Acknowledgements

Some of you may know that I recently released a book.

For those of you who don’t, just so you know: I recently released a book.

My book has most of the normal book things in it. It has a title page, and a copyright page and a Dedication to My Totally Wonderful Wife page. Also there’s a story in there as well.

But one thing I did not include in my book was an Acknowledgements page.

Why? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found those Acknowledgement sections to be dry and boring litanies of people I don’t know doing things I don’t care about. When I see “Acknowledgements” I read “Skip This Section.” (The exception to this rule is Chuck Wendig’s Acknowledgements page for Irregular Creatures which was an absolute screaming hoot.)

But now that I’ve gone through the process of getting something ready to toss out into the cold and crowded world of ebooks I know why all those other authors wanted to include those lists of people who I didn’t know. The dirty secret is this: writing is a social process.

We think we can do it alone, but we can’t. We need support and advice and all kinds of prodding and poking to make our stories the best they can be.

So without further ado, I’m going to give you my Acknowledgements. These are people who helped to make this book what it is.

Ashley Berg

Is thanking your spouse a cliche? Well, yes, but for very good reason. In my dedication I said she would have loved me just as much if I had never written a word. And that’s the truth. Sometimes you need someone at your back screaming at you to go farther and do better. But sometimes you need someone by your side to tell you that it’s all gonna be okay. Every day I tell her how my writing went and no matter whether it was great or terrible she’s always there to encourage me. Every writer should be as lucky.

Ellie Anne Soderstrom

I’ve mentioned Ellie’s contribution here before, but it bears repeating. Ellie did a fantastic job of cleaning up the snaggling loose ends of my prose and making it all flow like it should. She also served as the projects head cheerleader. Knowing how much she liked the story really helped boost my self confidence about my writing and motivated me to make this release as good as possible.

Piper Bayard

If Ellie was the head cheerleader, Piper was the head coach. She was the one screaming at me in the locker room to get out there and clean up my act. Well, that may be a bit harsh. But she did give me a great critique that helped me clean up the ending of my story. She pitched in and helped to take it to the next level. She’s an awesome lady and a great writer.

Hoover

Because it’s really his story when you get right down to it. For those of you who don’t know, Hoover is my dog. I never had a dog before I had Hoover. My family has had dogs and my wife had a dog when I married her, but Hoover is the first dog that I really felt I could call my own. His pure joy and enthusiasm inspired much of the character of the dog in the book, and it was him getting tangled up out in the hot Florida sun for hours when we were gone that first inspired me to write this story. He’s fine now by the way, chasing a squeaky toy as I’m writing this a generally being his awesome doggy self.

I could probably go on. In one way or another many many people in my life have helped to shape me into the writer I am today. But these are the major players for this particular work. These are the ones who made this book what it is today. If you read it and like it, they’re probably the reason why. If you hate it…well there’s obviously something wrong with you. I mean it’s a story about a dog who fights zombies. How can you not like that?

So again, thanks to all who helped to make this story what it is. And thanks to you dear reader. Without you this would all be in vain.

Twelve-Point

[I've been lax on keeping up with Chuck Wendig's writing challenges the last couple weeks, but this one really grabbed my mind and didn't let go. The challenge was this: write a complete story with beginning, middle, and end in three sentences. What follows is my effort.]

A rustle of bushes, a crackle of leaves, and the buck appeared, full of grace and power, antlers reaching like prayers toward heaven.

Don’s breath caught in his throat, and his dead father’s voice echoed in his mind, screaming at him to take the shot, the trigger under his finger as cold and immovable as love long lost.

And after a while, the buck passed on.

[It looks simple, but when you've got such a tiny tiny story, you have to spend a lot of time making sure every word is exactly right. I'd encourage all of you to try your hand at this. Give it your best shot, and then go read what everyone else is doing.]

