Are You Ready to be Hagged?

Is the lady living next door to you really the gorgeous sweetheart she appears to be? Is she 28 or 128? Welcome to the secret world of Hags, where people are not who they at first appear to be.

In this horror-thriller set in Naperville, Illinois, you’ll meet a demon masquerading as a faerie, complete with gossamer wings. You’ll greet Bob, the diminutive owner of Bob’s Coffee Emporium. And there’s Peevy O’Malley, the 300-pound barista who hates all men because of Micah Probert. Be sure to say hello to Peevy’s evil sister, Janice O’Malley. And no visit to Hags is complete without introducing yourself to Lionel Langdon, the principal of the local high school who twists new meaning from the expression, “Your principal is your pal, young lady.” And I'll introduce you to… but why spoil the tale?

As with all my stories, you’ll meet a group of characters slightly askew of normal, including a few who are too weird and evil to mention in a blog post. And you’ll find some of their innocent victims, the young ladies of Naperville, Illinois. Leave the lights on because this horror story is better than caffeine.

Hags launches October 8, 2012 with a five-day free giveaway of the Kindle version. Mark your calendar for October 8th through October 12th to download your free copy. And if you just can’t wait, you can download a pre-launch copy right now for only $2.99 by clicking here.

Here’s another novel idea…
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Announcing Hags

This Present Darkness meets The Blair Witch Project in Paul R. Lloyd's new novel Hags. After 15 years in prison for a rape he says he didn’t commit, Micah Probert returns to his hometown of Naperville, Illinois, where he starts his first day by discovering a human-sized faerie flitting about in his backyard, a dead body in the parking lot behind his house, a pioneer ghost in his kitchen, and a local coffee shop that serves the darkest roast this side of Hades. It’s in this coffee shop that his ex-girlfriend from high school now works and where he runs into her sister, the victim in Micah’s long ago rape trial.

But the real action begins when Micah learns that the beautiful young woman living next door to his fixer-upper, the girl he has just started dating, may actually be a witch as wicked as any from medieval times. Mix in a few dark secrets, a serial killer or two, a hot romance or two, and this novel takes you deep into the heart of horror in the suburbs. Will Micah heed the call to spiritual warfare with the evil forces mounted against him in time to save the city of Naperville? And will he discover the secret identity of the second hag who is out to destroy him?

To celebrate the launch of Hags, I’m planning to give away the Kindle version for free for five days. This five-day giveaway is my way to share my writing with as many readers as possible. I’m hoping you’ll enjoy reading Hags so much that you’ll help me spread the word about my new novel. As I’m sure you’re aware, this type of BUZZ is essential to generating interest, book reviews and sales. I should have the date finalized for the giveaway so I can announce it in the next day or two. If I don’t run into any glitches, the five-day giveaway will begin next Monday, October 8, 2012.

In the meantime, if you haven’t read my first indie novel, Fulfillment, it’s still available. You may click here for the Amazon Kindle version or click here for the paperback. Fulfillment is the Christmas story as pure suspense, thriller, horror, mystery, romance and spiritual warfare. Satan is out to stop the first Christmas by attacking Mary, a pregnant teenager with moxie and connections in high places. Keep your lights on.

Here’s another novel idea…
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Writing prompt results

And here's my contribution. Hey, better late than never. This being my first post here, I had to get some thing set up before I could join the fun.


The were-girl turned back into a normal businesswoman, only to look around quizzingly. This wasn't the first time Lydia turned into a monster in the middle of an important business meeting. This is the first time everyone stuck around afterwards, though.


“Go on,” Sullivan, the associate vice president, said.


“What, are you kidding?” Lydia demanded. “I spent the last hour rampaging across the office. I assumed you all would have run away screaming and called the cops. Or at least fired me.”


“But not one else has the quarterly numbers,” Sullivan explained.


“I savaged Jenkins!” she screamed, pointing at a pile of blood and shredded business casualwear.


“Jenkins the intern,” Sullivan corrected.

This week's writing prompt--results

The Phaserheads not only jointly blog, but also meet as a writer support group twice monthly. We talk about writing-related topics from the mechanics of good writing to marketing a book, we report on what we've been writing (sometimes sharing a short excerpt with the group) ... and we do short writing exercises using prompts: a concept, a phrase, or a sentence is announced and a time set, usually between 3 and 5 minutes. Our rule is that everyone has to write but you don't have to share what you wrote if you came up blank or just don't like what you did.

