How to be a Writer

Here is the Featured Read of the Month!  

 

At the end of each month, I will select my favorite out of the swaps I've done and post an exerpt, synopsis, extended review, or whatever is approved by the author so as to promote the story!

 

 

ZERO: A Journeyman's Tale

by: Jason Greer

 

Synopsis: When a mysterious in-game message offers Kristiana Camus, the chance to play against her hero in the augmented reality games known as Sims, she jumps at it. The deal quickly goes edgeways leaving her in debt to an enigmatic taxi driver and unable to play in the championships. Her only chance at a normal life is to take the Level One test, something she had vowed never to do.

 

Excerpt: The government knew what was coming. Everyone did. All roads leaving the barren, strip-mined Appalachian had been shut down. Every state was in lock-down. Checkpoints of metal fences and soldiers sorted through the teeming masses. Only those with a verified need to travel, and a sizeable bribe, were pushed through to the waiting caravan of covered 'deuce and a half' cargo movers.

Above the clamor, they could hear a distant buzz coming from the east, riding the night as the sun set in the west.

 

"Hurry! Get in the truck!" The soldier's voice was muffled behind his gas mask. He knew in his bones what the thousand other people pressing themselves through the metal bars did. It was too late. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

Swarming drones--black coffins with wings--roared overhead, creating panic below on their path across the continent. The soldier looked up at the boiling darkness as millions of machines blotted out the blood-orange sky. He had one last thought, an epiphany, as the crowd crushed through the barriers, pinning him against the truck whose engine had been shut down involuntarily.

Midnight had finally come to America.

 

Cheerful squares of glowing light, leaflets of Autumn hues, fluttered down from above. The crowd pushed over their fallen and headed in any direction like wild animals in a stampede.

The drones above, as well as the electronic papers now on the ground, began playing a song. A simple, cheerful song. A dreadful song.

'Imagine'. It had been the song of inspiration and hope to generations, finding renewed life in these troubled times as it continued to strike a chord with the rebel spirit.

The stampede stopped and listened, awed by the beautiful horror. Printed on the singing papers was a simple message:

 

Do not worry.

Carry nothing.

Do not resist.

 

The Union was coming.

 

 

A word from the author, John Greer: 

 

"This story has been with me for a long time. I have been trying to write it as a novel for at least 10 years. Time goes by so fast. It started as a comic book--never completed of course--several years before then.

I have poured through many ‘how to write gooder’ books and have learned a lot from every one of them. I have also learned that there is a kind of tightrope act between learning a new skill and implementing it, and then making it your own.

The masters hop up on the proverbial wire and glide across it as if they were dancing in a field. They make it look effortless, goading you to try your hand at the feat. When you do try, you immediately find out just how much harder such a thing truly is. That is when you recognize their mastery. Most jump off the wire and are content to be dazzled. Some stay on, knowing that they can find the secret knowledge, unlock the skill and by a modest stretch make it across like the masters do.

The hardest part, the real mastery, is in trying to make it your own. The goal is visible. You have the confidence you can reach it… and then you stumble over your feet because you were so excited at the possibility that you forgot to do the simple things. You forgot to just put one foot in front of the other.

I am still very much in the learning phase of things, but even then I want to rush past my abilities. My wonderful wife, an avid reader, can always spot these areas and does a fair job of convincing me to go back and put one foot in front of the other.

 

------On a separate note:

I enjoyed the nanowrimo as a chance to not only get feedback and other viewpoints on this story, but also as a personal drive to push through several chapters. I didn’t follow the nanowrimo template of starting and completing a novel in a month. I have been working on this project for a long time and knew that I needed some pointers. I did complete four chapters through the month, which is more than I had ever completed in that amount of time.

The hardest part for me was beginning the story. I must have rewritten the first few chapters over a dozen (hundred) times. The world of the story has several key pieces that I felt needed to be explained up front. Finding not just the right situation to show (rather than tell) but also the right words has been a constant struggle.

The feedback of the site was really crucial in making me go back and find the important elements and focus in on them. When multiple people say they don’t understand something, it makes you look objectively at the problems. Obviously this is still a work in progress, but it feels closer to the target. "

 

Click the photo to the left to read more!