Horror Month: Meets Gregory Carrico.

We are spoiling you tonight, With two pieces from Gregory Carrico. Firstly we have an excerpt from Children Of The Plague and then a little something that he wrote especially for us.

This tasty little flash fiction is called, The Stephen King Book Club.
 
Enjoy

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Children Of The Plague Excerpt  

Jacob nodded confidently. “I’m sure you’re right, Lanni. Maybe she’s having triplets this time. That could be it. And what mother wouldn’t scream with three or four kids like you in her belly?” He was trying to be funny, reassuring, and comforting all at once but couldn’t quite pull it off.

It wasn’t his fault, though. With all of the dire news on TV, very few people had anything to be cheery about. The stories ranged from deadly pandemics, to biblical prophecies of last days coming true, and everything in between. Something was obviously very wrong in the world.

Pregnant women were dying in startlingly high numbers across the globe. The few women having stillbirths or miscarriages were the lucky ones. The rest died in painful, premature births of seriously deformed and even mutated offspring. It was enough to make the nut-jobs predicting the end of the world sound perfectly reasonable.

The realities of the situation were crushing, particularly given her mother’s condition. She had no factual basis to believe her mother would be one of the lucky few, yet she refused to abandon hope. But as long as those terrible cries kept coming, she could hope, and she would cling to that hope, however slim, until it was gone.

Alex’s pencil stopped scratching across his pad, and the entire house went eerily quiet. He lurched up from the desk, knocking his chair over backwards, and sending an assortment of colored pencils cascading to the floor. He just stared straight ahead, ignoring Lanni and Jacob like he was still in his trance.

“Dude,” Jacob said, putting his hand to his chest. “You scared the… Aahhg!” He interrupted himself with a high-pitched gasp of pain, falling once more to his knees and clutching the sides of his head. It would have looked comical, like a scene from one of those D-list horror flicks he and Alex loved so much, if not for everything else that was happening.

Before Lanni could react, nauseating pain hammered her head and washed over her body. She saw stars through blurred vision, and ringing filled her ears. Her sense of balance abandoned her. Somehow, she caught herself on the desk, leaning heavily against it with both hands. Confused, she wondered if the house had been struck by lightning.

Alex was little more than a blur of motion as he stepped over his whimpering friend and brushed purposefully past her into the hall.

With virtually no reprieve, the pain struck again. It felt like her head was being crushed and trying to explode at the same time. Her nausea became an inexplicable and almost overpowering hunger.

As her sight returned, she found herself staring at Jacob’s flushed throat with an insane urge to sink her teeth into it. If she hadn’t been immobilized by shocking jolts of pain, she might have done so.

Still not recovered from the previous assault, her vision blurred and her ears rang again, as yet another wave hit. Her muscles twitched and jumped, treading the thin boundary between agony and numbness. Even clutching the edge of Alex’s desk, she barely kept her feet.

She gasped for air but couldn’t draw a full breath. Her heart quivered in her chest. Even with the overload of sensations wracking her body, in a moment of shocking clarity, she knew she was dying.

She wanted to resist it, to fight, to scream, but with the strange energy pulsing through her, her body didn’t seem to get any of her mind’s signals.

No!

A low, primal growl of rage clawed its way into her consciousness, but she couldn’t draw enough breath to give it voice.

Panic.

This isn’t happening. I won’t let this happen!

With every ounce of will she could muster, she forced her body to respond and was rewarded with a tiny, convulsive gasp of air. It felt like a great victory, but it was fleeting. She couldn’t hold out against the current of power trying to wash her out of her body.

The world went utterly dark.

Okay, so to be in with a chance of winning an ebook of Children Of The Plague, go over and 'like' his author page and sign up to his email. Then go to the Events Page and comment 'I caught the plague from Gregory Carrico'
Winner wil be picked at random tomorrow night.

Email Signup: http://on.fb.me/17RrOXw

Authors Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/GregCarricoAuthor?fref=ts

Event Page:http://goo.gl/5hU39q

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Gregory Carrico Flash Fiction:

The Stephen King Book Club

I couldn’t believe my luck. I stepped forward and pushed my hard-won copy of “Back Door to Hell” across the table.

“This is the last one, Mr. King,” Rhonda, the store manager said to the tired cheers of the other three authors.

He looked up at me and smiled. “Last in line, huh? That must have been a hell of a wait. We’re lucky to have fans like you.” The other co-authors, Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, and Danielle Steel nodded their agreement with varying degrees of enthusiasm. King was right. It had been a long day for all of them.

“I’d have waited for days to meet any one of you,” I said, with a polite smile to Steele. “I couldn’t miss the chance to meet all thr… all of you.” I said. “I’ve read just about everything you’ve all written. I really liked, Faerie Tale, Mr. Koontz. I don’t think the critics gave it a fair shake.”

Koontz mouthed “Faerie Tale,” searching the ceiling for something to jog his memory.

“I think I wrote that one,” King said.

“No, you pack of apes,” Steel sighed. “That’s Card’s story.”

“No. No, I think I remember it now,” Koontz said. “It had the guy with the dog and the shy, telekinetic chick from Atlantis. No, wait… cockroaches!”

King rolled his eyes. “They aren’t even drunk, yet,” he said under his breath. His hefted his Mont Blanc and opened the book cover. “What’s your name?”

“Mark. Mark Greene.”

He signed the book, tapping his finger on the cover and murmuring my name.

“Steve, we’re waiting,” Gaiman said.

“Pass the damned book, King. I’m numb from the ass down, and I need a cigar,” Steele croaked.

