Compass Rose – WIP

This story takes place in the same universe as X Marks the Spot and will be my own take on a super hero universe. It will owe a little bit to the Wild Cards series of books. This is a WIP and is covered by the Creative Commons License below.

I heard the screaming as I left the school by its back door. There was no way for me to resist going to check it out. It was a scream of abject terror in a high pitched boy’s voice. Such screams had torn from my own throat on more than one occasion. I cursed the decision to wear the long gypsy like skirts today. As cute as I think I looked in them, they got in the way of an all out run. Still, I pushed my body as hard as I could.

The playground was only a few dozen yards away. School was out for the day and the kids in lower grades should all be on their buses and well on their way home. Older kids like me might still be around, but it would be for organized after school activities, not for random play or climbing monkey bars. Most eighth graders believed themselves to be above such pursuits, even though swinging was the closest thing to flying that any of us would achieve.

In spite of my skirts and the non-sensible, but lovely sandals Mom had given me, I got to the fenced in playground in good time. A couple of my classmates, Ben a tall blond that I thought was the handsomest boy in Mr. Lester’s biology class, and Jackson a bullying ginger that had been my terror since third grade, stood over the prone body of someone much smaller than they were. I saw Jackson fetch one more kick at him as I ran up.

“Get off of him.” I shouted. My voice picked that instant to crack.

The pair looked up from their victim. Ben had the decency to look guilty. Jackson just looked annoyed at the interruption. “Well, well if it isn’t Ross the busybody.”

“It’s Rose, you moron.” Getting most people to acknowledge my new name had been difficult to say the least. People like Jackson probably never would. “Now, what are you doing to…” I looked at the ground and was shocked to see Dawn. She was a sixth grader I had taken under my wing. Still a tomboy, she came to me a few times about the way I dressed and we talked a lot about choices. I saw a thread of bright blood trickling down her upper lip.

I’d often heard of people seeing scarlet when they were angry. I thought it was just a figure of speech until that day. I planted both of my hands on the short fence and somehow made it over without getting caught. It was one of the few times I was grateful for the testosterone I had raging through my system. My first target wasn’t either of the two bullies, though. I went to my friend and knelt by her.

She opened her eyes and scrubbed at them with her bright green sleeve. She had been crying for a long time if the redness was any indication. “Rose?” Her voice was thick with snot.

“It’s okay, sweetie. I’m here. We’re going to get you some help. Just lay still for a few minutes.” I stood, not coming anywhere close to either boys’ height. “So, what’s going on here. You guys run out of things to pull the wings off of?”

Creative Commons License
Here There Be Dragons by Scott Roche is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.scottroche.com.

Help Wanted

I love podcasting. It has helped me get my words in front of more people than I thought possible. Unfortunately, due to my increased writing and responsibilities with Flying Island Press, I don’t think I’ll be able to put out Ginnie Dare and projects like that on my own as quickly as I would like to. So, I’m looking for a co-producer. This would sadly not be a paid gig, since my writing is barely paying me at this point. All I have to offer is my appreciation and whatever promotion working with me has to offer.

I’m looking for someone who’s comfortable with taking my actors’ raw audio, cutting out the flubs and creating a multi-track audio file ensuring that everything is level. It’s a fairly big job. I know how much work is involved and if you can only help with a piece of the process (cleaning audio or taking cleaned audio and arranging/leveling it) that may work too. It’s what Paulette Jaxton and I did for Chris Lester and we had a good flow there for a while.

If you can help, send me an e-mail at Scott at scottroche dot com.

Black Friday Movember Party!

We’re closing in on the end of Movember, an effort to raise money for men’s cancer research. I’m not quite where I’d like to be in my efforts so I wanted to have a virtual event to remind you kind people about what I’m trying to do.

How can you help? Well you can go straight to my Movember page. You can also buy books from here and I will split the proceeds halfsies with Chooch Schubert (his half going to breast cancer research).

You don’t have to do this Friday (or at all) but the deadline is November 31st. Thanks to you who have already kindly donated and the economy being what it is I understand if you can’t contribute at all. One thing you can do that won’t cost you a cent is to let people know about this event and my efforts.

