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2012 Projects

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January 11, 2012
Blog News, fiction, writing
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Holy story teller Batman! I’ve got a lot going on this year and will be needing to turn my output up to 12.

Children of Legend – I’ve blogged about this before, but this will be a gritty YA super hero series. I’ll be releasing a story a month from the points of view of four radically different protagonists. I’ll also be making these available as podcasts. Starting next month the prequel short stories will be available. After that I’ll begin putting out the audio versions of the longer ones. They’ll be available in e=pub before they come out in audio.

Action Pack – This is a joint project between Mike Plested, JR Murdock, and myself. Mike’s story will be Boy Scouts of the Apocalypse. JR’s will be a western/steampunk mashup. I’ll be writing a story that takes place in the Legend universe. I’m going to give the back story for one of the secondary characters. He’s basically Indiana Jones + Fox Mulder + Rube Goldberg. It’ll detail what REALLY happened at area 51 and events from it will enhance the modern stories I’m telling in the Legend universe.

The Aethellian Age – This is the universe that Zach Ricks and I are doing together. We’re working on a website. We’ve put together some timeline stuff that’s incredibly exciting. We’ve got ideas for more novellas and a novel. There will be political intrigue, magic, adventure, and all kinds of AWESOME.

Monte and Molly – This has been unofficially back burnered. I plan on getting the text written up in January and sending it out to beta readers. I know that Ed will be providing his awesome art and we’ll be doing a Kickstarter campaign.

Vampire Novel – At some point during all of this I’m going to finish my 2011 NaNoWriMo project. I got 40K words in and life interfered. I love the world and the characters so I will finish this. Let’s say draft one by my birthday and finished novel by end of year.

WHEW.

Legendary Idea

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December 29, 2011
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I’ve talked about this a little before, but I’ve had a new story come out since then and talking to James Durham and his family has me a little amped, so I’m laying it out here for you. I’ve put out three stories in my Children of Legend series so far. They’re all intended to be prequels and as such aren’t fully intended to stand alone, but I hope they do. I want them to give you a taste of the universe and they characters in it. I want to make these young people as realistic as you can make any protagonist and perhaps more so than you might get in some YA fiction. Let me tell you a little about them, perhaps a little more than you’ll get in the stories to date, in hopes that I’ll whet your appetite.

Marcus Killian Feaney, aka Mark, is the protagonist in “X Marks the Spot”. I identify quite a bit with this young man. Raised by a single mom, he led a largely unremarkable life until he went digging in the woods one day. What he uncovered there gave him important, but very subtle powers over the people and environment around him. He’s a bit of a brain thief, stealing intelligence from those around him and using it for himself. He also has low powered telekinesis, able to lift and finely manipulate objects under five pounds. Mark is an idealist, or so he would have you believe. He’s of the opinion that the world can be shaped into a utopia and he’s just the boy to do it. He’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Maria Perez gets introduced in “Here, There Be Dragons”. Saved from a local gang by her kindly boss, she is given a great deal of power when she takes the form of the Tarasque. Surrounded by gang violence, she lost a number of friends and family members and is determined to use her power where the authorities can’t or won’t. I’ve often called her my universe’s Batman.

The most recent character to be introduced is Ross “Rose” Covington in “Compass Rose”. A transgender teen, Rose is the white knight of the bunch. She stands up to a bully and ends up in the hospital for her trouble. The mysterious alien boxes that granted all three people their powers gives her control over the perception of reality. She can produce illusions of incredible beauty and can pierce any deception presented to her. She’s wary of her abilities though and is reluctant to use them for fear of what they could turn her into.

There’s a fourth character that hasn’t joined the trio yet. I have his story in the back of my mind. The young immigrant, brought to our shores against his wishes, will have to figure out how to survive in a strange land. Being invisible socially and physically will help him, but only to a degree.

All three stories are available on Smashwords for whatever you’d like to pay for them or on Amazon for $.99. My plan is to release a story every month in 2012. Each of these characters will get three tales, somewhere in the ten to twelve thousand word range. I’ll stagger who gets the spotlight and each one of the stories will be stand alone, but be part of an over all “seasonal” arc. I’d also like to release these as a podcast, though when that happens will be up in the air.

Wish me luck and have a look at what I have out so far!

What’s Stopping You?

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December 15, 2011
writing
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I’ve run into this as a writer and a reader a few times. No, not an actual brick wall, though as someone who used to read and walk at the same time I’ve come close. Preconceived notions have stopped readers from trying my work and has stopped me from reading others.

