I looked at the screen to see what I had written before passing out. It wasn’t much. What I had “written” after falling asleep was about four pages filled with the letter ‘d’.

Maybe I’ll try again tonight…

This has made for some very interesting nights. Don’t get me wrong, though. I wouldn’t trade being a dad for anything in the world. Plus, my kids are too stinking cute to be mad at for long. Yep, I love them even though they obviously have it in for me.

The good news is that despite my extreme lack of deep slumber, I have been writing something every day. It’s not always Journey of St. Laurent stuff, but often it is. And [...]]]> I’m confident that if I went to the doctor, he’d diagnose me with child-induced insomnia. Now that I have three kids, I don’t think there’s an hour in a day wherein all of them are asleep at the same time.

This has made for some very interesting nights. Don’t get me wrong, though. I wouldn’t trade being a dad for anything in the world. Plus, my kids are too stinking cute to be mad at for long. Yep, I love them even though they obviously have it in for me.

The good news is that despite my extreme lack of deep slumber, I have been writing something every day. It’s not always Journey of St. Laurent stuff, but often it is. And it really feels good.

Just so you know, while writing this short post, all three of my kids have awakened and been sent back to bed. Ok, so I really don’t “send” the three month old to bed, but you get the point.

So if anybody out there has any getting-kids-to-sleep-all-night secrets that don’t involve beating my children or drugging them to sleep, I’m all ears.

Also, I didn’t really care about The Hunger Games until the trailer for the movie came out. Now I just have to read the books.

And doesn’t Will Smith age?

For more info, go check out:

Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. She’s just in a bad position for this. Do this right, Corbin. You’re a nurse.

I slid her body to the side and rested her head on the ground. I crouched low, put my ear about an inch from her mouth, and looked down toward her feet.

I felt the tiniest trickle of air and watched her chest rise and fall a good half inch or so.

I tried again on her neck.

This time I felt a pulse.

The muscles [...]]]>

Author’s note: Wahoo! I wrote something! I hope it doesn’t suck too bad!

60: Of Fire & Tunnels

I felt for a pulse on her carotid artery. Nothing. My stomach flopped over and my jaw tightened up. A couple of tears ran down my nose and dripped onto her shirt.

Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. She’s just in a bad position for this. Do this right, Corbin. You’re a nurse.

I slid her body to the side and rested her head on the ground. I crouched low, put my ear about an inch from her mouth, and looked down toward her feet.

I felt the tiniest trickle of air and watched her chest rise and fall a good half inch or so.

I tried again on her neck.

This time I felt a pulse.

The muscles in my jaw relaxed. Weak but steady. Good enough. Time to get moving.

I turned around and scanned through the haze. I couldn’t see any aliens other than the dead one a few feet away. The shouting seemed to be decreasing, too.

Now, how to get her out of here?

Carrying her on my shoulders would be dangerous for her. The smoke was getting thicker and the room was getting warm. Still, there was no way I could drag her far enough to get out of harm’s way.

Fireman’s carry it is then.

The only choice left was which exit to head for. If I went back the way we came in, I’d only be putting off our moment to die. There was no way I could retrace my way through that mess. Plus, there might still be some guards waiting down that hall.

The other exit wasn’t really any more promising. I had to cross a smoke filled room while carrying another human being. Then, if I did reach the hallway, I’d be just as lost. To top it off, who knew what alien surprises I’d find down there?

Still, somehow that other exit just felt like the better choice. I had to go with my gut.

I straddled London then squatted down and hooked my hands under her armpits.

Carrying an unconscious person on your shoulders is not easy. Actually getting said unconscious person up there is downright difficult.

I waddled back and deadlifted and leaned back and lifted some more and eventually I got her body up in an awkward sloppy bear hug.

My lungs complained for more air. Sure hope this works.

I ducked my head and looped her right arm around so that her armpit rested on the back of my neck. Now the really hard part.

Pulling on her right wrist with my left hand, I squatted down again.

Her body slumped down against my shoulders.

I reached my arm between her legs and hooked the back of her right knee with my right elbow. I passed her wrist from my left to my right hand and stood up.

My legs quivered with the exertion. Every gasping breath came with a wisp of smoke that had to be coughed out.

A deafening explosion pummeled my eardrums and shook my brain.

I stumbled to my left, but somehow kept on my feet.

Great. Some of the crates must be explosive.

I didn’t bother trying to run or keep to the shadows or anything like that. My stamina wasn’t going to hold out long enough for anything other than a straight march.

