Making Stop-Motion Animation With My Ipad

So, I like telling stories, even when all I have is my iPad and some socks.

I know its silly, but what do you think? I've been really gratified and pleased with the response so far, better response than I've ever gotten for videos. But I always want ideas and constructive advice, so any thoughts would be great!

Sarah Allen

5 Reasons my Short Story Collection is Better than Pie

This weekend I released a short story collection, Cross-Eyed. Why spend your time with this book instead of, say, a piece of pie? Well I'll tell you.

1. It's free. Until the end of the month, the short story collection is absolutely free. Get it now, and get it instantly, while you don't have to pay for it.

2. It is multi-flavored. Choosing flavors is hard. You want apple-pie. No, pumpkin. No, pecan. In this short story collection you can have them all! Because it's a collection, there are several stories, all with their own unique flavor, and you get to enjoy them all.

3. It won't make you fat. Calorie free! Can't say that for a piece of triple-berry. And you might even read it on the treadmill...

4. It will last long-term. A piece of pie, though enjoyable, is gone once you've eaten it. It's a one time thing. My short story collection is yours forever. You can come back to it, share it, and it will never be gone.

5. It won't go bad during a nine hour car drive or three hour layover. Hopefully most of us are able to take advantage of these weeks while summer begins to wind down. While you take your trips, a piece of lemon meringue won't last in the trunk. But Cross-Eyed will. It will last your whole trip and never sour. At least, I sure hope not.

So there you have it. Reasons why you should invest in my collection instead of a piece of pie. Or maybe you might as well have both. A couple other things, before I go. First, huge, huge thank you to Alex Cavanaugh for the blog shout-out today, and to everyone else whose taken the time to mention the collection on Facebook and Twitter. I really can't tell you how grateful I am for that support. And lastly, just a reminder, because I've been asked (ok, by my Grandma, but still...) that even if you don't have a Kindle you can still read Crosss-Eyed on a Kindle app on your iPad or iPhone, or get it on your computer desktop, and since for the next few days it's free, you might as well, right?

Anyway, thanks again for all your support. I am super excited to have something out there for you guys. I really do hope you enjoy it as much as you would a moist piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top. Try it out, I would love to know what you think :)

And dang it...now I'm hungry.

Sarah Allen

N is for Nighttime

Night is what has taught me the meaning of a love-hate relationship.

I love the moon and the stars more than the glare of the sun. I love black and blue yellow-flecked skylines of big cities. I love being the only one awake. Breezes feel so new in the dark. And nothing beats reading in bed with a quilt and a bed-lamp. 

I am terrified of the dark. I am terrified of being alone. I hate being the only one on the road between my parents house and mine. I hate the blackness of my room before I turn on my too-dim lamp and above all, hate the quietness that leaves me with nothing but empty space in my skull for panic to bounce around in.

That is when I want the sun back. That is when I miss any music or the voices in the show I was just watching and I crave someone with whom I can pillow-talk and decide for the umpteenth time I need a dog.

Nighttime is how I imagine Alaska--the best place to be hunkered down with your soul mate and the very worst place to be alone. Even when you can mask the dark and the quiet with lamps and reruns of Frasier there is still the necessary moment of turning it off. At that moment the TV power button is a hard one to press.

And while you're terrified and driving home alone there is Jim Dale reading you Harry Potter from your car speakers and the green light from the stoplight streaked across the asphalt when it rains. And you're still terrified and alone and it is still too dark and quiet but the moon is often full and that is enough to pull you forward. 

Then when you've made it past the drive home and the walking into a dark apartment and the brushing your teeth in silence and clutched your teddy bear to you and clicked off the last lamp then your heart rate finally begins to calm down and you are grateful for thick quilts that signal safety in darkness. One night feels like every night and perhaps that is what is the most terrifying, but as imminent as that fear is, you can relegate it to a realm outside your quilt, which is what quilts are made for. Quilts are boundaries between nations.

Eventually all nights merge in to one and a dream runs through it--maybe it's the nightmare about a swollen and scarred clan of face-eaters, maybe the fragmented image of a piglet pulling the wagon of Yosemite Sam, maybe it's your constant fantasizing about whether the next scene in your novel will or will not take place at a baseball game.

At night, it's hard to tell the difference.

Not With a Bang: Choose Your Own Apocalypse Blogfest

Chuck of Apocalypse Now has a question.

How do you think it will end?

I subscribe to the quiet end of the Apocalypse spectrum. Eerie in the vein of Twilight Zone or Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

It starts with a soft rumble, maybe a flash of light, though not a blinding one. You are in your basement when it happens. For a second you feel a bit dazed and lose track of yourself, but you shake it off and are fine.

Wondering what happened, you walk up the stairs. Your mother, who was in the kitchen, is not there. The oven is burning the lasagna she was making.

