A Good ol' Fright

Okay, I haven't written in this for a long time and I haven't posted any short stories. Many reasons for that and they all seem like excuses.

I disconnected my internet, its back on again but with another company. It's probably best not to go into details but, oh my god the nightmare!!!

But that's not really the excuse. I can always manage somehow to get writing on the internet.

I have actually written several short stories and afterwards none of them seemed good enough. A lot of my time has been taken up writing my new novel. It's a large novel and I'll write ten or fifteen thousand words and then burn out a little. I like it, it's harsh and dirty yet kind of humorous.

What I need is a good scare and I think I got it.

You see I write horror, well horrorish. I don't really classify myself as a writer because the theme on my work is really based only in one direction. Writers can diversify, I can't.

I think writers and horror writers should be two different occupations. You read memoirs from horror writers and they all talk about simular things and these things I can really relate to.

a) Suddenly finding for no good reason you have a whole novel in you that you were not aware of ten minutes ago.

b) Having a dream or nightmare that has a need to be placed down.

c) Feeling you are driven by something that has happened to you in the past.

It's all a bit more complex than that, sufficed to say that from what I've heard from other horror writers, their talent tends to stem from more a compulsion than anything else.

Thus I love to be scared.

I have a fear of aliens, in particular alien abduction.

There are nights when I cannot sleep, I've turned on all the lights, trying desperately to keep my cat close, clutching at one of my bears and all I can do is stare at the bedroom door.

I love those moments. I adore them.

Yes, and you did hear correct, I have a collection of teddy bears.

At the moment I'm covering for someone and doing the nightshift. I started at this job on the nightshift. It's what led me to write one of the novels that I hope one day everyone will be able to read.

That eeriness of being the only one in the dark building, it's like visiting an old friend.

In the silence my ears are always thinking they hear music, I can even hum along until I realise that there is no music, it's all in my head. Out of the corner of your eye in the darkness you catch a glimpse of a moving figure. I'm imagining it of course.

I love it.

The last week I got a little bonus.

Went out for a cigarette, there was a figure at the back door of the next building. I thought security guard, he turned to me and I thought opps, time to go back in.

I turned off all the lights and tossed through my mind calling the police. We are on level 1 so I looked down on where I'd seen him. He wasn't there, I though phew I don't have to call the police. Then I saw a man walking around and I wondered what I was looking at. I was looking at the reflection of our building on the windows of the building next door. The man was trying to break into the door I had just gone into. When I thought about it I rang the police. I mean the man saw me go through a door and then proceeded to follow and try to break down that door.

After I got off the phone from the police I decided to go downstairs and see if he was still there. I could not see him in the reflection anymore.

Went down stairs, looked out the door, looked out a window. I shrugged and turned to return to work. There he was standing there at the other back door, waiting, grinning at me.

Inside I got quite a fright but all I did was murmur, well that was quite a shock to myself and then moved on, quietly back upstairs. By the time the police did the rounds he was gone.

I was as happy as Larry, the look in the guys eyes, the grin and the way he just waited it was pure madness.

I'll at least get a short story out of it. I was hoping for a nightmare but you can't get everything you want.

Oh yes, that competition I entered the story abandon in will get judged in November.

Statistic Summary and Updates

Here are the statistics since I started to take statistics. The last peak on the graph was right after I put the last story on the site.

I'm hoping that means something.
I love looking at where all the dots are for each day.
I've also made some changes to the site. The image on the right now loads at random. At the moment I've loaded up four images for it. Refreshing the page or going to another page on the site will load up another image. Took me a hell of a while to work out how to do the JavaScript and html, especially with the sizing and positioning of the thing.
Opps, I almost forgot, I put a poll down at the bottom of the page where you can vote for your favorite story. I made my own vote for "Life and death as a Sitcom."
It came about when I told my mum that I did not think much of my new story, "Support Groups." She read it on the internet and liked it more than the others. I found it a little cruel, she found it funny. It's usually the other way around which I found odd. Well, odder than usual which makes it pretty darn odd!

I'm starting to like the way the site looks and feels. I'm glad I chose the Blogger site as a place to put my stories. I was thinking of buying webspace for the site but this looks a lot better I think. It's kind of a Blog I guess.

I've got to put some more stories up though. I've decided to steer clear of using this as a diary or some speech outlet. It'll only be story related. I'm still editing the one that I wrote before I wrote "Support Groups" and I have another one that I found on my hard drive that I kind of liked that I may put up.

Abandon.

I've written a short story called Abandon and I'm going to submit it to a short story competition in the UK. It's the best short story I've written and I'd love to put it on this site but cannot. Short Stories submitted to competitions cannot be published elsewhere including on Websites. :(

Comments

Hi, I was testing the comments fascility and it seems that I cannot delete comments once they are put forward. I've changed it so that I have to approve comments before publication.

I've also taken the comments function of the Stories themselves to make it seem neater. Please leave comments on the introduction to the story.

The Blinddust Collection Memories

I renamed the blog The Blinddust Collection. Over a decade ago I used to write only short stories. Now looking back on them I find them terrible.
I feel that I have grown now from then, even though I still have a long way to go.
Sometimes I read one and thinking nice idea. Sometimes I read one and thinking Omigod what was I thinking. Maybe in another ten years I'll look at my work now and think the same thing.
Anyway, over a decade ago I decided to publish and distribute these books. I had a distribution company that sent four seperate books all over the country. It was nice to walk into a bookstore in Melbourne, Sydney or Tasmania and see one or two of your books on the shelves.
The distributor eventually sold their business and I was dropped. I was at that stage realising that I still needed a lot of practice and I was kind of thankful.
All those short stories were great practice and it was nice to have the input from people that bought them or went to my readings.
The first book was called The Blinddust Collection and I always liked that title. So here you'll find it on top of the page.

I also bought http://www.blinddustcollection.com/ with my mum egging me on. I have a feeling she likes the name as well and wants me to do something with the millions of hours of work that I cannot help but keep doing. Hopefully the address will clear and I'll soon attach it to this page, or visa versa which ever is technically correct. I thought I'd attach an image from the first book. I drew it myself and remember really adoring it. I've made it negative so it sort of fits in with the page.

To all those people that bought those books I say thankyou and also sorry, I'll do better

What's in a name?

At the moment I will use my own name, it is my name after all.

I do wonder if I ever get a chance in the future to show my work to the world what name I should use?

Matt Cole's are a little in the multiple. It's an okay name, it's my name after all.

It has occured to me to swap them around and choose Cole Matthews. It sounds nice, Cole is a unique first name. I would love to use Molecat but, well it seems a little fake.

Introduction

Hey, My name is Matt Cole.
I work, I sleep, I eat just like everyone else.
I also write stories.
While I work my brain is going over stories.
While I eat I'm thinking of stories.
When I wake up each morning more often than not I will have anywhere between one and ten stories in my head. Sometimes I'll wake up frightened.
See most of the time they are horror stories.
These days I try and turn them into novels, a few short stories filter through occassionally.

I think this may be the place to put those short stories.
Unlike my novels they are not all horror. I also have to state that the stories choose me, I don't choose the stories. They may not reflect my ideas and my views, I'm just the messenger.
I don't know how it works completely, I just type the damn things.