And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, my weekly prompt story and Halloween celebration! Enjoy...
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/10/30/weekly-challenge-288-halloween/
Halloween
By Chris Munroe
And welcome back to Zombie chat! We’ve got some amazing guests joining us on the show tonight and we can’t wait to get started.
First up we’ve got Nobel prizewinning economist Paul Krugman joining us, and we’re going to eat his brain. Our musical guest is Canadian ‘90s power poppers The Odds, playing one of their classic hits. Finally, the head chef of a popular downtown restaurant will be dropping by to cook us a meal involving a surprising secret ingredient!
But first, what’s left of David Mitchellson is outside with the action weather report. Take it away, David!
“Raaaaaaaaain…”
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Publish or Perish
Last December I joined a Facebook group for aspiring writers.
Publish or Perish.
The group was fairly self-explanatory. I pledged to take my writing more seriously, to finish the projects I started and to actually edit and submit my work for publication upon it’s completion. In exchange, the group offered a forum in which to communicate with other writers in the same position, a place to vent, moral support and a clearly defined goal.
Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. How hard could it possibly be? I had a whole year in which to do it!
I figured the group would give me the kick in the pants I needed to get some pages written and it honestly has. I’ve gotten more work done this year than I ever have, and I credit the group with a large part of the motivation that took. I’ve kept up my friday flash stories week after week, expanded them from drabbles to stories of 500 to 3000 words, and even have my first novel outlined and ready to begin drafting come November. I’ve placed stories on a number of online magazines and podcasts, including appearances on some of my favorite audio fiction ‘casts. Hearing my work performed makes me prouder than I can say.
But I still haven’t placed a story in a major print magazine.
I’m doing my best not to worry about it, but sometimes I can’t help it. The twelve month deadline the group imposed seemed like forever when I joined up, but now it’s nearly November and, while I’ve accomplished a lot, the one hard, fast goal they established continues to elude me. I’ve even started having stress dreams about the deadline, now only two months away.
Which I understand is dumb. Stressing out never helped accomplish anything. But I can’t help it.
After all, they made it perfectly clear what was expected of me. Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. And they made the consequences of failure equally clear. I mean, it was right in the name of the group, and I did join of my own free will…
I do still have two months. I’m still writing, and improving every day. I’m still editing and submitting, and it’s certainly not too late.
But, in the meanwhile, I’ve bought a gun.
Just in case.
Publish or Perish.
The group was fairly self-explanatory. I pledged to take my writing more seriously, to finish the projects I started and to actually edit and submit my work for publication upon it’s completion. In exchange, the group offered a forum in which to communicate with other writers in the same position, a place to vent, moral support and a clearly defined goal.
Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. How hard could it possibly be? I had a whole year in which to do it!
I figured the group would give me the kick in the pants I needed to get some pages written and it honestly has. I’ve gotten more work done this year than I ever have, and I credit the group with a large part of the motivation that took. I’ve kept up my friday flash stories week after week, expanded them from drabbles to stories of 500 to 3000 words, and even have my first novel outlined and ready to begin drafting come November. I’ve placed stories on a number of online magazines and podcasts, including appearances on some of my favorite audio fiction ‘casts. Hearing my work performed makes me prouder than I can say.
But I still haven’t placed a story in a major print magazine.
I’m doing my best not to worry about it, but sometimes I can’t help it. The twelve month deadline the group imposed seemed like forever when I joined up, but now it’s nearly November and, while I’ve accomplished a lot, the one hard, fast goal they established continues to elude me. I’ve even started having stress dreams about the deadline, now only two months away.
Which I understand is dumb. Stressing out never helped accomplish anything. But I can’t help it.
After all, they made it perfectly clear what was expected of me. Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. And they made the consequences of failure equally clear. I mean, it was right in the name of the group, and I did join of my own free will…
I do still have two months. I’m still writing, and improving every day. I’m still editing and submitting, and it’s certainly not too late.
But, in the meanwhile, I’ve bought a gun.
Just in case.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Weekly Prompt Story: Zoo
As heard on the current edition of "100 Word Stories"
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/10/23/weekly-challenge-287-zoo/
Zoo
By Chris Munroe
“You will not turn this courtroom into a zoo!”
