Interrogation of AntipodeanSF & Beam Me Up Podcast

Another flash fiction story of mine has made it out into the wild. 'Interrogation 8' can be found in AntipodeanSF #131 (April 2009):

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20090505-0003/www.antisf.com.au/the-stories/interrogation-8-by-jamie-richter.html

Speaking of which, Paul over at Beam Me Up, which is a sci-fi podcast that originates from station WRFR in Maine, has expressed interest in reading Interrogation on air as part of the program in the coming weeks.

Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter Does AntipodeanSF

Wow it's been over three months since my last post. Not a lot of writing has been done in that time - instead I've spent most of this time adjusting to some pretty big changes in my life. All these changes have been positive.

As promised, my latest short story to be published is Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter in issue #130 of AntipodeanSF. This site has some great local writers and it is an honour to have a few of my stories appear on the site over the coming months.

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20090405-0000/www.antisf.com.au/the-stories/jack-austin-xeno-hunter.html

The link will probably only last a month, but I think the stories get archived to the National Archive...

A New Year and a New Story

It's 2009, and a new story of mine called 'Interrogation #8' should be appearing in AntipodeanSF mid-year. I'll keep you posted.

Payload And Jack Austin Go Antipodean

Growing up, I used to think that poetry was, well, for individuals of questionable sexuality. Things have changed over the last decade and a half. Now that I'm a little older, and hopefully a little wiser, I've come to realise the power of a great poem - and the challenge of crafting a great poem.

My first published poem, 'Payload', a sci-fi themed work revolving around a female Coalition Recon Marine on guard duty of an alien artefact, should be hitting AntipodeanSF #125 mid-October.

Additionally, 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter' will also be appearing in an upcoming edition of AntipodeanSF - tentatively scheduled for Issue #130 in mid-March 2009.

More details when the publish dates get a little closer.

Damn You J.J. Abrams!

A few posts back I mentioned an old screenplay (teleplay) called 'The Mind's Eye' that I had written for an Australian show called Two Twisted... well, I have a funny story about it. Well, it's not that funny, it's damn annoying actually.

I've been working on and off during the last year to adapt 'The Mind's Eye' into a novella - it's taken close to one hundred hours and is somewhere in excess of 15000 words. It's pretty damn close to finished, and it's taken a lot of time and effort. Now as the title of this post alludes to, the bit where J.J. Abrams comes in is the fact that I was flicking through channels the other night and spotted something that looked very familiar. The show was called Fringe, and the scene that looked familiar involved a scientist extracting a death image from the retina of a cadaver using a scientific process that was almost exactly like what I described in my story The Mind's Eye... right down to the multiple flashes into the eye to build an image matrix.

Now I'll admit that the whole idea of extracting the last image a person witnessed before death is not a new idea, but the way it appeared on television looked so much like the technique I had imagined, and put onto the page. It's safe to say that I got pretty annoyed. Thinking you have a fresh idea in this day and age is pretty naive, but to see it realised in front of your eyes is another story.

The questions that now spring to mind are: Will I ever get my work published after this went to air? As soon as someone reads it, are they going to think I lifted it straight from Fringe? Was all that work for nothing?

If you know of anyone that was working for Bryan Brown’s production company, and they are now working on Fringe as a writer, let me know!

Back From The Dead

I've returned... ready and raring to go.

I know that it's been close to four months since my last post, but that doesn't mean that I've been avoiding writing. Truth be told, I haven't written a lot of fiction in that time, but I have been doing something semi-productive. Anyone that knows me well enough would know that I love film - I've always wanted to start a film news/review website, and after a chance encounter with an old mate from university who now runs a few of his own websites, he got me interested in taking the plunge.

I present you with www.youseenthat.com!

Okay, it's pretty basic at this stage, but I plan on working on it some more when I can get some time off. Writing a full SQL/PHP driven website from scratch isn't a five minute job. Just don't expect to find your typical, well-structured reviews on YouSeenThat.com - my reviews are very much stream-of-consciousness. Whatever comes into my head as I tap away on the keyboard. I try to adhere to basic review structure where possible, but they tend to go off the rails at times. I guess that's the fun of writing for your own website... I can write whatever the hell I like.

Anyway, enough of the website plug - I've actually put the website on the backburner for the last few weeks. Instead of writing reviews, I've really tried getting back into reading and writing fiction. At the moment I'm slowly getting through Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood', and I must admit that old Clive has really got me excited about writing short fiction again. When I say 'slowly', I like to read a story in one hit, so it's a matter of finding an uninterrupted hour to polish off one of Clive's amazing stories.

I'd kill for even half the talent of a guy like Barker. Well, kill again.

