I recently completed a fourth draft of a new story featuring the Inspector character from the flash piece Red-Handed. This one is longer form – it came in at over 20,000 words, which I believe places it just over the line into novella territory.
The story is a little darker and more complex than the antics of the three hags in Red-Handed. Some of the images in there are intended to be nightmarish and, for some people, this may be disturbing.
It might also be worth mentioning that this is a potential first step towards some world-building. I have half notions of eventually situating some further stories in the same setting. In practical terms, this simply means that the text contains some nods and references to places and personalities outside of the main plot.
It seems that the people came before the Gods. Though we sometimes tell ourselves otherwise. But when a people leave their homeland, what happens then? Do they leave their Gods behind them? Or can the same Gods be found again in a new home across the ocean?
Shadow, we are told, got his name from following adults around when he was a kid. The story picks up years later, as he is nearing the end of a stretch in prison. He was the driver. Things didn’t work out. But Shadow is no longer a child. He is big and well built and isn’t afraid of pain. The kind of guy that, on the outside, someone might figure would make a pretty good bodyguard. And it so happens there is a someone. A someone who might be an old-time two-bit hustler. A hustler who seems to know too many things about Shadow to make it easy to say no.
Together, Shadow and his new employer will get on the road. They will plot their way through a winter of cities, of small America towns and backwaters. It’s an America we don’t often see in Hollywood blockbusters. The America of American Gods is a work in progress. There is something that is still uncertain, almost temporary about the places we accompany Shadow to. It’s as though the land and the people are still in the process of drawing a breath, of gathering themselves, of determining who they might be. Grubby, liminal spaces intersect with the gaudy familiarity of fast food chains. The dark uncertainty of the past being drawn into the needy jaws of the future.
This book is dark on the inside like a jumper you are trying to pull confusedly over your head. The world you know will disappear for a while, offering only brief glimpses of what might still be out there. And it’s not certain that you will find your way back out into the light. There are new rules at play. There are tricksters abroad. Or so we hope.
Gaiman’s prose is steady and confident. It has, at times, the feel of Stephen King. The slow construction of place and personality. Quick snapshots of the nightmarish and the obscene. Occasional touches of light and grace. His characters are capable of patience and of irritation. They are opinionated, yet resourceful. And some of them are something other, something more than human. You will find Gods in this book. And the Gods… well it’s been said before, but I’ll say it again…
In an attempt to create some momentum around the launch of The Fix on eBook, for a limited time, I am sharing free copies of the novel. What is the catch? Well there’s only the smallest one. I would ask that anyone who reads a free copy would consider taking the time to write a review on Amazon. It does not have to be an essay. One or two lines, is all I would ask. If you feel like writing more, that would be even splendider.
And if you like the book enough to tell your friends, then of course that would be more than I could hope for.
These are some of my first steps into the world of self-promotion. I have very little idea how effective one person can be in promoting a self-published piece of fiction. Or, if it’s possible to make a difference at all. But… watch this space. If I learn some secrets along the way, this is where you’ll hear about them.
About six months ago while I was browsing through the Irish Writers Centre (irishwriterscentre.ie) website, I noticed that a new Irish magazine by the name of Spellweaver was looking for submissions.
“Spellweaver is all about celebrating storytelling and art, no matter where it comes from.”
-spellweaverlit.com
So, I sent in a couple of stories.
A few days ago, to my delight, a couple of copies of the first issue of Spellweaver appeared in my mailbox.
Red-Handed is a small piece of flash I wrote about a year ago. It is a silly piece. You can find it in the Flash section here on preciousflaws.
I finally got around to preparing The Fix in eBook format.
If someone is using an eReader, such as for example, a Kindle, or their phone, then they can change the orientation of the screen (portrait or landscape), and they can change the font type and size. What this means in practical terms is that the writer of a text has no control over how many words, lines or paragraphs appear on a screen at a given time. The text just flows. Similar in a lot of ways to a webpage. And very different to print, where you have full control over exactly how each page will look.
Creating an eBook is not at all as intimidating as it sounds. Even from an existing print-on-demand manuscript, which is what I was working from. It basically just amounted to stripping away all the extra formatting, such as headers, footers and page dimensions. I updated the styles on the section headings and the chapter headings. I added a table of contents and that was that.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will accept an eBook in Word Document format. You also provide them with an image to use as the cover. And from there, they do all the rest.
I’ve added a new menu heading – Flash, which contains some flash-fiction I’ve been playing around with. These are short, one-shots that are, or at least should be, single scenes in what could be a larger world.
Flash fiction is a great way to do writing when you don’t feel in the space to dive into something more considered, more measured, more composed. A way to try out styles and to have fun with ideas and allow the silliness and the weirdness to run about for a while.
I’ve also added three new poems, which are from a workshop I attended with Kevin Higgins last year – it’s just about a year ago now when these were written.
Fergus Deffely - Author 