Zombies, Chainsaws, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Editor

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed I’ve been talking a lot about zombies lately. If you’re not a regular reader of this blog, um…what’s your problem? Get with the program, man.

You may have asked yourself, “Why is it that Albert has chosen this time to bombard us with pointless facts about fictional monsters?”

To which I say, “Pointless? POINTLESS!? You won’t think its very pointless when they’re ripping your guts out now will you?! Of all the ungrateful…”

No, wait. Sorry, got a little carried away there.

What I actually meant to say was that I am working on putting the finishing touches on an upcoming novella called, “A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw,” a story about a dog who faces the zombie apocalypse. I’m hoping to attract readers to the site who might have an interest in that kind of thing. (If you think the title sounds a little familiar, you’re not going crazy; the story was originally conceived as a shorter work which is available here for anyone who’s interested.)

I’ve been working on this thing for a while, first writing, then editing and polishing. And finally that moment came when…I had to let it out. I had to let someone else read it.

And not just anyone else, but someone who was going to look at my story and try to find something wrong with it. Someone who would rip it to shreds with a red pen. Someone who would attack its weak points and slash at anything that didn’t quite work. Someone who was going to take a chainsaw and carve up my precious baby in a spray of blood and shredded flesh.

In other words, an editor.

It wasn’t easy letting go. But I knew it had to be done. So I gritted my teeth, repeated Chuck Wendig’s “Do Better, Suck Less” mantra to myself twenty times, and hit that send button.

And then I realized I had forgotten to, you know, actually attach the document to the email, so I had to go through the whole process again.

When I finally got my story back…I was afraid open it. What awful things must this person have said about my work? But finally I did manage to take just a little peek. And then, maybe another page, and another and another, and…

Before I knew it I had blown through every page of that manuscript, checking changes and reading notes.

And let me tell you something. It was fun.

See, I had been spending all this time thinking that reading those edits would be a horrible experience. I thought for sure that those changes would be a blow to my ego. Because really, none of us like to be criticized. None of us like to hear, “This passage right here just doesn’t work.”

But I’m here to tell you it doesn’t all have to be negative. Not if you approach it the right way; not if you have the right editor.

In fact there’s something almost magical about looking at a change and thinking Yes! That does work better that way! Ha!

You need that extra pair of eyes. Someone who knows what to look for.

It’s not because you’re a horrible writer.

It’s because you’re way too close. Even after you’ve let it sit for months. Even after you’ve gone over and over it yourself until you’ve started to become nauseated by your own words.

It can be better.

So let go of that fear. Stop worrying about your ego. It isn’t important anyway.

What’s important is the story. In the end, it’s the only thing that matters.

Doing Battle with the Green-Eyed Monster of Wordcount Envy

Oh, Twitter. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Let’s see…carry the one…adjust for inflation…taking the Kentucky windage into account…um…seventeen. No wait! Eighteen.

Twitter is a great thing for writers. And I’m not just talking about the whole, “build your platform and get your name out there” kind of thing (though that’s on the list). Twitter is host to a whole community of writers. And I’m not just talking about the big names here. I talking regular people like me and you, people who are still struggling to be published. Maybe they’re even still working on their first book.

When you’re feeling down, they’re there to encourage you. When you feel like no one in the world understands what you’re going through as a writer, chances are someone in your Twitter stream does.

But sometimes Twitter is a double-edged sword. At least it can be for me.

Lately I’ve been struggling a bit with my novel. Actually struggling is probably too strong a word. I know where I want to go with the story, but because of the fact that I’m doing research as I go, added on to the fact that I’m writing a slightly different voice than normal, things just haven’t been moving as fast as I’d like them to.

And then I log on to Twitter and I see Chuck Wendig and Adam Christopher and Kristen Lamb talking about the thousands of words they’re writing each day, and I start to get a little discouraged about my measly 700 words.

Maybe you’ve been there too. But I’m here to tell you not to worry about it.

