Tone – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

Foreshadowing

I recently reread John Crowley’s Beasts and am reading James Dickey’s Deliverance and am recognizing something I’ve known for a long time and today, for some reason, is being hammered into me – Foreshadowing.

Adjective: foreshadowing
1. Indistinctly prophetic
Noun: foreshadowing
1. The act of providing vague advance indications; representing beforehand
Verb: foreshadow
1. Be a sign of something to come, esp. something important or bad

Foreshadowing is something I ususally recognize after the fact. Sometimes I’ve read something and am surprized by the climax/outcome, except I’m really not.

“…the story fails because you can’t completely, unexpectedly surprise a reader and expect to get away with it.

A story which completely surprises leaves me going WTF?. If I didn’t see something coming, if it happens totally out of nowhere, if there’s no precedent for it, if it’s not foreshadowed, the story fails because you can’t completely, unexpectedly surprise a reader and expect to get away with it. You’ve violated the promise you made when the reader agreed to sit down and read your work.

However, a story which surprises me, even causes me to say, “I didn’t see that coming,” but simultaneously satisfies me, that’s different.

I’ve often said and written one of my joys when talking with my readers is their sharing how my story resolutions catch them by surprise, but when they think about it, everything was foreshadowed somehow.

Regular readers know my style, voice, and technique well enough to notice when something is foreshadowed. They don’t know what it is, but do recognize a particular phrase points to something.

Reading Deliverance and knowing the outcome, I’m quickly recognizing a different kind of foreshadowing and something I will practice – now that I recognize it – because I believe it’ll take my writing to the next level.

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 1 (backstory)

Long Ago and Far Away…okay, starting in August 2022, I shared chapters from The Alibi. That lasted to mid-September when life and starting a new business got in the way.

Life and a new business consumed more time than I expected. I still wrote – actually updated, edited, and got ready for publication my first non-fiction in six years, That Th!nk You Do (due out 15 Jan 2023. You should all buy a copy and leave glorious reviews) – but The Alibi took a backseat (and it annoyed me I did so, by the way).

But I’m also sensitive to my own cycles, transits, methodologies, dispositions, … . I knew the story wasn’t going where it was suppose to go, but I didn’t know where it was suppose to go.

So shelve it. Give it time. Ruminate.

Some time late-September 2022, Susan and I talked about it. I mentioned my biggest challenge with the story was not seeing a character who would change through the course of the novel, didn’t know who or what would act as the throughline, both of which are (to me) critically important.
Continue reading “The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 1 (backstory)”

Those Wings Which Tire, They Have Upheld Me in Penumbric Dec 2k22

“Worthy of Philip K Dick himself. I would buy the whole magazine for this story alone. For fear of ruining the experience, I’ll simply say that a bullied child with a disability and the tech he relies on lead him to make a very unusual friend.”

Spring

Cowan was walking in the woods the first time he saw Angel. He was really looking for a haunted house the real estate lady told his parents was back there and he’d walked further into the woods than he’d ever gone before.

Enjoy!

My “Don Quitamo Sails” now in Rabbit Hole V anthology

I’m lucky enough to have my work included in The Rabbit Hole Volume 5: Just…Plain…Weird anthology along with quite a group of talented authors. I especially love the teaser

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole. On our fifth excursion into the warren of the odd, 37 authors lead us down their own little burrows of strangeness : an army of penguins, music that cures, aliens that communicate through old cartoons, images of the future that save, unwanted visions of the now, and, oh yes, it is raining lawyers. All have one thing in common, they are just…plain…weird.
Weird can be funny, weird can be sad, weird can be thoughtful, weird can be mad, but the one thing in common is that weird shares experiences you have, thankfully, never had.
Just be careful, all little bunnies are not nice, but they are memorable.

About the Author
I’m boring and dull, haven’t you heard?
If you’re desperate to be bored, you can find a basic bio on my About page or on LinkedIn.

How the stories came about? Continue reading “My “Don Quitamo Sails” now in Rabbit Hole V anthology”