On August 30, 2026, moocat.net will relaunch to mark 25 years of independent digital publishing. Submissions are now open for the inaugural issue centered on the theme: Starving the Beast: Avoid Evil/Stay Online. #Writing #WritingCommunity #LitMag #SubmissionCall

A writing challenge with a 100€ first prize and a featured story in my publication.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41813874

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41813870

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41813793

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41813791

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41813739

Hello to everyone visiting this community!

I just wanted to apologize to everyone, as I didn't want to spam here.

After communicating with several members of the community, I've decided to stop posting for some time, until I make an article that suits this community better.

My last post remains the "No title writing challenge!" , which is a writing prompt for a contest organized by me. And sposored by me. The deadline for submissions is 17.6.2026. and the first prize is 100€ and a featured story in my publication. So check it out if you want to share a personal essay.

I've come to this community in order to get feedback and share my work, as well as to promote my publication and reach more readers and writers. I don't sell anything. I just want to find real people who like to read and write and to build something together.

I wish the best to all! :)

Fleeting feelings of a canvas so full of color and so full of life being drained away. Its source, the artist who once called that canvas their home. Dried paint brushes dot the easel not used for some time, not because of a lack of an artist who has a desire to create, but rather, a lack of continued connection to the once bright light of creativity. Those colors once carefully planned are now being replaced with the nothingness that the artist needs to exchange in order to continue coloring their own life. A temporary measure, one with a time limit, where once exhausted - leads to a life with a lack of the thing that once brought joy. This crutch on its last legs, waiting for the revival and return of the confidence of an artist inspired with new creativity. To add color back and exchange their dull, blunted, sense of self into a vibrant new creation. To once again build back up a new canvas - saving it to be a crutch for their future downfall. Cyclical in nature, the ebb and flow of creativity and complacency constantly at odds - fighting for absolute control, neither side giving up in its pursuit of dominance. Such is the life of one who inevitably reaches the end of their ability to push the limits of what they once thought was an endless pit of new ideas and combinations. Such is the life of our artist working in that dark pit, breaking new ground in search of new caverns to tap into and aid with a wealth of new colors. New colors they never thought possible to see, new colors that fill up their new sense of self, and finally - new colors that brings back the joy they once felt.

Your support—comments, tips, shares—helps me keep telling the truth and staying alive while doing it. Thank you for being here. Ko-fi

What We’ve Lost

My eyes flutter open, everything blurred and swimming in and out of focus, like I’m surfacing from a dream I can’t quite leave behind.

The first thing I notice is the brightness—harsh fluorescent lights burning overhead, sharp and unforgiving, making my head throb.

I blink slowly, my senses creeping back, though everything feels heavy, distant.

The room is cold, sterile—white walls, too white, as if they’re trying to wipe away what’s left of me.

The sharp smell of antiseptic clings to the air, mixed with the faint metallic scent of blood.

But beneath it all is the stench of my own sweat—thick, sour, and rancid, the kind of smell that only comes from detoxing off drugs.

It clings to me like a second skin, thick and unbearable.

It’s the smell of every toxin I’ve pumped into my body, pouring out all at once, and it makes my stomach churn with nausea.

The steady beeping of the heart monitor hums along with the slow drip of fluid through the IV, the rhythm almost hypnotic, dragging me deeper into the haze.

My body feels frail—cheeks sunken, skin pale and clammy.

I try to move, just a twitch, but my limbs are useless, heavy and numb.

Even breathing feels like work, my chest rattling beneath the oxygen mask strapped to my face.

I glance down at the IV taped to my arm, the needle somehow threaded into a vein that shouldn’t even exist anymore.

I can’t believe they found one.

My arms are wrecked—track marks, bruises, and scars where veins used to be.

But here I am again, hooked up to machines and tubes, kept alive when I shouldn’t be.

I shift my gaze to the IV bag hanging above me, the clear liquid dripping slowly down the tube into my arm.

It’s so cold.

It’s probably saline and electrolytes, I think.

Maybe some glucose, if I looked bad enough.

Definitely naloxone—can’t let the junkie die.

I almost let out a chuckle.

God, when did my humor become so dark?

I squeeze my eyes shut against the glare of the lights, and the first words slip out of me without thinking.

“I’m not going back,” I rasp, my voice barely more than a whisper, hoarse and raw.

“I’m not going back to the crazy house.”

A scoff cuts through the silence, sharp and bitter, like a blade.

“Seriously?”

The hand holding mine trembles before slipping away, the warmth disappearing instantly.

Jaw clenched, tension radiates from every movement, the effort to stay calm just barely held together.

“I’ve lost everything,” comes the crack in the voice, raw and heavy. “We’ve lost everything.”

“Baby,” I whisper weakly, the word scraping painfully from my throat, barely audible.

A hand drags down a face, frustration pouring into every movement.

Shoulders sag under the weight of it all.

“No. Do not ask me to watch you wither away any more than I already have. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.”

A shaky breath follows, knuckles curling into fists.

“This person in front of me… this isn’t the person I’ve loved since I was 17.”

Time stands still as the figure turns toward the door, each step deliberate, heavy, as if leaving requires more strength than what’s left.

A hand hovers over the handle, and for a moment, it feels like the entire room holds its breath with me.

“No! Please!” I shout, the words ripping from my throat, raw and jagged.

Pain shoots through my chest, and I wince, curling into myself as the effort drains what little strength I had left.

