My niece, for example, who is eleven, when she thinks about vampires, she doesn't imagine Bram Stoker's Dracula, she thinks about Twilight. It's not her fault. The teeny version of vampires is all she's known. I'm wondering if that is going to affect future writers or their perception of Vampires or other more classic monsters.
Stephen King is maybe my favorite horror author. He's right up there in the top five for sure. He writes the kind of stories that I love to read. Scary, suspenseful stories with rich, dark characters. He writes what I like to think of as Classic Supernatural Horror. The kind that delves into a character and drudges all the darkness back up to the surface. It's the kind of writing that preys on your own phobias, your own fear. Dean Koontz is another author who does this, too. They both have had such tremendous success that it is easy think that horror, as a genre, is alive and well, but I'm finding out that it might not be the case.
From a publisher's standpoint, it doesn't make sense to gamble on a genre that doesn't sell, and unless you are Stephen King or Dean Koontz, chances are your horror novel isn't going to make any money. Right now, and for last decade, the public has had an appetite for Young Adult almost exclusively. The Twilight series of books is an excellent example, all though there are many many more. Books geared towards young adults are a smarter investment for the publisher. I read somewhere that Young Adult fiction sells 25 to 1 over non Adult fiction. I don't know if that number is accurate or not, but looking at the Amazon sale's numbers it seems to be in the ballpark.
So, what's wrong with Young Adult fiction you ask? Nothing. Anyone who writes something and gains an audience from it gets nothing but respect from, and the Twilight Series is no different. I have my own issues with those books, but I can't begrudge Stephenie Meyer her success. She captured the imagination of a lot of young people and not a small amount of adults as well.
Her success, however, gave the publishing companies something to bank on. More and more, anything that had teens and supernatural creatures got backed and published. The market is flush with supernatural tales, but very few of them are geared towards adult readers.
I wonder if Stephen King had released 'Salem's Lot as an unknown author in the wake of Twilight if he would have been asked to make it more teen friendly. Maybe not. My only fear is that there is a ton of great horror novels out there geared for adults dying on the vine because they aren't a safe bet for publishers.
What do you think? Is Classic Supernatural Horror dead?
The story is surprising, but for me it is too full of filler words (purple prose). I've been guilty of this too, I think every writer has run into this. Have you ever heard the saying "Kill your darlings?" It basically means that even though you've worded something in an interesting way, sometimes you have to get rid of your favorite lines in service to the story. For example: "...It brings me a sense of purpose that fulfills the empty rotting core that rapes my daily waketime." The sentence is nonsense. How does an empty rotting core rape a daily waketime? I understand the gist of what you're saying here, but you aren't conveying it clearly. The plot is good. The dialogue is good. Just trim the fat.
At 6/12/14 03:49 AM, AbsurdRandomness wrote: It brings me great pleasure to know that my existence led to the biggest and most important change to someone's life. It brings me a sense of purpose that fulfills the empty rotting core that rapes my daily waketime.
There are some good lines in this, but for me it was really difficult to follow. When someone describes the other person in dialogue, it sounds forced. It would seem better to just flesh out the character in prose, rather than trying to put all the details of the world in dialogue. Describe the world, have the characters interact inside it. Even in the first person, Noir is a good example, the narrator describes what they are doing and where they are doing it. Just my two cents.
At 6/13/14 01:48 PM, FieryLighting wrote: You know, being a badass is cool and all, but being only 15, you learn it's better to take stress relief where you can get it. I'm not a chain smoker but a herd of dragons, a flock, I don't know but it's stressful
Can you post an example? It's tough to say without seeing it written down.
At 6/17/14 10:24 AM, SubparTony wrote: My question is, is this fine? I mean would the reader find that charming or annoying, or would he just be ok with it?
