Eric S. Hubbard's Blog

I have a few things out or coming out soon.

Hannah's Trophy is a flash fiction piece out now. It's the story of a young girl, a gumball machine and the trophy inside.

A Constellation of Two is a ghost story with the setting being the USS Constellation that is located in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore City. I've been on the ship a few times and that and my idea of romance sparked this short story.

As She Sleeps is a flash fiction piece about a relationship coming to an end.

All of my publications are listed on my website - www.ericscottwrites.com

Becky's Fan is now available. I've written a bit about it in this blog. It's a story I'm very happy was published since it was written so long ago. Having the ability to make it worthy of publication (because originally it wasn't), is a fantastic feeling. It appears in Volume 1 Issue 9 of Heater magazine and can be purchased here: http://www.fictionmagazines.com/magaz...

I've been working on continuing my novelette, Dawn of Demons. I won't get into too many details about the story, but here is a brief summary.

The story is about two girls after the apocalypse and the world is infested with demons. In my story, the demons are converted from humans and Dawn has some special gifts to deal with this new world. The first part ended with Dawn and Trista deciding to go to New York to find the people who wrote the "Project Humanity" document they found at the army facility. There are rifts throughout the world, most in cities. These rifts opened up and created the initial demons from those who fell and died. So, travel by road and car isn't possible. If the rifts haven't destroyed the roads, the largest concentration is near and around the rifts.

I knew where Dawn and Trista were at the beginning and where the army facility could be located in the Baltimore area. Using Google maps, I'm able to set the walking path my characters will take to New York. I can see terrain, buildings and examine photos of the area. Labels and road names are all listed right on the map and I can zoom in to see details. This will really help with describing the locations.

I still plan on traveling the path myself so that I have a true feel for the areas, minus the apocalypse of course.

I recently sold two stories and it is an odd feeling knowing there is someone interested in what you've written enough to give you a little bit of money for it. I've spent most of my time writing for myself, which I still do. Sharing my writing wasn't something I thought I would do.

When I was twelve, I wrote a science fiction novel that was clearly a knock off of Star Wars. I spent hours on my mother's Selectric typewriter telling my story. Back then, I wanted to be a writer. But with marriage and kids I soon found myself moving forward into a career of research and administration. Two fields of work that do not allow for creative thinking.

I fiddled around at times, writing short stories or starting novels. Nothing serious. Now that I am at a point in my life where I'm comfortable in my career and my kids have grown, I went back to my folder of stories last September. Some were salvageable and Becky's Fan is the first of the older stories to get published. It is also the first story that I will be paid for. There is a certain satisfaction in that fact.

I've been writing every day and I hope to keep things moving along. My first novelette is coming out in January/February. My blogs will start to cover that story as the weeks roll on. It is called Dawn of Demons and I sense that there is much more than 10,000 words in this story.

I heard that a story I wrote a long time ago will be published in Heater magazine. Becky's Fan was a way for me to feel better about the death of Rebecca Schaeffer, which sounds selfish as I write this down. I guess it was...is.

I've had people die who were important to me, including a stepson I was just getting to know. But to raise a daughter, and one that seemed so kind and good, I can't fathom the pain her parents fell to this day.

Rebecca died in 1989, gunned down by an insane fan. Her death helped to change things, like the Driver's Privacy Protection Act. Her killer used DMV records to locate her. The changes in the aftermath are good, but not worth the price.

I wrote this in 1989. Over this past year, I've started to write every day now. I always thought about writing, but the things we think about we never do so I decided last September to start writing. I came across Becky's Fan while going over old stories and after cleaning it up, I started sending it out. Heater accepted the story and it will be out later this year.

I've had a few other things published this year, but this one is special. One, because it is something I wrote a while ago that needed my forty year old self to finish and two, because I think it shows how writing can help anyone. I don't write to be famous. I write to tell stories and to work things out.

I didn't know Rebecca, but her story touched me and I hope others fell the same way.

My story, Contrition, will be in the new anthology, Horrors of History. I'm not a huge history buff, but I do feel we can learn much from looking back.

My story dealt with the Kennedy assassination and I really enjoyed researching the time and aspects of the Kennedys, particularly Jackie. That moment in history I feel changed the United States and the world in many ways. It is one of those defining moments of a generation and even though I wasn't alive for that moment, I can look back and see how it changed everything.

Throughout history, one single event changes things forever. Sometimes something as simple as the weather and other times something terrible like the assassination of JFK.

I hope you enjoy the story as well as the rest of the stories. I'm very happy to be a part of the anthology.