I'll be finalizing the printable version of the book soon. I'm really happy with the cover so far and for the most part the inside pages are pretty cool, with a few simple illustrations. I wanted to give readers who need a little push some visual to get their imaginations started, but not so much so that interferes with people forming their own mental pictures. I hope people like it. I pretty much just put out there what I enjoy.
I've written a short introduction to let people know where I'm coming from with the book, why I put together this particular little collection of stories, thank some people who helped me and just introduce myself. I'm posting a draft of that introduction here, in its entirety. It is likely to need an edit or two, but for now this is how it will appear in the book.
Things are getting close, gang.
There may be some minor spoilers in this intro depending on how surprised you need to be, but I really tried to keep any surprising details out of it since I knew this would be appearing at the beginning of the book.
Read on:
I've written a short introduction to let people know where I'm coming from with the book, why I put together this particular little collection of stories, thank some people who helped me and just introduce myself. I'm posting a draft of that introduction here, in its entirety. It is likely to need an edit or two, but for now this is how it will appear in the book.
Things are getting close, gang.
There may be some minor spoilers in this intro depending on how surprised you need to be, but I really tried to keep any surprising details out of it since I knew this would be appearing at the beginning of the book.
Read on:
###
There is a very good chance that you’ve never heard of Jason Liquori, the author of this book and the person writing this introduction right now. If you’re a fan of independent movies, I mean really independent, low budget, hard to find stuff, then you might know some of my work. Primarily I have written screenplays in the past and I hope that you’ll see the influence of that visual writing style throughout the stories contained on the following pages.
I usually produce and direct my own screenplays, so when my eye was having trouble for a time, I fell behind. The ideas, stories, characters and locations began to build up inside of my head. Since I wasn’t bound to be able to shoot them any time soon, I didn’t form many of these concepts into full scripts, but I wanted to get the ideas on paper for future use. I thought about writing them out as full treatments, but decided instead to write them out as short stories. It was a quick way to develop the characters and plotlines without the idea of “how will we afford to do that” hanging over me, as it often does with one of my scripts. This gave me the freedom to let loose a bit.
My style of keeping things simple still stuck with me when it came to not throwing too many characters into the mix and having the bulk of the story take place in a few main locations. It was a formula I learned early on from the old T.V. horror and sci-fi shows. Since the budgets were often woefully low, they had restrictions to help keep things in check and prevent a writer from getting too ambitious. I thought the formula would work well to help keep me from getting over my head while writing the short stories as well. I also think that the fewer characters involved with a story, the stronger the dynamic between those characters is bound to be.
There are five stories contained within in this book. Each is a different length, but all of them were conceived as movie ideas. The “Alien Vengeance” story was written more with the idea of being a short film and its style is a bit unusual. I figured, if you’re going to self-publish a book, might as well experiment a little. That is the point of being independent in endeavors such as this, isn’t it? Without the money of outside investors on the line you can risk trying new things that the public may or may not embrace. I hope those of you that take a shot on the book do enjoy it, but if not, there are four more, longer stories that will likely fit your idea of storytelling better.
Three other stories, “Banker’s Hours”, “Night Crawl” and “The Whole of Time”, are closer to each other in length and all contain some kind of creature. “Banker’s Hours” and “Night Crawl” fall more into the horror suspense genre while “The Whole of Time” is more of a sci-fi adventure. I do like my monsters and I think the first three stories mentioned here do a fair job of showcasing the beast or beasts involved. “The Whole of Time” concentrates more on the characters and the creatures aren’t so much monsters as they are just other players. In fact, one or two of the humans would be considered far more monstrous than the aliens in the story. All three of these tales were conceived as features and would need some fleshing out to achieve that goal onscreen. The characters and main points are there, but we run through them quickly within the pages of the book. This is largely because, when I read, I like things to happen quickly and keep moving, so I tend to write in the same way.
