As to the main character, I wanted to explore the life of a broken woman who is stranded far away from home. That catalyst causes her…well, you’ll need to buy the book to discover how she reacts.

Laura Eno’s “Freedom” is the fifth story for The Yin Book. A 750 word taster of “Freedom” will be available 1st October.

It was that line that got me thinking: Yeah, why is she flying?

I mean, she told Medae why, but for some reason I didn’t believe her. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much I didn’t believe her as I thought there must be more to it. This woman was frail, “saggy”, kindheartedly intrusive, and alone. Again I asked myself: Why was a woman her age flying alone?

When I see elderly people walking on the sidewalk, at the mall, in the library – anywhere – I often wonder what their stories are. What joys have they experienced in their lifetime? What hardships? Where have they been? What have they learned? Who have they loved? Lost? Forgotten? Some faces look hardened and bitter. Some soft and sad. Others content and at peace. Each one of those faces conceals a story. So did Mildred’s. And I wanted to find out the part of her story that had led her to the airport, alone.

Claudia Osmond’s “The Other Side of Limbo” is the fourth story for The Yin Book. A 750 word taster of “The Other Side of Limbo” will be available 30th September.

No really. I mean, isn’t it strange for a girl to not like shopping? Or be obsessed with science fiction and comic books at a young age? Or for a self proclaimed author to have never written anything in the first person? Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t really matter I suppose.

I thought I was strange, so set about rectifying the writerly dilema with my story in The Yin Book. But what could I write about that wouldn’t make “I” statements seem odd?

My original idea for a character was taken by Carrie Clevenger writing before me; a baggage handler who worked at the airport. I read through her story, cursing, until I noticed a “criminal activity” had occurred. It was then I thought about writing a police officer being sent to investigate.

But I wanted it to be more than just that – I don’t write crime stories, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. So I went back to my baggage handler idea. It had originally been about a man who had a secret life, a life no one at the airport knew about, one he desperately wanted no one to ever find out about. Now because I had chosen a police officer, that particular secret life just wouldn’t work (based on the principal I don’t write about dirty cops), but some other secret life could work.

Detective Tori Young came to me in a dream a few nights later, fully formed with all of her god-complex issues and her secret desire to replace her workaholic lifestyle with something else. As much as she wanted to be a saviour in people’s lives, she also wanted to have a life, but if it was a choice between the two she would choose the former without ever really thinking about it…

That is until I created an event that causes her to truly question that decision. An event that would affect her most recent case, career and  entire life.

It turned out, that was the easy part. Even writing from first person point of view was easier than writing a real person into my fictional story. As I mentioned before, I auctioned off a character in my story for a fundraiser event put on by the Rare Diseases Foundation (RDF) in British Columbia (BC), Canada, benefiting the children, parents and researchers at the BC Children’s Hospital. The winner of the auction wanted the character to be his mother.

I interviewed the winner for about an hour, and I got to learn all about this gentlemen’s mother: er favourite saying, mannerisms, quirks, and history. I then had to take all that information and mould Tori’s police partner into a woman resembling her. I wanted to do it in a manner that respected the woman she is in real life, while making sure the character did what she was supposed to do to move the plot of the story forward.

During edits with Paul, I also had to deal with the fact I was over my word count limit and the most logical section to cut was the one where his mother made the biggest appearance. I had to weigh the needs of the story over the want to have this man get something worth the money he spent on it. It was a difficult tight rope to walk, one I’m still not sure I got right, but in the end all you can do is let go and hope.

See what I mean about being wired wrong. Who in their right mind would be a part of a collaborative anthology AND auction off a character in the same 3500 word story? Although I do have to blame Jodi and Paul a bit here; you two are way too supportive of strange and off the wall ideas

Tina Hunter’s “Where The Heart Is” is the third story for The Yin Book. A 750 word taster of “Where The Heart Is” will be available 29th September.

I first thought of my setting as I read the prologue.

Airports have baggage handlers and I knew enough about the job because I spent a brief stint as one before 9/11. The only thing I didn’t have was how to make baggage handling exciting. That’s when Leon and Bullwick came along.  With a great deal of UK-esque assistance from my editor, Paul Anderson, they emerged as two blokes from somewhere in Eurasia.