“Got it! You wrote that story for Horror Hags magazine.”

I was gobsmacked. Stephen King had read my story. He remembered my name from three years ago. It had been my first and last published story.

“Must be another Mark Greene,” he said.

“No, I wrote it. I just never imagined that you would have read it.”

He jumped up and shook my hand. “Only about twenty times. Guys! He wrote that story I told you about. Apoca… something. It had chocolate Easter Bunny zombies. Achocolypse Now!”

For half an hour King scolded me for giving up writing, and insisted I join their next anthology. We would each collect several items and experiences in a gristly scavenger hunt, and then discuss our findings at a weekly book club meeting in King’s Chinese buffet.”

Re-reading the list he gave me, I wasn't sure I understood. Could this be for real? I had always wondered if my dream of being a horror writer was just a way to sate my murderous impulses, or if I felt the impulses because I was a horror writer at heart. My strange urges finally made sense.

After a sleepless night of soul-searching, I dove headlong into the project. I ended things with Becky, my girlfriend of three years who had encouraged me to quit writing and get a real job. She gave me a piece of her mind, but I wanted her heart. I carried it in a picnic cooler.

Some items weren't so easy. Who knew finding a married prostitute could be so hard? The jogger’s left foot wasn't so bad. Runners are creatures of habit. The homeless man’s liver-I think that’s what I got-was messy, but easy enough.

I was beginning to see the benefits of really getting into character for a story. There are so many things I would never have considered without literally stepping into the shoes of my protagonist.

The night of our serial killer party, I lugged the heavy cooler across the dark parking lot in the heaviest rain of the year to the back door of King’s Wing Dynasty Buffet.

The others sat around a long steel prep table looking at pictures of Koontz’s with his smiling victims, and showing some of their own.

“The new guy brought beer,” Steele said.

“What’s in the box?” Gaiman said in a tormented Brad Pit impersonation. Everyone laughed except Steele. She leaned forward to get a closer look at the cooler.

“He’s making a good impression,” Koontz said. “King stocks only the worst beers of the world in this joint. Whatever’s in there must be better.”

My face paled and sweat beaded on my forehead. The pictures on the authors’ iPads were all of smiling, unsuspecting citizens focused on the body parts needed for the scavenger hunt. Pictures? They weren’t killers like me, after all. What had I done?

Steele opened my cooler and gasped, horrified.

“Jesus, Greene,” Gaiman said in a hollow, disgusted voice.

“I’m going to be sick,” Koontz said.

“Guys, I…” I’d have to kill them, too. My heroes. My favorite authors.

Gaiman laughed first. “Ahhhhh? The look on your face! Priceless.”

“Priceless,” King said. “Fucking priceless!” He dragged the bloody cooler into the walk-in freezer where the others’ gruesome collections occupied wire shelves.

Steele’s face betrayed a touch of disapproval. Was I going to have to kill her after all?

“This is just sloppy. Next time use freezer bags, newbie.”

I let out a relieved breath. “Assholes!” I gasped. “You got me. You got me good.”  I grabbing the edge of the table as my knees buckled. This was going to be a killer anthology.

The end

Want to know a bit more about Gregory?  He's a man of many talents, not least his ability to chill, thrill and entertain, so read on and learn a little bit more about him.

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A Quick Get To Know The Author

Five facts about you that people won’t know about you. Can you juggle? Ride a bike with no hands? Drink beer upside down? Something unusual… GO!

1. I'm an identical Twin                                                                                                                                                  

2. Spiders scare me.                                                                                                                                                   

3. I'm a martial artist                                                                                                                                                   

4. I once wrote an English paper for my Twin to see if our professor was biased against him (or for me).                                                                                                                                                    

5. I don't want to be rich and famous. I'll settle for rich.

Five facts about your newest book that people won’t know. Some background history on one of your characters maybe? Maybe it was going to be called something completely different to start out with? Is it the same genre it started out as?...

1. Lanni and Alex did not exist in the original plot                                                                              

2. Leonard did some terrible things in scenes that didn't make it into the book.                                  

3. I made a cover for it, and then came to my senses and hired a professional artist.                                 

4. The ending was much different in the original version.                                                                                 

5. The scene in the shipping warehouse was a last minute addition that sent huge shock waves through the plot and ultimate outcome of the story in the forthcoming sequel.                                         

Five facts about your next book… Name, genre, expected date of release… 


1. It begins a series called Sand.                                                                                                    

2. It will be released in episodes, the first at around 25k words, and is titled "The Shadow of the World." 

3. Some characters from Children of the Plague and Apocalypstick will have roles, though not in the first book. (Maybe even Xipe (pronounced SHE-pay) and Crane…)                                                        

4. It is science fiction with horror and fantasy elements                                                                  

5. It has been the most fun I've had writing, yet.                                                                           

 

Three tips that you think might be useful for other authors… anything you want. It could be, to write a certain amount every day, only write after midnight and never get Gizmo wet (Sorry, that’s Gremlins not writers! My bad.) Maybe it’s some information that was given to you that has helped your process…

 

1. Write every day, even if it's just for a few minutes and has nothing to do with your WiP (Work in Progress).                                                                                                                                      

2. Write as early as possible. That way you will think about your story all day and will have new ideas, even if you can't actually write.                                                                                                                                       

3. Always work to improve your craft and skills. Practice writing things you've never written, like a short story in a new genre. It will keep you sharp.                                        

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I hope that you all enjoyed his work, and good luck with the competition. I'm currently reading Children of the Plague now, and it is crazy good!

Claire ♥