Then you walk outside. For as long as you can see there is nothing but flat, unbroken ground, white with what looks like salt. There is nothing, not a tree or hill or mountain, to break the horizon. Your neighbors houses, the playground across the street, the bell-tower of the church half a block away, even your mailbox, is gone.

You don't know how long you stand there. The urge to call out for someone comes in waves, and maybe you do it once, but half-heartedly, because you know there is no one there.

At the farthest edges of the horizon, towards the north, there may or may not be a spot of black shadow, a something, something different than the blank white. You stand there for another unknown length of time, watching, and the black something doesn't move but it doesn't go away.

Now you face a decision. Do you wait here to see if something happens, or move towards the black shadow?

It will make all the difference.

The movie in your head

So I'm kind of cheating on the film Friday thing, but I was sitting around thinking about that sad bride picture from Wednesday and I wrote this and was thinking that I don't often post my work on the blog and remember this is just what I jotted down in my little notebook but anyway here goes:

*********

WE open on a girl, young, probably twenty-five, standing outside of a motel in a puffy sleeved wedding dress. Her eyes are closed against tears, and their is a cigarette expertly held in her right hand.

There is a loud bang from the building behind her, and she flinches, her eyes opening for only a second. Distant laughter. She drops her cigarette onto the pavement and stomps it out. She is not wearing shoes.

A bus stops a block away from her, and she leans almost imperceptibly towards it. Now her eyes are wide, and she swallows. The bus drives away.

The veil she wears is gaudy, tiered floral. It is already lopsided and she takes it off. She holds it with both hands, examines it like she's unsure what its for.

There is a noise again, but off to her left. She watches, and soon a boy appears. Nine or ten, dark haired and round faced. The t-shirt he is wearing is too small. He is carefully watching the ground and doesn't notice our woman until nearly bumping into her.

He looks up.

"What are you looking for?" says the woman.

"My lunch money."

"Your lunch money?"

"Yes."

"Did you drop it?"

The boy stops walking. "I buried it."

"You buried it?"

"Yes. Under a rock."

"Why?"

"So the guys wouldn't take it."

"What guys?"

"At school."

"Boys at school are taking your lunch money?"

"Not if I bury it first."

"And come back for it."

"Yes."

"You're pretty smart."

The boy shrugs.

"Do you want help looking for it?"

The boy opens his mouth to speak, but sees something first. The rock he is looking for. He pounces on it, and flips it over. Underneath is a ziploc bag full of coins, mostly pennies, and a few crumpled dollar bills.

The boy eyes his find, apparently satisfied that its all there.

"Glad your plan worked," says the woman.

He looks up at her and pauses. He is fully aware of her for the first time. "Why are you wearing a wedding dress?" he says.

The woman pulls a box of cigarettes from who knows where and sticks one in her mouth without lighting it.

"So nobody takes it," she says finally.

********

I don't know how it ends, but there you have it. Any ideas?

Sarah Allen

Ode on a Gallon of Milk

At peak consumption, my family can go through 12-14 gallons of milk a week. I'm not joking. If it happens to be chocolate milk, it's lucky to last an hour.

It's like therapy for my family. Or a ritual. It was part of growing up that every night before we went to bed we would all sit around and have a bowl of cereal. (Incidentally we can go through a box of Cocoa Pebbles in about a meal.) When we get home after a long trip, no matter how late, the first thing we all want to do is have a bowl of cereal. It's cool, it's comforting, it's probably been programmed into our genetic code.

True connoisseurs of the cold cereal bowl know that the cereal must be rotated and eaten quickly to avoid becoming soggy, usually necessitating a second bowl. They know that the best part of a bowl of cereal is the milk at the end. They know the art of choosing a cereal; whole and hardy for breakfast, Life or Rice Chex, savory for dinner, Cheerios or Apple Jacks, sweet and sugary for midnight snack, Cocoa Pebbles, Trix, Fruit Loops.

Guess what we live on when Mom's out of town?

I think everyone has something like this in their life, and it doesn't necessarily have to be food. A quilt or a chair or a song or a recipe that is to them, in a word, home. Maybe milk and cereal isn't the most glamorous of childhood symbols, but it does the job for me. When I need to feel the familiar, when I need to tell my body and mind that the world is still spinning like normal, I know where to go, and it even comes in skim.

What makes you feel home and normal again?

Sarah Allen

Someday

Someday I will be a published author.
Someday I will win literary awards and be published in the New Yorker.
Someday someone will come up to me on the street and ask for my autograph.
Someday I will earn enough money from books to afford trips to London and cruises to Alaska.
Someday I will have a house and a Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy. Tricolor.
Someday a boy who I love will love me back and we will get married in December and go on a romantic honeymoon to Alaska and live in a house with a big library and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy.
Someday I will adopt a little boy and name him Linus.