Why? Because no two writers and no two stories are the same. It may be you just don’t have time to churn out daily word counts in the thousands. Or maybe you’re like me and the story you’re writing requires you to be more painstaking than usual.

The details don’t matter. What matters is you. If you let wordcount envy get you down, the next thing you know you’ll be saying to yourself, “Well, if I can’t write as much as those guys maybe I don’t have any business writing at all.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG.

Wow. That word looks weird when you repeat like that. Kind of like when you say a word over and over again and it starts to sound like…no wait. I was going somewhere. Yeah okay. You can only write as much as you can write.

Profound huh? But it’s true.

Terry Pratchett only wrote four or five hundred words at a time when he first started. Chuck Palahnuik wrote Fight Club in fifteen minute increments on his breaks at work.

It’s less important that you write a lot, and more important that you write consistently.

If you can only manage a couple of hundred words a day then commit yourself to those couple hundred words. No, you won’t be finished in a month. You may not be finished in a year.

Possibly the most important key to your success as a writer is that you make writing your habit. It should be something you do day in and day out, rain or shine, muse or no muse.

And I think you’ll find that if you keep going you’ll find yourself stretching the limits of what you’re capable of further and further. You’ll look back at those early days of writing and say, “I can remember when I thought a thousand words was a really good day. What was I thinking?”

That’s what we call growth my friend. And growth is what it’s all about.

***

I haven’t done this in a while, but I’ve got a reading assignment for you all today.

First up is a fantastic post by Jody Hedlund about why it’s so hard to be objective about your own work.

Second, go check out Chuck Wendig’s post about the closing of Border’s. It’s powerful stuff.

The Writer’s Guide To Catching Fish

When I was younger, my dad used to take me fishing from time to time. I’d get all excited, and we’d pack up the fishing poles and the tackle and head out to the lake. But when we got there it was disappointment city.

We learned to hate the phrase “fifteen minutes ago.” As in, “Fifteen minutes ago six hundred fish just grew legs and started crawling  ashore with the words “Eat Me” printed out in their scales. You just missed it.”

I’m sure we caught some fish in our lives, but it was never anything spectacular. Dad christened himself “the unluckiest fisherman alive” and became resigned to the fate of always being just fifteen minutes behind the excitement.

But looking back on it, I’m not sure he wasn’t making the same mistake I see some writers making. He saw the success of others, and when he couldn’t replicate that success for himself he told himself he just wasn’t as lucky as all those other people. And while it’s true that in fishing (and writing) there is a fair amount of luck involved, we’re often far too eager to place the blame for our failure on luck or fate.

We convince ourselves that other people are just born writers, that they have some mystical quality about them that we don’t have. We tell ourselves, “I could never write like that,” and lo and behold our prediction comes true.

But the truth is that writing is a lot like catching fish. And here’s how we can do better in both areas.

1. Fish Hungry

Whenever me and my dad went fishing we always took some kind of food along with us. We always told ourselves that if we caught a fish we would fry it up and eat it, but just in case we had our baloney sandwiches back in the truck.

And we always ended up eating those baloney sandwiches. We didn’t catch fish because we didn’t have to catch fish.

Writing is the same way. For most of us it’s just a hobby, an amusement. We look up at professional writers and we think, “Now they’ve got something I could never have.”

And in a sense that do have something we don’t have. It’s called desperation.

There is a reason Chuck Wendig is a better writer than I am. It’s because he has to be. His writing is what puts food on his table and ensures that his soon-to-be-born son will be provided for. If he has an off day, he might not get paid.

I’m not suggesting that we should all quite our jobs and become freelancers, but I am saying that as long as we treat our writing like a hobby instead of a job we will continue writing like hobbyists.

2. Fish Often

You know who catches fish? It’s not the guy with best tackle or the best boat. It’s not the guy who reads all the books about fishing and studies the mating habits of speckled trout. The guy who catches the most fish is the one who has his line in the water more than anyone else.

