Rat Hunt Segment

I should be working on Incident in a Japanese Inn, but I'm on vacation and decided to instead write another segment of Rat Hunt.

The following is to be considered a rough draft. You can read the first excerpt here.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The prison bus pulled up in front of a nondescript stone house somewhere in Manhattan. Aside from the bus driver and a prison guard, Conrad sat alone, his hands cuffed. He had no idea where he was, and he had learned after three years into a lengthy prison sentence not to waste time with questions. Answers, at least the ones you needed, were seldom forthcoming.

The guard said nothing but opened the gate that separated the driver and his escort from the prisoners and motioned toward the open bus door. Conrad stood up and made his way up the narrow aisle. For a moment he considered a possible escape scenario. Conrad couldn’t help it. The thoughts had become second nature, but his hands were cuffed, and he wouldn’t be able to run any distance without being shot down in the street.

Conrad stepped down off the bus steps, and the guard took him by the arm, steering Conrad toward the door of the house.

Inside, the entryway was bare. The guard steered Conrad away from stairs that went to the second floor toward a set of double doors. 

The guard knocked and opened the door without hesitation.

An elderly gray-haired woman sat at a plain table with a empty chair facing her. A large mirror adorned the one wall.

“Remove his cuffs and wait outside,” the woman said. The guard nodded, unlocked the cuffs on Conrad’s hands and stepped outside the room closing the door behind him.

“Sit,” the woman said, motioning to the chair across the table. She opened up a manila folder and studied the papers inside. “Conrad Gavin,” she read. “Currently serving the third year of a thirty-year sentence as a guest in Sing Sing. Previous employment, an enforcer for an organized crime family.”

Conrad sat and said nothing. 

The woman closed the folder. “How would you like to have that sentence reduced to ten years?”

Conrad paused for a moment trying to read the woman’s body language. “I’m listening.”

The woman sat back in her chair. “Of course, there’s a catch. You have to go through a lot of testing first to make sure you’re completely suitable to the task at hand, but you fit what we’re looking for: single, no family, military experience, a good business ethic.” She tapped the folder with her fingertips. “Even if you were working the opposite side of the law.”

“You are implying you want a job done. What’s the job?”

The woman smiled, and Conrad saw no mirth in it. “Let’s say we want you to be a security guard. An honest day’s work for room and board, a small retirement account, and you get to walk in seven years.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Let’s just say there’s some risk involved. You in?”

Again Conrad paused deliberately showing no emotion on his face.

“I don’t kill people,” he said. “I was an enforcer, not a hitman. My job was to frighten people into doing something or stop doing something.”

“We would never ask you to kill another human being,” the woman said.

“Then seeing that in thirty years I’m in my 60s with a good chunk of my life gone, I’ll take your offer.”

The woman nodded. “Smart move. We start the testing right away.”

The next three days consisted of lots of psychological tests. Conrad had his own personal room where his meals were served. The door was locked at night. 

The doctors spoke to Conrad with no emotion, performing their tests impassively as if they were robots.

On the morning of the fourth day, Conrad was led back to the room where he had first met the woman. A doctor sat there with a blanket covered box at his feet. 

“Please sit,” the doctor said.

Reaching down, the doctor put the cage on the table and removed the blanket. Inside the cage, a large gray rat hissed and growled.

The doctor observed Conrad carefully. “Ever seen a rat before?” he asked.

Conrad laughed. “I’ve lived in New York all my life. Rats are the only wildlife the city has. Well ... rats and pigeons.”

“Ever kill a rat?”

Conrad shrugged. “A couple. Ones that got in my house.”

The doctor nodded. “Are you afraid of rats?’

Conrad shook his head. “No rat has threatened my life so many times I’ve lost count. No rat has ever told me in detail what they were going to do with my body after they had killed me.” He gestured toward the cage and its occupant. “This little guy is no threat to me.”

“But if it attacked you?”

“Can’t outrun a rat. You kill it.”

The doctor opened up his suit jacket and took out a small electronic tablet. He tapped on the screen and then held it out to Conrad. “What about this rat?”

