Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

Flash Fiction: Over The Top Pulp Insanity

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So this weeks terribleminds.com flash fiction challenge from Penmonkey-in-Chief Chuck Wendig was:

…Crazy pulp shiznit….

…To go cuh-razy with the over-the-top pulp weirdness…

I can’t say I’ve ever tried writing anything in a crazy pulp style, but that’s one of the great things about flash fiction challenges. So, I give you:

Countdown to Meltdown

A wailing alarm screamed bursts of ear-splitting noise throughout the facility. Periodically filling the silence between alarm bursts the too-sweet feminine voice of the main computer called out the time remaining.

“This facility will self-destruct in five minutes. Please seek the nearest escape pod.”

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Useful Link: I Should Be Writing

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So, things got suddenly quiet around here in the last week or so because I found myself surprised by a sudden onslaught of work and work related stress. It was a generally bad week for productivity on almost all writing related endeavors, but I’ll talk more about lessons learned from the experience in a post coming tomorrow or the next day to reflect on a month of having a blog about becoming a writer.

Today’s real purpose is a new addition to the useful links. Frankly, I feel a little weird writing a post about today’s link because I’m sure that most anyone coming by my little blog has probably been long aware of “I Should Be Writing” the blog and podcast of writer, editor and podcaster Mur Lafferty (twitter: @mightymur) for wanna-be writers.

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Flash Fiction: Dinosaur Challenge

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This weeks terribleminds flash fiction challenge required the use of dinosaurs in the story. This theme is to go along with the public release of DINOCALYPSE NOW (which you can get at Drivethru RPG, Amazon or B&N). The winner of this week’s challenge gets an e-book copy of DINOCALYPSE NOW. Personally, I backed the kickstarter so I’ve already got my e-book copy (in multiple formats even) and will be eventually finding a physical copy in my mail. Still, I’d love to win and pass along the prize e-book to a friend who might be interested but didn’t get in on the kickstarter.

Anyway, here is my flash fiction entry for this week:

The Truth About K-Pg

Klax and Dyzon considered the enormous creature displayed on the view screen.

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Book Recommendation: Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig

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One thing I intend to include in this blog are reviews of books, movies and other sorts of entertainment that interest me. This is my first one and the first serious review I’ve ever attempted to write. I’ve added this review to the Amazon page for Blackbirds but I wanted to include it here as well. After all, Looking for a Rabbit Hole needs content!

The Review:

If I were to write a one-sentence review of Blackbirds it would be something like this:

Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig, is one heck of a tense, terrifying ride.

A longer, but short review:

I loved this book and would recommend it to almost everyone. There is a lot to like about it, including the characters, the story and the ideas running around in it. It has to be said that there is also a little that some may find unacceptable. If you absolutely cannot read something liberally laced with profanity, a bit of truly horrific violence and a smattering of straight up gore then you should probably stay away. For everyone else: buy and read it now!

Now, if you’d like a more fleshed out review continue on:

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Useful Link: Slushpile Avalanche

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Looking for tips on writing? Looking for tips on writing short (and flash) fiction? Looking for tips on getting your fiction published? Today’s useful link has all of that.

A very recent discovery for me, I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve found at Slushpile Avalanche so far. Now before I go any further I should mention that Slushpile Avalanche appears to be a dead or nearly-dead blog. According to Google Reader the last post was from January of this year and there was only one post in all of 2011. It’s also not a very big site; the site’s front page blog archive lists 37 posts in 2010. So, there are only 39 posts all told in the blog and not all of them may contain writing and publishing advice.

HOWEVER, with all those caveats out of the way I can say that what I’ve read over there so far has been very interesting.

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Flash Fiction: Don’t Mess With Our Lion

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My flash fiction offering for this week’s challenge from Terribleminds. This week the challenge was to use a randomly generated title. The titles were generated here, which creates kooky American military operation names. The title I chose from my five was:

“Don’t Mess With Our Lion”

The doorbell rang and Julie’s heart began racing. When she opened it and found that it really was Ray waiting on her porch her heart skipped a beat. He looked perfect and with her parents gone overnight to a conference for her mother’s company she knew they could have a perfect evening.

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