The ever increasing heat and smoke from the fires made each step more unpleasant than the last. The sensation of being completely vulnerable and in the open wrecked havoc on my nerves.

For my part, I simply kept moving and struggled to push the pain, fear, and discomfort out of my mind. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

It may have been only one or two or five minutes, but it felt like an hour before I nearly tripped on the remains of one of the drones.

Almost there.

Another three steps and I was standing over a human body. A nearby fire, possibly caused by one of my own stray shots, flickered just enough to get a look at him.

The drones had shot him up pretty well. There were at least three clotted messes that marked where alien bullets had passed through his chest. His right arm looked like a crocodile had chewed on it. Part of his neck was missing. Dark, dried blood stained the entire scene.

The dancing light also caught a holster on his right hip.

I held my breath and shuffled around the body to get a better look.

The holster still contained a pistol.

My heart jumped a little. My head ran a quick debate on the ethics of robbing a dead man versus the need to survive. What would a gun even help me do that at this point? Still, my gut was screaming at me to grab it. My legs argued it was too much work. My brain was too tired to form an opinion.

Before I could reason it out, I felt my legs bending. I crouched and let my left knee slam onto the floor. The cement stung like a framing hammer. And getting down is the easy part.

I couldn’t lean too far over, or London’s weight was going to shift and send both of us sprawling to the floor.

This is a stupid idea.

Afraid to look down, I groped around with my left hand until I unsnapped the retention strap and wiggled the pistol free.

There was no way I could drop the magazine and see how many rounds remained with only one hand, so I simply jammed the gun as far into my pocket as I could.

Now for the hard part.

I sucked in as much a breath through my nostrils as I could manage and pushed against the ground. Every muscle in my whole body tightened together in an effort to get me standing again. Pain shot from my knee up the back of my spine. A scream blasted through my cracked lips. Multicolored spots flashed around the edge of my vision. Another moment of strain and I was going to collapse.

And then somehow I was back on my feet.

My body involuntarily lurched and limped toward the exit.

I turned and took a final look back at the fires and smoke. No aliens in sight. Where did they all go?

There was no brain power left to come up with an answer. There was only the stoic resolve to keep moving until escape or death.

The sporadic and dancing light that had lit my way to the exit gave way to complete darkness.

Every few feet I stuck out my right foot to make sure the wall was still there. I didn’t want to miss a turn that could lead outside.

The smoke thinned out and pretty soon I was breathing mostly real air. It was a small consolation considering how exhausting walking had become. Every step sent another jolt of pain up my legs and down my arms. London’s weight pressed down on my aching shoulders and screaming back.

I pushed on even though I knew deep down it was useless. Another hundred feet, maybe two, and that would be it. I’d collapse into a heap with London and die. What’s the use in even dragging this out?

I don’t think that I even made it that hundred feet.

It made me even sicker to my stomach to know I’d reached the end of my physical limits. This is it. I unhooked my arm from the back of London’s knee.

Her legs slipped off my shoulders, pulling me backward.

I jerked forward and clung to her arm so that she didn’t slam her head onto the ground.

That was the point when my legs gave up. I did my best to control the speed of the fall, but I doubt it helped much. At least gravity pulled us forward, so that London could fall onto my back before rolling to the floor.

I can’t begin to describe the pain. I felt like I’d been smashed in a garbage press, run through a meat grinder, and then thrown into the street to get run over by passing cars.

A single thought repeated in my mind. How long do I have to lie here in pain before I get to die?

As it turns out, not very long. Within five minutes, a light appeared in the distance.

There really is a light. When does the pain stop?

The light got brighter and closer and began to be accompanied by a sound.

I closed my eyes and wondered why the noise death made sounded so much like frenzied alien shouting.

I love it when my friends send me amusing zombie-related stuff. This showed up in my inbox recently.

This morning I got a wake up call. Not the kind that gets you out of bed, mind you. This was the metaphoric kind. Although it was still on the phone.

My long-time internet writing buddy J. Dane Tyler (aka DarcKnyt) was afraid that I had fallen off the face of the Earth, so he put on his internet sleuthing jacket and tracked down my phone number. You see, we’ve never actually spoken before. All in all it was really nice to talk to an old friend for the first time. I have to admit though, his voice sounded way different than I expected. I had imagined a cross between James Earl Jones and an Irish priest. As it ends up, his [...]]]>

This morning I got a wake up call. Not the kind that gets you out of bed, mind you. This was the metaphoric kind. Although it was still on the phone.

