They Come With Springs Attached...

Happy Blog Day!

For today’s main feature, I’ll be focusing on A Boy and a Rat, and in particular the folklore that I used to create its villains (well its cannon fodder), the Spring Heels, as well as explaining why I linked them to a much more infamous Jack, one with a nasty reputation in London….

Before we get started though:

Creator Chaos

This Sunday is the third recording session for our growing podcast, so with luck, next week, I can report that it’s out there for you to listen to!
Now a quick reminder of who you’ll be listening to:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, Haskins and the Commander. A master of the pun.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the second of which is out soon! A great guy and the defacto leader of our rubble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name.

Matt Brown – A fantasy author looking to make a name for himself with his Ancient Blood series and his Valkyrie  story which he serializes in  his blog every Monday.

Click here to give our previous sessions a listen!

Vector Unit Orphan’s War

Many apologies as the series is now moving to a fortnightly update schedule, this is due to a number of behind the scenes incidents. Hope you can be patient with me a bit longer.

Check out all the previously released chapters here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for their newer stuff? Click here for their Christmas encounter with a Yeti, or click here for the anthology (Harvey Duckman Presents) containing the short ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, get this one and you also get a whole host of brilliant short stories as well from fantastic authors.

Click here to find me on Goodreads

They Come With Springs Attached

To start, an extract from A Boy and a Rat
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“I want to see what that noise is.” Outside was what you would expect at this time of the morning, dark, quiet and deserted, which is how I preferred things. Then I heard the springs again, and from my limited vantage point I saw movement, just below the tree. Someone was in my front garden, snooping around. It was dark, and they wore dark clothing so, as you can imagine, it was hard to make out anything. Then I saw one of them jump. The figure bent down and then launched itself straight onto the roof. Riz had joined me to witness this as I fell away from the window, speechless.

“Der Spring Heels ave found me...Must ave seen me sneak in ta yer bag. Though I wonder why it took dem dis long?” I heard another land on the roof, and then another. Three ‘Spring Heels’ were now doing who knows what on top of my house.
“What...What are those things?”
“Spring Heels’re specially modded Bogies, a type of goblin. Yer heard of Spring Heeled Jack aven’t yer?” I shook my head.
“Well yer bout to get a crash course in im. Jus hope der other Jack didn’t tag along” Riz started looking nervously at my ceiling, there was a loft in-between us and those Spring Heels. Then a purple haze seemed to be etching itself across my ceiling, at which point, Riz leapt from the windowsill, and darted towards my bag.

“What are you doing? What is that!” I shouted, I envisioned my parents coming in and waking me from one of those waking dreams, but  no, they stayed asleep.
Riz reappeared from my bag clutching a pouch in his mouth, and he then ushered me to follow him, and together we legged it downstairs and into the back garden. I hadn’t realised that’s where he wanted to take me, it didn’t seem smart going some where open. I wanted to voice an objection but Riz pre-empted it, something he did a lot of in the early days.

“Dey’re in yer house now, dat mist in yer room, dat was dem breaking in magically. Dere boss musta give dem der power ta do dat. We need ta get ta der field over der fence. Dat shud be perfect fer my plan...”  Riz ran up my leg and straight onto my shoulder.
“Your plan? When did you come up with that?”
“A moment ago, yer learn ta think quick in dis line of work.”
“And what line of work is that?”
“Is dis important rite now? Dey aren’t gonna be happy dat we’re not in yer room.” He was right, the situation was getting too much for me and I lost sight of what was going on. What was more astounding was that he had decided that I was helping him, and following his command. Though I guess we were in this thing together, whatever it was.

“Let’s get out of here then!” I said as I ran for the garden gate, throwing it open I ran down the short path and onto the field.
“Dat’s perfect.” He said, pointing to a spot just a bit further on, I cast my eyes back home and saw three heads sticking out of the roof, each of them looking at me with glowing purple eyes that burned from their sunken eye sockets. They started pulling themselves out of the structure, leaving no marks or damaged tiles. I ran towards the point that Riz gestured to, as the springs sounded out and the Spring Heels touched down behind us.

Riz had already pulled out a, what I now know as a Rune. He was thinking several moves ahead of the goblins. Taking aim with the Rune, he uttered something in a language I still can’t identify, and I’ve searched through almost all of them. The Rune broke apart in Riz’s hands, and the fragments shot out in the shape of an arc, covering most of the ground in front of us. The three Spring Heels were stood just ahead of this, their bodies constantly moving, their heads twitching as they observed us .