Writing is the same. If you want to be a great writer, you have to write. A lot. If you’re writing hit and miss, sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, you’ll never make anything of yourself as a writer. Real writers write. As in every day.

Yes, time can be hard to come by. I understand that. Too bad. Do it anyway.

If I sound like I’m being harsh it’s because I’m partly talking to myself here too. I need this advice as much as any of you. Every day I find myself struggling for time, trying to resist the temptation of some amusement or other so that I can focus on my writing. Sometimes I succeed. But often I fail.

But I keep trying. Because I’m not satisfied with where I am as a writer. An neither should you be.

None of us is so good that we couldn’t get better.

***

Addendum: For those of you who requested that I write the “man pukes up finger he doesn’t remember eating” story from yesterday’s post, your voices have been heard! I’ve got the first bit of it done, and I hope to finish it and post it sometime later in the week. So keep your eyes peeled. (Actually you don’t have to keep them peeled. I eat them with the skin on all the time and so far, no adverse affects.)

On the Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute Perfectionitis

Recently I received an email notification about this blog post in my inbox. It took me a little off guard because I didn’t remember when I had subscribed to this particular blog. But when I read the post I remembered. It had just been a long time since the blog had updated.

In the post itself the blog’s author discussed how growing doubt and uncertainty had kept her from posting anything in over a month, how that she had agonized over whether her writing was really good enough and how people would receive her work. It was a beautifully written piece, and I thought it was terribly courageous for this woman to share her fears so freely.

She’s not the only one with this problem either. I suffer from the same thing every week, and I suspect some of you do too.

“But Albert,” you may say, “Your blog updates every day (barring Sundays.) Surely you’ve conquered those demons of self doubt by now.”

Nope. Sorry to say I haven’t. See I suffer from a little thing called perfectionitis. Totally a real disorder. Not one I just made up as I was typing that sentence at all.

Perfectionitis is that feeling you get when you look back over your blog post and it just doesn’t look quite right. Something’s off. Maybe it doesn’t flow the way you wanted it to. Maybe it meanders from the originally prescribed topic. Maybe you can’t think of a third thing for your list of maybes.

You start to panic. “This is crap,” you think to yourself. “If I post this they’ll eat me alive. All my followers will leave and never return. Oh despair!”

Calm. Down.

You’re going off the rails. What you really need is a healthy dose of Truth to straighten you out. So here goes:

Truth Number One: your blog is not perfect.

Face it. You made a mistake somewhere along the way.

There’s a typo in your post somewhere. That sentence you’re closing the post with just doesn’t really give a good feeling of conclusion.  You can’t think of a good third thing in your list of things that might be wrong with a blog post (seriously this one gets me every time.)

Whatever. Nobody’s perfect. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. We aren’t going to bat a thousand every game. This is a fact of life. Deal with it.

Fact Number Two: it doesn’t matter.

Here’s a little tidbit that will shock your socks off: Your readers do not hate you. They are not sitting at the edge of their chairs peering into their screens and thinking, “Aha! I found a typo! All my months of waiting have finally paid off. To the comments!”

Probably they’re people just like you. They’re reading your blog because they think you might have something interesting to say. The truth is, most people want to like your blog.

They aren’t looking for a reason to leave. They’re looking for a reason to stay.

You do not have to be perfect.

Fact Number Three: consistency is just as important as quality.

Please note that I did not say that quality is unimportant. This is another area where you need that magic quality of balance. Yes, you should be concerned with how well you’ve written your blog. Yes, you should check your work as best you can.

But if you can’t get it perfect post it anyway.

Here’s a fact that probably won’t shock you. Almost every website that I visit regularly updates regularly. My favourite blogs are the ones that have new posts multiple times a week. And not all those posts have to be perfect and wonderful for me to keep coming back to those blogs.

