Monthly Archives: September 2014

fiction

Helluva Tattoo (#VSS)

GaraagaSpenser had wanted to get a tattoo ever since he read the eponymous story by Paul Cooley. It was a super creepy story, but it dug at something primeval in him. He even knew what he was going to get. As an homage to the author he wanted to get an image from the book, the sigil of an ancient god.

He settled into the tattoo chair, face down, and waited as the artist cleaned his arm and positioned the transfer. He felt like he’d put his face through a toilet lid, but it had a nice cusion to it. The floor was clean enough to eat off of, but it was nothing exciting.

“Alright, mate, I’m going to start. This is gonna hurt a bit. It’s gonna look fantastic though.”

“I’m a little nervous.”

The artist patted him on the shoulder. “Nothin’ to worry about mate. I’ve had customers fall asleep during. Just breathe and keep breathing.”

Spenser nodded. He relaxed as the needles began piercing his flesh. He’d always had a high tolerance for pain and he was sure that he was ready for what was about to come. It wasn’t nearly as bad as his buddy told him it would be. It still hurt, though.

After what seemed like not long at all, the sound of the needle gun stopped.

He opened his eyes and was a little shocked to see that the floor of the tattoo place was no longer white linoleum. It looked like sandstone. The room had also gotten quite hot. “Dude, did I fall asleep?” He tried to raise his body up and felt the chains now strapping him down bite into his naked flesh.

“No. You died.” The voice sounded like it was filtered through grinding boulders. “Heart attack. Boom.”

“This is a dream.” He managed to move enough to rotate his head.

The face that greeted him was something out of a nightmare hatched by the lovechild of Giger and Escher. Its mouths were filled with flakes of obsidian. “No. This is hell.” It raised a needle tipped dagger dripping with black ichor. “Now let’s get that tattoo finished. This is going to hurt. Forever.”

Inspired by the works of Paul E. Cooley. 

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Review – The Black by Paul E. Cooley (E-book)

Black_paperback_for-print-sml1 My friend Paul Cooley has a new book out. Unlike his previous books, this one is not self published. It’s put out by Severed Press, a fine purveyor of books like Jake Bible’s Z-Burbia series. I’ve been watching his process and it’s very interesting. He wrote the book this year and it actually got published THIS YEAR. I’ve more to say about that, but it needs to be a separate post. On to the review!

Under 30,000 feet of water, the exploration rig Leaguer has discovered an oil field larger than Saudi Arabia, with oil so sweet and pure, nations would go to war for the rights to it. But as the team starts drilling exploration well after exploration well in their race to claim the sweet crude, a deep rumbling beneath the ocean floor shakes them all to their core. Something has been living in the oil and it’s about to give birth to the greatest threat humanity has ever seen.

“The Black” is a techno/horror-thriller that puts the horror and action of movies such as Leviathan and The Thing right into readers’ hands. Ocean exploration will never be the same.”

The Goods – This is a book that is both like and unlike Paul’s previous books. Why is this a good thing? It shows his breadth and depth as a writer. This book proves that he can do a fairly straight forward monster tale (which this is) and bring his own flavor to it. It’s more “marketable” than his other works. Not to say that it’s better or worse, it’s just a bit more accessible than alt history/horror or Muppet VIOLENCE. His writing here is also a little tighter than usual, which is a requirement more of the genre. If he has continued success with this series and other books with Severed, it will hopefully bring more folks into the fold who will discover his edgier books. That’s a win-win.

The Black takes a few chapters to get warmed up to the level of action and violence a book like this needs, but it’s never boring. The characters are well fleshed out, especially for a book in this genre, and the monster is spooky without us knowing a damned thing about it. Once it does get going it doesn’t let up. There’s not a wasted bit of prose anywhere in here.

The Bads – Yeah, there aren’t any. I really can’t find a single damned thing I would change about this book. Except maybe to put my name on the cover.

Go buy this thing! It gets five and a half out of five tentacles from me. Yeah I can do that. It’s non-Euclidean or something.