He opened his eyes underwater. He couldn't draw breath. There was dark and cold water where air should be. He looked around but saw no light. Nothing but darkness. Then, from the murky water, he saw Frank's face emerge pale against the dark. His eyes were open, staring up into nothing, his mouth open. His tongue was missing, and tiny fish were finishing the job inside his open head. Then, suddenly, Frank's eyes tilted down and looked right at Ned. He was mouthing something but Ned couldn't make it out. Frank's pale and half eaten hands grabbed Ned by the shoulders. Frank was gripping him hard, his mouth moving frantically, his eyes looking right into Ned's soul. Ned could finally make out what Frank was mouthing. Don't Run. Frank was saying it over and over. He was shaking Ned as he said it, his pale mouth inches from Ned's face. The jolt shot him bolt awake in bed, sweating like a whore in church. He dangled his feet over the edge of the bed and tried to collect his thoughts. He had never dreamed so vividly in his life. After a few moments, his head began to throb, and Ned chalked the whole thing up to nasty bathtub whiskey and an even nastier hangover. He got up and looked outside. The sun was almost half way up the sky, which meant he needed to get ready. He donned the vest and turban and pulled on his riding boots. By the time he opened his wagon for customers, he had all but forgotten about the dream.
But the dreams would follow him. It wasn't always Frank, sometimes it was Ned's father. Sometimes, his father would raise his bloody face from the Packard steering wheel and whisper Watch Your Step, Cripple through a spittle of blood. Sometimes, he had the dream that he was falling. He was face up, watching a circle of the sky grow smaller and smaller as he fell. Then, his back would break, and Ned would wake up screaming in agony.
The dreams got so bad that Ned would fight sleep, and found himself nodding off during his act. He went days without rest. He got some uppers from one of the Geeks, and before long he was wrecked but awake. One night, he turned the radio on and blasted the wagon full of sound. He picked up one of Frank's books to read. It was a small leather bound book, and several passages were circled. The circled passages were all excerpts from Romanian Gypsies, and were very familiar to Ned. In fact, he knew them by heart. He had been saying them for the better part of five years now. One of the phrases was akin to asking for directions. Another was advice on trading onions. Out of the seven or eight phrases there was only one that wasn't nonsense. Ned's blood ran cold as he read the words. It was a curse. The author had asked the Gypsy to give him an example of a curse, and after some persuasion, the Gypsy had obliged. There it was, circled and memorized and said every night. A real Gypsy curse. Frank had obviously just leafed through this book and chose some random phrases, or else he put it in for a laugh, but either way he had been cursing himself every day. It was a curse for the speaker, presumably so anyone dumb enough to recite it would only harm themselves.
The passage read: ... and told me later it was a curse of vision. Anyone who is so cursed will see through the veil between this life and the next. They will see their own death. She told me never to speak the words aloud, and urged me not to print them. Myself, I have never been superstitious, and found the whole encounter...
Ned dropped the book. He licked his lips. The uppers were really thumping now. He got up and poured himself a drink. It couldn't be real. There was no way. Frank had been doing this a long time. It had to be bull. He finished his drink in a single gulp. Ned winced and got up, his head swimming. He stepped out of the wagon. The carnival lights were still shining. The music played over the carousel loudspeakers. He wasn't sure what town they were in anymore. He limped out and away from the lights, into a field to clear his head. The further he went, the darker the sky grew. One by one, stars appeared above him. He could smell the grass and feel a hot breeze blow humid air against his sweating skin. He walked further and further, the music just a ghost on the wind now.
Finally, he stopped. He looked up and saw stars, the whole night sky full of pin lights. The earth was swaying with him, his head craned up to see the stars. He felt suddenly very sick, and bent to throw up. He fell forward on the grass, the impact barely registering. He was throwing up now but somehow it was distant, as though it had happened in the past and he was just now remembering. He stumbled up and took a few steps forward, making his way towards a great black tree. He put his back against it and slid down, his legs splayed out into the tall and shadowed grass. His head was thumping and spinning. In the see-sawing distance, he saw two lights rise from the grass. They floated straight up as though guided by an invisible string and held steady several feet above the tall grass. As they approached, Ned could see what they really were. They were eyes, glowing white and burning inside a shadow moving slowly towards him. Ned tried to scramble up but could not move. Another set of lights emerged behind, then another. The whole field was awash in a sea of glowing eyes, and they were all coming for him. Ned scrambled up again and pushed off the tree, limping briskly away from the lights. He could hear their distant voices, pleading for him. They were gaining on him. Ned began to run. His crooked legs ached and burned, his head felt like a balloon being popped back and forth on a string. He felt the tall grass whip his arms, wet and warm. His legs were not sure, his back throbbed and tore but Ned ran through the waist tall grass as hard as he could. His breath came hard and each pounding stride brought sick with it, but he did not stop. He could see the carnival in the distance, the music tinkling gayly into the night.
