Uncanny Tales: Storytime for Adults

I was honored that Chris Humphreys recently read some of my short fiction as part of the Vancouver Public Library's "Uncanny Tales: Storytime for Adults" series.

In a delightful dark and black and white setting, Chris reads my short stories "That Old Silk Hat They Found" and "Browsers."

"That Old Silk Hat They Found" is a tale that appears in my mini short story collection Snowman Shivers: Dark Humor Snowman Tales and is about my perception of what might really happen should a snowman come to life.

"Browsers" is the tale of a bookshop that feeds, like a Venus flytrap for book nerds, and appears in my mini-story collection Active Reader: And Other Cautionary Tales from the Book World.

 

 

You can see the video here.

Chris has, so far, narrated a few of my horror story collections.

Bumps in the Night: Creepy Campfire Tales

 

Night Cries (Nocturnal Screams Volume 1)

 

 Ode to Classics (Nocturnal Screams Volume 2)

 

364 Days Until Halloween 2021

If you're like me, you've already begun to count down the days until Halloween 2021.

I know, I know. It's Nov 1st. There are other holidays to look forward to.

Okay, I'll give you that. There ARE other holidays. But I'm still going to pine for the next Halloween. The most wonderful time of the year.

And in the meantime, I'm going to share a pretty cool Kickstarter project that I'm honored to be a part of. It's WMG Publishing's Holiday Spectacular 2020.

Imagine an original holiday story delivered to you every day during the holidays? But not just the regular "the holidays" - on top of the Christmas themed tales, you can get Valentines and Halloween tales for 2021.

It's the story gift that keeps on giving, almost all of the way through 2021.

This project was born out of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's combined love for short fiction and holiday countdown calendars.

Subscribers to this project will get the first story on November 26th, 2020 and then a new story EVERY DAY through January 1st, 2021.

That's right! A Brand New Original Holiday Story Every Day, following three distinct themes. Mysterious Chrismas, Fantastic Christmas, and Sweet Holidays.

But wait, there's more!!!!!

Because (and you'll see why I related this to my eagerness for Halloween 2021) there are two more wonderful projects:

•  From February 7th through the 14th, 2021, you can get eight original Valentine stories delivered to your inbox. One each day. This Sweet Valentines collection is edited by Annie Reed.
• From October 25th through November 2nd, 2021, you can get nine original Halloween stories delivered to your inbox. This Halloween Harvest collection is edited by yours truly.
  

All of the stories are fantastic. I've had the privilege, as one of the series editors, of reading them all. But I'm a little biased about the ones I selected for my combined Halloween and Harvest themed anthology.

The stories are available to be delivered on those calendar dates but will also be available in book format.

And you can get in on the action and check it all out before this Kickstarter runs out in another 16 days.

What's your favorite time of the year?

Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction

On Wednesday April 22, 2020, I'll be presenting in one of Jane Friedman's online classes.

Jane is a consistently reliable authoritative source of solid information about the writing and publishing industry. Her blog and The Hotsheet are two amazing resources I regularly consume. I'm honored that I get to participate in one of her online workshops.

Creating Income & Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction

The course is $20 USD and will be a video chat where I'll be talking through several of the examples that Matty Dalrymple and I wrote about in our February 2020 book, Taking the Short Tack.

I will share many of the examples that we write about in the book as well several other options and examples with the goal of informing and inspiring authors on how they can leverage their short fiction IP in multiple ways.

Spring Is Sprung, The Sun is Riz, I Wonder Where The Snowman Is

Ah, the joy and wonder of spring.

The temperature rises, mother nature begins to peek out from under the slowly melting snow.

All is wonderful and joyous as "new life" takes form in the annual cycle of life.

All is good, of course, for everybody except certain creatures.

Like snowmen.

What does spring mean for a snowman?

That's exactly what the two dark humor stories in SNOWMAN SHIVERS explore, each in slightly different ways.

THAT OLD SILK HAT THEY FOUND - What might really happen if a snowman were brought to life. Would he really be jolly and happy? Would he dance around, singing? How could he? He doesn't even have legs!

