As a Machine and Parts: a novella (12/2011)


Mitchell, a twenty-something Cougar Cub with Marsha, his midlife girlfriend, wakes each morning, living an ever-thinning line between human and machine. As his literal condition progresses he looses his capacity for human emotion, and potentially with it, Marsha.  As a Machine and Parts is a story of Mitchell’s struggle to discover which assembly line he belongs Read more

I Didn't Mean to be Kevin: a novel (1/2012)


Jackson Jacoby is a motherless twenty-two year old boy with only the support of his crazy ex-military Uncle Marve and a kindred motherless peer named Creg. Creg holds fast to the hope of one day reuniting with his mother while Jackson maintains that his own life is so much better off without all the baggage that comes along with being somebody’s Read more

Charactered Pieces: stories


With Charactered Pieces, Caleb J. Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”);  where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Read more

Stranger Will: a novel


In this novel of impending fatherhood, an idealistic teacher recruits a pliant protégé to join her group of Strangers – a devout collection of kindred minds who have dedicated their lives to cultivating a unique idea of perfection. But joining is easier than Read more

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Other Writers

[Guest Post] Character and Plot – One and The Same Thing..?: A guest post from David Baboulene

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Guest Post, Other Writers | Leave a comment

Following is a guest post from David Baboulene, author of The Story Book. He is currently preparing to defend his Ph.D. thesis at Brighton University that subtext is the defining substance of story, and by measuring subtext presence, depth and extent, he can tell you in advance how successful a story is likely to be.

If you are like me, you are unlikely to understand the next two paragraphs, but by the end of this article we will visit them again and hopefully you willunderstand them and your life will be all the richer for it and you will love me. Here we go, then:

Plot is character, and character is plot, because as soon as a character takes a meaningful action, his action is driving your plot (whether you like it or not). Conversely, as soon as an event happens which elicits a meaningful reaction from your character, then his true character is developing in the eyes of the audience (whether you like it or not).

Note that it is not the event which reveals a player’s character, but his reaction to the event. The action he takes defines his character. Similarly, it is not the event which drives the plot (as you might expect), but the action taken by the character that defines the event, and drives the plot.

Confused? Let’s step through some explanation, and then come back to these paragraphs at the end and see if we have got anywhere.

Action without character

Let’s look at what happens if we separate plot from character. There are three levels of action without character, each with increasing subtlety.

1. At the blatant end, we have an event with no character involvement whatsoever. Lightning strikes a tree in a remote forest. So what? It’s not a story because no reaction is required of an emotional protagonist. This is not a story. This is a screensaver.

2. In the middle ground, we have an ‘emotionally detached’ action. If you watch the news and see that someone was killed in New York, the event is meaningless because you are not emotionally connected with the individuals on the news.

If we increase the known character, we increase the emotion: say we find out that John Lennon has been shot in New York. This is a person we ‘know’; we have been through his Act l and Act ll, and now relate to the tragedy at climax. Look at the emotion on the faces of the friends and relatives of the deceased in New York as they experience the same death, but on a different level of emotional involvement.

3. The most subtle example of action without character actually happens rather a lot in stories that fail to grip. A character takes an action, but it is not a meaningful action, because there is no dilemma riding on his decision to act. If the character is, say, Luke Skywalker, we know he will ‘decide’ to kill the next stormtrooper to come round the corner, and the one after that, and the one after that. Sure, his life is under threat, but that just serves to make his decision to kill even more obvious. His decisions involve no dilemma, so we learn nothing about his true character. However, if the next representative of the Dark Side to come round the corner is also… his father, suddenly he has meaningful decisions and difficult choices with severe consequences. Can he kill his father? Can he risk not killing his father? Now his decision is meaningful… and we in the audience cannot move until we know what he is going to do…

Character without Action

From the opposite end of the argument, let’s say we are shown a man. So what? Until he does something, we don’t know anything about him. Let’s dress him up as a policeman. OK, so now we have some characteristics as our brains overlay stereotypical presumptions about what makes up ‘Policemen’, but beware: this is still an individual without character.

Characteristics are just the wrapping. We don’t know if this person is courageous, extrovert, alcoholic, cowardly or a good father. We don’t even know if he is a criminal or not! Only his actions can reveal these things. When he is faced with a difficult decision

- say, to risk his own life to save someone else’s,that is when we will find out about his true character. What he does will define him. And guess what: what he does – the actions he takes – instantly becomes the plot (whether you like it or not).

A player’s character is defined only by his meaningful actions. The plot is defined only by the actions taken by the players

 

Writers are taught to define their characters in isolation. They also have a plot they have mapped out to the finest detail. They then find that the way the character wants to behave, if he’s true to himself, is not helpful towards a plot which needs a different behaviour to drive it believably. The story is compromised from the outset because the character is not credible in taking the actions the plot demands.

Considering either plot or character in isolation from the other will trip you up, because whichever you consider will drive the other whether you like it or not. The practical point is that we effectively have to develop both plot and character at the same time and as the same thing. Join them together. Don’t think about ‘plot’ and ‘character’. Think about the two as a single entity made of Character Behaviours. This entity is called a story.

