Tag Archives: fabulous beasts

Fabulous Beasts (a dark fantasy short story) [e-stories | writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

(Edit 4/24/15: Updated buy links)

Fabulous BeastsReeling from a breakup with his girlfriend Jean, Paul Miller encounters Cyane, a wealthy model who wants to hire him to create disturbing paintings for nameless clients. But that work is only the start of what she wants from him. With her seductive song, she lures both he and Jean past desires for flesh, into a hallucinatory hunger for ecstasy and transcendence. To save Jean, himself, and his unborn child, he must learn who and what Cyane really is, and make a harrowing choice.

Here’s an excerpt of the start of the story:

The ropes that held me to the mast of the ship were loose. I found that as frightening as the dark shapes that thrashed just over the side. The men around me rowed on, ears stopped with wax, oblivious to the howls that rose above the roiling waters. I pitied them, for they wouldn’t know what they missed–voices sharp enough to cut thought and honeyed enough to clot the wound.

Though I could have easily freed myself, I remained still. In this place, I could hear the song. If I moved, it would dissolve into feral noise. My understanding of this grew with every change of the vast and beautiful voices that wove through the near-liquid air.

My ropes fell to the deck with the fading of the last octave. The men stopped rowing and stared with fearful eyes at the sea.

I walked toward the bow. The rush of her feathers came as a gasp of hungry breath that voided every other sound.

“Not this way.”

Her voice held a quiver from the song.

The wooden deck barked my knees when I slumped. She landed before me, dark brown wings in angelic spread, eyes locked with mine. Her human face could have been real, though my instincts whispered that it was not. Her sinuous body moved in ways more reptilian than avian. Her sharp red lips drew back into a grin.

Talons flashed. Blood ran down my neck.

“There is no easy way,” she said. “If you want it, it will hurt.”

(continued…)

***

Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Fabulous Beasts cover art: Sergey Nivens/BigStock.com.

Long Time Gone [it burns! it burns!, writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

PersonalLAST TIME ON GARY’S BLOG: Our hero, the looming yet strangely beguiling Writer Lad, was hip deep in writing a first draft of an urban fantasy with talking raptors and flying sharks and things like that, unaware that he was moments from being captured by Amphi-dodecahedron, the Avatar of Fish-Based Geometry, to be used as an oblique angle in his decidedly fussy war against Cartanga, Finder of Small Pebbles, whose underhanded tactics and undercooked pasta were the subject of thousands of savage Yelp reviews, all written by Professor Ivan Sharpski, ex-KGB tap dancer and girl friday to Gummo Lemmingsnort, noted New York Times Bestselling Author of “That’s Not Chicken, and Probably Not a Taco, Either” and several not-so-bestselling horror novels featuring occult detective and part-time spatula Bacon McGee, a concept derived from a 1923 article on Bootlegging Badgers and the Flappers who Love Them, as mis-transcribed by Randall Everwood, a.k.a. the Shadow Over the Breakfast Nook, aided by a ratty English-Klingon dictionary, a vole paid off by Joe Don Baker, and Dr. Leslie Ann Cartier, inventor of the least joyful whoopee cushion ever documented.

We join Gary, already in progress.

Hmmm, guess it’s been a while since I last wrote a non-repost blog-entry. See, what happened was I broke free from the chains that bound me to the black pit and roamed the moors, slaking my thirst for blood just got busy with a lot of stuff, both writing and non-writing, and something had to give. Also, an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls, some car crash and replacement car buying drama, work stress, and so on. I’ve moved on, why can’t you?

Ha! Seriously, though, you don’t want to hear my lame, lame excuses. You want to know what’s going on now. And that is… writing. I’ve got a steampunk horror story I’m trying to wrestle into shape, and another short that may or may not get written after that. Redscale is on hold until the new year. Possibly longer, if I go and rewrite/polish/finish off/ship out The Morpheist, the biopunk novella I first-drafted more than a year ago. I’m putting together another short, Fabulous Beasts, for self-publicational glory later this month. My next non-self-publication is coming in January, with a story in Angelic Knight Press’s Fairly Wicked Tales.

