started to like a decidedly different answer.

Why doesn’t the literary mainstream accept speculative fiction?

Why does it matter?

Let’s refer back to our definition of literature for a second. In the grand scheme of things, does The Lord of the Rings have “superior or lasting merit”? I’d say so. Since the trilogy’s publication in 1954, it’s been an enduring classic for generation upon generation. It’s been translated into 38 different languages (not sure if Tengwar counts there). Furthermore, it’s a story about enduring human ideas: friendship, tyranny, power, greed, love.

Does The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy have lasting merit? Does DraculaDoes Slaughterhouse Five? 

If you’ve ever read any of those books, you already know the answer.

Truth is, we don’t need to speak up for speculative fiction. Speculative fiction speaks for itself.

 

 

Are you a fan of speculative fiction? Me too. Check out some of my speculative work here.

Unearned and Pointless: When Character Deaths Don’t Work

From Amazon

In fiction, everything happens for a reason. So when characters bite the dust, the audience wants to understand why. (Unless we’re talking about someone like Joffrey Lannister. In which case, reasons need not apply.)

A film called Trick ‘r Treat got me thinking about this topic. I really enjoyed this movie. It’s a horror-comedy Halloween anthology film featuring a murderous school principal, zombie children, and a demonic trick or treater. I loved pretty much every minute of this film—except for the very first scene.

It begins with two characters: Emma and Henry. They’ve just returned from a night of trick or treating, and Emma decides to dismantle their Halloween decorations, since she knows Henry won’t do it. Henry’s kind of like, “Yeah. True.” He also points out that removing decorations before the night’s over goes against tradition. Emma does it anyway.

As she’s putting away the decorations, an unseen assailant murders her. Henry comes out later and finds Emma’s dismembered corpse in the yard. And…scene!

Okay, this is a horror movie. The mortality rate for characters in horror films is far above the national average. And, as I mentioned, I think this is an excellent film. Yet I have an issue with this scene because the character’s death feels undeserved and pointless.

First of all, when we meet Emma and Henry, Henry feels like the character more deserving of death (no offense, Henry). He’s dopey and clueless. Plus, he won’t help with the stupid decorations. Emma, on the other hand, seems like a perfectly likable character. She doesn’t do anything in the scene to make her death feel earned aside from breaking the rules of Halloween. Yet she isn’t ware of the rules (nor is the audience) until it’s too late.

Here’s the thing about character deaths: Oftentimes they should feel either earned or significant to the plot. Otherwise, they feel cheap. If the villain dies at the end, no one minds. If the main character’s best friend dies and that death has no further bearing on the plot, something’s off.

I’ve seen cheap character deaths in other films as well, and they’re just as jarring. For instance, in Jurassic Worldthere’s an assistant character named Zara who’s needlessly and brutally eaten by dinosaurs. It isn’t just the character’s death that’s jarring—it’s the way she dies, being dropped into the waiting jaws of a sea monster. Seems unnecessarily nasty.

As mentioned earlier, I’ll admit that genre bends this rule somewhat. We expect character to die in horror films, often in gruesome ways. This makes sense, considering the genre is all about scaring its audience.

Still, the best works of fiction, horror or not, should strive to make character deaths feel earned. Deaths are plot points, after all, so like any plot point, the preceding actions must progress toward them. If an author/filmmaker doesn’t work toward a character’s demise (whether it’s a nasty one or just a regular one), it can often feel hollow. Plus, if a perfectly innocent character gets killed in a really awful way, audiences are likely to be repelled.

Character deaths work best when they’re earned or they serve a purpose to the plot. Striking that perfect balance is a challenge, one that even experienced filmmakers and authors don’t always get right.

Okay, I’m gonna go clean up my Halloween decorations. Wish me luck.

Wonderland is a Shade of White

You hear a noise in the night.

You toss back the sheets and swing your legs over the bed’s edge. You creep out into the dark. Your husband doesn’t seem to hear—not surprising. He doesn’t hear anything when he’s asleep, not the baby crying or the sink dripping water or the muffled sounds you sometimes hear when you’re lying awake in bed. Crying—that’s what it sounds like.

The moon lights your way. It peeks in at you through the parallel windows near the door. You’ve always loved the moon, the night. You love the soft pallet of cool colors, the blues and purples and blacks created by the darkness.