Conrad watched the video that had already begun playing. He felt a growing wave of horror.

The video showed a man in a doctor’s lab coat standing over a large table dissecting a body. The body was a huge rat, quite dead, longer than the table, it’s misshapen, clawed feet hung over the end of the table.

In the video, the doctor pried open the creature’s jaws to reveal its front incisors, a good two or three inches long. The doctor then lifted a brown-furred paw for the camera showing three-inch long claws at the end of each finger. The doctor waved to his right. The camera panned over to show another one of the rat corpses placed in a standing position. The monster stood on two feet and towered over the man in the video.

“What is this?” Conrad whispered.

“That,” the doctor said, “is Rattus erectus. Hundreds, most likely thousands, of them live under New York. They attack in swarms. We want you to join a group of select people who wage war against these monsters and keep them underground.”

Conrad stared at the doctor in silence.

“Take a day to think about it,” the doctor said. “If you agree you’ll discover we have some interesting tools at your disposal. If you say no, you go back to your prison cell. We know you won’t be telling anybody about this. You have neither friends or family to talk to anyway. And if you did say something, nobody would believe you.”

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

Lester Dent

What follows is the writing formula designed by Lester Dent (1904 – 1959), an American pulp-fiction author, best known as the creator and main author of the series of novels about the scientist and adventurer Doc Savage, consisting of 159 novels written over 16 years under the name Kenneth Robeson.

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

Here's how it starts:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE

2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING

3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE

4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A different murder method could be--different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary. 

Scribes who have their villain's victims found with butterflies, spiders or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.

Probably it won't do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque with murder methods.

The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones.

Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method and the treasure--thing that villain wants--makes it simpler, and it's also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you've lived or worked. So many pulpateers don't. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled "Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned," or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, "What's the matter?" He looks in the book and finds, "El khabar, eyh?" To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it's perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it's a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

Here's the second installment of the master plot. 

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:

FIRST 1500 WORDS

1--First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved--something the hero has to cope with.

2--The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)

3--Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.

4--Hero's endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.

5--Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE? 

Is there a MENACE to the hero?

Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot.

Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise's tail, if nothing better comes to mind. They're not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

SECOND 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel more grief onto the hero.

2--Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:

3--Another physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?

Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?

Is the hero getting it in the neck?

Is the second part logical?

DON'T TELL ABOUT IT***Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader--show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of  inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until--surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader's mind. TAG HIM. 

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

THIRD 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2--Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

3--A physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?

The MENACE getting blacker?

The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?

It all happens logically?

These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

ACTION:

Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE:

Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION:

Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

2--Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

3--The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

4--The mysteries remaining--one big one held over to this point will help grip interest--are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.

5--Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the "Treasure" be a dud, etc.)

6--The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?

The MENACE held out to the last?

Everything been explained?

It all happen logically?

Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?

Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?

Goldlust, by A.R. Mitchell: A Review

Goldlust is a collection of short stories from A. R. Mitchell, a collection of tales that pay homage to the golden age of the pulps when the characters and the stories they appeared in were bigger than life.

The opening tale, Goldlust and the one immediately following are both timeslip stories where the protagonists suddenly find themselves in another time, but the locales and tropes quickly change to stories of science fiction (an eerie and unsettling tale entitled Remember Me), post-apocalyptic drama (Armageddon’s Grace) and others spanning numerous times and locations.

Many of the stories are too short leaving the reader wishing they had been expanded into novels, but for this reviewer, some of the real gems besides the aforementioned Remember Me are:

Forty Eight Lashes that introduces a private investigator who discovers his wife of six months holds a secret that drives her to self-destructive acts.

A policeman in Love and Shotguns gives advice to a lovelorn young man.

The Outlaws of Sawdust tells the two-fisted Old West tale of a young cowgirl trailing down a gang of train robbers who stole her five dollars.

In Reliquary of Fear a renegade archeologist undergoes an involuntary rite of passage in a pagan Mayan temple.

