All posts tagged: Writing

Annie and the Wolves

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Introduction: Another short story, this one focused solely on my favorite bad girl, Lucy Belogh. Obviously I’ve taken huge, sweeping liberties with historical figures, but not nearly as much as I would have liked to have taken: I wish how Phoebe Ann Mosey was mistreated was fiction. I only tinkered with how she survived the experience. She never identified the family who abused her when she was a child, only referring to them by her nickname: the wolves. Rating warning: this story is the most violent I’ve published on a blog so far, and not for kids. *** The little girl’s blood stained the snow pink when she fell. She didn’t cry out. She was long past the point of feeling pain, reduced to numbness by the cold and her wounds. She had felt cold originally, but that was before the sun set and night shrouded the forest. She pushed her hands against the snow, brushing sap and ice and bits of broken twigs from her bloody fingers as she stood, unsteady and teetering. In …

Updates and One Lovely Blog Award

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Okay, so a lot’s going down. Let’s get started, shall we? First, you may have noticed that I’ve taken down my countdown and link for my Smashwords link for Blood Chimera. Why? Because a publishing contract may be happening after all. No final word yet (and it’s not with the same publisher as before) but since I won’t have final confirmation until after DragonCon, it makes no sense to put the book live at that time. The new publisher is still an indie, but they fulfill the main requirements I have — namely they bring talents to the table that I can’t do myself, including some bang-up awesome marketing. So I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that works out. Because while I can do some of this myself (and expect I will) it would be nice to have a support network. Oh so nice. After that, the next step will be to figure out if I’m going to self-publish Marduk’s Rebellion or keep trying to find a publisher. Okay, so second, C. Jeffrey over at …

Villains and Rape

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Okay, let’s talk about rape. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but I need to discuss some elements of this issue. It’s been bothering me. I want to talk about rape as a storytelling and literary device, but I recognize it’s impossible to remove it from its real world context as something that has, odds are, actually happened to someone you know (the statistics are rather appalling in this regard.) Rape is very personal and very, very charged, and for this reason, more and more I’m seeing writers talk about rape as an edgy literary trope they can use to push boundaries and emphasize just how evil their villains are. Rape or the threat of rape is still a very common theme in movies, books and comics. Note that I’m saying ‘writers’ and not ‘male writers’ because I’ve seen both men and women use rape this way (I’ve seen plenty of self-identified feminist writers use rape to emphasize how evil the menfolk are.) Take any random guy, have him rape the hero or their …

The Kidnap and Ransom Business

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When I began researching Blood Chimera (I tend to do a lot of preparatory research on books when I know I don’t know a damn thing about certain subjects) I began to play with the idea that the main character, Jack, is a kidnap and ransom specialist. What’s a kidnap & ransom specialist? Well, it’s been depicted in a few movies (probably most famously in Proof of Life) but a K&R negotiator is someone who comes in to organize a response to a kidnap for ransom situation. It’s a very small, select field, and incredibly secretive. There’s no single path to becoming a K&R specialist, but K&R people typically have backgrounds in law enforcement or military special forces (or both), and they can expect to fly all over the world and spend months at a time in the field. It’s dangerous, ugly work that puts their life at risk in foreign climes on a regular basis and requires them to be at home in the bureaucratic nightmare of dealing with governments, organized crime groups, terrorist …

You’re Not Good Enough

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‘What if I’m not good enough?’ That’s my goblin. It’s not just my goblin. It’s my husband’s goblin and my friends’ goblins and it haunts the dreams of so many people I know, online and in the real world, who dip their toes in creative works or dive in with both feet and a held breath. That goblin waits for the dark hours of the night and ambushes us from paragraphs of mangled reviews or worse, from the silence of a lone voice echoing lost in the static of the internet. So let me be perfectly clear: you’re not good enough. Don’t be mad. I’m not good enough either. No one is good enough. We are, all of us, flawed and imperfect and self-destructive, and while we are constantly striving towards perfection, it a goal that none of us will ever reach. Take a deep breath and accept that you are not good enough. Be liberated by that, so that you give yourself permission to make mistakes. (Sometimes the accidents are so damn beautiful.) Pick yourself …

©2013 Richard Lund

Beginning My Next Novel

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Okay, so here I am…I have two finished books shopping for a home, one of which is well on its way to publication. So I should finish the epic fantasy, right? Hell no. I’m writing the sequel to Blood Chimera, my debut novel. Because when folks finish reading that, I want them to have a book they can jump right to, or at the very least, know that it will soon follow. Oh, which reminds me: Avast! Here there be spoilers! Go away if you don’t want to accidentally find out details of Blood Chimera. You still here? Okay, let’s get this shit started (as Ze Frank would say.) So the first thing I do, the very first thing, is pick out music. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I like to have soundtracks when I’m planning a book. And this is a pretty music heavy book. There will be nightclubs, concerts and stuff as we spend some more time in Hollywood and along Sunset Strip. So let’s see…I start with some David Bowie, and then …

Very Good Things

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So I woke yesterday morning to find an offer from a publisher sitting in my mailbox. Now, I can’t give out details yet, but this is going to happen: I’m going to be a published author. (Okay, I’m probably going to be a published author — it’s still possible that I won’t like the contract, they’ll come to their senses, something will happen to muck it all up.)  I’m not going to be in ‘I’m writing a book’ limbo — everybody’s writing a book. I will have written a book. It will be in stores. My reality just shifted. So I’m taking a moment to reflect on this, because I’m kind of fascinated by the fact that this is the year that everything came together. I’ve been writing for a long time. Years and years. Why now? Why is this the year I’ve finished 2 books, and will almost certainly have a third finished by its end? Part of it I can blame on finally jumping on the twitter bandwagon (which really is a fantastic, …

Dark Son

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Another reposted story from There by Candlelight: ——————————- Marty Lucas walked into the principal’s office like he was about to receive an award, maybe something for bravery or valor — a citation for standing up to a bunch of punk bullies who thought they could get away with beating the candy out of every kid who was weaker, smaller and different from what they thought was ‘cool.’ The difference in posture was transforming: most of the kids who knew him in class wouldn’t have recognized him. Marty normally walked through the world with his head down, his hands stuffed into the pocket of his tan jacket, his eyes on the street, lost in his own thoughts. Today only, he walked like he owned the place, like he was a foot taller and could take on anyone who gave him the wrong look. The school secretary, Nina Collington, looked distinctly bemused as she observed him. Nina was saucy looking redhead in her mid-thirties with short page-cut hair and mod cat’s eye glasses who has worked for the school …

On the Road

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An essay worth reading by Vanessa Vaselka. [Edited to add: Read this piece too. I think I love this woman.] I remember when I was twenty-one, and working as a graphic artists for a newspaper in Los Angeles, two of my female co-workers left for a year to travel around the world together. It was not a good time for American women to be traveling around the world, but then again, I suppose one can argue it has rarely ever been. There’s always some reason it’s safer to stay at home. I was jealous of their bravery and their financial means (although they were not traveling in anything like style — this was $5 a day hitchhiking stuff they would be undertaking.) I was astounded that they could want to do this. Weren’t they scared? What if something should happen? Were they really going to hike through India? China? The same imagination which is so beneficial to me as a writer also would have tied me up in anxious knots about such a journey. A …