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Character snapshot: Willy Winston

Joe Hallett1 Comment

Writing Willy’s character was fun. I like characters that can be equally tough and tender…

Willy turned around to face his friends and make sure everyone was out and ok. Sandy started to sob and fell to her knees as Jonny put his arm around her. Frank, still huffing from his sprint, bent over to catch his breath. Gregory and Daniel looked around, frantic.  

“Where’s David?” Gregory asked in an awkward girlish-sounding voice. Frank stood up straight and looked toward the tent.  

Sandy gasped. “Oh, oh my God!” she cried, seeing the tent collapsed.  

Gregory and Daniel rushed over to the tent, calling his name. Willy and Frank followed, quick to help, struggling to find the tent opening in the darkening light of the sky. Frank froze cold. He looked down, and his voice turned a chilling tone of horror. “Blood,” he whispered, forcing the word out of his mouth.  

Willy looked down at where Frank was staring. Fresh splats of blood dripped at Willy’s feet.  

Frank looked up at Willy. “You’re bleeding, old man,” he said with a relieved tone.  

A trickle of blood ran down from Willy’s forehead and nose into his beard. He reached up and touched his forehead, searching for injury. “Oh,” he said with a nonchalant tone as he pulled a toothpick-sized piece of cable from his head. “Would ya look at that.”  

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Why did you name it that?

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My wife asked me why I named this blog “Hand-prints of Darkness”. Because “Prints of Darkness” was taken… Of course. I took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. first, I was told I should start a blog to help promote my writings, and second, a character for the next book writes a blog. Spoiler alert, I thought it would be a fun little easter egg to actually have a blog that was referenced in the book. So here we are… This is pretty fun too, I hope you like it!

            Part of the Draft from the Next book in the series…..

    Serenity Gates, Yes, that’s her real name. It encompasses everything she hates about living in this new, new age. Her Parents of course enjoyed the revolution of the spiritual awakening in the world.  It could explain a lot about her though. The typical rebellion against everything your parents are or care about to be your own person. At least I didn’t become a Satanist She thought.  Slasher movies and death metal, goth style. They could have got worse. Serenity pounded out a few more lines on her keyboard adding the last finishing touches to her blog “Hand-prints of Darkness”. A pretty successful blog about nineteen eighty’s and ninety’s horror movies… only the classics. Well not only, there are few current movies that are worthy of special attention to her blog, she’s not a purist.  

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My thoughts on “Alone”

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Ok ok, I will eventually draw a cover for this short story, but don’t judge a book by its cover right? Alone is a short story that kinda hit me out of the blue as I was going to sleep one night. really it was an image in my head of conjoined twins holding a bloody mallet. Originally, the story was too big to be considered a short story, If I remember correctly it hovered around 13000 words. I listen to a lot of podcasts and one of them I was listening to at the time had a horror story contest. I had already wrote most of “Alone” and decided to trim it down and see how it would do. Really, Alone was my debut into the writing world. No one except a very select few had ever read anything I wrote. So I Trimmed it down and sent it in. It came in first place! That really boosted my confidence to keep on at it.

I am a horrible record keeper, so my original file of the story is lost in the ether of the dataverse. Though this version of Alone is technically complete I am considering rewriting it, to add back the stuff I trimmed out of it for the contest. The story in my head is a lot deeper than this version.

Emergence Collective

Character snapshot: Frank

Joe Hallett1 Comment

Frank is a fan favorite, Mine too. I tend to use people I know as a template (not biograghically) for some characters. Frank is modeled after a real person….

Still lost in his thoughts and even a little excited, he must have been driving faster than he realized since he got to the hardware store in quick time. It was good, though; the evening was going by fast, and the store was about to close up for the night. He got out of his Volkswagen van and pushed open the old door of the storefront. He only got a few steps into the store when the cashier gave him an odd look. The young kid had spiky black hair and a ring in his nose. 

“Mister… you can’t come in here like that, sorry.” The young kid sounded apologetic and amused at the same time. 

“Like what?” Frank was oblivious to any reason why he should not be there. 

“Your feet, bro. You have to have shoes to come in; it’s a safety thing. Might step on a nail and sue us or something.” A smile indicating laughter was soon to follow was on the boy’s face by now. 

Frank looked down at his feet and realized that he wasn’t wearing shoes. The thick calluses on his perpetually dirty feet did not feel shoes in the summer most of the time. He was an old hippy and stuck in a time warp. Shoes were for winter when it was too cold to go without. He chuckled at himself and smiled back at the cashier.

“Sorry,” Frank said with a bit of a giggle. He was not embarrassed by his attire. Look at that kid; why should I be embarrassed by the way I dress? he thought to himself, almost laughing out loud. Nonchalantly turning around, he gave the cashier a nod goodbye and headed for the exit. He only felt a little disgruntled by the situation since it was a wasted trip. He did not have anything much to do anyway, but wasted gasoline was wasted money. 

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The Phenomenon

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I gave alot of thought to the world I was creating in Emergence collective. Emergence itself, the phenomenon played an integral part to my thought process. I am fascinated by the concept. Organization out of chaos and random. That is a watered-down version of it, and really doesn’t even come close to its own complexity. In my story emergence is the catylist for a universal form of transcendence the mechanism that drives evolution of a sort. A law of nature that we humans are just now beginning to piece together.

Now, as I am putting together the storyline for the second book, I am working on delving into that more in detail and getting really far out in some really cool thoughts on higher dimensions a its inhabitants. Trust me bro, shits getting weird. By the way if you use Kindle unlimited, Emergence collective is free, so there isn’t an reason not to check it out 😉

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Good stuff

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What kind of witer am I? I guess I’m a discovery writer since I let the story take control and go where it wants. I have an idea of how I want things to end up but the journey there even surprises me. Some situations in Emergence Collective developed organically and as I am writing I’m thinking “holy shit that just happened.” Thats the fun part when I am being taken for a ride myself.I started working on the next book. I have a pretty good idea of some of the main plot points and I am getting excited. This time around, rather than having the entire story rattle around I decided to out line the story and characters. There are things in Emergence collective I wish I had delved deeper in, some of the esoteric concepts I should have fleshed out more, so hopefully I will be able to pull it off in the next go.

Emergence Collective · writing

Emergence Collective

Joe Hallett3 Comments

Two teenage lovers on the verge of adulthood suddenly find themselves in a fight to save humanity or even reality itself after a megalomaniacal Airforce officer discovers a source of unimaginable power.