Tag: kickstarter

Welcome to a very special I got up at 0515 in the morning for a flight that has now been delayed until 0945 edition of my No Shit ToC blogging! My apologies in advance to both reader and the writer whose story I’m about to talk about, because I’m not sure how coherent I actually am right now.

Today’s story is The Pursuit of Happiness by William RD Wood. I mentioned before that we tended to classify our slush pile on scales between two stories. The Pursuit of Happiness has the (dubious?) honor of fighting to pin the “bleak” side of the tonal scale. (There’s another story it traded off with, which I’ll talk about on another day, and I’m still not sure which of them wins. Depends on what sort of existential despair I’m feeling at the time.)

The Pursuit of Happiness is a gritty, (quasi)military SF-with-more-than-a-dash-of-horror story that involves an alien invasion and a small squad of mercenaries just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. Spoiler, humanity isn’t exactly acing this encounter. But what made it stand out to me the most are the characters that William builds in the pages. I loved the dialog, the banter, the interactions, because it said so much about each of them and rendered lengthier exposition unnecessary. It’s a fun read with a deliberate pace. If there’s a military SF equivalent to hardboiled, William nails it.

And the aliens? Incredibly creepy.

And–well, if you want to know more, you’ll just have to support the Kickstarter and read the story. I’ve got a plane to board now. Hopefully. Wish me luck.

The No Shit ToC keeps on rolling, rolling, today with a really cool short story by Frances Rowat: Thou Unnecessary Letter.

There are several writers who got a little creative with the required opening line for the anthology, but Frances took it and ran off on the orthogonal. When I started reading the story, I had to wrench my brain around and turn my head sideways to understand what was happening. And then I got it, and it was like a dawning light.

The way one of the slush jackalopes described Thou Unnecessary Letter is: “Magical alphabet noir.” That’s about the most accurate way I could think to describe it, myself. It’s a story that you imagine in black and white as you read, in which everyone is smoking (even if they’re not) and unironically wearing classic hats.

I’m at a loss to describe more about this story because I love it, and so much of that love comes from discovering how Frances played with the idea, with the opening line, and telling you more about it would just ruin the delight of unfolding all the complexity that she somehow managed to hide in 2000 words. Every time I read it over, I find something new that makes me say think oh.

This is a story I’m actively jealous I didn’t write. (And I don’t think I could have.)

So if you want to know what I’m babbling about, you’re just going to have to support the Kickstarter and make sure all your friends do too, so you can read it.

Look at us, we passed 250 supporters! WOOOOOO!!!! 65% of the way toward our funding goal, and I’m not even halfway done telling you how awesome all of these stories are.

Today’s tale from the ToC is Incursion by RK Duncan, lovely Lovecraftian offering that stuck with those of us at No Shit Central. We all loved this story and refused to let it go.

We got a lot of stories in the No Shit Slushpile that followed the format of a person recounting past events to a listener, following the required line of course. The inherent weakness of stories like that is when it comes to maintaining the stakes, the tension. For example, you know the narrator didn’t get killed by the scary thing they faced, because they’re telling you the story.

Well, Robin put a twist on the format and then knocked it out of the park. The guy with the no shit story is the witness to an otherworldly incursion being interviewed after the fact, and it grips your attention. What happened? How does it work in with what else is going on? What does the interviewer want? The tension remains because the point of the story isn’t even necessarily what happened, but where it’s all going to lead.

I was personally a sucker for the atmosphere of the story, as a dedicated player of Arkham Horror. It has that same sort of feeling, rendered in prose, where it’s a mystery to be solved, a creepy adventure, and you already know that victory is not going to be without its very high price.

Support the Kickstarter, and have your Elder Sign handy.

Ever wonder how much of a pain in the ass it would be, to be the daughter of a goddess? One of many, many daughters of a goddess? This next story, The Goddess Whole by Heather Morris, has an answer for you.

There’s a lot that I love in this story. It’s got a compelling fantasy setting, one that feels very complete despite its short length. You can just feel how much there is under the surface, little details coming out and enriching the world without distracting from the narrative. And it starts out like a more traditional no shit, there I was story that starts the plot off, with our hero Caer listening in and jumpstarting her investigation into strange, godly goings-on from there.

