Eric Staggs: Writer

From the journal of Mekalides of Assur:

Blood painted the sky and stained the waters of the Sacred Isle as Helios closed his eyes and turned away from the horror unfolding. The harbor was awash with wrecked triremes, debris so thick one could walk from ship to ship. Between the smoldering masses of smashed ships were knots of bodies, warriors of Atlantis and the Inner Seas tangled in death’s grip. The sharks were everywhere, stalking and surfacing with jaws flashing.

I saw Themonides then, his armor of bronze still gleaming with godly-favor, the lightning-spear in one hand, the Aegis in his other. The offense committed by the Atlanteans had roused the anger of even fair-minded Zeus! To send his very son to end them!

Joining my captain, I saw there were woefully few of us left and we were scattered, unable to reform. Themonedes spoke then, his voice full and hard like the rolling thunder from whence it sprang.

He bade us rally to him. He’d seen a way through the smoke and burning wreckage to the shore, and beyond, past the smoldering city, the Azure Palace itself. We joined him upon the forecastle of his flagship, a stern trireme and as we gathered our might, the beast surfaced.

The water off the bow roiled and foamed, then surged so powerfully that the mighty ship was pushed backwards. The serpent rose from the briny depths with a speed belying its incredible size. Its head was the size of a small fishing boat, six or eight men long. Its eyes were silvery orbs cut through with black pupils like night cutting a fall morning in two. Bloody water streamed from its bulk as it rose. Scales the color of glittering gold, flecked with traces of red and silver. Its massive head was ridged with four rear-facing horns. All along its terrible jaws were bony prongs and ridges.

I later learned this monster was called Sun Fang, and he was the Guardian of the Sacred Isle, thrust into our creation when Poseidon tore from his own head a tooth, and dropped the bloody thing into the deepest, loneliest sea.

If you like military sci-fi, Roger Zelazny, Space Opera and high-concept adventure, you should buy this eBook. Right now. No, really. Don’t wait. Click and buy it right now. Where else can you get this sort of entertainment for only $3.99?

If you don’t like any of those things, you should still click and give the eBook five stars. Come on. We all need stars. Really. Even me.

Here is it is!

Links to some of my short stories ( in case ya missed ‘em the first time around):

• Exodus is here.
• The Census Bureau and Space Whales II: Sister Shiv are here!

Kind words from some very talented writers. Thank you all!

“Eric’s collections of short stories are not only entertaining but are very well written. There’s adventure, humor, intrigue and everything that makes stories exciting to read. As you’re reading it is so easy to make a mental movie from the words that are written on the pages. I enjoyed them very much. It was hard to wait to see what would happen next. Eric is a talented, gifted, and mind boggling writer. He will keep you your toes with his imagination. I recommend that you read Space Whales and Other Nonsense. You won’t be disappointed.” - Bianca Emery, Writer

The best part is… they don’t run out:

Buy it for Kindle at Amazon.com

Buy it for Nook at Barnesandnoble.com

They connected the final data feed to the test subjects skull, shaved gleaming in the bright light of the laboratory. A clutch of wires grew from the base of his skull and spread out in all directions, leading to servers and computer systems racked up one upon another, their status lights twinkling like soft little green eyes, fairies or fireflies in strict unison.

The technicians cleared away from the cocoon in the center of the room. That’s what the techs had taken to calling it. They’d inserted a fully grown but heavily modified human being into stasis chair and over the weeks rebuilt him. His eyes were mostly flesh, or at least pods of protein jelly, like they were at his “birth” (uncorking), but millions photoreceptors had been built in the place of retinas by swarms of nanotech viruses. The nanites were injected through any intravenous port and swarm like salmon upstream, up the blood stream, to their destination to create and then die; broken apart by the subjects existing augmented white blood cells. What they left behind was then patched into an ever growing lattice of subcutaneous neural networks, data highways, also paved by nanoscopic engineers.

Outside the laboratory, Janet Hilden twisted a cigarette in her fingers. She sat in front three monitors, each feeding her graphic representations of data she could have rattled off while sleeping. Her work with synthetic tissue growth and nanite reconstruction was nothing short of miraculous.

But that was all child’s play compared to what she was about to do. She knew it would work, of course, or she never would have attempted it. The process was simple – translation of human thought, that is, chemo-electrical signals to electrical signals, base machine code that could be run through any one of her numerous peripheral processors. The Subject would control machines with thought. As the designated moment became clearer and closer, she continued manipulating the cigarette.

“Going to light it?” asked Paul.  She turned her pale green eyes to regard him, spinning her body slowly in her chair with a deft motion of her foot.

“Paul, do you have any idea what’s about to happen in the next room.”

“Some.” He shrugged. She despised him when he played stupid. He was handpicked from a catalogue of researchers, grad students, mumbling PhDs, and god-knows-who-else. The experiment in the room next him was as much his baby as it was hers.

“So, you’ve nothing witty to say when we break down the last barrier and free humanity from the greatest bottle-neck of traffic we’ve ever seen and will ever know?”

“You’re referring to the ability to interface with computers as fast as thought.”

“Obviously.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. She spun the smoke one last time and lit it.

“I’ve some thoughts, I suppose.” He said, waving the smoke from his face.

“Well, Pauly, care to share?”

“Yeah. Um… Maybe we shouldn’t?”

Here it is for Nook! Buy it! Read it! Review it!

