IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!!!

Sometimes I feel like Dr. Victor Frankenstein, bent over his creation and finally seeing it breath life. I look down upon my monster of stitched together parts. "It's Alive" I scream to the lightning streaked sky and I know that this creation has a will of its own. This is how I feel about my short story collection Strange Yarns.

Am I saying that Strange Yarns, an online collection of stories is going to run amok in the night and kill people?! Will a digital mass of letters and white spaces incur the wrath of villagers, pitchfork and torch in hand? Yes... that is exactly... not exactly... what I'm saying.

Okay guys, it's truthbomb time. Are you sitting down? Good. Are you standing up? Sit down:

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

When I set out to write on Wattpad it was merely to get some of the short horror story ideas that were taking up too much real estate in my old noodle container on the page. I have always felt you can't get any new ideas unless you get the old ones out. For years I had been haunted by an idea about a kid who gets captured by a sinister stranger in his magic box. I had another story about a killer doll, but when written from the doll's perspective she was just a lost toy that wanted her friend back. That's how it started, as a collection of unrelated stories that hid around the corners of my brain like a bunch of creeps.

If you have read Strange Yarns you know that this no longer the case. The stories weave together building to something dark. It's became a grand narrative dealing with the citizens of Hilltop. A novel knitted from yarns. If you haven't read Strange Yarns... you should. MY EGO DEMANDS IT!

But how did a random gift-basket of stories begin to construct a narrative when the writer (That's me, guys!) had no intention of doing anything like that. Well, it's thesis time, dudes. On Wattpad STORIES ARE ALIVE! They are the love child between the writer and the reader. We have a kid! And that kid does what it pleases.

In my first story, a Curious Boy, the setting is a bed and breakfast. One character mentions that they have no vacant rooms and that maybe they should try The Ivory Arms in Hilltop.

In my fourth story I was looking for a town name that this story could take place in. That's when I remembered Hilltop. I always liked the way a lot Stephen King's books take place in and around Castle Rock and Derry. So, Hilltop it was going to be. A little Easter egg I'm sure I would be the only one who noticed.

In my seventh story, Hilltop High's Legendary Performance characters started to reappear. I hadn't ever planned to have them resurface, but again, the story was becoming bigger than me. It was its own thing. You, the readers, commented and that began to influence the story. A few of you started to get really excited that Twig Felderman had returned in a cameo role. Your excitement got me excited and that was the burst of electricity that surged this thing into the world of the living. Soon other characters began popping up. Then landmarks like the Ivory Arms and Vegasaurus Tex became go to settings. And now 13 parts later, Hilltop is totally out of our hands. It tells me what to write. IT has ideas off its own. I'm just there to type what it tells me.

That is AMAZING... and kind of terrifying. How does something inanimate and intangible as an arrangement of digital letters saved somewhere in the GREAT INTERNET MOON BASE (I have no idea how the internet works), jump into your brain and mine, and continue to let itself grow? It's sentient imagination! Unlike stories written upon the page in traditional publishing, this is a living organism. Two parents, Reader and Writer giving its care, nurture and discipline. And like our pal Victor Frankenstein I love it as much as it terrifies me.

I have a feeling that Strange Yarns is half way through its life cycle. But I can't be sure. I am a prisoner to it the way a mother is prisoner to her infant. It's hungry and craves all the idea-milk I got. It's just a bunch of stories and reader's comments... and I can't wait to see how our disfigured child grows up.

LINK: http://www.wattpad.com/story/25225258-strange-yarns

Where You Can Find Josh:

https://twitter.com/joshsaltzman

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25 EPIC Prizes for the Wattpad Block Party Event:

http://kellyanneblountauthor.blogspot.com/2015/02/over-20-amazing-wattpad-block-party.html