The Confabulator Cafe

Author: jcampbell

  • Calliope (Flash Fiction)

    The calliope sang, and the dark child wept. The steam-powered notes taunted him through the dirt-hazed glass of the attic window, as he stared into the suburban abyss. A spinning Skittles rainbow of twinkling Ferris wheel lights teased him.

    The dark child retreated to the shadows. The thick hair of his back itched against insulation. Tears fell from his red, night-glow eyes. The days were bad. The sound of passing school buses and playing children tormented him. But nothing—nothing compared to the carnival.

    The joyous cries of children invaded his sensitive ears. He covered them with his hands, digging his long, sharp fingernails into the surrounding flesh. His pain could not silence the ecstasy of others. The world lived, and he died a slow, lonely death. (more…)

  • Time, You Ain’t No Friend of Mine

    I think most writers will tell you that the hardest thing about writing is simply finding time to do it. While I think we all love writing, otherwise we wouldn’t pursue it, there is always something else to do. One of the greatest things about this site is that it gives all of us an excuse to sit down and get into the writer’s mindset.

    There are so many other things that draw your attention. There is the five-year-old running around with Batman Legos showing off his newest rocket ship. There is a book, D.H. Lawrence’s novella “The Fox” which my professor demands I read and analyze. There is my wonderful girlfriend who is also trying to find time to write.

    After working all day away from your family, isolating yourself to write seems like the last thing you want to do. There are so few hours in a day, and so many things you need to do, or even want to do. In the end, you have to make choices. For some people, that means writing early in the morning or late at night. For others, it means prioritizing time. The important things come before writing, and the rest are pushed aside. (more…)

  • Meeting with Mitch

    This interview is with a character from my short story Patchwork. The story is not yet available. It is being submitted to horror markets with the hope of being published soon.

    “ Welcome to a Meeting with Mitch, I’m Mitch Marlins. Our guest today could not join us in the studio. He is currently being housed in the Taylor County Jail facing charges on several murders, but he has agreed to talk to us via satellite. Denny, thanks for joining us.

    “ Goddammit, my name’s not Denny.

    “The deputies said—“

    “Those [beep]heads,” he yells off-camera. “Hey, Joel. It’s not enough that you got me locked up in this [beep]ing [beep]hole, but you gotta keep busting my balls on the Denny thing? Yeah, real [beep]ing funny.”

    “So your name isn’t Denny?” Mitch asks. (more…)

  • Behind every good writer…

    I’ve been a lucky writer. I’ve enjoyed a large amount of support from friends and family. In fact, I have never known anyone who was not supportive of my writing.  Even family and acquaintances who don’t read my particular style, or don’t understand or appreciate some of the things I have written are supportive of my life as a writer.

    It is an interesting thing. Maybe there are critical people out there, and I’m just not aware of them. But there is a fine line when it comes to a writer’s confidence. Support is great. We need it. We especially need support of our writing time. Anyone can be supportive when it doesn’t affect them. But writing is a solitary business, and it is a lot harder to be supportive when it is affecting your time with a loved one.

    However, in my experience, people can be too supportive. That sounds odd, maybe even impossible, but there is a definite fine line. Writers are psychologically fragile. At some point, support, though well-meaning, can place a lot of pressure upon the writer. (more…)

  • Pushing Dominoes (Flash Fiction)

    We all have one moment when we decide our life’s course. Most of us don’t recognize our moment until we’ve driven past it, but it is there, the touch of the dominoes that sets the whole thing off.

    Homecoming was my moment. How could it not be? Quarterback and sure-fire homecoming king. One push. It’s all it takes. One push, and the world falls. One push, and you give up control.

    The transmission to my ‘Vette sat in pieces in the garage, waiting for my old man to sober up. I walked the tracks towards Fairfax, one of those little towns that pop up around the railroads all throughout the Midwest. There are a million of them, all the same, but I proclaimed myself king of this one.