“What are they waiting for?” I asked, wanting this to be over quickly.
“Dey waitin on sumthin else...” Riz then pointed towards the far end of the block of houses where another figure lurked. This one was taller then the Spring Heels, his arms longer and there was a sheen to his hands that I never understood till he got closer. It was dressed differently to the Spring Heels, wearing a long coat and, amusingly enough, a top hat. “...Oh Shit, fer cryin out loud, can’t I get a break!” Riz shouted out.
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This covers the first proper introduction of Spring Heels, a creation of Faine Hedara, to serve as underlings. Goblins with springs attached to their legs is a bit of a weird thing you might say, and you’d be right, but their inspiration, is a very real bit of folklore. Who am I talking about? None other then Spring Heeled Jack.

Spring Heeled Jack is a curious creature, the first reports of the ‘being’ as he would be identified were in 1837, where several girls were attacked in the dark. His physical appearance does change with each story, with features slowly morphing to the extreme, though there is variants of course. He is said to have metal claws instead of hands, a Cape that is used to hide his appearance at first, eyes like orbs of fire and the ability to break blue and white fire. He didn’t actually have springs on his feet, but was named for the extraordinary jumping ability he possessed.

Of course, there was some very mortal suspects who have been accused over the years of being behind the original attacks that spread the myth, notably a young group of Aristocrats, performing drunken dares. Sightings continued after the first wave until the early twentieth century, though another country did have sightings of their own, Czechoslovakia, during the time of World War Two. Interestingly, there he was seen as something of a hero, even getting his own cartoons were he went after the deadly SS of the Nazis.

So drafting A Boy and a Rat, I was looking for folklore that might be a good fit for the story. While in this process, I came across the old pictures from that time (which can be seen here on the Wikipedia entry for Spring Heeled Jack), I looked into the legend more and decided that I had to feature him somewhere. Then, I refined the idea and settled upon the concept that someone created Spring Heeled Jack then mass produced him for cannon fodder purposes. This further evolved into the Spring Heels you read above.

Except there was something missing, and the name, Spring Heeled Jack, kept me following the train of thought that led to  an infamous Jack, that being of course, Jack the Ripper. Everyone knows about Jack, his crimes and all the speculations about his real identity, there was nothing I could add to him, well, aside from making him a goblin. Yes, I turned Jack the Ripper into the original Spring Heeled Jack, and Faine’s first creation. See I wasn’t the first to make Jack a monster, as to my knowledge, that honour belonged to the PlayStation game, Medievil 2, which served as an inspiration in how I ultimately depicted him.

This allowed me to give Faine a second in command, and bring in that little bit more menace then I previously had, and yes, Riz has fought him before…

That’s all I have time for this week, so thank you for reading and beware the sound of springs…

The Lost Writings: In The Beginning...

Happy Blog Day everyone!

Something different today. First though, the usual.

Harvey Duckman Presents….

Don’t forget that the Anthology containing the brand new Brennan and Riz short, A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens, is out now from 6e Publishing!

Click here to order your copy, and go back to last weeks post to learn how I went about writing the story. There’s a great selection of stories in there to sink your teeth into…

A Boy and a Rat Update

Chapter 10 is finished, which means that one half of the Seeley Council content is finished. I estimate that this is a third of the book done at this point so I’ve still got an uphill struggle. I’ll post another short snippet next week for you all, where hopefully I can report on another chapter done…

Vector Unit Regen: Orphan’s War

Chapter 6 First Flight is the latest chapter for Orphan’s War over at Royal Road, click here to give it a read!

 I’m sorry that the quality for this chapter isn’t up to par as it should be. It’s no excuse but home life was more hectic, but it’s up now, and I know how I’ll approach it in the future.

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The main feature for today is actually a look back in something I like to call *dramatic voice* The Lost Writings. So join me for the first delve into the past…

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…In The Beginning

Let’s change the clock back, to say…the year 2004 where I was just seventeen years old.  This was an important year for me, though it didn’t look it then. You see before then, I had done writing but it was mainly for English lessons in school. I had ideas, but I wanted to turn these into a different medium entirely. I had hoped then to become a games developer, so all those ideas were to become games that I wanted to make and thought would sell well.