My long-time internet writing buddy J. Dane Tyler (aka DarcKnyt) was afraid that I had fallen off the face of the Earth, so he put on his internet sleuthing jacket and tracked down my phone number. You see, we’ve never actually spoken before. All in all it was really nice to talk to an old friend for the first time. I have to admit though, his voice sounded way different than I expected. I had imagined a cross between James Earl Jones and an Irish priest. As it ends up, his voice sounds nothing like that.

I’ve been thinking about dusting off the old writing skills for a while now, and I don’t know if this is what he was meaning to do, but I think his phone call was just the kick in the pants I was needing.

Anyway, I’m starting up the habit of writing every day again. That means I’ll finally get this novel finished and I’ll be able to move on to the legion of other stories that have been waiting their turn to get out of my head and onto a page. I’m already a thousand words or so into Chapter 60, so I should be able to post it Friday.

I put on the brakes to give myself a heartbeat to think. Trapped between aliens and a zombie. No time to freak out. Just keep breathing.

An alien appeared around the far side of the rock pile.

Rhett marched toward me.

The alien raised its weapon and pointed it toward the virus-controlled Rhett.

I instinctively took aim at the guard.

The alien fired. A chunk of flesh sizzled off the back of Rhett’s thigh.

I squeezed the firing handle thing and must have missed my target by a good three feet. It didn’t help that the stupid extraterrestrial gun recoiled in the wrong direction.

It didn’t matter that I missed. [...]]]>

Author’s note:

Hey everybody. Yes, I’m still around. And finally writing again. It’s time to start getting this story wrapped up. I know no one’s going to be reading this tonight, but happy Halloween anyway.

For those of you who have never read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so.Chapter 1:  Down By The Bay. In fact, if you are new to the site, you probably want to start with the first novel, Oasis. If you want to know just as soon as I’ve posted something new, you can watch the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

59: Distraction & Chaos

My brain did a somersault. Holy crap, it’s Rhett. At least it was Rhett, before.

I put on the brakes to give myself a heartbeat to think. Trapped between aliens and a zombie. No time to freak out. Just keep breathing.

An alien appeared around the far side of the rock pile.

Rhett marched toward me.

The alien raised its weapon and pointed it toward the virus-controlled Rhett.

I instinctively took aim at the guard.

The alien fired. A chunk of flesh sizzled off the back of Rhett’s thigh.

I squeezed the firing handle thing and must have missed my target by a good three feet. It didn’t help that the stupid extraterrestrial gun recoiled in the wrong direction.

It didn’t matter that I missed. The green coward threw itself into reverse and scampered for cover.

Rhett spun and lurched toward the retreating guard.

I never did decide exactly why I wanted Rhett to survive a little longer. Maybe I had a lingering bit of camaraderie for the big guy and didn’t want him shot up, even though I knew he was technically dead. Maybe I was just being selfish and wanted his walking corpse to distract the aliens from me as long as possible. Either way, the correct course of action was clear.

If he stays in the open like this, they’ll put him down in no time. If I can just get him to follow me again, I could lead him back out of the little clearing.

I restarted my run, aiming to pass just out of reach behind Rhett.

More of the harsh alien shouting echoed around me. The whole pack would be on top of me any second.

I swung the long alien gun and struck Rhett in the back.

He whipped around and took a surprisingly fast swipe at me.

I didn’t wait to see if he was going to chase me or return to his pursuit of the alien guard. Instead I headed for cover.

That’s about the best I can do.

More flashes of alien gunfire lit the room behind me. The high ceiling seemed lower and lower as the giant room filled with smoke.

A pained alien scream cut above the rest of the shouting.

Hopefully that’s one of those jerks getting bitten.

All the crates at this end of the cavern were either coated with or turned into rubble by falling debris. I wondered what the army had used to level and seal the entrance like this.

I crawled, crouched and scrambled my way toward the collapsed end of the room, doing everything I could to stay in the shadows. The further I proceeded, the less light I had to navigate.

Another scream of pain echoed in chorus with the shouts of command and anger. It was music to my ears.

I swung wide and headed general direction of the entrance I hadn’t used. It was my best shot of getting out of here.

By now, errant plasma had lit at least a dozen crates on fire. The smoke ceiling edged lower and lower. It wouldn’t be long before visibility dropped to nil. And of course there was also that little problem of all the breathable oxygen getting used up by the flames.

Another minute or two of sneaking around and I saw five of the alien-hover-death-avocado-drones. All pointed toward the entrance rather than the room interior.

Two motionless forms lay prostrate in the center of the doorway. I decided they had been the scouts that the survivalist camp had sent to check out the second old mine entrance.

