SHORT, SWEET, AND TO THE POINT (with a bonus cover reveal)

Writing short fiction is something I enjoy and am good at. In my Deacon Chalk series there are the two novels out (BLOOD AND BULLETS and BLOOD AND SILVER)
and also two novellas. (THAT THING AT THE ZOO and SPIDER'S LULLABY)
*all titles are links if you wanted to go check them out at the big online retailer :)

Plus several short stories that are up for free on a few blogs that run from 500 words to just a smidge over 2000. (most of those are linked to on my website www.jamesrtuck.com )

There is one thing that I have found is KEY to writing short fiction.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR BACKSTORY.

Seriously. Cut it. You write a 20,000 word novella then you are allowed ONE PARAGRAPH of backstory that can only occur after the first 10 pages. This is the LAW. Break it at your peril. Subject to fines and imprisonment up to 300 years. Possible beheadament ( is that a word?)

Obviously I am joking, but I am serious that in a piece of short fiction you do not have time for backstory. Keep it off the page. Hint at it, work it in with a sentence here and a sentence there, but you cannot have an info dump or an exposition in the form of a chunk of dialog. No one wants that in your short fiction. Editors don't want to buy it and readers don't want to read it.

When you write genre short fiction you are basically taking your characters and dumping them in an extreme situation that they have to react to. The whole of the story is their situation and their reaction, nothing more.

Here is a conversation between a writer and a reader about short fiction.

Writer: Do you want to know how they got in the situation?
Reader: Don't care.

Writer: What made them who they are?
Reader: DON"T care.

Writer: Where the monster/big bad/nemesis/chain of unfortunate events came from?
Reader: DON'T CARE.

Writer: How amazing the world/magic system/political intrigue is that I made?
Reader: OMG I DON'T FREAKING CARE!

Writer: But I did so much reasearch and made some really cool things.
Reader: Don't care.

The point is that in short genre fiction it is all about the entertainment.  The fight, the turn, the moment things go south and how the main character deals. Save the rest of it for your novel. That's where the reader is sitting down to explore your creativity with you.

(And a short story/novella is NOT just something you yank out of your novel and plop it down for the reader. It still has to be complete in itself, not left dangling on both ends.)

So now for some picturey goodness to close us out and send you home, here is the cover for the third Deacon Chalk novel out March of 2013!
Ladies and gentlemen I give you BLOOD AND MAGICK!

Whee Whee Whee All the Way Home

By Kerry Schafer

If you live in the US, and if you have a TV, you are by now familiar with the Geico little piggy. People seem to be divided into two camps where he is concerned - we love him, or we want to reduce him to crispy bacon goodness immediately. I happen to love the little guy. He's got a lot of enthusiasm. I can relate, especially when he's engaged in this activity:

Full tilt, downhill, gaining momentum as he goes, with the pinwheels flying and the wind in his face. Wheeeeee!!! Indeed. This is how my life feels at the moment. Exhilarating, exciting, and just on the edge of a potential crash if the speed gets too much greater. It's been a wonderful and awesome opportunity to be your Saturday Whore, and I want to thank everybody for reading, commenting, and supporting my writing habit. However, in the interest of my own safety and that of others, (yep, saving my bacon) I have made the difficult decision to step away. 

Tomorrow Jeffe will introduce my replacement, and I can just tell you that she will be a fun and exciting addition to the blog. As a reminder of my Canadian Roots, I leave you with the following clip - which has no relevance to anything, other than the fact that it's from the movie Canadian Bacon.

All Was Dark in the World

Salt or sweet? Most people have a preference for one flavor over another. Salt seekers and sugar seekers, or as a friend claims of herself - sugan - she survives by sugar alone. What do you do, though, when you crave both salt AND sweet?

You reach for bacon.

Oh, yes. Pork belly cured in sugar and in salt, then fried up to the perfect texture (I'm a crispy gal, myself.) All the better when combined in the ultimate breakfast - the bacon and egg sandwich. No, no. I'm sorry. All the fast food joints? Anemic, cardboard versions of breakfast sandwiches. Hell. Is that even *real* bacon? Eh-hem.

