f(x)=x

About a month ago, I decided to take a shot at serialized fiction with The Erasable Man and submitted it to JukePop Serials. Yesterday, I received a little note from them saying they really liked the story, but it needed a little editing and to resubmit. So, freshly printed copy of the chapter in hand, I took my pen and poured over it one more time, fixing everything I could find!

Here’s the last commit message:

commit a6cffe46e8890697b30de714b901b6d8ee83c5aa
Author: arlaneenalra <>
Date:   Mon Jun 24 23:43:55 2013 -0500

    Remove spaces from T.E.M.

Yup, that’s just over sixteen minutes to midnight, and yes, I do like palindromes. About 5:04pm this afternoon, this little gem popped up in my inbox:

Dear Chris Salch,

Congratulations, your serial start, The Erasable Man, has been selected for publication on JukePop Serials!

To officially publish your serial to our website, we ask that you log into your JukePop account and go to MY SUBMISSIONS tab under MY ACCOUNT and look for The Erasable Man. Click on the CLICK TO PUBLISH button under your serial, review the JukePop Serials TERMS AND AGREEMENT, and click the AGREE button to publish your serial to the website. You should see your serial published on our website within an hour.

…

And here’s where I say:

Without further Adieu:

Now, I really do need to get a cover for this story!

Posted in The Erasable Man, Writings - Fiction

Every so often I’ve found myself wanting to link to a specific comment over on LitReactor. Unfortunately, while they have in page anchors, there is no easy way to get at a link to them. Having fought with developer tools tracking down the right anchor element one too many times, I decided to throw this little toy together right quick:

javascript:(function () {
    var comment_container = $('#comments');
    var comments = $('div.comment', comment_container);
    var anchors = $('a[id~=comment]', comment_container);

    for (var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
        var anchor = $(anchors[i]);
        var comment = $(comments[i]);

        var href = window.location.href + '#' + anchor.attr('id');

        $('.comment-content .comment-meta a:first-child ', comment).before(
            '<a href="' + href + '"> # </a>'
        );
    }
})();

And here it is as a link: LitReactor: Add Comment Links

Keep in mind, this is just a toy! No warranties, use at your own risk etc!

Posted in Programming
Tags: litreactor

YAY! My ’04 New Beetle has a new pair of headlights! Have a look:

Here’s the two big reasons the Bug needed new ones:

The drivers side headlight lost its lens and insulation on the wiring inside both headlights had started cracking apart.  I’d already tried fixing the lens once when it started coming loose several weeks back.  Unfortunately, it popped off somewhere on the road this time and disappeared.  It’s a touch difficult to re-attach something if you don’t have it to reattach!

I ran a few searches and called a place town to see what a replacement would cost.  A Bosch light was going to run me around $200 for one side.  That would have left me with a pair of mismatched lights and not dealt with the crumbling insulation in the other housing.  You can’t see it very well in the picture, but that lens is extremely yellowed and more translucent that transparent.  Definitely not conducive to good night time vision.   Beside, there’s a nasty crack starting around the bottom edge.

Thankfully, I found these guys: http://www.headlightsdepot.com

They had replacement assemblies at $85 a side and $155 a pair.  Much better than the $400 plus I was looking at otherwise.  They’re site isn’t the best in the world, but it does do a good job of letting you find the what you’re looking for.  Where it falls down is letting you track an order after completion.  I received an two emails (if I’m remembering this correctly) from the company, with a different order reference number than the the one their site gave me at the time of the order and two different FedEx tracking numbers.  One of which was for something being sent to Austin!  That’s a good five hours from where my headlights were supposed to be headed.

Needless to say, I was somewhat relieved when the headlights actually arrived!

If you find yourself needing to replace the bulb or full assembly on one of these, take a look at this video:

It’s a touch long, but he does a pretty comprehensive run down of how everything fits together.  The driver side light is a good deal more of a pain than the passenger side one.  Whoever did the layout for this vehicles engine compartment must have been a sadist to put the latch behind the battery box. SHEESH!  Thankfully, this is not something that needs to be done overly frequently.

