Satan’s Memoirs: Flash Fiction

SATAN’S MEMOIRS: THE TRUE STORY OF OUR GODS

(told in first person by Satan, himeself)

The race of men, which now hold dominion over the earth, have long been swayed by the words, “In the beginning…” as if it were the start of all things. But I tell you, that before your world existed, there was a sublime reality. Before the stars were set ablaze and even before the endless, black sea of what you call “space” to which such celestial bodies belong, there was an infinity of light, of thought, and of pure, benevolent mind. And though the mortal understanding of such things, a nothingness with no tangible or physical matter, is surely an infinite impossibility, it is exactly in that realm, that my story begins…

(this began as a flash fiction, then a drabble…I actually have notes built up now for a short Novella, which I do intend on writing once I get a few other projects out of the way. )

SATAN’S MEMOIRS AND MORE FLASH FICTION

How to survive drowning in ideas

One of the advantages of having an active imagination is that ideas flow freely and there is an abundance of them in the storehouse. The disadvantage of having an active imagination is that ideas flow freely and there is an abundance of them in the storehouse. See what I did there? It’s a paradox. And it makes it damn hard to concentrate on the project at hand when there are so many other thoughts buzzing through the brain.

I am certain I am not the only one who has this problem. The thing is, though, how many original ideas are there, really? I read Stephen King had said that “there are only four good ideas and we keep expanding on them.” That may be a little bit of an exageration but he’s right, in a way. There are so few original ideas that even the ones we have that we THINK are original can be atributed, at least in similarity, to a writing, movie, screenplay or some sort of artistic production somewhere in the past, even if it is quite obscure.

I would say that I have anywhere from three to six ideas pop into my head on any given day. Some of them are really silly and some of them are pretty good. All I can say is what I do is write a brief sentance, sometimes incomplelte sentance – just thoughts – on my dry erase board. Now, not all of the thougths make it to the board. Herman Melville said “Genius is full of trash.” In other words, not all of the ideas are keepers. I keep working on my project at hand and whatever ideas are still lingering at the end of that session, I THEN write them up there as notes. I leave that board behind my office door so I can cover it up with the door and not be tempted to look at it while I’m working on a project.

I’m no experet and whatever works for you, let it work. And if it does work, share if you don’t mind. We can all use help in this world of writing.

Blackwater Media

For those of you who love the dark, supernatural, bizarre and strange unexplained in the world, I have to point you in the direction of www.blackwatermedia.net. This site is a repository of the best paranormal, horror and supernatural story narrations (radio/podcast) on the internet. It is run by Dr. William Lester, whom I’ve had the pleasure of being frineds with for many years.

Dr. Lester is an author, scholar, broadcaster, paranormal researcher, artist, musician, and an educator. Add to that a lover of Premium Cigars, Single Barrel Scotch and/or Bourbon-and one woman. I met him several years ago as he was the voice on one of my audio books and when we met, we hit it off immediately because of our love of sports, literature and all things strange.

Recently, due to the demonitization on Youtube and the way they have effectively screwed loyal patrons by messing with the algorithms, Dr. Lester decided to move his work to an independent website and it is up and running. If you’ll take an opportunity to peruse the site you’ll find some very interesting and entertaining story narrations on the weird and strange, unexplainable things in our world. The stories are captivating; most are short listens. And Dr. Lester’s radio voice and sound effects are amazing.

The site has a ton of free content to check out. So don’t worry about getting there and having to sign up for anything. But if you DO like what you are listening to, I would highly recommend becoming a “member” for the cheap price of $4.99 a month. Let me break that down for you. That’s 16 cents a day. Not sure what area of the country you live in, but you can’t even get a cup of coffee for that from where I live. I’m gonna put a sample of his work right here for you to listen to and then I hope you will at least visit his site and check out the free content.

Sample: The Summer Garden

SAMPLE: THE SUMMER GARDEN (this piece is premium but this is a free excerpt)

VISIT BLACKWATER MEDIA HERE

All 3 Hauntings Books: Set on special

For a limited time only, you can now get all three of the Hauntings series books in a set for just 8.97 on Amazon. Each book was an Amazon Best Seller and Hauntings 4 will be coming out in October. Get ready for the next one with this series.

