NEW STORY: "The Mirrors are Plotting" + Zelda Universe Forums Stuff + New Audiobooks Coming Soon

"Nesborne" fell through like the 2011 Halloween story. Thought I'd open up with that. But don't worry because...well, I'll get to that!

So here I am! Back again for another full blog post! Recently, I've been posting updates on the official Many Worlds of EzloSpirit Google+ Page (link up top), but if you are repulsed by such a site, then I will bring you up to speed now as best as I can!

Anyway, so "Nesborne" fell through, but there is hope! I wrote something different instead! It was a bit late (by almost three weeks), but I actually think it better fits Halloween than "Nesborne" would have. I am talking about "The Mirrors are Plotting," a 2760-word story almost guaranteed to make you paranoid about looking into mirrors! I can't really describe it too much without giving the whole thing away and ruining most of the suspense, but just know that it stars Kat, a snarky businesswoman who is haunted by nightmares of a monster with knives instead of hands. Kat is my second female narrator ever, and she is much better than Maddy Morain, narrator of "Trust Fall." Trust me on this! Reader discretion is advised for this M-rated hybrid of snark and terror---"Mirrors" is my first written work to contain the so-called "F-word"---which was released on the Zelda Universe Forums on November 20 and on Figment just yesterday.

In August, former ZU Forums member and staffer Jehanne did me the great favor of drawing some beautiful cover art for "Duck Season." However, I apparently never downloaded the image, and she left ZU in October, also apparently removing the artwork from her Photobucket account. Which means I can't make a cover for the story. Which, in turn, means I can't release it to Figment or deviantART at this time. I emailed Jehanne a couple weeks ago using an email address I found in a years-old version of the ZU Staff Page using the Wayback Machine, but she hasn't responded. So if you know how to get a hold of her (or you are her!), please let me know!

NEW STORY: "Duck Season"

For the past five months, I have been making most of my news updates and announcements on my official Google+ Page, but do not worry because here is another blog post!

Here's what's been happening: not much. Work on Chapter VI of Armed with Wings has been at a standstill for these five months, but I do plan on returning to it after I complete "Nesborne." Then, there is that: "Nesborne" is the title of my Halloween short story for this year, my first one since 2010 ("The First Hour"). The story is a lengthy sci-fi thriller about the fictitious town of Nesborne, Illinois, and how a group of high-schoolers discover that an alien invasion is not on its way; instead, they discover that an alien invasion is already there....

Finally, today marked the official release of my newest short story, "Duck Season," written last week in two days (July 1-2) for the first-ever official Zelda Universe Forums Art Collab, which is essentially the same thing as ZU's Writing Contests, except that all art forms are accepted and there is no competition. Basically, it's an art show! The theme for this month was "Seasons."

"Duck Season" is what I consider to be my greatest masterpiece thus far. In 2,360 words, it tells a story so deep and so powerful that it has reportedly made most of the people who have read it thus far at least shed a tear. Personally? As soon as I finished typing the last word, I broke into sobs. Simultaneously, I was grinning from ear to ear, so it was pretty weird. But pretty amazing. "Duck Season" is written like a children's story, so the language structure is pretty simplistic (although some more advanced vocabulary is used occasionally throughout). However, the story itself, and its young characters and its conflicts, are as deep and complex as almost any piece of short adult fiction. It also marks the first time that I have used a plot device symbolically, meaning that "Duck Season" has the most intentionally-placed symbolism out of any of my stories thus far, which only adds to the emotion.

The story follows a young boy named Martin as he meets and gets to know a young girl named Angie by the bank of a duck pond in the local park. They quickly become best friends, and they spend their weekends playing in the park by the side of the pond. How could they ever drift apart?

It is my deepest wish that you enjoy "Duck Season" and that it has as much of an effect on you as it did on me and some of those readers whom I sent the story to before release.

By the way, I will be recording audiobook versions of both "Star Crash" and "Duck Season" after I return from Vermont, where I am currently participating in a program for high school students at a college (to help prepare us for college). Stay tuned!


P.S. If you are interested, you should check out the July Art Collab exhibit on ZU! All of the work submitted is top-notch!

