Jeffrey Alexander Martin

Every time you see George R. R. Martin mentioned there is a long list of people complaining about how slowly he is writing the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It annoys me, so I'm going to do some comparing.


First of all, we have to figure out what we're doing, and then how we're doing it. I'm going to mostly use arbookfind.com for book lengths, and readinglength.com if I need to. I think good metrics would be words per day and years per book.

I imagine that Mark Twain's short story The Death Wafer (or Death Disk) is going to be our slowest rate, because it's a very short story and it took him 12 years to write. But it was worth it, it's good stuff. Let's look at Twain first, then we'll dive into epic fantasy.

I did a simple word count of the story and came up with 3,358 words. That's 0.77 words per day (I rounded up), and one short story per 12 years. I think that's going to be our slowest rate no matter what else we look at.

I'm also go…

I'm leaving for my alligator wrestling trip tomorrow and want to get some work done on this zombie story before I have the possibility of losing a finger.


Here's what I have so far.

- - - - - - -
"Johanna! Don't you go in that room." Three-year-olds are full of innocence and mischief. Neither were good things in this situation.
"I told you, Matt is sick, you need to stay out of his room. Go play in your room." Susan put her left hand on her daughter's shoulder and steered her towards her bedroom. It was the seventh day, or the sixth, or the eighth. It was something like that. She was exhausted, the days were blending together. Johanna's long blonde hair swished back and forth as she disappeared into her room.

Susan looked down at her right hand and sighed; another wet cloth. Keeping Matt's fever under control had just about proved impossible. Since the quarantine a few days ago it had just been her and the kids; no help, no one had even come…

For this international flash fiction horror anthology that I'm involved with I need a picture and a bio. I've always been horrible at the bio thing. I think it's weird making a blurb about yourself, but... here we go.


I wish I took more pictures, but I don't want to do the taking part. I do have some and that's the first thing I want to work on. I have this picture sitting in the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones the television show (and A Song of Ice and Fire the book series). This was taken by a seemingly random, or was it fated, stranger at the renaissance fair in Holly, Michigan earlier this year. That could be a good one, I mean it is horror.

This Harry Potter based picture where I'm posing as an escaped prisoner from Azkaban Prison is pretty cool. This was taken by Jelitza at Potter in the Park in Spart, Michigan earlier this year. I think that still fits pretty well. I have a few other pictures from there, but only one other one that I think would really …

Yesterday I came up with a few ideas for my flash fiction horror story. I'm not going to pursue two of the ideas, I'm interested in two of the other ideas, and Oleg has one that he likes.


I'm not going to delve into the kidnapping and torturing a doctor thing, although I think that people might be enthusiastic about that one. I'm also not going to pursue the shrink that shrinks heads, although I do think that could be a humorous horror story in the future.

I'm interested in the forced inoculation story about a kid becoming a zombie and eating his sister in front of his mom. That's some pretty great sounding science fiction/fantasy horror. I'm also interested in the flashback false execution story. I think that that could cause some pondering in those who encounter the story.

And finally, I received this message from Oleg yesterday after he read my post:

Hi, Jeffrey!
Go for the succubus story idea. The anthology MUST have a succubus story!

So, I've been …

In 2019 my friend Oleg is publishing an international anthology of flash fiction horror stories called "Horror Without Borders". He has over 50 authors recruited for the project from 20 plus countries and all seven continents, that's right, all seven continents - including someone that works in Antarctica. Oleg is publishing the book in print and as an ebook in Russian, and I'm the editor for the print-on-demand and ebook that will be in English. I'm also contributing a story to the collection. That's what this article is about.


My original idea was to do a torture story where a patient that has gotten the normal medical treatment of being ignored, dismissed, and given painkillers gets so frustrated that he snaps, kidnaps the doctor, and tortures him in a creative way. He causes the doctor pain, for instance by pulling out a fingernail. Then he checks the doctor's blood pressure, notes that it's high and gives him some blood pressure medication. When …

I've been putting this off for months. There is no doubt that my chiropractors have helped, and continue to help, me tremendously. So why haven't I written the testimonial that I said I was going to write yet? Well, there are two reasons.


The first reason is that I keep making progress. It's not a straight path. There is no linear progression. It's somewhat more akin to riding a rollercoaster blind. You know that there are going to be ups and downs, but you don't know when. This means that in the near future, it's always the near future, that I could have a much better conclusion to my testimonial. I'll do it next week when I'm even better, I'll do it next week when I've recovered from this downturn, I'll do it next week when I'm even stronger, etc. Luckily next week has finally arrived, it only took a few months.

The second reason is that the story is quite large, decently long, and pretty complex. I don't want to write a memoir on …