The need to go with the first thing that pops into your head and write like crazy for a couple of minutes leads to some very creative writing.The fun part of doing this in a group, though, is hearing what everyone else wrote. As this blog's name reflects, we have writers of mystery-suspense stories, others who do fantasy and one whose chosen genre is science fiction. We have poets, at least one writer who nearly always goes for the totally offbeat humor, and one who often ends up with a romantic (more or less) triangle in the story. It gets really fun when the group members write against style, choosing an approach more characteristic of one of the other writers.


So, on to one of this week's prompts: "The weregirl turned back into"

Image courtesy of cscarlett15 via deviantart.com

I came up with the following:


The weregirl turned back into the bar. “Y’all go on to the party,” she called to the group, “don’t wait for me. I’ll catch up with you when I can.”

To a chorus of ok's and see-ya's, she waved and took off down the street at a quick walk. She turned at the first cross street, then dashed into the park and toward the museum. This last-minute stuff was getting old—and she really liked this bunch of friends. She’d been teased about being a Cinderella tonight and had to have the reference explained –that she was always running away around midnight. But if she didn’t make it back to the portrait gallery before the moon set …

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this. We all played with some aspect of what a weregirl was when she wasn't a girl. The idea of having her be something other than an animal, or a male human, intrigued me. The art museum seemed to hold such promise, but she would still need to be something at least quasi-living for the "were" characteristic to take hold. I'm not sure whether she would have turned out to be a plant in the portrait gallery, or maybe a wooden sculpture, with wood that somehow retained a quasi-life aspect.

OK, group--who's next?

The zen of writing

Writing is an odd sort of occupation. Writers want to communicate with others—but not necessarily have any direct contact with their readers. The writing itself, generally intended to be shared with at least dozens of readers and possibly hundreds or thousands, usually gets created in solitude and if not in silence, then with a sound-background of the writer’s choice.

Writers differ widely in their approach to writing, too. Some swear by organization: not just outline, but detailed character descriptions, and action mapped out to the level of chapter-by-chapter, at least. Others just pick up pen, pencil or keyboard and start writing, with or without any idea where this essay or story might end up. After all, one can always fix inconsistencies and plot omissions in the edit stage.

I fall somewhere between these two extremes myself. I always have some idea what I want to say in a short essay, and I started my few novel-length works (2 more-or-less done, one more barely started) with an idea about the identity and personality of at least two main characters, the opening problem and a goal or endpoint. But I leave myself plenty of leeway, starting out with vast uncharted areas within the general territory I intend to cover.

Partly, this reflects a rebellion against early how-to-write training in school, which insisted that an essay must be fully outlined, supporting ideas and all. That never worked well for me. As I’d begin to write from my outline, I’d always find myself departing from my outline: thinking of better examples to support my argument or a better order in which to present them. So I got in the habit of writing my essay or report first, working directly from my notes. Once the paper had been written, I could go back and make an outline that reflected what I actually wrote, thus keeping my teachers happy.

But an approach to the writing process that I can only describe as a sort of zen forms other big reason for leaving myself wiggle room when I start to write. While I can understand the rationale behind mapping everything out beforehand—even admire those for whom such a technique works—I can only admire from afar. For me, ignorance of exactly how the story will unfold between opening and goal allows me to come to the story’s details fresh. And somehow I help the loose ends stitch themselves together by the end.

I’d probably have better control over length if I preplanned more, though.

Susan shares more thoughts about the process of writing on her blog about writing, http://startingyourstory.wordpress.com/.

Literary Fiction is... well... literary

Authors of literary fiction focus on the art of writing as the main interest of the author and the reader. Literary artists write novels that have plot, but they are more concerned about creating a sort of onion effect. The more you read the story, the more you discover. As you peel away one layer of story, say the plot, you find a second story built around the theme. Read the story once for what happens. Go back to ask why. Another reading gets you thinking about how the author created such a beautiful, cohesive whole. You may enjoy the way the author developed the character as the story moved forward. The main character goes through a big change of some sort. Literary stories may or may not have a beginning, a middle and an end.

One example of an artistic onion layer can be found in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Read the novel a few times and you begin to see that all the characters equate to bulls or cows of one sort or another. That’s why the author spends so much time telling you about bullfighting and the different types of bulls. Gaining that understanding from a single reading is difficult. Knowing it helps to make the story come together for you.

