Annual 2013

By Neil Shooter

This collection is an Annual, a review of my writing life in 2013, including all short stories published in 2013, interviews, blurbs, some gems out of my Vault, and excerpts of some of the things that are coming soon!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Shooter
• Release date: Jan 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311397324

Neil Shooter

I grew up in Robin Hood Country, spent some time in the sprawling metropolises (?) of London, England, and Toronto, Canada, and now I've found a quiet corner of rural Ontario to put myself out to pasture in.I'm always in search of my serenity and my muse.I try to read, and to write, a little bit every day, so that my gears keep turning...Some of the results can be found on Medium at medium.com/@nshooter11.Thanks for reading!

Book preview

Annual 2013

by

Neil Shooter

Copyright 2013 Neil Shooter

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only.

Each reader of this ebook must purchase an individual copy.

This ebook may not be re-sold or redistributed to others for either commercial or non-commercial purposes.

No part of this ebook may be reproduced without the written permission of the author.

If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy from Smashwords.com.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this independent author.

Contents:

About the Author

Preface

Blurbs

Causality

Probability

The Kinnon Gate

About The Battle of Ebulon

Interview by Jenelle Schmidt

About Wyrd Worlds

Interview at creativebarbwire

Homeless

The Vault

A Remembered Scene from Never Forget

Eena of Eneslin

Where the current flows

The Tales of Lonel Vagar

Coming Soon

Excerpt from Neighbour

Excerpt from Holiday

Excerpt from Hero

Excerpt from Birds

Excerpt from The Last Bastion

Excerpt from First Draft of Gravity (Sequel to Probability)

Thank You

Connect with Neil Shooter online

Also by Neil Shooter

About the Author

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Neil Shooter grew up in northern England and now lives in a quiet suburban corner of Ontario, Canada. Always a slow learner, it has taken Neil most of his adult life to realize that the one thing that never fails to ground him and make him happy is the thing he should be doing with the rest of his life. Better late than never...

Preface

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This is an experiment of sorts. I remember getting Annuals when I was a kid, and they were always out in time for Christmas. I remember getting a Beano, a Dandy, and a couple of Rupert the Bears. They each contained new stories and activities, and I suppose something like them must still exist today.

This Annual of mine is intended to bring a few new things to light, but also to serve as a review of the events of 2013 in my writing life. This was an important year for me. Although I have been writing for as long as I can remember, 2013 was the year that I plunged into the world of self-publishing. So many things have happened in the past year that could not have happened without that first plunge.

If you've read any of my stories, I hope you like them. If you haven't read any of my stories, I hope you will. If you haven't liked what you've read, then thank you for reading anyway.

The blurbs are set out first, and then the published stories follow, one by one, with a couple of interviews thrown in for variety. Each story is introduced by a paragraph or two of italics, in which I describe roughly when and how the story came about.

The Vault exposes old projects from my (sometimes distant) past, with brief italicized introductions, and Coming Soon offers excerpts of projects that are theoretically on the front burner, and may well see some light in 2014.

I don't expect to be able to please everyone with my writing, and so I don't try. I write to please myself. I write for my own enjoyment, and if other people like what I've written, then that's just icing on the cake.

I'm happy to have the support of a few close friends and family members, but I'm also happy to hear from new friends.

This seems a good place to offer special thanks, to my sister, Claire Shooter, who poked and prodded me to join Goodreads and Smashwords, and to begin to publish my stories. She is my most ardent supporter, and without those pokes and prods, none of this could have happened...

Blurbs:

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Causality

A dream of desolation and death. A nightmare vision of a looming end, surrounded by hidden enemies and desperate strangers. His love taken. His hope lost. His life forfeit because of his failures, his inadequacies. How can this end be a beginning? And how can a dream seem so real?

Probability

His eyes are filled with recognition even though they have never met. She knows it's not possible, but it's happening anyway. It makes no sense, and yet it is real. They shared a dream, but how much of it will come true?

The Kinnon Gate

From all over the Kinnon, they have been magically Called to a wintry square in a deserted city, but by whom, and why?

Homeless

Winter didn't end, but his world has. Is he completely alone? In a world gone cold, what can keep the spark of life shining?

Causality

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by Neil Shooter

Copyright 2007, 2013 Neil Shooter

2nd Edition

Causality was my first published short story, in January 2013, but was written five years before for a short story competition with a very strict size limit of 2500 words.

The idea for the story came from a dream, and even now, whenever I read this story, I have vivid flashbacks of the dream. Perhaps that's why this story means so much to me.

Criticism has concentrated on the italics which form the bulk of the story. They were intended to show a dream sequence, but many readers were confused by it, so for the second edition I wrote a new opening scene, to frame the dream better, and also to set the stage for what comes in later instalments.

When I wrote Causality it was the whole story, but I've since been proven wrong on that score.

Special thanks must go to DL Christopher for his constructive criticisms which this second edition has benefited from.