I also like it because it’s a fantasy story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Caer is exceptionally down-to-earth as a character, and being the walking, talking agent of the Goddess isn’t a trip in the park for her. There’s a certain dark humor to her situation and how she deals with it that really tripped off my amusement. When you’re one among many chosen ones and have to deal with the divine on a daily basis–a divine entity that is distracted, inattentive, and never gives you a good reason for what She wants–it must get wearing after a while. There’s also a real gritty earthiness to all of the characters that makes them very real and their situations, no matter how otherworldly in origin, very immediate.

It’s a fun story with an ending that makes me want to fistbump Caer. I think you’ll like it too, so you should support the Kickstarter and make sure you get a copy of the anthology!

Today’s treat from the No Shit Table of Contents is James Beamon‘s Episodes From the Abner-Mortimer Karmic War.

This story, y’all. This story. If Uranus Calling is the silliest story in the anthology, Episodes ties for the funniest. If you watched my video on the kickstarter, I mentioned we have some stories that are laugh out loud funny, and this is one of them. To be technical, this story made me laugh so loudly that it scared my cats and incapacitated me for several minutes.

Episodes From the Abner-Mortimer Karmic War is about two guys–Abner and Mortimer, as you might have guessed from the title–who really, really hate each other. With the seething, fiery passion of a thousand suns. And then some. And they are locked in an endless cycle of murder and revenge that neither of them are all that inclined to stop.

Now, murder and revenge might not sound that hilarious at first blush, but what makes this story is the karmic bit of it. Every time one of them dies, via revenge killing or natural causes, he is reborn… but not necessarily as a human. And it doesn’t matter what body he’s in: at some point he wakes up to the fact that his nemesis is somewhere in the world, and goes looking for him. Which ends up pitting man against snail, say, or seal against man. And the cycle repeats.

I’m not doing it justice. Because there is no way to accurately describe how hilarious James makes this concept without just transcribing the story for you. Instead, you should support the Kickstarter so you can read it for yourself. Just make sure you’re in an appropriate setting for loud guffaws, and not in the library, the quiet coach, or a church. I don’t want to be responsible for even the tiniest smudge on your karma, or any future encounters with vengeful snails.

There’s a lot of fun to traditional ghost stories, the kind you could imagine telling around a campfire while someone is torturing a bag of marshmallows by running them through with pointy sticks. (Optional Colorado addition: passing around the local microbrew.) The next offering from the No Shit ToC puts me in mind of just that: Rudy’s Revenge by Anne M. Gibson.

The story expands on the origin of a haunted pinball machine, and involves a circus side show, the strong man, the witch doctor, and a total asshole of a clown. (Clowns automatically make everything creepier.) What I liked about the story was how atmospheric it is. There’s a solid sense of environment, of the characters, and with a real economy of words that honestly makes me jealous as a writer. You can practically smell the popcorn and cotton candy mixed in with a humid night at a fairground.

Even better, the pinball machine in question actually does exist. Well, as in that pinball machine design exists. I can’t really say one way or another if it’s actually haunted. The Williams Funhouse pinball machine is a real thing with a real animatronic talking face named Rudy, and he’s real creepy if you ask me. I found this cool video covering all the features and modes of the pinball machine.

Sound like spooky fun? (It is.) One more reason to support the No Shit kickstarter and get the anthology!

We’re back to the sillier and much more literal side of the No Sh!t Table of Contents: I’m Not Taking This Phantom Crap Anymore by David Jón Fuller. In this case, the problem is literally no shit–crap is mysteriously disappearing from the outhouses of a bunch of quaint little lakeside cabins. And it’s up to the intrepid Kristoff with his husband Dale in tow to solve the mystery before all of the missing crap mysteriously reappears at the worst possible moment and in the worst possible place. (As if there’s a good place for several tons of human feces to suddenly pop into existence.)

This story is fun, a sort of Nancy Drew and the Case of the Missing Crap if Nancy was actually a gay Canadian man who investigates otherworldly mysteries using psychic powers activated by knitting.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Kristoff’s appetite for yarn cannot be denied. His poor husband seems resigned to having his sweaters sacrificially unraveled now and then.