There’s a painting on the wall near the basement door: an image of a house in the woods at night. It’s your house, the one you’re in now. It might be the best painting you’ve ever done.

You peer at your painting, your house, and you notice something that you hadn’t before. There’s a person in the frame. A man standing under the eave of the roof, his face obscured by shadow.

Odd. You don’t remember painting that.

The man turns to stare at you. You admire the way his face is shaded, the perspective of his hand as it reaches out. He looks quite lifelike. You’ve always struggled with the human form—whoever did this man did a fantastic job.

Of course, you’re dreaming. You must be. Paintings only move in dreams.

Yes, you must be dreaming, because the man reaches through the frame, and he touches you. His fingers are moist slugs against your skin.

You scream, and when you do, your husband asks you to stop screaming, he’s trying to sleep.

Your eyes snap open. Here you are, back in bed next to your husband. Turns out he does wake up—you just have to shriek really loudly. He reiterates the fact that he’s trying to sleep. And then he rolls over.

You lie awake. You stare at the white ceiling. You promise yourself that it was just a dream. Paintings don’t move in real life, after all.

Then why are there paint smudges on your arm, right where the man from your dream touched you?

#

Hours pass, and you’re still staring at the ceiling. The white ceiling. You remember choosing that shade of white for the master bedroom, though you can’t remember the name. Something like a fairy tale, maybe?

You hear the baby crying in the other room. You’re not surprised. You’re also not surprised that your husband is still snoring loudly beside you, oblivious. Of course, of course.

You walk into the baby’s room, just one door down from yours. You pick her up and hold her and she stops crying immediately. You’re thankful for that—for a pair of nascent lungs, hers are powerful.

You take her downstairs and you feed her. And finally, an hour or so later, your husband wakes up and joins you. He asks you how you slept. That’s when you remember your strange dream.

You tell him about it. He listens to you. He says it probably means you have repressed rage or something, then heads upstairs to get dressed for work.

On a whim, you glance at your painting, the one near the basement door. It looks just the way you remember it looking—dark shading, smoke rising from the chimney, silver moon peering over an intricate tree line.

But no man. No hand reaching out of the frame.

It makes you feel a bit silly for thinking, even for a moment, that your dream might’ve been real. You’ve had nightmares before, many of them, but you’ve never had one quite so vivid as last night’s. Like dreaming in living color, some might say.

Frightening, certainly. But not real.

The baby is crying again. Your husband shouts this down to you from upstairs, as if you hadn’t noticed.

You wash your hands. And when you hold them under the hot, steaming water, something drips off into the basin. It looks like paint. But you haven’t been painting.

It’s strange and a little disconcerting that the paint washing off your hands, the paint you don’t remember painting with, is the same color as your skin.

#

You go through the day without looking at your painting. You avoid it the way you might avoid making eye contact with someone you have a history with. Still, you feel a gaze on your back, as though it’s looking at you. You can’t explain why you feel this way.

Your husband goes off to work. You don’t see him again for the rest of the day and most of the night. When he comes home, finally, he smells strange. Almost like paint.

The baby cries and cries all day, and she won’t stop unless you hold her. You just want the poor kid to be happy, for once.

Some time that night, you finally dare to look at the painting of your house. Again, there’s something there you don’t remember adding. Through the window in the lower half of the house, you have a clear view of the basement door and the wall beside it.

That wall should be blank—you did not paint anything on it—but now there’s a picture there. You look at the picture, you get as close as you can. It’s so small. You can’t be sure, but it almost looks like the painting within your painting is a painting of a house.

You drag your husband over to it and you ask him if he notices anything different about it. He looks at it for about a second, says he likes it, then pulls out his phone. You tell him to put his god damn phone away and look at it, really. He does, he looks at the image for about five seconds this time, and he informs you that it’s great. He likes the shading. The tree detail.

You ask him what he means by that, by the detail. He says he doesn’t know, he just likes it. And please, he asks you not to bother him, he has emails to get to. When he leaves the room, the baby starts to cry again. And your husband informs you that the baby’s crying.

#

That night, you can’t fall asleep. It’s silent for now, no dripping faucet, no baby crying, no unexplained sobbing from downstairs. Yet your mind clings to the painting.

