Story Profile "The Visitor"

All novels, plays, film scripts and short stories usually start with something popping into the author’s mind on the lines of, “What if?” And after the first what-if, can come other what-ifs, as the story spins off, limited only by one’s imagination. By that process was “The Visitor” born. 

I sat one hot, muggy afternoon working laboriously on a film script. I felt old, tired, run down, a kind of shabby, sweaty failure with a love life on hold. I tried to lift myself out of the gloom by imagining: What if the door bell rang and some fabulously beautiful woman stood there who would somehow be mysteriously attracted to me? Her adoration would transform me into the person I’d always wanted to be - dashing, glamorous, witty and dazzlingly successful. 

But my first what-if thoughts quickly turned darker – writers rarely exist in Disney-Bambi fairy-tale land – and I started to plunge off the beaten track into a different and altogether darker scenario. Perhaps the visitor had a more sinister and significant mission. The story began to form in my brain, and I immediately saved the script I’d been working on in Final Draft, opened Word and began - ‘The Visitor’.

“He padded downstairs and became acutely aware that his armpits were wet. Damn it! What the hell was under-arm deodorant for if not to prevent that? Scraggy old shirt, jogging pants, scuffed and dirty sneakers. Let’s hope it wasn’t someone important, he thought, and then instantly: what important? Who important? Important what? Who? Who was important that he knew, and who important did he know who would call on him? There was – he realized with a stab of bitter self-knowledge – nothing remotely important in his life. Except the novel. 

He opened the door without checking through the spy-hole. A woman stood there. Enormous understatement; he was a writer after all, let that be rephrased. A goddess stood there. A drop-dead gorgeous, stunning, more-than-beautiful-exquisite woman standing there on his doorstep……for a second he couldn’t catch his breath.”

Author Interview: Stuart White

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME A WRITER?
Entranced as a child by reading books which conjured up other worlds and characters, I always wanted to create such characters and worlds myself in stories that would be very real to those who read them.

DO YOU GET INSPIRATION FROM ANY PARTICULAR SOURCE?
From life and the world around me and the people who inhabit it, and from what I’ve experienced of this beautiful, immensely varied and frequently bizarre planet we inhabit. Everyday events, snippets of news, historical incidents, overheard conversations and ideas that pop into one’s head, can all inspire a story.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR FIRST POCKET NOVEL.
To say too much about The Visitor would give away its eventual plot denouement, but the essential idea is that of our lives being suddenly and drastically changed by the arrival of a glamorous and expected stranger.

WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?
I believe it’s taking the idea, developing the plot, fleshing it out with real characters, then working out how to pace it.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?
The writing itself; taking the developed idea and plot and characters and turning them – hopefully – into a gripping, entertaining and hopefully satisfying and credible story.

DO YOU THINK WRITING SHORT STORIES (POCKET NOVELS) IS HARDER OR EASIER THAN NOVELS?
At one level it’s easier than the physical task of putting 85,000 words or sometimes more into a novel. But on another it’s actually more difficult. With a Pocket Novel of fewer than 8,000 words you’ve less time to establish story, plot and credible characters than you have in a novel. So you have to be both brief – but clever – in packing a great deal into a short space.

DO YOU THINK THERE ARE SPECIAL CHALLENGES FOR A UK AUTHOR TRYING TO CONNECT TO AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE?
Indeed. And that challenge is authenticity. Although in the UK we are exposed to American culture and history at an early age that’s not enough. I think you really have to have lived in America. I’m fortunate to have visited America extensively for the last forty years, and to have lived there for two periods totalling almost eleven years. Without that invaluable experience I don’t think I would dare try to write about Americans or America.

WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE AUTHORS AND GENRES?
I adore Graham Greene, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Andre Malraux, Camus, Sartre and Victor Hugo and frequently re-read their books. And you can’t beat Shakespeare for plot and language. I like the international event genre, something set in another place and another historical time.

ANY PARTICULAR GENRE YOU LIKE WRITING MORE THAN OTHERS?
I like the history genre, where one goes back in time to re-imagine the lives of individuals in great world events – World War Two or the Vietnam war(s) for example.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING WRITING QUIRKS?
Not really. I’m dull in that respect. All I need is a quiet room (or seat on a plane, or train), a computer or notebook. But I insist on reading my work out aloud (to myself), especially the dialogue, to make sure the whole is easy on the ear, and the latter can be read without awkwardness.

DO YOU HAVE ANY NON-WRITING PASSIONS?
Travel and history: I love far-flung places. I’ve lived in the US, in Hong Kong and the Persian gulf, and spent a great deal of time in France. In total I’ve visited about 68 countries either for work or pleasure. I read history voraciously, especially French military and political history, US history, and that of the 20th century including both world wars.

