The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Rebel with a Cause

    I am a rebel.

    There. I said it. While most everyone around me is nervously putting together a plot and interesting characters for a brand new novel they can’t wait to start tonight at midnight, I’m just biding my time.

    I’m about 30,000 words into book three of my Monster Haven series. Tonight, I will open a new document and start the rest of the book. 50,000 more words will get me to 80k by the end of the month, which will be the end of the novel. If not, I’ll write more than 50k. The important thing is not the 50k for me, it’s getting to the words “the end.”

    This is how I’ve done it for the last two years, and it’s worked out really well for me. (more…)

  • Confessions

    Can I be honest with all of you for a couple of minutes?

    I’m terrified about this year’s NaNo. I don’t have a plan. I barely have an idea. And I certainly don’t have time. And even worse? I know what to expect.

    Last year was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. It seemed like a great idea at the time—and don’t get me wrong, it was—but now I do know. It’s an amazing roller coaster ride. It’s life consuming.

    And I’m completely unprepared for it. I’m worried that I’m taking on too many things at once. I’m terrified that something’s going to slip. (more…)

  • The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

    National Novel Writing Month is my favorite time of the year. I see it as a month long holiday designed specifically for writers. A whole 30 days where we can justify putting our writing before pretty much anything else in our lives. A time when new friendships are formed, new worlds are created, and writers everywhere discover their limits – or lack thereof. A month of not enough sleep, way too much caffeine, and thousands of words (around 50,000 of them).

    This will be my eighth year participating, my fourth year as Municipal Liaison for the Lawrence Region, and hopefully my seventh win. It’s kind of fun to think about: winning National Novel Writing Month seven times will mean I’ll have written at least 350,000 words during my writing  career.

    So this November, as Municipal Liaison, I will be writing pep talks, hosting write-ins, spoiling my Wrimos with treats, cheering on those who are ahead and encouraging those who are behind, drinking way too much coffee, trying to fit in the homework assignments for my online class, and also probably finding new ways to procrastinate. (more…)

  • Dear NaNo: I’m Coming for You

    I’m generally a guy who hates unfinished business.

    Whenever a project languishes, it eats away at me. I don’t sleep, I get pissy, and I start withdrawing from my friends and family. I just want to be left alone to stew in my own frustration.

    Unfinished is the status of the last novel I set out to write, and it’s been that way for far too long. I love the story, and it has its fair share of really funny sections, but for whatever reason, I never saw it through to the end.

    Well, it’s about time that stopped.

    (more…)

  • Remember, Remember the Last November

    Last year, I decided to finally take the plunge from writing short stories into writing an actual, honest-to-God novel. I joined the local writing group for National Novel Writing Month.

    I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had been writing for quite awhile, but I hadn’t really socialized with other writers. As part of a recent re-affirmation of my writing efforts, I decided I needed to throw my hat in and become a full member of the literary community. This meant joining a great group of speculative fiction writers called the Dead Horse Society in Kansas City, a group called Writers of the Weird in Lawrence, and the Nanowrimo group, which would become the basis for this website.

    Writers of the Weird never totally took off, and the commute and time conflicts have kept me from the Dead Horse Society, but this group, and this site, is obviously still going. It all started with Nanowrimo. In more ways than one, Nanowrimo changed my life. I became an author, I met my girlfriend, and I solidified my writing career. Since Nanowrimo, I’ve submitted consistently and have had five stories accepted for publication. I completed my fifty thousand words in just over two weeks and finished the month with around sixty-five thousand words. (more…)

  • The Coming of NaNoWriMo (Week Ending November 3)

    National Novel Writing MonthThis week, we’re getting ready to celebrate. No, not Halloween. We did that last week. (And if you haven’t read the traveling carnival stories by our Cafe writers, you really should.)

    We’re celebrating the written word. The writers in the Cafe are in preparation mode for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Thirty days, 50,000 words.

    If you’re not familiar with this event, it’s a month-long endurance test for writers all over the world. Starting on November 1, writers are challenged to write 50,000 words before November 30. That works out to approximately 1,667 words each day.

    Over the next five days, our writers will be writing about their upcoming NaNo projects. You’ll get a sneak preview of the stories that our writers are planning and plotting in anticipation of the November 1 start date.

    Then, throughout November, we’ll be hitting you from the trenches. Our normal weekly post assignments will be replaced by short updates from our writers on their NaNo progress. So this will be the last update from me for awhile.

    Until Next Month,

    The Cafe Management

  • What conventionally normal thing creeps you out?

    Carnivals are supposed to be fun, clowns funny, animals cute, roller coasters thrilling, but sometimes, for whatever reason, we have irrational fears of things that, by normal standards, are not considered scary. After writing our carnival stories this week, we asked the Confabulators what seemingly normal thing creeps us out.

    Ashley M. Poland

    Carnivals and circuses freak me out. Even state carnivals, which are fairly normal, just give me a weird feel of heebie-jeebies. When I was living in England — six or seven, I guess — we went to a circus. I don’t recall a lot about the circus itself, other than there was a tent; my sister and I got spinning plates on sticks. Nothing bad happened, but I still get weirdly uncomfortable when I see one.