Why do your thoughts always drift back there? Why can’t you force it from your mind? You peel back the sheets and walk downstairs.

The painting is right where you left it. It’s funny—you know it’s just watercolor on canvas, you did it yourself. Then why does it look so much like a photograph now?

Through the lower window of the house, you see a figure leaning over to look at the painting near the basement door. A man. He turns.

This is another dream, clearly. Figures in paintings don’t move. The man in your painting, though, he moves. He steps out of the house, through the front door.

The painting makes a sound, you realize. Crying, it’s crying. It sounds like the baby, yet it’s not your baby. It’s coming from the painting itself.

You feel something dribbling out of your nose. You reach up to touch it; it’s thick and oily. You think it’s blood at first, but blood isn’t white. Blood doesn’t smell metallic.

You look down at your hands and they look indistinct. The edges, which should be sharp and defined, are instead fuzzy. Like careless brushstrokes.

Meanwhile, your painting looks so real, so vivid, so lifelike. It looks real as the paint that oozes from your nose, your eyes, your ears, the paint that coats your lungs and your body and your thoughts, and you try to scream, but all that comes up is a mushy wet gurgle from your throat. And the man emerging from your painting, he whispers your name.

#

You wake up and stare at the ceiling of your bedroom. Paint, there’s paint on the ceiling. You remember its name now: Wonderland. Isn’t that pretty?

###

© Kyle A. Massa, 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this short story may be duplicated or distributed in any form or by any means without expressed written consent from the author.

If you’d like to read more of my fiction, you can find it here.

The Babadook and the Power of Fantasy

The Babadook

The Babadook is not your average horror film.

There’s no gratuitous violence. There aren’t any jump-out scares. No blood. And–thank god–there are no dumb teenagers.

The Babadook is the story of Amelia Vannick (played by Essie Davis), a widow who lives alone with her troubled son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Amelia’s husband died on the same day her son was born, and neither of them have been quite right since. One night, Amelia finds a creepy book in her son’s room called Mister Babadook. The horror begins when the creature from the book stalks the family.

It might not sound all that scary from my description, but, trust me, The Babadook will frighten even the most experienced horror junkies. So what does this film do so well?

In a word: juxtaposition.

The Babadook pairs reality with fantasy, depression with home invasion, and suppression with the supernatural. Despite the poster and the synopsis, this film is as much about loss as it is about a monster.

Take writer/director Jennifer Kent’s interpretation of her own film, for instance: “Now, I’m not saying we all want to go and kill our kids, but a lot of women struggle. And it is a very taboo subject, to say that motherhood is anything but a perfect experience for women.”

It certainly isn’t for our main character, Amelia. Her husband died, she works at a job where she’s surrounded by death (a nursing home), and her son Samuel builds homemade weapons in the basement like a troubled little MacGyver. We can tell right from the beginning that the stress wears on her–and that much of her frustration is directed at Samuel.

As the film progresses and the Babadook invades the home, we see Amelia’s aggression heighten. The Babadook, in this case, represents Amelia’s suppressed anger; it’s no coincidence that it chooses to possess her and not her son. You’ve probably seen the moment from the trailer when Samuel shouts over and over, “Don’t let it in!” But his mother lets the Babadook–her anger–take full control, and that’s when things get even worse.

That is the power of fantasy. The Babadook is the personification of Amelia’s negative emotion, and a good one at that; if suppressed anger had a corporeal form, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too pretty. Amelia sees the Babadook everywhere–in her home, at the police station, in her neighbor’s home. Here, writer/director Jennifer Kent gives us an important clue through the use of fantasy: Amelia can’t escape her negative emotions, no matter where she goes.

One of the coolest parts of the film is the use of montage. Not the kind of montage you see in a romantic comedy–I’m talking Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of film montage. Basically, the idea is that if you constantly show two images together in sequence, you can give both images a new, greater meaning. For example, if you show an image of a crying baby followed by an image of the grim reaper, you’ve given greater meaning to both images: you’re indicating that that baby might die, or you’re showing the passage of life, from the cradle to the grave.

Montage is a type of juxtaposition, and Kent uses it extensively with the Babadook and Amelia’s depression. We often see images of Amelia and the Babadook mirrored–Amelia holds a steak knife and the Babadook has knifelike fingers, for instance. Eventually, the real image and the fantastical one combine, and both transcend their original meaning: they represent a mother’s wish to kill her son.

