Face-Lift 38

Guess the Plot

Canaan Mountain

1. Rapper T-Rex moved to remote country where he thought the few residents were too caught up in their own eccentricities to notice him. He thought wrong.

2. A city girl gives up her publishing career and moves to the mountains of Tennessee to live with a hillbilly she met in an online chat room.

3. No one has ever come back alive from Canaan Mountain. Is The Creature in the Cave responsible? Or is that merely legend? Big Tom aims to find out once and for all tonight.

4. It was once known as Canaan Valley, second to Death Valley as the lowest spot on the continent. Then it was turned into a landfill. Now it's second to Mount McKinley.

5. Strip miners set up shop to ravage Canaan Mountain, but the tables are turned when it proves to be a live volcano.

6. Ghosts from the Civil War haunt the Canaan Mountain Retirement Center. And they want vengeance.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Canaan Mountain Retirement Center lays nestled in the hills of western North Carolina, a region where religion and nature are as interlocked as tobacco and paper. [Evil Editor is not crazy about this analogy. Some tobacco is wrapped in paper, true, but are they interlocked? One is rolled up inside the other, like sausage in a membrane. Of course it would be rather cumbersome to say, Religion and nature are as interlocked as two adjacent pieces of a completed jigsaw puzzle. Fortunately, the Evil Minions are nothing if not creative, so Evil Editor is giving them a limited time to submit conclusions to the phrase, "Where religion and nature are as interlocked as . . . " Evil Editor will gather the better ones into one post, so we all don't have to read 30 comments in search of the wittiest analogy. Of course this means there can't be a revised version, but at least we should end up with a better first sentence, which is three fourths of the battle.] In this setting, a group of characters meet and find a battle between good and evil still exists. Each of these characters finds themselves on their own personal journey.

Jack Heydon yearns to find his family. Chandler Heydon wants to find himself. Parker Heydon is trying to find his grandfather. [Are you sure this is a retirement center, and not a hedge maze?] [I think I can help Jack with his quest to find his family: Chandler and Parker, maybe? Hello?] Adam Cobalt looks to satisfy his greed. Ghosts from the Civil War haunt the center and they are looking for vengeance. [Shouldn't they be haunting a retirement center in the North if they want vengeance? Assuming there are any 160-year-old Yankee Civil War veterans to haunt.] [Wait, they could haunt the New York Yankees! No, seriously, Evil Editor is on to something here. Southern zombie Civil War vets want revenge against the Yankees, and discover the only Yankees left are the Bronx Bombers. This could be hilarious.] [If one of the Evil Minions decides to write this novel, Evil Editor wants an acknowledgment in the book, and half the take on the film rights.]

Jack, who cannot walk or speak, knows something is wrong. [For one thing, he cannot walk or speak.] The problem lies within the mind of Adam, a nursing home worker slowly turning mad as the demons from the Civil War haunt him. [Slowly turning mad? Let's face it, he's long gone.] Fifteen-year-old Parker is the only other person who knows something is wrong and who can save his grandfather. [Save his grandfather? You said he couldn't even find his grandfather.] He enlists the help of a handicapped friend. The two boys save Jack. [From what?]

But there is a cost.

I am a writer living in Chattanooga, Tenn. and have currently finished writing a novel called Canaan Mountain. The novel is part horror, part suspense and part thriller. It is a little more than 85,000 words long. I am a newspaper reporter, by trade. In June, I will be published in the online dark fiction magazine Dark Reveries. I have published short stories in the online fiction magazines The Dead Mule: School of Southern Literature and The Half Drunk Muse. [Credits can be helpful, even when an editor has never heard of them, as long as they have impressive-sounding names. The Dead Mule and The Half-Drunk Muse, might be better left out.] I have been named a poet of the week on Poetry Super Highway. The strength in my writing lies in interesting characters and a strong story driven by suspense and plot. Even though I'm a horror writer, gore and blood are secondary. The story and the characters drive my writing. I am currently working on a second novel [in which Greek nursing home residents are attacked by dead Pelopponesian War soldiers.]

I look forward to speaking to you further about my novel. I can be reached at (insert e-mail address) or you can call me at (insert phone number). [Or you may return the enclosed SASE (insert form rejection slip.)]

Sincerely,


Notes

This hedge maze looks cool.