The judge seethed, and I suppose I saw his point. Calling a lion tamer in as a character witness was one thing, but a cage of monkeys as “evidence” in a murder trial was beyond the pale.
Perhaps I should have apologized.
Instead I threw open the cage.
Monkeys exploded out of it, and everything was chaos. Lawyers, bailiffs and jurors scrambled, dodging flying poo as best they could. Hilarious.
I was sad to make my exit amidst that grand chaos.
But I had to. They’d have inevitably found me guilty…
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/10/23/weekly-challenge-287-zoo/
Zoo
By Chris Munroe
“You will not turn this courtroom into a zoo!”
The judge seethed, and I suppose I saw his point. Calling a lion tamer in as a character witness was one thing, but a cage of monkeys as “evidence” in a murder trial was beyond the pale.
Perhaps I should have apologized.
Instead I threw open the cage.
Monkeys exploded out of it, and everything was chaos. Lawyers, bailiffs and jurors scrambled, dodging flying poo as best they could. Hilarious.
I was sad to make my exit amidst that grand chaos.
But I had to. They’d have inevitably found me guilty…
Friday, October 21, 2011
A Recounting of the War on Emo
In 2006, at England’s annual Reading Festival, Panic! At the Disco and My Chemical Romance shared the main stage, with Panic! taking the stage Friday and My Chemical… following them Sunday. The decision to involve the two bands was a controversial one, as the Reading Festival had a history of hosting harder rock groups, and plenty of fans were unimpressed by the decision to feature them so prominently.
However, nobody knew exactly HOW unimpressed the hard rock fans were until, the Friday of the festival, midway through Panic! At the Disco’s set, a 2L pop-bottle, emptied and refilled with human urine, came sailing from the crowd, colliding with the side of one band-member’s skull, knocking him unconscious.
He was only unconscious a few minutes, but it was long enough that the set was cancelled. This cancellation proved to be a mistake on the part of the organizers…
…because Sunday, when My Chemical Romance took to the stage, they were assailed by a barrage of detritus the likes of which no band had ever weathered. They played as much of their planned set as they could manage, then beat a hasty retreat. The crowd, realizing their power to prevent shitty bands from being inflicted on them, howled in victory as they fled the stage.
The opening shots had been fired. The War on Emo, as New Musical Express later dubbed it, had begun, and the time had come for everyone to choose a side.
The war went on for years.
There were bad times, to be sure. There are always bad times in war. I was there when the last of us pulled out of MySpace, abandoning it to our enemies forever. I was on the roof of our embassy as self-important poetry and simplistic rock riffing closed in on us and we feared the helicopters wouldn’t get us away in time. I sometimes wonder if my old MySpace profile is still there somewhere, amongst the Emo wreckage that once was a social media site. We promised we’d one day be back, but in our hearts we knew we never would…
But battles won and lost are, ultimately, irrelevant. In war there is one party triumphant, and the individual battles leading up to that point are nothing more than sideshows.
Which is why the real victory, the only lasting one, was the final one. When Fall Out Boy was forced to tour jointly with 50cent in a desperate attempt to stay in the size of venue they’d grown used to and then, a few weeks later, they were forced to cancel that tour in it’s entirety due to lackluster ticket sales we knew the war was coming to an end. By the time Fall Out Boy split up, a month after that, it was almost anticlimactic. We’d won, the genre was no longer a force to fear, and all that was left for us to do was to mop up the scattered remnants of what once was a potent, if god-awful, cultural force.
We congratulated ourselves mightily upon that day. Perhaps too mightily, our hubris in victory leaving us unprepared for future challenges. And yet all I can bring myself to wish for now is to be back in those heady days, to have more time to enjoy our moments of triumph…
Because now we live in utter squalor, scrabbling from day to day with neither plan nor hope. Our forces lay in ruin and those who survive wish they had not. We sleep, when we can sleep, in the burned out husks of buildings where once grand music played, and always that infernal WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB is there, in the background, like the endless heartbeat of some horrible, ancient deity.
Because Emo, you see, was all that had stood between us and Dubstep. And now, heavens help us, there’s no hope left for any of us….