Plus, December is eating my head, and we’ve barely started the month. So there’s that.

Reading-wise, there’s a lot of good stuff out there that I’m gonna take this opportunity to push at you. If you’re an urban fantasy fan, you’ve gotta check out Manifesto: UF edited by Tim Marquitz and Tyson Mauermann. It’s got twenty-three envelope-pushing urban fantasy tales by the likes of Lincoln Crisler, Jake Elliot, Teresa Frohock, and many more. If ghost stories are more your speed, check out Bryan Hall’s The Girl. It’s an evocative and compelling story heavy on atmospheric dread that I enjoyed a lot.

My friend Eric Burns-White has been putting out entries in his Mythology of the Modern World series on Amazon and Smashwords. They’re short, sharp, sometimes satirical, sometimes haunting mythological stories composed as answers to reader questions posed to him. The Sky of L.A. is Yellow/Gray is my favorite of these so far, but all of them are highly entertaining.

Another friend, Angi Shearstone, put out the second issue of her BloodDreams comic not too long ago. It’s a sharp tale of a conflict between vampires and hunters that ensnares a troubled punk rock singer and his friends, with gorgeous fully-painted artwork. Absolutely no sparkling going on, I promise. (I reviewed issue 1 a long while ago.)

Bryan Thomas Schmidt, meanwhile, has two anthologies out, both of which began life as Kickstarter projects. Beyond the Sun, which features science ficton tales of colonization of new worlds, has a number of outstanding stories (by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Cat Rambo, and Maurice Broaddus, among others). Raygun Chronicles, an anthology of golden-age-style space opera stories, just recently came out, and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of books I’m really looking forward to reading, Emmy Jackson’s second novel, Empty Cradle: Shiloh in the Circle (set in the world of his previous novel, Empty Cradle: the Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson, which I reviewed a long time ago). The first one was damn good, and I’m expecting this one will be as well. Plus there’s Greg Chapman’s new horror novella, The Last Night in October… holy crap I have a lot of reading to catch up on!

(Note: there are a lot of Amazon links above. I’m not participating in any affiliate thing here, I promise–it’s just convenient for me to link there, to show you I didn’t just come up with these things in a caffeine-and-pork-rind-fueled fever dream. Because I know that’s what you’re thinking.)

That’s all for now. I’m signing off and heading for the tub. Don’t forget to tip your server!

***

Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: Elena Ray/Bigstock.com.

The ants come marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah…

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Yes, yes, I know. I skipped my federally mandated Update last week. I was away in strange, Internet-challenged lands (known here as “The Thumb”). Then I came back, and went away again. And again.

It hasn’t all been sunshine and toad-licking, though. I’ve been hacking away at a short story to be submitted to an anthology, which has taken much longer than I expected to settle into acceptable form. But it’s finally (almost) there, and it will be winging its way onward soon. I also polished up an older short work, Fabulous Beasts, and submitted it to a magazine. So, appendages crossed and all that.

I’ve also been working on the book trailer for Brutal Light. I’ve got the images picked out and arranged, and am trying to make a final choice on the music. Have to say, I’m having a lot of fun with Windows Live MovieMaker…

And if that wasn’t enough, I’m working on a website specifically centered around Brutal Light. This main GaryWOlson.com site will have all the info, of course, but as my career progresses, my new stuff will always displace the old, and I’d like to have a site hanging about where Brutal Light will always be front and center.

Then there’s the outline for the sequel I’m really really trying to get back to…

Scheming into 2011 (Part Deux)

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Back in January 2011, I posted this blog entry on my plans for the first half of 2011. They were, in summary:

– Submit Brutal Light to another publisher
– Submit True Places to another publisher
– Submit Onyx Fire to a publisher
– Outline my next novel (either Minions or the sequel to Brutal Light) and get started on writing it
– Write a new short story
– Rework an old short story into saleable form
– Submit my short story Fabulous Beasts to a publisher
– Worldbuild for an as-yet-unnamed dark fantasy/sf environment

Now that six months has passed, I thought I’d revisit this and see how I did. First and foremost, of course, I did submit Brutal Light to another publisher, and they accepted it for publication. This of course made my brain spin, and threw me onto a new track altogether for writing plans. (Well, that and some personal circumstances that have nothing to do with this.)