Amazon
Paul’s Site
Paul’s Twitter

writing

Paladin Trap Detector (#VSS)

Ulrich the Strong looked from Rabith the Mouse to the door and back. “You checked this for traps, yes?”

Rabith nodded, shaggy black hair shaking. “Thoroughly, yes.”

Ulrich sheathed Demon’s Bane and placed one mailled palm against the door. “I pray to the almighty Elrath, keep your servant strong and whole.” He pulled back his hand and balled both into a single, massive fist. The iron braced wooden door shivered in its frame and cracked down the middle. Before the halves hit the floor he had re-drawn the enchanted sword at his hip.

The room beyond was cloaked in inky darkness. Igthan the Wise held forth his wand. “There is danger beyond.”

Even Ulrich couldn’t restrain an eye roll. “Thanks wizard.”

He inched forward into the darkness, Demon’s Bane glowing brighter with each step. He almost stepped off of the lip of the stone floor. He drew a silver coin from the purse at his belt and tossed it to the floor in front of him. He counted for a full three seconds before he heard it strike the ground below. A low rumble followed the ringing of metal on stone. “All is well. You can join me.”

Rabith’s step was almost inaudible. If Ulrich hadn’t been travelling with him for years he may have missed it.

“Watch out for that…”

Rabith screamed as he fell.

The blackness subsided as the demonic creature below dropped his concentration to advance on the morsel now in its lair.

Ulrich smiled as he saw the little thief crouched below, both daggers drawn.

“That was a nasty trick, Ulrich.” Rabith shouted, not taking his eyes off of the creature.

“I just wanted to see if rogues were as adept at finding traps as you believed paladins to be.” He smiled and leaped out into the room below, sword point down and aimed squarely between the demon’s shoulder blades.

Ightan shook his head and readied the first of many healing spells he would need that day.

Blog News

The State of the Websites

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Fyi, as of right now www.spiritualtramp.com is down. I’ll be re-registering the domain in a day or two (probably). I haven’t blogged regularly there in months if not years. Part of me wants to keep it up for posterity. There were some good conversations there. Part of me wants to do a re-direct to here. Keeping it live is semi-important since I do get email there. Incidentally I will never not keep the scottroche.com domain updated since it’s my author portal and you should email me at scott at that domain.

Having said that I may need to nuke that site from orbit since there’s STILL a link to malware embedded somewhere in the database, causing it to be blocked by some filters. Thus my presence on this hear wordpress hosted blog. WordPress has always been a phenomenal pain in my ass, so I don’t know what I’ll be doing once I do nuke that site.

So, friends of mine, I am open to your suggestions as to what to do with these sites of mine. Please leave your thoughts in the comments and if you’re a web developer and want to help me make an uber-snazzy solution drop me a line, just not at the spiritualtramp address.

writing

A Prickly Fellow

This story was inspired by a photo taken from a collection of stock photos. Click here to see them.

IMG_1895 Chip had always been unusual. Even as a boy he’d been drawn to things that others found difficult to understand. The perfect example was the picture his mom kept of him embracing and sniffing a cactus. He didn’t remember if it was the smell or the way that the pressure of the spines against his skins. It wasn’t about pain. He’d never really pricked himself. Still, it was just odd. Or so people told him.

All of his life he’d had a hard time finding, making, and keeping friends. He wanted companionship and even people who could accept him for who he was often didn’t appeal to him at all. Eventually he decided that the best thing to do would be to make a copy of himself. He didn’t have any expertise in biology so cloning was right out. Technology wasn’t advanced enough to make an AI version of himself, so even that was out.

Ultimately, he decided that the only way to make it happen would be time travel or magic.

If there was anything that time travel movies told him, it was that meeting yourself led most often to disaster. That left finding a spell that would do the trick. This was where his oddness came in handy. He didn’t have an opinion one way or another when it came to magic’s existence. People that had strong feelings about its existence were often as strange as he was. He was able to find and make friends with them as a result. After enough networking with the oddments and outcasts, he found himself standing in the basement of an apartment in Turkey. Candles lit the room and a woman in little more than a bathrobe, her skin covered in arcane glyphs, chanted wall passing her hands over an ancient text.