P.P.S. "Duck Season" will also be coming to Figment soon! Not yet sure about a deviantART release.

ARMED WITH WINGS LAUNCHED! + Fate of The Current + Winter 2011 ZU Awards

Bubs says, "I shoulda made this post like exactly a month ago!"

So, November 1 saw the launch of the prologue and first chapter (with November 2 and 15 seeing the launches of Chapters II and III, respectively) of my newest and most active project, Armed with Wings. Armed with Wings is a fan fiction novel project whose source is…a Flash game?! Yes, it is. You may not have believed it so, but it is possible to write a full-length fan fiction piece based on an online game. Because, yes, some Flash games and series actually have stories to them. Those are my favorite kind of Flash series, by the way!

Armed with Wings is based on the game of the same name, the first out of five games to be released (but the second in order of occurrence according to series canon) in Sun-Studios' Armed with Wings series (informally known as the Blackmist series). It follows the resurrected commander of a rebel force that had tried to dethrone the tyrant king but had failed; now, the former commander is back for revenge. He will have to scale a mountain and make his way through hundreds of guards and traps before he can reach the king in his castle.

As stated earlier, the first three chapters are already available for your reading pleasure! Armed with Wings is currently only available on the Zelda Universe Forums, but have no fear; there is a table of contents for easy navigation. In addition, a rough audio version of the fan fiction piece that goes up to the end of Chapter II is also available exclusively (for now) through the project's thread on ZU. However, this is a rough version, meaning that I deem it below standard for my audiobooks, so I will be redoing it at some point in the near future.

Armed with Wings can be found here! Enjoy! (It is rated M for violence and language. Please be aware of this.)

Now, I want to take a moment to discuss The Current. Part of the title of this post is "Fate of The Current," which has likely led you to believe that I'm scrapping it. This is not the case. I am, however, officially putting The Current on-hold. I want to focus on Armed with Wings, which I am well into the fourth chapter of. I will likely return to The Current in 2012.

Lastly, the ZU Awards are back! They are currently in the nomination period, with zero nominations for me for any award. The nomination period ends tomorrow. Thought I'd mention that.

That's it! A short update, since I explained Armed with Wings a lot in my last post. Until next time! (My next post will explain what happened with that "Live Q&A Event" thing. In case you were curious.)

Happy Halloween! + NEW STORY: "Star Crash" + Story Collection Thread + Next Up... + This Friday...

Happy Halloween, all! I know I stayed in and got irritated every time the doorbell rang...even though my mom was doing all of the candy stuff! What did you do? Most of you probably did some form of trick-or-treating, a tradition I upheld myself for a time, going as Harry Potter for the last 6 or 7 years of my trick-or-treating life. This was my third year not going out. It was also the year I officially decided that trick-or-treaters annoy me. I'm sorry. But I don't like little children ringing my doorbell every three minutes. Especially not when I'm talking to my mother about serious matters during dinner. Argh!

Today marked the first anniversary of "The First Hour." In its honor, tomorrow, I'll put it up as the Featured Story for a month or so. If you haven't read it yet, it's the perfect Halloween story, especially when read immediately following "Twelve Chimes!"

This past week, Tuesday night (late) specifically, marked the launch of my latest story. Again, sadly, it was not "The Shadow Loop," my planned Halloween story for this year. For more details on that, please see my post immediately preceding this one. Instead, it was a short story written as part of a school assignment, titled "Star Crash." It's an adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, but...in space! It takes the overall/main plot of the play and puts it in the context of the first scene of the play...but all in space! It's an interesting read! "Star Crash" launched late Tuesday night (my time) on the Zelda Universe Forums as my final story to be released as an individual thread (I'll get to that shortly), it launched Wednesday afternoon on Figment, and finally, it launched on Thursday afternoon on deviantART.