The final story, “Off the Rails”, hits on another of my favorite genres, the Western. I’m not sure when Westerns really took a hold of me again, but lately I’ve been obsessed with them. Maybe it comes from “Back to the Future III” mixing the genres of sci-fi and the Western in such a fun way or maybe it’s because so many of the great old cowboy shows and movies are available on cable now. Whatever the cause, I had to write a Western, it had to have a train and it had to be packed with action and suspense. What resulted is the longest story in this book and the one that claimed the main title. Also conceived as a feature film, it is one I could never hope to do justice with the budgets I’ve used in the past. Even the highest budgeted movie I’ve ever directed, Stopped Dead, didn’t cost nearly what I estimate crashing a train and being able to shoot around the wreckage would set me back. Within the pages of a book, however, those things merely cost some words. I had a lot of fun with this one, but, unlike the others, I decided to leave the unearthly, cursed or mutated creatures out of it. Our villains are a bit different, but not totally outside of the realm of what most people consider reality. The story was originally going to be about survivors trying to cross a desert while being chased by zombies, but, like so many of my stories, once I started writing it, the characters had different ideas. The first change I made myself. The zombies, which would have been supernatural creatures, became escaped lunatics. The rest of the major changes came from the characters within the story.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure who was going to be on the train when I started writing. Early on, our main character, Sandra, steps into a passenger car and looks around. As she spotted the other passengers for the first time it was as if I was laying eyes on them for the first time as well. It was a bit surreal. From then on, the characters nearly had “free will”. For example, they surprised me by deciding to stay with the train instead of making a run across the desert. They found supplies I hadn’t previously thought of them needing and one of them was carrying something. Something that I wasn’t sure what it was until she revealed it late in the story. I know, this all sounds a bit insane, but read the story and you’ll see that it is.
I have a lot of people to thank for helping get this little project together. I’ll start with my wife, who has had to read every story in here, listen to me rant about the directions I was planning on taking and basically put up with me being obsessed with people, who aren’t real, for weeks or months at a time. She also often had to read unfinished products and was left with a cliffhanger while I tried to figure out what would happen next.
I also called upon two people to help me with proofreading and editing the stories. (Not this introduction, though, so all of the mistakes you find here are my fault). J.D. Vanna, a fellow writer working on her first novel and Patrice Athanasidy, my sister and a columnist for several publications each worked on separate stories. Both had to work their way through pages and pages of misspellings, typos, wrong words and missing words. When I let them, they gave advice on sentence structure, but I really didn’t give them reign over the stories themselves. Again, this is an independent venture, so with the stories, if you don’t like something, it’s probably my fault, however, most of the “golden moments” in sentence structure and wording are the result of their sage advice.
I’d also like to thank my dogs, Val and Xena, who had to put up with my writing at all hours of the night, often had meals and walks delayed and gave their help whenever they could. In fact, Val is sitting in my office right now waiting to be let out and Xena is taking a nap, keeping my wife company before I bother her to read this draft of the introduction.
I’d also like to thank all of you for taking the time to pick up or download this book. Thanks for giving my stories a chance and thank you for reading this introduction. I hope you enjoy yourselves in the following pages.
Sincerely,
Your Humble Author,
Jason L. Liquori
P.S. If you’re a producer who’d like to develop one of the stories contained on these pages into a movie, I try to make myself easy to find. www.hocfocprod.com
INTRODUCTION
I usually produce and direct my own screenplays, so when my eye was having trouble for a time, I fell behind. The ideas, stories, characters and locations began to build up inside of my head. Since I wasn’t bound to be able to shoot them any time soon, I didn’t form many of these concepts into full scripts, but I wanted to get the ideas on paper for future use. I thought about writing them out as full treatments, but decided instead to write them out as short stories. It was a quick way to develop the characters and plotlines without the idea of “how will we afford to do that” hanging over me, as it often does with one of my scripts. This gave me the freedom to let loose a bit.
My style of keeping things simple still stuck with me when it came to not throwing too many characters into the mix and having the bulk of the story take place in a few main locations. It was a formula I learned early on from the old T.V. horror and sci-fi shows. Since the budgets were often woefully low, they had restrictions to help keep things in check and prevent a writer from getting too ambitious. I thought the formula would work well to help keep me from getting over my head while writing the short stories as well. I also think that the fewer characters involved with a story, the stronger the dynamic between those characters is bound to be.
There are five stories contained within in this book. Each is a different length, but all of them were conceived as movie ideas. The “Alien Vengeance” story was written more with the idea of being a short film and its style is a bit unusual. I figured, if you’re going to self-publish a book, might as well experiment a little. That is the point of being independent in endeavors such as this, isn’t it? Without the money of outside investors on the line you can risk trying new things that the public may or may not embrace. I hope those of you that take a shot on the book do enjoy it, but if not, there are four more, longer stories that will likely fit your idea of storytelling better.