In the first case, I have two good examples. There are people who didn’t listen to Archangel because they were afraid I would preach at them. I also recently had a reader who said that they didn’t typically read any stories featuring gay/lesbian/trans characters because they tended to bash conservatives. This could have stopped them from reading “Compass Rose”. Thankfully, there are people that climb over the brick wall of preconceived notions and find the garden inside.

I’m not above this, myself. These days I tend to stay away from anything that looks like traditional/epic fantasy. Too often, the author is rehashing the same old tropes and I get bored. I’m sure that as a result I’m missing out. I could very well have missed out on Ravenwood if I had stuck to my guns. I’m glad I didn’t.

So I have two questions, which I think is really just one question. How do we avoid this? As writers, how can we encourage readers to check out our takes on stories they may be disinclined to look at? As readers, how do we open our minds to the possibility that we’ll find a gem in an unexpected place? Is it a matter of the right cover or book jacket blurb? Is it possible at all?

To answer that I guess the real question is, what made you pick up that book that you would have ordinarily avoided?

Compass Rose Pt. 2 – WIP

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December 1, 2011
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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.

Read Pt. 1 here.

Ben flinched.

Jackson balled up his fist. “Nah. We were just hanging out and this little queer got too nosy for its own good.”

I drew back at the smell of cigarette smoke on his breath. “Sneaking a smoke out behind the school and you got caught. No reason to beat up a little kid.”

“She was going to tell the teachers. Things got out of hand.” Jackson bent down as though to help Dawn up.

“You leave her alone and get the hell out of here, before I finish what she started. I saw Mr. Reed out by the shop class. He could be here in two minutes and you two would be out of school for the rest of the year.”

“No. You can’t do that. I won’t be able to run track and we’re doing good this year.” As handsome as Ben was, his world was all about that asphalt oval. “You can’t tell on us. She’ll be okay.”

“I won’t tell if you just get lost.”

Jackson punched Ben in the chest. “Come on big guy, let’s leave these two queers alone.” He looked down at me. “I’ll talk with you later.”

The boys turned and left the yard, and I stooped down again.

“Can you stand up, buddy?” I rested one hand on her shoulder.

“I… I think so. If you help.”

I could tell that she was going to have a black eye at least. The nose bleed wasn’t bad. The way she winced when I got her to her feet meant that she had a few bruises around her ribs. Together we eased to the building.

Dawn stopped us halfway. “You’re not gonna tell are you?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No. I think that would just make things worse.”

There was a lot of wisdom there. Even then I realized that and how horrible that truth was. Both of us had seen movies and heard talks about bullying, but on the schoolyard tattletales always paid double. If I told then she would get another beating whether she did or not. “I’ll leave that up to you. If you tell then I’ll say that I saw everything. If you decide not to then mum’s the word.”

Mr. Reed was still talking to the Robotics teacher. When they saw us come in, Mr. Reed said something I’d never heard him say in class. We were whisked to the office in short order. Dawn claimed that she had fallen from the monkey bars. That was plausible, but I would know later in life that the look Ms. Mayhew had given her was called incredulous. We would all know by the summer of our Sophomore year that her previous husband had beaten her more than once. That’s why she was a Ms. now.

Once everything was calm, I excused myself.

“Are you sure that you don’t want one of us to take you home?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you, Mr. Reed. I only live a couple of blocks away and there’s still plenty of light.”

“Okay. But be careful.”

I nodded solemnly. In a world where you could get a beating for being in the wrong place at the wrong time though, no amount of care was capable of protecting you from getting hurt eventually.

I left by the back way again. There was a shortcut to my house through the woods at the edge of the school property. I could get there in around eight minutes. Four minutes into my walk I hit the thicket and smelled smoke. That was when I felt something hit me between the shoulder blades. I blacked out before I even felt my face hit the thorn bush.

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

Compass Rose – WIP

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November 30, 2011
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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.

Let Go – A Sample

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November 8, 2011
writing
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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”

Here There Be Dragons – Pt. 2

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September 18, 2011
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Cont. from Part 1

“Not so fast you little c…” The boys voice turned into a whoosh of air as my foot caught him in the midsection.

It was a lucky kick and I knew I’d probably regret it later, if I let another one get their hands on me. I recovered, a little more clumsily than I would have in Tae Kwon Do class, but street fights are the same as ones on the mat. His friends weren’t far away and they were caught short by my reaction. I was glad, and not for the first time that night, that these weren’t real gang bangers.