ANY WRITING ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU WISH TO SHARE?
I’m fortunate that my sixth novel The Valhalla Secret is to be published in the fall. I also have two non-fiction books and two ghosted novels to my credit. I’ve also had two screenplays optioned in Hollywood and – fingers crossed – one script, Crossmaglen, will go into production also in the fall.

Story Profile "Consequences"

I present to you Michelle Birbeck and "Consequences", her premier Pocket Novel.
Enjoy.



I’ve always loved horror, be it films or books, and most of my reading collection consists of horror novels, but until now I’d never written one. Then, three days before my busiest month of the year, I found Pocket Novels. The opportunity to start writing in the genre I loved most was just too tempting to resist.

So I sat at my computer and hammered away at the keys, writing Consequences. Three days later, and I raced down to the library so I could print it and give it to my husband to read. This is my first short story, having only written full length novels before, and it has certainly been an experience writing it.

Celia was looking forward to eating with Nick before he had to leave for work, and had expected the smell of freshly cooked pancakes to greet her when she stepped out of the bathroom. But by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was disappointed, having not even caught a whiff.

“Nick?” she called out, thinking that he might have been distracted. But she heard no reply, and no whispering of his voice to indicate he was on the phone.

Silently padding towards the kitchen, she listened hard for any signs of where Nick was, growing more concerned with each step. The kitchen was as empty as it sounded, with nothing seeming out of place. The island in the middle was clean, all the pancake ingredients sitting orderly on the top, waiting.

Rounding the island, Celia almost slipped, catching herself on the worktop. Splattered across the floor was an egg, its shell in a dozen pieces, its insides smeared across the gleaming tile. It looked to be the only one left, and you can’t have pancakes without eggs.

Believing that Nick must have left to pick up some more, Celia grabbed a couple of paper towels and began mopping up the mess. Could have cleaned it up, she thought. But the more she cleaned, wiping away at the gluey mass, the more she began to worry over the silent house. Surely Nick would have called to her to tell her that he was leaving? Or was that the bang that she had heard? Had Nick called to her before leaving, and all she had heard was the door closing?

Except, she couldn’t remember the door to their new home ever making that noise before. It was a heavy oak thing, but the hinges were sound and moved easily. There shouldn’t have been any reason for it to make the noise that Celia had heard.

Worry wormed its way into Celia, pausing her hand as she cleaned, filling her and eating away at her until her mind began to churn over every sound that she had heard. Had she heard the door? Had she just missed Nick’s call? Thoughts tumbled around in her mind, piling up on top of each other. So when she heard light footsteps crossing the kitchen floor, she let out a sigh of relief.

Standing, she said, “There you are! I was wondering where you’d…” she stopped abruptly as a heavy pan came down on her head, knocking her to the floor.

Author Interview: Michelle Birbeck

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME A WRITER?
I’ve been writing since I was in school, daft things about the wonderful things my friends and I could get up to in some other world. Then I got married, and life became about working and cooking and cleaning, and all the other things people have to do when they grow up. Four years ago, however, I had to leave work when my husband was diagnosed with a blood disorder. Suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands and not a lot to do with it. It was then that I took up writing again, met some wonderful friends, and started creating my own little worlds to have some fun with.

DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM A PARTICULAR SOURCE?
Just about everything inspires me, but especially walking and music. Walking, not because of the things I see and hear, but the time it gives me on my own to just think and let my mind wander. Music, because of the emotions it brings to certain scenes and pieces I’m writing.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR FIRST POCKET NOVEL.
As much as I love every character I’ve ever created, I also love to torment and torture them. Celia is no exception. After the best night of her life, she’s looking forward to a nice, ordinary day. Her first day as an engaged woman. Life, however, has other plans. She soon finds herself entangled in a deadly game, where the consequences for her every action could mean the end of her life.



WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO PUBLISH WITH POCKET NOVELS?
I blame everything on my wonderful friend Bec. She’s a fellow writer, and somehow persuaded me to join the madness that is NaNoWriMo. Next thing I know, I’m preparing for my second year of the challenge, and I stumble upon Pocket Novels. What was one more challenge? I’d already committed to writing 50,000 words in the month, and though adding an extra 5,000 or so before I started was a good way to pass the days before NaNo officially started. So I sat down, wrote Consequences, and sent it off. Now I’m getting all excited and showing Consequences’ cover to anyone and everyone who is willing to look. Even if I don’t know them.

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?
The end and the beginning. Whether it’s a short story or a full length novel, there is something about coming to the end of it that makes me want to keep going. It always makes me just a little bit sad to see a project finished.

