Jeff Barr - Horror/SciFi/Fantasy Pulp Fiction Writer, Coder, Hacker, Musician » Writing

3 Free Short Horror Stories

Jeff — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:27:55 +0000

Here are the current free stories by Horror author Jeff Barr available at www.jeffbarr.com.

The Sorcerer – a humorous short-short about friends with a different kid of benefits.

Mr. Moak and Mr. Soames – Two Fine Old Gentlemen – Another humorous and gross short story about the less obvious dangers of the Epicurean lifestyle.

Jerry and Me: A Love Story – This was a fun, somewhat Christmas-themed story I wrote as part of an impromptu writer’s group who sometimes hangs around at WeBook.com.

Jerry and Me – A Horrifying Love Story

Jeff — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:54:43 +0000

This is one of my more recent completed short stories. I posted it to WeBook.com as part of a small informal writer’s group that has sadly since disbanded.
It’s a Christmas themed love story – enjoy!

Jerry and Me
Read it here on JeffBarr.com

Writer Resources

Jeff — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:41:07 +0000

This is a list of all the different sites, tools, and resources I use, as well as publishers of note. I’ll also post this to ReadNerd.com – my social network geared toward writers of Horror, Sci-Fi, YA, Fantasy, Slipstream.

QueryTracker.net – Keep track of agents and the queries you’ve sent them
Manuscript formatting – the William Shunn Manuscript Format Guide – this is the format I most often see requested, whether by pubs, agents or magazines.
YouWriteOn.com – another writing community/social networking site. You can upload stories (short stories or chapters of a book) – one good thing is it assigns a random person to review your upload, so unlike WeBook, where you might not get any reviews for a long while, you’re guaranteed at least one off the bat. Thereafter, you can do reading/review assignments to gain more reviews for your work. There’s some tie in with publishers, but I don’t know the site well enough to comment on it. YouWriteOn.com seems pretty geared towards UK writers, though anyone can join. If you do sign up, get the newsletter, its actually pretty informative.

More after the hop.

WeBook.com – probably my favorite social network for writers at the moment. It has a lot of really good writers (and some not so good), and a great system for reaching out to lit agents. It’s called AgentInABox – now, I don’t actually have any queries out to agents right now, but as soon as I finish editing my zombiepocalypse novel, I’m going to throw some agent queries out there. Mainly just for practice at synop/queries. I’ve heard varying reports as to the actual usefulness of AgentInABox, but I’ll let you know how I make out.
More Soon!

Red Perogies Recipe

Jeff — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:38:36 +0000

Red Perogies Recipe - Jeff Barr

Red Perogies

1 package Perogies
1 can tomato sauce
salt
pepper
butter

Heat pan for about a minute. Using a fork, melt butter in a thin layer over the surface area of the pan. Place three(3) small pats of butter at 3 not-necessarily sequential sectors of the frying pan. Let butter achieve bubble and sizzle, but not brownness. If it goes brown/is overcooked, rinse out the pan, and start over. I don’t care if you didn’t mean to; rinse it out, and start over. Place thawed perogies, flat side down, in concentric circles. FRY THEM. It is desirable to fry until golden brown with a bit of crisp. Flip them. Repeat application of heated teflon-coated alloy to perogie surface. The cooking time should be no more than 4-5 minutes, Earth-standard time.
Now, you have perfectly prepared, non-traditional perogies. But wait. You may, at this time, select your destiny.

If you decide to eat these crispy, salty delicious treats – carry on. Enjoy!
If you decide to expand your mind – Follow the next steps.

Add tomato sauce. Let it achieve bubbliness. Stir with a wooden spoon or plastic spatula. Do not hurry. Do not rest. The perogies WILL become non-crispy and limp, yet infused with glorious redness! Simmer. For many minutes. Until your hunger stirs.
Eat.

2 Great Scary Stories

Jeff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:54:01 +0000

Two really great horror stories that do what good horror does so well: makes you think about dark places, and then, slow and majestic and horrifying, takes you there.

Going the Jerusalem Mile – Chaz Brenchley
This story is as obsidious as it is insidious. My wife and I share a peculiar approach to religion: it scares the bejezus (excuse me, that’s my pun you’re stepping on) out of us. The only horror movies that scare her involve religion. Religion frightens me the way a shadow would – it’s presence at the best of times is unnerving; but if it moved toward me, I’d have a heart attack. This is a story about religion, obsession, and it’s final perfect form: worship.

The Machine of a Religious Man – Ralph Robert Moore
The voice and characterization in this story turn something simple into something just plain ole sad. Nothing worse than plain ole sadness.

Both can be found in ‘The Years Best Fantasy and Horror 2006‘, and likely a few other places as well.

Getting Wireless Adapter Working in Ubuntu 9.10 With RTL8192SE Linux driver

Jeff — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:41:12 +0000

If you have a Toshiba laptop, there’s a good chance it has a Realtek RTL8191SE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC or some minor variation of same. Realtek apparently doesn’t make it very easy to find drivers for linux for this card – the person who posted the driver said he got it from Realtek, and I don’t have any real reason to doubt that. It works for me, in any case. Here are the steps I took to be able to use WiFi on my Toshiba Satellite P505. YMMV, so feel free to give a thorough read of the problem and solutions available at the Ubuntu help/bug forums. The driver tarball is available to download from that thread. rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0010.1012.2009.tar.gz (1.3 MiB, application/x-tar)

only load the driver module to kernel and start up nic.
1. Build up the drivers from the source code
make
2. Copy firmware to /lib/firmware/ or /lib/firmware/(KERNEL_VERSION)/
cp -rf firmware/RTL8192SE /lib/firmware
or
cp -rf firmware/RTL8192SE /lib/firmware/(KERNEL_VERSION)
Note: This depends on whether (KERNEL_VERSION) subdirectory exists under /lib/firmware

3. Load driver module to kernel and start up nic.
./wlan0up

And now back to writing.