All posts tagged: Four Deep

Four Deep | An Excerpt

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{ 397-word excerpt } Three-thirty now.  He’s got the four of us waiting with our cocks in our hands, but since I’m responsible for this partnership I’m the one who’s going to get pissed on. At this hour with Mulligan’s now closed we’re lucky we haven’t seen any cops sweeping the parking lot.   I’m sure it’s just a matter time, though.  After another five minutes we finally see the rat bastard’s Monte Carlo pull into the parking lot, then next to my Ninety-Eight where we’re all leaning against it.  I notice he doesn’t switch off his engine. Considering the situation I can’t bother with pleasantries.  “Raleigh, you got our take?” The twitchy bastard hands over a black gym bag from his passenger seat.  “Yeah, it’s all there.” I give the bag to Bert as he hops back into my car so he can do a quick visual.  I bet no more than four seconds go by before he’s humming “mmhm” to himself, which isn’t good news.  “Raleigh, Raleigh, you’re short, man,” He finally says with …

Daybook 2 | Update Untitled

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I Got Nothing Firstly, I have no Workbook update to share this past week (or the past week before that) because, honestly, there wasn’t any of that kind of work done the past couple of weeks. Re-calibrating Like Garrus * Making some reconfigurations and changes here and abroad, and so things will be a little different here after that reconfiguration. Going to resurrect my old blog and reassign all my nonfiction writing over there and make Ruckerpedia the venue for my fiction writing and music. Or something like that. Gimme a week to tend to these . . . calibrations . . . and we’ll see what’s what. * Bonus geek points to those who get the Garrus Vakarian reference. Back In Briefs With my novel writing prospects in flux for the immediate future, I see no reason to avert my writing attention from short fiction. The novel stuff will likely have to wait at least until the darker, colder months arrive which is when I go into hibernation mode like a grizzly bear in the American wilds. If then, because it’s …

The Rucker Report: Week 16, 2015 – A State of Revision

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Most of my best writing occurs during the “Triple R” phase: re-writing, revision and refinement. I guess you could throw rereading in there too, but that’s a given. Ah, yes, the revision phase.  No matter how old the original draft was, the later draft will almost always be greatly improved. Howdy, y’all.  I am returned. So, yeah, I’m still in revisions with a handful of old stories.  I actually look forward to SMH moments when doing line-by-line revisions.  What can I say, I’m easily entertained.  What I find interesting about revising and refining old works is how often the Writer Me of Today vehemently disagrees with the Writer Me of Yesteryear.  Writer Me of Today is a great deal more picky and often dissatisfied with many initial word choices or turns of phrase.  Just as a point of distinction: The Writer Me of the 1990s had not yet read and reviewed hundreds of short stories in workshops, nor read, edited and selected for publication several dozen short stories for an online webzine, nor read, edited and …

Story Quote from “Four Deep”

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Well, last call’s come and gone. My guys are getting impatient, especially Bert who already thinks the jobs I find for us are bunk. And then there’s Percy with his delusions of grandeur, thinking we should be going Big Time, but the reality is we’re tiny fish in a large pond. We ain’t Italian or Russian, and none of us are connected, really, not to made guys anyways, so any mob work we get is going to be for scraps. That’s just how it is on the lower level. — Zane Mitchell in “Four Deep” Read the story here @ Dead Guns Press

“Four Deep” by Brandon L. Rucker @ Dead Guns Press

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Your after-hours reading may commence.  Published today (albeit a few days late) over on Dead Guns Press.com is my short story “Four Deep”. DGP specializes in modern crime stories written in the new era of pulp, and as a lover of all things crime fiction, I was happy to contribute to the site and am now honored to have my work featured there.  The story in question was originally written in 2010 as a workshop prompt involving time and the number four, from what I can remember. Naturally, I thought of these four scumbags: Zane Mitchell, Bert Simmons, Percy Collins and Tevin O’Brien as an easy reach to fulfill the number four. Add ‘just another night in the life of…’ approach and the rest is history. Mind you, it’s not your typical hardboiled crime story, which is evident by the fact that the editor at DGP (a fine and ultra-friendly British chap named Marcus Leon Smith, an author in his own right) was at a loss for finding a suitable image to accompany the piece (give’em time, …