His foot went down to meet the tall grass but found nothing. He folded down hard, his chin clicking against the earth. His arms were holding him up, his legs scraping against slick stone. His mouth was full of blood and he could feel himself slipping. His wet hands tried to claw the tall grass for purchase but he was slipping. He fell. He was falling backwards through a tunnel. His voice was thick in his throat but he couldn't hear it. The music was growing thinner. He heard himself land but felt nothing. He tried to raise his neck but could not. Above him, a circle of night sky.
Another illustration from my book of short stories.
Ned Lance was a fortune teller. He had never thought in a million years that this would be his life, but like so many things his dreams had died the death of a thousand cuts. When the war came he turned up 4F, and stayed behind while his friends collected medals, honor and bullets overseas. Ned had a crooked back and had walked with a limp as long as he could remember, but he had finished high school, one of the first in his family, and his mother and his brothers had been proud of him. His father, however, had not loved Ned as he should and never had. He had been ashamed of Ned's limp and his crooked back Ned's whole life. When Ned told him he was going to graduate, his father said nothing. When Ned pressed him for a reply, he looked square in his son's eye and didn't say a word. That was the last time Ned ever saw his father alive. The following night on the way home his father would have what the doctors called an embolism. He was stone dead before the Packard hit the ditch. His mother was devastated. Ned stood over his father's grave and did not weep as a good son should, and he felt bad and could not sleep. That night, with his brothers sleeping and his mother weeping softly into her pillow, Ned left out, never to return. He walked an awkward and painful eleven miles in darkness to the swinging carnival lights on the edge of town.
He did not start as a fortune teller. His first job was tending the show ponies. He would muck out their stalls and feed them and help the trainer brush them down. It was the hardest work Ned had ever done, but it earned him a place to stay and food to eat. He started out without a penny to his name, and spent the next half year living to eat and eating to live. It was hard work but it gave Ned purpose. By September, he had moved up to Dunk Bozo, where he yelled at people and they threw baseballs at a target trying to drop him in the tank. It was fun, but cold work in the fall. Eventually, the Great Zulo, the carnival’s fortune telling act, asked Ned if he wanted to help him. Zulo's real name was Frank. Normally, carnival shows had lady fortune tellers, but Frank had a flair for the job, and took Ned under his wing. Frank said he saw a lot of himself in Ned, and wanted to get the kid out of the freezing water. Over the next six months, as they made their way south along the train tracks, Zulo taught him the whole act, and Ned was eager to learn. For a while, Ned worked the magic crystal ball, raising and lowering the lights from beneath the wagon. Before long, Frank would let him sit in for him. Ned donned the turban, put on the eye make-up and said the nonsense words that Frank had cobbled together from books and stories. Gibberish, but to some corn fed hick like Ned had been some short eight months before, they sounded like dark and powerful magic. After the show Ned and Frank shared a drink and laughed about the different rubes they saw that day. It was all that Ned had ever wanted in his life, and he was well and truly happy.
Later that same night, Ned had a disturbing dream of falling down a long dark hole. His own scream woke him. Frank looked groggy, but concerned. He told Frank about the dream and Frank just laughed. He told Ned he had weird dreams all the time. You didn't talk to the amount of weirdos they did without a little of it rubbing off. Ned felt better, and rolled back over. He would never have another truly peaceful night of sleep again.