IDES OF MARCH - Taxes are due soon. But that's just a minor annoying deadline. There are more urgent things to be concerned about. Such as why a pair of odd strangers are kidnapping snowmen.

The eBook is free virtually everywhere. Check it out at various online retailers.

If you prefer to watch me read the first story in this collection "That Old Silk Hat They Found" (my attempt to wonder if a snowman that suddenly came to life might actually be a jolly, happy soul) via this #FreeFridayFrights video from April 2018.

You can also watch the video on my author Facebook page.

Enjoy. And happy spring.

Just try not to think about what it means for those delightful masses of snow that we enjoy building and then just forgetting about.

Two-Sentence Horror Stories

I recently spotted a few two-sentence horror stories and was enjoying reading them. So I wanted to try writing one of my own.

One of the first that came to me was based on a poem I wrote and had published years ago. I suppose it's okay to re-adapt my own writing into this new form.

So, here's the first two-sentence horror story I came up with:

"She has her daddy's eyes. In a jar up in her room."

 

This two-sentence horror story is derived from a poem I wrote called "Daddy's Girl" and which was originally published in Everyday Weirdness in 2009. The two first lines of the poem came to me many many years ago as a quick and dark humor punch-line that I later morphed into a poem (below) - but I figured: why not re-adapt it back to those first two sentences?

Daddy's Girl

By Mark Leslie

She has her Daddy’s eyes
In a jar up in her room
It took a while to dig them out
Because she’d used a spoon

She has her Daddy’s hair
And with it his whole scalp
She hacked it off with a dull steak knife
But knew a sharper one might help

She has the rest of her Daddy’s parts
Stored in an air-tight drum
She fancies herself a Daddy’s girl
But she looks more like her Mum

But enough of the original poem and back to the two-sentence horror tale.

Do you have a favorite two-sentence horror story to share?

Great review of Unexpected Strangers

Because I missed getting my stories out into the world, I started collecting a few of them in small themed packs of work under the "Nocturnal Screams" banner.

Each of the mini-books in the "Nocturnal Screams" series has between 12,000 to 16,000 words of stories (usually three tales), along with the "behind the story" notes - something I enjoy reading myself in other authors' works and have received compliments about in the past.

While I normally enjoy seeing that one of my books has been reviewed (social proof is great), I tend to not put a lot of stock into them (other than that it is important to have reviews). Reviews mean that people are actually reading the books. The reason I try not to focus on reviews is I find that many reviews are vague little "it was okay" with two or three stars, and if you start taking those things to heart, you'll drown in writerly self-doubt. And writers have more than their share of that.

And if you pay too much attention to one star reviews, well, that's a death knell. Not every book is for everyone, and, rather than take those to heart, I usually just have to consign myself to the understanding that I or my publisher or a bookseller (or however it happened), did something wrong to get the book into the absolute WRONG reader's hands. IE, the targeting was somehow off and the wrong person (ie, NOT the ideal reader) picked it up and had a bad experience with it.

In any case, reviews are necessary, but not something one should focus on.

Heck, if I get just a handful of three or four star reviews, I consider myself blessed.

But this morning I woke to find a wonderful four star review of a recently published collection called Unexpected Strangers. Volume 5 in my Nocturnal Screams series. And I couldn't help but bask just a little bit in that.

This in depth and well-thought out review from Silver Screen Videos is quite complimentary, while recognizing imperfections, etc. was six full paragraphs.

Here are some excellent pull-quotes from it:

In addition to the three short stories in “Unexpected Strangers,” author Leslie provides several pages of “behind the scenes” material. For each story, he describes how he came to write it, including a description of his creative thought processes in detail, as the three stories gradually took shape from rudimentary early ideas. For anyone who is interested in possibly becoming a writer, or in the writing process itself, this extra material is a solid companion piece to the stories themselves.

. . . and also this . . .

All three are well constructed, well written, and quite entertaining. Further, most people will probably be able to finish all three stories, with bonus material, over the course of a lunch hour. And, while it didn’t bother me that none of the stories were really scary in any sense, that shouldn’t deter anyone who likes either horror or suspense fiction. You will probably find that “Unexpected Strangers” makes for unexpectedly good reading.