I knew there’d be no way to slip past the hovering drones, so I braced the alien rifle against the corner of a crate.

This is the most awkward gun I have ever fired. I wondered if it wasn’t some sort of re-purposed mining tool. They should have spent less time trying to scare governments into submission and more time studying us.

I took a couple of deep breaths and decided on a retreat path if my little assault didn’t go so good. With that in mind, I did my best to aim at the closest drone. Come on, self. Control your breathing. I squeezed the handle-trigger-thing.

A shower of sparks flew as the plasma tore into the side of a metallic sentry.

I squeezed the trigger again and again.

The four other drones spun around and returned fire.

Burst after burst of plasma and shrapnel and sparks lit the space between me and escape. Three drones in all collapsed to the ground.

The other two kept firing, drilling hole after hole in my cover.

I noticed the front end of my gun getting white hot. The sight made my stomach turn. I don’t think it’s supposed to do that.

The two remaining drones drifted apart and then advanced at me.

I spun and ran back toward the other fray, keeping as many crates between me and the drones as possible.

Little projectiles whizzed through the air all around me. Fires and lanterns around the room cast little light. Dancing shadows blanketed the floor. The room, while immense, shrunk significantly when I was crossing it at a dead run.

I stubbed my toe about every third step in my frenzy to escape. Before I could formulate any sort of plan, I tripped, fell, and skidded on my knees and elbows into the little clearing near the big rock pile.

The green-skinned crowd had chosen that very spot to rally. At least eight or nine of them stood in the center of the space.

I didn’t think. I didn’t have time. A primal scream gurgled up from my toes, accelerated up my spine and exploded out my mouth like I was some sort of bloodthirsty lunatic. I steeled my grip on the rifle, launched myself to my feet and charged the guards.

Most of the aliens just stood there wide-eyed and dumbfounded. A couple had the presence of mind to fumble with their weapons.

One second later the drones popped onto the scene.

I dove into the center of the shocked crowd.

The drones kept firing after me.

The aliens freaked out. Some ran and a couple returned fire. They must have thought that I had hijacked the hovering nasties.

From the corner of my eye I saw Rhett step back into the clearing.

I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as fast as I could.

A hand reached out, slapped me on the back, and grabbed hold of my makeshift bandages.

I dropped my center of mass a bit, twisted, and pushed against the floor as hard as I could. Must keep moving.

The hand pulled back on my bandages.

I spun to the right and then jerked to the left.

The alien who had a hold of me lost its balance but didn’t let go.

The fabric split and tore away from the wound on my side. I grimaced at the pain.

My assailant fell face first onto the dirty floor.

And then I was free and moving again.

Random plasma bursts and alien screams filled the air. The hovering sentries went crazy, spraying their little metal missiles at anything moving.

I rounded the rock pile and headed back in what I hoped was London’s direction.

The aliens behind me were too confused and freaked out to chase me. Smoky haze had reached down to eye level. This is going to be my only chance to get us out of here.

I couldn’t run any more even if I had wanted to. My knees ached. My lungs screamed for oxygen. Still, I couldn’t let myself stop.

Up ahead, I could make out the doorway London and I had used.

Almost there.

I rounded a stack of crates to see the back side of an alien about halfway between where London had run and me. It was lurching as it walked. That probably meant it was a zombie.

I lifted the bizarre gun, took a deep breath, and squeezed the mechanism.

A flash of plasma tore into the center of the alien’s upper back.

The lanky form stood motionless for a moment, then crumpled to its knees before finally collapsing onto its face. Just beyond the fallen alien lay a still body obscured by hazy smoke.

Is that- I jumped over the corpse and got a better look. London!

The redhead was sprawled on her back with her head jammed up against a crate at a funny angle. She had obviously fallen backwards, and the impact split her scalp wide open. Blood from the head wound lay puddled and coagulated on the floor. There were no further visible injuries.

When you’re in emergency medicine and you’re with a patient, there is often no time for displays of emotion. If you want the patient to survive, you have to quickly but methodically check for all life-threatening injuries then begin treatment immediately. Once you’ve done all you can and either the patient stabilizes or someone relieves you – that’s when you can step back and let yourself feel the gush of fear, anger, sorrow, or loss. If you lose it before then, you’re not much help to anyone.

I guess you could say by now I was way off my peak nursing game. There was no holding back the emotion.

Tears clouded my eyes. The corners of my mouth pulled down into a grimace. My whole body shook. No, no, no! Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. I dropped the alien gun, fell to my knees, and checked for vitals.

The program has been renamed Self Publish A Book (SPAB!). I’m hosting it over on my self-publishing tutorial blog.

