Red Moon of October

As is tradition, I am doing a horror story released once every weekend for the month of October. This one is a bit late, but is the first part of a three-parter to be finished the last weekend of October, rather than the separate short stories of last year’s style.

Enjoy!

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October 27, 2017

Day one of the weekend! Nick, Maddy, Cindy, Mai, and I are going to be with Mai’s grandmother in Upstate NY for the long stretch. Her name is Gramma Doli. She’s quite an intriguing person, really. When we first met her, she was dressed like someone who is still stuck a bit back in her ways. She isn’t really, I promise you. She bakes cookies, and pancakes, and everything. Nick was really appreciative. She even has her own smartphone, and uses it! I think that’s impressive for her age.

Is that mean? Maybe. But honestly, her face is almost completely comprised of wrinkles, so much that you can barely tell her eyes are even there. She’s really the nicest woman you’ll ever meet. She also has this gorgeous walking stick, something straight out of an old western. Knobby old thing with a hand-knitted knitted pattern on it, and it has a few beads and this this big black feather dangling from it. It’s a gorgeous thing, really – makes me want to get my own, even though I’m not Indian in any way. Maybe I’ll convince her to make me one.

It’s a quaint old place. It’s a small brick house, probably the third of the size of most houses, with only about six rooms. Three of them are bedrooms. She already had a fire going by the time we got here, and cookies, and a whole dinner ready. Nick was really appreciative, but that’s because the guy has no actual stomach. I swear he has a black hole in his torso. Anyway, It’s got a huge garden out front, a creek out back down the hill, and it’s surrounded by trees otherwise. I actually really appreciate that Mai took us out here, even though she hasn’t been here herself in about three years. I could spend the rest of my life here, honestly.

I take that back. It’ll have to be a lot warmer here before I consider that one. Probably not having a high in the forties and all the wind. Otherwise, I’d be down.

Everyone else is asleep, including Cindy, who was already well asleep by the time night came. I nearly fell asleep on the rocking chair in the living room myself. I almost got to see a deer while I was here too, which I don’t really get to see back at university. Gramma Doli closed the blinds on me. So now I’ve seen the shadow of a deer’s horns. At least, I think it was a deer. Either Gramma Doli is very afraid of deer, or it was something else, because she was shaking.

Maybe she shakes normally? I don’t know.

Will start homework tomorrow.

 

Oct 28, 2017

I was right. It was not a deer. I should have figured something was wrong with the house, I should not have let Mai take us here. I should have asked if there was something wrong with her family, I…

There really was no way I could have known. I thought Maddy was just tired. Everyone was tired. We drove for hours and hours and Maddy works three jobs. I didn’t think anything was wrong. I thought she was fine. We heard a scream and then the window was broken. There’s this massive crimson trail going down all the way to the creek. There’s deep scratches, like that of a massive dog, all across the inside of the room. There’s still a lock of red hair on the bed.

Grandma Dolli, she says she took something she shouldn’t have. It was the feather on the staff. I thought it was for decoration, but she took it from someone when she was a kid – I didn’t catch what she said, it wasn’t English. But I could tell that it was a very bad someone. I figure it must be the thing that’s here, hiding away in the trees.
She won’t let us out of the house.

 

Oct 29

Gramma Dolli set up traps late yesterday, sprinkled things around the house, drew symbols. She doesn’t want it to get in the house. I don’t want it in the house. No sane person wants this thing in the house.

Nobody walks outside of the house.

Nobody walks outside of the house.

Nobody walks outside of the-

We’ve been hearing screams from outside all day. Gramma Dolli says not to walk outside, that we can’t do anything anyway. She still shakes at night, and twitches every time someone screams.

She cries quietly when they stop. She knows why the screams stop, after all.

We don’t know how she’s lasted this many years without anyone to watch over her. Mai says she remembers getting earplugs and putting wood over the windows every Halloween. She thought it was just a strange Navajo tradition, and says Dolli used to talk of evil spirits. She had always assumed the strange screams were really coyotes. They are fairly common up here, and with earplugs in, even I admit it sounds like one sometimes.
I do not dare open the door.
Oct 30

We put wood against all the windows, and some furniture. Gramma Dolli says we have to wait it out, until the weekend is over. She says we cannot let anyone know what happened. We cannot even tell Maddy’s mother. The police will make up a story, she says.
But they know.

I heard it pacing outside. I heard its giant footsteps, walking back and forth. It nearly shook the house with its massive strides, just going around the house, over and over again. It won’t stop walking.
Occasionally, I hear something like Maddy’s voice. She begs me to let her in the house.

She’s hungry.

She’s tired.

She promises she won’t hurt me.

She doesn’t know what‘s going on.

She needs me to let her in.

She wants to go home.

She’s hungry.

She needs me to let her in.

Don’t I know it’s her?

She needs me to let her in!

I ignore her, even when she starts to cry. She screams for a few minutes. I keep quiet and wait for her to stop. I only sleep during the lulls.

 

O 31

I saw it.

One of the boards fell from the windows, and I saw it at the edge of the trees, standing, staring at the house. It was nearly as tall as the trees themselves. The legs were too long. The arms were too long. The fingers were too long. It was all too long. It was all very wrong. And I realized why I had thought it was a deer. Its face was a deer skull, still stained in a splotchy red from whatever it had been eating, with two huge, huge horns jutting from the top. It also had long hair falling down from the skull – long, red fiery hair.

Maddy’s hair.

 

She needs me to let her in.

 

The Fantasy Genre Returns

So apparently my blog is very popular over this past week due to a post of mine called “A Little List of Lies about Leprechauns”. It’s gotten over 400 views, something I considered impossible for any of my posts. So with this in mind, I’ve decided to discuss the thing that birthed such creatures in the first place: the fantasy genre.