“I’ll stop,” I gasp, desperate and frantic. “I mean it this time. Just don’t—”

“Stop.” The voice comes out low and broken. “You are not the same.”

Those words hit harder than any needle or overdose ever could.

I want to reach out, to leap off the bed, to beg and plead, to hold on—but I can’t.

I’m stuck, trapped in this useless, broken body that won’t respond.

All I can do is lie here, helpless, as the door softly clicks shut with a finality that echoes through the room.

Gone.

And I am utterly alone.

Fuck.

Why can’t I just die?

The thought settles deep into my bones, cold and absolute.

I just want to be with him.

The ache in my chest deepens as my mind drifts to the son I lost—the one I never got to hold, never got to name.

I just want to be with him.

I lie there, numb and exhausted, the weight of the oxygen mask pressing lightly against my face.

How bad is it this time?

The question lingers in the back of my mind, gnawing at me like a splinter I can’t pull out.

I know it’s bad—worse than before, maybe worse than it’s ever been—but the edges of my memory are hazy, blurred by whatever they pumped into me.

I try to remember, try to trace the path that led me here, but everything is tangled—just flashes of chaos and fear.

Someone screaming.

Maybe me.

Someone crying.

A needle, a blur of faces, then nothing.

Just the dark.

I close my eyes, but it doesn’t stop the questions.

What did they see when they found me?

Did they have to break the door down?

Was there vomit, blood?

Who called 911?

I hate that I don’t know.

I hate that this isn’t the first time I’ve woken up in a place like this, wondering what damage I’ve left behind.

The panic creeps back in, sharp and cold, slithering beneath my skin.

I try to shake it off, but it clings to me, dragging me under.

How much worse can it get?

How many more times do I get to wake up like this?

I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the tears back, but they burn anyway.

Please, not again.

Not this bad.

Not this time.

But I already know the truth—this time is different.

I can feel it in the way my body aches, the way every breath feels borrowed.

Subject Index:

overdose, addiction, recovery, grief, trauma, detox, withdrawal, hospital, relapse, survival, mental illness, depression, loss, heartbreak, drug use, isolation, self-destruction, healing, pain, memory, forgiveness, emotional collapse, codependency, drug withdrawal, raw prose, autobiographical, hospital stay, near death, hopelessness, love, writing, creative nonfiction, prose, lyric narrative, mental health, recovery writing

I just posted a new historical deep-dive piece called Prohibition and the Profit Motive.

It’s part essay, part political analysis—written with narrative flair but grounded in receipts.

Would love feedback from other writers, especially if you’re working in nonfiction, alt-history, or political commentary.

Just released my first Special Edition eBook: Prohibition and the Profit Motive Special Edition eBook

Prohibition and the Profit Motive – How the U.S. Sold Control as Virtue

This $5 eBook version helps me keep going.

It funds the next piece.

It keeps the lights on—literally.

Can’t swing $5?

Even a $1 tip makes a bigger difference than you think.

Can’t support at all? Please share this with someone who needs to know.

Thank you for being here.

Every view, every read, every repost—

you’re helping me fight back with facts.

Prohibition and the Profit Motive Standard PDF

_Subject Index: 

Origins of the Temperance Movement, Feminist advocacy and state betrayal, Racialized and class-based enforcement of Prohibition, Government-sanctioned poisoning, Surveillance and control policies, Economic exploitation of addiction, The War on Drugs as a legacy system, Pharmaceutical profiteering and opioid crisis, The commodification of pain, Resistance, rebellion, and reclaiming history_

Ablaze

Sometimes when my pen hits the paper I start to bleed.

I scribbled this on a page of notebook paper and decided to post it—just raw and real.

I wrote this while I felt like everything around me was on fire

Ablaze

Subject Index: spoken word poetry, raw emotion writing, trauma poetry, unfiltered prose, poetic rage, healing through writing, mental health expression, survivor poetry, emotional catharsis, dark poetry, stream of consciousness, grief and growth, poetic vulnerability, feminist poetry, writing through pain, confessional writing

Please tell me if you think this would be useful for you.

I'm working on a story plotting app which focuses on value changes as the basis of the app. For each section of the story (beat, chapter, act) there are value changes (characters getting closer or further from some goal, threat, or other value). And I want to visualise these changes on a graph, so you can see how everybody's fortunes rise and fall.

There will still be the standard components, something similar to index cards to plot out the actual action of each chapter and beat. But the unique addition that I'm bringing here is you can see everybody's changes of fortune, like watching the stock market, or maybe like reading music.

It will be a desktop application (written in python and JavaScript).

So, does anybody think this would be useful to your writing? Are there other things you might want to see added to such a piece of software?

“And if you follow me out there, I will shit a live ANIMAL!”

Mike Murray slams the crooked screen door so hard it boings back open. Nothing quite like a failed door slam to further twist a man. Torn between slamming it again and stomping off, Mike opts for stomp. Fuck her, he thinks, if Master Piggles slips in the dog door and tears shit up, her problem not mine.

His wife Sheila has that infrequent, yet persistent, bee in her bonnet this morning. That bee is named jealousy, and in Sheila’s case, it’s more like a hornet.

Sheila believes men are dogs that would fuck a snake, given an extra hand to hold its mouth open. There is no misandry involved in this belief, if you can get your head around that. She doesn’t hate men in the slightest. A cheating man is simply a man with an opportunity, a natural law of the universe, unavoidable as death and gravity. In Sheila’s world, busty blondes forever throw themselves at her husband’s feet and he, only a weak male, is powerless to resist. It’s her job to fend off the barbarians at the gate, keep her man pure.