What changed? An encounter with a friend from secondary school (I carried on into college, he went on to an apprenticeship, so we would only occasionally cross paths). Anyway, this time, he told me what he was doing outside of work, has he had been inspired to write stories of his own. This got me thinking. If he could do it, and it did look fun, maybe I could turn those ideas that were rattling around my head into something worthwhile. Unlike him, I had no intention of publishing what I was going to do, as I had no belief in my abilities (and the stories were rubbish, as I’m about to inflict on- I mean, get you to see), so while he finished his work and started to look at who would take such a work, I started writing…

The first idea I worked on, was heavily inspired by Capcom’s Resident Evil franchise for various games consoles, perhaps too inspired, now that I look back on it with hindsight. There was differences, as I didn’t use zombies in my story, but it was still a dodgy company making bio-weapons, and full of action set pieces galore! So in its very first incarnation of the story that I thought up, I had wanted it to be a third person (or first person depending on mood) game called Infect or Destroy, where players could either choose to be the military guys (I.e. the good guys) or the monsters (self explanatory but the idea here was that they could turn the good guys into monsters, hence the infect part of the title).

General plot was experiments gone awry, people sent into deal with it, simple. This idea joined the rest as time when on, till as I say, I started writing so I dragged it out and give it a makeover of sorts. Gone was the first title, instead I took a cue of a an old Red Dwarf episode I liked from Season 5 and ran with it (completely changing the meaning of the word in the process), this was how Terrorform: The Project came into existence. The plot is as basic as before, and I put a lot of tropes in, before I even knew what that word was.

The excerpt that follows is the first time the protagonist team meets one of the basic bio-weapons while searching the building. Please remember that this was written fifteen years ago, so I apologize for what you are about to read:
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Michael was the first to notice the huddled shape searching the desk, there was a slight moan, then the shape up-ended the desk. Ray shined his touch at the shape, it was shaped like a man, apart from that one of his arms seemed much longer than the other one, the person wasn’t wearing a shirt so they could see that there was a large wound on the guys back;
“S-top r-ight there” Michael said, the man turned around, now they could tell that the thing was anything but human, the thing body looked slightly bigger than a human’s, the skin was almost a dirty grey colour, the thing’s was sex-less, its feet were slightly bigger as well, it had a muscular body, the creature didn’t have any hair, its face looked like it had been scarred at one point, the scar going down from its left ear to it mouth  face and the eyes were just white, the teeth were jagged and sharp, but the thing that attracted the most attention was the creatures arm, it was elongated, it seemed to drag on the ground, the elbow bone visibly sticking out of the skin, there was no blood though. The creature came towards them, Ray could have sworn that he saw it smile, if it knew how to that was, it looked at them in turn, there was a moments silence then it attacked;
ROAR!!!
The creature swept its long arm round, it hit Ray in the leg and knocked him over, Michael noticed the claws that were growing from the creature’s hands, it swept its arm round again in hopes of getting Michael or Rodger, both of them managed to get out of the way. Michael pulled out his gun and aimed at the creatures head , he fired 2 rounds, he saw that the rounds hit, as the creature stepped back, a black liquid coming out of the wounds, it was still moving though it cam up to Michael and picked him up with it’s other hand, Justas it was about to bite his head off, there was more shots and the creature dropped Michael, when Michael looked again he saw that the creatures are had virtually been blown off, he turned around to see who had saved his life. It was Rodger and his Ak-47, he ran over to where Ray had fallen and helped pick him up, but the creature was still live and coming to get them, Michael fired another 4 shots this time aimed at the creatures chest, the shots went thought the creature, there was a horrible wailing sound as the creature slumped to its knees and fell to the ground, the carpet being stained with the black liquid, the creature stopped moving.
“Ray are you okay?” Michael asked,
“I think I’m fine, what the hell was that thing?” Ray looked at the lifeless corpse, he walked over to it and looked at it, he looked at the wound on the creatures back, the was a black lump on it, it looked like it was going into the skin, it wasn’t a wound, Ray almost threw up when he realised what it was. It was another creature, he backed away from the creature, he turned to face Rodger and Michael, we better report back to Mark and the others, he not going to believe this.
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Still with me? Good. Now you may be asking yourself, why did I go down memory lane for this? The answer is, to show that time and practice can improve things and that I didn’t just hit the ground running. In this case you can see I hit the ground hard and then struggled to get up again for a few years. I’m now a published author, whose work is a million years away from this story here.

If you think your own work is no good, rest assured, it’s probably better then what you’ve just read. If for whatever reason you still want to read the rest of that train wreck (and it’s two sequels) just let me know and I may think about unleashing it all, but it will be on your head that I do so.
Anyway, thank you for your time today, and have a good week everyone, till next time, just remember you are your own harshest critic.

A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens

Happy Blog Day to you all!

Let’s dive in to this weeks topics shall we!

Creator Chaos

Episode 2 is now online and ready for you all to listen to!
Follow the link to hear me and four other brilliant authors ramble on about our characters, you might even learn something about Brennan and Riz while you’re at it…

Harvey Duckman Presents….