Stories are about character behaviours. What characters do is who they are and what characters do is what happens.

When your writing has this unity of character and plot, your stories will burst into a third dimension of power that comes from consummating their relationship. And you’ll know it and feel it when it happens, and you’ll never write without it again. So, do those first two paragraphs make sense now?! If not, do please get in touch and I will send you the complete chapter on Plot and Character from which this post is drawn.

Best of luck in your writing.

David

Since first being published in 2002, David Baboulene has produced two humorous books, two children’s books and has had three film productions deals, two in Hollywood and one in the UK. His fifth publication - ‘The Story Book‘ provided readers with an understanding of what stories are, why the exist and what authors do that give stories power.

 

 

Warmed and Bound reaches #3 in Barnes & Noble paperback bestsellers

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Book News, Other Writers | Leave a comment

By now, most of you know that I have a story in this amazing noir short fiction anthology called Warmed and Bound. What some of you may not yet know is just how successful the book has been already.

On the day of its release, Warmed and Bound reached third in the country on the Barnes & Noble Top Paperback Bestsellers list

Among all books, Warmed and Bound reached seventh in the country on the Barnes & Noble Top Bestseller list

Through its second day, it remained the number one trending book

Go here for purchase information. Don’t be left out.

Get Warmed, Get Bound Today

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Book News, Other Writers | Leave a comment

The day of attrition is upon us. Also, coincidentally, the day that Warmed and Bound is released is also upon us. For those of you not yet in the know, prepare to be baptized.

Warmed and Bound is an anthology of short stories stitched together by the people at The Velvet and edited by the beautiful and talented Pela Via.

I’ve stated already the huge amount of talent crammed inside this amazing noir collection, so I won’t do that again.

For those with an tendency toward great noir fiction, this collection simply will not disappoint. In fact, the amazing Steve Erickson has offered his own view words to this effect:

“The writers of The Velvet are contemporary fiction’s most effective and least self-conscious aesthetic guerrillas…the result is fiction at once conceived from high artistic intent and executed with depraved populist energy.”

Head over to the Warmed and Bound site for all the purchase information. Currently the book can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powells.

Six Personal Investigations of the Act of Reading: Caleb J. Ross’ Stranger Will at the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Media, Other Writers | Leave a comment

Pablo D’Stair returns with his second installment of his Six Personal Investigations of the Act of Reading, this time with my novel, Stranger Will, as the article’s referent object (with a focus on Genre). I simply could not be more delighted. He’s already tackled Stephen Graham Jones’ The Bird is Gone: a manifesto and is prepping investigations of Goodloe Byron’s The Wraith (which I am currently reading), Amelia Gray’s, AM/PM, D. Harlan Wilson’s Peckinpah: an ultraviolent romance, and Brian Olu’s So You Know It’s Me. This guy could run his own online psychology classes, I swear. I’d enroll (mostly so I could shoot virtual spitballs at his touchscreen whiteboard).

Here’s a bit from Pablo’s Stranger Will investigation:

There can come a point where the magnetism of the internal conflict of a central character can be abandoned or toned down for “the reveal” the exposition of the superficialities of the plot (“whodunit”, as they say, taking center stage) a delicate tension can be lost which to me is always a shame.

Returning to Chinatown, a piece exemplary of what I consider a flaw in some branches of noir, a piece in which the unveiling of who-did-what-to-who-and-why-and-when demolishes the connection to the world, takes the intimacy of the shared experience and makes it remote, only observed, no longer “lived” (even only vicariously). Because of Chinatown, of the letdown I feel every time I get wrapped in its spell and its spell for me falls limp, I always dread when it seems we’re going to learn of a “dark secret” or “a cover up” or any of the conventions, it gets my guard up.

And Ross plays in the tropes, as though cognizant of precedent as something essential. This was evident to me from early on, inseminated in the prose, the clip-and it reinforced my reading it through my own stance on genre.

And perhaps even greater than Pablo’s inclusion of Stranger Will in his investigations, is an interview with the man himself, here, part one of Exploring writers’ intricate world
By Ranga Chandrarathne. Pablo is a true thinker, with words that could level armies.

Why’d You Go and Do That, Caleb? Pablo D’Stair asks and I ask Pablo.

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Other Writers | Leave a comment

Pablo D’Stair simply doesn’t stop. He has recently begun yet another project. His Why’d You Go and Do That? series asks authors to confess to a long hidden secret, and subsequently answer a few questions about how that secret may have forged the author’s thematic sensibilities. This guy has so much going on that he’s basically become his own Guide to Online Schools. Though I hope this trend of uncomfortable confession doesn’t take over his entire curriculum; someone will likely be calling HR.

