Graeme Rodaughan's Blog: Writing The Metaframe War Series - Posts Tagged "humour"

According to Courtney Carpenter there are 21 Key Traits of Best-Selling Fiction

Lets check this out by application to my stories.

1. Utility - Very high, provided you're a vampire hunter.
2. Information - Vampires don't like silver or sunlight
3. Substance - See point 1 above.
4. Focus - Vampires are bad.
5. Logic - Vampires are consistently bad.
6. A sense of connection - On the off chance that vampires are real...
7. A compelling style - If you fear vampires you'll love my book.
8. A sense of humor - There is at least one joke in chapter 6.
9. Simplicity - Just about hunting vampires.
10. Entertainment - There are fracking vampires in there!
11. A fast pace - There are vampires and/or fights in every second scene.
12. Imagery - The vampires are really well drawn.
13. Creativity - The origin of the vampires is novel.
14. Excitement - Fight scenes are short, sharp and frequent.
15. Comfort - The vampires die.
16. Happiness - The vampires stay dead.
17. Truth - It could be true. No really, it could be true...
18. Writing that provokes - You will think long and hard about vampires while reading my book.
19. Active, memorable writing - Last sentence of the prologue, and again in the 4th scene of Chapter 7.
20. A sense of Wow! - Has reputedly happened at least once. (On good authority...)
21. Transcendence - last chapter of the last book of the series due for release in Q3 2023.

‘I’m sitting with Anton Slayne at Patrick O’Malleys Irish pub just off the Boston CBD. Anton’s recently landed a gig as the main character of a new series of books, beginning with A Subtle Agency and has agreed to give an interview for my Blog.’

‘So let’s begin Anton, how did you get the gig?’

‘Well, I saw an advertisement in the Boston Mercury for a main character for an upcoming novel, they said they were looking for someone who could play a star hockey player and Boston University freshman, so I brushed up my CV and sent it in.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘Well, there was a couple of rounds of interviews, and everything seemed to be going really good. I thought, solid, I’ve got it, my first major role - no more bit parts for me.’

‘Sounds like something unexpected happened.’

‘Yeah, they asked me if I wanted to be a vampire, and I can tell you, alarm bells started ringing straight away, and I thought to myself, well there’s a big red flag. I mean, what the hell - vampires? Really?’

‘Vampires?’

‘Yeah, what I thought too. Anyway, so the old geezer who’s running the show, he said he was toying with the idea that I might be better placed as one of the vampires.’

‘Shocking.’

‘Too right, so I said to him, that no way whatsoever, I was gonna play a damn vampire. And he ruminates on my response for minutes … so I’m waiting for the old fart to make up his mind, and then he comes out and says, it will all be okay, you don’t have to be a vampire.’

‘You would have been a relieved.’

‘Sure, but I’m going, what the hell in my mind, as I thought it was a sports story, and so what is all this talk about vampires. I just didn’t get it.’

‘So, did he do anything to clarify the situation?’

‘Well, he gave me an outline of the novel, and I read it. I’m still thinking this is a sports story, right, and I’m a freshman at Boston U, right. Yeah right, so I’m looking for a hockey tournament, with me as a star player. I’m looking for a championship game with me scoring the winning goal. I’m looking for hot cheerleaders and lots of them. I’m looking for drunken frat parties and pranks and laughs and fun. …’

‘But it wasn’t anything like that was it?’

‘No, nothing like it. It was a real downer, I was some guy who’s mother get’s murdered in our living room, and who’s father is abducted by really tough vampires. Not only that, I’ve been living in some weird witness protection and basically I’ve got enemies everywhere just looking to put me in an early grave. I nearly get killed half a dozen times in the first book, and then I see in the second book that I get shot, thrown off a cliff, and then hooded, gagged, bound and buried alive and that’s only in the first three chapters.’

‘That’s a tough gig.’

‘Even worse, my number one enemy, Chloe Armitage, who kills my mother and abducts my father, wants to use me in some plot of her own. And get this, her time on page is almost the same as mine. Hey, I thought I was gonna be the main character. What’s up with that?’

‘So what convinced you to take the job?’

‘Well, a guy has got to eat, and I was sick of playing bit parts in online computer games.’

‘It’s that simple?’

‘Yep, it’s that simple.’

‘Well, thank you Anton, its been wonderful to get some real insight into the inner workings of the job market for main characters.’

‘Sure, no problem.’

‘Thanks again.’

‘Cheers, hey, and thanks for the beer.’

‘It’s all good.’

Tales from the COVID-19 front lines... (Australia).

I was walking through the city when someone whispered at me from an alleyway, "Hey, mate. You want some?"