    Amanda Jaquays

    I have a number of things I’m afraid of, but probably one of my strangest fears is my terror of boats. I’m not afraid of drowning. I’d be perfectly okay if somebody threw me off the boat into the water. Well, maybe not okay, but I’d at least stop panicking. It’s not a fear I can explain and I’m not quite sure when it started, but what I can tell you is that it’s ruined any number of family vacations.

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    Ice cream trucks. Dear God. Some unknown stranger is driving around in a panel van with music playing, trying to draw kids to him like some automotive pied piper so he can give them food that he’s been keeping in his van for just such an occasion. I’m a paranoid person by nature, but my skin crawls every time I hear those bells playing “All Around the Mulberry Bush.” Pedophiles, poisoned or tainted treats, kidnappers, mass-murdering cannibals…take your pick of possibilities.

    Sara Lundberg

    When people swing crookedly. I know some kids get a kick out of swinging sideways or twisting up their chains and spinning around, but for some reason I get sweaty and nervous and sick when I don’t swing perfectly straight or someone next to me is swerving sideways or I’m pushing the kid crookedly. Serious panic. Maybe the strangest innate fear ever.

    Kevin Wohler

    Spiders. I’m not the kind to scream whenever they’re on the television. But when they suddenly appear next to me (either dangling on a web or running across the table) I will seriously freak out! And if there are a lot of them crawling over someone in a movie, that makes me spaz out. Yet, I’m the appointed spider-killer in the house. No one else will touch them. Ironic, no?

  • Those Who Aren’t Missing

    “It’s weird, right?” my older brother says as we watch the muscled men set up the tents over on the fairgrounds. “I mean, I don’t remember the last time I heard of a circus in a big city, let alone a little shithole like this.”

    “Hush!” I snap, enthralled with the way they hitch the poles and raise the faded, striped fabric. Horses whinny from inside rusted trailers, and I would bet every quarter in my piggy bank that there was a lion around here somewhere. Someone may as well have pulled the circus from my dreams, from the faded photographs I copied with the library’s machine.

    With my arms over the edge of our fence and my feet braced in a hole in the wood, I look around for Mama. She’s still inside, on the phone, with her back turned to us. I steel my resolve and say, “It’s not a — a shithole. It’s our home.”

    Zane pats my shoulder and smirks like he always does when he thinks he’s right. “Give it two more years, squirt. You’ll be calling it worse when you realize how boring it is.”

    “It’s not boring,” I say. “We have a circus.”
    (more…)

  • The Things Which Must Be Done… (Flash Fiction)

    Disclaimer: I know I was supposed to write a flash fiction but once I got into the story, it took on a life of its own and grew into a true short story. Presented here is the first part of the two part tale. — Jason

    The Ringmaster of the Circus of Crime from Marvel Comics. Owned and maintained by Marvel.

    Sure clowns are scary – I’ve read that Stephen King book – but they’re not the ones trying to the end the world. Uh uh. It’s the twisted, evil ringmasters you’ve gotta worry about. That guy in the Marvel comics with the hypno-hat and all the circus ‘freaks’? He’s bush league compared to some of the ones I’ve taken down.

    The wind was October chilly and whirled the brittle leaves up the block in a swirl of orange, red and yellow as I took my morning walk. I had my hands in the pockets of my jacket, jingling some change and my collar turned up. The rubes were probably still in bed that early, and I could smell the warmth of fires in fireplaces or stoves. It’s one of the things I love most about fall . Anyway.

    It was the police cars halfway up the block that really had my attention. Three of them, none flashing their lights, with a couple of officers standing in the driveway. The neighborhood was pleasant and probably forty or fifty years old. I mean, it’s pretty obvious which houses were built in the ’70s if you pay attention.

    “Excuse me, sir,” one of the officers said as he crossed the street toward me. I pulled out my earbuds and gave him a look that said I wasn’t expecting him to stop me. “Do you live in the neighborhood?” Leonard, his nametag said.

    “No. I’m at the Barrow Square Hotel a couple blocks over.” I showed concern. “Something happen?” (more…)

  • Fera Profanum (Flash Fiction)

    By the time the McPhereson Carnival and Circus Cavalcade left the county, six children had disappeared with it. Each of the kids had been orphaned, and had no real family to speak of. They were county kids, the kids who lived outside of town. If not for the fact that one of them had been my best friend, Flick, I might never have noticed what was happening.

    The carnival train arrived in the dead of night, its whistle piercing the veil of sleep and awakening every child. We listened as the clickity-clack, clickity-clack of its wheels gave way to a long screech of metal on the track as the brakes slowed the train’s progress.

    The days leading up to the carnival were a wash at school. We did nothing but dream of the coming festivities. We bragged about who was brave enough to ride the most frightening rides, who was skilled enough to win the midway games, and how much of the carnival fare we were likely to eat. (more…)