FIRST FRIDAY! 3 AUTHORS, 1 IMAGE

I gave three outstanding authors this photograph and asked each to write about it in 150 words or less. Three very different visions of the same thing came back. Amazing how imagination works!

DAVIS

Anger churned in my chest when I saw Jason standing in the doorway of the barn wearing that insipid mask. Twenty-five-years old and he hadn’t any sense. The night before he had tried on different masks, like a child effecting poses and attitudes of Halloween spirits. Now, he wasted time when he should have been completing chores.

“Jason, what are you doing?” I said, approaching him. He peered from the mask. Was that outrage in his eyes? He manipulated something. “What are you fiddling with?” 

“You criminally stupid hag,” he said. He grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, clamped a wire around my neck and squeezed. I fought, knowing I would lose. Perhaps stealing the boy twenty years ago hadn’t been my best decision. I’d raised him, instilling fear when he asked too many questions. Had he learned the truth? How could I know his real parents were billionaires?  

GALLACHER

Hello my dear Mary, I knew you wouldn't disappear completely from me without at least one more meeting to say goodbye properly. I've waited here on every anniversary of your passing.

I was sure you'd come. You'll notice the cottage is not as it was. I never cared to tend to it after your murder. I want you to know that the madman who killed you is also now dead.

I expect some day the police will come and ask me about that, but I don't care. What he took from me can never be replaced. What I took from him goes some way to paying for that. I still miss you.

LOVELY

At first glance, the crumbling stucco building proposed by Mark as a setting for a Halloween Haunted House held little promise. Too small to set up multiple jack-in-the-box thrills for kiddies. A weed-choked field separated the yawning black entryway from the nearest road. Getting people here would be a bigger nightmare than any jangling skeletons or severed heads rigged inside.

I stumbled over a half-buried car door. The field was a dumping ground. Great. I looked up. A man blocked the doorway. Jeans, black hoodie, white drama mask. Was Mark trying to scare me? Same height, same build. Why did he pick a woman’s face as a mask? “Nice try, Mark,” I called, “but you’d frighten me more wearing a Tricky Dick mask.”

No answer. I noticed his hands. All ten fingers. Mark had nine—a missing index finger. My heart shifted into overdrive. “Who are you?”    

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

E.B. DAVIS

At Amazon

E.B. Davis’s lives in the Washington, D. C. Virginia suburbs and longs to live at the beach. She is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, Sisters in Crime and its Guppy and Chesapeake chapters. Her short stories have appeared in online magazines and in print, including the Shaker of Margarita anthologies. “Lucky In Death” appeared in Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder, and “The Acidic Solution” was published in He Had It Coming http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008STR0G2 in August. Fishnets, a Guppy anthology, will include her short story, “The Runaway.” She blogs at http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com.

At Amazon UK  and US

SEUMAS GALLACHER

Seumas Gallacher lives in Abu Dhabi and has two crime thrillers on Kindle now, THE VIOLIN MAN'S LEGACY and VENGEANCE  WEARS BLACK, the first two in a series. The novels spin around  three former SAS commandos, owners of a specialist security firm that tackles major crime gangs using their black operations expertise to deadly effect.

The latest book VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK can be found on these links :

UK  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008H45KJC/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

USA  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008H45KJC

Amazon Author Page

LINDA LOVELY

Linda Lovely writes mysteries and romantic thrillers. Her Marley Clark series features a 52-year-old retired military intelligence officer. DEAR KILLER is set in the South Carolina Lowcountry where Marley works as a private island security guard. NO WAKE ZONE moves the action to Lake Okoboji, Iowa. In the next installment, Marley returns to the Carolina Coast.

FINAL ACCOUNTING, a romantic thriller set in Atlanta and Jamaica, is set for release in late October.

Lovely is a member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and the South Carolina Writers Workshop. Click on book covers on Lovely’s Amazon author page—https://www.amazon.com/author/lindalovely–or visit her website—www.lindalovely.com—for buy links.

Join in! Add your vision in 150 words or less. After a taste of these authors, check out their books for some good reading.

                 

Writing Short Stories

My guest today is E.B. Davis, short story author and blogger on Writers Who Kill. 

I’m always amazed when writers say that it’s harder for them to write a short story than it is to write a novel. To me, a short story plot is the basis for a novel, and learning to write a short story is the basis for learning to write a novel. Sounds logical—and it is.

A short story must contain only one plot. The plot is structured in three parts. The beginning presents the problem. The middle provides pivotal information that drives the plot to the end, in which the writer solves the problem—sometimes cleverly in a twist. The writer must accomplish this using a few, carefully chosen words. Once mastered, a short story can be expanded into a novel. But in its basic structure, there is no difference between the short story and the novel.

A novel must present a unique situation or problem in its beginning while introducing the main characters, the setting, perhaps suggesting a subplot and, nearing the end of the beginning, add an interesting complication. The middle must drive the plot, providing the start of the main character’s transformation, following complications and furthering subplots, which complement the main plot. Eliminating red herrings decreases the possible suspects, and the mysterious puzzle forms a logical path taking the main character to the conclusion while suspense builds. The ending solves the mystery while tying up the loose ends of the complications and the subplots, which are solved or are used to provide an avenue to the sequel. In different genres, the elements may vary, but the structure remains the same.

Just because a novel is longer doesn’t mean word choice need be any less critical. Every piece of prose and dialogue must snap off the page. Waxing poetic doesn’t cut it. Too many novels contain flabby writing. Learning to write a short story disciplines a writer to be concise. Word smithing is a wonderful art, but it must have aim and hit the target.

In short, short stories are the prototype of novels, which expand the parameters of the short story in breadth and depth. By word count necessity, short stories are limited, concise and singular.

I laugh at myself when reviewing my critiqued work. My partners point out that I jump from point A to D without showing the steps because I tend to write too condensed, but I contend, better to risk a non sequitur than write ad nausea without coming to the point. A novel is not a lengthy conversation, with a captive audience. If it bogs down, readers quit reading.

In a short story I wrote, “Lucky in Death,” about a murderous grandmother who goes back to work helping her family’s financial struggle, soon to be published in a SinC Chesapeake Chapter anthology titled, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder, a reviewer questioned the grandmother’s necessity of going back to work because of the insurance. What insurance? In the story, I made no mention of insurance, and because I hadn’t, it didn’t exist. The reviewer assumed there had to be insurance. Not always. Many people don’t have life insurance. Should I have addressed her comment? No. Insurance was outside of the story. I had no need to address an issue that didn’t exist. Don’t be persuaded to expand a short story where it need not go.

I challenge you to do a backward exercise. Write a short story using your novel’s main character and plot. See if you can find your novel’s essence by deconstruction. Formulate a finely honed short story based on your main plot. I bet you’ll learn more about your novel than your critique group’s feedback. Then go further—what is your log line?
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Beach author/bum E. B. Davis writes short stories and novels in the mystery genre. When she is not writing or blogging at http://writerwhokill.blogspot.com, she sleeps on the beach, the setting for many of her stories. She is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, Sisters in Crime and its Guppy and Chesapeake subchapters. A Shaker of Margaritas: Hot Flash Mommas contains her short story, “Implicated by a Phrase.” “Daddy’s Little Girl,” can be found at:  http://voicesfromthegarage.com/story/daddys-little-girl. This short story provides the basis of her paranormal romantic novel in progress, TOASTING FEAR. A Shaker of Margaritas: Cougars on the Prowl presents her romantic short, “Rock the Cradle.” In 2012, the SinC Chesapeake Chapter’s anthology titled, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder, will present “Lucky in Death” and Fishnets, a Guppy anthology will include “The Runaway.”