Frank got drunk one night that summer after a show and drowned in the Mississippi river. They never found the body, just his work boots and clothes by the bank. The carnival went on same as ever, except there was no fortune teller that night. Ned had a little ceremony by the bank of the river, with the carnival music playing and the lights from the rides playing on the surface of the water. Ned cried and stared out and into the black rushing water, thinking about how unfair life could be sometimes.
The fortune teller job was his. He donned the beaded vest, the curly mustache and the silk turban with the huge fake jewel in the forehead. For the next four years, Ned was Zulo the fortune teller for kids and gullible adults in every town the carnival passed. He would amuse and sometimes shock, but it was all Grade -A- Bull Hockey, and everyone was in on it. No one really believed he could see the future, and Ned never really let on otherwise. He was an entertainer, nothing more. He would light his crystal, say his magic words and wave his hands. Everyone went home happy, if not slightly poorer. Frank had taught him well, and before long he was able to determine what someone did almost instantly just by looking at them. Sometimes it didn't work, and he played it off. Sometimes it did work, and the people were dazzled and impressed. It was not hard work, not like mucking the stalls, but by the end of the night, Ned was exhausted. It was tiring work lying to people all day, even if that's exactly what they want you to do. He waved good-bye to the last rubes of the evening and shut the painted door of his wagon. He was beat. He tossed the turban on the crystal ball and took off his vest. He opened the door behind his chair and stepped down into his meager living quarters. The Wagon had been cramped with himself and Frank living inside, but it felt almost cavernous now that Frank was gone. Ned poured himself a drink. He wished he had some ice, but beggars couldn't be choosers. He kicked his smelly riding boots off and settled down on the worn chair next to the bookshelf. He had bought a radio a summer or two before, but he didn't get good reception at this site. Maybe the next town would have better reception. He picked up a book and sipped his whiskey, and before long was fighting his eyelids to stay open. He laid down, his head barely swimming from his rather stout drink, and listened to the crickets outside. He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.
1) Robert Hay
2) Novels / Short Stories / Graphic Novels
3) 1976 Graphic Novel (Not finished), A Shadow Growing (Finished), Closter's Branch (Editing)
4) I've been told I am good at writing dialogue and description, although I have to work on not writing overtly flowery prose. <---See, like that.
Happy Pico Day Everybody! Sorry I couldn't make it out, but I hope you guys have a blast! Can't wait to see all the submissions!
If you have Amazon Prime, you can read my book for FREE! If not, there is still a fairly large preview that includes the entire first story. I'd love it if you guys would read it and let me know what you think!
Here's mine. Just a single Panel.
Good Luck Everyone!
BIGGER VERSION
I'd love to help judge if you'll have me! Regardless, if I have that weekend off, I will put something together just for kicks.
I just realized I never put my submission in this thread.
Awesome competition! I loved checking in and seeing the new battles as they went up. Really great stuff this year. Kuoke's piece is AWESOME, and deserves first place. I think it's better suited for the kind of audience they hope to sell it to. I DO appreciate all those that liked mine though :)
I'm speechless. There were a ton of Awesome art entries this year... THANKS TOM!
I made some changes to my submission, and put in the Portal.
HERE'S THE LINK
I CAN'T RESIST A GOOD COMPETITION
Another Entry for you...
BIGGER VERSION
Thought I might take a swing at this... it was fun doing anyway.
BIGGER VERSION
I couldn't resist giving this a shot
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Wow! Thanks guys, this contest was a lot of fun! Congrats to all the other winners, and great job to those that didn't win, hope to see you in the next contest :)
Congrats to all the winners! Turned out to be one of the more enjoyable Art Contests for me.
I've got CS4 AfterEffects / Flash, and you can save a flx file and bring it into flash... what version are you running?
Well, I figured I'd post a link to my final entry here, just in case:)
Final Entry for Robot Day 2010...
BIGGER VERSION
Select between 5 monster racers, upgrade your monster skill and win the competition!
4.23 / 5.00 3,881 Views
Build most powerful forces, unleash hordes of monster and control your soldiers!
3.93 / 5.00 4,634 Views
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