This next point is more directed at my readers on the ZU Forums or anybody who ever reads my stuff there. On Wednesday, I began compiling all of the short stories I'd ever posted anywhere on ZU into a single thread. Friday morning marked the completion (for now!) of this thread, when I posted "Star Crash" into it. The thread is a place where readers can view in their full texts all of my short stories (minus "Chosen Ones" and "The Blind Man Who Could See") and where ZU members can post feedback for any or all of my stories, from my newest to my oldest, without necroposting, which goes against ZU forum rules. From now on, all of the short stories that I post to ZU will be posted exclusively in this thread. No longer will they have their own threads for each one. You can find the collection here.

Story Launch: "Freeing Truth" + First Batch of Audiobooks Launches! + NEW PUBLISHING SITE: deviantART

Good news: I'm starting again on The Current next week!

In other news, one week ago, I launched my newest short story, "Freeing Truth." This was written as part of a school assignment, which was to make a creative piece (story, poem, painting, sculpture, etc.) involving the quote, "The truth shall make you free," in the light of Cory Doctorow's dystopian, modern-day 1984 novel, Little Brother, which was the "all-school read" for this past summer. The result is "Freeing Truth," my longest short story to date, at about 5.25 pages long in Word. Like "Trust Fall" before it, "Freeing Truth" is split into "chapters;" there are six in this one, as opposed to five in "Trust Fall." The story is of the fantasy genre, and involves a selfish king who holds a mysterious power in his castle. A youth then tries to steal it and learns a startling fact about the king and the kingdom. "Freeing Truth" is currently available on both the ZU Forums and Figment, and in the next few weeks, it will also be available on deviantART (more on that later).

Today marked the launch of the first batch of audio versions of my short stories! In case you never noticed the "Audiobooks" page here, it's been here for about three months with a message saying "Coming soon! (I promise!)" Well, it wasn't quite as soon as I'd hoped, but I'd say not bad! Each audiobook is read by me, unabridged. If you download the whole thing (as a ZIP file), you get some extra goodies. Unfortunately, that's not out yet, as I haven't recorded all of the audiobooks yet. The first nine have been recorded, as well as the version of "Trust Fall" with the extended second chapter, the version of the audiobook that will only be available in the ZIP file. I will also be recording "The Blind Man Who Could See" later today (UPDATE, 17:38: Done and available!), and maybe another, as well. If you enjoy books more when you can listen to them, then you'll benefit from the really dramatic (at least most of the time) audio versions of my stories! Even if you're a visual reader, you can still enjoy! Just head over to the "Audiobooks" page, and you can download (individually) the available audiobooks. (There is a small error in "Twelve Chimes" when my microphone apparently cut off for a second. No need for you to worry, as I will be fixing that--by rerecording that cut-off sentence--and re-uploading the file within the next week or so.)

ZU August Writing Contest Results + Entry Reveal/Launch/Reception + "Trust Fall" Anniversary

Yes. I did. Finally. I won first place in a Zelda Universe Forums Writing Contest! I tied with two other greats of the ZU writing community, Doran_Bladefist (one of my former co-Muses/co-Teachers in the Writing School/Muses' Oasis) and FightingTorque. I was up against thirteen other entries (a record), and I received three votes--only five or six people voted. Voters each voted for up to four entries. Special mention goes to ZU member America for his outstanding praise of my entry, praise that touched me so deep and made me feel really warm and fuzzy inside!

So, you're probably wondering what the heck my entry was in the first place! It's a folktale-style piece that followed the contest's theme of "magic" in an indirect and more metaphorical sense, titled "Wonders of the Sky." It tells the tale of a man called the Wanderer who travels the world searching for "wonders so impossible that they could only be magical." Following him on his journeys are a group of devoted Followers. Eventually, however, he begins to give up hope of ever finding what he is looking for. Will he ever find it? Find out in "Wonders of the Sky!" (Yes, I used to love making advertisements for things.)

Where can you find this new story? Hit the jump to find out this and more!

The Current Update + Conceptual Dual-Release Launch + Reception on Figment

Well, the good news is that I've started the third chapter of The Current! And now that I'm into it, I should have it finished in a couple days or so. Don't worry. It will happen soon! Chapter three has also undergone a name change, in case you didn't notice it under the "Current Projects" (how fitting!) box on the right. Originally to be called "Chapter Three: The Current," for the obvious reason (if you read chapter two!) that Joe will be going down the Current in this chapter, I felt it was too simple and, since the novel's title is The Current, didn't really express what I wanted it to in regards to the chapter's content. The new chapter title is "Chapter Three: Insult to Injury," of which I will not disclose the relevance of at this point in time, due to it being a fairly major spoiler. Again, it should be up in a couple days or so.

