A Campfire Chat With Steve Vernon

Today I have a guest stopping by to chat. Talented horror author, and fellow Atlantic Canadian, Steve Vernon discusses writer's block and tips to get through those "staring at the blank page moments" we all have. Plus, there's a peek at his hockey horror book, Sudden Death Overtime. Enjoy...

A CAMPFIRE CHAT WITH STEVE VERNON

ON BURNING THROUGH WRITER’S BLOCK

Autumn is my favorite time of year.

You can feel the changes whispering at hushed gallop in the breeze as the sky leans down to kiss the leaves into bouquets of flame and color. It feels as a doorway has opened up in front of you and you know that you are going to have step right through the doorway into the weird winter world that is just waiting beyond it.

It is November and a lot of you folks – like me – are getting set to take part in NaNoWriMo. You are getting set to try and lay down 50,000 freaking words in a month that is only 30 days long.

That is a daunting task – but it shouldn’t ought to be so.

Let me give you the secret.

Let me whisper it into your ears.

Sit down.

Sit down here at the campfire.

These are magic words to the human ear. The campfire is a place in the universe where we all come to listen to the crackling dance of wood upon flame.

Every time that a writer sits down at their keyboard they get in touch with that inner spark as they blow their words upon the embers of their imagination trying to roar that flame into life.

That is what you need to remember whenever you find yourself at that fatal sticking point. When you start to think too damn much and you worry about what word you are going to put down next.

Remember – this is not rocket science.

It isn’t even writing – not really. Not when you stop to think about it.

You are just telling a story.

Don’t fear that.

Don’t let yourself freeze up.

Remember – we are ALL born knowing how to tell stories. Just as soon as you open your mouth and say “A funny thing happened to me just yesterday morning…” you are getting set to tell a story – and that is ALL that writing really is. At the heart of it, at the root of it – you are just telling a story.

You cannot open your mouth without a story falling out.

Whether you are talking about the hockey game that you watched last night, or the reason why your girlfriend has decided to run away with the local hot tub salesman, or if you are trying to sum up the answer to the meaning of life in 42 words or less – you are telling a story.

I always get a quiet little giggle out of how many people think that I am some kind of a freaking genius just because I know how to wrap a story around the framework of a novel and make it work.

It isn’t brilliant.

It isn’t freaking rocket science.

It is just telling a story.

 As you sit down at the keyboard today just stop and picture yourself sitting at a campfire across from your very best friend in the universe.

I mean besides your dog.

Just picture yourself sitting there and telling a story to very best friend and stop freaking out about how you are supposed to be writing and how this is supposed to be hard and just let the words ember and roll.

Blow each syllable upon the flames of your imagination and let the fire rise up inside of your spirit.

And if you think that I am just talking at you and telling you something that really isn’t all that true just stop and remember that I wrote this entire 600 word blog entry utilizing a strong underlying autumnal subtext with overtones of flame and fire without ever using the word “kindle”.

Speaking of kindle…

SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME – A STORY OF HOCKEY AND VAMPIRES

Meet Sprague Deacon - one of the toughest old-time hockey players who ever skated upon a rink of hand-poured ice. Sprague was born and raised and he expects to die here on the Northern Labrador coast. What he did not expect was a tour bus full of vampires - none of whom glitter in the least bit - to pull into his town and begin lowering the population level - one corpse at a time. Sprague and his three best friends - an over-the-hill never-say quit bush league hockey team from Northern Labrador go toe-to-tooth with a tour bus full of vampires in an immortal-stakes showdown of street hockey? For the answer - throw Paul Newman's Slapshot into a blender with Steven Niles 30 Days of Night and hit frappe! Also including the bonus time travelling hockey tale, "Time Out" as well as a bonus hockey-oriented ghost story, "Smoke Signals". Only 99 cents for this week only.

Available on

Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P2P5WMY

Amazon.ca - http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00P2P5WMY

Apple - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id998047572

Kobo - https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/sudden-death-overtime

For Canada Day: Even The Paranormal Play Sports

Happy Canada Day!

To celebrate, I bring you a little Canadian paranormal:

Even The Paranormal Play Sports

“Welcome everyone to the final showdown between the Clover Creek Undead and the Johnsonville Bloodsuckers! Let the hockey begin!”

A roar went up from the crowd; we had all begin looking forward to this championship game for weeks. I mean life has to go on, right, even if some of your friends and neighbours aren’t, well, exactly alive anymore.
I was sitting third row up, so I scanned the rink as the players skated in and cheered as my boyfriend Freddie hit center ice. I waved at him and he blew me a kiss. He was so gorgeous, even in all that bulky hockey gear; I could see a hint of his vampire fangs as he smiled. It was good to see him smile again, heck to see everyone so happy again, after all that happened.