This had been going on for an hour, when he started to feel an uncomfortable tingling in his chest. He would have been concerned, but Morgana, the bathrobe woman, had told him to expect this.

“The process,” she said in her unique and potentially faked accent, “is not easy or comfortable. You might pass out from the pain or from boredom. Don’t.”

He hadn’t been bored. She was attractive to look at and the more she passed her hands over the book, the more her robe opened. He was so glued to watching her at work that he failed to notice the air shimmering in front of him.

“What do you want?” His own voice asked him from beyond the veil rent in space and time.

His head turned and looked at himself. He appeared to be in good health and was of the same apparent age. “I don’t know how things are on your end, but in the process of looking for a friend I’ve never quite figured it out.”

He cocked his head at himself. “So you decided to try and find yourself?”

He shrugged. “I would hardly be the first one.”

“Is your intention to play with yourself, or just get to know yourself better?”

“More of the latter. Maybe if I truly knew myself I’d have less problem knowing others.”

“I can only hold this portal open for a few more minutes. Either you two will need to talk faster or one of you should join the other.” Morgana interrupted her casting for the recommendation.

Chip looked from her to his double. “What do you say?”

“I’m fine with staying on this side of things. I’ve got a lot of friends and my social calendar is full. You could come here I suppose.”

He considered his tone of voice and didn’t think he was being genuine with himself. “No, I think staying apart for now is the best course of action.” As much as he wanted to spend some time with himself, he didn’t want to run the risk of being stuck in a strange place.

He nodded. “Fair enough. Is… Is there anything you can recommend once I go home?”

He stroked his chin.  “No matter how easy or hard a thing might be, there’s always an opportunity to make things better for the next person. You should do more of that and less worrying about how you look to others. That’s always been what’s held us back, more so than the other things.”

The connection between the two halves disconnected.

“Your other self is a pretty smart cookie.” Morgana noted from her book.

“Let’s start here and now.” He extended a hand to her. “I’ll make you some pancakes and then we’ll see how I can make the world a better place.”

writing

Love Stinks (#VSS)

Love stinks. Yeah yeah.

The lyrics to the song played over and over in my head. I’d tried passing a note to Suzanne in third period. Naturally the note was intercepted by JD. He and I had been rivals for nearly everything since we’d been in Kindergarten. Now that he knew I had feelings for Suzanne he’d probably try and put his hat in the ring. I slumped against the tree just outside the lunch room and cradled my head in my hands.

“Dude.”

It took me a second to register that I was the dude in question. I looked up and JD stood there with a dumb look on his face. “What?”

He held the note up between two fingers. “This.”

“Give it.”

He shook his head. The desire to jump straight out and catch him at the knees was strong. “You don’t want to put this in her hands. She’ll post it in the girls’ bathroom and you’ll be the laughing stock of the school.”

I had heard that most of the girls declared him persona non grata. I didn’t want to believe that she who held my heart could be so cruel. “I’m s’posed to believe this why?”

He sailed the note to me. “Believe me, this is one I had to learn the hard way. I passed her a note a few weeks ago. It happened to me. Granted my poetry was a little less Hallmark and a little more ee cummings.”

The note fluttered to a stop near my Vans. “Now you’re in the business of doing me favors?”

He waved his hands. “Not at all. This isn’t a favor, though. This is how people are supposed to be.”

I chewed that one over for a second. We were both sixteen. Had he grown up before me? I stuck out my hand.

He grabbed it and pulled me up. “Course, you could be different. She could be ‘hot for you’ too.”

I scowled at the now obviously horrible line he brought up. I’d have to give this some more thought. “Look, we’ve known each other for eleven years?”

“Since Mrs. Thunderbottom’s class.” We shared a smile.