If you’ve been paying attention you will have realized that this superbly entertaining anthology from the publisher of my Brennan and Riz stories, is out right now. Like right now right now. Click the link to get order your copy and read a whole host of short stories from fantastic authors, including the Brennan and Riz story that’s the subject of today’s story behind the story.

A Boy and A Rat Update

Work continues on this prequel, but I thought it would be nice to give you a little sneak peek at the story…

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It’s a good thing I’ve got a strong stomach, otherwise I would have been rushing backwards and forwards to the toilet. In front of me was the scene from an extreme horror movie. Blood dripped from a couple of bodies that were suspended from the ceiling, collecting into pots and pans from the kitchen.

Another two bodies were draped over the settee, their necks slashed open at just the right angle so the blood looked like wings on the opposite wall. The smell was horrendous, I didn’t know how Riz was able to keep it together, and Valarie, well she had obviously seen those police programs way too much, as she was taking pictures of everything important.

Perhaps I should explain, see I had a call from Valarie a little over an hour ago, saying that she herself had been contacted by the government to look into a case on their behalf of supernatural dealings. When she relayed that to me, I was expecting something different then what I ended up with. What she brought me to, was a mass murder.

A party of illegal squatters had all been killed in increasingly horrific ways. The ones who got their throats slit had it comparatively easy. Now, you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with me? A guy with a talking Rat who investigates paranormal shenanigans, and when no jobs are around, more mundane matters. Well, the murderer’s masterpiece was in the hallway, and it was the first thing we saw.

The body had been stripped and tied with small chains to several floating candles, with the chain links going through his flesh. His stomach had been opened and emptied, and moved somewhere else. In the now empty cavity was a fairy statue, taken from the garden and lavishly painted. The floating candles was a bit of a giveaway here. To make matters worse, they were scented candles, apparently brought to the crime scene. I’ve now lost any sense of attachment to the smell of cinnamon.

The police who were first on the scene, saw that, and straight away reported it to their bosses, who reported it to their bosses, who in a long series of passing upwards, passed it to the Government department who dealt with this sort of thing. They are so secretive they don’t even have an official name or an acronym, though, I would suggest waste of space.

These people then do what all those in charge do best, and shift responsibility. Citing lack of manpower, they contracted the job out to someone in the area, that someone being Valarie. She in turn, hired us, not revealing till we walked through the door, the full details of what was going on. I can take one body, as gruesome as it was, but this many? With all those...pleasant smells, mixing together? I wished she had hired someone else.

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Remember though that this is still a work in progress so requires work still.

Vector Unit Orphan’s War

Just a reminder that this is still ongoing, and updated weekly with a new chapter. Chapter 5 deals with Drake’s induction to the Vanguard and his meeting with it’s commanding officer. Click the link to see how the story goes…

And now…your main presentation…

A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens

The inspiration for this story came while I was walking my two dogs through a small green area five minutes away from where I live. It’s a nice place, situated on two levels with sloping pathways connecting them. It was first created early in the twentieth century as a nice green space for the little town (which became more well known a couple of decades later for playing home to a Royal Air Force Aerodrome).

As I was heading down the steps on the far right I noticed something odd about one of the large trees at the bottom. The base of the tree, where the trunk met the roots had grown open, with a small hollow, and in this space, someone had placed a small plant pot for some reason. Intrigued I looked around but couldn’t find anything else and no sign of what ever used to be in the plant pot. The tree itself took on the form of an arc around the opening, which, to my over active imagination, looked like a doorway.

When I got back home I made a note in my journal, wanting to get this story seed down before I lost it in the jumble of my mind. That was the genesis of this story.

After this, every time I walked through the Pleasure Gardens, I looked at the trees, and imagined them being gate ways, just like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, wondering what was on the other side, how I would describe it.

It was around this time that I started working with 6e Publishing and one of the first things they asked (aside from the first set of stories) was a short story of roughly two thousand words. To be featured in an anthology they were wanting to do. I was more than happy to oblige. Before I left their office, I knew what story I wanted to write, and later that evening I started it.

Two thousand word stories are hard to write and getting a story to fit the constraints is daunting. For contrast Girl in the Water (the first Brennan and Riz story, featured first as part of the Crossing the Tees 2017 Anthology) was three thousand words, and proved hard to edit. This is why the story is actually quite simple when you break it down. The pair show up poke around the tree and then suffer. They are the only speaking characters. I had wanted to use what limited words I had to give a good description of the “Other”, and so set out to think of the best way to get across the feeling that Brennan has when he’s cast there, and when he’s hearing the other being. Did I do well? Guess I’ll let the readers be the judge of that.