Head over to the Why’d You Go and Do That? site to read my confession, my answers, Pablo’s confession, and his answers to my questions. Here’s a taste:

 

So, first thing I’d like to ask—coming at less the full on subject matter here, but one of your set-up points—is whether you feel in your desire to write some drive to eventually “be free of the tedium of a job” so to speak—do you, at this time, earnestly find time-at-work to be time-away from-writing? And to further a bit, do you think if you didn’t have to work, if you were set-up, well-to-do, that you would fill that time with writing, with active pursuit of your literature? I’ve always been good with having a job, myself, never really (principally) found it as something that takes away from writing and I’ve met some people who I think kind of say they think working is a drain, but really that’s just something they say (as in, I doubt if they didn’t have to work they’d really produce any more or less). Ideally, do you think writing, or any art, is something that should have room to breathe, space, time, something built of a life without such concerns as dayjobs and all? A lot of questions, so answer

however you like—I guess it boils down to “Do you think time away from writing, required time away, is the enemy of writing?”

 

For a long time I thought of my dayjob simply as something I do between bouts of writing. I’ve realized, fairly recently, that my position on the dayjob was due primarily to me having a shitty one. Now, I’m actually quite content and often find myself letting dayjob duties infringe in what would traditionally be considered my writing time. I hope this is not a testament to an eventual takeover of the dayjob stuff, wherein the writing would dissipate completely. I’m sure it isn’t; writing means too much to me.

More to your question, I know, quite for sure, that should I be given all day to write I wouldn’t use the day in that way. I work best with a balance of outside obligations and writing struggle. If writing were all I had to do, I wouldn’t have any other option to oppose. We need conflict. People need to work in order to appreciate their off-time. I need my job to appreciate my writing time. Required time away therefore might be quite the opposite of the enemy; it could be the best possible mate.

Stranger Will tour stop #44: Pela Via’s blog

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Blog Orgy Tour, Other Writers | Leave a comment

What follows is a conversation between myself and writer and Warmed and Bound editor, Pela Via. Why? We like chatting about ourselves. Or, read a much prettier version at Pela’s blog.

Pela Via: Thanks for talking to me again, Caleb. You are one of the hardest workers in contemporary fiction; I always love a chance to corner you into a long, stifling conversation. Are you as prolific as you seem?

Caleb J. Ross: Prolific is a term that seems appropriate at first, but really a better way to say it would be “got lucky all at once.” Stranger Will and I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin, the two 2011 novels, were both written a few years ago, each a year or so apart. And the novella also to be released this year, As a Machine and Parts, was written even later than the novels. This is all to say that I spent about eight years writing the books, but the one year release schedule implies otherwise. I’m actually quite the disappointment.

PV: Hardly. Your short work is everywhere. Do you plan to release any books in 2012?

CJR: As for 2012, nothing is contracted yet. But I have plenty to write.

PV: What do these two novels represent in your writing career?

CJR: The books both deal with parenthood, but from opposite angles. Stranger Will is about a parent not wanting his child. IDMtbK is about a child wanting nothing more than to have a parent. IDMtbK was written later, and I see it as a reaction to Stranger Will; it is both a personal goal (as in “now, let me see if I can to the opposite of what I just did”) and a reader-based goal (as in “I had better show readers that I’m not as crazy as Stranger Will would imply”).

PV: Do you feel more official this year, as a writer? I know it’s not your first book, but Stranger Will is your first published novel. Has it helped your ego?

CJR: The ego has taken a bit of a stroke, for sure. What makes me feel the most validated with Stranger Will is that I have a lot of strangers commenting on the book. With Charactered Pieces, my first book, I would say about 70% of the readers knew me personally. With Stranger Will that number seems significantly different.

PV: I’m frightened of reaching that place where my work is just barely popular enough to be reviewed by non-friends (and consequently panned).

CJR: I wouldn’t worry about having strangers review your work. I’ve found that the panning is about the same with strangers and friends. The difference being that friends tend to critique you as a person along with the work (“Wow, I can’t imagine you writing something like this”) whereas strangers tend to focus on the work itself.

PV: Interesting. So does it sting a bit more, then, when it comes from friends, if they have a complaint? Does it feel like they’re speaking to your general ability as a human and writer?

CJR: Most of my friends who read early drafts are writers themselves, so I understand that all intentions are good. That said, it can still sting. But the sting is more because of my passion for the work rather than my relationship to the reader.
Read more

Quoted for Tattooed Truth

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Other Writers | Leave a comment

This entire post is pulled from the Warmed & Bound book site, written by editor Pela Via. If she didn’t already have the words, I swear this could have come from my fingers verbatim (though with less Caleb Ross praise; I try to subdue the ego as much as I can):

It was this time last year I sent out the first anthology emails. If I remember right, first to JR Harlan, begging for his story “Love,” and to Craig Clevenger, with more unsubtle begging. Then others, Richard Thomas, Gordon Highland and Caleb Ross, asking for publishing advice and whether they liked various titles—one a play on the well-loved existing phrase: The Velvet warms and binds.

I don’t know what happened between then and now. But this photo, and rumors of other people to be similarly inked, tell one part of it better than I could.

The idea of a Velvet anthology existed well before I was involved. And somehow, we still managed to stumble into something incredible with this project. I am in awe. And tempted to frame Doc’s arm in my home. It has come to mean more to me each day I’ve known about it.

The ink makes sense when you see how much these writers care—about the work and about each other. I’m lucky to have been involved. The book is lucky to have these writers.

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