I ran as fast as I could, finding more speed somewhere deep in me. It wasn’t much further to the store. Then it hit me, the metal grate was down. There was no way I could get that up in time and get behind the safety it offered. Blood thundered in my ears, but now I could here every angry voice and catcall behind me.

The store came up on my left and I ran past it and cut into the alley just beyond. Angels must have given me a push giving me just enough speed and bounce to make it onto the lid of the dumpster. From there it was a short jump to the fire escape. Miraculously, I didn’t miss a step and climbed to the roof of the three story building in a flash.

It hadn’t bought me much breathing room. The ones right behind me didn’t realize I had gone up and went down the alley looking for me. I had a minute, maybe two. I looked around for the roof access. Mr. Looper talked about his roof garden and I knew there had to be a way to get downstairs. Then I realized I had gone up the wrong building. I’d seen action heroes make the jump from building to building, but they were trained athletes and I was just a scared little girl. At least, that’s how I felt.

The iron bars on the fire escape started grinding against brickwork. Heavy boys, nearly grown men, were climbing up here. My eyes darted around the rooftop and I saw the access to a stairwell near the center of the plane. I rushed to it, trying not to trip over anything in the dark. I grabbed the handle and pulled, only to be rewarded with nearly pulling my shoulder muscle. My scream was a mix of rage, fear, and disappointment. It fought with the wind for sheer volume and won hands down.

Shaking, I turned to see how close the Dragons were. For once something played in my favor. In going to the door’s side of the access, I was hidden from them. There was no other way down except for the long jump, so my freedom wouldn’t last long. I made myself small, but kept on the balls of my feet. With any luck they would all come around one side as a group. They weren’t very bright, so I felt it was realistic enough.

“Chica, come on out. We won’t hurt you. We just want to play a little game.” The boy’s voice wasn’t long out of puberty and cracked once to the amusement of his friends.

“Yeah,” another one yelled, “we just want to play a little touch football.” The next to the last word was emphasized and she could nearly feel the leer.

She balled her fists and relaxed them in a rhythm. She’d touch them alright. If she could draw blood on one of them then whatever happened next might be worth it. The way her stomach felt, she might even get to puke on them while she was at it. It did seem like they were all coming around to her left side.

As softly and slowly as she could, she circled around to the right. In the dark she couldn’t tell if hat she tripped over was a pipe or a string of cable. Whatever it was, it put her down on her side just as one of the smarter boys was sneaking around to intercept her. She lay at his feet and had a moment for her predicament to register before his black Chuck caught her on the side of her head.

Go to part three.

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.

Free Fiction Fridays

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September 16, 2011
writing
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Last Friday I decided to try an experiment. I gave away a Smashwords coupon to my mini-”anthology” consisting of two stories; “Piercing the Veil” and “Vicious Cycle”. I’m the kind of person that does things like that a little impulsively and right after I released the coupon I did some thinking.

My first question was, “What am I trying to accomplish?”. I want to get more eyes on my stories at this point. I’m fighting some degree of obscurity (for large values of obscurity), and if giving some stuff away helps overcome that then I’m all for it. However, I know that there are people out there who believe in my and want to support my work financially. So I give them ample opportunity to do that by offering my works for sale at as many venues as possible.

When I tweeted last night that I was going to do another Free Fiction Friday today and wanted to know what people wanted me to give away, I got some push back. The objection seemed to boil down to, “if I buy your work and three days later you’re giving it away, I’ll feel cheated”. There was also the notion that if someone knew I was going to do this every week they’d just wait and get what I had for free.

I understand both sets of feelings. My own thoughts on the matter are this though, if I’m supporting an author financially and they decide to put something on sale or give it away then I should respect that. They, no doubt, have reasons for doing what they’re doing. I pay money for stories because I want that person to continue being able to make stories and because I believe in them. Sometimes I even buy things that I’m not otherwise interested in, simply to enable someone to make something cool. Case in point, JR Blackwell’s LARP game Shelter in Place. I’m unlikely to ever play it. I like zombies, but I’m not a LARPer. I backed her Kickstarter campaign anyway.

If someone wants to wait until I put something out for free, for whatever reason, to download it, that doesn’t hurt my feelings. Their reasons are their own, and I made the conscious decision to give it away so they’re not pirating and my being put out would be silly. The only thing that bothers me is the notion that someone wouldn’t buy one of my stories (that presumably they were going to buy at some point) simply because I want to try using a loss leader to bring in more eyes.

