Murdockinations: short stories

Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts

Saturday, March 21, 2020

FREE - All My Ebooks Now FREE on Smashwords!

For those picking up my ebooks to read, Thanks . Enjoy! Been getting emails that they are getting downloaded. All of my ebooks on there are now temporarily FREE until April 20th because of the pandemic. Check it out and then check out their other authors, maybe one of your favorites. Get them while you can!

From Smashwords to customers:

For one month only, thousands of Smashwords authors and publishers will provide readers deep discounts on ebooks. Discount levels include 30%-off, 60%-off, and FREE.

This sale is a direct result of several Smashwords authors who suggested it. These indie authors want to support readers around the world who face unprecededed anxiety, economic hardship and social isolation as the world community fights to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

More than ever, these ebooks from indie authors and publishers offer readers unlimited hours of low-cost entertainment, distraction, comfort and knowledge during these trying times.

Smashwords is being hammered with downloads. Can't imagine why. But keep trying, they may be up and down with all the requests.

I was just wondering, as all my ebooks are free for a month, which is good (or bad, or bad good?) for pandemic reading?

So I surveyed my available titles. I have a complete other manuscript of new stories as yet unpublished which I've been wanting to get around to, but...not yet.

So...

ANTHOLOGY OF EVIL - a collection of my older writings available in print on Amazon
In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear - Sci Fi / Horror
Gumdrop City - Horror / based on True Crime and my new film
Quantum History - Sci Fi / Humor at MIT
The London Mea Culpa Document - Lead into next story
The Mea Culpa Document - Medieval / Horror
Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer (To A Question He Knever Knew on the knight that the Knight lost all") - Medieval / Horror / Surreal - this comes later from another "Breaking on Cave Island"
Sarah - Horror / Surreal Alzheimer's on Twilight Zone
The Fall - short short Horror that led to an indie industry article written about my writings
Japheth, Ishvi and The Light - Horror / Zombies at a religious commune and ... God
Andrew - novella - Horror / Surreal / Sci Fi the story that led to the next book...

From author and reviewer Michael Brookes: "The book [DEATH OF HEAVEN] starts well and has a Clive Barker, Books of Blood vibe, which really works well. It's in these tales that the author's writing ability shines. He demonstrates a lovely turn of phrase and some of the writing is almost poetic in its beauty."
DEATH OF HEAVEN - epic horror sci fi with standalone stories in it you will understand when you read it. A complex and some have reviewed, a beautifully written book that is hard to describe: Available in print on Amazon
The Conqueror Worm - two 12-year-old boys dig up treasure
Rosebud -beware imposing your mind on your gf
Thirst Divine - terrifying entities from above can be erotic
Harbinger -be good, terrifying entities are watching from above
"Sweet Jane" - be careful who you marry. I wrote this after watching Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians one night back in the 90s when they played on SNL and being inspired.
Marking Time - avoid ghosts in Afghanistan, even if you're special forces. Originally written about my own childhood in the Civil Air Patrol in search and rescue, ported over to adulthood.
Going Home - runaway gets in the wrong car, classic story.
Vaughan’s Theorem - a scary serial murderer story and rather long.
The Mea Culpa Document of London - medieval witch hunter

ALSO other shorts:
EarVu - horror in the lab
Mr. Pakool's Spice - father and 2 young kids in the zombie apocalypse in the back winter woods of Oregon. Originally published in an anthology with other authors.
Expedition of the Arcturus - sci fi on earth's first trans-generational spaceship, originally published in PerihelionSF.com magazine in their second edition ever.. A great hard sci fi mag for free reading.
Xibalba Unleashed - serial murder in a Mayan cave and university campus

Simon’s Beautiful Thought - short sci fi romance I wrote about a guy and his phone's AI, before most or all of the more famous stories like that.

NON FICTION (I have a degree in psychology, thus...)
On Psychology: With Illustration in Psychopathology via Synesthesia and Schizophrenia

Psycho-neurologically Approaching a Field Theory Understanding of Schizophrenia via Research of a Non-normative, Non-pathological Syndrome: Synesthesia, and the need for more information Title Case Recommendation
Unpublished

SO...jump over to Smashwords and look around. Wishing you all the best through this difficult time. But there are options to lose yourself for a time in some great books!