At the same time, I find the start of whatever I’m working on just as hard. If I don’t like the opening, then I will go back over it again and again to get it write. I just can’t continue on if the opening doesn’t feel right to me.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?
Reading back through what I’ve written. Though there are many bits of writing that I like, this is one of my favourite. I love sitting down with the printed pages, reading them through, and laughing my behind off at what I’ve written. Those little lines that say one thing when I know the exact opposite is coming, and the little bits of foreshadowing I know are there. It makes me smile to see them in the writing and know that something completely different is coming.

DO YOU THINK THAT WRITING SHORT STORIES (POCKET NOVELS) IS HARDER OR EASIER THAN WRITING NOVELS?
Harder. For me, sticking to a word limit is the hardest part of writing short stories. Whether it’s a minimum or maximum limit, I’m not good with them. I’d rather be able to write for as long as needed to tell the story. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying writing short stories, I am, immensely. It is a wonderful challenge for me to complete a story, tie up all the loose ends, and not miss anything out within the limits.



DO YOU THINK THERE ARE ANY SPECIAL CHALLENGES FOR A UK AUTHOR TRYING TO CONNECT WITH AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE?

Two nations divided by a common language isn’t just a phrase. There are an unbelievable number of spelling and word differences between here and the US. If I want to write about someone going shopping, then I have to remember that trollies are what we call trams, and what I really want to carry the shopping around in is a cart. And that’s just an easy example! There’s a whole different culture between the two, as well, so it takes a lot of sifting through things to find out exactly what differences there are and get it right.

WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE AUTHORS/STORIES/GENRES?
Where do I start? There’s a whole room in my house dedicated to books. Shelves and shelves of the things, from dictionaries dating back to 1940, to every full length novel Richard Laymon ever wrote. He’s my favourite horror writer, and I have happily read every novel he wrote, several times. Of course, I do have a particular soft spot for J.R Ward, as well as far too many other authors to mention.



ANY PARTICULAR GENRES YOU LIKE WRITING MORE THAN OTHERS?
Horror and anything supernatural. If it goes bump in the night or isn’t your average human, then I’m there.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING WRITING QUIRKS?
I like to write with my eyes closed. I will happily sit in front of my computer, fingers on the keyboard, and close my eyes before I start writing. It helps me keep the pictures in my head a bit clearer, though it can freak people out when I’m out in public. The other advantage of being able to touch type is that I can carry on a conversation, whilst looking at the person I’m talking to, and continuing with writing. It also freaks people out, but honestly, it’s sort of fun. 

DO YOU HAVE ANY

NONWRITING PASSIONS?
Corsets, my bunny, and faeries. I’m a bit of an amateur dressmaker, and out of everything I ever made, corsets are the most fun. They might leave me unable to take a deep breath for the day whilst wearing one, but they are just so pretty!

My faerie collection is spread throughout the entire house. There isn’t a single room in my house that doesn’t have at least one faerie in it. Be that paintings and cross stitches, or ornaments and books, they are everywhere.

Lastly, my bunny. She’s a beautiful little thing called Poppy, who I inherited from a friend. I was given the choice between her or two brothers, Jimmy and Hendrix, but as soon as I heard she was called Poppy, I had to have her. She’s my distraction from the computer, and I sit on the living room floor for hours watching her hop around and play.



ANY WRITING ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU WANT TO SHARE?
As well as signing the contracts for Consequences to be published (which will be my very first writing publication) I also signed the contracts for my first full length novel earlier this year. Very proud moments for both of those.

ANYTHING YOU WANT TO ADD? ADVICE? WARNINGS? ANYTHING?
Thank you for reading, and enjoy!

Preview of "Ghost Story"

Ever wondered how an author writes a story? Would you like to read a few paragraphs from one of the books in the initial launch? Here it is.
Enjoy.

I blame Ghost Story on National Novel Writing Month.

Stick with me, my story gets better.

I met a lot of good friends through NaNoWriMo. We would have our local write-ins during November, where little writing actually got done. We would actually sit outside the coffee shop long after the place had closed down and the staff was gone, still talking about anything and everything that came to mind.

I was driving home after one such write-in, and the hour was far too late to begin with. It had rained earlier, and even in November it gets warm in Louisiana so the weather was perfect for fog. The shapes in the mist were shifting and then I almost had a heart attack -- Driving through a residential area, I thought one of the shapes climbing out of the drain was a person.

By the next write-in, I had three pages of Ghost Story written and the rest of the story plotted out by the time the others showed up. I asked the others if they wanted to read it when I was done....