Part of my inspiration for Leon and Bullwick came from the relationship between Shaun and Ed in Shaun of the Dead, a movie with tongue firmly in cheek about zombies taking over. Leon was named after my great uncle, whom I never met. Seemed back in the thirties he owed money. He was murdered at his own front door by men never caught. Or so my grandmother says. Truth is often stranger than fiction.

Bullwick and Leon in the heat of the airline collapse decide to steal from a passengers luggage. Bullwick steals a woman’s knickers, which end up in several other stories later in the book. As Jodi put it—who’d think a pair of panties could travel so far? Leon takes an obscure canvas to gift his girlfriend Mindy, starting a whirlwind motion and well… you’ll see.

Carrie Clevenger’s “Baggage” is the second story for The Yin Book. A 750 word taster of “Baggage” will be available 28th September.

Reading the prologue brought these films to mind – I don’t read books in that genre you see. It also reminded me of a question these heroes elicit: is it possible to live that kind of life and remain in touch with ones humanity? And if one has to be that tough and strict all of the time just to survive, isn’t there a chance one could become brittle? If one becomes so tough, with so little left beneath, could something that was once a shield becomes something that will instead break the wielder…

I considered all that Medae had gone through to achieve her objective, and found myself wondered what kinds of rules she would have to live by in order to cope with all of the deception, the pressure and the constant fear of discovery. I am rather timid in real life you see, so I am often filled with an envious curiosity when I think about ruthless people – which I thought she’d have to be, in order to even consider such a job.

I wanted to explore that, and also the potential breaking point – that moment of brittleness – when those rules were challenged. I wanted to put her in a place that would force her to examine herself and her actions in a way I suspected she would never choose to do – self-reflection would be useless at best, destructive at worst for a person like her.

The Guilty One focuses on Medae and her victim, rather than the thriller aspect of what to do about the painting or big fights and gun shots over luggage carousels. What makes a person do the things they do, and how they cope with pressure on psychological fault lines, is more interesting and accessible for me as a writer. I hope that the readers find it interesting too!

Emma Newman’s “The Guilty One” is the first story for The Yin Book. A 750 word taster of “The Guilty One” will be available 27th September.

Swiftly moving on from any controversy and onto the readable delights on offer this week:

“The Resurrection Men” by Icy Sedjwick

Midnight mist swirled around my ankles. I stumbled, my foot caught under a tree root. At least, I hoped it was a tree root. I didn’t want to think what else might grab at my foot in a cemetery.

“So what you’re saying is, you won’t steal, you won’t run any doxies, and you won’t get a job. How else do you expect us to make money?” asked Will.

Read on …

“Mist” by Benjamin Solah

“Guess you’re stuck with me for a bit then, ay?” whoever was under that enormous hat chuckled, “Might as well start acting a bit kinder. You’re only gonna make it harder mate.”

Read on …

“Poker Night” by Laura Eno

Lucien greeted Death and Chronos with a jovial salute as they arrived for the monthly poker game.

“Glad you could make it, gentlemen. I want to thank the two of you for sending Jeeves to me.”

“Why?” Death said. “Did you find a particularly amusing way to torture him?”

“Hell no. He’s the best bouncer I’ve ever had and he broke Lilith’s habit of sticking gum under the tables, too.”

Chronos stared at him. “Jeeves? I thought he buttled.”

“Buttled?” Lucien gave him a blank look.

Read on …

“Long Story” by Tony Noland

Scooter threw the bundle out the window, watched it disappear into the night. He tried to listen for the thud, but the whipping wind was too loud. How far? Dammit, how far? He pulled on his end, trying to feel if it was slapping against the ground below. Between the weight of the tape and the wind, he couldn’t tell.
Read on …

“Pen Pals’ by JM Strother

Anna waited for the mailman, as she had every day for the last three weeks.

“Staring down the street won’t make him come any sooner,” Jerry, her older brother, taunted. “And it’s just a stupid letter.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then returned her attention to the street. Mia’s letter would come today. She just knew it.

Read on …

‘Jailed’ by Carrie Clevenger

I felt something. Something there. A chill that snaked down my spine, blossoming in spider-pricked gooseflesh on my entirety. My fingers cowered in their leather gloves, nearly releasing the steering wheel. A stunning realization that I was not alone in the car. I was afraid to look.

