Day 6 of 10 Days of Excerpts -- Youth in a Bottle

Okay, I know I said something last week about 10 excerpts in 10 days, but you and I both know I meant 10 excerpts in 12 days, right? I mean, that is what I meant to say...really...

And today's excerpt is from my short story, Youth in a Bottle, which for those of us with a few years on us is an intriguing idea. It was for the main character of this story, aging burned-out rock star Grace Smith, until she found out what it was the bottle contained.

You can still get Youth in a Bottle (the story, not the youth), and the rest of my collection THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES, for just 99 cents, for download to your Kindle here or for download to your Nook here.

And now, for today's excerpt:

*****

...Tonight none of that mattered. Grace felt more alive, more like a singer, more like a rock star than she had in nearly a decade. The announcer quieted the crowd, called her name and Grace sprinted onto the stage.

She dove in to her opening set, deep voice bellowing the lyrics at a fevered pitch. Diehard Grace Smith fans made up the audience. They had come despite the vitriolic reviews of recent shows, and soon were screaming for more, their fists pumping in time with the music. After ninety minutes, the appointed time for the concert to end, Grace was nowhere near finished. She turned to her band.

“All right boys, that's enough of a warm-up, now let's rock the house,” she called into the mic. The band members glanced at one another, surprise on their faces. So far the daily script for the tour had been play hard for ninety minutes, sometimes less, then get off the stage and the rest of the night belonged to them.

“I said, let’s ROCK THE HOUSE,” Grace screamed. The audience joined in, their cries for more echoing off the walls, the roof. The band members kicked in on their respective instruments. For another ninety minutes they played, the audience cheered, and Grace was in heaven. She forgot about being old, about being tired, about the small but now-rabid audience. For those ninety minutes it was just her and the music, melding together. Finally Grace’s agent, who doubled as her road manager, got her attention from the wings. He was pointing at his watch – if the band and crew didn’t clear the building by midnight he’d have to cough up another day’s rent.

She sang two more songs, then exited the stage.

“Damn, that felt incredible,” she screamed as her bandmates followed into the wings. Grace hugged each one of them – another surprise, since she had barely acknowledged their existence during the tour. “Great show guys.” She jogged to her dressing room, shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, eyes closed, listening to cheers filtering from the concert hall.

“Quite a show.”

Her eyes snapped open.

“How did you ... you weren’t here a second ago,” she said.

“I was, I chose not to be seen. I must compliment you, Ms. Smith, on a stirring performance.” He bowed slightly. “I see you tried the elixir.”

“Yeah, I tried it, so what?” She walked across the room, brushing roughly against the man.

“Come, come, Ms. Smith, I would think you’d be ecstatic with the results.”

“Results? I drank it, nothing happened. I suppose you’ll get a good laugh out of that, making me believe I could find youth again in that damn little bottle.”

“That’s exactly what you found, Ms. Smith. Youth. At least a few hours of that most precious commodity.”

“Like hell. That stuff is about as worthless as—”

“You sang tonight like you were thirty. You even look younger."

Despite her cynicism Grace twirled to the mirror. She leaned close. Sweat glistened on her skin, but even through the perspiration she could see the lines on her face where a tad shallower, the circles under her eyes a bit faded. She faced the stranger.

“What did you give me?”

“Oh, I’m not sure you really want to know just yet. Later, once you begin to truly understand what it means to grow young.”

“What did you give me?”

The man smiled, but remained silent.

Grace maintained a hard stare. As a young rock singer she had been naturally defiant whenever a manger or bar owner tried to bully her. She felt the same emotion tonight, another feeling she had not known in years.

“I said tell me.”

More silence.

“I got all night,” Grace said.

“As you wish. The vial was filled with blood. Human blood.”

The defiance left her body like helium escaping a popped balloon. Grace grabbed her belly, turned to the dressing table and leaned against it for support. Her stomach heaved. Vomit filled her mouth before spilling onto the tabletop. ...

*****
Read the rest of Youth in a Bottle (the story, not the youth), and my collection THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES, for just 99 cents, for download to your Kindle here or for download to your Nook here.

A visit to the Hot 100 New Release list during a special month

One of the challenges indie writers face is that we have to do a bit of everything. Not only do we write – the core of our endeavors – but we have to do or oversee the editing, cover design, formatting, publishing and marketing.

Sometimes, in trying to juggle so much a few things escape our notice. That has happened to me twice this week.

First, the big news. I published my novella and short story collection, THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES, around the first of May. I've been doing a bit of marketing, finding a few websites and blogs willing to do reviews for me and never even noticed, until this morning, that the collection made the Amazon Hot 100 New Releases in the Science Fiction Anthologies category.

How long it's been there, or how high it actually climbed, I don't know. Like I said, I just discovered it today. But it's there!

And that seems appropriate, given the second bit of information I discovered this morning. May is National Short Story Month, so what better time for you to pick up THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES.

The collection starts with a somewhat shortish novella, then dives right in to short story after short story. All of the work is a little – okay, maybe a lot – on the dark side of life, and hopefully a little bit fun, too. I know I enjoyed writing most of the stories.

So, if you want to read a Hot New Release and maybe fill a hankering to indulge in reading a few short stories, this is the perfect time to pick up THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES. Just click on the title of the collection to order for your Kindle, or click right here for your Nook.

Mid-August portends Halloween Horror?

Beware the ides of August.

Okay, that doesn’t quite have the ring of Shakespeare’s Ides of March, but we are at the mid-point of August. Around where I live the weather’s already begun changing a bit – it’s still hot during the days, but the heat isn’t as oppressive and the nights are cool enough to turn off the AC and open the windows.