Now that that’s over with!  Time to get back to writing! 😉

Posted in Random Thoughts
Tags: car trouble

In honor of getting my this site moved onto new hosting, the kindle version of That Which is Nameless is going to be free this weekend the 18th and 19th!  Here’s a short excerpt:

That is, until someone tripped one of my traps. Thankfully, it was nothing overly dangerous. I had set up proximity-triggered portals around the room I was staying in, arranged to prevent anyone other than me from finding my door. In theory, anyone who activated one of the portals should have been moved down the walkway by the width of one room, none the wiser. Somewhere in the process of writing out the phrasing I had screwed up. Instead of being moved one door farther down, they were moved one door farther back.

The poor soul spent an hour trying to get away from the door to my room before I found her. She had a downtrodden, frantic look that characterized many of the residents in this hotel. Her eyes were sunken into a gaunt face, and she was generally disheveled in appearance. If I had to make a guess as to her age, I would have said somewhere in her late twenties. I was reasonably sure she had not bathed or changed clothing in some time. She was sitting across the walkway from my door with her body pulled up into the fetal position. Tears were streaming down her face as she sat there, rocking back and forth in fear and desperation.

When she saw me opening the door she screamed and grabbed my legs, holding on for dear life. “I’m freaking out! Help me! I’m trapped here! Please help me!”

When you grab a copy, give me a shout-out either here or over on Twitter.  Have fun!

Posted in That Which is Nameless, Writings - Fiction
Tags: Free Stuff, That Which is Nameless

Finally!  I’ve made my way back through the first ten thousand words of The Erasable Man and have finally caught up with where I was when Teleport-Us derailed me.  Now, how to get Zachary Artemas out of his little predicament … but you don’t know about that do you.  Here’s a little snippet:

“Don’t worry your little head none about that. I’m not supposed to kill you unless you’re difficult,” said the little man. “He gave me a note to read to you. It says: Next time it will be you. What’s that supposed to mean? Next time it will …”

Something gurgled and collapsed with a heavy thud. I looked over my shoulder and saw my assailant on the ground, surrounded by dried blood. A zip-tie, pulled tight enough to have embedded itself into the man’s wrist, bound his hands in the small of his back. Next to the body was a pile of neatly folded skin and two skewered eyeballs sitting on a small ceramic dish pointed directly at me. The eyes had been placed so that they appeared to be looking into my own.

There was no need to check his pulse; the man had been dead for a long time, several hours if the Sun’s elevation could be trusted. The massive gap in my memory ached like a missing limb. How do you deal with someone who can immobilize you without warning, I thought to myself.

The plan is still to release this in an episodic form, with periodic role ups of several episodes.  The main reason I haven’t pushed out some of the earlier episodes (read that as 2) is that I’m having trouble finishing them up in a timely manner.  Once I can nail that down, and build up enough of a release backlog to have a spare episode or two waiting in the wings, The Erasable Man will hit the figurative presses.

Anyone have suggestions on a viable platform to publish episodic fiction?

Posted in Short Stories, The Erasable Man, Writings - Fiction
Tags: litreactor, Short Stories, The Erasable Man

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fair warning: this is a dark, disturbing, and horrendously gruesome book. If you have a weak stomach, have difficulty with the idea of self inflicted violence in every conceivable form and fashion, or can’t imagine a world where death is not the worst thing that can happen then this is not a book for you. Otherwise, Chuck will not disappoint.

Haunted is written in a somewhat unusual, at least to me, style. There is an over arching story that frames a collection of short stories, each of which is preceded by a short about one of the characters. The short stories are meant act as a window into the past of each character in the framing story. For me, this style was a bit of a problem. The contextual switches between the short stories kept distracting me. That coupled with the text’s graphic content forced me to read the book much more slowly and in much smaller chunks than I would have liked.

My introduction to Haunted was an article on Chuck Palahniuk’s site, The Cult, titled The Guts Effect. Guts is the first of the short stories after the opening scenes of the framing story. It does a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the book and is by no means the worst of what lay within. I don’t know if I can convey to you how horrific this text is without giving too much away.

I’ll say it again, fair warning. This is not a book to read if you’re having even the slightest hint of stomach troubles.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing

Late Saturday the 30th, almost the 31st, I finally finished reading the last entry to Teleport Us on LitReactor.  Over the course of three months, I’ve read and commented on around 160 short stories.  I’m not sure of the exact number as some of the stories were pulled after and some before I could get around to reading them.

