The Chaos Stories NBtM

Blurb:

Here you'll find nine new short-stories, some which have been from my life, or things that could have happened. One is inspired from the many games of Dungeons and Dragons I've played over twenty years while another is from the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Some are even some from other authors, who kindly contributed to my collection.

As a treat for fans of my series, I have included six deleted chapters, two from each of the three Newfoundland Vampire novels, which have been all cleaned up and have been made better than ever for your reading pleasure.

I have also included not one, but two chapters from the upcoming fourth book in the Newfoundland Vampire series, War of the Fangs. I've filled this collection with tales that will make you laugh, or will scare you, and will hopefully make you think a little about the world around us and the people in it.

Excerpt:

"I'm not leaving you behind, no man gets left behind, GET MOVING!" Marlon screamed the last part at the top of his lungs and they bolted forward. It wasn't easy with all the roots and holes in the ground. Larry fell once as did Marlon, painfully twisting his ankle so that now Larry had to help him but they moved on, spotting one mark on a tree and chalk on another. The mist had started to rise, it was at their ankles now.

"Mar I can't feel my feet, it feels as if I'm running on blocks of ice.  We need to get out!" Marlon looked about frantically, the trees were still thick, he couldn't see the tall grass from where they had started this morning. Everything felt tight, his chest felt like it was going to explode, his heart felt like it would leap out through his throat at any second. The trees seems to be closing in on them, he felt like he was back in France, just waiting for the first bullet to split the air.

Marlon looked down for a second, legs are numb up to my knees but somehow I'm moving, I don't feel the pain in my ankle. "We'll get out, you are the best woodsman I've ever seen. I know you can do it." Larry nodded and Marlon was glad to see a small smile creep onto one side of his face, he pointed with his right arm to a mark, an arrow pointing to the east, the way they were going. You better be, he thought, I'll be damned if I die in a forest by some mist, I made it out of the war, I'll make it out of here!

The Value of an Outline

It is one of those simple things you learn in school early on (at least I did), the importance of an outline for a story. The funny part is that for all my time in high school and university (I have a Bachelor in English and a Masters in Education) I never bothered to do an outline. It was only the past six years when I started novels that I finally saw the benefit of it. When you have an idea for a novel/short story/blog post/whatever you just want to go with it, get it down as fast as possible. What I have discovered though is that once you get the first few chapters done you need to come up with a plan, you need to know where you’re going and as the writing continues, where you’ve been.

At first I was content just have an outline which contained four things, chapter titles, dates when the story happened, a brief description of the chapter and of course the chapter order. I found that by always at least having ideas for two or three chapters ahead I had an idea where the story was going and it always gave me something to think about in terms of scenes, characters and the storyline in general. What I’ve discovered though, with the help of my most excellent editor Heather at Reilly Books, is that it helps a great deal also to have a detailed outline. A detailed outline contains all of the above but also describes briefly every event, small or big, that happens in each chapter. Why go to this level of detail you ask? Consistency, logical flow and evenness of the storyline and characters in your story is something that may be hard to keep straight otherwise.

Two examples from my own experiences: when I wrote my first novel “The Newfoundland Vampire” I just had a basic outline. It gave me an idea of what happened in each chapter but with editing and changes I lost track of a couple of things. The sequence of days, while it may not sound important, if you’re going to have your characters follow the regular week that it has to be correct, otherwise readers will become frustrated and taken out the story. Another thing I missed was the time of day that the sun would set, for a vampire novel that’s important. Without a detailed outline I had the sun setting at the wrong time for September and it needed to be changed to October. When I wrote my second novel “Killer on the Road” I spent a few hours and did an outline for the entire novel. I had an idea now of where the story will go and a plan. As I completed each chapter I added to the more detailed outline discussed above. As a result when it came to edit book 2 I ended up doing just 7 drafts instead of 16 and almost all the details flowed smoothly. In later books (book 3 "The Gathering Dark" and my latest "The Chaos Stories") doing an outline was just second nature.  Of course for my latest book the outline was much different (and smaller) as the chapters from my vampire series had already been done. Mainly for my first short-story collection the outline was a way to organize it, see where the stories should be, the deleted chapters and the works from other authors.

While writing is a creative process, I have found it invaluable to be organized when it comes to writing anything you want to collect and make available to the public. For my latest collection I grouped together stories based on whether they were connected (four of them are) and if they had similar themes (some are sci-fi, others just fiction). If you are going to create your own world it needs to make sense and outlines (at least one) make sense to me.

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Author Bio and Links:

Charles O’Keefe lives in the beautiful province of Newfoundland, Canada, with his wife and two feline ‘children,’ Jude and Eleanor. He is a part-owner of a beauty wholesale business. He enjoys many hobbies and activities that include reading, gaming, poker, Pilates, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course, fantasizing about vampires. Charles is the author of three books in the Newfoundland Vampire series, but this is his first collection of short-stories. Look for the fourth Newfoundland Vampire book sometime in the near future.

To find out more about Charles or his other books, go to Twitter and Facebook or visit his website.

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