Posted on by ajbrown

Dredging Up Memories: Humphrey

I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.

Humphrey2

This is Humphrey, the Good Dreams Bear.

Some of you may be asking yourself, ‘now why is he posting a picture of a stuffed animal and talking about it on his blog?’

Good question.

Humphrey is not just some ordinary stuffed animal. No, this little bear is a central character in my series, Dredging Up Memories. But this is not just some prop bought with the hopes of getting you to hop over to the website and read the series, though if you want to, I would not try to stop you. As a matter of fact, I’ll wait for you to go read.

Go ahead.

You know you want to.

(Three hours later).

Ahhh… you’re back.

I hope you enjoyed the series so far, but really, this is about Humphrey and where he came from and how he came to be an important figure in ‘Dredging Up Memories.’

When my daughter was around three-years-old she had nightmares—bad, bad nightmares. She would wake up screaming and thrashing in the bed. We could never get her back to sleep. Sometimes the dreams were night terrors and she would sit up in bed screaming and wouldn’t wake up as we tried to calm her.

“What are you doing in my room?” she would ask when she finally did wake.

On the nights she had night terrors she had no clue what had happened, even after we explained it to her. The night terrors were worse for my wife and I, but the nightmares were horrible for my little girl. After several months of dealing with this, my wife and I decided to try something different. We went to a store with the sole purpose of finding her a ‘Good Dreams Bear’

We searched through the stuffed animals until we found a light brown teddy bear. We named him Humphrey, the Good Dreams Bear, and gave him to our daughter. I thought my daughter had said the bear was naked, so therefore we went and purchased him the pajamas he wears. My lovely wife corrected me on that and said we bought the outfit at the same time we bought the bear.

We gave the bear to my daughter and explained to her that it would keep the bad dreams away and only allow the good dreams in. She is 11 now and still sleeps with Humphrey. That little bear is like Linus’s security blanket.

When I started writing ‘Dredging Up Memories’ I knew Hank was going to be alone for the most part throughout the first third of the story. I also knew that the few people he did come in contact with were folks he would not be able to trust, no matter how bad he wanted non-dead human contact.

Humphrey was born out of necessity. I needed Hank to have something to hold onto, to have a reason to live, so him finding the teddy bear gave him that thing.

In the story, Humphrey is a girl, at least in Hank Walker’s mind. I always thought Humphrey should have been a girl anyway.

Humphrey’s role in ‘Dredging Up Memories’ is critical. She keeps Walker alive by having him think of her before he gives up living. In future installments, she plays a huge part in him not losing his mind completely.

I think in times like a zombie apocalypse where the world has gone to the dead, a person would need something from the old world to keep him/her grounded, to keep them sane. Humphrey is that grounding wire. Without that little bear, Hank Walker would have died long before installment number nine, and after what happens in ten, well… I guess you’ll have to wait until it comes out.

Before I go, I want to say this:

I started writing a few secondary storylines a while back, tying in certain zombies at crucial points in the story—I wanted a few significant victims’ stories to be told. Then ‘The Walking Dead’ goes and does the story about Bicycle Girl. After seeing it, I stopped writing the secondary storylines. I didn’t want to appear like I was copying TWD. I was aggravated. The stories had the potential to be really good.

Then Pete Bevan reminded me of a simple truth, and I quote:

As for the side stories, personally I wouldn’t worry about copying TWD. That way of interlacing stories has a long history within literature, particularly early Sci Fi. Personally I would love to know Humphrey’s story up to the point Hank finds him.

After thinking about this for a few days, I’ve decided to go ahead and write the secondary storylines for several main character appearances, including:

Humphrey
Jail Cell Zombie
Hungry Louisa and her Husband

There are a few more I might delve into, such as:

The Paul Marcum look-alike
Pharmacy Girl
Dead Family in the Garage
And another character not introduced yet.

I’ll let you all figure out who that is when part X comes out.

So, if you like zombies and haven’t read ‘Dredging Up Memories’, what are you waiting for?

Check it out here: Dredging Up Memories

Thanks for dropping by, leave a comment if you will. Until we meet again, my friends…

Posted on by ajbrown

Update 4/24/2012

Good morning, afternoon, evening wherever you may be.

April has been a rough month. I won’t deny that I haven’t posted near as much as I had planned, but I have been busy and, clearly, there has been a significant change in the way I view things in my life. I could talk about a bunch of things today, but I think I’m going to narrow them down to just a couple: Promoting and funny stuff.

First the funny stuff:

With all the rain we had Sunday, we stayed inside for the most part. There is this show called World’s Dumbest. Some of you may have seen this before. Bored and just kind of lazing around, we flipped on the television, scrolled through the list of shows and found World’s Dumbest was on.