While I did manage to submit Onyx Fire to a publisher, I never got around to sending True Places anywhere. In fact, I’ve decided to shelve True Places entirely for the time being. There’s just too much I’m dissatisfied with in it, beginning with how it’s about a third longer than it needs to be. One of these days I’ll take it off the rack and retool it, but not now.

I have started outlining the sequel to Brutal Light (tentatively titled Starless Midnight), much as I said I would. I started the ‘new short story’ indicated above, but have not yet gotten far with it, and I’ve neither retooled the old short story, nor have I submitted Fabulous Beasts anywhere.

Why not? Well, aside from my personal circumstances and being thrown for a happy loop by having Brutal Light accepted for publication, I’ve been at work learning the business end of writing. I’ve expanded and polished the material on this website. I’ve taken a seminar on self-promotion for writers (the publisher does some, but other bits fall to me) and outlined some rough plans for what to do as publication day (12/1/11) approaches. I’ve expanded my contacts on the various social media platforms (and yes, I’m gonna be on Google Ploosh, very soon now). I’ve cut or modified some things I had going on that threatened to compete with what precious time I have available to write. In short, I’ve been at work re-orienting my head from being a writer hoping to get his book published the first time to a writer aiming to get published again and again.

That said, I’m ready to list some tentative goals for the second half of 2011:

– Editing Brutal Light into its final form for publication–once I have an editor assigned to my book, this will be my top priority until it’s done
– Finish outlining Starless Midnight, then write and write and write and write…
– Finish two new short stories – one the story I started back in January, the other a new one for a recently announced anthology
– Submit Onyx Fire to another publisher (should the one that has it now reject it)
– Continue networking and making publicity plans for Brutal Light, and then following through on those plans (something that will take more of my time as December approaches)

I’m looking forward to an amazing (and hectic) second half of the year!

30 Days of Writing #13: Favorite Culture to Write?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

13) What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

I think what is meant by this poorly worded question is ‘what is your favorite culture to have your characters interact with, or relate to, or somesuch.’ To which I answer… um. I don’t think I have one, per se, and I’m not going to make one up to answer the question. I’ve enjoyed spoofing aspects of ‘superhero culture’ and ‘fan culture’ in Superguy and SfStory. I’ve enjoyed having characters discover hidden cultures based on mythic beings in stories like Fabulous Beasts. But… favorite culture? I just don’t have an answer for that one right now.

Scheming into 2011

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Looks like we’ve made it mostly intact into 2011. Hope everything went well for you and yours over the last couple weeks — it certainly did for me and mine. I thought I’d take a break this week from the ’30 Days of Writing’ series to talk about my writing plans for the first half of 2011.

I’m aiming to produce a couple new short stories — one all new, and currently under way, and one a full-scale breakdown-and-rewrite of an old one I think can be made saleable. Additionally, I’m determined to produce a detailed outline for Minions, my next novel. (Well, unless Brutal Light finds a publisher, in which case I’ll switch gears and start on the sequel to that one.)

I’m also working on worldbuilding for what I hope will be a long series of fantasy/horror short stories and novelettes and novellas, set in a lush and bizarre world populated by… but that would be telling. I’ve been sloppy in the past when it comes to worldbuilding, I’ll admit — I’ve always preferred to write, see what falls out of my head, and adjust my story to fit it in. But for this particular series to work, I’ve got to nail some things down, or at least come up with a sketch of what these things, and the nail, might look like. I’m quite looking forward to playing in this sandbox.

As far as established works go, I’ll be submitting True Places to another publisher, and see if I can find a home for the short story Fabulous Beasts as well. Plus I need to find somewhere to submit Onyx Fire, and maybe Brutal Light if it gets rejected by the publisher that has it now. You might think this doesn’t belong in a ‘goals’ post, but I’ve been lazy about keeping my momentum with submissions in the past, and that’s got to change.

Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you updated as to how these plans are going. Hope 2011 rocks, for all of us and ours.