Read on …

“The Courage of Others” by Jason Coggins

Aisley picked her way through the earthen ramparts that encircled the village.  In her left hand swung the wicker basket. The fingers of her right played with its contents before bringing a scoop up to her mouth. The mixture of cheese and herbs was slightly flowery. The toadstools earthy.

Read on …

This is how my story was born.

The character emerged and he wouldn’t let go until I told his story. In fact, I’ve been trying to tell his story for years in one form or another and he seemed to think this would be a good chance for him.

When I think of airports, I think of post-9/11 paranoia, the war on terror, racial profiling and strict security. It is out of this that my character, Kurush, emerged to provide a different side to this paranoid world.

Kurush has a whole range of other things to worry about when flying. And the chaos around him really doesn’t help. “Somewhere to Pray” really aims to explore fear though Kurush’s eyes as he tries to find somewhere safe from judgemental eyes and memories he has no control over.

Why are people so afraid? Can Kurush find that safe place?

Benjamin Solah’s “Somewhere to Pray” is the final story for The Yang Book. A 750 word taster of “Somewhere to Pray” will be available 24th September.

It’s not a name I thought would stick or one that would need defending but my protagonist’s name is Quiche.

After reading one of Annie’s segments in the Write Anything website a grain of her wisdom lodged in my mind. She had been talking about genre and how fantasy writing is so very often plot driven as opposed to character driven. Gee, said I, that’s me down to a tee. It certainly was how I approached “Something mean in the dream scene” for the Red Book. Thus I got to thinking about my new mission impossible for the CW gang and challenged myself with making it the most character driven thing I had ever written.

The girl I had in mind was cute like Amele. She also made the world a better place with every imagination rich encounter she had with the people around her. Cool, that got me off to a flying start but I sure as hellfire couldn’t think of a name that would suit this cheery damsel of odd thinking. She wasn’t a Sue or Diana and she certainly wasn’t a Janelle! I needed to get some good strong words down on the page so I opted to call her Quiche with the intent that that word was silly enough to get me into character but also irritating enough for me to eventually discard it. After all, one name is just as good as another, right? But, names have a spooky sort of power when you evoke them … especially it seems the ones associated with delightful pastry flan like savoury treats.

The girl in the military boots with satchel swinging deep down around her ankles didn’t just grow into that name…  she took it, tried it on, liked what she saw in the mirror and thanked my sub-conscious for christening her with the name she had always wanted.

And in return I got to see the world through her eyes for a bit. From that vantage point Quiche gave me her take on what would happen if you spent your entire life flying west.

“Okay,” said I, “you get to keep the name if I get to keep that as my plot idea.”

She said, “Yes.”

Jason Coggin’s “Chase the Day” is the penultimate story for The Yang Book. A 750 word taster of “Chase the Day” will be available 23rd September<.

On being told the story my first questions were: I wonder what you could hide behind the mask? Could you conceal something there? Smuggle something behind it?

Yes, I know they shouldn’t have been my first thoughts but we’ll analyse that another time.

A week or so later, Jodi and Paul informed me my story had to be set in an airport… It seemed like a timely cue for a story with a twist but I also used it to explore some other themes – how we’re casualties of our own lives, the scars we exhibit and don’t, human ugliness and what we can conceal.

I was pleased Jodi picked up on these and wanted to highlight them a little more than they were in the first draft. Ultimately, though I hope people are intrigued, revolted and feel the end justifies the time they’ve spent with it.

Richard Jay Parker’s “One Behind The Eye” is the eighth story for The Yang Book. A 750 word taster of “One Behind The Eye” will be available 22nd September.

If you read my thoughts on participating in Chinese Whisperings 2010, you’ll recall I was sure this year would be easier than last year because I’m older and more experienced. But now, as I open my brain and spill the thoughts it contains about “Thirteen Feathers” here before you, I’ll let you in on the real reason I thought this year’s story would be easier to write—a little secret I didn’t mention last year.