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Monday, May 7, 2018

On Being Creative and Writing

I've been asked, as have so many other creatives...

"How do you come up with your ideas for things you write?"

Well...I have a thought, I put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and, produce. I heard an author once say that the difference between hobbyists or amateurs and professional writers is the latter writes down their good ideas for later and they throw away, nothing. Saving it for a future story. Not infrequently it happens at bedtime, so I keep a notepad by my bed. Or I may get up and go to my keyboard and writer it out, dumping it all into a file for later.

I have a file on my laptop and desktop for ideas and another for titles. I have an "ideas" folder in my short story, screenplay and my novel folders.

A spark happens, an idea hits me, the framework for that idea shoots through a tunnel into the future in my mind, in a multi dimensional pathway from concept to fruition. That journey into a new reality begins. As I write, the structure further reveals itself to me. Logic and satiation fill in the cracks and crevices as I experience the story unfolding within and before me.

At some point I hit a juxtaposition, or a void. At that point I have emptied my mental and creative buffers and need to come up with something new. And that I think, is what interests people.

Brian Eno, once of Roxy Music fame and then from his own, studied art for a short time. He and his cohorts were like many others at the time interested in John Cage's book Silence (1961). Music can be art and why cannot one listen to a waterfall or the wind and experience the same euphoria one could get from say, Beethoven? Eno getting involved with Robert Fripp and his with King Crimson were all expansions of previous leanings.

Six Melodies, by John Cage.

I was very into avant garde and experimental music since my childhood in the 1960s, as well as some classical, pop (as a kid) and much rock music. From as far back as I can remember I have been attracted to the unique and unusual and the beautiful. I didn't even hear of the aesthetic of the ugly until the late 1980s and it went against everything I had believed in to that point. Yet, I had loved horror films and books and I did get it on a visceral level.

I bring all this up because of the need and desire for creativity, for uniqueness and the unknown and for the fascinating. It is a quest always for more and beyond.

Concepts like the synthesis of systems and ideas, the dynamic rearrangement of information, the rearrangement of the echoes of one sense upon or in place of another or synesthesitic observations, all organized to be highly pleasurable and\or productive have always fascinated me. And yet again and again I find myself falling back into formal structures.

And so I continue to bide my time, to explore, and to strive for that uniqueness that I hope one day to uncover. And of course, to share.

A good example of this in my catalog of writings is in my latest novella, "The Unwritten" coming out in the sequel to my first book to be titled, Anthology of Evil II. In the novella, I decided initially to take three disparate universes and write about them, then at some point bring them all together in some way. That is all I had to start with.

It was a singular journey that took me two years to finalize. Once I returned to it, my mind having had worked on it in the dark recesses of thought over the period of my putting off writing the last half of the story, had worked much of it out, unbeknownst to me. It flowed out of me onto the page and it somehow all came together.

That is the way of it so very often.

I had studied what creativity is during my university years. I felt crippled, unable to be creative. Until I realized what it is. Creation. The more you have to bring to that creation, the more you learn in life, the more you practice things, the more interesting and useful will be your creations.

My point being, learn your craft. Learn all you can about everything. Try to experience and produce all types of, all forms of whatever your craft is. And then... the creative happens. It will happen.

Bring your creative voice, or vision to us. Because we want to see it.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Today launches a new Giant Tales Horror Anthology, World of Pirates!

Today marks the official launch of a new Giant Tales anthology by Heather Marie Schulte titled, World of Pirates, and along within it my latest short story, "Breaking on Cave Island".

There's some back story about how this came to be.

But first, Happy Valentine's Day to you all! And best of luck with that....

I ran into Heather Marie Schulte's group on a LinkedIn writer's group, last year. It sounded like they were doing some fun and interesting things. I offered (submitted) a short short story for evaluation and got a "best tension" label on that short-short story titled, "The Regent's Daughter". Well, I thought that was fun. I was in and out of the group as I tend to be, commenting from time to time about one thing or another, until one day Heather asked if I would like to submit a story for the next book.

It was to be a pirate horror book and a part of her "Giant Tales" series of books: "Beyond the Mistic Doors" and "From the Misty Swamp" that I'm now happy to be involved with. I had never written a pirate story before. I thought it might be a good experience, though. A chance to stretch my skills and add to my catalog in a previously untrod upon and unexpected direction. But, could I pull it off?