Bacon and egg sandwiches were a mainstay of camping during my childhood. They have all kinds of great memories and emotions surrounding them. So imagine how the light went out of my limited culinary world when we discovered that bacon was a migraine trigger. Nitrates. Nitrites. Chemicals I have no hope of spelling all combined to one deadly combination: processed meat.

Any hope I had of enjoying brussels sprouts cooked with a bit of bacon and onion - gone. Bacon and egg sandwiches - gone. Too many southern dishes to speak of - removed from the steadily dwindling diet. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Then, praise be to the 80's, the healthfood craze hit. Wash your mind out with soap. No. NOT turkey bacon. Feh. I'm talking about the sudden availability of bacon without preservatives - no nitrates. No nitrites or other brain-bending chemicals. Initially, it wasn't the greatest. But as time went on, new brands and new varieties appeared - thick-cut, pepper-crusted (mmmm, pepper), maple-smoked, etc, etc.

Brussels sprouts are a going concern at my house again. For me. No one else'll touch 'em. Claim they're cabbage fetuses, but that's another post. And yes. I do allow myself a once a week bacon and egg sandwich. It's a fifteen minute breakfast that let's me wallow in being twelve again. Without all the twelve year-old angst.

As an aside, look at this: http://baconfesthouston.com/and-then-there-was-bacon There's a bacon fest!

Shakin my Bacon

Oh man. There is no more perfect food in this world than Bacon. It is so delicious it should be a food group unto itself. I grew up in the South and there has not been a time, no matter how far back into my childhood you go, that Bacon wasn't served 6 out of 7 breakfasts. I literally grew up on food that was cooked in saved bacon drippings.

Bacon grease runs through my veins!

My favorite bacon? Thick cut peppered bacon. Oh yes. It is the gift of God to mortal man. Just look at it.

Now recently I had the chance to go to Dahlonega Ga, the home of the first gold rush in the South. Nestled in the foothills of the North Ga mountains it is a wonderful little town. I loved Dahlonega before my last trip. Now Ilove it even more. I walked into one of the fudge shops on the square of Dahlonega with my daughter and they had CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON. Yes I am not lying to you. Now it wasn't cheap. About $1.00 per slice, but it was heavenly in my mouth. It was every bit as good as you would think it would be.

Sorry. I need a moment there.

Where was I?

Oh yes, CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON. Take a look at this picture.


Now here is an Epic Meal Time Parody video. If you haven't watched Epic Meal Time I highly recommend it. You will see approximately 1000 uses for bacon, including a Bacon beer cup.

A Sliver of Bacon

by Jeffe Kennedy

Before I met sister Word Whore Allison Pang, I never gave bacon much thought.

I mean - why would I? Sometimes restaurants or family offered it with other breakfast foods. There's an appetizer I make at Christmas sometimes, where shrimp are wrapped with bacon and drizzled with Balsamic vinegar and rosemary - those are yummy. But otherwise, bacon was just something that wasn't particularly good for me that didn't cause me much heartbreak because I could take or leave it.

Then I met Allison.

She takes love of bacon and elevates it beyond obsession and makes it into an art form. A horrifying art form, from time to time - you wouldn't believe the bacon monstrosities she discovers and posts pictures of. But her love is strong and sincere, akin to the devotion Linus has for the Great Pumpkin.

When I first read A Brush of Darkness, in one of its early incarnations, I remarked on how often bacon appears in the book. I think Allison even removed some of the references at my suggestion. So, when her agent asked her to take out a few more, I just laughed and laughed.

Turns out there IS such a thing as too much bacon, Allison!

I'm proud and delighted to see Allison's second book come out on Tuesday. She'll be over at my personal blog tomorrow, giving away a special something to a lucky commenter. And A Sliver of Shadow is available for pre-order right now. I can't promise that there's bacon in it.

Knowing Allison, though, there will be.