So, if you think this is a dumb idea or that ultimately it’s going to hurt me more than help me, I really am interested in hearing what you have to say in more detail than Twitter will allow. I plan on doing giveaways of my short fiction only on Fridays for the next couple of weeks at least, maybe longer if it turns out to be helpful. But if there’s sound logic that I’m overlooking then I’m game to listen.

Here There Be Dragons – Pt. 1

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September 14, 2011
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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 locked up the door on Mr. Looper’s PC Emporium and jumped as high as I could, snagging the gate and using my body wait to pull it down. With it locked in place, I knew that it was as safe as any store in this neighborhood could be. In spite of the fact that this was a computer store, most of the stuff he carried was way old. He tinkered with his stock and fixed any electronics that customers brought in. No matter how useless or broke down the TV, radio, or remote controlled car was, he was always able to coax life out of it.

I pulled my black nylon jacket’s collar up around my neck to try and keep warm. If I hurried I could make the three blocks home before it got dark. This was the Dragon’s turf and anyone caught out in it after dark, especially a girl my age, was like fresh meat. If we didn’t need the money I wouldn’t clean Mr. Looper’s store, no matter how much he paid me and he payed me way too much.

Mom thought he wanted something more than money. She’d never say that to my face, but I’ve heard her end of phone calls. She’s also always asking me how the old man makes me feel or if he ever touches me. I don’t think she knows that at thirteen I know what she’s asking and it made me sick to think about it. He never did and I don’t think he even has thoughts like that. He doesn’t like people much. Oh he treated his customers and me well enough, but he loved his machines.

Wind picked at my jacket and cut through the legs of my skinny jeans. We moved to North Carolina from New Jersey five years ago, but the winters are still pretty cold, even this far south. I broke into a jog, hoping it would warm me up. It almost had too, until I heard the whooping and jeering from up ahead. I knew that it was a group of the Dragons. They weren’t a real gang, not like the Ochos or the Strangers. Mostly, they were just older teens who smoked dope and stole lunch money from younger kids. Ricardo, whose brother was an Ocho, said that they couldn’t cut it in an actual brotherhood, but wanted the excuse to act tougher than they were.

I didn’t know about that. I’d known a few kids that got their share of bruises and cuts, and while Mr. Looper might not be interested in my girlhood, these boys might be. It wasn’t much further to get home, but going the long way around I’d risk running into some tougher groups. There was no safety except to go back to the store. Mr. Looper lived above it and I could probably get him to take her home, or at least she could call Dad to come and get her when he got home.

I hated to bother him, but he had invited me upstairs once or twice early on for cookies. Thinking about Mom’s advice, I said no, respectfully, and it never came up again. I think he knew why I said no, cause he looked a little embarrassed and sad.

I hurried, but the wind was in my face. It seemed to be blowing faster, making it hard to take steps. I didn’t weight much and the spaces between buildings focused the winds. That must have been why I didn’t hear the voices behind me. I didn’t know there were Dragons behind me until one grabbed my arm.

Go to part two.

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.

Contest Update!

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March 21, 2011
pimpage, writing
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So here’s where we’re at contest-wise. Thanks to a couple of generous (and lovely) young ladies (and some other folks I don’t know) I have crossed the halfway point and am at fourteen sales. Only one of those ladies has sent her receipts in. So, if we do cross the twenty-seven sales line by the end of the month, she’s a dead lock to get the paperback proof of Through a Glass, Darkly

I’ve Tweeted and Facebooked and blogged about it. I’ve had people share and RT my contest. I’ve put the word on on MobileRead.com’s Forums as well as the Kindleboards. I’ve also shared it on the Kindle Facebook fan page. I’ll continue to use these methods and any others I can come up with. I’m still running into people that don’t know I’ve put stuff on Amazon and that I have a print anthology available, so I’m not reaching everyone I can. Thanks to Amazon’s limited reporting tools, I don’t know if people are downloading the samples (you can get samples of most any Amazon Kindle books delivered right to your device) or not. If you haven’t taken advantage of the samples at least, please do so. If you have and you’re just not compelled, I’d actually like to hear that.

There are still ten days left in the month. This has only gone for seven days, so there’s plenty of time. You don’t have to buy all six stories to be entered. If you’d just like to send me the money for a signed copy of the print book I can arrange that. Any help you lovely people can give me in this effort is appreciated. Blog, Tweet, and Facebook about it. Tell your friends. And for those that have done that, a great big thanks!