Of course, one of my favourite lines from the review is this delightful compliment about the story "Captive Audience."

The author contends that his stories are reminiscent of old “Twilight Zone” episodes, but this one could more easily have come from the pages of “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” and I mean that as quite a compliment.

For those who aren't familiar, Hitchcock is, and has long been one of the most prestigious thriller/mystery/dark fiction magazines available.


And, for the sake of 100% transparency, so you can read, the good, the bad and the ugly, (the reviewer does a great job of calling out things that they don't like about some of the writing - all quite valid points that I can appreciate - here is a link to the item page where you can read the full review.

If you're curious to check out the first in the Nocturnal Screams series, Night Cries (pictured below) is free on all major retail platforms.

5 Ways To Use Free As An Author

When I was recording a recent episode of the Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing podcast, I began reflecting on the various ways that an author can leverage FREE in order to build their author platform.

Below are those points, quickly summarized.

1) To Get Readers Hooked on a New Series

Offering the first book in a series free can bring a large funnel of new readers to your books. And, for authors who perhaps don't have more than a few books in that series, sometimes offering a free short story that is linked to that series is a great way to get people to try out your characters and their unique world/setting.

Examples:

Earning Money From Re-Cycled Short Stories

The other day I cashed yet another check from McGraw-Hill Ryerson for a short story.

The check was for $29.24 - which doesn't seem like a big thing.

However, let's look at the source, and the history for where this payment came from.

A snapshot look at how "Almost" appears in theiLit.ca format

The History of my short story "Almost"

• 1988 - 1989 - Some time between high school and university I was reading Stephen King's Dance Macabre and was fascinated by his mentioning of the classic "tales of the hook" -- it inspired me to write a short story called "Almost" involving many of those elements
• 1989 - 1996 - I submitted "Almost" to three short fiction horror markets. Rejections from all of them.
• 1996 to 2003 - "Almost" remains "in the drawer" as one of those stories I had written but didn't have a home for
•  2004 - I decide to include "Almost" in my self-published collection One Hand Screaming in the "Curt Cries in the Night" section featuring short-shorts (stories approx 1000 words and under) and poetry.
• 2010 - I record a free audio version of "Almost" for Episode 14 of my podcast "Prelude to a Scream"
• 2012 - I reprint "Almost" in the digital chapbook Bumps in the Night. This collection was described as "a collection of four short stories perfect for either sharing around a campfire or reading while on a vacation or sleepover."
• Bumps in the Night was, for the longest time, my most successfully selling digital book
• Dec 18, 2014 - A Permissions Editor from McGraw-Hill contacts me by email requesting the use of "Almost" in the www.ilit.ca digital collection provided a few small editorial changes are made to make the story more palatable for an education audience. I agree.
• Jan 5, 2015 - Paperwork/contract is signed for re-print publication of "Almost" 
• Feb 25, 2015 - Receive editorial notes on revisions to story as well as initial layout proofs.
• Mar 9, 2015 - Receive request to modify a few additional words based on sensitivity issues with the Newfoundland and Labrador ministry of education. Accepted changes.
• Mar 9, 2015 - Receive flat fee payment for "Almost" - $350
• Oct 20, 2015 - Published a free version of "Almost" with an ambient soundtrack on BookTrack
• Oct, 2015 - "Almost" appears in the free Wattpad version of One Hand Screaming. 

Three of the collections that "Almost" has appeared in

Revenues Earned from McGraw-Hill

$350.00 (Flat Fee - "Advance" for story being made available in digital catalog)
$75.00 (Royalty payment for printing of story in custom printed secondary school books)
$88.65 (Royalty payment for printing of story in custom printed secondary school books)
$29.24 (Royalty payment for printing of story in custom printed secondary school books)

Total rec'd so far: $542.89

The story "Almost" is approximately 870 words long. The initial flat fee payment of $350 means that payment for this story was approx $0.40/word. Standard professional rates for fiction run at about $0.05 to $0.06. I have been paid $0.25 when selling non-fiction to magazine markets. So getting $0.40 per word for a short story is quite a spectacular "win" for me.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that I continue to receive royalties each time the story is added to a new teacher's custom-printed collection for a class. Heck, those royalties alone currently mean the story has earned an additional $0.22/word.