The otherworldly forces behind the crap wandering off are something I found personally amusing for a myriad of reasons, but I don’t want to give them away. You’ll just have to support the Kickstarter and read the story yourself. I finished this story hoping that there are more adventures of Kristoff (he does mention a werewolf problem, maybe David will tell us more about that some day, hint hint David) since he would make a wonderful hero to follow while curled up under a blanket, a mug of hot chocolate close to hand.

So what do you call it when aliens are trying to change Earth to be more hospitable to them? Certainly not terraforming.

Today’s offering from the table of contents of the No Shit, There I Was anthology is If You’re Hearing This, I’m Already Dead by Sunil Patel. This story stands out for a lot of reasons; first off, it’s a first person, stream of consciousness monolog, a step apart from even the couple of more traditional No Shit stories that made it into the anthology.

I love what Sunil did with this story, because it’s got many trappings that could be read as outwardly silly–the invading aliens are named Graxians, you can kill them with peppermint oil–and leaves no question how deadly serious the stakes and circumstances are for the story’s hero. There’s a driving sense of urgency through this story that never lessens. You’re on the edge of your seat the whole time, listening to Tamika trying to figure out what’s happening, what she’s going to do, what she even can do about the desperate situation on Earth. It’s not an easy thing, to maintain this level of tension in a story like this, when you’re basically having a character sit in one place and unfold the past for the reader, but Sunil does it perfectly. You never know what Tamika’s going to say next.

And Tamika herself is a wonderful character–a black girl who has brilliant wit, wisdom, and a razor-sharp mind on her side, but she’s also just one girl against an alien invasion. And her determination will leave you wanting to cheer and break your heart at the same time.

Shut up, I’m not tearing up, you’re tearing up.

If you support No Shit, There I Was on Kickstarter, you’ll get to meet Tamika, the bravest girl on Earth. She’s well worth knowing.

So in an anthology titled No Shit, There I was, there have got to be some classic “no shit” stories, right? At least you’d hope so–and don’t worry, you’re not hoping in vain! We’ve got a couple that are definitely tales of strange happenings that lead to an odd and hilarious conclusion.

The first of these is Lo, He Has Risen, by Linda Tyler. You start off right in the head of a woman of a certain age who’s attending a Church of England service, enjoying the “bells and smells” routine. Then the comforting cultural theater is interrupted by an apparition of her deceased neighbor, and thing gets a bit silly.

I loved this story because it’s so indefatigably British. You can just hear it from the first words of the narration, read it in the way all of the characters react and interact because of mischievous ghost.There’s just something to this nice lady looking around her church that you couldn’t imagine an American doing. There’s a sly, wry sort of humor about the goings on that can’t be denied.

The best part is the way the ghost that brings people together, which I am not going to spoil for you–you’ll just have to read it, but all of the slush jackalopes were just tickled. The story is absolutely charming, and for the price of two cups of tea at a local cafe, you can support the kickstarter and have a copy of the book for yourself!

Your space ship has crash landed on a strange moon with a corrosive atmosphere. You are alone. You can talk to yourself–but you don’t like yourself all that much at this point–or you can talk to the odd, alien animals that flit through the stinging air, which look like nothing so much as silver fish.

This would make you the protagonist of Sarah Tchernev’s story, Silver Fish, the next offering from the No Sh!t, There I Was anthology. Life’s not being kind to him. On the other hand, he’s richly earned this particular fate.

I like a good character study , where the plot is internally driven and the external more a reflection of the conflicts and changes happening within. This story stuck with me because it has that arc like Cast Away, where it’s a single person against a hostile environment, only in this case the greater enemy is the one within, guilt and regret and the realization of mistakes that cannot be undone.

But what pushed this story into the “I will have this!” folder was Sarah’s use of language. There’s a dreamlike quality to the distant moon she creates, the choking atmosphere and the waving plants, the alien fish swimming through the unbreathable air. It’s like watching a human flounder around in a fish tank without a diving suit and then slowly developing gills–or at least believing he has.

It’s belief that’s the most dangerous, after all.

From this strange moon in the back end of known space to Uranus, this anthology is going to take you some strange places, guaranteed. It just needs a little kickstart.