Seven Innovative and Low-cost Ways of Marketing your Book

1. Put it in the tray when going through security at the airport. Explain to the guards that it's absolutely not a risk to national security whatsoever.
2. Turn the title into a cheerful well-wishing, e.g. 'Have a glassy day, worldians!' or 'Upwards and out of the darkness, my friends!'
3. Strap a copy to your chest when shopping, touching it occasionally and uttering a sound of religious devotion like 'whoopiteewoo'.
4. Pretend to read it at the bus stop, laughing and crying uncontrollably before telling fellow passengers that this book has changed your life.
5. Paper your bathroom with it, then invite friends to a meal at your house and slip a diuretic or laxative into their food.
6. Get a parrot from the pet shop, teach it to say the best lines from your book, then return it to the pet shop complaining that it keeps spouting nonsense.
7. Pulp it and use it to fill potholes because that's how roads read books.

On Being Drunk

Water has a million voices.

It splashes, pours, patters, flushes,

Babbles, roars, makes other noises.

Sometimes it gurgles; sometimes it rushes.

And sometimes water's in my glass,

And when I put it to my lip,

I can smell its ocean mass,

And if I'm feeling brave, I sip.

And then the water's moving through me,

Trickling, foaming, bubbling, sloshing,

I am become a river valley,

The water passes through me, frothing.

But soon the water will be gone,

And I'll be here, my valley dry.

All because I must cling on,

With water simply passing by.

But if I could just let go,

And travel down toward the sea,

And mingle there with melted snow,

And leave the solid body-me,

I'd soon rise up, evaporate,

And then I would become a cloud,

I'd thunder, drift and cumulate.

Oh, how I wish it were allowed!

'Cos if I could, I'd next be rain.

I'd slash and torrent, precipitate,

I could make buses aquaplane,

The floods and landslides I'd create!

But all too soon, I'd be scooped up,

And channelled fast to someone's tub,

And wash some hair or get brewed up,

Make up juice in someone's pub.

And in a chair, I'd find myself,

Really not the worse for wear,

For having touched an ocean shelf,

How nice, in fact, to be bodily there.

Yes, maybe life is not so dire,

My mind and body aren't so numb.

It's not to be water that I aspire,

It's just that aqueous momentum!

The Sack of Dirt

Upon hearing that one would 'eat a peck of dirt before they die', a man purchased a large sack of earth, placed it in his wheelbarrow and carried it everywhere with him. Each day, he measured the contents to ensure that none had somehow escaped from the sack and got into his food. Each day, he confirmed that the sack remained full.

A year passed, and the sack was no emptier than when he'd bought it. He felt great elation that he, a simple man, had solved the problem of mortality so cheaply and so easily. He realised that, with this simple trick, he could live forever. He told no one of his discovery, but many noticed his beaming happiness as he went about his modest business.

As the years passed, he grew older and his hair went grey and his skin became wrinkly, but still the sack was full, so he didn't worry about death or mortality. In fact he remained blithe and generous for he could give away nothing of which there was not an infinitude.

After a few more years, he became sick and bed ridden. Friends and relatives visited to whom he cheerfully explained that this was temporary, and he'd soon get better. They admired his sense of humour and asked him if he had any last words. He responded by asking if a river had last words. No, it does not, he said, when they could not answer him. It goes down to the sea, rises into the clouds and falls again in the mountains. So the river is not in need of last words.

His friends continued to look dumbfounded, so he told them to go and inspect the sack of dirt in his wheelbarrow and tell him if it was at its limit of contents. They duly did so and reported that indeed the sack was full. There you go then, said the old man, I have not eaten my peck, and so I am not yet to die. But you are old and frail and lying in your death bed, they complained. Clearly your time has come.

No, I am not to die, he replied, beaming at them all, don't you see? They looked at his old, grey face, and still they did not know what to say. Imperturbed, he rested his eyes and there, still smiling, his breath grew fainter and fainter until, finally, there was none.

The man's funeral, testament to his spiritual and material generosity, was well-attended. In her eulogy, the minister, who had known him well, mentioned that the man had been known to carry a sack of dirt with him everywhere he went, that he'd believed that, while it remained full, he would never die, and that this was the secret of his happiness and his success.

Understanding at last this curious fact, the mourners had a statue of the man made, and now he stands on a plinth in the centre of the town. Every day, with the stone-hewn sack of dirt in his sculpted wheelbarrow, he smiles down on the people of that town. The tale of his happiness and kindness is passed down from generation to generation. And so it seems, that in the hearts of the townspeople who love him, he shall never die.

Opening the Box

Garkellia shut the door on another damn day. At last she could let her face fall into the expression she’d been feeling on the inside since that stupid, rotten meeting. Those horrible – no, Garkellia. Even verbalising what she thought of them in her mind might cause it to pop up on her face the next time she saw them. Better not to. Things could always get worse.