He might actually sign up for that gig if he could get it, but middle-aged white guys, even with factory original teeth and hair, aren’t in that sort of demand unless said guy is loaded. Michael R. Murray is not loaded. Always a faithful man, old hound dog faithful, the accusations cut deep. If he’s going to be accused of dipping his wick in strange pussy, he might as well get some strange pussy. It’s just not fair.

The seed that grew today’s go round was a text message.

“HEY YOU! What’s up? Want to meet up tonight?” Either a wrong number or a scam, Mike doesn’t care. But Sheila cares. Sheila cares very much.

“Who is this person? Ha! Who will you meet? Ha!” She always throws that Filipino “ha!” when she’s bent. Today she’s well past bent, she’s positively corkscrewed.

“Hell I know babe, someone probably fat fingered their text.”

“I want to know who this is! Ha!”

“Then call the damned number and ask! I dare you! I’m out!”

Mike chunks his rifle case in the F150’s rusty bed, yanks his camo hat down tight and gives the key a vicious twist. I’ve got to calm my happy ass down or I’m getting pulled over before I get there, he thinks. He’s only had four Keystones, barely a buzz for an old soldier like Mike, but maybe just enough buzz to ride out the weekend in a freezing cell, both watched over by, and bunking with, Santa Rosa County’s finest. “Maybe I’ll get hammered out there, spend the night. Bitch thinks she’s mad now...” But that’s no good and he knows it. An hour after sundown she would come marching down the trail, hunting those ever elusive bimbos, stripping Mike’s very last reserve of cool. There won’t be any bimbos, and they both know it, but the forms must be followed in these sorts of things.

It’s a cool, breezy October day in the Year of our Lord 2024, Saturday, 19 past 2 o’ the clock, poofy cumulus graze an otherwise clear blue sky and he’s headed for their camp in the boonies. Camp is Mike’s little slice of redneck heaven.

Turning the corner just past where the road peters out into forest, visitors are greeted with a flag strung between two pines, “Welcome to Swinebrook! A place to camp, kayak, canoe, throw lead and other redneck business!” Centered between the text on a brown nylon background is a stylized pink pig, giving the viewer a porcine side-eye. As with the other signs, tree trimmings and miscellaneous obstructions, it’s hung to clear a 5’8” man. Swinebrook is a bit inhospitable for talls, and that suits him just dandy. After all, it is his place. OK, their place since he married Sheila, but he’s got 8 inches on her. The talls have enough advantages in life, they can duck now and again if they want to visit.

Swinebrook sits on 5 acres of prime Northwest Florida swampland. When his inheritance landed at the credit union (grandma having gone starkers with Alzheimer’s), he figured a land purchase was a now or never kind of deal. Knowing he would eventually nickel and dime the money away if he didn’t make a play, he found the perfect getaway spot. Just off I-10, buried far back in the forests on a dead-end private road (damned near impassible if the neighbors haven’t plowed the sand lately), Swinebrook is the sort of place no one stumbles into. Who would go back there and for god’s sake why? Guests often make a crack about banjo music. Yeah, that one never gets old, such sublime wit. But he’s not too annoyed. After all, if city people find the area sketchy, good, keeps ‘em out. Hailing from across the Pond, Sheila’s friend Nancy had come for a visit, and she is just such a city person.

One morning of her brief stay at chez Murray, Nancy came scrambling back in the house, having been enjoying her coffee on the front porch.

“Forgot I was in Florida and there might be alligators roaming about! What was I thinking?! Ha ha!” “No worries!”, Mike soothed, “We’re in town, far enough from water that they’re not walking overland. Besides, they’re lazy ambush predators, not going to chase anyone.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell Nancy that a gator big enough to take on a woman her size would be a rare one indeed. Americans keep monsters of that caliber stored deep in the Louisiana bayous where they belong, and in any case, Mike doubted Nancy could run from much of anything.

The Murrays, having gushed about Swinebrook, took Nancy out on her last night. Figuring it highly improbable she had ever seen an AR-15 in the London burbs, he thought she might get a kick putting some lead downrange, a crazy American tale to share over mulled wine (or whatever the hell they do) with the blokes back home. “My goodness Nancy, tell us you are pulling our leg! How very exciting! Does he carry it to market and is it true that Stateside visitors are issued loaner pistols? How many brigands has he gunned down?”

They never get as far as popping off a few. Nancy was getting visibly nervous as the sun went down. Truth be told, she was damned near twitching in fear. “Looks like it is getting dark! (big smiles) We should probably be going back, yes? Ha ha! But I really like your place and it’s been great, great fun!” Turns out, Nancy had never been in the woods before, was probably keeping her eye out for rabid leopards and toothy baboons. Mike is soon to find Nancy’s fear quite reasonable. There are far worse things lurking in the swamp than common reptiles. He was pretty much ready to roll out, which was fortunate, as scrambling into clothes, filling the cooler, and loading the truck, all while trying to pitch a meaningful conniption, kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Even were it not God’s perfect day, Swinebrook would still be the place to get badly needed peace.
Mike has the routine down pat, after all, he’s done it 100 times.