It is hoped by this reviewer to see Mitchell expand her tales into at least novella-length stories. These twenty tales are proof she has the talent.

Goldlust in paperback can be purchased here.

Goldlust for Kindle can be purchased here.

A.R. Mitchell's blog can be found here.

Re-enter Fu Manchu, by Sax Rohmer: A Review

Re-enter Fu Manchu is the twelfth book in the series of thirteen adventures Sax Rohmer wrote about his best literary creation, the diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."

Written in 1957, the story follows the eleventh book in the series written in 1948: The Shadow of Fu Manchu. The evil doctor has been believed dead since the adventures in the last book, but Dr. Fu Manchu is very much alive and very much still involved in world conquest. Now the unquestioned leader of the Sai Fan, a secret order that he once worked for, Dr. Fu Manchu has kidnapped his old nemesis, Denis Nayland Smith, and using plastic surgery has created an almost perfect imposter. Next, the doctor hires under false pretenses, one Brian Merrick, a young man who is also the son of a U.S. Senator. He ships him off to Cairo to meet the fake Nayland Smith and then jets them both to New York where the real action takes place.

By the time Rohmer released this book, he had been aggressively writing novels, stories, and nonfiction for nigh on five decades. The writing in Re-enter Fu Manchu is very polished and very professional, but the plot line drags along slowly as we watch Brian struggle with his doubts and trying to discover who he can and cannot trust. It is not until the last few chapters we learn exactly what Fu Manchu is trying to do, the reasons behind hiring Merrick, and the final interaction between Fu Manchu and the real Sir Nayland Smith.

Compared to the other books in the series, there is very little action to speak of and I confess that in the first two thirds of the book, I was wondering if Rohmer had simply become bored with his creation.

Out of the original twelve novels, Rohmer wrote in the Fu Manchu universe, I presently own eight and I will continue to haunt used book stores until all twelve are mine.

On August 5th, 2010, I began keeping record of the books that I have read. Re-Enter Fu Manchu is book #229.

The Treasure of the Llanganati Mountains: An Excerpt

Many times as a writer I've been given the sage advice to "Write what you know," but as a writer of fantasy, dark fantasy, and science fiction, I find that a tad difficult to put into actual practice. I really don't know that much about magical beasties, interstellar travel, and arcane practices, but I do have an active imagination and I've been blessed with a life rich in experiences.

A picture of the beautiful and deadly Llanganatis.

From September, 1980 until January, 1983, I had the pleasure of living in Ecuador employed by Radio HCJB in their English Language Department. For a country bumpkin from south-central Pennsylvania, Ecuador was, for all practical purposes, a journey into my own personal Middle Earth, and the experiences and tales I picked up there have entered many a tale.

One of the most interesting tales was the secret of the Llanganti mountains, an incredibly hostile stretch of Ecuador that purports to hold the buried treasure of Rumiñawi, an Incan warrior who hid mounds of gold, platinum, and jewels from the Spanish conquistadors. It is also rumored that up to the 1960's, there had been reports of giant ground sloths living in the Llanganatis, living ancestors of the Megatheriums that went extinct 12,000 years ago, until they themselves joined their ancestors in extinction, hunted down by the native people.  (By the bye, do follow the links above. They are fascinating.)

Many a treasure seeker has wandered the Llanganatis searching for the treasure and paid with their life or their sanity.

So, fascinated by the tales that I heard, I began to weave my own until responsibilities made me put the work aside. However, for your pleasure, please enjoy the following excerpt of the very rough draft that served as the work's prologue. 

Chronicles of the Old Dogs: The Treasure of the Llanganati Mountains

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PROLOGUE

The two men ran through the jungle underbrush, gasping for breath in the terror of their exertion. Ignoring the prick of thorns and the sharp-leaved vegetation that ripped at skin and clothing, they bolted through the bushes and around the trees in a mad dash for their lives.

Suddenly, by some unspoken mutual consent, they collapsed against the fallen trunk of a huge tree eaten partially away with thick moss and fungus. The air was heavy with humidity. Thin sunlight filtering through the canopy overhead gave everything a weird green tint.