In addition, with the recently received check and royalty statement, I can see that the payment is for the reproduction of about 225 copies of the book in which the story appears. Based on those numbers, I can safely assume that more than 1000 students have either read, or had access to read this story in the past couple of years.

Yes, I know that most high school students who encounter a story aren't going to remember it or the author. Even this book nerd balked at some of the texts high school teachers forced me to read. But I also remember, quite fondly, those particular short stories I read in high school that have stuck with me all these years later. So there is always a slim chance that, among the students encountering this story, that some might be intrigued enough to read some of my other work.

The total money received for this story doesn't include the funds received from having "Almost" published in One Hand Screaming nor having included in Bumps in the Night, nor its availability in the BundleRabbit's The Crimes, Capers and Rule-Breakers Bundle.

But, just to do some minimal math on that, Bumps in the Night sells for $2.99 of which I keep 70% which comes to about $2.09; since the collection has four stories in it, it means that every time that collection has sold ths share for "Almost" is about $0.52), and I can safely say that I have sold more than 1000 copies of Bumps in the Night.

Bumps in the Night revenues earned since 2012:  Approx $2,090. The "cut" for Almost = $522.50

So, even without adding in the cut from One Hand Screaming (the revenues on this go back to 2004 - I haven't always been good at tracking the income on print and ebook for this one) or the other places "Almost" has been included, such as the Crimes, Capers and Rule-Breakers Bundle, I can safely say that this story has earned me more than $1000.00 in revenue. That comes to about $1.15/word so far. And the earnings continue to tick along.

Not bad for a short story that I initially hadn't sold to a short fiction market (and for which a professional short story sale would have been about $43.50)

Interesting end note. I still have no idea how the "right person" at McGraw came to discover my short story "Almost" and thus want to acquire rights to it for the high school literary catalog, but I have to believe that it might have something to do with the story being so broadly available and accessible.

Various Links to Almost:

• Listen to "Almost" in my old Prelude to a Scream Podcast Episode 14.  (Free)
• Read "Almost" on BookTrack (Soundtracks for Books) complete with an atmospheric sound-track (Free)
• Read "Almost" on Wattpad. (Free)
• Buy One Hand Screaming (includes "Almost" and 15 other short stories and a handful of poems) at your favorite online eRetailer (available in ebook and print)
• Buy Bumps in the Night (includes "Almost" and 3 other short tales perfect for "around the campfire" reading) at your favourite ebook retailer (ebook format only)
• Buy The Crimes, Capers & Rule-Breakers Bundle (includes "Almost" and 19 other stories from great authors) from BundleRabbit or your favorite online eRetailer

Sadder Still To Watch It Die Than Never To Have Known It

I fondly remember those teenage years when I would put on a Rush album, sit there holding the album in my hands, marveling at the overall spectacular visual presentation of the art (usually by the genius Hugh Syme) while the music filled the air in my bedroom and stirred my heart, mind and imagination with spectacular new visions and tales that bounced around inside my head.

Yes, I'm talking about the large square cardboard object that held the vinyl disc inside a paper sleeve that sometimes even had the lyrics printed on it. Occasionally the album cover would open like a book -- 2112 by Rush, of course, did just that. And there was an incredible story inside.

But it didn't have to be one of the themed story albums that inspired my imagination and creativity. So many songs from this band set my imagination on fire and produced characters, settings and scenes from stories in my head. I imagined, for example, with the Rush album that was my proper and full introduction to the band, Grace Under Pressure, a theatrical/musical stage show about a post-apocalyptic world, and invented characters that would further connect the songs together in an overall story arc. Heck, I was even able to connect the songs from Signals together in a similar story arc about a young boy who rose up to become a world leader via following his passion for adapting technology into making the world a "better" place.

So when the opportunity to write a story for the anthology 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush (edited by Kevin J. Anderson and John McFetridge) came about, the biggest question was which of the hundreds of stories that this band had inspired in me would I write about.