Unzip the tent porch and peg the flaps back through the nylon loops, open the main room, grab some targets, tape and headphones, hang the paper on the range. Next, unlock the raggedy storage shed, fill a couple of glass ashtrays with today’s chosen caliber, maybe a box of shells if that’s what we’re doing. Back to the tent porch, twist the cooler spigot, and dunk the fresh ice and beer while last week’s water runs out the drain hose. Walk to the big table by the fire ring, set the beer down, have a seat, good to go, and… back to the tent, because he has forgotten to snag a koozie, inevitable as death and gravity.

If it were summer, he would grab the sun umbrella out of the shed, but it’s not that kind of day. It’s the kind of day for breeze in your hair and sun on your face and Mike is here for it. He is going to follow the usual plan, drink a beer and revel in the silence. And when that gets boring, he will crank Spotify’s country list and shatter that silence with his Colt .45 or shotgun of choice. That paper ain’t gonna put holes in itself. Today’s choice is the new-to-him Parkhurst coach gun, two barrels of old-school, 12-gauge fury. He’s pretty sure he’s got it working smooth, if only the new sight bead doesn’t fly off. Again.

He pulls the half rotten beach chair off the storage hook and unfolds it. Probably fair to say, Mike has no ass, or as first wife always said, he suffers a medical condition doctors refer to as “noassatall”. Lacking stature and padding, a couple of porch pillows lining the sprung seat is a must. The plan is to spend 20 or 30 minutes sipping beer and simply looking around, never know what might pop up.

Last month an osprey landed high up at the far end of the range, polite enough to let him watch through his scope for a few minutes. Two weeks ago he got his first up close and personal look at a pileated woodpecker. Those are some big mama jammas! Absolutely stoked, he ran straight to Dollar General and bought a feeder and pair of suet blocks. So far, no repeat performance, but Mike’s a hopeful guy.

He has just crushed his second Keystone Light and is headed to the tent for another when two local pups come tear-assing up the trail from the nearest pond, blowing right by without so much as a “Howdy do!” You know the sort of country puppy; big, excitable, friendly, dumber than a sack of hammers. These two doorknobs typically creep up on visitors, silent as ninjas. Mike has about jumped out of his skin a time or three, looking down and BAM, there they are, right at his knee, patiently waiting for a head rub. They are not waiting around today.

Nothing rustling out there, nothing giving chase, the hell? Still, Mike’s plenty damned spooked, this not being a normal event on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They wouldn’t run from a human, unless it was beating their asses, and even then, they would stop for him, hoping for succor. Black bears are around, and though they occasionally tump out the trash cans by the highway, he has never seen evidence of them close to camp. A Florida panther might be worrisome, especially a female trailing a pair of cubs, but they’re far rarer than black bears. He has only ever spied a single male, a hulking beast on a lonely creek far from here. Besides, if there was one back there it would probably have given a scream, and that distinctive woman-being-ax-murdered sound carries.

Slinging his AR over his shoulder, and promptly getting it ass backwards, he gets it right on the second try. He wears his rifle like all the cool kids, high and tight across the chest. Having studied a GunTube video presenting a pair of mercs taking some R&R from killing Russians, he thinks he’s finally got the sling setup right. At least it hangs comfortably, is quick to sight and he doesn’t get whacked in the dick every time he bends over.

Our man is not the shoot first, excitable sort. Mike thinks that particular brand of asshole deserves a Darwin Award, and they often get one. Still, he has his rifle pointed low but ready in case something murderous comes crashing out of the palmettos. Not taking his eye off the path, he finds himself both indecisive and torn with curiosity. Maybe an angry squirrel rattled them? They’re only puppies after all, might be running from a scary looking bug. On the other hand, if there’s a black bear or panther back there, he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of having to shoot it. Excepting wild pigs, Mike doesn’t have the heart to kill unless it’s a mercy thing, and those few times, though necessary, have stuck to him, every death a crystal clear memory. He may be a gun shooter, but he’ll never be a gunslinger.

He stands there a full minute, mouth slightly open, listening, head swiveling on a short arc.

“OK Mike, get your shit together and calm the fuck down.”

Hearing his own voice helps, though it didn’t come out as loudly as expected. Still nothing. He pats his left kidney for the third time, yep, pistol still there, loose in its holster, ready.

“Oh god damnit, grow a pair and just walk down there. Even if it’s a big animal, a shot or two will scare the shit out of it.”

Having got his pecker up, Mike sets off, not quite creeping, nor in any rush. 150-feet down he turns left into Sheila’s personal site, Brookside. Brookside has its own cute flag: “Sit a spell, relax and unwind, watch the sun go down.” Same statant pig, yellow on a blue background this time, a perfect Pantone match for Ukraine’s national colors. Mike is a big fan of both Ukrainians and vexillology, though he can only pronounce the former. Gaily decorated, yet tasteful, Brookside rests at peace. Minnows pop just under the swampy water, all the action there is to see. Maybe there was a low splash down trail? Turtle falling off a log no doubt. Happens all the time, too skittish to ever let him get a peek. Country animals are not city animals, country cousins run at a pin drop.

Pointing south, the trail widens into a boulevard flanked by the shallow ponds that make up a good chunk of Swinebrook. Rue Royal the sign says, très Vieux Carré. Mike being a drunk, and Sheila, born and raised a big-city Manilla girl, are right at home in the French Quarter. The next campsite down the rue is the Garden District and you can just bet it has its own cutesy flag. (Green pig on that one.) Mike lowers his rifle, rests his arms a minute, listens. Nada.