Another excellent question. I’m glad you’re keeping up. Well, like most blogs, this one is about the author, Me (or a least one aspect of the I). In the site’s previous incarnation I used it to house some of my writing samples and film and video game reviews. The most traffic the site received was from people looking information about their failed Microsoft Xbox360 Wireless Antennas. That’s not to say we didn’t get traffic, but by far the bulk of it was from disgruntled Micro$oft customers.

Anyway, this blog is going to be about writing. All aspects of writing, in fact. Topics like the character, plot, scene, sense, backstory, villains, heroes, anti-heroes, monsters, to name just a few. In between highly focused blogs about writing, there may be a smattering of philosophy, and though I will attempt with all my might to avoid it, perhaps some social commentary as well.

Ugh! I know, another blogger who somehow believes that the world give s a damn about his opinion! When will it end? Well, hopefully never. Personally, I swing wildly from the idea that the internet is down fall of culture and invention (all art suffers from our cultures collective bad taste), and the idea that the interwebs will be the salvation of the next few generations, allowing a stymied mankind the ability to kick-start their intellectual evolution.

I’ve been working with the interwebs or some aspect of it for longer than I can remember (or care to admit), and for me, it’s become sort of blasé. I’ve seen ten-hundred websites, representing the ten-thousand forms of ingenuity and human determination: the start-ups, the unique service, the niche vendor, the public service, the crusader, the blatant opportunist, the pleasure seeker, et al, ad nauseum.

The one thing they all have in common is the need for words, the need for convincing copy, brief, tight text that tells their version of the capitalist dream. Anyone who’s ever written ad copy before has heard this:

“I’ve been selling lawnmowers longer than you’ve been alive. I know the business.”

And we bite our tongues, us writers, and try desperately not to retort “Yes, but I’m the one with the degree in writing/marketing/advertising.” Good copy is a hard sell, no doubt. Like a good logo, everyone needs it, but no one is willing to fork over the bacon for the time it takes for a creative to pull genius from thin air and make your brand complete.

Internet technology makes good copy even more vital. The world of Search Engines and SEO forces web site owners to develop good content and continuously produce relevant topical information. But if I’m a web site owner, hiring (firing these days), buying stock, making deals, worrying about being hacked, protecting my customers data and all the rest of the headaches that come with entrepreneurial spirit, do I have time to sit down and draft some SEO-strong but catchy copy? Obviously not.

It’s a matter of the right tool for the write job. You never tell the doctor which needle to use, you never sneak up behind the plumber and tell him which wrench to use. So, why do business owners insist on writing the copy themselves? That philosophical quandary simply cannot be addressed in a mere blog. It would take more starships with more firepower than I’ve … oh wait, that’s a different movie.

I digress.

My suggestion is that writers learn the ins and outs of SEO and internet search engine marketing. Back in the day, softcore erotica and Penthouse Letters were the last bastion of starving fantasy and science-fiction authors. In this post-cyberpunk paradise, it’s the wordsmiths with the world wide wiki that make the bank and pay the bills. 

Good question. So, let’s get to it, yes? My name is Eric Staggs. I’m a writer. I studied Creative Writing and Screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago. In the not too distant past, I graduated with a B.A. In several other incarnations, I’ve studied Fine Art (snoot), Computer Science (yawn), Graphic Design and Illustration (yawn), Philosophy and Classical History. And, as any career student can guess, I’m still paying for my education (so clicky the sponsors and earn me $0.05, ay?).

I’ve worked in Marketing, Advertising, Video Production, Education and Insurance. I’ve been a web developer, web designer, graphic designer, multimedia specialist and web content specialist freelance writer and I once even sold American Girl dolls for a semester. So, I’ve done some stuff. Strangely, I don’t much write about my work experiences (if I want to read about people suffering, I’ll look out the window). I will not be writing about my current employer. It would bore you to death anyhow.

Anyway, here’s the boilerplate:

Eric Staggs is a Wisconsin-based writer, known for his unusual sense of prose and an enduring passion for science- and speculative fiction. As a graduate of the Creative Writing program of Columbia College Chicago, Eric uses his skills to create thought-provoking and bone-jarring short stories and flash fiction pieces.

His perceptive and sometimes cutting film and restaurant reviews have been published repeatedly in the Wisconsin-based Arts and Entertainment magazine, Volume One.

Eric has worked as a professional freelance web content writer since 2006 and is currently working on his first full-length novel.

A few more things before we part ways for the moment. Napoleon said “One does not compose the Illiad by studying grammar.”

For a short French man, he was quite right. In college, I studied story and character, plot, scene and the mythology of adventure, the chemistry of tension, the techniques and tools of telling tall tales. I did not study demonstrative pronouns, gerunds or contranyms (if you did, you have my sympathies). So, please don’t expect my “gramma ta be all propa”. I write like I speak, with frequent pauses, parenthetical statements and alliteration galore. (read – gathering my thoughts, mumbling under my breath and penchant for rhyming like a poet who didn’t know it) Put another way, my English 101 class was called “The Origins of Creativity and how it manifests in Art, Literature, Poetry and Film” not “Composition and Grammar.”

In my secret lair, working diligently on my next overly intricate plot, I decided to take some time out of my daily routine to write a quick blog post.

As many of you may know, this month’s (Dec 2008) issue of Tales of the Talisman (http://www.talesofthetalisman.com) includes one of my more popular short stories, Space Whales.

To celebrate, I’ve moved my blog from my secret asteroid base to a more earthly location. I’ve reduced security droids and allowed the system’s AI to make my posts public. Check back often, as we’re expecting many changes in the upcoming months.