There is a sense of elation and accomplishment that comes with completing a run like that, and some withdrawal pangs as you realized it’s all over.  I can honestly say that this competition has devoured almost all of my free time since it was first announced back in January.  Now that it’s finished, I will have to get to work on some of my own writing again and back to my sorely neglected reading list.

If you didn’t get around to reading entries before the April 1st deadline, don’t worry. Scare Us from last year is still online with all the entries and comments that went with them, and I’m certain that Teleport Us will be left up indefinitely as well.  All you have to do is get an account on LitReactor to access all of those amazing and sometimes gruesome stories!

Here’s a short list of my favorites with quick links:

• The Gorund – A story about a robot who learns what the world is like outside his building ….
• Rings – Who is really in charge of the universe?
• Anamoly – Find the one who isn’t human …
• Ubi Cor Ibi Domu – The good life of a guard dog …
• The Machinery of Xmas – Christmas by the numbers …
• Fracture – What part does an evil master mind have in uotpia?
• One Tunguska Story – An isolated family finds something amazing …
• Gravidism – A new life and a lost job …
• An Incy Wincy Holocaust – This one has one hell of a twist!
• Corporate Person – What is the essence of a person?
• Of Flesh and Steel – Factory life is for the robots …
• Higher Minds – Dangerous minds …
• State of the Art – When writers become obsolete …
• The Song of the Ship – Can you hear what’s wrong?
• A Song for my Brother – A sisters trys to save her brother …
• The Last Dance – Comfort at the end of life ..
• His Man Stanley – If you’re a Dr. Who fan, think of the “Planet of the Ood”
• The Memory Remains – Time heals all wounds …
• Sunken Hearts – Their mission is destruction …
• Yes, Admin – So much worse than slavery …
• The Human Argument – What does it mean to be human …
• The Demon Chef – A family obligation, a family curse …
• Kill (command) – Freeing the world from perfection …
• Chip Head – The dangers of temptation …
• Deep Sleep – What happens when the world goes to sleep?
• The Business Spirit – Coming to terms with death …
• An Incident at Winter House 12 – Surviving against all odds …
• The Horse With No Head – Fighting for her masters life …

Yeah, way too long a list!  There’s also my own entry, Implant, but it seems disingenuous to include it in a list of my favorites.  Good luck to all those who entered!  As I’ve said before, there were some down right amazing gems  in this challenge!  I wonder if any of my picks will win?

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing, Writings - Fiction
Tags: Implant, litreactor, Scare Us, Short Stories, Teleport Us

It’s that time again! My novel That Which is Nameless will be free on Amazon March 1st and 2nd, and A Thousand Cuts, a “Creepy” short story I wrote for the Scare-Us event at LitReactor will be free March 1st.

Both of these texts have been part of the KDP Select program for the past ninety days and their enrollment is just about to run out. That means it’s use it or lose it time for their remaining “promotion days” and another give away for you!

If you do pick TWIN or ATC up, I’d really like to hear what you though of them. Be sure to drop a comment here, review over on Amazon, or get in touch with me via Good Reads.

Posted in Short Stories, That Which is Nameless, Writings - Fiction
Tags: A Thousand Cuts, Free Stuff, litreactor, Short Stories, That Which is Nameless

The guys over at LitReactor have done it again and wiped out another month of writing time. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not writing, just that I’m working on a project related to their event Teleport Us rather than other things.

This is the second time I’ve gone through one of these and I have to say that the four thousand word limit is a killer! It really forces you to cut down things that aren’t core to a story. If you haven’t been by the site before, give a whirl. You can find my entry at:

Posted in Short Stories, Writings - Fiction
Tags: Implant, litreactor

Just a heads up. My novel That Which is Nameless and the short story A Thousand Cuts will be free all weekend. Yup, I’m giving the books away on the 19th and the 20th. If you don’t have a copy, go pick one up! Be sure to drop by here or over on Goodreads and let people know what you thought of them.

Posted in Short Stories, That Which is Nameless, Writings - Fiction