Within the hard, shrivelled cocoon of his lifeless body, Beau
slept. The silken cover of his shelf bed stirred softly in the breeze
from the opening door.
Suddenly a shrill whistle pierced the quiet. Skilful hands removed
Beau from his silken cover and placed him in a warm glasshouse. He
was immersed in a scalding liquid. After the initial shock warmth
eased his inner soul out of his ugly body. His true colour flooded
the liquid and his seed blossomed into a lovely flower.
Feeling alive he floated up to the top of his new glass house.
He heard a soft voice announce, “Here is my Beau-Tea”.
Story by Sue of Connects.live Checkout Sues blog for her, almost, daily musings. Thanks for the tale, Sue!
A couple of Fearful things today. First, I believe I’ve responded to everyone who emailed me about a collaboration. If I haven’t replied to you yet, or if you want to collaborate with me, drop me an email to fears@gmx.co.uk and poke me.
I know some of you are waiting on images and audio. I got most of it done yesterday and I’ll be spamming out emails to everyone later today.
Second thingy. I mentioned about a month ago Brexit had finally taken its toll on the companies I’d been getting regular work from. I’ve helped two of them close this last week. Distributing the websites, social media accounts, hosting and all promotional media too other companies buying up the broken-up brands. I’ll be helping to dismantle the company I worked at for 17 years later in the year too. Boy howdy, do I hate Brexit and both major political parties in the UK, right now.
The upshot is I’ll have a lot of time on my hands and work to replace. If anyone needs to hire an artist/designer/writer/vocal bloke for anything, from blog logo design too growling the audio for a YouTube video, poke me. Happy to work for individuals, brands, companies and packs of mutton-chop wearing rockabilly lobsters.
Copper watched the
road they’d come from. Keeping an eye out for the creature that had
been watching them. Iron continued fiddling under the dash of the
car. An occasional whir and grind came from the engine.
It reminded Copper of the one car she’d driven. It would always stop working during the hottest hours of the afternoon. She couldn’t stand that Ford Siesta.
It was a fear I had myself back at the start of the year. I’d done serials before. 30 posts for each of the Lost Leads crime stories. I was concerned about doing anything longer than 30 stories as it felt like an attention span limit. My current story is about 53 tales into an 88 tale long story. So yeah, the ongoing, serialized fear story that is Brass, just ain’t working for me.
There are a few reasons for it. I thought I’d run through them in a post. Do something, learn from the experience and then explain.
The internet has a short attention span.
100% including myself there. I cannot tell you how many blog/fiction serials have hooked me in the first few chapters. Then I forget to visit. I delay catching up and fall further behind. Then I skip a few chapters and miss something important. It doesn’t apply so much with the Brass series. But psychologically, it matters. For both readers and myself.
Some folks hate serials.
Like, straight up. There’s some real hate for web-serials. I’ve had a few comments from older Fears followers that said they stopped reading on the Brass serial. They check in to see whether it’s over. Although I always say, don’t write for other people, serialized fiction is rather polarizing.
People who join halfway, walk away.
A combination of both of the above. Folk that have been following Brass since the start, are not put off by the episode numbers in each post. Readers that first see the Little Fears, on chapter 40, will often read, laugh, then leave and not come back. They feel they’ve already missed out on a huge chunk of the story and can’t catch up.
The Fears are far less nimble.
I’m always miles ahead of where I need to be for content. I’ve pre-written years worth of stories. But, I mentioned all the big plans I have several times before, and I can’t seem to get them going. When I post too frequently outside of the ongoing Brass story, it seems to mentally disrupt my flow. It’s another psychological thing. The background story of Brass is vague. But it still feels disruptive when my feed bounces between the ongoing story and random “fear of ink,” stories. I think that’s the killer for me. Not being able to enact all my great plans. A story is now holding me back.
Going forward
As there are only 35’ish tales left in this serial, I’ll continue it to the end. I think in future I’ll avoid writing singular serials such as Brass. Instead, writing more one off’s that might have a theme and character progression. Seeking Hydra and Grey Moon style. As for different projects, one thing that is apparent to me from people coming to the Fears mid serial is that I need to have a home page, footer or header that can take you to a complete story/category of the website. Even a single post with links to all single tales within a particular storyline would help. I think I’ll get to work on that this weekend.
I’ll end by saying I’m happy with Copper and Iron, and that I started publishing Brass online. I’m a firm believer, that no matter how many “ten great ways you can write a story,” articles that exist out there, a lot of the time you’ve got to try things and see how they turn out. Sometimes you’ll hit, sometimes you’ll miss. But you’ll often never know until you take a swing.
OK, as usual, we have a new Threadless design available on hoodies, pullovers, tanks and a gazillion types of tees in a gazillion colours. Prices start at $15 a tee.
Not, as usual, Threadless is running a free shipping deal on orders over $45 across all designs. Get in!
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Iron looked back up the road, eyes narrowed. Copper followed Irons
gaze. She saw movement on top of a building in the distance. A spot
of black with two shining eyes.
“Do you see its eyes?” asked Copper.
Iron cocked her head to one side and gave her a nod.
“I do like an eye pun,” remarked Copper. “The cornea the better.”
Metallic fish were strewn across the street outside the chip shop. Iron nudged the handlebars of a motorcycle with her nose. ‘Triumph’ embossed on the petrol tank. The rest of the bike had sunk into the dirt road.
“On Fridays, two shoals of robot fish riding motorcycles or mopeds would come here and have a dust-up,” sighed Copper.
Iron dug around the tank. As she loosened the soil what was let of the bike sunk below ground level. Copper pulled Iron away from the sinking vehicle.
“It was very seventies,” she continued. “Codrophenia.”
Little Fears 