A while back, Chuck Wendig made a few posts about playing the game Minecraft. I have zero interest in Minecraft, but I didn’t say, “Well Chucky I’ll be taking my blog reading services elsewhere thank you very much.” Because the next day he had another post and another one on the day after that, they had something I could learn from.

Bottom line is this: we are creatures of habit. If you post the single greatest blog post in the history of the world and then stop, chances are no one is going to notice. If you want to gain any kind of following you have to keep pushing through that demon of doubt.

And who knows? You might not love that blog post but someone else might. Often we criticize ourselves so harshly we forget to see the good in our work.

So that’s my two cents worth. I hope that it’s given you some encouragement. But if not, then stick around. I’ll try something else tommorow.

The Life and Times of Casey Jones

[This is my entry for Chuck Wendig's latest flash fiction contest. In in the spirit of killing two evil demon cat-birds with one stone, it is also my answer to a challenge from Twitter friend Ellie Soderstrom to write a story with a sympathetic protagonist who was...well, you'll see.]

Casey Jones doesn’t know that he’s lived his entire life in Cell Block C of the Westborough Correctional Institute.

Casey Jones doesn’t know the name of the man who lives with him in solitary confinement cell number 17.

Casey Jones doesn’t even know his own name.

Casey Jones only knows that he needs food. He searches for food in all the dark places, in the cracks between the cinder blocks and in the damp and safe place behind the cell’s stainless steel toilet. But he finds the most food every day when he feels the vibrations of steps coming down the hall and senses the clatter of the tray in the slot of the door.

He does not know that the man who brings the food is named Conrad Bingham. He doesn’t know that his cellmate once saved Conrad Bingham’s life. But he knows that when the food comes his cellmate will be sitting on the floor with the tray, eating with a plastic spork. And when he’s done eating Casey’s cellmate will spoon out some of the food into his hand and Casey will scutter over and gobble it up.

While he’s eating Casey Jones will feel his cellmate’s fingers brushing softly against his carapace, but he will not run away. He likes the food, and his cellmate does not try to hurt him or make him go away.

Casey Jones does not know that his cellmate has nightmares at night, that he sees the face of the woman he bludgeoned to death over and over in his dreams. He only knows the sweet taste of sweat on his cellmate’s trembling skin.

He senses the vibration of the air in his antennae, but he does not know it is his cellmate telling him how he wishes he could take it all back.

One day Casey senses a strange sound, the sound of scratching, but he does not know it is the sound of his cellmate scratching the words, “Get me a shiv. You owe me,” into the cover of the Styrofoam tray that Conrad Bingham will come to pick up later.

And on the next day when the shiv arrives Casey does not know that Conrad Bingham had to give up something precious to get it. He eats the food from his cellmate’s hand and he smells the tears in his eyes.

Casey doesn’t hear when his cellmate sings the words to a song about a train engineer who sacrificed his life to save the lives of his passengers.

He doesn’t understand when his cellmate’s voice cracks halfway through the line, “He’ll be waitin’ at the station in the promised land.”

He doesn’t know when his cellmate drags the shiv down along his wrist tearing through the skin and deep into the vein.

And when the blood begins to spurt from the wound Casey Jones only knows how deep and wonderful the warm red liquid smells.

He drinks his fill from the growing pool. He makes no notice of his cellmate’s death rattle.

A little later he crawls over the cooling skin of his cellmate’s corpse and tastes the sweetness of his sweat for one last time.

And when the men in uniforms come to take the body away Casey Jones hides in the dark place behind the stainless steel toilet. Only later when his cellmate is gone and a new man has come to take his place does he dare to venture out into the open.

He does not understand when a voice cries out in revulsion.

A shadow of darkness, a descending boot, a falling soul, and-

***

[By the by, the contest I mentioned will be open till Friday, so if you think you can do better then head on over there and give it whirl.]