At the moment I've been getting back into the rhythm of 'the craft' with some flash fiction - under 1000 words in length, for the uninitiated. I've mainly been going through my work folder, pouring over the innumerable half-realised plot ideas salvaged from incomplete stories.

One story that eventuated, Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter, was spawned from two simple lines of dialogue that popped into my head about a year ago. I ended-up jotting the lines down and saving them in a Word document on the off chance I'd ever use them.

The two lines of dialogue:

“What happened to your last cameraman?”
“Screw that. What the hell happened to your last host?”

Going under the original title of 'ZMB-TV' (Zombie TV), the story was initially going to be about a fast-talking anti-hero who finds himself followed around by a reality TV crew during a zombie apocalypse. Instead, the story ended-up going in more of a Sci-Fi direction. While the opening lines of dialogue are similar, only more fleshed out, the central character is now an Australian alien hunter who is forced to tolerate a reality TV crew in order to pay off a series of lawsuits after a his chain of intergalactic petting zoos went belly-up after an incident with a kid and a carnivorous midget pony... the only problem is that old Jack has a hard time keeping his TV crews alive long enough to get an episode in the can.

I limited myself to 500 words for 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter', mainly to ease myself back in - plus I suspect that the story would have lost a little of its punch if it were any longer than, say, 1000 words.

And how goes the novel? I finished the second draft before I went away to Europe, and I haven't really looked at it since. If I were to be completely honest, I'm going to keep it locked away in the cupboard for another few months, and then look at doing a third draft - I'd like to concentrate on improving my writing before taking another stab at what is a very lengthy and time intensive process. There's nothing wrong with the story structure, the original screenplay was very tight and a great guide for writing a fast-paced novel, I’m just still working on developing my own writing style. I suspect that more reading and writing is the key.

Anyway, I hope that the later half of 2008 will be a little more productive than the half that preceded it. My aim is to double that Publication List of mine by this time next year.

Still Alive

I'm still alive: back from a vacation in Europe and ready to wage war against the blank page, or more accurately, the blank word processor screen. More soon.

New (Old) Story

I took a few unplanned days off of work recently, mainly to get my head in order. It's surprising how happy and productive I become when I don't have to go to work - I actually got to finish an old short story that I started almost two years ago. It was actually the second short story I started, just after Ringtone.

The Passenger is the first of possibly several short speculative fiction stories set in a modern day Australia, all based around genetic engineering, civil war and the fight for identity. Each story gives a little more insight into the Australia of the future, and is told from a slightly different perspective. My plan is to try and get The Passenger published in a reputable Australian speculative fiction magazine - at least that's my plan. Maybe it won't make it past the editors, but either way, hopefully you will get to read The Passenger sometime soon.

As far as the novel goes, it is still progressing slowly.

Things In The Back Of The Drawer

I’ve decided to put the first draft of my novel 'in the drawer', so to speak, and leave it there for a few weeks. I don't want to see it, and I certainly don't even what to think about it. Sure, I might lose three or four weeks of writing time, however, the time to clear my mind and come back to the story with a new perspective is definitely worth it in the long run.

Fortunately, when I did put my novel back 'in the drawer', I happened to stumble across an old story I wrote about a year ago called 'The Mind's Eye'. The story was originally an idea adapted for the Australia TV series 'Two Twisted', back when they were advertising for new material for a second season. Ultimately the ‘Mind’s Eye’ was rejected along with a couple of other stories I submitted - I'm not entirely sure which is more disheartening, having your story rejected, or having it rejected from a shithouse TV series like Two Twisted; probably the latter.

I sat down and reread the story - it may be considered a little clichéd in part, but I certainly enjoyed it enough to spend some the last week belting-out some of the dints in the bodywork. It's a novelette by definition, running at over 10000 words at the moment, however, I hope to find a market for the story. Novelette's are always a little awkward - too large for your average short story magazine, too small to be taken seriously as anything else.

Probably need another couple of weeks on and off to perfect the story, then I’ll look at magazines for publishing.

Stephen King's 'On Writing'

I recently picked-up an audio book copy of Stephen King's book called 'On Writing'... and I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in creative writing. Probably would have made a good Christmas gift, oh well, there's always next year. Reading the physical book is great, but listening to King tell his story, in his own words, was definitely worth the price of admission.

Essentially the book is half autobiographical, half instructional guide on improving your creative writing. The autobiographic chapters, while heavy-going at times, gives the reader a good understanding of where King has come from as a writer, and provides us with an insight into the life experiences that have inspired King's stories. The second half of the book, King's guide 'on writing' was equally as interesting. This is the reason you are reading the book in the first place. I wouldn't say there was a great deal of information in those chapters that one could call 'revolutionary', a fact that King himself admits frequently. However, these chapters are full of bullshit-free, commonsense, instinctual tips and observations from a guy who has spent the last forty years as a writer. He must be doing something right, surely?

