The Whitechapel Project

Just a quick note on the scheduling of Whitechapel, and how I’m going to fuck it up right out of the gate.

Currently I’m planning to post something at least once a week — one week will be an episode of Whitechapel, then when the voting closes the following week I’ll do a set of author’s notes on the previous episode, as well as some thoughts on the voting. It’ll be kind of a post-mortem of the episode and the week’s voting wrapped into one entry. Then the following week will be the next episode, and back and forth like that until the novella’s done.

However, next week I’ll be at GenCon just when the voting wraps up, and I won’t be getting back until the following Monday. Then I’ll have to catch up on work, which will be crazy. So, I’m going to do the author’s notes around August 19th, and the second episode will be up August 26th. I’m hoping that once I get Whitechapel‘s schedule going at a steady pace that I’ll be able to sneak some other fiction in once in a while as well — I have a couple more Mosaic stories nearly ready to go, an Agent Patriot story to finish up (from four fucking years ago) and some initial ideas for the first few parts of a Katrina Night serial.

But that’s in the future. For now, it’s all about getting over this GenCon hump.

P.S., 40 votes already on episode one! Kick ass!

I’ve been going through some of my old pieces, and I decided to post this flash fiction piece to give a taste of (unrelated) horror.

“Questions” is an older microfiction piece of mine, and it’s been through a number of revisions (including one version that made it onto the “Pseudopod” podcast). I also used a different version as a test script for my audio work on the Collection of Horrors for White Wolf Publishing. But all in all, I’ve never been satisfied with it. Today I had a frank talk with my eternal editrix and beta reader Genevieve Podleski, and I hammered out a final version. I’m probably still not going to be entirely happy with it, but I’m finally done fucking with it. (Until I change my mind, of course.)

This piece actually has a few similarities to Whitechapel. Both are first person perspective (I tend to be about fifty/fifty on first and third-person pieces), both are horror, and both came about from online input — “Questions” was written from a post where I collected words and phrases from my readers. While I think my style has matured since I wrote this, there’s enough similarities that it works as a nice aperitif. I’m not intending this piece to have anything to do with the story in Whitechapel, but it’s entirely possible that Claude could come into the story at some point. We’ll have to see how the voting goes.

… Cold. So cold. I can’t feel my hands. They’re a couple of twitching lumps of meat at the end of my arms, uncaring about my needs or desires. I push them closer to the fire sputtering in a rusted oil drum, but the heat is as unconcerned about me as my hands are.

Across from me, the man with the long, diamond-shaped scar covering his cheek smiles, his teeth as black and broken as the ancient blacktop around us. “It’s cold tonight,” he says. I nod and look away to avoid gagging on breath that smells like cigarettes stubbed out in used cat litter. The lumps twitch toward the illusion of warmth again.

“Name’s Claude,” he says. “You’re new.”

I nod again, still looking out into the empty street near the alley. It’s bad enough that I lost everything – my job, my home, my family. But now I’m going to be trapped in this alleyway, snow melting into my shoes, listening to a disfigured man with breath as stale as his conversation forever. This isn’t just another November night. It’s a pit of hell that I’m trapped in, a punishment for unknown crimes against the universe.

“Sometimes the innocent are put in jail, and the guilty go free.”

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First, a quick Whitechapel update. Episode 1 is written, and I have some final revisions in mind before I record it. I still have to work a little on my reading speed (which is why I gave myself more time — I’m anticipating quite a number of takes the first time through), but overall things are looking good for the August 5th release.

I did want to take a moment to point out that the Whitechapel Project site is, in fact, more than just the Whitechapel novella (although I anticipate it will likely be the majority of the site’s focus — hence the name). I had been considering a blog for my fiction for quite some time, but it wasn’t until Whitechapel that I had a project big enough to warrant the initial start-up work¹. But I always expected that other fiction would cluster around this site — in fact, if you check out the “About the Project” page, I’ve already got a couple of other projects in mind.

What I didn’t expect is that I would start getting more ideas right away.

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