Friday, January 13, 2012

New and upcoming story news....

I have published two stories through a site called Smashwords. Both of my stories are available for download, free of charge. You can download either or both in .rtf format for most reader programs(OpenOffice, Word, etc.), .txt, .PDF, and for various mobile readers as well(Kindle, Nook, etc.)

Click the image to go to the page in which this story is available for free download(link will open in new window)


 Click the image to go to the page in which this story is available for free download(link will open in new window) 

And as a bit of 'news', a third story is in the works. Outline complete, trying to skip 'drafting' it and going straight into the nitty-gritty as I've done before.
It can be expected to be finished sometime in March, perhaps April, if all goes as planned. The title is yet to be decided.

After some number crunching...

 According to the "World Health Organization"(WHO), Alcohol: Approximately 2,500,000 lives claimed annually(6,849/day).
 According to history books, Hitler and the Nazi regime: Approximately 1,000,000 Jewish lives claimed annually.
 9/11: Approximately 2,800 lives claimed in one day.

 That means that, Globally, alcohol is 2.5 times as efficient at taking lives as Hitler and the Nazis were at killing Jews, and 2.45 times as efficient as an attack as devastating as 9/11 happening every day of the year.
 4% of all deaths worldwide are caused by alcohol; so much money goes into finding a cure for cancer, trying to stop terrorist attacks, trying to find vaccines for AIDS, yet so many more people are killed by something readily and legally available to anyone twenty-one years of age.
 Why is the most efficient of those first three things not only legal, but glorified in society; to the point that some people are shunned if they do not participate?

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

An introduction...


I've been sorting an idea out in my head for a few weeks; the plot is loosely based on an idea I had before I even started writing; it was an idea for a movie.
It's not going to have much action and, unlike my previous short stories, it will have dialogue. It's the story of someone named Kadota Haave growing up in New Hampshire(locale may change to a place I'm familiar with, for the sake of describing places from experience). He meets a kid named Sarth at his eighth birthday party. The two become friends, inseparable even. Sarth, though imaginary, is always there for Kadota. When he has problems with women, Sarth offers advice or counsel. When he's got issues with his job, Sarth encourages him to try harder. It's pretty much a story of someone with a ridiculously intricate imagination and using it as a companion, of sorts.

And in case you're wondering, it DOES have proper formatting; copy/pasting doesn't keep that formatting, though.

Without further ado, here's an introduction to the main characters.


1977

Kadota Haave is a seven year old boy growing up in New Hampshire; the only child of two immigrants, his father from Finland and his mother from Sweden, Kadota is far from being an average New England kid. Extraordinarily sociable, despite being teased about his thick European accent and very pale complexion. With an extremely wild and vivid imagination, he is sometimes caught talking to himself by his friends and family. It was something he was supposed to have grown out of, or so his parents were told. His fifth birthday, perhaps halfway to his sixth, they were told, it would stop and that he'd grow out of it. It only became more frequent. Despite being an outcast at school by those who have seen him talking to himself, he's outgoing to a fault, willing to befriend any stranger than might cross his path. It worried his parents to take him to a grocery store for, if they turn their backs for more than a minute, he starts conversing with anyone and everyone in sight. Exuberantly happy as well, he invariably tries to cheer up anyone that's sad or frowning; once, even going so far as telling jokes at a funeral being held for a friend of the family.
Starting in February, his parents took him to a psychiatrist specializing in dealing with children of Kadota's “special behavior” as his parents put it. The weeks following caused a stress between them to finally come to a head; it had been there, under the surface but unspoken and not admitted consciously to either one. Dormant. But taking him to a shrink twice a week awakened that stress. There wasn't anything wrong with their child, he was just different. That's what they had said day in and day out. To friends, to family, to the school board; to each other even. This caused a regression for Kadota. The occurrences in which he was found talking to himself became more frequent. One time during Grace at the dinner table, he started mumbling to himself. He was excused by his father after his mother ran out of the room, face in her hands, crying out “Dear God, what's wrong with my son?”.
That was when they stopped telling each other that there was nothing wrong with him. That was when they stopped lying to each other. And to themselves.
He saw the psychiatrist on a biweekly basis until the week before his birthday, the seventeenth of October, his parents ceased taking him when they realized it had only made matters worse not only for Kadota, but for them as parents and as a couple. It pushed their relationship to the verge of collapse. They found a way to make it work, either for themselves or because they both knew deep down that, if they separated, Kadota would be so overwhelmed that he would never be able to support himself as an individual. It would destroy his mind and he would be taken over by his imagination.
The seventeenth came; he'd been begging for a sci-fi themed birthday party ever since his parents took him to see the first installment of a space fantasy trilogy in the cinema back in May. They agreed to it, regardless of their disapproval of the film's theme. The entire plot irritated them, but Kadota enjoyed it thoroughly; all of it. From the space ships to the laser swords, he cheered through and through, over the hisses of the other moviegoers shushing him. It was embarrassing for his parents trying to keep him from expressing his excitement about the film.
It was at his own birthday party that he'd meet who would become his best friend; a boy named Sarth. When asked where he was from, he said “somewhere else”. When asked about his last name, he shrugged and stifled an oscillating grunt. He was a strange child in comparison to others, but completely predictable to Kadota because this child, Sarth, it just so happened, was imaginary. Nothing more than another character invented by Kadota's mind; a world that's vibrant, joyous, hopeful, and far from ordinary or dull. Real—real enough—to Kadota, at the very least. Peaceful. Real life was never peaceful, but when he escaped into the deepest realms of his imagination, there was peace unlike any other. And freedom. Oh, how free it was in his mind. Freedom to do anything at anytime for any reason. Without necessity or boundary, without restriction or rule.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Finally...

At long last, I have finally finished the story I've been working on for over two months... Two months and a whopping fourteen pages, it was a debilitating, difficult writing effort. It was a very slow effort due to the need to use definitions of words to change the definitions of them(the robot being insane by, essentially, its complete sanity).
I need to go back through it and fix any errors, but it is finished as an entire story. And I couldn't be happier.