Last year I broke my rule about never planning my writing. When I was preparing to write “Out of the Darkness” for The Red Book, I took notes about the characters in the preceding stories and jotted down ideas about what I could do with them. I spent five whole minutes and filled out a spreadsheet of details about each character and what they did, wore and thought about the world. And while this may not constitute “planning” to most people, I felt dirty and in need of a shower because of this ridiculously massive amount of preparation. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. As I sit here in this confessional moment, I’m not even sure I should be admitting I did this. But what’s on the page is on the page, so I’ll continue.

The result of all the planning last year was the infamous set of thirteen distinct stories getting written about two or three different characters. So, this year, I swore I would not do any planning and would just write what came to mind, like I always do. Thus, it would be easier.

So, when it came time for me to write my story for “The Yang Book,” I settled down at the dining room table with my laptop, facing the window so I could enlist the help of Nature in getting the story started. There might have been a little bit of coffee at the table with me. There definitely would be no planning. There would be no character biographical spreadsheets. There would be no showers.

I read the prologue and the six drafts that came before mine in each anthology and then I opened a new blank document and wrote the first thing that came to mind.

Thirteen Feathers

That was it. The whole thought. Two words and no more came.

After a few minutes of staring at these two words typed in blue on a shining, white electronic page, I decided to note what prompted me to write those two specific words. Knowing I’d have to write this behind-the-scenes look at the story, I opened a new Microsoft OneNote notebook and rattled off the next three sentences I wrote that first morning:

Assuming I get this written and turned in before my dear writing buddy, Icy Sedgwick, gets hers turned in, this will be the thirteenth story in the Yin and Yang Books. I’ll never get it written, though, if I have to keep chasing the birds away from my newly-planted garden. I bet feathers would fly if I let the cat out in the garden to play with them.

And that, my friends, is the story of where the title came from.

So, title set, I saved my work, closed my laptop and went about my day, not thinking about it at all for the rest of the day, since it was already late (9:30 in the morning).

The next morning, I opened the document and stared at the title.

What was I going to do with this? Why would there be birds in an airport? Would the birds be willing to share their coffee with the other passengers? Would airline personnel allow birds, with or without their coffee, to board an airplane? What if one of the birds was on a “no-fly” list? Why would a bird bother with the lines and the security scans and the baggage fees anyway? What would the cats say about these shenanigans?

Panic began to well up in me. At 7:30 in the morning it is clearly too early for panic to be welling, yet well it did. I was forced to fight it off with a third pot of coffee, a few pretzel goldfish, a piece of fresh asparagus from my garden and a spoonful of organic peanut butter (creamy style). Panicky crisis averted, I started writing a poignant, politically-charged story about a woman who got in trouble with the law for having too many cats. Being cooperative yet creative and somewhat defiant, she replaced the cats with parakeets (an animal to which the law is indifferent except in some remote parts of New Jersey). She was travelling to a distant city to rescue a thirteenth feathered beast from the dark, dungeon-like home of a man named Hans Thomas Warburn, where he forced the poor little birdie to watch nothing but poultry cooking shows on television.

Clearly, this would be must-read fiction.

I wrote nearly a thousand words of this in my first sitting and was pleased with the progress. Then, nature called and told me I needed another cup of coffee; I, of course, had no option but to answer that call and headed to the indicated coffeepot.

That’s when the cat showed up.

Now, the tale of how a cat, or should I say two cats, came to be in my home is long, twisty and likely to make you motion sick, so I am going to spare you the details. In the end it is not the point of this story.

The point of this story is: cats are evil.

I don’t think I ever explained why I find kittens terrifying complicated. It’s actually quite simple: kittens, even the purple ones in bad science fiction movies, turn into cats. And cats… well, they hate me. It might be because I’m a dog person. It might be because every cat I’ve ever written into a story has turned out to be evil (through no fault of my own). It might be because cats, contrary to popular belief, prefer decaf coffee over the regular coffee I occasionally enjoy. Whatever the reason, the proof is that whenever I walk past a cat, it hisses, bites and scratches at me. It doesn’t matter if it was asleep or sedated or locked inside a sound-light-and-vibration-proof box—the cat would know I was there and attack.

But where was I?

Oh, yes. I was getting more coffee.

I swear I left my computer unattended for just a few seconds. I swear I had saved my work. But when I returned with my steaming cup of liquid heaven, I found the laptop shut off. And a cat sitting on the keyboard and power switch.