It seems like the fantasy genre is finally making a comeback. With shows like Game of Thrones, the Shannara Chronicles, and the recent success of The Hobbit, the general public is eating up fantasy as intensively as the upper class is eating lobster. But where does the booming interest in fantasy come from?

A Very Sad Update.

So I think it’s well known that I hate killing off characters, but if I think it is needed in the plot, then I do so. For the final draft, I will get around to killing off a certain main character that I refused to kill off in the previous drafts. It just seemed ridiculous to me that they stayed alive, really. I only kept them alive because of how scared I was to kill them. It changes the plot of the second book slightly, but it’s important that it happens. Otherwise, it’s not realistic and the whole point of the story is not as compelling.

I REALLY hate myself for doing this. The fans will probably hate me just as much, but I can live with that.

To end this off nicely, for the final draft, I will finally do what I proudly proclaimed I would do initially. Now, half of the book is from the protagonist’s perspective and the other half is from the antagonist’s perspective.

Basically, what I’m telling you is that there is now no antagonist or protagonist. There are just warring sides. And really, that’s what I should have done all along.

Gabriel, out.

Dark Soldier Sound Snippet

First page of the first chapter is now in audible form! Big things are coming.

Don’t Be Anyone But Yourself.

Perhaps as someone who hasn’t published much except a few things online, I don’t have much of a say in this. However, it seems to me that the writers who excelled are the ones who didn’t try to be anyone but themselves. They may have been inspired by other authors, even borrowing some things from their style. In the end, their stories were still their own.

I tried so long to be like J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Dickens and C.S. Lewis. It was all a failure, really, because I wasn’t reaching my true potential. My potential is not reached in trying to be someone else. I am not someone else. I am me. I write very distinctly and definitely with intensive detail. While I may be inspired by other authors, I cannot allow their styles to overshadow my own.

Maybe I’m going too far with this, but I don’t think I could be more insulted than being told I am the next version of an old author. I do not want to be the next C.S. Lewis, although I love C.S. Lewis. I don’t mind it being said that I write like a certain person. I have someone who I write somewhat like. I am fully aware that we have similar styles, and we’re actually good friends.

(This would be the fantastic Caitlin E. Jones that I am referring to, by the way. She is currently writing Chimehour, an excellent Gaslamp Fantasy.)

Still, our stories and content are very different, and I think both would be happy to say that we’re different.

Don’t try to be the next J.R.R. Tolkien or Emily Dickenson or Ernest Hemingway or Robert Frost. They’re all dead. Just try to be you, and you’re already on your way to greatness.

They’re all dead. Just try to be you, and you’re already on your way to greatness.

Just try to be you, and you’re already on your way to greatness.

Bearded Writers Association!

I have a new Facebook page known as the “Bearded Writers Association”. Here’s the rules:

• Have a decent amount of facial hair
• Write or have written stuff

That’s it. It doesn’t have to be a book. It doesn’t even have to be in English. 

Step up, my bearded fellows! You too can be part of this epic community, standing as a proud bearded writer just as Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Charles Dickens did many years ago. 

Personal Writing Tips

Write the book you want to read. 

If there’s something you don’t like in books, make a point not to put it in yours. 

If there’s something you think modern books need more, put more of it in yours.

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t fit a specific genre completely. It doesn’t matter if absolutely nobody else likes it. Just write the thing. Write it for you, because you’ll regret it forever if you don’t.

Write what you want to write and screw what anyone else says. 

The Machine by Gabriel Penn

THE MACHINE IS BACK.

Well, really, it’s just a repost of the original story. But you all should read it anyway. It’s my favorite thing that I have ever written, and one day I want to do another one. Sequel or prequel, I will not say.

And, as always, please vote for me in the contest.

EDIT: Rape scenario in part two. Not intensively described but it is there. You will understand the reason it is there by the end of that chapter, I promise.

The Machine by Gabriel Penn

Magic Systems

blackwingedgabriel:

It’s 2am when I’m writing this and I can’t sleep, so allow me to tell you in detail about the magic system for my upcoming book Dark Soldier.

In Vaela, magic is a very tangible thing. The most common form of it is called crystal magic. In this form, one can actually buy magic by purchasing crystals. You can open up the locked magic inside by reciting phrases depending on the stone you buy. Also depending on the spell that you are in need of, magic can be very, very pricy… unless you are one of those crazy people who actually go to crystal sources to find them. That’s a bit of a risky operation, so most people don’t do that. Instead, the poor are just far less protected than the rich. Due to the fact that the rich are just generally more powerful, especially having powerful magical stones, there’s not much the poor can actually do about it. The stones are often color coded to define their specific trait. For instance, an air-based stone will be colored differently from a fire-based or protection-based stone. The more tumbled, polished and/or purified the stone, the more powerful it is. Thus, the bigger price for the bigger amount of work involved.

Now, there is another way to get magic in Vaela. This form is called beast magic. It means that the user does not actually need crystals to perform magic, but instead has magical energy inside their soul. It is generally more powerful than crystal magic. This type of magic is not very common, and those who have it won’t often use it due to its energy-draining nature. A very powerful spell could make the user lose consciousness, go into a coma-like state, or occasionally, depending on the power of the magic, even kill the magic user after they say the spell. This is not a coveted ability, especially since beast magic users have a hard time using crystal magic.

That’s all I’ll give away for now! Thanks for reading this long spiel and let me know what you think! Also, tell me the magic systems for your fantasy novel! I love to hear this kind of thing.