Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 13 - The Staring Stranger

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A podcast flash fiction story written and read by me inspired by the flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's website www.terribleminds.com.

The creepy bum is always there, staring at me. Every time I ride the subway he's there. No matter what terminal I get off at, he's there. I can't escape him and I'm starting to lose it.

Rules for writing this story challenge:
You know the drill: Random number generator or d20. Roll it. Grab a setting from the list below and go forth and write yourself around 1000 words of fiction set in that location. The list, then, is:

(I got a 12 for my random number) 

12. The NYC subways

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Music was "Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod:

http://www.incompetech.com

Notes on my Novella

A good friend of mine Michell Plested gave me the honor to have first dibs on creating a book cover for him. I jumped at the chance, especially when I heard what he wanted the cover to be. Check it out! It's for his awesome novel Boyscouts of the Apocalypse that you can read for free on Wattpad. Michell knows the scouts because he is involved with them as a cub and scout leader. He volunteers his time to go on cool outdoor trips and things with his scouts which includes his son. I think that is awesome. My oldest is 5 but I can't wait to see all the things he gets involved with as he gets older and I can't wait to be a part of them. So go check out Mike's book Boyscouts of the Apocalypse.

Here's where I get to my novella. When Mike asked what I'd like as payment for his book cover I asked if he would be interested in reading my novella and giving me feedback on it. I really respect Michell and look up to him as a writer. I'm so thankful he agreed. He has given me some very honest feedback on my novella which is invaluable to me. I first found Mr. Plested online by searching for writing podcasts and found his fantastic Get Published podcast. You get to hear about his writing journey and listen to laid back and insightful interviews he does with other authors. Mike jokes around with his guests but also gets a lot of great writing advice out of them. Since he started the podcast he got published. You can pick up his debut novel Mik Murdock, Boy Superhero now published by Five Rivers Publishing. I bought it and had a blast reading it. It would also be great for your kids to read. I bet you'll hear them laughing as they turn the pages and ask you when the sequel is coming out once they've finished it.

So Mike read my story a couple times and then went through about the first 60% making notes for me and then stopped. He suggested I rewrite and tighten up the story before he goes on to finish his feedback for me. After reading his notes, which I found to be dead on, I whole heartedly agreed with him. I'm also thankful he didn't just get through it and hand it off to me. I can tell he cares. He wants my story to succeed. I really hope to meet Mike someday at a convention or something because he is a class act. He made a ton of notes pointing out a lot of things that could be changed in my story. I read through them last night. He made A LOT of really great points and I'm so glad he didn't worry about hurting my feelings and tell me it was a great story that was ready to publish.

He was very nice but as he put it "didn't pull any punches." I'm so thankful. That's exactly what you want as a writer when you're getting feedback on your story from beta readers before you go and publish it or send it off. I reworked the story quite a bit and changed a lot of it on my own, but that was as far as I could take it and I needed some help seeing the flaws. There are a lot of them. I still have much to learn. After getting Mike's notes though, I'm not disheartened. I'm excited! I have the chance to see things, lots of things, that are wrong with my story that I couldn't pick out on my own. Now I can fix those things before putting my name on the thing and making it available for sale online. I have a lot of work to do, but I think it will be work that will really improve my novella.

I bet I will learn a lot rewriting, hacking, and revising this novella with the help of Mike's notes. That in itself will be really valuable to me. I will blog about the things I learn that will help me write a better story the next time around as I go through this next draft of my novella. If you want to read the thing in it's current state, its just under 30K words, click the big banner at the top of this website and you can read it now for free on Wattpad. Pretty soon I'll be posting up new versions of the chapters as I work my way through it and you can follow along there.

Have you received feedback on one of your stories? Did it help you? Make you curl up in the fetal position? Anger you, or encourage you? I'd love to hear about it! Go ahead, leave a comment - and as always thanks for stopping by!

Brian Rathbone's "Call of the Herald" free, then the Audio Book is $1.99! Get your copies now!