However, nobody knew exactly HOW unimpressed the hard rock fans were until, the Friday of the festival, midway through Panic! At the Disco’s set, a 2L pop-bottle, emptied and refilled with human urine, came sailing from the crowd, colliding with the side of one band-member’s skull, knocking him unconscious.
He was only unconscious a few minutes, but it was long enough that the set was cancelled. This cancellation proved to be a mistake on the part of the organizers…
…because Sunday, when My Chemical Romance took to the stage, they were assailed by a barrage of detritus the likes of which no band had ever weathered. They played as much of their planned set as they could manage, then beat a hasty retreat. The crowd, realizing their power to prevent shitty bands from being inflicted on them, howled in victory as they fled the stage.
The opening shots had been fired. The War on Emo, as New Musical Express later dubbed it, had begun, and the time had come for everyone to choose a side.
The war went on for years.
There were bad times, to be sure. There are always bad times in war. I was there when the last of us pulled out of MySpace, abandoning it to our enemies forever. I was on the roof of our embassy as self-important poetry and simplistic rock riffing closed in on us and we feared the helicopters wouldn’t get us away in time. I sometimes wonder if my old MySpace profile is still there somewhere, amongst the Emo wreckage that once was a social media site. We promised we’d one day be back, but in our hearts we knew we never would…
But battles won and lost are, ultimately, irrelevant. In war there is one party triumphant, and the individual battles leading up to that point are nothing more than sideshows.
Which is why the real victory, the only lasting one, was the final one. When Fall Out Boy was forced to tour jointly with 50cent in a desperate attempt to stay in the size of venue they’d grown used to and then, a few weeks later, they were forced to cancel that tour in it’s entirety due to lackluster ticket sales we knew the war was coming to an end. By the time Fall Out Boy split up, a month after that, it was almost anticlimactic. We’d won, the genre was no longer a force to fear, and all that was left for us to do was to mop up the scattered remnants of what once was a potent, if god-awful, cultural force.
We congratulated ourselves mightily upon that day. Perhaps too mightily, our hubris in victory leaving us unprepared for future challenges. And yet all I can bring myself to wish for now is to be back in those heady days, to have more time to enjoy our moments of triumph…
Because now we live in utter squalor, scrabbling from day to day with neither plan nor hope. Our forces lay in ruin and those who survive wish they had not. We sleep, when we can sleep, in the burned out husks of buildings where once grand music played, and always that infernal WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB is there, in the background, like the endless heartbeat of some horrible, ancient deity.
Because Emo, you see, was all that had stood between us and Dubstep. And now, heavens help us, there’s no hope left for any of us….
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Weekly Story Prompt: Leaves
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/10/16/weekly-challenge-286-leaves/
Leaves
By Chris Munroe
The leaves on the trees turn red and gold and brown, and soon they’ll be gone.
I’ve a Scotch/Irish complexion, and I burn and peel in the summer, so when the fall breeze first blows I breathe a silent sigh of relief at having made it through another one. I grab a trenchcoat, an umbrella, and hit the streets to enjoy the season that seems made for me.
Soon Canadian winter will be upon me once again, and I’d be cursing the bitter cold. But at this moment, I’m too swept up in the breathtaking beauty of autumn to care.
Leaves
By Chris Munroe
The leaves on the trees turn red and gold and brown, and soon they’ll be gone.
I’ve a Scotch/Irish complexion, and I burn and peel in the summer, so when the fall breeze first blows I breathe a silent sigh of relief at having made it through another one. I grab a trenchcoat, an umbrella, and hit the streets to enjoy the season that seems made for me.
Soon Canadian winter will be upon me once again, and I’d be cursing the bitter cold. But at this moment, I’m too swept up in the breathtaking beauty of autumn to care.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Journey Into... (shameless self promotion)
For those of you interested in my work outside of this blog (I assume that includes most of you) my flashfiction piece "The Box" has been produced for the excellent Journey Into... podcast. The 'cast, for those of you not yet aware of it, is a relatively young podcast with a wider mandate as to what it produces than most venues. And it is excellent, in 15 episodes it's yet to fail to impress me.