“Why is it that we don’t get along?” I looked at the way he was dressed and thought about his last book report. We had a lot more in common than a lust for Suzanne.

He shrugged. “Wait, you aren’t hot for me, too?”

I smacked his arm. “No, I just need someone to hang with.”

“Come on. We’ll go drink away our troubles.”

“Coke’s on me.” We walked into the building, the first of a thousand drinks we’d share after being scorned, losing a bet, or just a hard day at work.

fiction

Beans – Flash Fiction by Dave Avila

This is Dave Avila’s  entry in my 300×300+300 challenge. I hope you enjoy it!
When you look at the beans in the large glass jar and the beans look back; you know it’s going to be one of those days. I try not to notice. It’s best not to notice. It will only start an argument, “I don’t know why I keep you,” I muttered to myself.
“Because we’re brothers, Allen,” he answered.
“I don’t believe you are. You just look like him. Daniel is dead! 12 years ago.”
“I couldn’t leave you. I love you. You’re my brother. Go ahead ask me anything.”
“We’ve done this a thousand times, Daniel. You know a lot about us but. . .you’re a face in a jar of beans. Clearly not my brother. He hated beans. Maybe even jars, I don’t know what you are but you need to leave and never bother me again. Or so help me I will drop you this time.”
“You did do that on purpose. I knew it!”
Daniel’s likeness dissolves into the beans and disappears.
A knock at the door pulls Daniel into reality. He smiles because he has a feeling he knows who it is.
“Beth! You’re early, good , I’m ready,” Allen grabs his phone and keys and motions to the door.
Beth, Allen’s girlfriend, steps inside,” We have time, babe. Let’s sit and talk until it’s time for the movie. I was thinking of Mexican dinner tonight,” Beth walks into the kitchen.
“Great! Where at? Tacos Ensenada?”
“No, I was thinking of making dinner here,” Beth grabs the large jar of beans. Daniel’s worried face appears to her from within the jar. She sees the specter and screams. Dropping the jar. Beans and glass scatter on impact with the floor.
The funeral in the back yard was nice.
writing

Great Big Bunghole

320px-Foam-bunghole (Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) My creativity is like a cask aged foaming, funky, sour Belgian beer. It’s unpredictable and “interesting and doesn’t suit everyone’s taste. That’s not what this post is about though.

Last night I had a bit of family drama. In a house with three kids, one of whom struggles with what we think is bi-polar disorder and the another of whom is on the autistic spectrum, this is nothing at all new. The only problem is this, it was my intention last night to finish a story last night. When this sort of drama rears its head, rather than this heady mixture pouring from the tap into a glass, it blows the bunghole (heh bunghole) from the cask. Beer spews everywhere, onto the floor and down the proverbial drain.

Not to abuse the metaphor even further, when this happens I spend the night cleaning up and nothing gets done. I’m left feeling aggravated, frustrated, and hopeless. An okay night’s sleep has recharged my batteries a bit, but I still hate the fact that I didn’t get the work done. I know I shouldn’t feel bad. I should just mount up on wings of eagles (why didn’t they just fly over Mount Doom and drop the ring in?) and overcome and all that happy horse hockey.

What do you do in these kind of situations?

fiction

Toaster Toast

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This story was inspired by a photo taken from a collection of stock photos. Click here to see them.

IMG_1885 Helen had been a spokes-model for nearly five years now. She felt certain that anything she held would benefit by her just being in the same shot with it. She never dreamed that she’d face a challenge as great as she did that fateful October day.

“It’s a piece of bread!” She felt her fingernails digging into her palms, but the sensation was distant.

Sully shook his head. “It’s Toaster Toast. The new client feels like it will blow the roof off of the breakfast food market.” He pointed to the white square. “Look, you can do this. I have faith in you.”

“I was patient when you had me sell Instant Water. I gritted my teeth when you put me on the Raisin Magic kit. They were just selling old grapes for crying out loud. I put my reputation on the line when you give me this kind of crap.” She unscrewed the lid from her Smart Water and took a long swallow. She instantly felt smarter.

