Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

Some Micro Fiction for #MondayMixer

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It’s been awhile since I wrote some flash/micro fiction for one of the weekly contests. This little story is for entry over at The Latinum Vault for their Monday Mixer contest. It had to be exactly 150 words and include a location, thing and adjective chosen from lists provided. I picked cabana, cabachon and intrinsic.

Here’s the story (untitled):

Tony Twist lounged poolside in his cabana. It looked well stocked with top-shelf booze, quality girls and low-class thugs.

Looked fun, but his smile disappeared when he saw me. “Drake, I’ve been waiting. I’m not good at waiting,” he said.

“Looks like you do it well enough.”

“You got any leads yet?”

“Better,” I said and took out the cool stone from my pocket. His eyes went saucer-wide before I tossed it over.

“The girl?”

“Settle for the cabachon, Tony. You got the pretty stone. Forget the pretty girl.”

“She was an intrinsic part of our deal.”

“So give me half of what we agreed and we’ll call it even.”

“She stole from me.”

“You’ll get over it. Payment in two days Tony, or she sings some songs downtown.”

I laughed as I walked away. Tony’d play, he’d bragged a bit too much to Claire not to.

2012: Year of the Blog

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Ok, ok. Like most things I’m recapping here 2012 wasn’t a full calendar year of blogging, but it was the year I started blogging. I hope to be much more consistent with posting in the year going forward than I was in the last and  maybe grow something of an audience. As it stands, most of my readers come here directly from Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds.com when I participate in his week flash fiction challenges. Which is cool, but I’d like to hook more of those folks into sticking around than I currently do.

Still, while the website’s success, like my writing success, has been humble I still find it exciting and impressive in it’s own way.

For example: I had visitors from 35 different countries last year. The idea that my words have been read around the world? Cool.

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2012: My Year of Horror (Fiction)

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I’ve always been a fan of horror movies. Old school horror movies anyway. The Shining is one of my favorite movies ever. Alien and Aliens were both great. Psycho! What a movie. I also enjoy a good scream-queen fronted b-level horror or slasher film. The Nightmare on Elm Street series, for example. I am not a fan of the more modern gore and gross-out centered “torture-porn” kind of movie though. Assume I’ve never and will never watch most things that fall in that category. Until last year though, I’d never really read horror.

I don’t know why that is. Before 2012 I think I had read exactly two horror novels: The Shining by Stephen King and Dean Koontz’s From the Corner of His Eye, and one of those may not even really qualify as horror. While I didn’t hate either of them I didn’t love them either. I’d also read a handful of short stories that could be considered horror – all written by Harlan Ellison. That was the extent of my literacy in horror prose. 2012 was the year that changed.

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Future Voices is Avaliable

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It’s out! Inklestudios “Future Voices” anthology is now out in app form. You can find it in the iTunes store here.

It is really cool to be able to download an app and find my story inside. I’m looking forward to exploring and reading the other ten stories in the anthology. Eleven pieces of interactive fiction for free? What’s not to like about that?

2012: My Year of the Audiobook

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I have become an audiophile! Or, at least an audiobookphile. 2012 was definitely the year I fell in love with the audiobook. I joined audible at the end of 2011, but only thought of it as a little experiment at the time. I’d always had a bit of a snobbish feeling that we should look down on audiobooks or “books on tape” as somehow being inferior to “real reading”, but I don’t really know why. Having spent a year enjoying some great audiobooks I certainly don’t feel that way anymore.

In fact, I’m starting to wonder if audio books aren’t sometimes superior to their original written form.

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Audiobook Addendum

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I noted in my post on audiobooks yesterday that I was currently listening to Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. That is no longer true. I finished it about an hour ago and it was great.

I know I’m 4 or 5 years late in discovering this book but I’m very glad I finally did. I’m also glad I listened to this instead of read it, because the narration brings the accents of the characters to life and I think it made it easier to immerse myself in the wonderful cultural flavors of the story. I liked it so much that I can’t wait to start on Buckell’s second book in the same universe (which is not a direct sequel).

I want to listen to that one as well, but I’ve got so much on my Audidble wishlist that I decided I was going to need a better subscription. So Crystal Rain is officially the book that made me upgrade my Audbile membership to platinum.

NOTE: Uh, do to a weird thing I did about changing the timezone my blog is set in this post actually appears before the post on audiobooks I am referring to in it. Whoops.