One of the most interesting ideas presented by King was the concept that you shouldn't have to plot out the story - simply put the characters in a situation or environment, and allow their own instincts/characteristics guide the story. Simple but thought-provoking.

I’d recommend the book to any creative writers out there – after finishing it, I felt recharged and enthusiastic about my writing. I believe that I’m certainly on the right track; however, there is a long road ahead. Will I succeed? Will I fail? Who knows? I’m done asking those questions. I don't have those answers. Regardless, Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ had given me a new appreciation of the journey.

Stephen King's 'On Writing', available at Amazon.

Novel Progress: Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas (for yesterday) and a happy New Year... and all that bullshit. We don't celebrate Christmas all that vigorously in my household, and given some of personal factors, including the illness of family members - 2007 has been especially low-key. Pretty much nonexistent. Just another day.

I decided to use Christmas Day to continue belting the first draft of the novel into shape - Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day are more or less the only real holidays I will get off over the next few months. The occasional public holiday here and there, but that's about it. Sure, I do get a couple of weekends to myself per month, where I don't get dragged into my real job on a Saturday or Sunday, but with so many things to do in the space of a normal weekend, my writing seems to get somewhat neglected.

Anyway. No real progress on any short fiction since my last update. I did start toying with an old fantasy/sci-fi/post apocalyptic short story for a few hours, however I decided to leave it on the backburner for the moment and concentrate on the novel.

The novel is around the 45000 word mark at the moment - it's on the cusp of being a long novella, or a short novel. With additional editing, fleshing-out ideas and spot-welding, it will definitely fall on the side of a short novel. 50000 - 60000 words as an estimate. Word count isn't all that important, as long as you have used as many words as necessary to tell your story.

'Ringtone' On Your Mobile

My first published story, Ringtone, has recently been given a second life... coming at you on your mobile phone.

Matt Ward from Skive Magazine has been working on an associated site called skiveflash. For those interested, skiveflash is a flash (250-1,000 words) fiction site designed for users of mobile phones. Despite the fact that the site is still fairly new, I couldn't pass-up the chance to have people read Ringtone on their mobile phones. The irony.

Hopefully they aren't driving when they read it.

Glass shards at the ready.

Novel Progress: Initial Adaptation Complete

Last night I completed the initial adaptation of my novel "UC", taking it from screenplay to something resembling a novel. Only took a few months, and that was the easy part. Now I have to go back over the entire thing and craft something that resembles a first draft. Actually more like a second draft, technically. Time to take some of the clunky movie dialogue and pad it out a little, make it a little more human... all without losing the fast-paced nature of the story. This part is going to be even more difficult than getting the initial adaptation on paper.

Oh well. Another three or four months and let's see what I can turn out.

Running On Empty

With the publication of Hemodialysis, I've realised that I'm completely out of stories for publication. I've got a few in half-arsed stages of completion, but I can't really see them going anywhere, and I'll probably scrap these ones completely and start fresh. Most of my concentration at the moment is going into the novel, codenamed "UC"... which at one point was seemingly dead in the water; however it has since picked-up momentum in the last couple of weeks. I'm currently around page 80 of 113 pages of the adaptation, and definitely on schedule to have this initial portion done by the end of December.

I've got some interesting ideas for Sci-fi themed stories, which is a market that I have been skirting around and flirting with for the last few months. Generally my work is fairly mainstream; however sci-fi and speculative fiction is definitely the next step.

I've never been interested in inter-galactic warfare, space ships or the like. My sort of speculative fiction and sci-fi will generally have a very Australian, and somewhat satirical flavour. I guess we will have to wait and see.

Skive Magazine Undergoes 'Hemodialysis'

'Hemodialysis' has been accepted for publication and should be appearing in the December 2007 issue of Skive Magazine. Skive is published quarterly and contains 'short stories from some of the world's most exciting authors.'

While I certainly don't consider myself one of 'the world's most exciting authors', I am certainly pleased to have my story appear in Skive. The last few months have been fairly uneventful from a creative standpoint, and this is definately a shot in the arm.

On a side note, 'Re-entry' doesn't appear to have been accepted into the Zombie Anthology that closed all the way back in May. Not really surprised, it was a bit of a rush job, and upon re-reading it, there were a hell of a lot of typos and such. Not my best work by a long shot. Plus upon doing some digging around, it looks like a lot of stories had already been accepted as early as December last year. To be honest I'm pleased in a way that it won't be seeing the light of day just yet. The overall story was really great (in my mind) and the 7000 word limitation and rushed writing could have never done it justice. Essentially the story captured a twenty minute period at the climax of the story, and none of the great build-up to it. I'll leave the idea on the backburner and I might get back around to it as a novel... assuming I ever finish UC that is.

