Straight Up Witches!

Completely forgot to mention this in the previous post. Mottephobia, my first published short from earlier this year, has been collected and released in the first issue of the e-book anthology, Stories in the Ether. Be a cool guy (or gal) and buy a copy.

(And yes, I realize that the title of my story is spelled incorrectly on the cover. It bugs me but I’m too lazy to have anything done about it.)

My how time flies. A lot has happened since my last update. I quit a job that was causing me immense amounts of stress, started a new job that is amazing and stress-free, we sold our house back in Ohio, moved into a new house, my second daughter was born, and I turned 29. *whew*

The book still isn’t done and that’s okay. The job from Hell took a lot out of me, a lot more than I realized. I thought I had been handling the stress well but that wasn’t the case. I had stopped being creative, stopped writing, I even stopped enjoying life. It was terrible and I wish I could take that year of my life back. I finally quit (without notice) after lining up another job. Some people call that “burning bridges”, but in a right to work state they wouldn’t have given me any notice if they were firing me. (And they didn’t, when they fired my buddy.) So I fired them.

But I’m back on the writing wagon and it feels good. I’m not getting as much done as I would like, but that’s to be expected with a toddler and newborn. I’m happy again. Life is good. (And it’s October, the best month of the year!) I’ll try to update this blog more often. At least once every week or two. Twitter is still the go-to for daily updates, though even those have been sporadic lately.

My writing related stat for the day: I sent two stories out into the wild last week. Hopefully they’ll find a good home soon.

I’m still alive. The beard is still growing strong. Progress on the book halted for a while but I’m feeling good about it again and back to writing.

Okay, folks. It’s one o’clock on Saturday morning which means the contest is over. We had seven entries and, as promised, three of them will be receiving a copy of Cate Gardner’s excellent short story collection, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. (If you didn’t win, don’t fret, go buy yourself a copy. Right now. I’ll wait here while you do it.) My trusty random number generator has been consulted and the bones of a small but delicious chicken have been thrown against a wall. And the winners are…

e.
Brian Stanfill
Juan Pinto

I’ve already sent messages to the winners to verify e-mail addresses, so please check your inboxes.

Huge thanks to Cate Gardner for a) being an awesome writer and b) picking my name out of a hat to win her contest. As luck would have it, the magazine I won in her contest arrived in the mail today, all the way from the UK. (I can now confirm that getting international mail is so much cooler than domestic mail.)

I’ll be cracking it open and reading her story as soon as I finish this blog post. Which is now.

The envelope this came in had a Wallace & Gromit stamp on it, which makes it even more awesome.

Thanks to everyone who entered and spread the word!

Mottephobia, the little piece of flash fiction I wrote earlier this month has been accepted for publication in the Nevermet Press anthology, “Stories in the Ether, Volume 1″. I’ve revised it and added about 160 words while staying under my original goal of 1,000. The new version will appear on their website April 1st, 2011 and will be collected in their forthcoming print/e-book/audio anthology due out early 2012.

This marks my first published work. So I guess this means I’m a real writer now, huh? It feels great but I’m not resting on my laurels. I already have a few other pieces out on submission and I’m continuing to write more short stories and work on the novel.

I recently picked up Cate Gardner’s short story collection, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits, for my Kindle. I’m really enjoying it so far. Because I picked it up during e-book week, I ended up winning a copy of Space and Time with Cate’s story, “Flying Dutchman”, in it as well as a $10 Amazon gift card. Since Cate was so generous to me, I’d like to return the favor. I’m giving away three (3) copies of the Kindle edition of Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits.

To enter, simply leave a comment and tell me your favorite short story and who wrote it. Winners will be chosen at random. Please only enter if you have a Kindle, since I won’t be able to send it to you otherwise. The contest will end on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 11:59 pm MST. And make sure I have some way to contact you if you win, so either leave an e-mail address or your Twitter name.

10/17/2011 Update: This story is now collected in the first issue of the Stories in the Ether anthology, now available for your Kindle.

3/31/2011 Update: The revised draft is up a day early and it’s got a great little illustration to go along with it. Go read it!

3/22/2011 Update: I have written a revised draft of Mottephobia for the Nevermet Press anthology “Stories in the Ether, Volume 1″. It will be available on the web on April 1st (no joke) and collected in their print/e-book/audio anthology in early 2012. Consider this a first draft. I will replace this version with the updated one some time in April.

Chuck Wendig suggested a flash fiction challenge of 1,000 words or less, inspired by the title of his short story collection,”Irregular Creatures”. Here is my entry.

Mottephobia
by Gary B. Phillips

I stretched my legs on the steps of the porch and caught my breath. My shins were red with fresh wounds from running through the thicket of woods. Only a sliver of orange light remained on the horizon as the black sky crept in from the east.

I planted both feet firmly on the wooden porch and froze. A thin screen door, and the hundred or so moths on it, stood between myself and respite from the Tennessee heat.

My biology teacher had said that a collection of butterflies was called a flutter. How precious. Moths were anything but. They didn’t flutter. They carved a pale and erratic path through the night. I hated them.

“Mottephobia,” the doctor had called it. “An irrational fear,” he told my mother. He suggested a treatment of systematic desensitization. I suggested that he was a quack. My mother was not amused.