She realised she still had her hand firmly on the door handle as if the day might’ve tried to shove its way into her home. When it didn’t, she got a beer, which went crack-hiss as she opened it, slumped into a floral armchair, kicked her office shoes onto the rug and switched the telly on.

But she could not project herself onto the screen and lose herself in its images. She let the beer and dejection swill and foam in her blood, and she was surprised to find moisture come to her eyes, more surprised to find that it stung her, blinded her. She groped for a tissue from the box on the coffee table in front of her but retrieved only an empty box.

She jumped up in a tearful rage, rubbing and wiping at her eyes as the room was rinsed in a white light which just as quickly died away. Before her stood a middle-aged woman, even upper-middle-aged, but she stood bolt upright, and the blue of her eyes poured down on Garkellia. Compassion. Pity.

She wore a wide-brimmed hat, a checked shirt, a black vest, a pair of beige shorts, woolly socks and boots. Garkellia gazed at her wrinkled knees, the strange black box she carried, her freckled chest, the slack flesh of her neck and finally those bright blue eyes.

“Garkellia. This box is for you. You must look after it.”

“Thank you,” said Garkellia, taking the box as though it were a divine word in solid form.

“And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget this. This moment. Remember me.”

Her voice was rough and deep but kind. There was so much to this woman. Garkellia felt her trust escape from her and attach itself to the woman.

“I will, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just do it.”

“Alright.”

Light flashed again. Garkellia covered her eyes, and when she lowered her hand, it was just her in her living room with a strange black box.

She put the box on the coffee table and continued to watch TV, but all she could really think about was that woman; how she stood, how she spoke, how she looked. When it got dark, Garkellia put the black box in a drawer she wasn’t using.

For the remainder of her twenties, a thought that lingered low in Garkellia’s consciousness was how much she admired that woman, how much she wanted to be like her, but how impossible that was, how she’d never put so much purpose, so much meaning into one word, how she’d never stand like that, like a hurricane wouldn’t knock her down.

As she grew older, she thought about the woman less and less often but, when she did think about her, the thoughts were less painful, the attributes she had longed for in her twenties didn’t seem quite so inaccessible. She moved from place to place and relationships came and went, but she always took the box with her wherever she went.

Of course, she wondered what was in the box, but if she ever looked at it, found her eyes rolling off in the direction of anything less troubling: the red of a book, the grey-blue of the sky.

One day, she prepared to go on a long hike and dressed appropriately. She packed an old rucksack with the few necessities such a trip required: water, a change of clothing, a torch, a good knife, a little money, a favourite book. Just before she walked out the door, it occurred to her that now might be the time to do the thing she’d put off for so many years.

She put down the rucksack, went to the bedroom cupboard and gently teased the box down from the high shelf.

‘It is time,’ she thought.

As she thought those words, everything disappeared in a flash of light, and before her, in a living room she hadn’t seen for decades was a very familiar person, a bright, handsome and resourceful young woman who lacked only self-belief.

As the red-eyed young woman looked her up and down in wonderment, Garkellia spoke the words that she remembered.

“Garkellia. This box is for you. You must look after it.”

Three More Writing Prompts for Uneasy Fiction

Just a short post this week to give myself time to make progress with my manuscript, working title: Generic. I hope these will give you some ideas for weird or eerie fantasy fiction. Go ahead and write your response in the comments!

1. You awaken to find that your flesh has become translucent, and you can see your blood, bones and organs within yourself. Trapped in your stomach, you notice three small artefacts. What are they? What will occur as your body attempts to digest these strange artefacts?

2. Walking through a graveyard, you notice an open grave with a coffin inside, so you climb into the coffin and lie there. Passersby stop and stare silently. You find that, with a little concentration, you can hear their thoughts. What are they thinking? How long will you lie there?

3. While reading a strange book bequeathed to you by a relative you never met, you notice a peculiar smell. You get up and begin to trace the odour to its source. What will you find when you get there? Are the book and the odour connected and, if so, how?

See you again next week for more fiction or other ideas about writing!

Three Writing Prompts for Uneasy Fiction

Are you looking for inspiration for your next eerie short story? If so, I hope these odd writing prompts will get you started. By all means, share your ideas in the comments below. Alternatively, write your story in a dusty old notebook and then hide it in a deposit box in a hastily dug hole in the forest.

1. You dream of a besuited man in a desert looking away from you. No matter how you turn or call him, he is always facing away from you. What's going on? What does it mean?

2. As you leave your urban home, a pigeon shit lands on the concrete directly in front of you in a shape that reminds you of the happiest day of your life. What does it look like? What happens next?

3. As you are rummaging through the bins of your local park, looking for something to eat, you find a small metal box covered in strange runes. From within, a deafening silence emanates. What is it? What do you do with it?

Come back soon for more creepy writing prompts or one of my own short stories.