Where do you locate the monsters?

You can place a story in a real location as I did by setting Steel Pennies in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Hags in Naperville, Illinois. My other novel, Fulfillment, is set in the first century in ancient Israel. My Jude Nerdworthy short story series is set in Warrenville, Illinois.

Some authors like to make up their own world, either as a realistic place such as Winesburg, Ohio, or one of imagination such as the shire of the Hobbits. In my current work in progress, I have both the real and the fantastic. The novel is set in Wheaton, Illinois, but quickly takes the main characters on a journey into a fantastic underworld inhabited by a vicious group of trolls and other monsters.

Location sets the mood of the story. Hemingway wrote about seeking a “clean, well-lighted place” but his characters never quite find it until one goes fishing on the Big Two-Hearted River. Hemingway’s dark bars and apartments set a tone of decay and depression in a fallen world. That mood carries over into his brooding characters.

A happy place does the same thing. Oz sets a joyful mood to support a lighthearted scarecrow, tin woodsman and cowardly lion. But the location changes when the main characters have to face the wicked witch in a dark, scary castle.

My feature novel this month is Hags. It is set in a real location, the city of Naperville, Illinois, with side trips to Warrenville, Oak Brook and Chicago. The places may exist in the real world, but the story takes place in the realm of the fantastic as faeries, demons and hags populate a story filled with mystery as Micah Probert seeks two serial killers in a quest to clear his name. The Kindle version has been reduced to $.99 this month. For the Kindle or paperback versions, please click here.

Passing the First Sentence Test

How do you decide which book to read? You’re browsing the shelves of the local bookstore or the electronic shelves of Amazon for your next read. How do you choose?

If a friend says, “Hey, you have to read this book,” I’m likely to check it out. As an author, I meet other authors online or at book festivals. I like to browse the Kindle shelves for the tomes these other authors produce.

No matter how I find a book, I make my purchase selection based on the first sentence. I enjoy reading the blurb in the Description section on Amazon and on the back cover if I visit a bookstore. But for me it’s about that first sentence. I call it the first sentence test. The big question is: Does the first sentence grab me.

A long time ago in a career far away, I wrote, “Quality writing grabs your attention and doesn’t let go until your message is delivered and understood.” At the time, I was writing about advertising copy, but the truth is it applies so well to fiction.

Now, it’s your turn to judge a first sentence. This is how I open my horror novel Hags:

From the mattress on the floor of the back bedroom of his antique Victorian fixer-upper, Micah Probert heard a far off scream.

Are you curious? Does this sentence make you want to know where the scream came from? If you do, then consider the second test of a good novel – the first paragraph test. Here’s the entire first paragraph of Hags:

From the mattress on the floor of the back bedroom of his antique Victorian fixer-upper, Micah Probert heard a far off scream. An equally distant clang of heavy metal followed. Then two muffled voices, a male and a female. The sound of feet scampering followed by a loud buzz made Micah picture a prehistoric dragonfly. Then came the silence.

Does the first paragraph of Hags snag your interest? Do you want to know what happens next? If yes, then Hags passed your first paragraph test.

While some authors prefer to set the stage for a few paragraphs or pages before the action begins, others, myself included, prefer to start in the middle of the action and then catch you up on the details as the story charges ahead.  It’s a matter of taste.

If you would like to know what happens next in Hags, click here. Only $.99 this month.

Hags Again

With Halloween around the corner, I have selected Hags as my focus novel for the month of October. The price of Hags has been reduced to $.99 for the Kindle version for the entire month. If you haven’t read Hags yet, here’s what it’s all about:

This Present Darkness meets The Blair Witch Project in my full-length horror novel Hags. After 15 years in prison for a crime he claims he didn’t commit, Micah Probert returns to his hometown of Naperville, Illinois, where he starts his first day by discovering a human-sized faerie flitting about in his backyard, a dead body in the parking lot behind his house, a pioneer ghost in his kitchen, and a local coffee shop that serves the darkest roast this side of Hades. It’s in this coffee shop that his ex-girlfriend from high school works and where he runs into her sister, the accuser in Micah’s long ago trial.

But the real action begins when Micah learns that the beautiful young woman living next door to his fixer-upper, the girl he has just started dating, may actually be a witch as wicked as any from medieval times. Mix in a few dark secrets, a serial killer or two, a hot romance or two, and this novel takes you deep into the heart of horror in the suburbs. Will Micah heed the call to spiritual warfare with the evil forces mounted against him in time to save the city of Naperville? And will he discover the secret identity of the second hag who is out to destroy him? Find out when you read Hags. For paperback or Kindle version, click here.

Novel Quote
"In the half awake time before rising when images, dreams and half dreams ascend from the darkness of the soul and imprint themselves on the memory for the rest of the day, Micah Probert observed the faerie in a mountain meadow."
Hags by Paul R. Lloyd

What Holds Your Attention in Speculative Fiction?

Speculative fiction includes science fiction, fantasy, horror and those creepy stories that don’t fit into a box with a genre label. Think of Twilight Zone and you get the idea.

What is it about speculative stories that hold our attention? A story works because the author blended the elements into a beautiful tapestry that delights and entertains the reader.

A well-told tale is located in a specific time and place. The author may change both as the story progresses, but the locale has to be believable. The location doesn’t have to be an actual place. Some of the best writing takes us to made up worlds like that galaxy far away that serves as the setting for Star Wars. Or you could tell a tale set in a real environment but with a dystopian twist like London after the zombie invasion has wiped everyone out except for a small band of intrepid survivors.

Stories revolve around characters. Ordinary stories feature ordinary characters in ordinary situations. Speculative fiction may have its share of ordinary characters, but you also find a few extraordinary characters in extraordinary places doing extraordinary things.

Speculative fiction moves at a pace appropriate to the tale. Science Fiction tales may need extra time for the author to create the fantastic world of the story, including an explanation of the science behind space travel, time travel, atomic fallout’s contribution to the size of insects, etc. But once the story is setup, it takes off at lightning speed. That because fantastic journeys are rarely languid. There’s simply too much going on to maintain a slow pace.

Location, characters and pace are three of the many elements that form the fabric of a good story. They provide clues to solving the mystery of my new novel Steel Pennies. The location is a working class neighborhood of a small Pennsylvania town in 1960. The characters are a group of teenagers whose summer is destroyed by a serial killer. The pace is fast as you might expect from a thriller. Check it out on Amazon by clicking here.