And we watched it. I feel a tad less intelligent after watching it.

My son came in and sat down. It was about the time that this video was playing:

My son looked over at my wife and I and said, “They can make snow cones now.”

Yes, that’s my boy. Always looking on the bright side of things.

***

On to a little bit of promoting.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of my short story collection, Along the Splintered Path, I encourage you to do so.

The Blurbage:

Along the Splintered Path is a collection of stories written by up-and-coming horror author AJ Brown.

The Woodshed: A young man wrestles with the ghost of his past, an abusive father and a mentally unstable brother. As a last resort, he returns home to confront the evil he left behind. What he finds just may be the end of him.

‘Round These Bones: After a failed attempt at saving his marriage, James leaves the cottage get away in a huff. After skidding off the road, he is forced to find shelter from the coming snowstorm. When he falls down the edge of the mountain and breaks his ankle, the need for shelter becomes more important. James comes upon a small man made hut in the middle of the woods. Inside, he finds not only shelter, but something else…

Phillip’s Story: Down on his luck, Phillip comes into a bag of money that falls from the sky. Intertwined with the money is the story of the Williams brothers and how the money in the bag ends up falling from the sky. What Phillip does with the money could be his saving grace… or his greatest downfall.

You can find Along the Splintered Path on Amazon here

If you do pick up a copy, I hope you also would consider leaving a review. It doesn’t have to be fully detailed, just what you thought of the book, the stories.

As always, I thank you for taking the time to read Along the Splintered Path and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Do you like zombies? If so, then head on over to Tales of the Zombie Wars where my series, Dredging Up Memories currently resides. It follows the story of Hank Walker during the zombie apocalypse. You can find Dredging Up Memories here

Midnight Echo #7 is coming soon. My story Just Some Good Old Boys Sitting Around The Fire Talking *$#&# appears within it’s pages. This edition of Midnight Echo was put together by Daniel Russell and I’m looking forward to reading all of the stories in there. This is also the Taboo issue, so you can expect some subject matter that’s not your standard ho-hum stuff. You can follow this link to view the cover art and to pre-order a copy of Midnight Echo 7. Again, I appreciate any support you can lend to the small market authors and publishers out there.

Finally, but not least in my mind, is my new blog. It’s not for everyone. As a matter of fact, I believe it’s probably not for most people who have followed Type AJ Negative or my writing.

This is the blog I created about a month ago to write about The Bible and how I see it. I am a visual person and when I read I visualize things in great detail–a lot of this detail I try to leave out in my own stories, but in my mind where the stories develop, they are always there.

If you have followed me for any length of time, then you will know about what happened on March 21st of this year. You will know that I have had a change–a significant one–in my life. The thing is I can’t keep that change out of my writing and away from my blogs. So I created As I Sow It, for those who want to read less about my writing and personal life and more about things of The Bible. No, not religion–The Bible. It is as I see it and today I posted the first real blog post. It is called In Difficult Times.

For those who don’t care much for God and The Bible, this is not something you probably want to read (however, I encourage you to consider reading anyway). Out of respect for my readers, I will try not to have too many preachy type things on Type AJ Negative. I can’t guarantee there won’t be some, but not as many as could be.

Thank you for reading. As a writer, without all of you, my stories would have no meaning.

Until we meet again, my friends…

Posted on by ajbrown

A Note About 2011

A couple weeks ago, I lamented on how 2011 has not been the banner year for me, as far as writing goes. 2010 had been a boon and I thought things were looking up. Then came 2011 and, well, I came back down to earth (in a meteor crashing from outer space kind of way).

In that blog I also mentioned something about things may be changing. I’m here to tell you now that something good is on the way.

We’ll start with a few publications that accepted stories that have either recently came out or will be coming out very soon.

I know… I know… some of these I probably should have mentioned before, but, like I said, it’s felt like a down year so the enthusiasm hasn’t always been there to blog about it.

Shame on me.

Not again, though.

I’m almost positive I did throw a blurb up for this first publication, but just in case:

The Horror Zine picked up a story I co-wrote a couple years ago with Diane Smith (a very talented lady I may add) after entering it in a flash fiction contest that I had no business writing for. Interestingly enough our stories were as similar as they were dissimilar. The story, The Third Edge of Power was submitted by Diane and accepted by Jeani Rector for The Horror Zine. It came out in August and I’m quite proud of the story.

[Side Note: I must add that Diane did most of the work on this after it was written, so I really can’t take much credit for the story finding a home. This was all Diane’s doing and I thank her for pushing on with this one. End Side Note]

Back in October of 2010, Necrotic Tissue picked up my story, Picket Fences for Issue #12. It was the editor’s choice, chosen, I believe, by Daniel Russell. It was my first pro paying story and another reason to believe I was finally on the way up (if only by one rung of the ladder).