As I mentioned in my previous post, today I have launched a dual-release of conceptual short stories that I wrote over the course of the past school year as English class assignments. The two stories, as I also mentioned before, are titled "The Blind Man Who Could See" and "The Open Gate," respectively. The former was released exclusively on Figment, and the latter was released exclusively on the Zelda Universe Forums.

"The Blind Man Who Could See," which I originally wrote last October, is a conceptual/spiritual story that sacrifices complexity in the plot and in the writing itself for an important, powerful message. Like "The Open Gate," this story is told from the view of the main character. This character is a young man who meets a blind, old man on the side of a street in London. From his conversation with the old man, his view of life is forever changed. The assignment for which this story was written was to write a short story borrowing elements, particularly the character of Vasudeva, from Hermann Hesse's classic novel, Siddhartha. It received a B+.

"The Open Gate," which I originally wrote in April, is more fantastical than its parallel release and carries less of a message. It is also significantly darker in mood. The main character stumbles upon an open gate across the street from where he is walking home, and he/she realizes that the gate is made entirely of pure gold and is studded with all kinds of gems and crystals. He/she decides to take a detour to see what lies beyond the gate, but he/she soon finds him-/herself walking down an endless road that provides for his/her every need in order to wipe the thought of turning back from his/her mind. It's a very chilling story! It received a B or a B+ (I'd need to check to remind myself).

Still Alive + The Current Launch + ...Halloween 2011...? + ZU Awards

If you read my previous post, you'll notice that it begins with an astonished question, "Did I manage to go a whole month without posting here?". Now look at the date on that post. It's March 10, 2011. Now look at the date on this post. Yeah. So not only did I manage to go another month without posting here, but this time, I managed to go three times that without doing so! Impressive?

Basically, I've been busy. My school is a college preparatory school, and they give us boatloads of work. While I'm fine with all of the regular homework, I have particular trouble with working on long-term assignments; my brain shuts down easily due to anxiety. Well, in the past few weeks, my school, which got out the first week of June, gave me about five long-term assignments at once. Imagine how that worked out for me. Long story short, I had no time to work on my fictional writing and had to dedicate a few weeks of my life to sleeping, eating, going to school, and working on...non-fictional writing (plus breathing). Let me officially mention that while writing fiction is one of the things I love most in this world, writing non-fiction (essays, etc.) is quite possibly my least favorite thing in all of existence. Yeah! No joke! (I know some college or something is probably going to find this blog at some point and read that statement. Well, my fine friends at the college or something, I'm not going to lie about that fact. I have to force myself to write essays and things. And it sometimes drives me a bit crazy. Literally. But they all get done in the end. And I'm a bit paranoid for writing this, especially considering that I won't even begin looking at colleges for another few months.)

Anyway, in writing news, the first two chapters (time flies...?) of my previously-mentioned project, The Current, are now online. The first one can be found at both of the novel's official web locations, Figment and the Zelda Universe Forums, while the second chapter, at the time of this posting, can only be found at the ZU Forums. And yes, the novel has been listed on the Master List since I first published the first chapter. You can expect the third chapter to be up by this Friday or so.

While I was not originally planning on it being part-comedy, that is what The Current is turning out to be. However, it will likely become less humorous (not necessarily darker, except for later on) as it goes on. It also  features more swears than I have ever featured in a single project! And more references to drinking! And the first-ever references to drugs (well, tobacco)! This is my most mature science fiction project to date, and possibly tied with The Midnight Sequence ("Twelve Chimes"/"The First Hour") for being my most mature overall project to date. If you are easily offended by that kind of stuff, this is one project you might want to stay away from. Sorry!

"Resolution" Reveal/Launch ; NEW PUBLISHING SITE

It's been a while, and I've made very little progress on I&L4. Deal with it. I've been busy.