Now it can generate the files you need to immediately publish at: Amazon’s KDP (.mobi) Barnes & Noble’s PubIt  (.epub) Smashwords  (.doc) Lulu, Createspace, or UniBook (.pdf)

I need some help to test it, so please go try it out, and let me know what you think. Self Publish A Book

Here’s a screenshot:

Interesting side note: [...]]]> A couple of weeks ago I posted a free self-publishing helper tool called Pandoc ePress. Anyway, I’ve been hard at work on another version, and now I have something that should be useful to any do-it-yourself self publishing author. I streamlined the interface a touch, and added a couple more useful format targets.

The program has been renamed Self Publish A Book (SPAB!). I’m hosting it over on my self-publishing tutorial blog.

Now it can generate the files you need to immediately publish at:

• Amazon’s KDP (.mobi)
• Barnes & Noble’s PubIt  (.epub)
• Smashwords  (.doc)
• Lulu, Createspace, or UniBook (.pdf)

I need some help to test it, so please go try it out, and let me know what you think. Self Publish A Book

Here’s a screenshot:

Interesting side note: the Urban Dictionary defines Spab as “To stab somebody using a spoon.”

The author of the software put up a testing release and I played with it a bit. Long story short, it required [...]]]>

update: This software has a new version and a new name. Go see the Self Publish a Book page for more info.

Ok, so a while ago I got all excited about a piece of publishing software that could make my life a little easier. The software was called Jaguar PS. Basically, it is a tool for authors who want to easily convert their works to useful formats, like pdf, epub or kindle. What a great idea – have one source file for any work of fiction I write, then run it through a program that spits out all the formats that I want. I can upload them to the various distributers, or I can sell them /give them away directly.

The author of the software put up a testing release and I played with it a bit. Long story short, it required a couple of extra steps before the files were actually ready to go. Plus, it’s been a while since the author posted anything.

So I set out to make my own.

As it ends up, there are already some tools out there that make file conversion like this easy. The problem is that most of these are either command line, or they only work with one format.

“Hmm,” I said to myself. “What if someone made a program that streamlined the use of these tools, you know, so that anyone could use them?”

This is what I came up with:

Pandoc ePress

Right now, my program takes a specially formatted text file (more on this in a minute) and produces ready-to-go .mobi (kindle) and epub files. You can also include a cover in the file, if you have one.

The actual conversion work is done by two other programs, which you’ll have to install separately, Pandoc & kindlegen (scroll down a bit if you don’t see it when you go there).

This is the first time I’ve ever tried to write something in c#, so it’s not perfect. Also, It’s windows only. Sorry.

Installation

1. Download Pandoc & run the installer. When the installation asks you if it should put Pandoc on your Path, say yes. Or check the box. I can’t remember which just now.

2. Download & install kindlegen. Kindlegen doesn’t have a real installer, so you’ll have to do a little work. Just unzip the kindlegen files somewhere, I suggest c:\Program Files\kindlegen or something similar, and then manually put that directory that holds kindlegen.exe on your Path. If you don’t know how to do this, you’ll have to wait a while until I have time to write a more full tutorial.

3. Download Pandoc ePress & run the installer.

Usage

Here’s the hard part. You have to get your work into a plain text file that is very, very similar to markdown.

Basically, your file will look like this:

% Book Title
% Author Name

# Chapter Title

Chapter text here. You must put two lines for the program
to recognize a new paragraph. If there are is just a single
line break, like there is in this paragraph, the text will be
treated as a single paragraph.

Just like this. If you want something in italics, you put underscores around it _like this_. If you want
something bold, you put two asterisks around it **like this**.

If you have a block quote, you can do that by putting a greater than symbol before your paragraph.

> This is an example of a block quote.

# Chapter The Second

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

Once you have your text file done, you just run the program, select your text and cover files, then hit “go to press” The program just drops your epub and mobi files in the same directory as your master text file.

If you don’t like the formatting of the epub (paragraph spacing and the like), feel free to edit the epub.css file in the Resources directory of your Pandoc ePress installation.

Example

Okay, so here’s  a real text file and the results I got from running the program.

Text file: The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, by Mark Twain

Cover file: Hadleyburg cover

And here’s what the program produced.

epub: The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

.mobi (kindle): The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

The Future

If there’s any interest, I’ll be adding features to this as time goes on. My two main targets are a print ready pdf for createspace paperback publishing, and a .doc file that meets smashwords specifications. And if there’s no interest, this’ll be the last you hear of it, and I’ll just build anything else into it for my own use.