Weekend & Story's End

We're coming up to the end now. As planned, there will be a final chapter posted tomorrow (probably early) and then an All-Saints Epilogue on Sunday.

I'm afraid I had to break with the lovely Daiza-Kalaena-Daiza-Kalaena symmetry, but the story structure has to serve the plot and the plot called for a long final confrontation--too long for a single chapter. If this had been a novel written without the kind of restraints I gave myself, I probably would've thrown in a "filler" scene with Ruadd and Kalaena between the two Daiza scenes. Maybe I'll add it later, but for now, it's all Daiza for the final two.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

Christopher Beats

Double the Story!

So I messed up and wrote an extra chapter (I discovered yesterday there were two Chapter Tens in my MS!). For the purposes of suspense and story structure, I didn't feel comfortable breaking it up and nesting its two parts in other chapters, so congratulations--you get two chapters today.

Enjoy them.

HallowThirteen Continues

We're on Week Two of the HallowThirteen short story. Part 8 is up and (hopefully) legible. This is always a busy time of year for me, but so far I'm keeping to the schedule.

Enjoy today's instalment and see you tomorrow!

Plans for the Weekend

Part 5 is up. It includes tree-climbing. You should check it out.

To be clear, I'm not letting a little thing like the 'weekend' put a crimp on Hallowthirteen! Part 6 will be up tomorrow. Probably quite early, as I have stuff to do that morning and did the polish today. You won't want to miss it--things're gettin' good now.

Expect a Sunday chapter as well, probably before noon (which is the de facto deadline I've given myself each day).

In the meantime, have a good weekend and enjoy Hallowthirteen!

Part 4 is Up

Enjoy!

Day 3 of Hallowthirteen

Well, let's hope the next few days go better than the last two. After getting mildly sick one night then missing another night's sleep entirely, I feel especially proud that I've gotten Parts Two & Three up on time. As to if they're any good, well, I'll let you make that determination.

I can tell this is going to be fun.

As always, Happy Hallowthirteen and thanks for reading!

HAPPY HALLOWTHIRTEEN!

It has begun...

I've posted the first little installment of "Benighted," my Hallowthirteen short story. You'll find it in the tab above. Click it. Click it now!

I've also posted a little bit of commentary, just some random thoughts that went through my head while I was editing this thing. I would like to keep that up for the whole event, but we'll see. For obvious reasons, the priority is the story itself. Everything else is frosting.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading,

Christopher Beats 10/19/2015

Tricks & Treats

It's that time of year: the sun is shifting, the leaves are falling, and Christopher Beats has changed his cover photo (quick shout-out to the very awesome Jamie Stone of Punksthetic Art).

Sorry for not updating. I've been working on a number of novels over the last few years, so don't think I've been idle. Unfortunately, in writing, effort often doesn't pay off for years, if at all.

Anyway, when the plastic jack'o'lanterns started going up, it occurred to me that I haven't written anything resembling horror in quite a while. In fact, I've been grinding away at edits and rewrites for so long, I've almost forgotten what it's like to produce something new.

This gave me an idea: why not let myself write a little story? Just for fun? And since it's just for fun, I'm not going to pitch it to anyone, I'm just going to post it here, piece by piece, for my readers. I've been writing in little snippets, trying to keep the scenes fairly neat. Each scene is approximately two pages long, a perfect daily blog post. And, it being Halloween, I'm shooting for exactly thirteen chapters so I can call this event: HALLOWTHIRTEEN!

(There will be a bonus chapter, or "All Saints Epilogue" to tie things up on November 1st).

HallowThirteen will start on the 19th and run to the 31st. See you there!