With what, you ask? With "Resolution," of course! Wait, what? No, I haven't been busy writing New Year's resolutions. Those are pointless. Instead, I've been writing "Resolution," my entry in the Zelda Universe Forums' January 2011 Writing Contest, for which the theme was "resolution." The results? Well, they came in tonight, and ...I got second place. Again. I guess I can't win. But hey, last time I entered a ZU writing contest, I didn't rank ("Trust Fall," August 2010). Also remember that I got second place in my first writing contest, too ("Twelve Chimes," October 2009). "Resolution" is a thriller, which is a genre I have never bothered (or actually wanted to bother) getting close to before, but I couldn't avoid it this time. (The following is exclusive information, so be glad you're reading this!) Originally, the story was going to involve an established serial killer writing a list of resolutions, a.k.a. his next victims. (That's pretty much it for the exclusive stuff.) The final product is barely a shadow of the original idea, the only similarity being the main character, William, writing his resolution, which includes a short list of people he wants to murder. Why? William is a patient at the Woodstone Institute mental asylum for post-traumatic stress disorder. He wants to know how he develoed the disorder, but he'll have to stay for a month to give the psychiatrists enough time to figure it out. Well, he doesn't want to stick around in that dump for a whole month, so he decides to escape. Which involves brutally murdering a few people. "Resolution" is available on the ZU Forums (no membership necessary, as usual) in this thread and now on Figment.com. Wait. Figment.com? Wuzzat? To find out you're going to have to...

Mystery Story Revealed & Released! ; Thoughts on 2010 and 2011 ; More "Shining Armor" Reception

In my last post, I officially confirmed that I would be releasing a mystery story (not in genre; I didn't want to give away the title!) that I found while cleaning my room this past Saturday, probably instead of "Illusions & Lies: Undercover," which I've been unmotivated to write due to too much free time, as my last story of 2010. This is indeed the case: I have released this mystery story, and it will be my last story of the year. (However, on an unrelated note, I will begin making up Spirit World: Extinction tomorrow, which is the last installment on the official Spirit World Saga timeline!)

The mystery story is titled "In the Trees: A Short Story of Vislia," and takes place on the planet Vislia, the same planet where my Sight Chronicles series (and my canceled Sound Chronicles series) takes place. It is different, though. It tells of King Nesh, king of Junglaria (a jungle kingdom), and his encounter with a deadly danger approaching his kingdom. And how his philanthropy and extreme care of others but not himself leads to his downfall. It is currently up on the ZU Forums, and, for a limited time, on the Featured Story page of this blog. A link to the story on ZU can be found in the Master List under Short Stories>Other.


I'd like to take some time now to briefly think back to the past year and briefly think ahead to next year. But to read that, you'll have to...

This is the Seventh Blog Entry....

Indeed, that is true! This is actually the continuation (although you don't need to read the earlier entries) of the same kind of blog, which was in my "fanclub" on the ZU Forums. This is more noticeable and therefore more useful for people.

Anyway, work on the fourth story in my short story series Illusions & Lies, titled "Illusions & Lies: Undercover," is well underway. It's coming along pretty well, and I should be finished in about a week and a half. So if you haven't done so already, catch up in the series by reading the first three installments, which you can find links to in the Master List, which you can get to by clicking on "The Master List," located above this post and under the blog's header.

"Undercover" is confirmed to be the last story I will be releasing in 2010. I am towards the end of a different story that is actually a school assignment, which I will be publishing as an official story, probably to the ZU Forums. This will probably go up tomorrow. It is neither sci-fi nor fantasy, but rather it is realistic fiction! It will be rated G.

Well, ta-ta for now!

Update (22:26/22:31): "Shining Armor," which is the story that I mentioned in the second-to-last paragraph, is now up on the ZU Forums! A link is in the Master List now, and another can be found at the beginning of this update! Enjoy! Feel free to post a comment in the thread on ZU if you're a member, or you can leave a comment on this post here!

Oh, and if you are wondering what the moral I had originally intended on conveying was, I will tell you now: "You don't need to be a valiant knight to be a hero; you can simply be yourself."