Book Gift Guide is featuring my Reality Check!

Posted on 2013/11/15 by ecgarrison

Reality Check Cover

My book was featured on BookGiftGuide.com

Do you like Ready Player One? BookGiftGuide.com says you’d love my Reality Check!

Of course, I think it’d make a great gift for any science fiction reader. Just sayin’.

Posted in Hydra Publications, promotion, Publishing, self | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Book Gift Guide is featuring my Reality Check!

Whiteboard Wednesday – A scene from Restless Spirit

Posted on 2013/11/13 by ecgarrison

Where Everybody Knows Your NameTiny gargoyles share a shot glass of something at Heath’s Brewery.

Posted in Fun Stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Whiteboard Wednesday – A scene from Restless Spirit

NaNoWriMo Restless Spirit peek #2 – Weirdness

Posted on 2013/11/12 by ecgarrison

A little bit of Chapter 11, in which “booth babe” Skye figures out Minnie is missing. Frannie helps Skye by sending her “ghost” off to search. Fantasy Free Form employee Phil (on loan from RJ Sullivan’s Virtual Blue)  is confused and annoyed.

“Frannie?”

“Hi Skye,” she said, eyes half-lidded.

“That’s still you?”

“Yeah. Some of me.”

“What’s it like?”

She shrugged. “Like napping, kinda. Only awake.”

I shivered. She reminded me a little too much of Ernie’s zombie thralls. “Do you need to sit down?”

She shook her head.

Phil handed me more postcards. “Come on, if you’re not leaving, make yourself useful.”

He did a double take when he saw Frannie standing there in her dumb state. “What’s with her?”

I didn’t feel like weirding Phil out even further, so I punted. “Uh, long story. Call it astral projection, if you like. Means I can stick around a bit while she finds where Minnie went.

Phil glared at me. “Just how much weird do you think I can swallow?”

“I am not kidding you. Look, I’m handing out postcards, looking sexy. ‘Cause otherwise, I’d run off to go look for Minnie myself.”

Posted in Blog, Fun Stuff, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

NaNoWriMo peek – freshly written tiny random excerpt from Restless Spirit

Posted on 2013/11/09 by ecgarrison

skye-cropChapter 10, in which Skye wakes up hung over after a night of overindulgence and mishaps:

Still cocooned in blankets, I rolled away from the light and sounds and fell off the other side of the bed with a whump, face first into the scratchy hotel carpet. I heard someone whimper, and realized it was me.

I struggled with my linen restraints, but only ended up rolling to the nearby wall. My arms pinned, legs bundled together like a mermaid’s tail, all I only managed pathetic flopping around. I could ask Frannie for help, but my pride forbade that. My pride and I wormed around on the floor, dragging blankets and sheets off the bed with me as I propped myself against the wall and pushed with my feet.

Frannie cavorted around the room, arms and legs flailing, red hair thrown this way and that. I had a weird impression that it was a tribal ritual or some terrible spell meant to raise the dead. She sang along with the music blaring from her phone. Then she noticed me. She laughed. “Oh Skye, I should take a picture.”

“Do it and die,” I said, giving her my worst skunk eye.

Posted in Blog, Fun Stuff, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on NaNoWriMo peek – freshly written tiny random excerpt from Restless Spirit

LISTEN to Troll or Derby – now an audiobook!

Posted on 2013/11/08 by ecgarrison
Troll or Derby Audiobook!

Troll or Derby is now an AUDIOBOOK on Audible.com!

We wants it, O yes, we wants it, precioussss… Ahem. My friend, the fabulous Red Tash, has created an audiobook version of her dark fairy tale (or fairy dark tale). I have the book and the ebook, but I want to LISTEN to this story.

If you like audiobooks for listening to on your iPod or phone, maybe for knocking around in the last days of fall, or maybe you want something to listen to as you drive over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house later this month… if you’re a fan of fantasy or fairy tales or rollerderby or all of the above, you’ll want this preciousssss recording too.

And unlike Gollum’s precious… we can BOTH have it, O yes we can…

Posted in friends, promotion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on LISTEN to Troll or Derby – now an audiobook!

NaNoWriMo Whiteboard Wednesday #1 – Restless Spirit cover

Posted on 2013/11/06 by ecgarrison
Skye battles the Chained Lord at Big Con

Skye battles the Chained Lord at Big Con

I am writing the first sequel to Blue Spirit this November, called Restless Spirit. In this book, Skye is on a mission to find dark magics and stop them from being used. Only there’s more than one supernatural force at work at Big Con, and Skye is caught in the middle.