One Bullet

My micro-fiction story 'One Bullet' finally appeared on Flashshot:

ONE BULLET
By Jamie Richter

“Salutations. You have been randomly selected to participate in One Bullet,” the loudspeaker crackled.

Emily opened her eyes. She was still groggy from the sedatives.

“The rules are simple. Sixteen contestants, each issued with one biometrically-encoded handgun, chambered with one bullet.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

Emily examined the weapon that sat on the floor of her cell. The tiny red light on the handgrip indicated that the gun was locked; it awaited Emily’s delicate, biometrically-matched grip to arm it. Armed was good.

“The Prize? Tonight’s sole survivor will be granted oblivion!”

The rusted cell door slid open.

“Happy hunting!”

Writing micro-fiction isn't as easy as it sounds... one hundred words isn't really a lot to play with. Give it a shot!

Novel Progress

Just to keep you up to speed on my attempt to write my novel, and so I can keep focused, I have included a little progress box on the menu down the right-hand side. So far I'm about 20% through my initial adaptation of the screenplay, and I am aiming to have this at least done by December. I've adapted about 24 out of 113 pages of the screenplay - about 11,000 words in all. Given that this is just the first pass, the word count isn't too bad. Obviously a writer should be aiming to tell a story in as many words as it takes to tell that story. Err, yeah that made sense. Generally it is recommended that a novel be somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000 words... but I'm not too worried about this target at the moment, I'm sure the story will fit comfortably within that predefined limit. Getting the initial story on paper is the first step. Getting the thing published is at the very end of the Yellow Brick Road - just before I bitchslap the Wizard.

September Status Report

I've decided to put aside some of the short fiction I've been working on over the last couple of months and I'm going to take a crack at working on a novel. Every man and their dog thinks that they have a novel in them, but I'm under no allusions that this will be a long, unforgiving journey. Hell, I may not ever get around to finishing it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I'm somewhat of a realist as you would well be aware.

Fortunately I don't have to worry too much about sitting down and plotting-out the storylines and characters - I already have it all on paper. It's been sitting here for a few years. I've decided that my first attempt at a novel will involve a story adapted from my first (and favourite) screenplay. Yes, I'm taking the unusual approach of adapting a screenplay into a novel. Usually it's the other way around, a writer struggling to condense a 50000+ word novel into a 120 minute screenplay. Stripping away important character development etc. The great thing about turning a screenplay into a novel is the amount of freedom that you have to develop what were essentially two-dimensional characters, and unresolved plotlines that may have initially been stripped in a screenplay. It's actually quite liberating as a writer.

I won't give away too much of the initial plot, but I'd like to think of it as 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and 'Snatch' meets Chopper Read. It's essentially a dark crime comedy set in the world of bungling Australian criminals. A world where a criminals mouth is often faster than their brain... or their trigger finger.

Given the nature of the story, I've decided that I am going to retain a lot of the snappy, disjointed nature of the screenplay in the style of the novel. Play a little with the conventions of your standard story. A novel for the A.D.D. generation.

With my current work commitments, I'm probably adapting about ten pages of the screenplay each week. If I were to extrapolate that across the entire length of the screenplay, I'm probably looking at around ten to twelve weeks to get a very rough draft together. A *very* rough draft. Once that's down, I'm probably going to have to go through it and rewrite the majority of the rough draft. Ever so much fun. I’m aiming at hopefully get the rough draft done by the end of the year… with an improved rewrite by about March next year - although I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch. I may just get sick of it before then.

I'll let you know how my progress goes - good or bad. In the meantime I'm still waiting on some sort of response regarding 'Re-entry' and 'hemodialysis'. Part of me wants 'Re-entry' to get rejected... I'd love to tackle that story as my next novel (assuming the first one ever gets off the ground).

Hopefully I can get a few more short fiction stories published before the end of the year.

Rock out with your cock out!

Twisted Tongue

As promised, Twisted Tongue Issue #7 is finally out. I received official word that the magazine had came out this morning as I got ready for work, so I haven't had much time to peruse it (aside from my own work), but it definitely looks to be packed with a lot of interesting writing and illustrations. Over 100 pages of fiction, interviews, poetry in fact. Worth a read for sure.

'The Cloud' can be found on page 23. 'Supreme Hunter' on page 98.

Website: Twisted Tongue

Twisted Tongue #7 'Coming Soon'

Just a quick post to say that the August issue of Twisted Tongue should be coming out in the next few days. As you can probably guess, two of my stories, 'Supreme Hunter' and 'The Cloud' will be featured in this issue, and I'll post news additional on this as soon as I find out the exact details.

PS. Greetings to any new visitors that may have found their way to my blog after viewing mini-biography in Twisted Tongue.