Sadly, Necrotic Tissue shut down after Issue #14 (which came out in April, 2011). When I say sadly, I really mean it. NT was my favorite horror publication and I have several of their issues. I wish I had all 14 of them.

There is a good note to this. R. Scott McCoy, the owner of Necrotic Tissue, decided to put out a best of NT earlier this year. It came out in October. My previously mentioned story, Picket Fences is in there, along with some very good writers (Nate Lambert, Cate Gardner, Robert Eccles, Daniel Russell, Greg Hall, Brian Hardin, to name a few).

You can find this collection at Amazon, but I’ll make it easy for you. Just follow the link:

Best of Necrotic Tissue

[Side Note #2: In 2012 I plan to rewrite Picket Fences, detailing more of what the story is about. The original version was an experimental story trying to use what I considered ‘future tense.’ Though I love the story in it’s current state, I want to go down that road again and write it in a more traditional style. It may even end up being a novella or… something longer. End Side Note #2]

In November, A Hacked-up Holiday Massacre came out. This is a Pill Hill Press publication, edited by Shane McKenzie, who has recently left PHP to start his own publishing company: Sinister Grin Press.

As the title suggest, all the stories are based on Holidays. Mine was Mother’s Day and it’s a story titled Remember What I Said About Living Out In the Country?. Yeah, long name, I know. Better than my story appearing in this anthology is that it appears in there with the likes of Jack Ketcham, Joe Lansdale, Bentley Little, Wrath James White, Nate Southard, Kevin Wallis, Steve Lowe, Lee Thompson and others. I was thoroughly honored to get into this publication.

Again, I’m going to make this easy for you. If you want to check it out, you can follow either the above referenced link to Pill Hill Press and check out their bookshop or you can follow the following link to the Amazon page where it can be purchased as well:

A Hacked-up Holiday Massacre

Just recently, my short story, Skipping Stones was published by Dark Moon Books in an anthology titled Frightmares, A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror and edited by Stan Swanson. All the stories (and there’s a LOT of them totaling a whopping 129) are less than 500 words in length.

Skipping Stones is a reworked story after having let it sit and stew for a couple years. In it’s original form, it was less than 200 words.

You can check out Dark Moon Books from the link above and you can check out the Amazon page by following this link: Frightmares, A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror

[Side Note #3: This not so banner year looks like it hasn’t turned out so bad after all. End Side Note #3]

Coming soon from Blood Bound Books, my story, In the Shadows They Hide will appear in the anthology Night Terrors II, edited by Marc Ciccarone.

In the Shadows They Hide is one of my favorite stories that I have written. I think the title tells a lot about the story. And you readers, I really think you’ll dig this one. I’ll keep you updated on it when it comes out.

If I haven’t bored you to tears yet, let me throw in a couple of other stories that have come out during the year that I know I’ve plugged, but while I’m at it, I may as well do so again.

Flowers In Her Hair came out in the spring, published by Liquid Imagination, which is edited by Kevin Wallis. The story also has an audio version, read by Bob Eccles, another talented individual with a great radio voice.

You can read or listen to the story here: Flowers In Her Hair

After a couple years and over a dozen tries at finding a home for Summer Jumpers it was finally picked up by The Gloaming earlier this year. This story had been accepted twice previous, but both of the zines folded before the publication dates. It was short-listed half a dozen more times, so it was good to finally give the story a place to be read. Sadly, I can’t seem to link to it because it no longer appears to be on the website.

[Side Note #4: If you would like to read Summer Jumpers as it appeared in The Gloaming, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do for you. End Side Note #4]

One of my favorite stories to write over the last couple years has been a series titled Dredging Up Memories. This series has been so generously put out by the good folks over at Tales of the Zombie Wars. It’s (kind of obviously, given the site name) a zombie tale and follows the trials of a lone man dealing with the world gone to Hell in a hand basket, the loss of family and friends and what he discovers about the zombies… or, rather the people who have turned into them. You can find the first six parts of the ongoing series here: Dredging Up Memories

I’m going to end this blog tonight with a simple thank you to those who have read my work this year or in the last five years or so that I have pursued this dream of being a writer. It’s an up and down roller coaster that would never go up without all of you. For the writer, having no readers is the worst thing that could happen. If I have touched just one person with any of my words of fiction, then I’ve succeeded at being a writer. If you’ve liked one of my stories (or even if you didn’t) thank you for reading.

As the New Year rings in, I have some good news, which I had originally intended to share here, but I seem to have gone on a different path with this blog. So, in order to avoid turning this into a 3000-word piece, check back here in the next day or so.

For now, I’m A.J. and I’m out…