The Stone Saucer

[This short story is was inspired by the Shackleton's Scotch Challenge over at Chuck Wendig's Blog. The challenge was to write a story inspired by the discovery of a case of scotch left behind by Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated South Pole Expedition. The story I was inspired to write does not directly involve either Shackleton or scotch, but rather it plays on the theme of things left behind. I hope that you enjoy it.]

Dad said they had to cut the tree down. It was old and dead, and it might fall on the house the next time a hurricane came through.

Zachary didn’t much like the idea. The tree had been there his whole life. The idea that they could just cut it down, end its legacy with a few swipes of a chainsaw felt…wrong somehow. But he didn’t have much say-so in the matter.

So Dad got out the chainsaw and started cutting, while Zachary stood back and watched. The base of the tree was thick and hard, and Dad cut for a long time making the notch in the front bigger a little at a time. Then the chainsaw made a screeching noise, and Dad yanked it back.

There was something there in the place where he had been cutting. Just a sliver of it was showing, but Zachary reached in his hand to touch it. It felt smooth and warm under his fingers.

Dad said it must have been something that had gotten stuck in the trunk a long time ago. He didn’t sound happy.

He cut around the thing as best he could and when the tree finally fell with a snapping crackling roar they saw what the thing was. It was a stone saucer, about as big around as a dinner plate and as thick as a dictionary, and it was carved all over with tiny swirling lines that crossed and converged in strange patterns.

Zachary asked what the thing was.

Dad said he didn’t know.

Zachary touched it again, and it still felt warm. Alive.

He asked if he could keep it.

Dad said yes.

So Zachary took it inside to his room.

That night, after they had finished cutting up the tree and hauling away most of the branches, he went to his room and looked at the thing again. He kept running his fingers over those twisting lines, trying to find the meaning there. Dad had said the thing had been inside the tree for a long time, maybe hundreds of years. For a while Zachary tried to think about how long that was. But after a while he got bored with the thing, so he put it on his shelf, and went to bed.

And when he slept he dreamed of strange things, of another world with skies of orange and red, and alien beings that looked like praying mantises as large as men. The mantis men were sending out stone saucers just like the one he and Dad had found by the thousands. In the dream Zachary watched as the stone saucers flew up into the red sky and disappeared. But then something happened. There was a roar and a crash, and the sky split open with light, and the world of red and yellow disappeared into fire.

He woke up and looked over at the stone saucer sitting on the shelf. It was still dark out, and the clock by his bed read 3:17, but he wasn’t sleepy.

He turned on the lamp and got the stone saucer. He set it next to him on the bed, and ran his fingers over the grooves again. The details of the dream stayed in his mind, sharp and crisp like a photograph.

It was just a dream. He kept telling myself that. But it was more than a dream. It felt…important. It felt real. But if it was real, what did it mean?

The mantis men had sent the stone saucers out for a reason. They had known their world was going to die, and they had known that they would die with it.

In the movies flying saucers had lasers and ray beams and they killed people. But the stone saucer didn’t seem like a weapon. It seemed more like…like a memento. A messenger with the memories of a dying world.

It made him think of the time Mom had come to get him from school early. Her eyes were all red, and she told him Grandpa Jonah had died. He had cried pretty hard because Grandpa Jonah was pretty much the best grandpa ever.

He went to the funeral, and he remembered looking around the big room at all the people who were there. He asked his Dad who they were, and Dad said they were all people who knew Grandpa Jonah.

He’d sat and thought about that for a while. Grandpa Jonah was gone, but all these people who knew him were here together in the same place. They all remembered something about him. And maybe that meant that all those little pieces of Grandpa Jonah were alive somehow. As long as people remembered.

And now a whole world was dead. Maybe it had been dead for a long time. But before it died, the mantis men sent out the stone saucers.

And the saucers were seeds; the seeds of a memory.

Maybe there were other saucers on other worlds, their memories infecting other minds. Or maybe this one was the only one that ever found a home.

But maybe one was enough. Maybe as long as someone remembered the mantis men, maybe a small part of them would live on.