“In for a penny I guess. Let’s just walk to the end, see what we see.”

Feeling a little bolder, having sensed nothing in the wide open space, he sets off again with a little more spring in his step. Down at the Garden District camp, he hears another, closer splash. And was that a grunt?

God. Damn. Despite loving wild animals, and having a pet pig back home, Mike will shoot wild boars on sight. Thinking on the possibility of a charging pig, and it won’t be just one, he tightens up. A sounder of only 10 animals would level the main camp in an hour flat, he’s seen them in action. If he finds pigs rooting in the muck, Mike is prepared to kill every last motherfucking one of them. Only question is how many he can nail before they run oft.

Beyond the Garden District, the trail cramps up. Not much down here, he hasn’t cleared his way this far yet. Ducking a fat banana spider’s golden web and twisting past a pair of trees, Mike gets a good look at the far end of the pond and his brain promptly strips gears.

Sixty feet away, just across the water, a centaur is chowing down on a decomposing corpse. Not your Harry Potter centaur, chest muscles rippling, hair flowing, head held high and noble, no, not that sort. One of those would be a mercy compared to this abomination before the Almighty. Filthy and stinking even from this distance, it bends down to tear another chunk of pig flesh. Rather than bringing the rotten meat to its face, it bends at the waist and feeds, arms darting in and out of the corpse like a crab picking over a dead fish. The torso is sweaty slick, the flanks splashed with fetid swamp muck. Its hair, where patches haven’t fallen out (torn out?), is long and greasy, a sickly yellowish gray. Its right eye is a white haze, blind for certain, but Mike’s not seeing details right now. Mike has gone a little blind himself.

He stands mostly frozen, yet vibrating so hard you can almost feel the static rolling off his body. His rifle hangs loose in its sling, dropped to his chest, forgotten. Somewhere along the line, he’s fumbled the laser sight to ON. The dot jitters on the ground to his left like a nerve gassed spider. His arms hang slack at his sides, the left hand giving the occasional twitch, mouth loose, eyes jitter bugging in tight arcs. He can’t feel his heart, but it’s hammering and it’s about to choke him out. Though drawing air just fine, his neck walls feel like overinflated inner tubes, carotid pumping in, jugular pumping out, both struggling with the raging blood flow. To an outside observer, his neck pulses like it’s ready to give birth. He did promise his wife a live animal, but that was to come out the other end.

When a person is scared shitless, time doesn’t slow down, just seems that way. Instead, the brain speeds up, starts scrambling for options. My brothers and sisters in Christ, Mike is beyond scared shitless, Mike is bugfuck and his brain is running wide out on the open highway, hell bent for leather. Growing up in the sticks, he’s been in a few near-death scrapes, entertainment being different in the boondocks, but he’s avoided the aforementioned Darwin Award. So far. At those times when death was certain, a calm, and mostly unused, part of his brain kicked in and calmly informed him:

“If you don’t do something in the next, oh, 3 or 5 seconds, you are going to die. Right now. Your call my man.”

Before today, he had always found a way out, found that “something”, that ass-saving option. At the moment, no options are bubbling up. His mind has, at least momentarily, jumped ship. “OK Mikey take care love you bye BYE!” His mouth opens and closes twice, lips pressing together and out, maybe trying for a plosive? “Please”? Who he might be begging, and for what, remains an open question.

Hallucination is the idea that begins to get him unstuck.

OK OK OK. This can’t be real. So what did I get in my body to cause this?

A traitorous part of his brain pipes up, “C’mon! You ate your body weight in hallucinogens back in the 90s and never saw a thing that wasn’t there. Perhaps you’ve been on a 4-day meth binge and forgot? Nah. Also, see that pig head sitting on its stump staring back at you? See the flies blacking out it’s eyes and the maggots roiling out its snout? You’re not that imaginative my friend. While we taking a reality check, hear any birds? Even the insects have gone quiet. Suppose they’re all hallucinating right along with us?”

OK, I’m still calling this a psychotic break. I have to get out of here, get help.

“No warnings, no precursors, no sleepless night? Not even a twitch? You’re toodling along in the woods and BAM, centaur? Hell, if our brain cooked up a centaur, it wouldn’t be that horror. It’s there, I promise you.” Whatever I’m seeing or not seeing, I’m out.

Mike tries to turn, but his head is in a vice, no way on god’s green Earth can he take his eyes off the horror. The fiend, on the other hand, intent on his rotten pig, hasn’t glanced at him. Apparently decomposing swine makes for a toothsome meal.

Maybe it hasn’t noticed me.

“Yeah, right. You know it knows you’re here. He’s just busy noming up his succulent din din. That animal reeks and it’s grown maggots, been dead a week, easy. It probably slaughtered the pig and left it to ripen up in the sun, came back today for harvest. And you’re next.”

Had Mike summoned the courage to look further afield, he might have seen the wisdom in that penultimate phrase, “came back”.

30-feet behind and to the left of the centaur floats a hole in reality. Nothing of the Dungeons and Dragons sort, surrounded by shrieking dragon heads, promising eternal punishments drowning in the Abyss, only a perfect circle of vegetation, too perfect to be natural. 10 feet wide, it floats just off the forest floor. If he had eyes to see, he might note the quality of light past the circle, see a redder glow, as if the day is further along in that world. Through the looking glass, the vegetation is both darker and greener, listless despite the cool breeze on this side.