I mean, after all, so many different songs from Rush inspired so many different amazing tales, images, characters and situations. And much of my writing had already contained elements from the band's music and lyrics that infused themselves between the cracks.

And despite the fact that I had already had a story published a year earlier that had been inspired by the song "Losing It" from the Rush album Signals, (a song that continues to bring tears to my eyes and which I got to see performed live during the band's R40 tour), I knew that song, one that had long been an intensely personal song for me, could inspire yet another story.

The previous story that had been inspired by "Losing It" was a dark humour piece I had published in Tesseracts Seventeen called "Hereinafter Referred to as the Ghost." I wanted to draw inspiration from the same song, but this time take a more heartfelt approach.

The song paints a quick portrait of a dancer who is no longer able to dance and a writer who can no longer write. After displaying the loss of their life passions, the chorus chimes in:

Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be
Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it

For you the blind who once could see
The bell tolls for thee . . .

 The song still brings shivers and a gentle tear to my eye. The music is as hauntingly beautiful as the portrait of the two artists who still hold the passion, yet whose bodies and minds are unable to continue on.

And so, in my story "Some Are Born to Save the World" I wanted to capture that same feeling in the guise of a super-hero at the end of his career. Bryan, the story's main character, has dedicated his life to employing his supernatural abilities for good as White Vector, and the tale captures his rise and fall in that life-long conviction.

It is a story that I am quite proud of, not just because of the tale that the song inspired, but because I know that the story has already reached a number of readers in a positive way. Here are some of the reviews I've already seen that mention the story:

"Leslie explores Bryan’s motivations and fears with a sure hand, and delineates the qualities, good and bad, that could drive a person to dress up and fight crime. Even in the last days of his decline, Bryan is able to rediscover a new purpose and a return of his dignity, and it’s a measure of Leslie’s skill that this change happens in a realistic, yet meaningful fashion." - Brandon Nolta, Tangent Online

"This one teared me up, but in a good way." - Erin S. Burns, Burns Through Her Bookshelf

"This was one of my favourites. The life, death and rebirth of the superhero White Vector. This perfect little gem captures exactly what being a superhero means. I wouldn’t change a thing. You just can’t beat a well-executed origin story." - Paul, Goodreads review

Me and Ron Collins (contributors to the anthology) making a Kevin J. Anderson sandwich

Kevin, Ron and I doing our best "Starman" pose (from 2113, not 2112)

While 2113 might be the only actual Rush-themed anthology that I have had a story published in, I know there will be more tales born out of inspiration from the band's more than 40 years of music.

Creepy Island of Dolls

I love this creepy story about an island in Japan where Ayano Tsukimi, a 64 year old artist has created more than 350 lifesized dolls to breathe new life into a 'ghost town' of an island.  The dolls are everywhere, posed as fisherman, sitting on bus stop benches, attending an abandoned school or even eerie silent weddings.

Dolls posed in an abandoned school - Source: VIMEO/FRITZ SCHUMANN

It reminds me my first visit to Halifax and discovering the scarecrows of Necum Teuch in a very small community just outside of town. I was doing a book signing for One Hand Screaming at the Chapters on the Saturday night and a Starbucks barista who was interested in horror suggested that I check out this nearby community.

Photo of Scarecrows of Necum Teuch taken by Bob Marchand, Sept 2002

I was so inspired (and freaked out) by the scarecrows, that when I got back to my hotel I stayed up all night writing the first draft of the story A Murder of Scarecrows. It's about a man (Wilson Kendrick) who wakes up in the middle of the night to discover an army of scarecrows is taking over his isolated east coast town.

The story (about 10,000 words) retails for $1.99 US and is available on Kobo, Kindle, Smashwords.

You can, of course, read the entire story for free if you use the following coupon code (good until the end of 2014) for the book's listing on Kobo. Simply throw it into your shopping cart, then use coupon code:  "starkshort" to apply a 100% OFF discount. (You don't need a Kobo device to read it - you can read it on your smartphone, tablet or computer using a free Kobo app)

Seriously - go ahead and download it for free. I don't mind. I'd prefer it, in fact.