The ending, to me, is the most intriguing part of the whole film. Amelia confronts the Babadook, and in doing so, she confronts the anger she feels toward her son and the depression she feels regarding her husband’s death. But, interestingly enough, that doesn’t actually kill the creature. The Babadook lives in the basement, chained up and weakened, but still alive. Amelia goes down to feed it, and the film ends.

What does this mean? Well, it’s certainly not the sort of happy ending we might expect. If we look back to classic works of horror, we see the recurring use of the subterranean to represent the subconscious (Lovecraft and Poe use this form of symbolism a fair bit). When you see people going down into the earth, it’s as if they’re traveling to a suppressed, secret part of the psyche.

Amelia’s basement serves the same role–she hides her negative emotions down in her subconscious mind, where they can’t hurt her or her son any more. For a while, at least…

You don’t need violence and blood to be frightening, and I think The Babadook proves that beyond a doubt. In this age of senseless violence and gratuitous gore, I was very happy to find a film that focuses on psychology rather than shock value. Writer/director Jennifer Kent uses fantasy to frighten us in a way that reality never could.

So if you decide to watch, I suggest doing it on a weekend. You probably won’t be getting any sleep.

 

 

Like creepy stories? You might enjoy horror story “Sightings.” It’s about a reporter tracking an angelic creature that brings with it a mysterious plague.

Podcasts for Writers

Sound Wave

Being a writer can be really lonely. In fact, the great Neil Gaiman recently compared writing to death, so that says a lot about the process. When you spend your time in a room by yourself, it can be tough to avoid the feeling that you’re all alone.

Sorry. That got really sad, really fast.

Anyway, if you’re a writer and you’re feeling lonely or maybe even a little dead, try listening to a writing podcast. Nobody writes in a vacuum, so it’s encouraging to hear what great writers are doing, what’s going on in the industry, and how you can improve.

These are three of my personal favorites, and, since I’m a bit of a nerd, they’re mostly oriented for a speculative fiction enthusiast. It is known.

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is probably my favorite podcast to date. Hosted by writer David Barr Kirtley, the Geek’s Guide has amazing guests each and every week. Just to name a few: George R.R. Martin, Philip Pullman, Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, Neal Stephenson, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Cronenberg, and Felecia Day.

Kirtley’s also an excellent host. An accomplished short fiction writer, he knows his stuff when it comes to fantasy, science fiction, and geek culture in general. One of his best moments as a host is episode 145 with Kazuo Ishiguro. At the end of the initial interview, Ishiguro turns the tables and interviews Kirtley on all things speculative fiction. These are two very smart guys going back and forth on where speculative fiction fits into literature and why it’s not always accepted by the mainstream. It’s a very cool moment.

Speculate!

Speculate! was my introduction to writing podcasts, and a good one at that. Hosts Brad Beaulieu and Greg Wilson work very well together on the air and they’re definitely knowledgable on the subject. While they don’t get quite the same number of high-profile guests as Geek’s Guide, their show is still pretty awesome. And, even if you haven’t heard of everyone on the show, it’s always nice to discover someone new.

Every once in a while, they also do roundtable discussions on particular books. These are great for writers because the hosts break down the author’s style, analyze entire passages, and even talk with the authors themselves. If you’re looking for in-depth writing discussion, you’ve found your podcast.

Writing Excuses

Though I’ve listened to this one the least among the three, I like it a lot already. Hosted by Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, each episode is a fun and insightful fifteen minutes. That’s right–where Geeks’ Guide and Speculate! run about an hour, Writing Excuses episodes go for just a quarter of that time.

The official tagline of the podcast explains the runtime: “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” They’re pretty darn smart, though. They cover any topic a writer could think of, from agents to outlining to world building to critiquing. Each episode ends with a writing prompt too, which is fun when you’re looking for ideas, which is, like, always. 

In conclusion…

Podcasts are really cool. The ones listed above are excellent resources for information on the publishing world, the speculative fiction climate, and just about anything to do with writing. They’re perfect for those days when you need a little inspiration. Plus, they’re free. And you don’t have to be a writer to love free stuff.

Go listen!

P.S. Does anyone know of any other good podcasts for writers? I’m always looking, so if there are any you particularly like, please let me know!

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