Now, you guys: Listen to it. You already like my writing, otherwise you wouldn't be here, and hearing it produced increases the total amount of my work in your life. And what could be better than more Munsi!?!?!?? Here's the link:
http://journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2011/10/journey-15-box-by-christopher-munroe.html
...and when you're done, go back and listen to the back episodes, it really is a consistently fine 'cast.
Now, you guys: Listen to it. You already like my writing, otherwise you wouldn't be here, and hearing it produced increases the total amount of my work in your life. And what could be better than more Munsi!?!?!?? Here's the link:
http://journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2011/10/journey-15-box-by-christopher-munroe.html
...and when you're done, go back and listen to the back episodes, it really is a consistently fine 'cast.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Audition
I’d never placed an ad on Craigslist before, but the interface was user-friendly enough, so no trouble there…
Wanted: Young, uninhibited women to audition for BJ videos. Pays $50 to auditioners, $500 to the women cast in the actual video. Nude scenes necessary, contact email below.
The email address was a dummy I’d set up for the purposes of the ad. I knew I’d be receiving a lot of email from a lot of women I’d likely want nothing to do with, and I wanted to be able to abandon the address when I was done with it, never thinking of any of it ever again.
I mean, who responds to an ad like that?
A surprising number of people, as it turns out...
I don’t know if it’s the economy or what, but when I checked my email Monday I already had three hundred replies. Three hundred women who, for one reason or another, were willing to respond to an add like that on Craigslist. Disturbing, if you think about it.
I tried not to think about it as I deleted each and every one of the emails, unread.
This wasn’t about them, it’d never been about them. Their emails were just a byproduct of an unrelated agenda.
I wasn’t even really paying attention to their subject lines as I deleted them. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew it wasn’t there.
You’d already told me, after all, to expect your email Tuesday.
By which point another hundred fifty emails had arrived. Weeding through them was tougher, logistically speaking, as this time I was actually looking for something. But eventually all but one had been deleted. I responded as politely and professionally as I could, you responded back, an uncomfortable edge to your email, and we made our plans to meet.
So here I am, in a hastily constructed video studio in my living room, waiting for you to arrive. And when you do, we’ll see how your “audition” goes, and if you do well, we’ll see what other “projects” I might want to involve you in.
And I’ll do my best, through all of this, to be comfortable with the part I am to play in the process.
I honestly will do my best, nervous and somewhat icky though I am by the seediness of it all.
I’ll do it because you’re my wife.
And I love you.
And yes, I’m willing to play along with your kinks.
Wanted: Young, uninhibited women to audition for BJ videos. Pays $50 to auditioners, $500 to the women cast in the actual video. Nude scenes necessary, contact email below.
The email address was a dummy I’d set up for the purposes of the ad. I knew I’d be receiving a lot of email from a lot of women I’d likely want nothing to do with, and I wanted to be able to abandon the address when I was done with it, never thinking of any of it ever again.
I mean, who responds to an ad like that?
A surprising number of people, as it turns out...
I don’t know if it’s the economy or what, but when I checked my email Monday I already had three hundred replies. Three hundred women who, for one reason or another, were willing to respond to an add like that on Craigslist. Disturbing, if you think about it.
I tried not to think about it as I deleted each and every one of the emails, unread.
This wasn’t about them, it’d never been about them. Their emails were just a byproduct of an unrelated agenda.
I wasn’t even really paying attention to their subject lines as I deleted them. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew it wasn’t there.
You’d already told me, after all, to expect your email Tuesday.
By which point another hundred fifty emails had arrived. Weeding through them was tougher, logistically speaking, as this time I was actually looking for something. But eventually all but one had been deleted. I responded as politely and professionally as I could, you responded back, an uncomfortable edge to your email, and we made our plans to meet.
So here I am, in a hastily constructed video studio in my living room, waiting for you to arrive. And when you do, we’ll see how your “audition” goes, and if you do well, we’ll see what other “projects” I might want to involve you in.
And I’ll do my best, through all of this, to be comfortable with the part I am to play in the process.
I honestly will do my best, nervous and somewhat icky though I am by the seediness of it all.
I’ll do it because you’re my wife.
And I love you.
And yes, I’m willing to play along with your kinks.
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