He’s screaming at his body to obey, turn, run, anything, just move god damn it. OK, compromise, just back up, slowly. He makes it 10 feet until he backs into a tree and his knees melt out from under him. Falling on his ass, the rifle’s assist button pokes him under the solar plexus, hard. Just what the doctor ordered, Mike scrambles to his feet and jerks his weapon level. The strap flies taught, a perfect fit, the red-dot sight points dead center on the beast’s torso. He jerks the trigger, no bang, no click, safety is up.
The centaur jolts straight, freezes and stares him in the eye. Black blood and greasy fat flow down its chin, dribbling on its chest. Mike’s soul comes unmoored, but his legs can still pump. He is on autopilot and he is off to the races.

Sun is down, moon is up, and Sheila is positively fucking torqued off. She slams her Toyota to a stop behind Mike’s truck and bounces out, lights on and running, intent on scalping the first floozy she lays hands on. Somebody, maybe two somebodies, is going to be very damned sorry in the next 60 seconds. She has no idea that a few hours ago, Mike was as sorry as he had ever been in his life.

She stamps halfway to the turn which will open onto the main camp before unease sets in. If Mike’s here, and here’s his truck, he should have lights going. Even if he’s out of batteries, there should be a blazing fire visible through the trees.

She calls out in a voice meant to project authority, meant to declare, “I am here on business and my business is you.” Starting off with steely command, her voice trails down meekly. “Michael! Where are you? HA! Why don’t you answer your phone Michael?! … Who is here?! Michael?”

Silence.

“Mike?”

Turning the corner, sure enough, the camp is cold and dead. Sheila can’t put her finger on it, can’t quite articulate what is off going by the slim moonlight. She fumbles her iPhone flashlight and shines it from side to side. Nothing is closed or put away properly, like he simply up and left. And even if he wandered off, and there aren’t many places to wander, most of the land being impassable muck, he sure as hell wouldn’t have left his prize 12-gauge hanging on the gun rack.

Now she is positively spinning in circles, sweeping her meagre light around and around. She has completely forgotten the keychain light her husband gave her. It’s tiny, but it outshines a lousy phone LED all day (night) long. She inches over to the table looking for clues. Maybe she’ll luck out and he brought her pink Bersa Thunder to play with. It’s the only handgun she feels comfortable with, and while it might take her a minute to get it in operation, it would sure as hell beat a sharp stick, which she doesn’t have either. Shuffling along the edge of the table, she kicks something soft, partially hidden. She doesn’t look, assuming it’s some of the crap he stores under there spilling out as it always does. Her lack of attention may be a temporary mercy because she’s pushed an old combat boot back under the table, a combat boot with the owner’s foot inside.

Openly weeping and nearing dead panic, Sheila flails out the Stations of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows, and starts muttering a Hail Mary. She is feeling the need for all the Grace she can summon this evening.
“Oh, Jesus help me…” She pronounces it “jee-sous”. Mike always found that kind of cute.

And was that a grunt?!

Ever wanted to start a personal blog, but didn't know which of the 50 one-thousand-word-user-agreement writing corporations to sign-up with? Would you rather start a blog in the fediverse instead? Well, you're in luck or something: I started my own Write Freely instance, focused on creative writing and free expression, shunning soul-sucking monetization schemes and AI-garbage. It's a VERY simple UI that uses Markdown for post formatting and CSS for blog customization. No commenting, no like-system, just writing in a community of people who f&$king love writing.

More info in the main link, or here (same thing): https://howdoyouspell.cool/cool/community-guidelines

We aim to be a no-judgement place to just post whatever you want. Feel free to join at your leisure. Since it's privacy focused, you don't even need to put in an email to sign up. Registration is open for the next 24hrs or so. It's totally free - I'm just looking to build a community of like-minded writers. The community guidelines are outlined in pretty exact detail, so I encourage you to read through them before joining. You can have up to 2 blogs per user.

I'm a part of a writers group that meets twice a month. In that group there's an older man named Lee who write police procedurals, either novels or short stories. He spent much of his life as a cop in the area, so he knows the exact voice of those stories, and even draws on personal experience to make interesting or often fun little cop adventures. I got into a conversation with him after our group meeting recently, and we talked about the general unhealthiness of fiction publishing in recent years, if not recent decades.

"We're in a game of ego," he told me. And I wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that at the time.

Lee told me, "When I was younger, there were eight magazines that published police procedural stories. Do you know how many there are now?"

I expected, given the size of the internet, that he was going to say a truly gigantic number, but the didn't. He said it was two.

"Everybody else flocked to the internet. And on the internet, they don't even have to pay you."

There was a time, long ago, when people got magazines in the mail full of short stories and novel excerpts. Sometimes I when I read interviews from my favorite authors, the older ones will talk about their early inspirations, reading sci-fi magazines in the 60s, or short story collections of all genres. The authors of those times could mention specific magazines that were their favorites, and the writers who found fame and recognition by first being discovered because of the shorts within those pages.

I was born in the 90s. I'd never heard of such a thing. I don't think I've even seen any such magazine. There must be some in print, but nobody I know reads them. They just don't exist anymore.

If I wanted to be discovered as an up and coming author, my choices are, first, to attract a publisher without any past writing experience to my name, or second, to get my name out there via online journals, or third, to publish indie and hope that my writing is so wildly successful that a publisher asks me to team up with them.

