Writing Update: October

Recently I've been interested and inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and have started two shorts in that vein. The first being a tale of a man who travels the world but comes back to his home town, founded by his father, to find the once amiable people cold and distant with a hollowness to them. He finds through the help of his ailing cousin new people have moved into the town and strange things have been happening to them.

The second, which I've only started yesterday, is a ghost story of sorts. A middle aged doctor moves in with his ailing father to help him through the end of his life when they are tormented by a spectral beast. It is still in the earliest stages.

I've also submitted a piece to an online Horror publisher called Solarcide. The piece I submitted is called A Man in the Snow, about a man who buys a painting of a Cossack standing in a snowy field but goes insane upon looking at it.

I hope to hear back from that soon.

With NaNoWriMo around the corner I've decided to work on The Abyss, which for the "contest" I've titled The Elevator, as always that is a working title.

My initial idea is taken from my 2013 novel Orbs, about an underground city where criminals mine the mountain to fuel the city above. It was just a set piece to start the fantasy novel but I've taken that setting and made something more substantial of it.

The Abyss is an underground prison essentially, where criminals are sent from the world above to die. This prison has existed for hundreds of years expanding and falling apart as the mountain is mined away. The world above no longer needs the energy from below so they work in vain but the prison is still run.

The only way into or out of the Abyss is a solitary elevator that transports supplies and new tenants down below. It is guarded by an electrical fence and armed guards. Multiple attempts have been made on the Elevator over the many years of the prison. All unsuccessful, all failed. Yet, with no other recourse the tenants try and try again.

With no sense of time this story has no year setting or world placing. It isn't earth per se but it doesn't have any fantastical elements. It is very dystopian, and sci-fi oriented.

Thematically it deals with isolation and the damage that does to the human psyche, depression, human resolve through terrible circumstances, the tyranny of authority and power struggles.

The story will take place through the eyes of a few different characters. A schizo who writes on his walls, an authority figure with a mechanical arm, and some others. I don't know where I want the story to end but I know it will have an attempt on the elevator. I assume I'll have it fail.

Aside from the horror pieces and my NaNoWriMo novel I've been "working" on my novel Dreams of Machines. I put it in quotes because I haven't touched that specifically for a month or so but It's still relevant.