Three other stories, “Banker’s Hours”, “Night Crawl” and “The Whole of Time”, are closer to each other in length and all contain some kind of creature. “Banker’s Hours” and “Night Crawl” fall more into the horror suspense genre while “The Whole of Time” is more of a sci-fi adventure. I do like my monsters and I think the first three stories mentioned here do a fair job of showcasing the beast or beasts involved. “The Whole of Time” concentrates more on the characters and the creatures aren’t so much monsters as they are just other players. In fact, one or two of the humans would be considered far more monstrous than the aliens in the story. All three of these tales were conceived as features and would need some fleshing out to achieve that goal onscreen. The characters and main points are there, but we run through them quickly within the pages of the book. This is largely because, when I read, I like things to happen quickly and keep moving, so I tend to write in the same way.
The final story, “Off the Rails”, hits on another of my favorite genres, the Western. I’m not sure when Westerns really took a hold of me again, but lately I’ve been obsessed with them. Maybe it comes from “Back to the Future III” mixing the genres of sci-fi and the Western in such a fun way or maybe it’s because so many of the great old cowboy shows and movies are available on cable now. Whatever the cause, I had to write a Western, it had to have a train and it had to be packed with action and suspense. What resulted is the longest story in this book and the one that claimed the main title. Also conceived as a feature film, it is one I could never hope to do justice with the budgets I’ve used in the past. Even the highest budgeted movie I’ve ever directed, Stopped Dead, didn’t cost nearly what I estimate crashing a train and being able to shoot around the wreckage would set me back. Within the pages of a book, however, those things merely cost some words. I had a lot of fun with this one, but, unlike the others, I decided to leave the unearthly, cursed or mutated creatures out of it. Our villains are a bit different, but not totally outside of the realm of what most people consider reality. The story was originally going to be about survivors trying to cross a desert while being chased by zombies, but, like so many of my stories, once I started writing it, the characters had different ideas. The first change I made myself. The zombies, which would have been supernatural creatures, became escaped lunatics. The rest of the major changes came from the characters within the story.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure who was going to be on the train when I started writing. Early on, our main character, Sandra, steps into a passenger car and looks around. As she spotted the other passengers for the first time it was as if I was laying eyes on them for the first time as well. It was a bit surreal. From then on, the characters nearly had “free will”. For example, they surprised me by deciding to stay with the train instead of making a run across the desert. They found supplies I hadn’t previously thought of them needing and one of them was carrying something. Something that I wasn’t sure what it was until she revealed it late in the story. I know, this all sounds a bit insane, but read the story and you’ll see that it is.
I have a lot of people to thank for helping get this little project together. I’ll start with my wife, who has had to read every story in here, listen to me rant about the directions I was planning on taking and basically put up with me being obsessed with people, who aren’t real, for weeks or months at a time. She also often had to read unfinished products and was left with a cliffhanger while I tried to figure out what would happen next.
I also called upon two people to help me with proofreading and editing the stories. (Not this introduction, though, so all of the mistakes you find here are my fault). J.D. Vanna, a fellow writer working on her first novel and Patrice Athanasidy, my sister and a columnist for several publications each worked on separate stories. Both had to work their way through pages and pages of misspellings, typos, wrong words and missing words. When I let them, they gave advice on sentence structure, but I really didn’t give them reign over the stories themselves. Again, this is an independent venture, so with the stories, if you don’t like something, it’s probably my fault, however, most of the “golden moments” in sentence structure and wording are the result of their sage advice.
I’d also like to thank my dogs, Val and Xena, who had to put up with my writing at all hours of the night, often had meals and walks delayed and gave their help whenever they could. In fact, Val is sitting in my office right now waiting to be let out and Xena is taking a nap, keeping my wife company before I bother her to read this draft of the introduction.
I’d also like to thank all of you for taking the time to pick up or download this book. Thanks for giving my stories a chance and thank you for reading this introduction. I hope you enjoy yourselves in the following pages.
Sincerely,
Your Humble Author,
Jason L. Liquori
P.S. If you’re a producer who’d like to develop one of the stories contained on these pages into a movie, I try to make myself easy to find. www.hocfocprod.com
Again, sorry about the loss of formatting when pasting.
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