That first option is like winning the lottery. To get the attention of a major publishing house, which are the only ones that could sell more than a hundred copies, you first need a literary agent. Literary agents receive thousands of query letters from aspiring authors and only take on a handful each year. If agents say yes to 10 in 5,000 authors, that is 0.2% of queries. Even if your writing is in the top 10% of quality, you still have a 1/50 shot of being selected. And that's just getting an agent. Getting representation from a literary agent does not guarantee that a publisher willl pick up your book. It's harder to find data on how many authors get through this next layer, but it's yet another cut into your already abysmal odds.

The second option, building a resume out of online journals, is futile. There are hundreds of these journals online who also receive thousands of submissions a day, and even if you are lucky enough to find a journal that accepts your work, hardly any of these journals are noteworthy enough to impress a publisher. I personally had two short stories published in small online journals back in 2017, when I thought this was a viable route. The only reason I won the numbers game here was because they were journals nobody had heard of, and both ceased to exist within two years, essentially deleting those lines from my writing resume. Writers might also feel tempted to win contests, which implies more prestige to the winners, but the majority of these have entry fees often over twenty dollars, which makes this only viable for somebody willing to throw hundreds of dollars into a lottery. Again, this is a lottery, because even if your writing is in the top 10%, there's still hundreds of others writing at the same level of quality.

The third option, being an indie author and praying for success, is a fucking hellscape. Since COVID in 2020, everybody suddenly wanted to become an indie author and use it to make money on the side. The largest of these markets is self-publishing on Amazon, and it's largest to the point that nobody can realistically expect to see sales without using Amazon as a publishing platform. This market is bloated and toxic. There are so many people fighting over scraps that it's even more of a lottery than finding a literary agent.

I've self-published on Amazon. It was a waste of my time. First of all, the only way to get noticed above everybody else it to pour money into ads and ad services. You're essentially guaranteed to spend more on ads than you're going to make in profit. Second, the market is toxic. When I self-published my first novel on Amazon, there was some asshole going around leaving one-star reviews on every new release in an effort to "weed out the competition." So my first release was instantly met with a one-star rating and zero sales. It was unsellable from day one. I took it down and put up a different book. Same result. Now we get to the third problem of self-publishing. Fake reviews. You can pay people to review your book for you. You can drop a hundred bucks, and a group of people will leave reviews without even buying your book. It's incredibly easy, and I'm sure every success story started by buying fake reviews. It's so easy to buy reviews, I did it by accident once. I paid an advertising service a couple hundred bucks, and they claimed to "market my book toward people who have a tendency of leaving reviews." A week later, I had six reviews with four- or five- star ratings, all of whom wrote reviews that made it obvious they hadn't actually read the book. One of them got the gender of the main character wrong. And then a few days later, somebody else left a one-star review, claiming that a few of the character motivations were unrealistic. Now, I've seen indie books on Amazon that were nigh unreadable and scraped by with two-star reviews. A one-star review because of clunky characters, though? Really?

So self-publishing is, like the writing contests, only a viable route if you have a ton of cash on hand to spend, like an investment. Even then, you're gambling. So how did we get here?

There are fewer major publishers than ever before. They just keep merging, creating a monopoly. But let's ignore the economics of monopolies and mergers and such for a moment. Let's return to my friend Lee and do a simpler experiment.

Lee claims that, since his youth, the number of procedural police magazines has decreased from eight to two. That means it is now four times harder to get your story published, simply because there's less room in the market. Not only that, given Lee's age, I imagine his youth is referring to the 60s or 70s. The population of the United States has doubled since then, and assuming that new aspiring authors are born at an equal rate across the population, the number of aspiring authors has also doubled. So now we have to cut our odds of success in half again, because the competition has doubled.

It is now eight times harder to publish a police procedural than it was fifty years ago. Rather than increasing the number of magazines in this genre, to account for the rising number of submissions, the magazines have dried up, preventing perfectly good authors from breaking into the scene.

There are one eighth as many authors in that genre as there could be.

"We're in a game of ego." Even if you are literally the greatest writer on the planet, the odds of getting published are shockingly slim. That's the game of ego. You can keep improving your craft, and improving, and improving, but you will be told no a thousand times no matter how good you think your writing has become.

I'm just starting to write and a thing I've noticed is that I can't seem to be able to just 'go with the flow' when writing the first draft. Like I often imagine stories in my head and how they would go line by line, problem is when I sit down to write all of that my brain kind of stops doing that and instead tries to recall what I've come up with before, which doesn't really work (or at least makes the process much longer). I know it will probably get better the more I write, but do you have any tips on how to overcome that?

I hope this is allowed here, if not, feel free to remove my post, mods

My name is Richard Silva, I'm a young Brazilian writer(17) who just published their first book. Since I was a kid I wrote things, but for the first time, I made something I am going to share with the world. Currently, I'm finishing Brazilian integral high school, which in other words, wastes 9 hours of my day with mostly nothing. It's very stressful, and leaves me with not much appropriate time for actually writing quality content, so you might imagine how many reviews this book had to get before I felt like I was satisfied.

I would like to encourage you to read my book, and share your thoughts on it, of course, it's me first one, so constructive criticism is very welcomed. My desire is to be able to make a living out of my art, and when reading this book, you are helping me make this dream possible :)

And please, if you did enjoy it(even if it's a little bit), leave me a review on google play saying how much you like it, and why you like it. As for you, fellow Brazilians, a version in Portuguese is coming soon!