Today I will write.
Today I will submit my writing to competitions and to the New Yorker.
Today I will make sure my roommates know they are special.
Today I will not go over my budget.
Today I will read and look at pictures of puppies.
Today I will be happy with myself, my family, and my books.
Today I will play with my little sister and make lesson plans.

Oh today.

Sarah Allen

How To Make Your Blog More Popular

Short on time today, so I thought I'd leave you with the video I made as part of the Dear Muse vlogs as an attempt to answer some questions I've been getting about marketing a blog. This is super important for writers, because blogs are one of the main means at our disposal for book publicity. These are just my ideas based on my own experience, and if you have additional ones, I'd love to hear them.



Sarah Allen

Six Word Saturday

I did this a while ago and got some great stuff from all y'all, so I thought I'd give it another round.

Here is Hemingway's again, for good example purposes:

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Here's my attempt for today:

Don't worry, Santa. Blitzen picks locks.

(You know the sad thing? This isn't the first story I've written featuring Blitzen) :)

Now its your turn again. What can you give me in six words?

Sarah Allen

6 Word Saturday

I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who came up with the 6 word story idea, or at least accepted the challenge to try and created one of the best 6 worders ever:

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here's my try:

Funerals were funny, but not his.

Not as complete as Hemingway's, but its a fun challenge. Quite a challenge.

What have you got?

Sarah Allen

Opening Short Story Lines: The Teacher

Here is another beginning that I left off awhile ago. See what you can do with it.

The Teacher

The day my wife found the manuscript was the day I told my class that Pride and Prejudice was one of my favorite books. I didn’t mean to tell them. We were discussing intriguing female characters and it just kind of slipped out, like the first time I told Abby I loved her. When I realized what I’d said, I nudged my glasses farther up my nose, and wondered why confessing my love for Jane Austen in front of my class was making my ears feel so hot. As I expected, Patrick started cracking jokes from the back row of desks: “Mr. Willis reads romance novels,” he said. The throng of thick skulled, broad shouldered boys that surrounded him snickered their support. In the front row, Faye rolled her eyes. “At least he can read,” she said. I think I failed to suppress a grin.
Because I taught at a small boarding school, I got to know my students pretty well. Faye Guthrie had been my student since she was a freshman, and she always sat in the front row. She was one of my quietest students, and only in her senior year would she have been confident enough to get after the class dorks like that. She was the tiniest girl I’d ever seen. I’m no heavyweight, but even I felt like I’d snap her in half if I wasn’t careful. She had wispy, light blond hair, which, combined with her blue eyes and tiny figure, made me think of fairies. It gave me a kind of satisfaction to have a tiny blond girl as the smartest in the class.
The drive home felt normal, except that I was stuck behind a big moving van the whole way, whose driver must have been taking time for last goodbyes. My mom used to call them “not-moving” vans.
I turned on the radio, and “Always” by Atlantic Star came on. It’s mine and Abby’s wedding song, and it made me smile. I was going to tell her it had played, maybe twirl her around the kitchen as I sang a sincere, if botched up version of the song, but I did neither when I saw the look on her face.
“When were you going to tell me?” she said.
Crap, I thought, trying to figure out what I’d done. Out loud I said, “Huh?”
Abby pointed to a manila envelope lying on the kitchen counter next to a half eaten Yoplait. The covering was blank, but I knew what was inside. I scratched the back of my neck. “Oh,” I said.
Steam seeped from the rumbling dishwasher. “Yeah,” Abby said. Her sandy blond braids draped over her shoulders, and her eyebrow was cocked. The sprinkle of freckles across her nose stood out when she was angry, making her even more adorable then usual, but I did nothing. Smiling would not have helped at a time like this.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” I said, and shrugged.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” she asked. “Did you think I wouldn’t be supportive? You’ve always wanted to write, I would love for you to be able to do that. Of course I would. In fact, I’ve wondered why you haven’t been writing; now I know you’ve just been hiding it from me.”
I couldn’t even explain to myself why I’d kept the book a secret. The manuscript seemed such an indispensable part of me, yet at the same time, something from another life. “It’s just a start,” I said. “Of course I would tell you if it turned in to anything serious.”
Abby breathed deeply. “I read it,” she said. I looked at her. “It seems serious to me.” My ears started getting hot again, and I looked away. I needed a drink.
Abby moved closer to me. She smelled like vanilla and brown sugar. She looked up at me, and her voice was low and steady. “Todd,” she said, “it’s good.” Her hazel eyes glowed. “It’s really good.”
I shifted my weight. I didn’t know what to say except, “Really?”
Abby grinned and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re going to finish it, right? And get it published?”
I wiggled my toes inside my shoes and cleared my throat. “I don’t know,” I said.
“What do you mean?” said Abby.
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “I mean, getting something published takes a lot of work. It’s really hard.”
“I know,” Abby said. “I’ll help you. I can look for agents or whatever. You really should do this.”
I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and shrugged.
***

Hope this helps!
Sarah Allen