Meanwhile… back to suspense/thriller novels
Serious writers of suspense/thriller novels or other genre fiction will tell you they do the same thing literary novelists do in creating character depth and layers of artistic merit. And they will point out that most literary authors actually write genre fiction. For example, Charles Dickens, if not the first author of a murder mystery novel, was certainly an early adapter of the genre. So what’s the difference for you as a reader?

The first rule is to find novels you enjoy. Read other novels written by the same author or authors. If you enjoy the classics, you may enjoy modern authors who pride themselves in writing “literary” novels. If you enjoy murder mysteries, read them.

The point is simply this: the better authors invest themselves in developing the literary quality of their work as well as entertaining you with a good plot. “Literary” authors generally are not concerned as much about plot as they are character and literary tradition. They mainly write for themselves as artists. They trust that literary readers will find their work.

Genre authors emphasize telling a compelling story within their genre to entertain their readers. Their stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. They know how to develop a character so you can empathize with her. They know how to make you weep or laugh. They are not afraid to kill off a character, but also recognize there are consequences to their actions. They know how to make you want to turn the page, something literary authors are less concerned about.

Read literary novels when you enjoy an author who plays with the language, writes poetically and provides insights into philosophy and why the world works the way it does. Read genre fiction when you want to enjoy a good tale well told.

And speaking of tales worth telling, please consider my suspense/thriller novel Fulfillment, click here for Amazon or click here for paperback.

Here’s another novel idea…
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based on true events

Hovering bedside, the demon started out in a playful mood.  He toyed with ideas of escape from imminent danger, entangled relationships from disparate social circles, and added a smattering of spooks and creeps where appropriate.  His specialty was not so much in blood and gore, but illusions of deformity, illness and the like.  He liked to throw in possessed children, depending on the dreamer.

This time she happened to be an insouciant waste of time.  She was one of those.  One of those who like to write on the side.  On the side, top, bottom and middle of their daily lives, they were unassuming emotional vampires, sucking the beauty and chaos out from any situation, as if they couldn't cope without arranging words to process the things that did and didn't happen.  Getting chills in her bed, she secretly lavished in the scared feeling.  Instead of waking up, forcing happy thoughts, or crying out to God, she seemed to be trying to actually prolong the nightmare.  Could this be this right?  Along the edges of his consciousness, the demon began to suspect that she was working out descriptions of characters and setting from what she saw.  Infuriated that the writer was using even this opportunity to cultivate plot fodder for scenes of her next book, shook her awake with a loud shriek and dissipated out of the room.
The demon returned with new strategies, worse images.  But the woman in her fear, welcomed it and would wake up to begin writing furiously before the details tapered out.  This of course challenged the demon even more....

Sometimes our muses aren't friendly.  I was thinking, that writers make muses out of anything, seizing upon facts, thoughts, events, all the time with a persistent ulterior motive: in part, to exploit them as material for their writing. Whether it be the experience of a nightmare, a loved one's financial or health struggles, romances of all kinds, etc., we are opportunists of all we encounter whether or not we like it.

What do you think?  Are we vampires?

You Noir What You Noir

In this video I talk about my dark, mysterious "noir" writing style. Enjoy.

To learn more about my suspense novel Fulfillment, click here for Amazon or click here for paperback.

For more on this topic, please visit my author blog by clicking here.

Here’s another novel idea…
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Reading Suspense/Thriller Fiction

Writers choose a genre of fiction that works best for them. I focus on suspense/thriller while mixing in elements of other genres. This video covers the types of fiction I blend together to make a story.

To learn more about my suspense novel Fulfillment, click here for Amazon or click here for paperback.

For more on this topic, please visit my author blog by clicking here.

Here’s another novel idea…
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New Series: How to Read Suspense

I'm launching a new series of short videos and follow-up commentary for readers of suspense or thriller stories.

Is this you?
You find a book you like. You read it. You enjoy it. You put it on a shelf, toss it, give it away, return it to the library or wrap the fish in it, but your rarely read the novel more than once. Why not? You can learn a lot by reading a novel for the second or third time. For example, you enjoyed the book so much, you couldn't put it down. Ever wonder how the author kept your attention?

Starting with plot and character
The first topic in my series on reading suspense fiction is character-driven fiction versus plot-driven fiction. What's the difference? Why should you care as a reader? Enjoy the video.

Learn more by clicking here. And be sure to share with your friends by clicking on the social media buttons below.