Basically the title. In what ways do you share your writing? Do you look to self publish, go through professional organizations, or possibly publish online? I've never really shared much of my more serious or longer writing and would love to hear the ways people get their stories out there.

For me its:

1. The villain's motivation isn't revealed to the reader/audience (or, if it is, at the very end; and, ofc, the author should go through the work of providing the motivation if it isn't seen)

2. Some of the villains actions seem impulsive or out-of-the-blue. Especially for a villain that's usually cold and calculated this can seem especially creepy because you aren't sure if the impulsive action was intentional or if the villain is snapping.

3. There's a softer side to the villain. Maybe he just bombed a synagogue but he still needs to pick up wrapping paper for his son's birthday party.

There are a few more that are probably honorable mentions. And I'm mostly in agreement with the video about great villain tropes. But honestly one I've never really liked is the "villain monologue," and I'm surprised that made the cut (but I definitely don't mind seeing someone else's POV). It just seems too much like a Saturday morning cartoon. If the villain is really that dangerous, why doesn't he just kill the protagonist and be done with it? Why give him a few seconds (or 5 minutes) to escape? Perhaps to add to the screen runtime/word count?

What do other people think? Are there villain tropes you like? Are there ones you can't stand?

Hey all, I'm working on an old western which has some native characters, predominantly of a fictional tribe. I'm wondering if you all think it would be understandable if people spoke (in dialogs only) as the times and used terms like "Indian" or, even worse, "Injun", or should I stick with using tribe names and the word "native"? Or something different altogether?

Thanks!

Im trying to put a Scifi universe down on (digital) paper and Ive found that the process doesnt really lend itself to linear type word processing software. Least not for me.

Is there some tool that writers use for plotting out long arcs or keeping their reference material easily accessable to avoid anachronisms or inconsistencies. Possibly something that allows internal linking to other chapters?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3308843

"What’s your process like?"

Me:

So everyone's different, and I am autistic. I have an extensive memory for details, quick and sometimes instinctive understanding of many fiction principles, and a lot of visual thinking. (I have my shortcomings too, especially over-thinking and over-explaining instead of showing.) But I think at least some of what I do can work for you.

1. Discipline is better than motivation. Motivation ends, discipline stays. Eventually, hopefully like me, you'll get to a point where you feel wrong if you didn't write every day (or 5 days a week in my case). This hugely helps keep you motivated

2. I am a one-trick pony with it; but I always started with a theme, a feeling, something important I want to share and say. For me it was a terrible childhood, my desire for healing and family, my idealism towards wanting a greater world, and how we all need to become better and happier people to achieve it. I wanted to capture that idea and feeling since I was like six. While for my novel the lesson may be larger than life, every fiction should have a point to make, even if that point is "things in this book are awesome; here, have a good time because you deserve it". Your point should be memorable even if small.

3. Once you have a theme, start coming up with characters and scenes that support that theme. Write down the things that look or feel awesome in your head, the things that you always wanted to share and show, and come up with your best scenes first. Try to build a story around them. If you have important messages to say, build your plot around them. Have the characters' stakes revolve around those scenes. Once again this is just my method; but I don't think you can go wrong writing heart first.

4. For me, I found it easiest to quickly just outline scenes and jot down what you want to happen, what you want said. Finish all the basic sentences, events, and ideas for that scene, move to the next scene. Once you have all the chapters, this will be your first "outline"— even if you end up doing a little (or more) prose in that outline, like I did. Once you have that full story (which probably won't be good yet!) you can start figuring out where it needs fixing.

   This is my first novel, and I'm technically still doing the second draft. But I learn very fast and retain a ton of helpful information; so I mostly know what my next phases and fixes are, all the way through my first and later drafts. I made a little changelog of each thing I want to focus on in future versions, all numbered in preparation, as if this was a piece of software.

5. Once I'm done with the versions that I call "outlines", I will finally start drafting in full prose, allowing me to focus on the flow and beauty and clarity of my words, since the story itself will already be figured out and awesome.

One way I think of the whole process of noveling is this, modified from game development advice:

1. Make it function
2. Optimize
3. Make it pretty (write your prose draft)
4. Optimize again

There's a lot of other advice I can give, but I wouldn't exactly know where to begin! The most important thing, I think, is to figure out what time of day your brain writes best, and create a routine around it. No novel was ever finished without persistence! <3

Also, I recommend reading https://mythcreants.com/ and getting lost in https://tvtropes.org/. They can really help! Try watching Lindsay Ellis on Nebula, or http://atopthefourthwall.com/. Some of these may not be about novel-writing, but you can learn a lot about good stories through any of these platforms, and all of that helps!

So my novel takes place in an afterlife and focuses on one major character, as they try to heal from childhood trauma, learn helpful mental health tools, and newly take in this beautiful universe.

The other major characters are also developing ethically and emotionally, and we need to see inside their minds and watch them learn.

Meanwhile the past was literally a different life, and there's not a lot of past talked about in the narration— more thought about or talked about by the characters.

So with that, I've decided that the best way to write my novel is first-person present tense with the main character; and then with the occasional times where I need to focus on other characters when the main isn't around, third-person present tense.

This is not a common choice, but I think it is the best choice for my particular novel. I think it's the best choice for my novel's sense of immediacy, for getting inside characters' heads, and for experiencing many new things from the main character's viewpoint.

Also also, I intend to make my main character Chris/Solemn completely-ambiguous when it comes to gender; so that really works with the first-person perspective.

Tell me your opinions or tangents!