@DanDanTheArtMan be sure to grab the free ebook first, then the audiobook is only $1.99
— Fantasy Author (@BrianRathbone) September 28, 2013

Word to the wise: If you consume audiobooks like crazy and also like reading eBooks, this is a steal! How cool was it for the author to tell me about the deal too?! Really cool. I hadn't even remembered that I already bought the eBook for Call of the Herald, which holy crap is FREE right now, so I can get this audio book for a steal! 

So go get the eBook and read it, or better yet - then go get the audio book for $1.99 and you can switch between reading the eBook at home and the audio book while in the car!

I've Been Away, in Disneyland!

I haven't posted in quite a while. I didn't really get on any social media last week either. Why the silence? My family and I went with my in-laws to Disneyland! It was really fun. We had five days at the Disney parks. We got hopper passes so we were able to go to both Disneyland and Disney's California Adventures. One of the coolest rides was the new Radiator Springs Racers in Cars Land in California Adventures. You get to ride through Radiator Springs, see the characters talk to you, and race a car full of other visitors to the park. We were a little bummed out our 2 and 3 year olds weren't tall enough to go on the ride but now we know why. Those six passenger cars go really fast and bank some hard turns. It's more of a thrill ride than we were expecting which was awesome and made for a really fun ride. Cars Land itself was awesome too. It's like walking into the movie. You get to walk down the road that Lightning McQueen fixes in the first Cars movie. Everything is there including all the shops of the different characters.

Another awesome thing in California Adventures was the Disney's Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular. We went because the kids like the movie, but it was actually really entertaining and surprisingly funny. The actor playing the Genie was cracking funny jokes time and time again and you even got to see the villain Jafar turn into a hugh snake and the famous flying carpet scene. Two actors sing as they are flown overhead on a carpet swinging from wires. It was impressive. Also, there's a water and light show called World of Color. This was a pretty amazing show at half an hour with smoke, fire, and fountains of water with color and scenes from favorite Disney and Pixar movies playing out on them at huge sizes. It was a sight to see. So was the fireworks show in Disneyland as you can see in the first image in this post. But the best part of all of this was being there with my family. It proved difficult at times standing in line with a 5, 3, & 2 year old but many special memories were made. Leading up to our trip we watched a ton of Disney movies and so going through Fantasyland in Disneyland was fun too, were you can go on rides like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and ride through classic Disney films. 

I'm sure many of you have been to Disneyland so I wont keep listing all the fun rides and shows we got to experience as a family, but it was really fun. We're all exhausted now but glad to be back home. Now I need to get back to writing, blogging, and podcasting. My Workflowy is full of tasks for these things. I have another flash fiction story to podcast, a novel to finish, and a novella to revise once I get some notes back from a few alpha readers. I'm way off track now for my word count on finishing my novel before NaNoWriMo starts, but I'm hoping for some epic sprints where I splash thousands of words on the screen and get back on track. It would be so awesome to start a new novel right on the heels of finishing one. Well, that's what I've been up to. Time to get back in the saddle. What projects are you working on? Thanks for stopping by!

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 12 - Death of a Salesman's Boss

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A podcast flash fiction story written and read by Dan Absalonson inspired by the flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's website. Here were the rules for writing this story: 

I’m going to give you ten words. Your job is to work all ten of these words into a flash fiction story, ~1000 words in length. That’s it. End of mandate. The story’s due in a week: Friday, August 30th, noon EST. Post at your online space. Link back here.

The ten random words are as follows:
FUNERAL, CAPTIVATE, DECEIT, BRIMSTONE, CANYON, BALLOON, CLAY, DISFIGURED, WILLOW, ATOMIC

Music Attributions:

Pilot Error by Kevin MacLeod

http://www.incompetech.com

SFX Attributions:

cf_fx-sounds

cf_FX_batch_jingle_glock_N--kloing.aif by cfork

http://freesound.org/people/cfork/sounds/26875/