Thursday Randomness: Cheaters Never Win

Next month will see two of my stories appear in different anthologies. Last week, I unveiled a bit of graphic artwork I created to promote one of those stories entitled "The Deadlands," which will appear in the anthology Four in the Hole. I'll include wallpaper versions of that graphic for your computer at the end of this entry. First off, a few details on the other short story.

I wrote "Cheaters Never Win" back in 2008. It's one of the few pieces of flash fiction I've ever written, coming in at just a little more than 500 words. The story might well be one of the darkest things I've ever written. A husband, having learned his wife has cheated on him, exacts his revenge by forcing her to take part in a deadly game. I don't want to say much more than that, lest I give too much away. After all, there's only so much one can reveal about a flash fiction story.

A local publisher, Sink/Swim Press, is including "Cheaters Never Win" in their anthology Front Porch Flash Fiction. The book comes out September 9th. They're holding a release party that night at Velocity Comics, and I can't wait to go!

I'm also excited about this anthology, because it will include stories from two friends of mine, Katharine Herndon and John Glover. I met John at last year's James River Writers Conference. Speaking of which, Katharine is the chair for this year's JRW Conference, which is being held October 7th and 8th at the Library of Virginia (you can expect me to blog about that as we get closer to the conference). I've known Katharine for many years, and my wife and I were even in a writers critique group with her called "The Ten Page Club" (or "XPC" for short). It was in this group that Katharine read an early version of my other short story, "The Deadlands." Ah, yes... that's how I bring this blog entry back to my other short story.

So, here's the wallpaper for "The Deadlands." I've included the usual sizes for your enjoyment. Nothing makes a computer look more chipper (or would that be "chipperer?") than a picture of the end of the world.

               

800 X 600                  1024 X 768                  1280 X 960                  1280 X 800

Thursday Randomness: The Deadlands

I'm enjoying a bit of a writer's high this year. Two of my short stories will be in different anthologies next month, and just six days ago, I finished the rough draft to my WIP, a young adult novel about a teenage vampire hunter. For today, I'm going to use my "Thursday Randomness" to spend some time plugging one of the short stories, "The Deadlands."



To help promote my story within the anthology Four in the Hole, I created a picture which is inspired by a scene within my story, a shot of Interstate 95 covered in wrecked cars. Yes, when the end of the world arrives, it makes a mess. There's just a small problem here. There's no one place a writer can go to snap a picture of an interstate all messed up like the above picture. Fortunately, I am not just a writer, I'm a graphic artist.

On August 4th, I received the good news in my e-mail about "The Deadlands" being the opening story to an anthology. The next day, the kids piled into the car with me on my quest to build an interstate in total disarray. The part with the kids coming along is clearly the real challenge here, but God bless their hyperactive hearts, they stuck it out like champs. No small task there, because it was a hot day, and all the stuff I needed pictures of was outdoors.

Our first stop was the Hermitage Road overpass to I-95. The kids earned their room and board here, because I couldn't park on the bridge. We went about a block away and hoofed it with my tripod and camera in hand. Ideally, I needed a shot of the interstate without any cars on it. "But wait," you might say, "what about the wrecked cars?" Well, I was going to have to add those in myself, unless I could cook up a way to manufacture a major, mass casualty traffic crash on the spot, and since neither of the kids was willing to jump over to start said chain reaction crash, I was gonna have to add in the wrecked cars later via graphic art magic.

I snapped more than 90 pictures of I-95 and not once was I lucky enough to get a car-free picture of the interstate. Fate did offer me lots of big gaps here and there, so what I did was combine the pictures with the best gaps until I got a relatively car-free picture of I-95.



From there, it was off to find some smashed up cars, and fortunately, I knew the perfect place to find some. Our next stop in this adventure was not a wrecker yard. Oh no. We went to Henrico County's Fire Training facility. Quite a few years ago, I took part in a citizens fire academy, so I knew the Division of Fire kept a bunch of messed up cars out there to practice extracting people who get trapped in car wrecks. Boy, did we ever hit paydirt. Not only did we score messed up cars, but we found a wrecked bus and tanker placed on its side.



Pictures complete, it was back here to my laptop where I cut out the pictures of the cars. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cars to cover the interstate without reusing a few, but I just changed their color a bit and flipped them around and the like, and more than a week later, even I'm not sure where all the duplicates are in this picture.

Originally, I was going to just have the promotional image be of the smashed up interstate, but wasn't really working for me. I found it looked better when I washed out a lot of the color, so I tossed in an image of what most will only see as some red circle. Obviously, it's not just a circle. It's actually an important element to the story, but you'll have to read "The Deadlands" to find out exactly what it is.



All that done, it was time to add in the promotional elements: the title of my story, a tagline and when it's coming out--which is next month. I made a few versions of this, one to put at the end of my comic strips, another for the side panel of the Lair and of course, wallpaper for computer screens everywhere.



Next week, I'll post the wallpapers for your computers, and I'll offer a little insight into the other anthology my writing will appear in next month. Be sure to revisit the Lair then, and don't forget to catch the next episode of my comic strip tomorrow.

Ask Uncle Kerouac, Episode 19

Feel free to share each week's episode of "Ask Uncle Kerouac" by embedding it in your own blogs, Facebook profiles, what have you.

And don't forget you can get Uncle Kerouac's advice by sending your questions to him at AskUncleK@gmail.com.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the latest picture in our weekly You Write the Caption contest.

Thursday Randomness: Wildcat in an Anthology!

I've got some exciting news for today's "Thursday Randomness." I learned this morning that one of my short stories will appear in an upcoming anthology called FOUR IN THE HOLE being published by May December Publications.

My story is called "The Deadlands." What is the story about? I won't offer any specifics just yet, but I will tell you that the theme behind this collection was zombies and/or vampires.

As we get closer to the release date, which will likely be sometime next month, I'll drop more details about my story.

For now, here's a look at what I believe will be the cover art for FOUR IN THE HOLE.