The rest is, well, a ghost story.
~Gracie Musica


Sometimes people see things in the fog, in the dark, shifting shadows momentarily taking on the appearance of a person, of an animal. There's that moment of fright, that heart-out-of-your-chest jolt of pure terror that you're not alone, that you're up against something unknown and foreign and genuinely creepy. It's the moment that the best horror movies live for, the one that the truly frightening ones are able to repeat.

Then the shadows move, or someone pulls out a flashlight and the serial killer with a knife is a tree with a broken branch, the human-eating wolf is just a shrub that has grown in an odd way. The things that can't be explained away are forgotten, hidden, never spoken of again except when someone gets really drunk and blabs.

But sometimes that figure of a bear really is a bear. And appropriate actions against must be taken to defend yourself against them.

So the figures in the fog that looked suspiciously like people I ignored. It was almost midnight, and if anyone was out walking in the middle of the interstate fifty miles to the next little hole in the ground, they were probably drunk and deserved to be taken out of the gene pool.

To be honest, nothing tells a ghost to screw off like a hood ornament through their midsection.

So there I was, plowing down figures in the mist, goose bumps occasionally rising up on my arms. It was far too late – or too early, depending on how you looked at it – to be dealing with this. There was a good chance this was all the fevered dream of a tired, overactive imagination. Next place there was to stop, no matter how run-down, I'd stop for the night.

Author Interview: Gracelyn Musica

WHERE ARE YOU FROM AND DO YOU LIKE IT THERE?
I'm from Lake Charles, Louisiana. It's an interesting place to live -- too small-time to be big city, too big city to consider itself adequate.

DOES THE BAYOU STATE INSPIRE YOU AS AN AUTHOR?
Of course it does! The people and places here have long memories, for both the good and the bad. Everywhere you turn, someone has a story. And if they don't, it's rather easy to make one up.

FAVORITE AUTHOR? AND DO YOU DRAW INSPIRATION FROM HIM/HER?
I have quite a few favorite authors, and honestly it depends on what I'm into at the moment: Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl, Diana Wynne Jones, Gerald Morris, Douglas Adams, Rick Riordan, Kate Chopin. I like a lot of children's lit, so I'm really inspired by stories with strong main characters, or characters that don't start out all that strong but come into their own (Matilda, Coraline, Chrestomanci and Squire's Tales series, Ella Enchanted, Percy Jackson). I also love funny characters -- if a book makes me consistently laugh out loud as I read it (Dirk Gently, Good Omens, The Squire's Tales again), I'll usually pick up another book the author's written.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR FIRST POCKET NOVEL, "GHOST STORY"
I hate writing summaries, I generally suck at them, but here it goes. It's pretty much the main character, a psychic named Mia Richard, getting disgruntled at a spirit she takes on and being snarky at him. I know it doesn't sound completely thrilling, but if I tell you any more I'll have to charge you.

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?
Finding the discipline to take the time to write! Between work and the rest of life, it keeps getting harder and harder to find the time.

DO YOU THINK THAT WRITING SHORT STORIES IS HARDER OR EASIER THAN WRITING NOVELS?
Short stories and novels both have their pros and cons: for short stories, it's harder to confine myself to the word count while novels let me ramble on and on. However, it's easier to write short stories because I get the feeling of accomplishment when I finish a story.

ANY PARTICULAR GENRES YOU LIKE WRITING MORE THAN OTHERS?
I love fantasy and sci-fi, I always have. I find myself lately writing -- and enjoying reading -- romance stories.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING WRITING QUIRKS?
I do like to say dialogue out loud as I write it. I read a lot of my stuff out loud when I write, actually, to make sure the words flow naturally. One quirk I do have is that when I write by hand, I can't use fancy writing journals. I love them, but they're always so beautiful and I hate messing that up! I like to write on yellow legal pads when I do hand write first drafts. And I never erase if I'm using a pencil. Slows me down.

FOR YOU, WHERE DO YOUR STORIES COME FROM?
The truly terrifying recesses of my mind, and from things my friends say in conversation. That is meant to be as ominous as it sounds.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT WRITING "GHOST STORY"?
Honestly, it wasn't the writing part, although I did have a blast writing Mia and Bill's interactions. My absolute favorite thing about going through the experience of getting Ghost Story published was doing the photo shoot for the front cover with fellow writers Jason Foux and Tasha Gray. You know you have amazing friends when you can look at one and say, "I'd like to take a picture of your legs sticking out from under the trunk of my car for the cover of my Pocket Novel" and he replies with, "As long as you both stay away from the jack while I'm underneath it."

I am also rather proud of the back cover blurb. Like I said, I hate writing summaries.

ANYTHING YOU WANT TO ADD? ADVICE? WARNINGS? ANYTHING?
I want to thank all of you for reading, writing, and supporting Pocket Novels! We couldn't do this without you.

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