Toby shuffled his feet on the other side of the door and smirked, revealing a mouth full of metal on his pockmarked face. Uglier than usual. Why his parents were blowing a few thousand dollars on braces for him I could only guess.

“Looking terrible today,” I said. “As usual.”

He stuck his tongue out and sneered. “Come on in, it’s great,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“What’re you so afraid of? These little guys?” He pointed to the legion of moths.

“Godzilla was just a little guy once too,” I told him.

He laughed and slammed his fist against the screen door, sending the moths snaking toward me.

My heart hammered in my chest and I fell back off the porch. I struggled to my feet and ran to the back of the house and into the mouth of the woods. It was dark here. Safe.

The tent we had pitched earlier in the week was here and would do for now. A Ball jar with a single firefly in it provided an intermittent light source inside the tent.

“Hello,” I said to the firefly.

He glowed happily.

Other bugs didn’t bother me. I had spent the previous evening catching fireflies with my cousin. We caught them mid-flight, put them in jars, and set the jars along the path from the back door to the tent.

I unscrewed the lid and pulled a fresh knot of grass and leaf from my pocket and placed it inside the jar. The lightning bug crawled on my finger and lit up approvingly before I placed him on the new leaf and screwed the lid back on.

I rested my head on the hard ground and began plotting my revenge against Toby. A concoction of sneezing powder would be simple and effective. These happy thoughts pulled my heavy eyes shut.

A rustling sound woke me.

“Toby?” I asked in the darkness.

There was no answer.

The rustling grew louder and I realized that it was not rustling, but the beating of a hundred tiny wings. Moths. Something smacked the outside of the tent and sent them into a frenzy. I screamed until no air remained in my lungs.

The moths crawled into my mouth, their fuzzy legs twitching on my tongue, marching down my throat and flitting their wings. I gagged and gasped for air and then blacked out.

I awoke to the dim rays of morning sun illuminating the tent. My eyes could not focus. I tried shifting my weight but was unable to move. Sharp rocks dug into my flesh and I struggled against my own dead weight. I tried to move again, felt my muscles contract and the thick skin around my shoulders ripped open and my arms fell to the ground.

My legs broke off next in a searing bolt of white hot pain. I cried out but either made no sound or no longer had ears to hear. Inch by inch my skin sloughed off in great pale sheets.

My mother found me first and let out a scream that I did not hear. The whole family came after that. I couldn’t make out the detail in my mother’s face, only sagging gray skin and dark hollows for her eyes and mouth. They mulled it over, but none of them dared get close to me. I could not see them clearly but I saw enough to know their plan. They tore down the tent and wrapped the polyester fabric around my broken body.

They left me there for days, without food or water, but I did not hunger or thirst. Where my skin had previously folded with fat it now cracked and hardened. My body absorbed the threads of the tent and created a safe place for me to wait.

In time I will discard this body. New blood will pump through me and I will grow wings to envelop the sun. I will find the light of this world and wait on its door, biding my time until it opens.

I sent a new short story (“A House Divided”) out into the world this week. As an unpublished writer it’s always scary to let one of your babies leave home. Of course, about two minutes after I sent it I was informed of a minor but critical tense error. There’s just no winning, is there?

I’ve spent the week asking myself, “Did that little error kill my chances? Was it really ready for an editor’s eyes?” But those questions will drive a man mad faster than you can say, “Cthulhu fhtagn!”

At some point you have to trust your own voice. For us unpublished folk, that’s probably the hardest part of the process. I like to imagine that it gets easier as your work is published (validation!) but I’m not so sure that’s the case.

The good thing about all this fretting is that there’s an easy fix. Write!

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. (After giving myself a day off.) I picked up my pen and started writing anew. I’m 500 words into a new short story, in the process of rewriting an older short story, and I’ve added a few thousand words to my novel.

So I guess that makes me winning, right?

What’s in a name? (Or, why is this blog called Straight Up Witches?)

I’ve been struggling to name my work-in-progress for the last three years. I have a working title but it’s rather ridiculous to call it a working title when it simply isn’t working. I was discussing possible titles with my wife and she jokingly said, “Straight up witches!” We both had a good laugh and when it came time to name the blog it was a no-brainer.

What do witches have to do with anything? Well, that’s what the novel is about.

Which, sadly, I still don’t have a title for.

On February 13th, 2008 I wrote the opening line to a short story: “Greg drew the short straw.”

Over the last few years those 5 simple words turned into 50,000 and counting. Before I knew it, I was writing my first novel. It’s been a long road and I’ve gotten lost a few times but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s also a light at the other end of the tunnel. A deadline and it’s heading my way fast: My wife and I are expecting our second child this year. If I don’t finish by then, I will have yet another excuse as to why this novel has taken over three years to write, albeit a very cute and cuddly one.

So this is my plan. Finish the first draft of my novel by the end of July. That’s 5 full months to write approximately 40,000 new words and then rewrite the less savory ones. To keep myself in check I won’t shave my beard until the novel is done. (And because beards are awesome and writerly.)

This blog will follow my journey.

And for your link of the day (not guaranteed every day or any day): Watch as former-agent-turned-author Nathan Bransford critiques a page from one of his readers. Always good to see an example of cutting back superfluous prose.