Butterfly Moments

by

Scott D. Parker

How do you know when something you’ve written or planned out is good?

That’s my question for the weekend, folks. Thanks!

Okay, I’m kidding, but it’s an honest question, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For me, it has something to do with the butterflies in my stomach and the racing pulse.

This week, as I’ve been planning out my next book, I’m still doing the notecard method I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. My routine is up at 5:30 to write/prepare/think for an hour before I have to prep for the day job. In that time, with no music, TV, or anything other than my cup of coffee (in my awesome Halloween mug!), I visualize the story unfolding. 

With a schedule like this, I have already spent the last day idly mulling various aspects of the story. I’ll write them down in my comp book and then get started writing the notecards, one at a time. Oh, I’ll spread out a dozen or so to remind myself where I am in the story. 

There were a couple of days this week when, as I’m seeing the movie in my head, I can actually feel the butterflies in my stomach flying around. I start writing faster (and sloppier), trying to get down all the details. 

In other moments, I can literally feel my pulse pounding in my wrist and arms as I’m writing. I realized it’s not just the coffee, but the story that’s making me excited.

Will others find those scenes exciting? I hope so. It does depend on me writing compelling prose to suck in other readers, but I’m comforted knowing that if folks like the stuff I like and *I’m* digging these scenes, there’s a good chance others will, too.

Time will tell. 

But I love those butterfly moments.

Beau and serial killers

 

This week Beau looks at My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

ABOUT MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER

NOMINATED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE 
WINNER OF THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR MYSTERY/THRILLER
FINALIST FOR THE 2019 WOMEN’S PRIZE

Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood (bleach, bleach, and more bleach), the best way to move a body (wrap it in sheets like a mummy), and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.

Buy

Factual Conversation

And so tonight, despite the great importance of what transpires during the coming Presidential election, I think we are going to get something like this:

Thanks for the images and foresight, Jan Svankmajer.

Rob Pierce Chooses Blood

Rob Pierce at Amazon

BLOOD BY CHOICE, published September 18, is the third installment of the popular Uncle Dust series from Rob Pierce. Dustin, better known as Dust, is a tough guy who’s tough to figure out. Even with a pocketful of good intents he has a history of crime and violence, and a habit of ending up in trouble.

Trouble is close as two former girlfriends and a child are found dead and Dust is the only connection. He returns to the Bay area to find who committed the brutal murders and to exact payback. But when Rico, Dust’s former boss, and his violent hired gun Vollmer find out he is back in town, Dust’s objective becomes more complicated.

Rob Pierce paints beautiful pictures of the ugliest parts of life. Down in the gutter life. Known for his poetic but blunt and focused prose, Pierce is a favorite among many writers. All fans of hard-boiled noir will love this book as well as the other books in the series, UNCLE DUST and WITH THE RIGHT ENEMIES. Rob has a tremendous talent for building characters that are layered and detailed, and worlds that are clear enough to touch. Streets filled with gangs and criminals, bars and diners. And Uncle Dust is a realistic, edgy sort that always surprises.

“Rob Pierce is the squirrelly eyed barfly you see there at 2am when you stop in for a last round with your buddies. He's alone, surly, everything about him says stay the fuck away. And there are a thousand--and million--losers like him in every corner bar in every corner of the world. And you'd never think about him again. You'd grab a last shot, head out laughing with your pals, and be done. Except Rob Pierce possess an uncanny, visceral ability to write eloquently about that scene, and what happens afterwards to that guy, and the world he knows. And it's a sad beautiful violently poetic, tragically heartbreaking and serene world. It exists all around us. Few see it. Fewer can extrapolate its allure. Rob, ratfucker he is, can.”

Joe Clifford, Author, THE LAKEHOUSE, RAG AND BONE, JUNKIE LOVE

Rob Pierce is the former Editor-in-Chief of Swill Magazine and co-editor at Flash Fiction Offensive. He has also edited dozens of novels for All Due Respect and freelance, and has had stories published in numerous magazines. Rob has written other books, including TOMMY SHAKES, VERN IN THE HEAT, and the short story collection THE THINGS I LOVE WILL KILL ME YET. Rob has been nominated for a Derringer Award for short crime fiction.