Strangels

I was sitting at a table, enjoying the slight chill in the air as I held my cup beneath my nose. The steam warmed the tip and the aroma of vanilla and honey made my mouth water. For the first morning of my retirement, I thought things were going well.

The first of them walked across the street and stopped a few cars down. She was beautiful in a way that I couldn’t have described the day before. All long, lean limbs and cute, captivating curves. I might not enjoy being alone, but it did make it easier to stare. Although as I looked at her clothing, an almost see through green sack of a dress with a pair of heavy, brown work boots and one spotted sock, I realized that everyone was staring at the woman.

When he friend appeared beside her, the woman at the next table gasped. I never asked if the gasp was due to him just appearing, and I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed him walking up, or if it was because the loose running shorts he was wearing left a portion of his anatomy hanging out down the leg. Honestly, I didn’t need to know. The man was so well built and gifted that I would have considered switching teams if he had asked.

I was lost in thought as a pair of children ran down the sidewalk. The little girl who was running from her brother came to a sudden stop when she saw the adonis standing in front of her. Her brother was distracted by the woman and did not stop. He plowed into his sister, knocking them both to the pavement in a tangle of skinned knees and bloody elbows.

As children often do, they began to scream and cry in response to their injuries. The whole of the little cafe’s patronage pulled their eyes from the visions of beauty to look upon the injured. The pair stepped toward the children, who ignored the beauties to focus upon their pains.

It might come as some surprise, but this is when things got weird.

The woman, her gown falling off of her to reveal far more than has ever been accepted as modest, knelt beside the girl and grabbed her face. She kissed the child full on the mouth before wetting her fingers in her mouth and then shoving one in each of the child’s ears. While giving the girl a double wet willy, the woman bent further forward and licked the blood from each of the child’s knees with a tongue that would have made an anteater proud.

The man, lowered his pants a bit around his bottom before squatting over the pursuing brother and lifting a single finger into the air. As he did, the sound of the gas he passed seemed to echo off the building behind me. I was aware of a car alarm going off, though at that moment I could not remember if it had been honking it’s warning before the fellow farted or not.

Both children were silent. The diners were silent. The passing pedestrians were silent. Even the cars were stopped at a red light. The only sound was that stupid car alarm.

The pair stood straight, and the sun reflecting off the windows illuminated them. For a moment, they were haloed in soft gold, then they each started walking in opposite directions. The children’s mother ran up to check on them and I looked back at the woman at the next table.

We made eye contact and I began to worry about her. She was pale, her lips a light blue, and I wondered if she would be able to keep her seat. Her eyes were wide and wild as she gulped like an old cartoon character. “The kids,” she whispered. “They were hurt from falling.”

I looked at them, and saw what the woman meant. No scrapes and no cuts. The boy looked nauseous and the little girl was wiggling her finger in her ear as if trying to dry it after swimming, but neither was bleeding anymore.

“It’s a miracle,” the woman said. Her words drew my attention back and I saw that she was clutching the cross hanging from her neck. “That was a miracle. They must have been angels.”

“Strange angels,’ I said, slurring the words together into a single unrecognizable one as I tried to make my brain and mouth work together after the spectacle. I licked my lips and cleared my throat before trying again. “Strange angels indeed.”

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Still Dark Blog Tour Stop

Switching it Up

There’s an age-old question that writer’s always get asked: Pantser or planner? In non-writer language that means do you plan your novels or do you go by the seat of your pants?

Over the years, I’ve written around ten novels. Some of them will never see the light of day, but they served their purpose of giving me a chance to practice and hone both my writing and my method. In the early days, I was a pretty meticulous planner. I knew what I wanted the story to be going in, and I didn’t let myself deviate from that.

Those were also the years where I was finding who I was as a writer. More than anything, I struggled with character development. I was so set on the delicate house of cards I was building that I refused to let the characters just breathe and move around in the space, much to the detriment of the story.

With Still Dark my fourth written, first released novel, I started to loosen the reins a bit. I knew what the story was, where I wanted it to go, but I also started to see certain settings as playgrounds or stages. It was my job as the writer to get everyone in place where they needed to be, but once they were there, I started to let them play a bit. Some scenes went longer than I planned. Others sprouted off into new scenes, new conflicts, new moments. In short, when I started to trust the characters to behave like real people, my books started to get better.

In the novels since, I’ve switched it up even more. I’ve started novels without much of a plan at all, just a vague idea. The end result has been a change to my process overall, putting more effort into editing instead of fretting so much over the first draft. All of this is not to say one method is better than another, just better for me. I’ve finally figured out which parts to plan and which ones to leave up to chance.

At the end of the day, it’s all about trusting myself as a writer. Back in the day, I would hold on to a single idea, a single scene or conflict that I just knew would make a book. I would pad out everything around it, refusing to just get to the damn point already because I was afraid that one scene might be all I had. One of my favorite quotes is, “What do you do after you lay down all your cards? You find new cards.”

Still Dark is a living example of that mentality. Scenes that could have been the climax come in the first 50 pages, and guess what? It only gets more tense from there. I finally figured out how to find new cards.

 

Still Dark

D.W. Gillespie

When a thunderous explosion rocks an idyllic cabin resort in the Great Smoky Mountains, animals and humans alike begin to act strange. Jim, along with his wife Laura and son, Sam, are cut off from the outside world, but they soon realize the true nightmare is just beginning…

Deep in the snow-covered woods, something is waiting. The creature calls itself Apex, and it’s a traveler. Reading the minds of those around it, Apex brings the terrifying fears hidden in the human psyche to life with a singular purpose: to kill any that stand in its way.

Locked in a fight for their lives, Jim and his family must uncover the truth behind Apex, and stop the creature from wreaking a horrifying fate upon the rest of the world!

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR — D.W. Gillespie has been writing dark fiction in one form or another since he was old enough to hold a pencil. He’s been featured in multiple horror anthologies, both in print and online. Still Dark is his debut novel, and his second book, a short collection titled Handmade Monsters, arrives in 2017. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two children.

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