He sat and thought about that for a long time. And when the clock read 5:13 and the first blush of dawn shone through his window he put the stone saucer back on the shelf and turned off the light. He crawled back under the covers, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

He dreamed of the dead.

Bizzaro Book Review: Irregular Creatures by Chuck Wendig

Once upon a time I went to a local bookstore and the guy behind the counter asked me what kind of books I liked to read.

I said, “Weird ones, mostly.”

He got the strangest look on his face.  I’m sure he’d been expecting me to say, Mystery or Horror or some other easily defined genre.  At last he said, “Well we’ve got some Steven King stuff over there.”

I’m not sure why “weird” isn’t a genre by now.  If I was running a book store it would have a section labeled “Weird Stuff,” You’d go over there and find books like Three Bags Full, House of Leaves, The Beasts of New York, and the Thursday Next Series.  And if you went a further down the row, nestled somewhere between Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede and When Graveyards Yawn you’d find a little book by Chuck Wendig called Irregular Creatures.

Reading this book was a strange experience for me.  See, when I was a kid we used to go to the creek and swim. I remember dipping my toe into the freezing water, and then my feet, and then my legs.  Finally, I’d take the plunge and sink my whole body into the water.  After a minute or two I was wondering why I had been so freaked out by a little cold water.

Getting into this book was a lot like getting into that creek.  It took me a while to acclimatize to the style of prose Wendig employs to deliver his stories.  At first it struck me as overly simplistic and far too direct.  But gradually as that first story slowly unfolded I began to understand.  From that point on there was no turning back.  I plowed forward through each increasingly weird tale and loved every minute of it.

There are books that you will read for the sheer beauty of the sentences, the perfect poetry of the prose.  This isn’t one of those books.  This book takes every hint of artificial adornment and crushes it beneath its hobnailed boot; it spits upon subtlety, and gleefully defenestrates that worn out old saw that the writer must show and not tell.

If Chuck Wendig wants us to know that he hates Mondays he does not muck about with an entire paragraph describing the process of waking from a fitful dream only to realize that the cat has peed on the floor and the alarm clock reset itself in the night culminating with a final horrified glance at the calendar.

When Chuck Wendig wants us to know that he hates Mondays he writes, “I [bleep]ing hate Mondays,” and moves on with the story.

And I for one am fine with that.  In fact that’s part of the beauty of this book.  Because what Wendig has to say is far too important to let it be overshadowed by how he says it.  It is clear from the get-go that the stories are the stars of the show in this book and they are amazing.

I will not do you the disservice of summarizing the tales, but I will say they’re probably unlike anything you’ve ever read.  The best of the bunch is a tiny tale called “Beware of Owner.”  Reading this story is like having someone slide a rusty machete into your belly and then twist it hard.  And I mean that in a good way.

The other stories are good too, though some better than others.  One in particular, “The Auction” had a fantastically well-developed setting that felt as if it could contain an entire novel’s worth of action, but the story itself didn’t quite live up to the incredible world that had been created for it.  Also when reading ”Lethe and Mnemosyne” I got slightly confused.  Even after looking up the mythological characters of the title I still didn’t get what any of it had to do with a giant killer chicken.  If any of you know I would love to be enlightened.

But anything critical I can say would be insignificant compared to the wonder and the awe contained in this oddly charming menagerie of monstrosities.  Irregular Creatures is a fantastic book, fully worth the pittance of a price its author is asking.  So slap your three dollars down on the digital barrelhead and prepare to be amazed.

Irregular Creatures will take you on a journey you will never forget.

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Still don’t believe me?  Seriously?  I’m hurt.  Okay, well if you need extra incentive, you can check out some of the stories from this book including my favourite, “Beware of Owner,” here.

Once you’ve gotten the cat feathers out of your brain you can buy the Kindle version of the book from Amazon.com here or the PDF direct from the author’s website here.