I’ve written nine pieces of flash so far this year. A few are short, semi-interesting things, but nothing I’m really planning on developing. The ones that glimmer like stars in the night are the weird fiction I’m starting to explore; dark vicious urban fantasy, brutal super powers, and the depths of post-singularity fiction. I’m crossing some boundaries with these pieces of fiction and it’s starting to make me wonder about some of my existing stories.

I admit I wasn’t always interested in writing weird fiction at first. It’s a genre I’ve discovered a lust for and have started to fall in love with during my time reading and writing as an “adult.” My interests started with fantasy, then Sci-fi, and now border somewhere between the two. I’m only a recent convert of Lovecraft and books like The King In Yellow, but I’ve been a gamer and reader in the strange realms of Shadowrun and other cyberpunk, and my love of the darker sci-fi movies like the first Alien movie and Event Horizon kept with my through my teens, always on the border land, becoming ideas wanting to cross over in the night only to return as twisted haggard victims of shadows. It’s really in the past three years that I’ve been starting to crack into those skulls and dig at the tasty-tasty dark ichors within. And I like it. Especially my short fiction I find the dark little eldritch tentacles starting to show up, and I start wanting to bring out the worse in my characters.

What comes next, I’m not certain. The novels I’m working now fit snuggle just within the borders of YA save for a scene or two in the full novel from last year. I’m not planning on taking either story down a darker path, but there are hulking dangerous things moving into position to be the next major project, and they’re as eager to lunge forward as I am to rip them from my brain box. It’s likely I’m finding a candidate for the third novel this year, and I’m so looking forward to reaching that item in the late summer. Seems appropriate to write about darkness during the bright season. Gotta have a balance to fix all that bright sun right?

I’m going to be starting up reading more items in this genre as I develop a style. While I already believe I have a unique flavor of fiction with ingredients from all the media I’ve absorbed, I know I’m still developing a style that will become my public face. It’s a strange concept to know your flavor of imagination gets manufactured into your art and prose, and seeing how I carve these fractures of another reality into whole worlds is probably my favorite part of writing. Up in the brain box ideas, people, and places are all jumping shadows, strange twisty things that go through a metamorphous at a whim of my own or their own discretion. Even formatted into digital or physical stock, these deviants change, and it’s only the items I release publicly that become static. Reading the items in the weird genres helps my ability to bring these creatures to focus, and deny their abilities to run amok without my permission. It’s why I love diving into King, Lovecraft, and Chambers and absorbing as much as I can to create a strange Frankenstein skill set of weird cryptic stories. While the bulk of those works have a terror feel to it, I wouldn’t call all of them horror though and in turn the stories I’ve developing with those lessons aren’t set firmly into the place nightmares, but they do learn from them.

It’s a year of change, as is the central theme of this month, and my fiction is the major steam ship sweeping down oily waters of creativity. Realization of the rivers ahead and the talent needed to navigate these waters will be the turning point for my career. The weird fiction is a beacon amongst those shores, and one of the various places I can and will explore in coming months and years. I hope I’m a worthy student of that set of craft though, and can show my respect for the pieces that have come before me. Genre bending will be a growing experience that can conquer my current knowledge base about Fantasy and Scifi, but again that goes back to why I like the label Weird Fiction writer, rather than Sci-fi or Fantasy writer. The Weird offers so much more, removes so many additional boundaries, and lets add far more challenging works to my personal collection.

As an aside I’d like to share my favorite place to find weird fiction these days. Part of my plans this year is to attempt to submit to this market sometime in the coming year if I can write something that can appeal to the stranger listeners of the Drabblecast. It’s their haunting and strange pieces that prompted me to start exploring Lovecraft more, and I’ve fallen for the unique worlds the podcast presents. It’s a great audio magazine and if you’re into the weird fiction flavor it’s the best source to get a hit.

I’ve been away awhile. I return to our daily schedule with a post from the loading dock at work.

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It’s been two months since I last posted a full post and almost a month since my latest Hiddennode episode. Time to step back into productive mode, but first a recap of what was planned. NaNoWriMo was slated for November, and October was to be the TDC project completion. The upcoming December the novel was scheduled to be done, and the entire season was to be spent exercising, getting mentally in shape, and posting regularly. None of that happened. Damn it, Justin, you like only a few jobs. You’re fired.

Okay, okay, you’re hired back, but let’s take some time to break down some walls and talk about what’s been going on the past few weeks.

October was a trial in project competition. The Trans Dimensional Café project was trumped by prep work for NaNoWriMo. It worked out well as the Novel’s concept; preplanning and design work let me slip into the novel with ease. During the first two weeks of NaNo, the novel sang. I’m still planning on the TDC concepts, but don’t expect them in January as originally reported. November was a struggle. A few things hit pretty much in the same week. I hit a physical wall, damaging my left leg’s upper tendon in the inner thigh, a pain just now loosening this week. My personal discomfort mirrored Patty’s as her Cortisone shot flared, and instead of causing her the expected relief, it made her condition worse. This spiraled into a depression the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since my teens. I couldn’t write, I stopped podcasting, I could hardly play games, I did a decent job masking it with friends and family but inside I was being torn up. Things were getting bad. The light came at the end of the tunnel when my wife and I changed our practices. We changed how we had our time together, focused more on each other, and revealed uncomfortable but honest things. There was some emotional pain, but it was more akin to setting a bone than causing a new wound.

Things are falling into place to have a more fulfilling month. I’m returning to podcasting shortly with a new microphone/headset on order, so expect Hidden Node to be back soon, and the return of the group podcast TDC in January. The novel continues over the next few weeks, and I don’t know if I’ll have it done in December, but I will have it completed in January. The Interactive fiction stories are on hiatus until the novel’s completion, but they’re not forgotten, and will be a major project in 2013. I’ve already scheduled a review to go up two days after this post, and I have another being written, so they’re not going away. My wife and I are closer and understand each other better. I’m back to reading (right now John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War). December is going to rock.

There are a number of lessons to take away from November. Foremost is a reminder of just how much mental health and physical health matter. It’s been a long time since that part of psych has paralyzed me, and I don’t want to let it come creeping in again. I’ll talk about that more during my first episode back, but know that I’m taking the depression I went through quite serious. The physical ailments seemed to come out of the blue. I’ve gone over my actions during the past two months and I can’t seem to point to a specific issue that would have dealt my hip such a blow. I’m guessing it’s just extended strain from constant wear and tear. While I don’t know if I can prevent future issues completely, I’m looking once more about the healthy road. I let it slide back in the summer, and I think it’s time to bring it back. No big surprise but as these posts are essentially me talking to me, it’s just a reminder to myself to say: “Weight loss helps you prevent injury, and heal better when you do get injured.” Just a reminder.

 So that’s really it for now, the rough cut of the last month and why I haven’t been around. I’m hoping to get back to regular posting and recording, but there’s no guarantee and I’d rather prove it by doing it than saying it. For those of you still sticking around reading still; thanks. I appreciate your support (though silent you be) and continued subscription. 2013 is a year that will hopefully herald change. I turn 30 this coming year, and I have huge plans I want in effect before I hit that marker. Let’s see how I do.

Progress on the novel today. I’m eager for the start of NaNoWriMo and I think you can tell.

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I talk a bit today about the Novel’s outline and where I’m going.

Our iTunes feed is live! Go rate on iTunes and let the world know what you think.

Download Hiddennode Episode 30

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.