I quickly shooed the cat away and watched her meander over to a new resting spot on top of the newspaper. Powering the laptop on, I waited the interminable seconds for it to boot and launched into a frenzied search for my work. Eventually, I gave up. It was gone.

I hear you asking why the auto-save didn’t work. Well, it would have worked had I enabled it. Or had I used Microsoft Word. But, in another feat of brilliance, I chose to use a simple text editor to do my initial draft, so that I wouldn’t be distracted by fonts, colors, formatting and the other shiny things a real word processor provides.

I felt no joy as I downed another couple cups of coffee while figuring out what to do next. I opened the original document, the one with just the title in it, and stared at the blankness of the page. The cat, still standing on the newspaper by this point, meowed and walked away. I looked at the paper and found it on the horoscope page. Reading mine (Pisces) it said:

“Even if the morning is going poorly, don’t give up on the rest of the day. Take each challenge as an opportunity to try something new. This is a good day to find love with someone with whom you have lost touch.”

So I took this advice and started over. Over the next several days I wrote 5,000 words about a woman who had fallen into such deep despair  she could make no decisions on her own, relying on mystics, horoscopes and other psychic phenomena to decide such simple things as what to wear and where to go each day. I remembered that feathers are a symbol of travelling and worked that into the story. Coincidentally, feathers appear thirteen times in the story (not including the title) and I didn’t plan that at all.

It went well, albeit slower than I’d wanted. Several times over these days, I found the cat sitting on the keyboard. I had learned my lesson by this point, though, and had ensured the work was saved, not only on my hard drive, not only on the external drive and two USB memory cards, but also in my email. Once I even burned it to a re-writable CD which I kept in my car. So, there was no way she was going to delete my work.

But she could add to it. The way she sat, small shifts of her body weight, her purring or the way she batted at invisible foes dancing in the air around her caused typing to happen. It was mostly just gibberish or cryptic text-speak, and there were a lot of 3′s in the middle, but every once in a while, she wrote an inspired word like “I” or “A”.

It was amazing and it made me see her in a whole new light. Seriously, when have you known a cat who could write so well as to put actual words on the page? The other cat, seeing how much attention the first was getting, decided to climb up on my shoulder and arm and help me type by pressing my hands down with his paws or causing my hand to jerk along the keyboard as he inserted his claws into my shoulder. By the end of the writing, I was almost convinced that these cats had started to like tolerate me.

Collaborating with other people on a work is hard. Cohabitating Collaborating with cats – that’s darn near impossible. There were constant arguments about how much coffee was too much coffee, about how many kittens a person could realistically have in an apartment and about the importance of catnip-scented perfume in a modern woman’s life. Eventually I gave up and let the cats add whatever they wanted.

So, Jodi, I’m sorry—all the parts you didn’t like, the cats added them. I haven’t told them yet I ended up cutting the kittens out of the story completely, nor that the little roadside motel they added, called “The Catnap Motel,” (where all of the mattresses are shaped like little boxes and filled with fluffy towels and newspapers and where the ashtrays are kept so clean guests can drink coffee out of them) was cut. I’m afraid of what they might do when I tell them. Thankfully, they cannot read (yet) so I’ve got some time to get protective armor before breaking the news.

Through the whole process, Jodi was kind and patient with us me as the story was narrowed down to its core parts and focused in on Larissa’s search for direction. “Thirteen Feathers” is about a woman who is, perhaps, too trusting. At her weakest moment, her trusting nature allows others to take advantage of her. But in the end it is this trust which helps her. Jodi’s patience persisted, even as the cats kept adding things at the end of the editing phase.

As I sit here finishing this post, watching the cats slowly meandering closer and closer to my keyboard, I feel I should close with some simple advice. My friends, trust your family for they will always be there for you. Trust your friends, because true friends will always tell you the truth. Trust your editor because… well, because you are supposed to. But more importantly, trust yourself because you, of all people, know you the best.

And most importantly: never, ever, trust a cat.

Rob Diaz’s “Thirteen Feathers” is the seventh story for The Yang Book. A 750 word taster of “Thirteen Feathers” will be available 21st September.