Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

I Won A Little Something

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So one of the things that I’ve learned over the last few months is that there are a lot of writers out here on the internet. Twitter seems particularly full of them. The flash fiction challenges at terribleminds.com are great a great way to meet a small slice of this great population of authors and I do try my best to read and comment on as many of the challenge takers’ entries as possible – though I’ve been a little lax in this the last few weeks.

During these explorations of my fellow writers’ webplaces I started noticing that there is a community of them who just love flash fiction and micro fiction. They love it so much they’ve started little weekly micro-fiction writing contests. For example there are: #MenageMondays hosted over at “Defantly Literate” ( http://www.caramichaels.com ), the #55WordChallenge hosted at “Jezri’s Nightmares” ( http://www.lisamccourthollar.com/ ) and #ThursThreads hosted at “The Weird, the Wild, & the Wicked” ( http://siobhanmuir.blogspot.kr/ ). There are many more as well.

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Flash Fiction: The Android and the Wondering Chamber

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So we had a weird challenge from Chuck Wendig over at terribleminds.com this week. He gave us a strange random sentence: “The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber.” and told us to use it as the first sentence of our 1000 word or less flash. Usually I really think about these challenges and put a bit of work into crafting them, which is perhaps not true to the spirit of writing flash fiction, but I’ve always considered them to be just really short stories more than a quickie writing exercise. This week though I decided to just sit down and start writing and let it go where ever it went. What follows is the result. It’s fairly light and silly. It also contains a character I realized afterwards I’d blatantly stolen from a TV show. (bonus points to anyone who can recognize the character and show) I’ve decided to consider it a kind of homage. I doubt I’ll be facing any lawsuits over it.

As always, feel free to leave comments. I love feedback and am not just looking for a pat on the back (really!) let me know what you like or don’t like about any of my writing. You’ll be appreciated for it.

C-17, GR-81 and ACT

The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber.‭ ‬It doesn’t make it five steps before it decides being noticed by a nosy chamber annoys him.‭ ‬It,‭ ‬Cleanbot‭ ‬17,‭ ‬or C-17‭ ‬for short,‭ ‬clomps the five steps back to the chamber and holds up its left hand to the door plate.‭ ‬The door plate acknowledges C-17‭’‬s identity chip and opens the door.

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Something I’ve Learned About Me, A New Goal, and Inspiration For Any Writer

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One great thing about being in the early stages of learning anything is how fast you can improve. I’m pretty damn certain that every day over the past several months I have become a better writer and more likely to succeed in the business of writing. I’m equally sure that there will come days in the future where I will feel like I’m not getting better, or making progress. Those times, or plateaus, are commonly discussed in education theory and I believe they apply to most things in our lives. They can frustrate, but the secret at those times is to just keep pushing forward, maybe try to change-up some routines, and don’t stop putting in the time because you will break through the plateau eventually.

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Useful Links: Armed With Pens, and More

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Ok, it’s time for me to point out some more places that I’ve personally been finding useful or enjoyable on this here internet.

My main highlight for today is a new site called Armed With Pens (@ArmedWithPens). They’ve been going since about mid June and already have fifteen articles up. Topics so far have included getting an agent, why you don’t need an agent, marketing, ebook formatting, editing (both as a process and as a profession), and more.

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Book Recommendation: Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine

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So I’ve been meaning to write this review for about 2 weeks now. As soon as I finished Mechanique I knew I wanted to write about it, but I haven’t had the time. I teach English as a Foreign Language at a university in South Korea and the end of semester always means two weeks of exhausting work. I mostly teach English Conversation so final exams mean I have to sit down and talk to students. It doesn’t sound so bad but going over the same questions and hearing the same sorts of answers (often with the same sorts of mistakes) over and over again for hours a day over the course of a week is surprisingly draining. There is also the fact that when you’re marking someone’s conversation skill and language ability you really have to give them your full and undivided attention. If you let your mind wander you risk being unfair in your marking. The week after exams is always long too as I usually have a backlog of final tests and homework assignments to mark before I can compile final grades. The payoff for those two weeks of mental exhaustion though are a generally easy job and two months of paid vacation per semester, so I’m not complaining.

This means I’m going to have lots of time for writing and blogging, assuming I don’t let the joy of freedom devolve into long hours of TV, computer games and naps. That’s always a danger. Anyway, expect to see more action here on Looking For a Rabbit Hole (still pondering a name change on that front…). To start us off I should get to that review, yes?

To be clear, I am reviewing the audiobook of Mechanique, which means I’m really reviewing the work of two different storytellers: the book’s author, Genevieve Valentine [ her blog here] [her twitter here], and the audiobook’s narrator, Scott Aiello [other books narrated by Scott here]. Both of these fine artists did a great job in making Mechanique an enjoyable audiobook experience. Early on in my listening I realized that, as someone aiming sqaurely at the goal becoming a proffessional writer, I was very jealous of the writing here. Mechanique is not your standard novel. The narrative is non-linear, effortlessly jumping back and forth through time, and uses multiple points of view; many of the Circus Tresaulti’s performers take their turn in the spotlight.

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