    Derek walked with his head down, looking at his shuffling feet through his Coke-bottle thick glasses. The tape still wrapped the frame from when I broke them two weeks prior. Derek’s family didn’t have the money to replace them. His ankles peeked out pale beneath high-water jeans. Derek wiped his nose with the sleeve of his hand-me-down flannel. He didn’t see me. He couldn’t have seen me, or he wouldn’t have come that way. (more…)

  • The Poisoned Well

    Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s rare to see an idea so great that it can transcend actual writing. Everyone you talk to has a great idea for a book. Few of them will ever write it. Writing isn’t about ideas. Writing is about writing.

    I’ve got notebooks full of ideas. I write them down as they come to me. I jot down pieces of dreams as I wake up from them. It’s rare that I ever get around to writing them. Why? Ideas are easy. I can sit down at my laptop right now and think of something to write. I can do it on command, without a prompt, at any time or place.

    I have a theory about ideas, and that “well” from which they spring. When you first start out writing, you are an idea writer. You think of scenarios and you write them. But you don’t really become a good writer, a good storyteller, until you have used up all those obvious scenarios and realize your idea well is poisoned by all the writers who have come before you. (more…)

  • The Han Solo Effect

    I’m not a very social person. I try to be nice to people, but overall, I have a very small group of friends. It’s hard to maintain a large number of friends and give them all the attention they deserve.

    The same applies to your cast of characters in a work of fiction. Keep them under control. It may seem like a lot of fun to sit and make up characters, but in the end, you risk losing the focus of your story and confusing your reader.

    There is a story about The Stand that I came across in which Stephen King realized his cast of characters had gotten out of hand. His solution was to immediately kill several off. This resulted in the closet bomb scene that you may remember, if you are a fan of the book.

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  • Let the Peasants Have Their Pitchforks

    No one can write with another person looking over their shoulder, especially one that isn’t really there. If you constantly ask yourself what other people are going to think, your writing is going to be crap.

    Art is about letting go and not worrying about anything, even your own judgement. Conscience? Morality? Leave that baggage at the door. That isn’t to say that every passage should read like a Dear Abby column out of Soddom and Gomorrah, but if it heads there, for the love of salt pillars, don’t stop it.

    There will be plenty of people willing to censor you. Don’t do it to yourself. Not during that first draft. What if your mom reads it? So what if she does? Your boss? Let him. Your friends? They aren’t friends if they don’t.

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  • A Burial (Flash Fiction)

    Tanner placed the shotgun in his little red wagon. Its weight surprised him. He couldn’t imagine carrying it through miles of snow-covered fields like Daddy. But Daddy was really strong. Tanner trusted Otis, his teddy bear, with making sure the gun stayed safe. He sat Otis near the stock. Otis watched the shotgun though one black button eye. Tanner felt bad about not having Mommy fix his other eye, but he was afraid.

    Daddy had made Mommy angry. Daddy worked at the dog food plant for a long time. He got fired when they caught him taking tools home to fix Tanner’s swing set. He fixed it, but Tanner didn’t feel like swinging anymore.

    “I can’t believe how stupid—“ (more…)

  • Implying the Question

    Getting people to keep reading is a tricky business. You can’t be there with them. You can’t tell them, “I know this part is slow, but wait till you see the payoff.” Instead, you have to imply there will be something important, not at the end, but just around the corner.

    You’ve got to keep your reader wondering what is going to happen next. I believe in action scenes and reaction scenes. Your protagonist acts, it backfires horribly, and he spends the next scene trying to piece things back together. At the end of each of these scenes, I will always have a question that will be answered in the next scene. Hopefully, the reader gets the implied question and will keep reading to get the answer.

    There are several ways to imply the question. There is foreshadowing, which most people reading this blog already know. You can’t be too heavy-handed with it, but foreshadowing can be a good way to increase suspense. The reader knows something is going to happen, they just don’t know when.

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