Patrick E. McLean
ລາຍລະອຽດຊ່ອງທາງ
Patrick E. McLean
Short fiction every week and serial novel "A Town Called Nowhere" patrickemclean.substack.com
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89 ຕອນ
Nowhere Ch. 22 -- A Stranger Stranger Comes to Town
If Dance only looked at one side of the street it could almost appear that Grantham had gotten back to normal. There had been a rough few days after t...
Nowhere Ch. 21 - From The Ashes
Laura looked out over what was left of the Town of Grantham. Smoldering buildings. Bodies scattered across the street. She realized that this was the...
Nowhere Ch. 20 - All Against All
The town burned through the night and when the glow of dawn finally overpowered the glow of the embers, the townspeople who were still alive collapsed...
Nowhere Ch. 19 - Virgil Strikes the Earth
Virgil had sat in the Nothing with the Shaman for an amount of time he could not identify. He asked, "I saw you dead. How is any of this possible?”
Nowhere Ch. 18 - Up in Flames
Dance crawled until he passed out. He couldn’t say how long he slept, but he was brought back to consciousness by the peaceful sound of his horse crop...
Nowhere Ch. 17 --Dance Goes on a Scout
As Sheriff John Dance rode down to the river, Miguel, the Stagecoach agent, came up beside him. Dance gave him a skeptical look, and didn’t have time...
Nowhere Ch. 16 - A Temple to a Far Older God
Dr. Krupp was terrified. In all his years of selling snake oil throughout the frontier — a figure he often exaggerated, but in truth amounted to no mo...
Nowhere Ch. 15 - From Nowhere to Nothing
Virgil sat for two days while the strange grass around him died in the heat. At night he slept on the ground and in the daytime he sat once again. At...
Nowhere Ch 14 - Take Your Bullets and Go
As the Sheriff and Pete walked back through town, they could all but smell the fear. Gone was the carelessness of rough men when they weren’t working....
Nowhere Ch 13 - The Aftermath
For a long time, nobody said anything. They just stood on the bank of the strange new river with the wounded as if the whispering of the water would e...
Nowhere Ch. 12 - The Attack
Squatting on the bank of the river, Archie offered one word of description for the wooden ship that was bearing down upon the Town of Grantham, “Trire...
Nowhere Ch. 10 & 11 -- Ethan Burdock & Welcome to Town
Chapter 10 — Ethan Burdock
To the Northwest of Grantham was the Bar-D ranch, owned by Ethan Burdock. Burdock had carved a 28,000-acre ranch out...
Nowhere Ch 9 -- A River in the Morning
Just catching up? Here’s the story so far in ebook and audiobook format
If you’re already on board, take a minute to leave a review on Part I on...
Nowhere Ch 8 - A Hole Through Nothing
The Apache rode until sunset. Then they rode until sunrise. They felt the wind through their hair and the horses pounding the earth, but all they hear...
Nowhere Ch 7 - The Wager
The saloon was a shoddy-looking two story box of building, made from unfinished boards that had not fared well in the desert sun. Above the awning was...
Nowhere Ch 6 - Virgil Gets the Flour
Virgil got into Bisbee late in the afternoon. Outside of Fetterman’s a drunk cowboy was staggering around the street running his mouth at passer-bys....
A Defense of Writing Longhand
I wrote this essay 12 years ago. And there are a lot of things that I used to believe that I don’t believe anymore. But the substance of this essay ha...
Nowhere Ch 5 - Welcome to the Morning Star
Archie rode uphill through the town, towards the elegant, yet out-of-place Victorian house on the hill. When those in the street and on the porches ga...
Somewhere a Story is Searching for You
Somewhere, out there, a story is searching for you.
It fumbles, faceless through the dark. Unknowable, unformed. Newt pads for hands, it whisper...
Nowhere Ch 4 - Trouble with the Stage
The Swing Station was a pile of mud bricks with a thatched roof on the east side of the Mule Mountains. The windows had no glass, only torn curtains t...
Inspiration
Inspiration… that son-of-a-b***h
I’m having a problem with inspiration right now.
He’s been ducking me.
I mean we have this regula...
Nowhere Ch 3 - The Sacred Raid
He called them with the same magic that brings the fog in the morning or a thunderstorm on a hot summer afternoon. They came from the reservation. The...
What the Rain Brought
The summer was immense. It was so hot that the mud dried in the blasted cracks in the yard as all the crops died. Across the range, cattle moaned as t...
Nowhere Ch 2 - A Stranger Comes to Town
(Previously: Chapter 1 - A Man Goes on A Journey)
The Journal of Archimedes Croryton, July 23rd, 1888
I have been informed that my...
The Inescapable Gravity of Barfight Scenes
If there was one thing that I wish I knew about writing years ago, it is this: Every story you write comes with obligations. These obligations are dri...
You Are The Creature that Turns Silence into Words
You and I are the creatures who turn silence into words.
And if you find it at all difficult to know what you should do or say: first ask yours...
Nowhere Ch 1 - A Man Goes on a Journey
The team had been hitched to the wagon before dawn, but Virgil still hadn’t left. As Laura Miller folded and sorted the new fabrics for display, she c...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 7
The King paused in the telling. Gripping the sword in his right hand, he rose and threw a few more coals in the brazier with his left. The stable boy,...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 6
The men panicked and fled. As Beowulf had foretold, not a one went for a spear. Some dived back into the barrow. Others ran up or down the coast. Only...
Beowulf and the Dragon Chapter 5
At the end of a long, upward march we found an old oak tree on a cliff facing the sea. It was gnarled and had grown at an angle from being blown inlan...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 4
Neither Beowulf nor I slept that night. On his order, I found and woke the Blacksmith and brought him to where the King waited by the forge. Beowulf e...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 3
If you’ve jumped in the middle, here’s Chapter One.
After I killed the wolves, Beowulf took a liking to me, as much of a liking as he too...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 2
This is Chapter Two of Beowulf and the Dragon. If you missed it, here’s Chapter One.
After I was captured, it was ten years before Beowu...
Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter One
Author’s Note: This is the first in a seven-episode podcast/serialization of Patrick E. McLean’s new novella. It will be available on Amazon and where...
How to Outline Any Story
There is a lot of advice about how to outline a story on the internet, and almost all of it was it was useless, so I stopped trying to wade through it...
How It's Written: Batman
Explaining how Batman works written is a huge task. There is simply so much Batman. Since the character's creation in 1939 every conceivable tone has...
How It's Written: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Today I'm going to take you through Shadow Over Innsmouth. To reveal the techniques that make this story, and cosmic horror, work. It's one of Lovecra...
How It's Written: Call of Cthuhlu
Today I'm going to talk about H.P. Lovecraft, an author who is one of the great well-springs of the horror genre. And if you want tl/dr on the horror...
How It's Written: The Mandalorian
This week, I'm trying something a little different. In addition to this essay and podcast, I made a video.
It’s part of my ongoing series, “How...
The Persuasive Appeal of Dr. Martin Luther King
I really like Martin Luther King day as a holiday. It certainly makes more sense to me than President's Day. Washington and Lincoln were tremendous fi...