"Do you hear them coming," one man gasped, almost in tears. His English was marked with a heavy German accent.

"No," the other man gasped out, "but we wouldn't hear them coming anyway. I can assure you we aren't safe yet." The second man would have been handsome except for the old scar that tracked across the entire left side of his face.

With a whimper, the German reached into his pockets and pulled out a small gold statue that he sat on the trunk of the tree.

"What are you doing?" the man with the scarred face asked.

"I'm hoping that those things chasing us will stop for this," the German said, his breath coming easier. "It's gold. It's heavy and it's weighing me down. It may give us the few seconds we need to get away."

Scarface shook his head in the negative. "That won't work, We need to give them something more attractive to make them stop."

The German looked at his companion quizzically. "What?" he asked.

Scarface did not reply, but suddenly swung his left fist in a broad uppercut directly to the German's jaw following it with a right to the solar plexus. With a barely audible groan, the German dropped to the ground, the wind completely knocked out of him.

Without another word, Scarface grabbed the statue, jumped over the log, and disappeared immediately into the thick brush.

The German lay stunned, his mind screaming at his body to get up, to run. Unable to move, he finally did the only action available to him. Ignoring what might be sharing the jungle floor with him, he attempted to force his way deeper into the forest mold under the trunk of the fallen tree.

Suddenly, two dark shapes burst through the brush and leapt over him and the tree under which he lay. The German froze in terror. Trying not to gasp for breath, trying not to scream, he lay still.

Moments later coming from some distance away, the German heard his traitorous companion begin to scream. He squeezed his body deeper under the trunk and waited until the screams abruptly stopped.

Several hours later, terror still kept him prisoner under the log, even ignoring the one snake that traveled along his side while he lay completely still. As the sun was setting, he finally began to entertain the thought that a miracle might allow him to escape the Llanganati Mountains alive.

The Lost Level: A Review

Brian Keene is best known for being a writer of graphic horror and though I am not a fan of splatterpunk, I am an avid reader of Keene because he writes his characters with great poignancy, presenting them as fully fleshed human beings instead of existing for the sheer purpose of being nothing but monster chow. In addition, Keene has created an elaborate mythos he has named the Labyrinth that ties all his novels and stories together. As a result, his universe is not only huge, but is just as elaborate and fascinating as the Cthulhu Mythos first dreamed up by the Old Gentleman from Providence.

In The Lost Level, Keene tries his hand at another genre and his foray in pulp fiction results in a satisfying read that entertains and is worth another reading.

Aaron Pace is a young student of the occult who gains the ability to travel the Labyrinth that connects all parallel universes and individual worlds within those universes. His fascination and exploration unfortunately traps him in an oubliette, a world with only one entrance and no exit. Known as the Lost Level, it serves as the dumping grounds of all the parallel universes that connect to the Labyrinth. People and objects that have mysteriously disappeared in our world and others end up in The Lost Level, a world of such danger that survival is only remotely possible. In his wanderings, Aaron gathers two companions, a barbarian princess and a creature that is mostly an anthropomorphic cat with a prehensile tail. In their adventures, they encounter all sorts of wonders and horrors such as piranha birds, giant amoebas, dinosaurs, large metal killer robots and other challenges that allow Keene to let loose his full range of imagination.

My only disappointment is, and I say this with great respect, is that Keene needs an editor. In chapter 12, Aaron waxes eloquent on women's liberation that detracts from the story and appears to be nothing more than the author's attempt to use his narrative as a pulpit. Also, in a world of such horror with danger at every corner, when we are introduced to "the soft valley" the sheer silliness of its existence may have seemed cute, but so nonsensical that it acted as a huge interruption to the narrative. An editor would also have steered Keene to a more satisfying ending other than the sheer info dump that is the final chapter.

Other than that, as well as some other minor hiccups that an editor would have caught, Keene's foray into adventure pulp fiction is entertaining enough that, for this reviewer, I will make sure I pick up the next two books in the trilogy.