“Miss Dawson, could we get back to the interview?”
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the reporter. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to neglect you, but I had to wave to my sweetie. And you can call me Deidre.”
“Teenage love aside, Deirdre, my paper is very interested in the alleged strange occurrences in this area, so if you would...” He turned on a tiny digital recorder.
Geez, the guy’s persistent. Would it kill him to wait until the game was over? I sighed.
“Okay. Here’s how it happened. It started early last summer, just before the start of tourist season. No one even bothered giving the two strangers much notice. Most everybody just thought they were nutty Europeans, although Marcy thought they were a gay couple from the States, California maybe, and Crazy Mitchell swore they were mobsters to anyone who would listen.” I paused for a second as they dropped the puck and our team won possession.
“These guys rented the old Sampson place up on the hill off Cedar Street. They kept to themselves and they didn’t come to town much, or do any of the tourist stuff. This, of course, got all the tongues wagging and theories about what they were doing in that house were flying left and right. People were even saying Crazy Mitchell was right about them being mobsters and any day the town would be shot up or invaded by the RCMP.”
My attention was pulled to the ice; Freddie had the puck. “Go Freddie!” I cheered as my honey scored and the reporter fumed beside me.
“Relax, why don’t you? I’ll get to it, but I’m not missing the hockey.” I cheered again as our team won the faceoff.
“They were here for a couple of weeks or so, before the first incident, when the dead cow was found. At first everyone thought it was coyotes, but then the rumours went around, about how there was no blood in the carcass.”
“I heard about those rumours. They didn’t have any hard facts to back them up. There was no evidence the police were called in to investigate, no official record of an incident with a dead cow, or any report of a disposal of the carcass. There’s no proof of any such event occurring.”
“Oh, it occurred, but I wouldn’t know about police investigation or stuff like that. I don’t usually take notice of dead cows.” I smirked at the reporter. “Besides, I was too busy with the end of year school dance. It’s a sort of pre-prom thing for all the high school students. We did this whole vampire/werewolf/Twilight theme, which is kind of funny considering.”
“I’m sure your dance was lovely, but could we get back to what’s important here.”
“Hey, jerk, the dance is important. That’s where it happened.” Action on the ice distracted my attention. “Damn, Clover Creek has the puck. Take it back, Johnsonville. Don’t let them score!”
“Could you please try and focus on the story, Miss Dawson!”
This guy really annoyed me, and he was asking for it, but I turned my attention back. “Like I said, the dance is where everything happened. We held it at the arena here, on account of the big turnout, and hockey season being over meant the place was free to use for the evening. We had to have chaperones, cause everybody was afraid we get drunk or something, like we couldn’t do that anyway. And I guess that was the excuse those new guys used when showed up at the dance. It’s like we thought they were just trying to help, be all community or something.”
“Two strangers show up at a teenage dance and no one questioned it? I find that odd.”
“Well that was the thing wasn’t it? They should’ve seemed out of place. Marked as possible pervs at least, but they weren’t. We didn’t know until later how or why.”
“You’re saying these men conned their way into a high school dance? To do what exactly? Threaten a bunch of teenagers? To what end?”
“Recruitment. They spiked the punch and the rest of the drinks, waited, then locked us in the arena and gassed the place. We didn’t even know what went down until we, uh, woke up I guess.”
“You are telling me two men locked down an entire building to drug a group of teens unconscious? That seems a bit, farfetched.”
“No. We weren’t drugged, they killed us.”
The reporter stared at me as if I’d just grown two heads, and then he got mad. “Is this some type of joke? Pull one on the idiot reporter? Because I don’t like having my time wasted, young lady!”
“It’s no joke. The two guys were honest to real vampires. They put some juiced up vampire blood in the drinks and then pumped in poison gas to kill us all. Except we didn’t die. We became like them, vampires. Pretty much every teen around here, over the age of fifteen is now a vampire.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Yeah, it was kind of a complicated idea. I mean, after we, changed, we were supposed to fall in line with their plans and all and become some kind of army or something like that. Like we’d listen to a couple of uptight, out-of-town vampire loons.”
The reporter looked at me funny and shrank back in his chair. “You’re serious. You actually believe what you’re saying. What is this, some weird paranormal cult thing?”
“Is that what you think? Well it isn’t. It’s real.”
“This is nuts. It must be brain damage or brainwashing or a hoax. You can’t be-be...”
“What? A vampire? The undead? That’s what everybody else said too, until the government came. Now, they believed us, and did the whole hush-hush clean up bit you see in movies. But not before a few rumours and YouTube videos leaked out. Which is how you got sent here, I’m guessing?”
“We go on more substantial facts than YouTube videos, but yes, my paper sent me here to investigate a possible government cover-up and suspected violations of civil rights.”
“Good luck with that. This whole incident has been deemed a ‘national security risk’ and those two vampires classed as ‘domestic terrorists’.” I notice two burly men headed our way. “Did you know that our national spy agency has a paranormal division?”
“Excuse me? CSIS has a what?”
“A paranormal division. It seems it has been operating for years. They have the entire area under surveillance and curfew.” The two brawny guys came to a stop behind the reporter. “And I believe these two agents are here for you.”
The agents hauled the reporter out of his seat and they scuffled, but he was taken away. I kind of felt sorry for him, but hey, I got to protect my own. Those CSIS nuts were serious about not letting the secret out and my friends and I like living or un-living as it were. As long we vampires cooperate, we get to keep our heads.
I turned back to the hockey, just in time to watch Freddie steal the puck.
“Go Freddie!” I gave my sweetie my best fanged smile.