The milky light of the moon shimmers on the bedroom wall, broken by the tree branches in the garden, and by summer leaves.

He is deeply asleep, and lies unmoving as the square of light drifts down the wall towards his head, in counterpoint to the moon's stately rise into the sky.

The silver light touches his dark hair, and it seems to unsettle him, though he doesn't wake. The rhythm of his breathing changes as the light glides across his forehead. His eyelids flutter once when the glancing moonlight first reaches them, and his closed eyes move, the bulge of his corneas dancing and darting around beneath his eyelids, casting flickering shadows around his eye sockets.

He is dreaming.

-x-

There are five of us in the concrete storage unit. It's too dark. There’s not enough room. It feels like we’re on top of each other. No space to breathe. No room to move. The air is gloomy, thick with glares and tension. Something is going to happen.

Something bangs on the door, the metal door, echoing in our concrete chamber, echoing and echoing. The little girl screams, a reflex. It isn’t what we were fearing.

Help, help! A woman's shrill cry..

There’s only two of us! Please help us! A man.

I reach for the viewplate in the door, and swing it back. There is fog, and dust, on the reinforced plexiglass, but they are not what we feared. I pull back the bolt, and, desperately, they fall inside, acrid smoke following them. Fresh compared to the stale safety in the chamber. I scan the horizon. Someone is coming. I bolt the door as quickly as I can.

I see them realize how little space we have. There is less now. Less food, less air, and no more hope.

They followed you, I say. They’re coming.

You brought them to us! One of the others.

Sooner or later they would’ve come, I say.

A shout goes up from outside. They’re as smart as we are. Smarter, perhaps. More in tune with their instincts? I don't know. But that’s why they have won. That’s why they are superior to us. That’s why we stand at the edge of oblivion.

Will the door hold? The new guy. He is scared, but we all are.

We have two choices, I say.

There is a scratching, a crunching, a grumbling, from outside the chamber. They are here. They’ve come for us. There is no way out.

We can hear them all around us. There are ventilation holes in the walls, otherwise we would already be dead. Too much sound carries.

The little girl is on the beam. Catlike, she has sought out the high ground. Her back is to the wall. She is near a vent.

The vents are small. Nothing can get in through them. Not anything the size of a person. Not anything that big. I can’t take my eyes off the little girl and the vent.

I hear sounds from inside, behind me, someone bracing the only door with something they were able to move. But I don’t look. I can’t look. There is a fear rising inside me. It is a nameless and inexplicable terror. We’re cornered. We’re at the end of it all. The last humans in the world.

The others are making their desperate best of it all. Working together. Humanity at its finest and most desperately resourceful. Self-preservation amongst these last humans means cooperation, unswerving and automatic. No ego. Self is tribe. We are one. We’re all we have left. No, the slim chance of survival is all we have left.

The others don’t complain that I am staring at the little girl and the vent. Do they notice? Don’t they know what is going to happen?

The little girl knows it too. She sees me looking, and she knows that she will be the first to go. I know she will kill us all.

Outside, the sounds cease. We lapse into a similar silence. We have all taken a breath. Our last moment approaches.

Into the deathly silence comes a sound. A breath. Many breaths, all at once. Through all the vents. Their breath. Their breaths. Their only way in.

And a single splatter of spittle. The little girl feels the warmth of it. She whimpers. She is the first to breathe, and the first to go.

It’s slow at first. Confusion comes to her eyes. A greyness suffuses her skin. No one else is looking at her. Only I can see it happen. There is nothing any of us can do.

The little girl shrieks, wracked by pain, and rage, and grief. She shakes, and shakes, and falls from her perch.

No one comes forward to help her. It is as though the realization has hit home, finally, hit all of them, all of us. Hope has evaporated, if there ever was any hope.

No one will remember us. No one will really know what happened to us here. We are the dead, and she is Death.

Death looks up out of black eyes, and smiles.

This is the end.

-x-

It’s dark, but not a simple, pitch dark. It’s a busy dark, full of flickers and smoke. Fire. Embers. Something has happened. Is happening.

There are people all around me. I don’t know what they are doing. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s chaos. I can’t tell what’s going on!

There are cries and shouts, from every direction. Where am I? I don’t recognize this place, but I recognize the taste in the air. Fear. Sweat. Blood. The odour of destruction.

The smoke clears for a moment. People are attacking each other. Biting each other in the neck, and the face. No, some biting, some trying not to get bitten. Some with teeth bared like fangs, some retching, or screaming in terror. Those who don’t run are making an easy target of themselves.

There are blood spatters on everything, on everyone. Quickly, too quickly, the air changes, quietens. The yelling is less. The biters are panting, scenting the air like predators in the woods. Is there anyone left to run? Anywhere left to run to? Those they have bitten are shuddering and moaning on the ground. I realize there are flowers and grass, squashed, burned, trodden down, all around me, a garden. We’re in the park, but there’s not much left of it, or of anything.

An inhuman howl rings