With a week to go, here’s a chance to peek inside The Holocaust Engine and see what is coming.
SPECIAL SNEAK PEAK OF THE HOLOCAUST ENGINE
Page 6 of 7
Any disaster book has to explore the tools, skills and essential needs required to survive. Sometimes you have the perfect tool for the job and other times you’re lost in the woods with a writing journal and no pen.
Our thought experiment for today is:
What is the one item that you consider absolutely essential in a survival situation?
AND
What is the one item you consider absolutely useless in a survival situation? (extra credit if you add on why you’ll carry it anyway)
We look forward to your thoughts and comments below!
In celebration of the art and eye of Kabir Shah, who created all three covers for our series, we want to present a bit of the colors of Key West.
One of the joys of being a writer is finding inspiration in the most unusual spaces.
My question for today: What is the most obscure thing you’ve read/seen in the past month that impacts your writing?
Here’s a few gems we’ve found in obscure places that have impacted our writing. Leave your own in the comments or feel free to comment on ours. Enjoy!
DAVID RIKE
Attack of the Mushroom People is a Japanese horror movie from the 60’s on Amazon Prime. It’s actually good. Mostly just a stranded-on-an-island-survival-movie. Surprisingly smart script, you know, for a story about attacking mushroom people.
STEPHEN PATRICK
The Imjin War by @Samuel Hawley explores the Japanese invasion of Korea from 1592-98. Ostensibly, a historical piece about an obscure time period and a sliver of history that was never covered in my world history classes, Mr. Hawley builds an incredible narrative about human interactions, strategy, and drama. Based on original sources, it is filled with colorful characters, immersive settings, and page-turning scenes. Add in palace intrigue, samurai and naval combat with Geobukseon (“Turtle ships”), it filled my notebook with inspirations for several current and future projects.
From Stephen Patrick:
One of the best things about working with a writing partner is how we compliment each other to make us and our stories better.
Our individual reading tastes are hard to describe, but we both have a unique discipline beneath the madness. Below is a small snippet of what we are reading as The Holocaust Engine prepares to launch. Please share your own in the comments. We’d love to see where you are casting your gaze these days.
DAVID:
Every year I have a reading list with categories: classic, course study topic, recent sci fi, new author, etc.) I just finished this year’s classic, Joyce’s Ulysses, hated it. All high brow mainstream fiction is self-serving but Ulysses just seemed to hold its readers in contempt..After that I read Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three — which was a fantastic palate cleanser.
STEPHEN:
I love the art of discovery in reading. Each year, I split my targets among science non-fiction, history/biographical, top 10 contemporary fiction, classic fiction and “literary” classics. My stack is currently anchored by the Norton Anthology of English Literature (the 3k page powerhouse we hated in school), which gets me from Blake to Kipling to Conrad to Achebe. It sits next to my palate cleanser: Fritz Lieber’s “Our Lady of Darkness”. “The Biggest Bluff” by Maria Konnikova and “The Great Influenza” by John Barry complete the stack and keep the lights on deep into the night.
A brief look into the setting of The Holocaust Engine:
For David, “The Holocaust Engine” started as a dream/nightmare. In my dream it was an island off of the coast of California, but I haven’t been to California in ages. The storyline needed an area that could be easily cut off due to its geography and we already had a trip planned to Florida.
For Stephen, Key West is a stewpot of the weird, the strange, the eccentric and more than a few thing that defy explanation or even language. Equally important is the chance to turn a veritable “Paradise on Earth” into a living Hell.
What about you? What do you think of Key West as a setting? Any personal stories to share? Who knows, your favorite spot may find its way into the series.
As we move toward the release of The Holocaust Engine and our own first lines, it seems fitting to drop a few of our favorite fiction first lines.
Add yours in the comments section
- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984
- A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
- All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
- He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
- It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
- In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
We’re synchronizing our watches for Sept 14th as we count down to the official release of The Holocaust Engine.
To help channel our excitement, we’ll be dropping daily hints about the book, a bit about us and some other fun topics to play with.
Drop by www.holocaustengine.com and share your feedback, comments and other ideas. You can also share them on our FB page , and our book’s Goodreads page.
And it won’t stop when the book drops…. but we’ll leave that for Sept 15th.
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