The first thing I usually do at a time like that is to consider my past writings. Have I written something like this before? Do I already have an unused story that I could save time with and submit? The answer was, no. But there might be an old friend, a character I wrote long ago, who might fit this story very well. Maybe even as a prequel to his previously published adventures.

Typically, I look over what I have before I do anything else, as who knows, I may have forgotten I wrote a pirate tale before. Hey, I like pirates. I like the new Starz cable show, Black Sails. I grew up loving Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. As well as so many other films about pirates.

As far as my new story, "Breaking on Cave Island", if you like it and want to know more about the character, "Lord Ritchie", his continuing story is in my book, "Anthology of Evil" (2012). This character has a long and prestigious history going back to my university days at Western Washington University in the early 1980s. I always liked this guy and felt for him as life always seemed to serve him up a messy and undeserved path.

Now, who is this woman who challenged me to enter an arena I was unfamiliar with and who is putting out these fun books?

Another woman in the group, Rebecca Lacy, wrote an article on the "Women's Voice Magazine" site that I think states this clearly. It's an "Unsung Hero" article about Heather Marie Schulte, also owner of writers750.com, a short story contest site where the entrants judge one another. Here's the article:

A Love Letter to Those Who Cheer for You to Succeed.

After reading Rebecca's article, I have to agree. Heather is indeed a positive influence (force) in the world.

Drop by and check out this new book, "World of Pirates", maybe even shed a few doubloons and see what you think yourself!

Then feel free to come on back and let me know what you thought of it.

Cheers!

Monday, January 14, 2013

New JZ Murdock Video Book Trailers

Last week I posted links to my two new Video Book Trailers of my writings on YouTube. There were only two then, one for Death of Heaven, and one for Anthology of Evil. I have made a longer one for each now and updated last week's post. I offer them again here along with my new ones for many of my eBook short stories and my novella, Andrew, which is a lead in to the book, Death of Heaven.

First of all, should any of these links change, you can get to their latest replacement versions and any new one on my TheJZMurdock YouTube Channel. See if I change or enhance these videos, I have to create new versions which would supercede these older versions.

From - EarVu

I have a few others to do and I will let you all know when they are ready, too.

Cheers!

Friday, November 9, 2012

Two Free Short Horror JZ Murdock ebooks!

Free November 9th in UK and US. My two newest horror stories are going online as standalone ebooks. Originally only available in my book, Anthology of Evil.

Gumdrop City
Based on a true crime event, a widowed (now drinking) father contemplates the strange neighbor everyone is wary of… as well as his young daughter’s whereabouts. This is a disturbing story first brought to my attention when I was getting my degree in psychology at Western Washington University in a class for abnormal psychology. I took the framework of that story and built a fiction story around it. (Update 2019: I am currently working on a short film production prequel of this story). It is a disturbing story and was a challenge to write it without simply being offensive).

UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gumdrop-City-ebook/dp/B00A1TM7MY/

Japheth, Ishvi and The Light
Unknown to them, plummeting to the Earth as terrifying pillars of light from the skies, is the Zombie Apocalypse as it burns into the grounds around a religious commune’s farm; throw in some devastating confusion; a splitting migraine; a squad of special Decon soldiers; God himself; and well, there you pretty much have the making of let’s say, a religious experience.

UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japheth-Ishvi-The-Light-ebook/dp/B009Z42DK2

Cover art is by the incredible artist Marvin Hayes. He has been doing some interesting works on the side and chose to work on some of my covers. On RedBubble.com he has been selling well in the area of covers for things like ipods, ipads, and iPhones.

Marvin also did the cover for my book Anthology of Evil and Death of heaven (no, the word "heaven" isn't capitalized on purpose as it's a sign, a warning, a commentary on the story, disturbing some and breaking some rules, both grammar and Amazon).

Marvin recently did one for my EarVu story that has been doing well and it's an awesome graphic.

I submitted these to Indies Unlimited for their Freebie Fridays promotion. They didn't pick up my ebooks for this promotional today, this time.

However, they have been kind enough to do so in the past and have also interviewed me and even wrote an article or two about me on there. Not the first time I've been interviewed. You can get other free ebooks there today, so, I'm promoting them here. Give them a look as there will be other Author's free ebooks available.

Have fun.

Cheers!

Murdockinations