I have a confession: this was not drawn on a whiteboard. (gasp) It was drawn on paper with whiteboard markers as part of the kickoff festivities for NaNoWriMo here in Indianapolis (Nindy). No, that is NOT bacon to the left, it’s a Big Con banner that’s been torn down. Skye is NOT on top of a cake, it’s a sort of dais/stage that she’s standing on to give herself a little height on the giant troll.

Having a cover concept for a novel ahead of time is a great way to have a vision to work toward, even if you trash it and go with something else later. Having that cover image makes it all feel more real, that finishing is inevitable. It’s a terrible waste of writing time, though I admit I’ve burned a day in past NaNo months to make a cover. But I did that on a day I was burned out, so it helped recharge my creative batteries.

Restless Spirit current wordcount: 13,469

Posted in Blog, Fun Stuff, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on NaNoWriMo Whiteboard Wednesday #1 – Restless Spirit cover

NaNoWriMo update: already off the rails!

Posted on 2013/11/02 by ecgarrison

justminnieI posted earlier about Pantsing vs Planning and I came out in the middle, doing minimal planning but mostly leaving the story to grow organically. I learned in the wee hours of November 1st, at the Nindy Nanoween party that this method is also called “lampposts in the fog” or something similar… still looking for something online to back that up.  The ideas is that you have key events that have to happen (like Doctor Who’s “fixed points in time”) dreamed up, but you let the story and characters take you wherever else they want to go on their way to those lights in the fog. I called it laying down rails for the story to run on.

And this year, for National Novel Writing Month, I made a listing of potential chapter ideas. I started out following it, but so many other ideas have bloomed since then as I wrote, that the story’s already jumping those rails. I’m not trashing the plan, but I am letting the muse lead me along.

And I love it. I’ve gone from feeling so-so about NaNo and this novel to being very excited, since I no longer know for sure where it’s going to end up, or what’s going to happen along the way.

It’s going to be awesome.

5022 words so far.

If you’re doing NaNo too, how’s it going? Planning, pantsing, or otherwise?

Posted in Blog, Writing | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Jailhouse Spook: my true ghost story

Posted on 2013/11/01 by ecgarrison

Halloween 2013 ParticipantI have a guest blog post at Long and Short Reviews “LASR” today, please go take a look! It is a true story from my days in the Indiana Ghost Trackers with my wife.

It’s experiences like this that led me to writing Four ’til Late and the other Road Ghosts novels.

Posted in Blog, Guest, Publishing, Seventh Star Press | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Jailhouse Spook: my true ghost story

My 10 Scariest Ghost Hunts – Happy Halloween!

Posted on 2013/10/31 by ecgarrison

ghost-TV(The following originally appeared on the Flipside of Julianne blog, and I’m reposting it here for Halloween)

Brett, the main character of Four ’til Late, is an amateur ghost hunter, and that’s no coincidence. My wife and I spent 7 years ghost hunting nearly every month as a part of the Indiana Ghost Trackers and other groups and on our own. I got to be known as a sort of gadget specialist, and often served as the group’s skeptic. I earned a reputation as “the Simon Cowell of ghost photography”.

We visited quite a few haunted locations in our time, and so I’ve been asked by my gracious hostess to talk about the 10 scariest places I’ve been!

#10 – Rotary Jail  Museum, Crawfordsville, IN

This place is amazing. The jail cells are literally part of a gigantic horizontal wheel, two floors tall. The whole thing rotates on its axis like a sandwich vending machine, except instead of serving up tasty sandwiches, it rotated to expose different cells to put prisoners in, and take them out.
Continue reading →

Posted in Blog, Fun Stuff, Personal | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

It’s not you, it’s NaNo – a warning to my friends.

Posted on 2013/10/31 by ecgarrison

Dear friends,

I’ve set this to post just before midnight [edit: except it went out at noon instead, oh well…] Most of my friends know this already, but just to be sure…

I’m doing National Novel Writing Month for the 6th time. That means I will be spending nearly all my spare time hammering out ~2000 words a day on a new novel, with a goal of at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Except I know it’s not 30 days. I can’t really write much on Thanksgiving, followed by no time to write during the Starbase Indy convention. I also have Fridays where I’ll only have lunchtime to write (Friday night is date night with Amy – extra important because even she is not going to see me all that much during November).  So that means only 23 days where I’ll be writing, turning up the pressure to get closer to 2200 words per day.

So I’m going to be turning down just about every invitation to hang out and socialize during November. Sorry, the “no” isn’t personal. I do this craziness for me, and it’s a little selfish, I admit. But I need this, it’s very important to me. We can get together in December, instead, okay?

Love,

Me

Posted in Blog, Personal | Tagged , , | Comments Off on It’s not you, it’s NaNo – a warning to my friends.