Update! What's going on? Upcoming goodies!

Not usually a big fan of blog updates, because they tend to be useless to the reader, but I wanted to kinda give you guys an idea of goodies I'll have for you in the future! (Yay!) As a lot of you know from my twitter, I'm smack-dab in the middle of medical school and still trying to write a little if I can--which is why blogging and tweeting is slowing down a bit.

BUT I'm dedicated to this whole writing thing, and this is what's going down!

• Escaping the Dragon: I'm launching a new straight-to-blog fiction serial to celebrate genre diversity! It's about a dimension-traveler, a gal who lives life hopping between several stories and genres--from contemporary to fairytale to scifi to horror to superhero stories to women's fic to whatever else you can think of--while a world-hungry, violent, demented dragon haunts her shadow. She's using every strategy she can think of to kill the beast, but it threatens to infect and destroy every world she lives in--using her hyperactive mind. Keep an eye out over the coming months for the diary of her adventures.
• Medfacts for Writers: Your MC starving to death? Stabbed in the stomach? Shot in the back? How do you write that, anyway? How does it feel? What are the details that go with the everyday adventures of our protags, and how do you make your hospital scenes sound real--how do you make your doctors know the facts if you don't? Keep a look out for articles in the coming months that explain the fall-out, feelings, symptoms, and writing tips and tricks for the common lacerations, burns, and implosions our adventure MCs deal with. In the meantime, follow my twitter (@petr3pan) for medfacts both related and unrelated to writing. 
• Short stories: Keep an eye out in the coming year for...
• a magical realism about friends trapped underground trying to decide who to cannibalize;
• a vampire who refuses to drink blood--but does her extremist hunger strike go too far when she tries to stop other vampires, too?
• fairies who live in our coffee beans;
• a citizen of an organismal city, with living walls and floors, gets transferred to a nuclear post-holocaust zone and discovers his heartbeat is slowly killing him--but the girl he loves doesn't want him to change it!
• a surreal, zuihitsu-style taste of a zombie brain the moment before it's killed, a hopeful fairytale commentary both on addiction and cancer, available now from the Bleed horror anthology--all proceeds go to supporting cancer research for kids!
• Becoming Hero, about the superhero comic book character who shoots his author, is getting some good bites from agents, so maybe I'll have something to share on that front soon. I want to do a series of youtube readings for you all--complete with pictures and voices and fun!--once I'm allowed.
• And more! Yay!

So that's what's coming down the pipe for you guys and gals. 

Escaping the Dragon, entry 2 (fantasy blog serial)

September 29, 2012

Locale: Redacted SciFi World Name

Feeling so much better today. Marched right into the Monk Academy, grabbed a Leche Azul drink from the first robot I saw in the hallway, and waltzed into the children's holographic training room just like any other day, without even a flicker from my shadow. The GrandTeacher nodded as I walked in; I flipped him my casual two-finger salute and called to my student. Just an ordinary day visiting the academy, a day full of sweaty, sticky mats, smooth sweet zinging Azul in my mouth, and Arol's bad attitude. (Arol--that's my student's name) The trick to dimension-traveling, of course, is that no one knows you've ever been or lived anywhere else--when you travel it's like you put the whole world on pause. Of course, it's only on pause to you. Can't actually stop time, far as I know. Not in most dimensions, anyway. 'Course if you tell anyone about your dimension travels you sound like a demented day-dreamer. That is, until a drooling megalomaniac extremist finds out the truth, and uses your brain to open rifts in time and space so he can take over--

Yeah, that's happened before. He's dead now. Or trapped in a null dimension. I don't remember exactly.

I do remember that we saved this pretty world. I love the city of <redacted>. I love standing at the tip of the monks' spire, arms spread like a phoenix, toes clenching the orb atop the pole under me as I scream into the wind because I can. I remember my heart racing the first time I climbed that spire; I remember teetering as the silver bullet-shaped Civvies zipped by. They're my favorite surface-cars, Civvies, just because they're pretty--they're honestly not very sturdy, and I'd never bet <currency name redacted> on one in a race, but the back tail swoosh makes me think of sharks, the concave sides make me want to run my hand across the smooth metal, and the open roof reminds me of every time I've ridden in one, all decked out in shimmering blue ripples as the Senator's "legislative assistant." (Actually her bodyguard every time) All pretty with the make-up on my shining eyes. It was a translucent glittery veil covering my lower jaw then, not this respirator, not this heavy chest plate keeping me alive--no bad reputation to forget, over and over, while my friends remind me I'm "past that now."

"It was just a rough phase for all of us, with the Witch attacks and stuff. And your friend died! And it wasn't fair what happened to you. And you're okay now! And we love you." And so on and so forth. How I want to uphold that, to prove them right.

It's good to have someone believe in you.

Those days aren't exactly gone, but I'm not in town much, so I guess the Civvies make me nostalgic for the sweet days of childhood. Not that these days are bad: I pilot my cargo freighter crew all over the known--and unknown galaxy--and Arol travels with me, dragging all his tough-guy-ten-year-old issues along. Glad shapeshifters hit puberty around the same time human boys do, so at least I've got some time to prepare before THAT happens. In the meantime, our travels educate him well, and keep us both out of trouble in the capitol, which I'm sure makes GrandTeacher very happy.

So, the dragon. Yeah, I was s'posed to go to the GrandTeacher about that today. Arol wanted to go get wurms--think sushi, but chewier--and I wanted him to finish the flight simulator and meditation before we went back to Form II sword technique, and it's taken the whole day. But I've invited the GrandTeacher for dinner and sent Arol to bed--he's with my best pal, Onraka, my navigator and sometime boss, sometime partner in prankalicious crime--and yeah. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, it's been a good day. It's okay that I jump every time I see my shadow--long as I don't talk to it, right?

Read Page Three

Escaping the Dragon, Entry 1 (Low Fantasy Serial)

September 26, 2012

First post! Or Dear Diary...

My dragon caught up to me today. I'd slipped into a world where unicorns exist, a field of heather I know not where, and bathed in cool shade and lilting, dancing sunlight I chased after them. They only come willingly to maidens, and I'm married--no longer a maid--so I hid in the grass, stifling giggles as my muscles rippled and blood surged with adrenaline and mischief, itching to catch a ride the hard way. Like a fool, a happy fool--those horns aren't for show. But this is my raison d'etre!

But then the shadow ate the shade around me. My shadow reared up into a shape much bigger than me, with feathery decay in its wings and a stench that makes you tingle from your privates to your gut, like the odor alone is a violation--

I screamed, tried to pull back--

I really did!

Why didn't the stupid horn-horse run?

But the dragon ripped the unicorn in two. Snapped off its horn and shoved it through the creature's--

Sick bastard. My stomach's turning writing this. I hate it. I hate how it snuck up on me, didn't give me a chance to fight it. I hate how it's following me. These are my worlds! Let me be in my worlds! I'm a dimension-traveller for pleasure, not to be the carrier of some freakish parasitic death-vector!

I'm never going back to that field, wherever it was. It was too pretty for me. I realized today that I'm not winning anymore. The dragon's not something I can ignore. I may wake up tomorrow imprisoned in shadow, with scales creeping up my arms and legs and its thoughts penetrating every bit of my mind. I'm writing this down so that if it wins, if it gets my brain, if it devours one of your worlds through my hands--you'll know I tried. Whoever you are.

Tomorrow I'm waking up in a science fiction. There, maybe, one of my space-warrior friends can track down a cure I just haven't thought of yet.

Tonight I'm just trying not to travel in my dreams.

Oh God I think I'm scared of the dark...

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