I gave the link up there already, but if you fancy reading this story then click here!
That’s all for this week, so take care and make sure you’re careful about where you stick your head…

Story Behind the Story: Yeti in the Snow

Good day all!

Hope this Wednesday finds you all well, now a couple of things before our main presentation.

Harvey Duckman Presents…

I spoke about this anthology last week but I wanted to remind everyone that it was officially launching at Sci Fi Scarborough this weekend! So if any viewers are at the convention, you can go and say hi to the awesome publishers 6e Publishing and pick up a copy of this awesome anthology!
If you can’t get to the event, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time to get your preorders in from Amazon.

A Boy and a Rat update:

So for all those that don’t know, I’m currently writing the first full length Brennan and Riz novel, in the form of a prequel. I’m currently over a third of the way through and I’ll start periodically posting teasers here on the blog do you can see what’s hopefully coming out this year…
I’ve just finished Chapter 9, and so far, I’m getting good feedback from my beta reader on how it’s shaping up. Look out next time for a small sneak peek.

Vector Unit Orphan's War

Work continues apace on this story, with chapter 4 having recently been uploaded. This chapter (The Siblings Part) sees Drake having to say goodbye to Ava as she arrives at the hospital to begin her life saving treatment.

If you follow the #Vss365 tag on twitter you might find a little reference I put in to one of the best writers to use that tag.

Click here to check out the chapter!

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Now for this weeks main feature…

The Yeti in the Snow

Or the original full title, The Yorkshire Yeti in the Snow, which was sadly lost due to constraints with the cover. When I first started writing, I’ve always wanted to do a seasonal story of some kind, a holiday special if you will for one of my story series. In fact back in the distant past of 2008, I started writing one that was never finished sadly, other things needed the attention in my life.

Flash forward to the summer of 2018 and a brainstorming session with my publisher where I gently dropped the idea of doing a seasonal themed Brennan and Riz tale, thus the groundwork was laid for Brennan and Riz to have a busy Christmas…

With it agreed that the story would be wrote, and knowing that I had to have it ideally finished before the end of October (I was entering NaNoWriMo the following November so needed all hands on that) I had to settle on a plot. You would think that Christmas Folklore would mean I was spoilt for choice for ideas, but did the world really need a Brennan and Riz vs the Krampus then? (let me know if you think it will be a good idea, feedback is always welcome!) so I needed another idea.

Enter the Yeti. Thinking about folklore connected with the season was much easier, and I quickly settled on the abominable snowman (to use another name), while they are quite common in folklore in the Tibetan region and outlying areas, the Yeti didn’t make much of an appearance in the west till the nineteenth century, when people were studying the cultures of the region. They have been depicted in various different ways through the media since their introduction, from being smart to being the missing link in human evolution (along with their sometimes related cousins, Bigfoot). So I had the creature from folklore, and the plot was beginning to form. It still needed something else. Given their history and the angle I wanted to take (Intelligent creatures that shared parts of our world but wanted to be left to their own society) I needed a villain.

I have already said that I was entering NaNoWriMo, and I already had plans for it, one of which was one of the antagonists in the story, taking sometime from the Halloween Preston park story and going with it further, the idea of the Fae who didn’t fit into the two established Councils. I decided that Azure Fractal, would be linked to this, taking inspiration from the Fae who I would be writing about in the prequel, allowing it to sync up nicely.

I had also decided quite early on that Valarie would reappear in this tale, as she was becoming a fan favorite through feedback I was getting. It’s always fun to give her and Riz scenes together as they have a nice back and forth. The last thing I needed was the location, and this was perhaps the easiest part.

Ten years ago, my parents and my then girlfriend (now my wife) went on a great winters walk to where my father delivered parcels for his job, this was the Yorkshire Dales, a stunning place during normal weather. When we went it was covered in snow, giving it a new appeal, and proving fertile ground for my imagination. The best part is, as this wasn’t connected to any existing folklore in the region, I get to revisit it at some point.

With everything in place, crafting the story wasn’t so difficult, and the climax saw a nice twist on the old formula, by Brennan being the one captured and needing rescued by the surprisingly efficient team of Riz and Valarie. The only thing I regret there is not being able to show what it was like from their point of view, given the perspective the stories use.

I’m not sure if I would use the Yeti’s again in the future, though I know some people would like to know about Riz’s connection with them, just like his connection with the gods. If there’s a story there, I’ll tell it, though I’m not sure Brennan and Riz will want me sending up to the Himalayas…

Click here to purchase the story from Amazon!

It's also free to read for those on Kindle Unlimited!

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Join me next week where I’ll talk about A Walk Through the Pleasure Gardens, till then everyone, keep safe and don’t upset any yeti’s…