Thanks!

Children of Legend

Today I dropped a story on Smashwords called “Here, There Be Dragons” It’s a bit of a super-hero origin story. Right now you can get it for whatever price you’d like. My thinking is to leave it that was on Smashwords and charge $.99 for it on Amazon. So you can have it for free, or you can give me as much as you’d like.

It’s set in the same universe as “X Marks The Spot”, itself another origin story. The next story I release (hopefully in December) is tentatively called “Compass Rose”. See the pattern? 😉

The whole thing is part of what I’m calling Children of Legend. I plan on releasing twelve stories next year, one every month, in the ten to twelve thousand word range. I’ll bundle those up into anthologies at the halfway point and years end. While each story will have its own arc, there will be an overarching plot. All the stories will be available as e-books and the anthologies will be available in Paperback.

These will be YA books. The protagonists will be in the late teens (in the prequels they are middle school age). I plan on taking it easy on the swears and violence, but I want to tackle things like divorce, sexual identity, addiction, and other things that kids (and adults) deal with on a daily basis. This will be equal parts Wild Cards and Teen Titans with maybe a dash of the Watchmen thrown in.

If all of this sounds kind of daunting you should see it from my end. I have hopes, if everything goes according to plan to make these into graphic novels and maybe podcasting it. We’ll see. Gotta get them written first. In the meantime, go get these short stories so that when the bigger ones launch you’ll be on board.

And if there are any artists reading this who’d like to help with covers/character art/that sort of thing, you know where you can reach me!

Buy a Story, Help Naughty Bits

I have decided a decision. For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently raising money through the month of Movember by growing a mustache. If you’re interested in donating to that you can do so here. A friend of mine (a writer/podcaster/musician and husband to an incredible woman) Chooch Schubert is raising money through the month of November for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation via How Not To Grow A Beard Month. I’m a fan of both my own bits and my wife’s. As a result I’m going to donate all money from the sales of my books via my online bookstore from now until November 30th to these two fantastic causes. Half of the money will go to my Movember kitty and half will go to Chooch’s titty kitty.

Only sales from my online store will count since those are the only moneys I will be able to collect directly and I won’t have to give Smashwords or Amazon their cut, thus providing more money for saving the naughty bits. If you want all of your money to go to these organizations then by all means hit the appropriate link and go crazy! And by all means, tell your friends about this. The more money and attention we can funnel towards this, the better.

So, go buy some books!

Let Go – A Sample

Here’s an e-pub sample for you nice folks to share. Just don’t change it, profit from it, or claim it as your own. You know, this one: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en_GB. Email it to everyone you think will like it (assuming you’ve read it) and if you haven’t then go ahead and download it here.

People have said:

Scott Roche is “such a wonderful painter of the pictures in my head.”

“I am not much into zombies… but I must say that this story is more than that and could be applied to other “sicknesses”. And it is very well written.”

The “story elements are solid and it is definitely an emotional ride with the right ending”

November Plans

There are two nearly sure things for me every November. That is, if you don’t count Tryptophan overdose. One is NaNaWriMo and the other is Movember.

For the uninitiated I will explain. No, that is too much. I will sum up. NaNoWriMo is the (dis)organized effort by many worldwide to write a fifty-thousand word novel in a month. Now, of course, some will tell you that this is a useless effort. Others will say that 50K does not a novel make. To those people I have some unkind words better not printed here. For my part, I plan on finishing at least fifty thousand words worth of what will likely be a one hundred thousand word novel. How good it will be when I finish the first draft is… not good. But better a bad first draft than none.

The second, is an effort to raise funds for men’s cancer research. Click here to donate! I shaved my luxurious “wooly bear caterpillar” ‘stache off this morning and will be re-growing it throughout this month. I haven’t settled on a style yet, though I am open to suggestions. I am considering a “Lemmy” or perhaps something I can wax and sculpt.

So there you have it. I will be a busy little bee this month. I’ll also be putting some mental cycles into Monte and Molly’s first adventure so that we can have something to tease you with come December. Wish me luck!