I probably should've kept walking, but I was curious. So, I said, "What?"

"4 Ply. I've got rolls of the stuff."

"You're kidding me!"

"No, for real." He lifted back the front of his coat. His skinny chest was wrapped in line after line of toilet paper.

I looked closer, there was a faint metallic gleam to the paper under the street lights. It wasn't 4 ply, it was nothing like real toilet paper. I waved my hand dismissively at his fake wares. "That's Badger's Arse. Government issue, made from recycled sandpaper, sawdust, and metal filings."

"No. No. No. It's good stuff. I promise you."

I shook my head, and turned away. I was wasting my time with a street-paper merchant. A bootlegger of stolen stock. No one could be trusted. It was a good thing I'd already hoarded my stash.

I reached my car, got in and drove for home. Half way there, red-blue lights flashed me from behind. A pair of motor-cycle cops pulled me over. They ordered me to open my car up to be searched for contraband and to assume the position. Of course, I complied. Ever since the 'Corona Virus Civil Safety Act,' had been passed, Cops could shoot you for non-compliance with a lawful directive. And searching my car and my person in intimate detail had been made a lawful action under the CVCS Act. The closest one passed upwind of me and I got a full whiff of his rear end. It smelled pretty bad down there. I figured the cops were down to using government issued Badger's Arse with predictable results. They were hoping to find some paper on me - off course I wasn't carrying any with me. I'd carefully gone to the toilet before I left home. I wasn't stupid.

The cop I couldn't smell asked, "You carrying any paper?"

I said, "No," and before I could stop myself, I added insouciantly, "I had a boating accident."

"A boating accident?" asked the smelly cop, lurching around to face me.

"Yeah, I was transporting my whole stash of paper across a lake and the boat tipped over and I lost the lot."

The other cop's face darkened, and I realized I'd let my mouth run away from me. He remarked with a merciless grin, "We'll see about that."

They pulled my car apart, and then smacked out one of my rear brake lights in a fit of spite at having to leave empty-handed. They slapped a yellow-sticker on my windshield, declaring my car unroadworthy due to the now broken brake light. I said nothing. They roared away on their motorcycles and I walked the rest of the way home.

In a stroke of good-luck, I arrived home in time to discover a gang of thieves ransacking my place. I keep a loaded shotgun (only for sport shooting of course) buried in the front yard. I dug it free with my bare hands and charged through the front door. I caught them attempting to steal my stash of paper. Of course, I blew them away. It's a God given right to defend your paper. They died squealing, their filthy hands clutching scrunched up wads of paper, more paper, half used, hanging out of the rear-tops of their jeans. One of them was a female with some of my paper stuck to the bottom of her left shoe.

It was a disgusting job, but I recovered what I could, and re-hid the rest of my stash in a fire-protected safe-box in my cellar. As for the bodies, they were safe enough on my lounge room floor. I'd work out what to do with them later - right now, nature was calling.

I have one of those retro-dunnys in the back yard. So I went to it, and sat down on the throne. I did my business and reached for my roll of toilet paper. I'd bought out three supermarket aisles of Kleenex Super Ply, Super-Deluxe just as this whole crisis was starting. It was the creme-de-la-creme of toilet papers. I was filled with anticipation of wiping its wonderfully strong, yet soft and absorbent majesty across the sensitive skin of my bottom. My left hand reached, my fingers grasped - nothing!

It was gone.

I heard a growl above my head. There were holes in the roof of my dunny, and a dirty great possum had my toilet roll. I watched in horror as it leaped onto a tree branch and scampered into the crown of the giant gum tree in my back yard. Dragging my precious paper with it. I put my horror aside, and grim faced, I reached for what I needed and stepped out of the dunny.

Now, as everyone knows, and it hardly needs to be said. There are two great truths. Outback dunny's have matches and possums can only hold one thing at a time. Being an enterprising, fore-thinking citizen of merit. I'd added a stash of dynamite sticks next to my dunny, just because you never know when you might need one. I grabbed a stick and lit the fuse with a match. I threw the dynamite at the possum. And being the stupid critter it is, it dropped my prize toilet paper and caught the dynamite.

I leaped forward and caught the falling paper, and fell into a roll that shielded it with my body. Above me the possum growled, and then the whole top of the gum tree exploded, raining burning fragments all over my backyard. I checked my paper, it was safe. The top of the tree fell away, a burning mass, straight onto the top of my house, which exploded in a ball of flame.

I cradled my toilet roll. I had no worries, my stash was protected in a fire-proof box in the cellar. Anything else was expendable, I had my paper, what more could a man want?