Soon, the lazy warmth of August will give way to September, with the first fall-like days on tap, and then we’ll have the cooler, crisper days of October. Before we know it, the ridges and mountains around where I live will erupt in vibrant reds and yellows and oranges, then the leaves will fade and the streets will fill with little ones – and maybe a few big ones – dressed as ghosts and goblins, demons and Mitt Romneys.

While my writing of late has centered more around murder and suspense, romance tinged with a bit of eroticism, I was born into the literary world as a horror writer, learning much of my craft while writing about bad things that often are not of this world.

Well, that’s not entirely true. What I strove for was to tell what I hoped were compelling stories, with ever-improving writing, with horror as the backdrop in which the story exists. In other words, I didn’t write “go boo” stuff for the sake of being scary. I wanted to write good, strong stories that took place within a world where things weren’t exactly as they should be.

I think that training helped me learn to create life-like characters, with situations built around human drama, rather than relying on the clichés and tropes of a given genre.

Despite having moved away from horror in much of my writing, this time of year I begin to think about autumn and cool breezy nights and scary stories.

And I still have the urge to write horror. Which brings me to what I think is an exciting announcement.

Nine of my horror tales will be published in a weekly series called NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR. Beginning on Sunday, Sept. 2, and for the next eight Sundays afterward, one of my horror stories will be published on Amazon.com and available for download to your Kindle.

So get ready for a few chills and thrills – cannibalism, a killer with an obsessive compulsion (and a victim with a dark secret), an ancient home in search of new blood, a small town that strangely is devoid of any ghost stories, some religious zealots who’ve lost perspective – all of that and more will be available in my series NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR.

More information coming, including a full list of stories and maybe a couple of sample covers, this Sunday, Aug. 19.

See you then.

John Peters is the author of the paranormal romantic thriller CLAIMING MOON, available for download to your Kindle now. Don’t have a Kindle? Get a free Kindle app for your PC, Mac, or mobile device right here.

Say it ain't so: Mr. Techno Phobe now reading a Kindle?

A few years back I came across a few accounts here and there about those little devices called e-readers. Most of you will know them by their brand name, the two most popular of which are the Kindle and the Nook.

I found a few folks online who used them, then I did a bit of research on the new-fangled things. My initial thoughts were that these might be neat little toys for computer-nerds, but they would never really catch on with the general public. Come on, who wants to be reading novels on a little screen? Who wants a supposed book that's nothing more than electrodes on a thin electronic device? Virtually no one is going to give up on the feel of a real book in their hands.

Then I joined the 21^st century and got a cell phone. I had it for a couple of years before giving it up this winter for various reasons (cost and simply wanting to be left alone at times chief among those reasons). However, over the time I had the cell phone I found myself using it for more than simple telephone service. I gradually came to rely on the thing for monitoring e-mail. Then I started checking my Facebook account periodically. 

Next thing you know I was using it to...gasp...read! Whenever I was stuck somewhere, maybe waiting to pick up one of my kids, or in an office waiting on an appointment, I'd whip it out and check the latest stories on ESPN.com or Fox Sports. If a major news event broke and I wasn't around a computer or television, the old cell phone would do.

So much for not wanting to read on a little screen, huh?

Still, that's a far cry from reading a book on an electronic device, right? Besides, while my family isn't exactly destitute, with five kids in the household we watch our pennies. A Kindle was simply a luxury we couldn't afford.

Just before Christmas I entered a contest being sponsored by writer Michelle Garren Flye and the prize was the winner's choice of a Kindle or Nook. Guess what? I won! I received the Kindle about six weeks ago. In the time since my wife has probably downloaded and read 50 or more novels (she is a voracious reader). My youngest, a 10-year-old, loves downloading and playing games, and she does a bit of reading on the Kindle (there is, however, a dearth of good, modern children's work in e-books.) I've even come to enjoy reading on the Kindle. Since owning it, I've read about four paperback novels, two novels on Kindle, and two non-fiction books on Kindle (I'm a sloooooow reader with a short attention span).

The other night my wife was lying in bed, reading as she normally does before drifting off to sleep. She put down this big old honkin' hardback and picked up the Kindle, then looked at me. “Reading in bed with this is just so much easier,” she said, holding up the Kindle. Then she picked up the hardback. “Reading this big thing is just so awkward.”

So much for the feel of a real book in your hands.

It's no secret, or at least I try not to make it a secret, that I'm now turning my attention from attempting to break into traditional publishing (paperback and hardbacks) to e-publishing. Sure, I'll continue to submit short stories to small press publications, but even many of those have gone to pdf and online formats.

For my novels and other longer works I'm going with e-pub. While I've been kicking around the idea for nearly a year, it wasn't until holding a Kindle in my own little hands, seeing how convenient and easy it is to use, that I've been able to fully grasp onto the idea.

Truth be told, despite my earlier objections (and suffering from a bit of techno-phobia), as a reader I think I now prefer the Kindle to paper.

P.S. Despite my burgeoning love affair with e-readers, I still like paper, so don't forget you can be entered into a drawing for a free trade paperback copy of either the Stoker-nominated Horror Library Vol. 3 anthology by Cutting Block Press or the recently released Night Terrors 2 published by Blood Bound Books. I have a story in each collection, along side some great writers. Remember, in order to enter into the drawing you must join my blog as a follower AND leave a comment on one of my blogs this month. You have to do BOTH. If you've joined the site prior to the start of this contest, simply leaving a comment will enter you.