Order Hauntings Series Here

How graphic is “too graphic”

So, as I’ve moved into the romance genre of writing, I find myself at a place where I’m lacking direction and there seems to be two different camps on this: how graphic is “too graphic” for a love scene in a romance novel? I want my books to genre bending type of novels. I want it to be tasteful when I write about it (sex). Statistics show that a vast majority of readers who read “romance” skim over the love/sex scenes when they get to it. I don’t want that to happen. I want the connection between the two to be felt by anyhone who reads it. I don’t want it to be about the “sex” I want it to be about finding each other in another realm…about it being a healing. Anyway, would love your feedback and opinion on this. How graphic is “too graphic”? You can either comment on the post or just message it to me.

THROUGH MY EYES: ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

THROUGH MY EYES: ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

It’s been two weeks since I went to see “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.” Of course, I went opening night because I am a huge Quinton Tarantino fan. And I love the cast that he had plaing in this particular joint. I wanted to wait a couple of weeks to let the story settle in my brain before writing what I thought about it. As with anyof my “Through My Eyes” takes, I preface it by stating I am not a professional movie critic. I am simply a guy who likes movies and has an opinion.

READ THE REST OF MY REVIEW HERE

Metamorphosis

I have been writing for long time. And I want to preface this contemplation piece with this: I have never considered myself a brilliant writer. But I AM a brilliant story teller. It is my strength. Spinning stories in my mind and telling them.

The first short story I hammered out on my dad’s old IBM Selectric Type Writer was called “The Hollow” and was a horror piece about my friends and I finding a body in the woods at a creek in West Columbia. Very similar to Stephen King’s “The body” (which inspired the film “Stand by Me”) but mine was written six years earlier. that began my love for the written word. I wanted to be an author from that point on in my life and consumed every book that was inside my interest sphere that I was able to find.

Horror seemed to be my wheel house. I read every author I could find that wrote the genre. Stephen King and Dean Koontz were my favorite contemporary horror writers but my real favorites were Edgar Allen Poe and Guy Mauppasant. Those guys wrote the good stuff…the psychological horror that delved into the evil and disturbing places that the human mind could take you. One of my all time favorite writings was “The Tell Tale Heart,” by Poe. So I wrote horror. From short stories like “The Seventh Power,” which explored witchcraft to pieces like “Deadly Animation”, a piece about an artist who painted scenes depicting murder and terror that he committed in moments of being outsde of himself in schizophrenic moments. One of my favorite shorts that I wrote was a piece called “The Great Spaghetti Incident”, and was a high school story about bullying and how one boy suffered from it and handled it.

In 1995, I penned my first novel, co-authored with a very good friend from high school. And when I say “penned”, I really mean it; handwritten. We querried over 100 publishers, handwritten, and got enough rejection letters to wallpaper my kitchen. But an obscure publisher sent back a letter wanting to see the complete manuscript and we obliged and The Revelation became my first published novel. To be honest with you, it was terrible. The story was great. The characters were strong. But it wasn’t well written and is, perhaps, the worst thing I’ve ever written. But it got published and made me hungry.

A hiatis from writing occured following that because my sports publication took off and my career in sports television and radio along with it. I won’t go into great detail about that break but it afforded me the opportunity to do some journalistic writing for some national sports publications and it also allowed ideas for novels to continue to grow inside my mind.

Hauntings 1

In 2015, I decided that I wanted to write again. I was drawn to it and felt if I didn’t write down some of the ideas that had been brewing inside my head that I would explode. So, I sat down and wrote Hauntings 1: Piercing the Darkness. It was followed by two more Hauntings books based on the character, Ezra LeBarr, and they were well received. In fact, Hauntings 1 is still on the top seller charts on Amazon. Mixed in between the Hauntings books were some poetry (romantic) books, which also did quite well.

Last year, something happened to me inside in regards to what I was writing. As I reviewed the Hauntings Manuscripts and began work on another in the series, I realized that I wanted to be more as a writer. I wanted to write something that had some literary merit to it. I wanted to transcend genre’s. I don’t want to be considered a “horror writer” or a “romance writer” or any kind of term that would limit the things I can imagine and write about. I want to be a writer who is consided multi-genre. I began allowing myself to imagine storyline that came to mind and over and over again, a story that kept entering my thoughts was a love story that had an air of tragedy to it. The Lake was born in my head and I began writing it. I have to say that this is the best story that I’ve ever written.

Now, my dry erase board which looks like something out of out of Einsteins office except covered in words and thoughts rather than equations, is filled with ideas of romance, thrillers, horror and ficitional dramas based on non-fiction characters or events. I crave to write these things. I have trouble turning off thoughts about “the next story” constantly while I’m trying to write. And the desire for these things to be considred literary fiction is strong.

I suppose you could say that I’ve gone through a metamorphosis. The transormation from an immature form into a more mature creature with distinct chanages. I’m excited to see what comes from this.