I found out today that I was one of the winners of the Tales Out of  Miskatonic University contest!

The contest was to write a short piece about a character reminiscing of their days at Miskatonic University, a fictional university that is mentioned in the works of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

Winners of the contest will have their stories included in the Tales Out of Miskatonic University anthology (edited by William Jones, who also set up the contest). The anthology is a collection of stories that take place at MU and are written by present day writers.

I’m not getting paid for this, but I get a writing credit–and that’s fine by me, it was a flash fiction piece (a very, very short story–mine was around 330 words), so it isn’t like I wrote an epic novel. Because, now when I send out other manuscripts I can list that in my cover letter (as well as put it on the ol’ resume).

While I can’t put up the actual story online, I can say what it is about–I went with a bit of a different direction, making it more humorous and satirical. The narrator (this is a first person point of view) talks about being awarded a track scholarship to MU and is a background character for lots of wacky stuff going on around campus.

Lots of Lovecraft stories deal with characters finding some kind of ‘forbidden knowledge’ or science gone wrong or beings from other dimensions. My narrator isn’t directly involved in any of that, but his (ever changing) roommates are.

Think Death Star construction workers. Something like that.

I don’t know yet when Tales Out of Miskatonic University will be released, but I’ll do a post once I find out. And better still, I think it might be available at bookstores.

I’m excited!

Mirrored from Daniel J. Hogan. If something doesn't look right or show up, view the original blog post. Feel free to comment here or on the original post

Started a new short story, dusting off an idea I've had since this summer.  I know, you're thinking "But what about your new novel and other stuff you've been working on? Won't this slow you down?"

Shaddup.

I was inspired, so I gotta write while the ideas come to me.  I can always shelf this if I dont' like it and retool it later--at least I'll have it written down.  I'm aiming for something around 1,000 words--maybe more. If I keep it under 1,000 it counts as flash fiction, but if I can't do what i want within that word count, I'll keep going.

I made a big change already.  After working on the first draft, I liked what I was doing but I was doing too much 'telling' instead of showing and teasing.  I had a few long paragraphs explaining what happened, and while interesting, I didn't like it.  So I stared over--and this time I went in a different direction.  Instead of an adult 'loner', i decided to go the Young Adult route and made the main character a 16 year old boy on his own (and has been on his own since he was 14).  Then the ideas started coming really fast: why was he where was, what had happened, so on and so on.

We'll see if I still like this after I'm done, but I'm glad i decided to change gears a bit.  It certainly makes the story more interesting.

I sent out two flash fiction stories this week, both to Flash Fiction Online.  It'll probably be awhile before I hear anything, so I get to play the waiting game.  Both stories, Gotcha and True Love, were rebuilt from short-short stories I did for a college course.  I rewrote most of each and changed a few things around as well as adding parts (both were under 500 words). 

They both kind of depart from my style as of late, and have a more serious tone--although I think True Love still has my usual sarcastic humor, just presented differently.  I had to really tone the violence/gore of Gotcha  (original title: "Space Pirate Steve"...don't ask), because it just didn't sit well with me and felt like (back in college) I was trying too hard for the gross out factor.  Reading over that one and True Love (original title: "She") made me realize just how much I've grown as a writer since college, heck even in the last year or so.  I also cut out all of the profanity of True Love, because a) Flash Fiction Online doesn't want it and b) I just didn't like it and again it came across as me trying too hard.

Gotcha ended up being closer to a horror story than the sci-fi adventure it started as, but that's fine by me.  I realized that as I was revising it and decided to just go for it, trashing the gore aspect and going for the bizarre atmosphere with a little bit of Lovecraft influence thrown in for good measure.  I also changed the character Steve's name because I didn't want any connection to Steve from Magic of Eyri ("Steve" was my utility character name for projects in school).

True Love is a first person point of view story, something I haven't written that much of--and might be my least favorite way to write.  But we'll see, I could grow to like it.  Writing this character's POV was fun, because of the gritty nature of the story and because of the questionable nature of the narrator. 

And I'll be honest, both of these stories are kind of creepy in their own way.

So have those two sent out and I'm still waiting to hear about Slow and Steady from another place.  I'm pretty proud of myself for sending out this many short stories in the same month.  Now if any ( or gasp, ALL) of the three gets bought, then there shall be cause to celebrate.

I decided to work on a flash fiction story to submit to Flash Fiction Online. For those unfamilar with this form of writing self-punishment, flash fiction is a short-short story, typically under 1,000 words. Some flash fiction can run 200 to 500 words, but 1,000 (from what I've read) is considered the cutoff.

1,000 words--not to mention 500--is (...are?) not that much (speaking as someone who is accustomed to cranking out 2,000 words a DAY during Novel Writing Month), so you have very little space to develop a plot and characters. But, this forces you to come up with creative ways to move the story along. We talked about short stories and flash fiction at ConClave, and some writers hate short stories and only prefer long form stuff, others thrieve on short stuff and then there are those who like it both ways (there's a joke in there somewhere). I fall into the last catergory, and enjoy writing both story stories and long form stories.

The thing I like most about flash fiction is that it is a challenge, and I like challenges: "Can I say all I want to say?" "Will this make sense?" "How do I start or end this?" I like it. I dug out a few of my short-short stories I did for a story writing class in college and decided to overhaul them a bit. I was surprised to see that most of them were barely 400 words--but they all had a begining, middle and end (sort of) and some kind of plot.

The other aspect of flash fiction I like is they are considerably easier to edit and reread. A couple pages or so is quicker to edit than something over twenty pages long. This is the issue I ran into with editing A Queen's Tale, which is almost 60 pages long (double spaced)--it is the longest thing I've writter that wasn't a novel (or part of a novel), and reading it over and over was a chore.

The neat thing about Flash Fiction Online is that they actually pay pretty well for a story: $50. That's really good considering how short the piece is. And, they take submissions via email, which is another thing I like. I don't have to print the story out, stuff it into a big envelope, buy postage, blah blah blah. Just paste the story into the body of an email and hit Send. Easy.

So, I'll work on this story (and perhaps others) a little more and give it a shot. I have nothing to lose.