“If we didn’t trust you then we wouldn’t do this.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “This may seem silly to you and me, but we need to think of the big picture. If you’d come to my grandfather fifty years ago, when he started this company, and told him that there would be a market for powdered juice aimed at kids or that they’d put squares of chocolate in breakfast cereal he would have laughed you out of the room. Our job isn’t to judge our clients or their consumers. It’s to take their ideas and make sure that they sell, sell, sell.”

She looked down at the floor for a heartbeat and then back up. The million watt smile was back on her face. “Okay, I can do this.” Moments later she was in front of the camera, and once again when people saw her face and how much she obviously loved the product, they bought it in droves.

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Review – The 33: Pramantha by JC Hutchins (Audiobook)

I’ve long been a fan of I reviewed the first part of this story early this year. I just finished listening to it and I’m here to tell you how it held up. This is not a podcast. JC is charging for it.

Synopsis: After cutting a deal with a mysterious recruiter, Addison Creel is thrust into a world he barely understands. He’s been called to join The 33 — a group of thirty-three misfits tasked with protecting humanity from ruthless criminals, malicious technologies, black magicians and hostile supernatural beings.

Addison’s first day on the job brims with brainbenders: teleportation, sorcery, nanotech. But that’s easy compared to his first mission: Investigating a rash of violent, shocking suicides at a high-tech, high-profile commune in Washington.

Will Addison’s unusual gift — and the gifts of other The 33 members Bliss, Azael, Mad_Ana and John Swords III — be enough to thwart the twisted epidemic before it spreads?

Production: The production on this is straight forward. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles here, but the sound quality is good.

Grade: B+

Cast:  JC is a quality narrator and brings a unique voice to each character that he portrays. This dramatic reading displays those talents.

Grade: A

Story: As I said in the original review, this story opens with a bang. The pace never lets up. If there’s one thing Hutch is phenomenal at, it’s crafting a story that take you for a wild ride. And when I say “craft” that’s not hyperbole. I know Hutch and he’s the kind of writer that agonizes over every detail. That shows. It does mean that he’s not released as frequently as he would like, but Pramantha is a finished product. So you don’t have to wait if you get this now.

The best thing about this story, in a story that seems full of “best things” for my money is the character development. Each of the characters is very unique, and they all possess a depth that’s almost shocking in a thriller. It would be tempting for me as a writer to take a few short cuts or to sacrifice some development for sheer streamlining, but he doesn’t do that.

The other thing that this story is chock-full of are face splitting grin moments. Whether it’s a call out to a bit of pop culture or a bit of inventive dialog, I found myself smiling and nodding along.

The finale certainly lives up to all of this buildup. There’s a TON of gore, violence, action, and adult language so this one’s not for the kids. But if any of that appeals to you then buckle up and take this ride. I guarantee you won’t be sorry.

Grade: A+

Verdict: I am as off the hook pleased about this story taken as a whole as I was by the first episode. I not only recommend that you go pick this up, I beg you to. It’s purely selfish of me. I want him to keep on writing in this universe. Whether/how quickly that happens is entirely reliant on sales. He’s putting a massive effort into this and naturally to pay the bills if it doesn’t pay off then he’ll move on to other projects.

He’s started releasing the second “adventure” in the first “season”. He’s taking a TV approach to this and these are his terms for them. He also released an interim story which was free to his newsletter subscribers (subscribe to his newsletter) and cheap to everyone else. You might want to pick that up first since it’s a prequel of sorts to Pramntha. Regardless of listening order it’s just as good, though a bit lower key.

The four ebooks that make up Pramantha will cost you $7.96. The audio books will cost you $11.96. Or you can get a set including both for $15.96. The audio clocks in at approximately seven and a half hours. It was imminently satisfying. I got the bundle and it cost me a little less as a subscriber (you should subscribe to his newsletter). I also recommend buying it directly from him. Support your local indie!

Grade: A

Buy direct from JC’s site.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble