It didn’t take long for the two of us to start gathering steam, as both our sites were blessed by a lot of early attention and immediate momentum.

This hint at early success fueled us to push harder, publish more and experiment with new ideas such as our earliest endeavor, the .99 cent “Wee-Book.” The concept of the wee-book was simple, and held in it a magic we both embrace to this day; our words and art blended together and spread as far and wide as possible. Wee-books were our first stab at collaboration and harbored something we instinctively understood, but had yet to correctly interpret.

Neither of us had any idea how difficult it would be to sell solely from the strength of a blog post. Fortunately, our early experience with wee-books helped us to curb this misconception quickly. Though we would still, of course, stumble a few more times, it was ultimately our faith in the strength of our collective voice that led us to keep fine tuning the vehicle. At the time, though, we were driving with blinders on, convinced that the wee-books would eventually do well.

We had started to follow the false prophets of online success.

Comments and accolades are great. They can buoy your self esteem like little else. The danger, however, lies in believing they are something they are not. Listening to the rally of a few dedicated fans will prompt you to ignore the jagged reality of hard, unyielding numbers.

Online success is all about reach, something that is nearly impossible to achieve when you are just starting out, no matter how loud you are screaming. 1,000 subscribers may seem like a lot, but it’s nothing really – at least if it’s how you are expecting to make a living. We released our wee-books with half that number – and without marketing or a sound strategy in place.

We foolishly believed producing the product and publishing a post announcing its arrival would be enough. The romantic whispers from Field of Dreams, If you build it, they will come, echoed in our ears. It seems funny now a year later, not so much back then.

We converted 2% of our audience, which we now nderstand is relatively high. For our hours of work we yielded a grand total of $10. Split between us. For many hours of work.

Ouch.

This, however, was a 24 karat lesson which enabled us to understand that comments are not legal tender, nor are they a promise of things to come. Same holds true for subscribers. Most importantly, we realized a product without a plan to push it forward is just a car without an engine; a nice place to sit and watch the world fly by at 55 mph.

It was a good lesson to learn early. Little did we know there was a dragon that needed slaying.

Stay tuned. Monday we’ll be publishing the next part in our series looking back at our first year online.

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Though every blogger is an individual, many of us begin our journey bobbing in the same boat, adrift in a sea of misinformation.

Not unlike parents and their children, we have lofty goals and great expectations for our fledgeling blogs. Perhaps we want to be the next ProBlogger, Copyblogger or Dooce. Maybe we’ve seen the subscriber numbers at Zen Habits and dare to hope our voices could achieve such reach. Our blogs are our babies and the sky is the limit, right?

Not quite.

Somewhere between dreams and realizations, reality intervenes.

Birthing a blog and raising it through its infancy and awkward, initial growth are two different things. Just like nearly anyone can have a kid, anyone can create a blog. It’s what comes after that first post which determines the success of our blog. And just like many parents, many of us stumble our way through the learning process.

As we said, anyone can start a blog. Want evidence? As of this publication, there are hundreds of millions of blogs worldwide. However, millions of these blogs are now inactive, abandoned, and orbiting cyberspace like a forgotten satellite.

Most blogs never see their first year birthday.

Why? The short answer – blogging isn’t as easy as it looks. Many of us bought into a false dream of easy internet success and riches. More on that in a bit. First, we want to tell you a bit about how our blogs were born.

Last summer, we were strangers on opposite coasts, who happened to both be dads and writers, both searching for Internet Success.

David was part of the Great Journalism Layoffs of 2008 and was searching for a way to keep his writing tools sharp and sate his creative desires while also feeling as though he were doing something productive. He decided to start a humorous blog about his experiences as a father and figured magazine and book offers would soon come pouring in.

Sean was running a preschool with his wife, but feeling restless. His brick and mortar business had grown as far as it could and his recent discovery that there was a writer inside him begging for attention, only encouraged him to find a way to amplify his voice and spread it as far as he could.

Soon, we joined forces, instantly complimenting one another’s strengths and weaknesses.

Neither one of us was quite sure where we were going, or how we would manage to get there, but we both knew taking our dreams online was the one surefire way to strip them of limits. We both believed, rather naively it turns out, that things would naturally fall into place. We thought if we worked as hard as we could and never failed to look our audience in the eye, we would eventually discover the magic alchemy that turned words into dollars.

This is just one of the lies the beginning blogger believes.

Here are three more.

1) Subscribers will eventually equal dollars. It is all too easy to see the blogs with their five-digit subscriber counts and assume that with an audience so large, the authors must have trouble counting all their money. But this is Los Angeles and the truth is Helsinki. Your blog might be the car and a hundred-thousand subscribers your full tank of gas, but you have to know where you’re going in order to get there. That is, if you expect to mine value from your vehicle. Subscribers are nice, but they don’t automatically equal anything. It is extremely difficult to make money simply by being liked or appreciated. The professional blogger must think like a businessman and not only be able to harness their popularity, but also lead it toward profit.

2) Content is KING. We still agree that quality content is an essential ingredient to success. Neither one of us, however, in any way buys into the argument that it is the most important element. The chances of breaking out and making it BIG are nil if you are only putting out garbage or faded echoes, but they are still better than if you put out premium grade copy and do absolutely nothing to promote it. Content may be king, but it is worthless without a couple of jesters in the court.

3) Publishing to a blog is easy. Yes, WordPress makes it simple to gather our scattered thoughts and place them online for all to see, but the budding blogger must also quickly realize that their posts are a reflection of them. This prompts many an inner perfectionist to tweak and re-tweak their posts, spending far too much time in search for the perfect image or digging to the deepest root of what we want to say, all for content that will spend a day or two on the front page and then be mostly forgotten forever.

You probably believed one or all of these things. Most of us do. We were both convinced we knew what we were doing and that it was only a matter of time until it paid off. Fortunately we met in our first month blogging and have used our early momentum and many mistakes to figure out some of the best ways to move forward without falling down.

Stay tuned. Wednesday we’ll be publishing the next part in our series looking back at our first year online.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)
Abigail’s heart was a jackhammer, banging against the silent walls of the unlit car still cloaked amongst the shadows. She watched helplessly as chaos exploded across the street, the gun quivering in her hand as her left knee bounced madly.

She watched as John attacked a soldier, sinking his teeth into his throat and then leaving the man a burned heap. Abigail sat paralyzed, horrified and fascinated all at once. Though she’d seen the aftermath of John’s feeding, this was the first time she’d actually seen … it.

Pain crawled up her throat as her eyes fought back tears. For the first time, Abigail was not only afraid for John, but seeing his unbridled glee for the feast, some part of her was afraid of him.

The gun in her hand suddenly felt powerless against the narrow-eyed juggernaut of fate.

_______________

Brock was now 40 yards behind the girl in the car. He lowered the night vision goggles on his mask, confirming she was indeed alone, her attention bolted on the old motel. Brock bit his lower lip, flipped up the goggles and crept slowly towards the car.

____________________

John stood over the two corpses, invigorated and oddly … euphoric. His hungry eyes wandered the parking lot for a second before his ears pricked to the sound of a few gunmen approaching from behind. He lifted his hands in the air and slowly turned around, a predatory smile spreading on his face. John threw his head back and quietly dared them as if he, not them with their assault rifles and deadeye aim, held all the cards.

“I’ll give you the same chance as the others,” he leaned forward and whispered, “run.”

One of the men barked into an unseen radio, “Alpha Seven to Alpha One, do you copy?”

The radio’s silence washed the man’s face in sudden worry. There was a small fissure in the cool of his voice when he repeated the call.

“He’s dead,” John said without emotion, though he had no idea if Alpha One was indeed one of the men he’d taken, one was named Sergei and the other Christian. Bits of their memories now intermingled with his own, a too-confusing brew that had yet to settle. “I killed him. And you’re next unless you run.”

Two of the men that flanked Alpha Seven stepped forward, one yelled, “Hands behind your head, drop down to the ground!”

Though part of John was still very afraid, there was something in him, a bloodlust, which thrust him forward without regard for his life. The gunmen’s bodies were so warm and appetizing. Their fear excited John, making their desire to take their lives even more intoxicating. Hunger, twisting like a dark parasite, coiled then expanded somewhere inside his guts. Wisps of blue and magenta aura surrounded the men, beckoning John to draw from their wells. His fingers tingled in anticipation.

John stepped forward, staring down Alpha Seven, almost daring the man to take a shot. The man refused to break his stare even as John stood just inches from him.

A shot rang out, and one of the two flankers was hit in the back of the neck and fell to the ground screaming. The remaining gunmen spun around, each facing a different direction, weapons aimed into the fading darkness, searching for the shooter. They both flicked down goggles on their masks but not in time. Two more shots rang out and the top half of Alpha Seven’s head disappeared in a splash of blood which missed John by a drop. The other man was hit in the leg and fell to the ground, still clutching his gun, and looking for the gunman.

Suddenly Larry appeared, climbing over the top of his van, which was turned on its side. He jumped down, rifle slung over his shoulder, hair as wild as the look in his eyes. Apparently John wasn’t the only one invigorated by death dealing.

“Hot damn, that was some shooting,” Larry said as he quickly ran forward, paused with a slight grin, then finished the two wounded gunmen with a pair of head shots.

John dropped quickly to the ground, laying hands on one of the men’s corpses to capture the last bit of life as it fled his body. The stream was different, weaker and not as satisfying as the others. It was also full of pain. John flinched as he felt the first gunshot which hit the man in the leg. He tried to pull away, but couldn’t break the connection as he continued to feed on the last of the man’s life, his memories and his pain. As the corpse burned, John continued to twitch, pain splintering his entire body.

He relived the man’s final moments, seeing through the dead man’s eyes. He saw Larry barreling towards him, gun drawn, aimed and…

An explosion went off in John’s mind as he jumped back from the corpse, broke the connection, pain twisting through his body as something else, far darker and lonelier wrapped itself around his mind. He felt himself falling into a void, his body finding velocity as it crashed towards an unknown doom.

Suddenly, a tether snapped him back to reality. Larry’s hand on his shoulder, his voice in his ear, “Hey buddy, you okay?”

John nodded. He was not okay. An overwhelming sense of doom had taken root in his head, pressing on him from outside and within. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible was going to happen.

“Abigail?” Larry said, looking up and past John.

“Where’s Abigail?” John asked, still groggy.

“Here,” a voice said from behind.

John turned to see one last gunman standing about 10 yards away, one hand gripping her shoulder tightly, the other holding a pistol dug into Abigail’s temple.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

You asked – we listened. Since so many of you have commented, emailed and tweeted demanding more than one chapter per week, we figured what better time than Halloween to serve up a double dose of Available Darkness? In case you missed Friday’s chapter, go back and read that first.

And all we ask in return is that you help us promote Available Darkness – especially for Halloween weekend, when people might be looking for a good scary read. Please tweet, email, or just tell a friend. And for all you new readers, or shy ones, we’d love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment or email us and let us know what you think.

And lastly, a sneak peek at the book cover below.

Brock’s squad flanked the dingy doorway of the motel room. Two agents were stationed in the back of the old inn, though the only exit was a small bathroom window.

According to Jacob, their target, the feeder named John, was in a straight jacket and not likely to be much of a threat. Still, in Brock’s experience, you could never be too prepared. His men were each armed with a satchel of flash bang and tear gas grenades that would neutralize without killing. They were also equipped with M4A1 carbines to deal with anybody else that got in their way.

______________

John cursed the jacket that was keeping him prisoner.

He could feel the presence of the men surrounding the motel room, like a blind man sensing someone at the edges of his space. He could even hear some of them, anxious breaths and quickened heartbeats, though much of what he heard was lost in the din of his own internal cacophony of panic, anger and hunger, damn, the hunger!

He saw in the monitors that they were armed to the teeth, each man in black equipped with their own series of guns. While he had healed from the earlier gunshot, he wasn’t sure how he would stand up to a hail storm of bullets. Perhaps he had a weak spot. If you could kill movie vampires with a stake through the heart or by chopping their heads off, perhaps he had a similar frailty? He already shared at least one Achilles heal with his fictional brethren, sunlight. So why not the others?

John suddenly realized that most of the gunmen were positioned just outside the hotel room which he entered. Not the adjoining room where he now was. He clumsily rose to his feet, though his upper body was completely restricted by the jacket, and raced to the door separating the two rooms. He pushed the door closed with his shoulder and sealed himself off in the secondary room, where all the monitors were. Unfortunately, the doorway between the rooms had two doors – one on each side, and he had no way of closing the other door. Certainly someone would notice the door and then storm the adjoining room. At best, he was buying himself a few seconds. A few seconds to do what, he didn’t know, but a few seconds, nonetheless.

______________

“Come on,” Abigail said from the back seat. She was nervously watching the monitor as the small army assembled outside the motel room, large weapons raised and collectively aimed at the door.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Larry snapped, and indeed he was pressing the van to its limits. The speedometer was past the 100 mph listed on the dashboard and the entire van shook as if the sheer force of unreasonable speed might shred it to ribbons. While the van was deceptively well built and maintained, it was never meant for such ridiculous speeds. There was only so much Larry could do with a vehicle like this. Fortunately, they hadn’t strayed too far from the motel and were now only a few minutes away.

Larry hoped that would be enough time.

___________________

The doors burst open in a riot of sound, smoke and light. Masked soldiers stormed the next room. John tried to suss out the noises and his senses, to get an idea of how many of the men were still outside the motel. At least six, he sensed. One man in a straight jacket against six soldiers. They weren’t good odds, but it was as good as it was gonna get.

John ran as fast and as hard as he could, sending his shoulders into the doorway that led outside, in hopes of launching the door open and running into the night. Instead, he slammed into the immovable door and fell to a painful heap on the floor. Only then did he realized that the door opened inward, not out.

“Fuck!” he cried out, on the ground and writhing in pain.

The door separating the rooms burst open and smoke began to pour inside, choking John and burning his eyes as though they were rinsed in fire.

He could hear the echo of boots against hard wood around him. He knew he was surrounded, though he couldn’t open his eyes to verify.

Suddenly, two hands yanked him from behind and pulled him up by the back of the jacket. Something sharp poked his head – a gun barrel.

“Walk,” a voice, muffled by a mask, barked in his ear.

John obeyed, not that he had a choice. He was aching and hungry, and still couldn’t focus on a single clear thought. His instincts prodded him like a tiny million needles, directives to run, jump, bite, and even fly. The whispered counsel from his inner voice was slowly rising to a scream, but he couldn’t harness his thoughts long enough to formulate a plan. It took all his focused energy just to stay upright and stop himself from melting into a puddle of impotence. Hunger twisted in his gut and he could feel the warmth of the bodies around him, begging him to feed on them. Even if he could break free his restraints, the gunmen would never give him a chance, he knew. They held him from behind, gun to his head as they marched him out of the motel room and into the last moments of night, to God knows what.

__________________

Larry killed the lights as he coasted into the parking lot across the street from the motel. He watched as the men marched John out at gunpoint.

“Do something!” Abigail cried.

“Get out of the van,” Larry commanded.

“No, I want to…”

Larry turned back to her and yelled, his face twisted in anger, “Get out!”

She looked him in the eyes. He was dead serious. Whatever he was going to do, he was trying to protect her. She climbed past him, into the front seat and opened her door.

“Run like hell and if anyone tries to stop you, shoot them in the head,” Larry said. “Remember, turn your safety off.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head and jumping down to the ground.

Larry gunned the engine and raced towards the motel.

______________

Brock watched as his men marched John out. He was much weaker looking than Brock would have guessed for a man who had caused so much havoc in the past 48 hours.

He approached John, keeping a safe distance.

“It’s okay, John. We’re going to take you home. You no longer have anything to fear.”

A roar of an engine erupted behind them. Brock looked up as a van careened straight at them. His men drew their weapons and fired at the approaching danger.

___________________

“Yee-haw, motherfuckers!” Larry screamed out, surprisingly giddy and laughing as he barreled forward.

Bullets pierced the window, ripped into the chair where Abigail had been, but missed Larry entirely. With just a few yards to go, he turned the wheel left, aiming not at John, but at the handful of men just behind him.

The van struck them with a sickening thud, then rolled over them, thumping as Larry slammed on the breaks. The van screeched then lost its balance, tumbling over twice and sliding to a crashing halt into the motel.

_____________________

John opened his eyes in a painful blur just in time to see a van careening straight toward them. The van slammed into the men behind him and the momentum sent him forward, into one of the gunmen.

Instinct took over, John’s eyes shot open wide, his jaw snapped open and he bit down hard on the man’s neck and jerked, ripping flesh and blood away in one animalistic surge. They fell to the ground hard, the man screaming and flailing as John dug in deeper like a dog refusing to loosen its grip. Blood rushed into his mouth and then, as his jaw locked tighter around the man‘s neck, the current of energy began to course through and into John.

John inhaled deeply, his eyes rolling back into his head as he felt a pleasant wave pulse through his body. All at once, the panic, pain and hunger which had been coursing through him eased, replaced with a calmness even as chaos continued to erupt around them. For that moment, even as the van screeched and flipped over before slamming into the hotel, even as the remaining gunmen screamed and fired their weapons at John, there was nothing else but John and the life force he was drinking in fully.

One of the men screamed “hold your fire” repeatedly. However, bullets continued to rip into John’s back, legs and arms. Only when a bullet hit his shoulder, did some part of him consider the danger of a head shot.

John looked down at the withered corpse beneath him, paused for a moment, and then lifted his gaze at the remaining men in black – four of them.

They stopped firing, standing back. One man’s weapon shook in his hands.

John looked down at the jacket, concentrated on the belts and buckles which fastened his arms together. All at once, they unfastened and he began to wriggle free.

Neat, if only I could’ve done that 10 minutes ago.

“Holy shit!” one of the men said and fired a shot which slammed into John’s chest.

John fell back and to his feet, his chest stinging as he gasped for breath. He glared up, then leaped at the man who shot him, so fast that none of the men could do a thing, and his hands found the man’s skin beneath the mask.

“Oh God no!” the man blurted out with his dying gasps. John turned and glared at the three remaining men and barked, “Run!”

They did.

________________________

Brock watched as John fed on his soldiers. What the fuck happened? He took cover behind one of the vans the minute shit went south.

He wanted to call Jacob and ask him what to do, but was afraid to disappoint his boss. He knew all too well what happened when people let Jacob down. While Jacob was not a strong man, he was not without his resources. Those he didn’t kill, always wished themselves dead soon enough. Brock could not return without John.

As he contemplated his next course of action, he saw her. The girl that he and his squad had kidnapped earlier. She was sitting in a car across the street, head peeking out over the dashboard. While she was seemingly staring straight at him, her eyes were more likely fastened on the action. Brock decided to move from his spot so he could circle around and take her from behind.

John might out power him, but Brock would be damned if the freak would outsmart him.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

You asked – we listened. Since so many of you have commented, emailed and tweeted demanding more than one chapter per week, we figured what better time than Halloween to serve up a double dose of Available Darkness? Come back on Saturday for the bonus chapter, which is practically as long as two chapters, so it’s almost like we’re doing three chapters this week!

And all we ask in return is that you help us promote Available Darkness – especially for Halloween weekend, when people might be looking for a good scary read. Please tweet, email, or just tell a friend. And for all you new readers, or shy ones, we’d love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment or email us and let us know what you think.

And lastly, a sneak peek at the book cover below.

Abigail!

John filled the empty room with his hoarse voice but the only thing that returned was the sound of his own dull echo. Where the hell are they?

Pain hammered against his skull as a ravenous feeling of need burned through his entire body. The deep yearning felt somewhere close to hunger, but more insatiable and far less reasonable; clouding the edges of every thought. He HAD to get out now. Had to … feed.

For the second time in as many days, he woke up confined. This time by a jacket rather than a grave. John would have gladly taken the tomb instead.

He writhed and squirmed, trying to free his arms from the goddamned prison of fabric and buckles, but the constant motion only seemed to tangle him further. Panic and rage flooded his senses like a shot of adrenaline as he shook his entire body in a vain attempt at escape.

“Damnit!” he screamed, spittle raining from his mouth.

“What did you do to me?!” he bellowed to the empty rooms, hoping that bastard Larry was within earshot.

He began breathing faster and more shallow as panic needled his brain, whispering that he would die right here in this spot if he did not break free RIGHT NOW.

He shook again, this time kicking his feet into the floor and sending his chair flying back into the wall. His head bounced against the drywall with a dull thud.

“Fuck!” he screamed.

Where were Abigail and Larry? With a flare of anger, John vowed to tear Larry to shreds if he’d done anything to harm the girl. Then, he had an idea – he could try to connect to Abigail. Perhaps if he could concentrate long enough he would be able to sense her, to at least know if she was okay. His mind, however, was a tumultuous mix of panic, pain, and hunger, flashing through each phase with equal intensity, making slow, deliberate thought all but impossible.

He glared up at the monitors, showing the news – still – of him. Isn’t there anything else happening in the fucking world?

Two of the monitors weren’t displaying news. They were closed circuit monitors, one which showed the parking lot of the motel and the other which showed what John presumed to be the rear of the building. From his viewpoint, he could see the entire parking lot. Larry’s van was missing.

It’s okay, they’ll be back … no, they fucking left and you know it … you’re going to die right here. They left you to die. He and Abigail left you alone. To die.

John closed his eyes, trying to shake the anger from his thoughts. It worked, even if only temporarily. He found himself thinking of Hope and the dream, and suddenly, he was awash in the emotions that he woke to, sadness and misery. John could feel tears wanting to burst from his eyes, but his face seemed frozen, taut, like it was going to crack from the pressure building within.

Suddenly, a beeping sound.

John glanced up and the two closed circuit monitors had red bars along the bottom which read “ALERT.”

That’s when John saw four black vans pull into the parking lot. Panic returned to seize control of his senses. He began to writhe again in his jacket in another attempt to squirm free.

____________________

The newspapers were full of people who needed to die; corrupt politicians whose actions indirectly led to the deaths to their constituents, unscrupulous businessmen who took ungodly sums of money while robbing the pensions of their employees, to the hundreds of people who beat, robbed and raped those weaker than themselves.

A world of wolves fat with prey.

Though there was no shortage of people who would enhance the world in their absence, people who deserved a verdict harsher than that which the dubious legal system would impose, there were none which were both local and within easy reach. A shame really, because Larry, now that he had given it some thought, rather liked the idea of vigilantism by vampire. But justice, it seemed, would have to wait. This morning, they might have to be the very wolves who preyed on the weak and innocent.

“I wish I were a vampire,” Abigail said, tossing the paper to the floor, “I would just roam the night, helping people and killing bad guys.”

“That would be cool,” Larry said. “Though I don’t think you’d enjoy the loneliness of such an existence.”

A chorus of beeping abruptly rang through the cabin. The alarm he’d set up at the motel began its cry on his cell phone.

“Shit,” he said, awkwardly scrambling toward the back of the van.

On the monitor, he could see the four vans which had breached the motel’s parking lot.

Abigail was behind him. “What’s happening?”

“John has company,” he said as he bolted back to the front seat and gunned the engine. “We need to get back there now.”

Staring at the monitors, Abigail stumbled forward to the floorboard and rolled into the back of the passenger bucket seat as Larry kicked the van into motion. She sat up, holding tight to the back of the seat.

“Who are they?”

“It’s either the good guys or the bad guys,” Larry said, “my money’s on the bad guys.”

“What do you mean?”

There are two different groups of people who want something John has, Larry explained. Something he doesn’t even know he has.

“What is it?”

“A memory both sides want,” Larry said.

“So why doesn’t he give it to the good guys?”

“Because,” Larry explained in as simple as terms as he could, “the good guys aren’t necessarily the ‘good guys.’ They’re just a little better than the bad guys.” Larry shrugged. “And maybe worse. The bad guys only want the information, but the good guys want to prevent the bad guys from getting it. And the only way to really do that is to kill John.”

Abigail turned back to the monitors and watched as the van doors opened and a small army of men spilled from the aperture with weapons drawn. She cried out.

“They’ve got an army,” she cried out.

“How many are there?”

Abigail counted, “I see 12.”

“Fuck,” Larry cursed as he raced down the highway, hoping he could reach the motel in time.

TO BE CONTINUED… TOMORROW

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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Yes, I’m still running far, far behind and this week probably won’t help much since I’m heading to the 140 Character Conference on Twitter in Los Angeles on Tuesday and Wednesday.

However, I know you are curious about the happenings in Vegas and I am eager to share. For the sake of both brevity and clearly tending to your curiosity, I will be answering every question asked in the comments Monday and Tuesday for a post to be published on Wednesday.

I’m doing the same thing over at Writer Dad, so feel free to jump over there if your question is more personal than professional.

Thanks!

Sean

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

“How about that one?” Larry waved his finger at an old man slowly peddling an ancient-looking 10-speed in the dark, likely on his way to a job that had been swallowing his soul one sip at a time. Two plastic grocery bags dangled from the handlebars, heavy with a cheap prepared lunch or perhaps pages to turn while whittling away a break.

“No,” Abigail said, sitting beside Larry in the van, clearly uncomfortable.

They were parked beside two other cars, both broken down by the looks of it, at the far end of a gas station/convenience store still about an hour away from lighting its canopy. From their position, they could see the station and a small strip plaza, which was also not yet open. They’d hoped to find some wayward soul up to no good.

Unlike Larry’s disastrous motel headquarters, the van was immaculately clean and well organized, despite its outer appearance. Along one wall of the van stood a built-in table with a few monitors and onboard computers and a chair. The opposite wall held a long row of dark heavy duty plastic totes which drew Abigail’s curiosity, though she’d refrained from asking about their contents.

Larry had allowed Abigail to continue holding the gun, while also giving her a quick lesson in aim and handling. He had both a .45 of his own and a stun gun, which he was ready to use as soon as they found the right person to accompany them back to the motel.

They’d been sitting in the parking lot for nearly 20 minutes, but the bicyclist was only the second person they’d seen. The first had been a heavyset woman in her late 40’s, out for an early morning run. Considering that the nearest residential area was at least a mile away, Larry suspected she was on her way to the all night doughnut shop a bit further up the road. Abigail had cast a vote against her as well. Fortunately for the jogger, the wages of sin by way of donuts was not worthy of execution via vampire.

Abigail had hoped this would be easier, half expecting they’d catch someone committing some sort of heinous sin that she and Larry could stop in the nick of time, knocking the bad guy cold and bringing him back for John to feed on. Unfortunately, there was never a bad guy around when you needed one.

“We’re gonna need to find someone soon,” Larry said.

“Fine, but not him,” Abigail said pointing at the old man as he slowly faded from one patch of light on the deserted highway and into darkness.

“It’s okay,” Larry said, “He’s too old anyway. He probably wouldn’t have done much to quench John’s hunger. Younger people have a lot more life force to feed on.”

“So,” Abigail said, “I’d be an ideal meal, then?”

Larry wasn’t sure if she were making a dark joke or verbalizing her fear.

“Yeah,” he agreed, matter-of-factly.

Abigail swallowed the knot in her throat.

“I don’t suppose you know anyone around here who needs to die, do you?” Larry asked, “Maybe an old boyfriend who pissed you off?”

“Boyfriends?” Abigail laughed.

A pair of headlights swirled into view and grabbed their attention, as a white van rolled into the station and idled beside one of the station’s doors. A short man hopped out, tufts of brown and gray hair curling around his balding dome. He wore khaki knee-length shorts and a faded yellow tee shirt with black spots peppering the front. He slid his van’s side door open, retrieved a bundle of newspapers, then dropped the pile next to the gas station doorway.

Abigail and Larry exchanged glances.

“Too high profile,” Larry said, “he’d be reported missing before the hour was up, soon as the cops at the donut shop down the street realize their coffees are cold and they don’t have their papers yet.”

“No,” Abigail said, “I don’t want to take him. I have an idea. Can you give me some money?”

“For a paper?” Larry shook his head. “No way, missy. You’re picture is all over page 1 A, I can guarantee you that. That dude gets one look at you and the cops will be here in minutes. We wait until he leaves.”

“Oh yeah,” she said with a frown. She began tapping her feet on the floorboard and Larry rolled his eyes. Kids.

The delivery man left and Larry sprinted to the station, grabbed two papers and returned to the van.

“Okay, what’s your big idea?”

Abigail was frozen, the pictures on the front page sending a chill through her body. One clearly showed her wide eyed terror as she stood by the side of the freeway, the other far more blurry shot had been snapped just as John was moving from one victim to the next.

“Earth to Abi,” Larry said, snapping his fingers, “what’s your idea?”

She shook the moment away and started to explain, “It’s like what you said before. Let’s find someone who really deserves to die. I mean, people do bad stuff all the time, right? And most of them don’t go to jail, I bet.”

Larry looked at her, wondering what kind of hell a kid goes through to become this jaded so early in life.

“Well, chances are good that if they’re in the paper, they’re probably in jail, or maybe hard to get to.”

Abigail glared, “You have a better idea?”

“Not really,” Larry said.

“Then let’s find someone who needs to die,” Abigail said, clenching her jaw and unfolding the paper across her lap.

__________

Four black vans with their lights off rolled out of the darkness and into the parking lot of the motel simultaneously, quiet save for the sound of tires crunching over debris on the littered pavement.

Squad leader Brock Tyler was anxious to get the ball rolling. “We’re here,” he radioed his boss. “It looks like he’s alone.”

“Good,” Jacob responded, “then go in and bring him home.”

Brock gave the command and at once, all the van doors slid open and 12 men in black paramilitary body armor prepared to descend onto John’s hotel room, weapons drawn.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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3. Available Darkness: Chapter 26 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...

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I’ve been running crazy behind for about a week now. If you can believe it, I actually talk work with me to Vegas and expected I’d get it done. I guess that’s a little like taking a brown bag lunch to a buffet.

I haven’t had time to write, but I did want to connect. I’ll be laying down my thoughts on Vegas soon. Dave and I have a more definitive direction planned for the Inkwell, though we’ll be sticking with the same pretty decor!

What’s Going Down at the Inkwell from Sean Platt on Vimeo.

Enjoy the video and we’ll see you soon!

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

Jack Baldwin woke with the embers of the dark creature’s eyes still singed in his memory.

He glanced at the clock – the scant hour of sleep seemed to have hollowed his bones. His head pounded as he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind. He stumbled into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and cradled his head in his hands as he emptied his bladder. The lights were off, but Jack could do nothing about the bright that spilled into the memory of his sleep.

That wasn’t a dream.

The thought sent a chill down his spine. As the images continued to loop, they felt less and less like the sequences of a dream and more and more like a forgotten memory.

A buried memory.

A terrible itch raged from the deepest recesses of his brain. Jack approached the bed and collapsed on top of the sheets, eager to return to the dream, turning the pieces of the puzzle and trying to make sense of all he saw.

Baldwin’s memories of his early childhood were fuzzy at best. The only things he could recall with any clarity didn’t come until after his birth parents were killed in a car accident and he was adopted by Ed and Myriam Baldwin. He vaguely remembered his birth father, though certainly not as the abusive man who haunted the dream. His mom was even more of a mystery. Suddenly, perhaps for the first time in decades, he wondered why he had not held on tighter to those memories. They were his parents, after all. A wave of guilt washed over him.

He beat the hell out of you.

Baldwin shuddered as vague memories bubbled from somewhere deep down in the recesses of his mind.

He saw his birth father, a balding, working class man with a paunch and a horrible glare. As if prodded by the dream, memories surfaced. Whatever version of his father he had been carrying with him was now revealed to be false. Baldwin remembered the man’s hateful gaze on him, judging him for one reason or another, always shaking his head in disgust. He tried to pull more memories from the well, but it had run dry. He awoke.

He stared at the ceiling, then leaped up and yanked the cord to turn the ceiling fan on. He downed another two pills and fell back into bed and stared as the blades made their orbit. He often found that if he allowed his focus of the blades to soften until the individual blades blurred into one singular shape, sleep would descend upon him. He had nowhere to be tomorrow and would stay in bed all day if necessary, in hopes of unlocking whatever memories were waiting to be found.

____________________

John woke to darkness. The last thing he could remember was looking up at Abigail. He was now lying nude in a bed covered by cool silk sheets. Upon remembering Abigail, he tried to leap from the bed and call out to her. His body refused to cooperate. Panic seized for a second, until a voice called out.

“How long are you gonna be?”

After a moment, he realized it was his own voice, though he had not spoken the words, but rather this dream self had. Suddenly, and without thinking it into action, John rolled over in the bed and glanced at the light bleeding from beneath a door.

“Hold your horses,” a woman’s voice.

Hope!

He tried to get up, but instead found his hand reaching down to coax himself to readiness.

Though he was seeing through his own eyes and could feel the coolness of the sheet, and smell the scent of… what was that, jasmine? … he was simply a passenger in his own body, another John, in this dream which was most likely a memory, was in full control.

“You promise not to laugh?” she asked again, from the other side of the door.

“Scout’s honor,” he said and crossed his heart, though she wasn’t there to see it.

“If you laugh, I’m NEVER doing this again,” she warned, in a slightly serious voice, edged with the laughter he loved. “And this will be the last birthday gift you ever get.”

The door opened, and there she stood, her milky white skin bathed in the soft blue glow of moonlight pouring through the open curtains. Hope, just as she appeared in the gift of memory given by Abigail, though even more beautiful. And less dressed.

She wore a black and white maid’s uniform, the sexy kind you’d find in a costume shop or adult catalog.

A strong sense of deja vu flooded John’s brain. A swarm of memories rushed him. He remembered looking at the outfit with Hope at a costume shop a few months prior to that night. He joked that he’d like to see her in the uniform. She must’ve taken him seriously and decided to feed into his fantasy. Another memory, this one from earlier that night – they were out to dinner when she whispered in his ear, “I have something special for your birthday.”  He was excited and curious. Hope wasn’t overtly sexual. Her charms were more subtle, though no less intoxicating.

Suddenly, John began to remember more about the woman he loved. Her love of painting, how she always carried a book with her, her attempts to play cello, how her nose crinkled when she laughed, and how she got super silly when she consumed even the smallest amount of alcohol. John the passenger smiled, even if his dream self didn’t, at these recollections.

He looked at Hope with a renewed sense of longing. He wanted to reach out and touch her, hold her and hug her and never let her go. If he could feel her, perhaps he could somehow wake in that moment and never return to the nightmare that had recently become his life. She was right there, so real he could smell her skin. He desperately wanted the dream John to reach out and touch her and prayed that the senses he was experiencing as a passenger would extend to touch.

“Wow,” he said, looking at her.

She stared back. “Happy birthday,” she said in a huskier-than-normal voice, slowly moving towards the bed.

The dream John laughed.

Passenger John wanted to reach through and strangle his past self. Don’t laugh, you ass!

Hope’s eyes widened as she pulled back, hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he pleaded, “I’m sorry.”

He reached out to touch her but she pulled away, standing just out of reach. “I knew I shouldn’t of done this!”

“No, no, no,” John said, standing up, awkwardly aware of his erection, “I’m not laughing at you.”

She looked up, wounded eyes peeking from beneath her dark auburn shelf of bangs. “Then what’s so funny?”

He stammered, trying to find a way to explain what he was thinking. The passenger John could hear the flood of thoughts echoing in his head, crossing over his own.

“You just surprised me,” he said in the desperate tones of a man who was accidentally honest when asked by his wife if an outfit made her look fat, “that’s all.”

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” she said, looking down and covering her breasts.

“No, you look absolutely beautiful.” Passenger John felt as if he were also speaking, a simultaneous echo of his faded self.

He felt like such an ass for laughing. Of course he found her sexy, didn’t she know it by now? She was such a strong and confident woman and rarely showed such frailty. How could she not know? She looked up and their eyes met. He held her gaze. Hours of conversation passed without a word. He stood up and seemed to be instantly beside her, longing to be inside her.

“I was just surprised, it would be like if I dressed up like a … I dunno, one of those Chippendale dancers or something,” he said, laughing, “Sure, I’d be sexy as all hell, but you’d be surprised.”

She laughed, “So modest,” she said, the smile returning to widen her face. “You sure that I don’t look stupid?”

He reached out, “Come here.”

And they touched.

As he wrapped his arms around her and their bodies blended, passenger John felt the warmth of their embrace. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to touch another. His fingers caressed her hair and traced the arch of her back as he pulled her tightly to him. His hunger to touch her, to feel her, to explore every inch of her body was fed insatiably by the dream self as he began to kiss the small of her neck, downward, to her breasts and then back up, licking her lips before their mouths locked. Their eyes closed and for a moment there was only darkness and the sense of touch, the glorious warmth of their fingertips exploring each other’s bodies.

If his recent hours had been hell, this was nothing short of heaven.

While kissing, he opened his eyes, and found she was looking at him. The passenger John felt his heart leap, in hopes that she was recognizing him, not only there in that moment in the bedroom, but also the him that was passed out in a motel room somewhere. He wanted to ask if she could see him, but his dream body would not cooperate. Their eyes locked and he was certain that somehow, if he just knew how, he could find a connection, somehow find a way to her in the present. Failing that, he was prepared to live forever in this moment.

“Fuck me,” she said as her hands slid down to his cock.

This time, John didn’t laugh.

She pushed him gently down to the bed and he fell. And he kept falling.

John awoke back in the motel room. His body and heart were equally broken.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

Baldwin stumbled through the doorway and into his darkened house; a cavernous hollow in the deep dead of night. It was close to dawn and he was exhausted. While Bob waved the carrot of promotion, he’d not been nearly as forthcoming with details as Baldwin would’ve liked. There was a process, Bob said, which would be starting soon – though not until this case was officially closed. In other words, if Baldwin wanted to know everything, he had to catch the killer he was already hunting.

Baldwin wasn’t sure why Bob had bothered to call the meeting. Sure he filled him in with some sensitive details – that he was in fact hunting something not human. A pretty big fucking deal, no doubt. But something wasn’t adding up. Why withhold other pertinent information? Why promise him a promotion he wasn’t bucking for? Bob was putting the squeeze on him, a gentle one, but a squeeze nonetheless. But why? It wasn’t as if he needed more motivation than catching the man who murdered his wife.

Five minutes from Bob’s estate, Baldwin called his second in charge and said he’d be out of commission for the day. Not exactly the best way to kick the investigation into overdrive, but it had to be done. He was falling apart and needed time to mend, a few hours to do nothing but lower his lids and surrender to the dark.

He fell into bed, not even bothering to get undressed, reached into his pants pocket and retrieved the only tether he had to peace of mind. The pills that made all his thoughts disappear… at least for a little while.

Jack Baldwin quickly fell into a peaceful slumber, a blissful smile on his face.

_______________

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Larry said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Killing someone isn’t a big deal?” Abigail asked, not quite believing what she was hearing. They’d been debating his proposal for nearly half an hour already.

“It’s no different than feeding a snake. Sure, you don’t want to kill the mice or rats because they’re cute, but you know if you don’t put the cute and fuzzies in the tank, your snake is going to die. Same thing here, we just need to bring someone here for when John gets hungry.”

“I don’t like snakes,” Abigail said, her arms crossed, “and people aren’t rats.”

“Apparently, we don’t hang in the same circles,” Larry joked, but the joke fell flat; Abigail giving him the silent treatment.

Finally, she said, “There has to be another way.”

Larry suddenly rushed Abigail, wrapped his arms around her from behind, closed his hands over hers and pulled the gun up, aiming it straight at John’s head.

“No!” she screamed, tears flooding her eyes as she tried to free herself from Larry’s sudden grip.

“This is the only other way,” Larry whispered in a soothing voice that seemed at odds with his quick, abrasive actions. “If you want John to die, then pull the trigger now so he doesn’t suffer.”

Abigail trembled, unable to say anything, as she looked at her angel’s face, so calm and peaceful. His eyes moved again under their lids and she wondered again what dreams he was dreaming and if, perhaps, she was in them?

_________________

The boy clutched his pillow tightly as the shadow in the corner subtly shifted, dark charcoal barely outlined against the inky black backdrop.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” the shadow said, its voice strained and fragile as if it were made of fibers which might crumble to nothing in the slightest of breezes. Despite the voice’s brittle quality, the shadow seemed to exude an incredible force of undiluted strength, which gathered in his room like a slowly churning funnel cloud, absorbing every available shadow and casting itself into an impossible shroud of darkness.

“Wh.. What?” was all the boy could manage.

Downstairs, his father piped up again, screaming incoherent curses at the boy’s mom.

The shadow’s head, if it indeed had one, spun quickly towards the boy’s bedroom door.

“Ah, father is quite mad tonight, eh?”

The boy’s bottom lip trembled as the shadow swirled even faster, as if gathering a solid mass of twisted knots of sinew, forming into something.

“You … won’t need to … worry any long … er,” the voice said. The shadow man drifted towards the doorway, shadows trailing him along the walls, floor and ceiling like floating streamers tied to an automobile.

“No!” the boy cried out, “don’t…”

The shadow stopped and turned, fixing its eyes, if it had such things, on the boy.

“Surely … you want him to stop … hurting you … yes?” it asked.

A million thoughts raced through the boy’s mind – what was this thing? Why did it apologize for being so late? Was it The Devil who had come to answer his many silent prayers for his father’s death? The boy was awash in guilt, fear and confusion. The monster waited, its shadows swirling around it like wisps of inky smoke caught in a holding pattern … waiting for the boy to give the command.

“It can … all … be … over,” the thing said, its voice seemingly weaker, giving the boy the impression that if he didn’t act now, this thing, whatever it was, would go away forever.

“You stupid cunt!” his father screamed, followed by a sickening thump of his fist on the boy’s mother.

Now or never.

“Kill him,” the boy said, his eyes suddenly steel marbles of clarity and conviction.

The monster flew from the room, its form tightening into an ever more human shape until the boy could clearly make out the features of a face, and two, impossibly blue eyes. It turned to the boy, the shadows of its face rising in a smile.

“You w … won‘t regret this … Jack.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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