Episode Announcement on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Flight from Hell – the end of season 2

Sun, 05 Jan 2014 15:07:27 +0000

There’s still a bit to go before the last episodes of season 2 of Flight from Hell are available online, but I’ve already sent them out. (which reminds me, a new episode was posted today)

For the past few days I felt lost. I’ve written 2 seasons of Flight from Hell – 12 episodes each, so 24 in total. About 3000 words/episode, give or take. About 70-75 thousand words, I think. Unless my maths deceive me. And I know where the story is going and who the characters are, but there’s a point in anything I write when I wonder if the story isn’t, in fact, dull, crap, stupid, cliche or unreadable… or all of them together. That point, for Flight from Hell, is now.

Once upon a time, that feeling was absolutely correct. I wrote crap. That’s what teenagers and beginners do. It’s how you learn, by smearing the paper with what you think is brilliance and seeing later that you sound like a childish drama queen with a speech impediment and a slight IQ problem. These days the feeling is usually wrong (not always, but usually). As such, it’s something that I need to deal with. I need to push myself through doubt, through indecision, through the desire to flee and abandon the novel.

This is why last year I thought writing a serial novel is a brilliant idea: I’ve already made a contract to go on. As well as being a series of physical, on-paper contracts, writing for the Big World Network is a metaphorical contract with myself, a promise that no matter what, I’ll go through with it. Flight from Hell might not be the best thing I’ll ever write (I should hope not; it’d be disappointing to write my best work at 25). It might not even be as mind-blowing as I wanted it to be. But I’m hoping it’s good and I’m trying to make it so. You aren’t a real writer if you only ever write in your head. So eventually I had to take the big step and step on insecure ground, exposing myself to failure and criticism – but mostly, to being disappointed in myself.

This morning, feeling like I was about to curl up in a corner and hyperventilate because I was so afraid of screwing things up, I re-read a pep talk I got on NaNoWriMo a few years back. It was by Neil Gaiman, because of course it was. And it started like this:

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

By now you’re probably ready to give up. You’re past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You’re not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You’re in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone[…] You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that […] it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

So true.

It turns out many writers have doubts. Including Neil Gaiman. Including 75% of the writers his editor knows. I assume that out of the rest of the 25%, you have at least 5% who think that they’re the best thing since Shakespeare and that perfection flows from their pens like lava out of the Vesuvius, cca. 79 AD.

So I got myself an Irish Coffee, which is basically coffee with whiskey in it. I rarely indulge in alcohol, but it’s fucking brilliant with anxiety. The amount of alcohol in an Irish Coffee is usually perfect: enough to lower my inhibitions, but not enough to make me think I’m funny or brilliant when I’m blatantly not.

I wrote.

I now have 1129 words of the 25th episode of Flight from Hell. And I’m in love with it again. Not because alcohol makes any novel idea looks pretty, but because I loosened up enough to remember why I love writing it.

The only thing I hate is that I write from a single character’s point of view and it’s frustrating not to know how to reveal others’ POVs as well. I know them, I know what they’re thinking, and Nakir is a bit clueless. But it’s not an insurmountable problem.

Last time I finished a season, I wrote an article called „12 episodes, 12 quotes” to entice people to check it out. But fuck it. I didn’t feel like advertising this time around. I’d rather celebrate, because it’s a fun novel and when I sent that first episode to the Big World Network last year, I had no idea that it would actually be a novel, and one people like reading, at that.

Flight from Hell – 12 episodes, 12 quotes

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:13:40 +0000

All of Season 1 of Flight from Hell has been written, edited, fixed and recorded and is steadily going online every Sunday on the Big World Network. Two episodes to go!

So. Flight from Hell is a supernatural/horror series set in Hell (hence the title). The reason is probably the sex – or the mindfuck.

Quotes:

Episode 1 -- „A dying angel, a strange magician human woman, and a carnivorous horse met in sex-Hell. If it was the beginning of a joke, Nakir couldn't wait to hear the punch line.”

Episode 2 -- „Sara was now as tall as a house, her eyes gold, her bared fangs shining in the light as if she were Hell itself. But if Nakir remembered them right, Madness and Ferocity had had a hundred times her strength and ferociousness. Still, not bad. Not bad. He could foresee not dying quite as fast now.”

Episode 3 -- „After the preliminaries of the conversation, Ashmedai was a trip down the rabbit hole. Probably the drug-induced kind of rabbit hole, but still. [..] The way he was still touching the maid-clad woman was both disturbing and as eye-catching as erotica written on dirty sheets by a naked writer with a cigarette between his lips and three-dollar whores serving as muses.”

Episode 4 -- „“Did the devils make this?” Sara asked. She had barely spoken since they'd come to the road. “It doesn't seem particularly Hellish.”

“I don't know. Legends say there was something in Hell before the Fall. They might have just discovered this. Or it might have built itself.”

Sara laughed. The sound echoed around them eerily and loudly, which probably displeased her because she stopped abruptly. “Roads with walls and towers don't build themselves, you know.”

“Here they do.”

Episode 5 -- „“I hate this place,” Sara mumbled. “Deeply. Profoundly. From the bottom of my bloody soul. I loathe it and despise it. I want to tear it into little pieces and throw them into a fire and feed the ashes to elephants. Then I want to kill the elephants and bomb their carcasses, then send their remains to the bottom of the ocean.”

Episode 6 -- „“What do you think he's doing inside?” Nakir asked.

“Abusing hair gel, inflating sex dolls, corrupting the innocent, waiting to see how long it will take us to realize we've been locked on the balcony. Do you really want my theories?””

Episode 7 -- „Heaven was cruel. It was something humans had never been told because they didn't need to know. Its particular branch of painful coldness never touched them directly.”

Episode 8 -- „“I loathe myself, and sing myself, and what I endure you shall endure,” she said. “Or how did it go?”

She'd gotten things wrong, as usual. She'd twisted them into something bad, cynical, filled with anger and hatred.”

Episode 9 -- „He placed his lips against Nakir's ear and whispered, “I want to fuck you into the wall, I want to have you struggling against me while you pant in pleasure, I want you to curse me the whole way and give me that disapproving, spiteful look when your hips buck against me. But until then, angel, I'll have to let you go.””

Episode 10 -- „“There's a dead human in my bed,” the pretty succubus who'd screamed announced to every single person inside in a high-pitched, hysterical tone. “She's awful. Oh, take it away, take it away!”

Episode 11 -- „Nakir would kill him. They both knew it. Any second now, the angel would end the priest's chants and there would be no more Gilbert.”

Episode 12 -- „Nakir opened his eyes and saw a tall ceiling decorated with wooden patterns. He wasn't in his own bed. He wasn't clothed. He wasn't alone. His lips were parched and tasted of blood.”

Flight from Hell – episode 3

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:47:36 +0000

Episode three – the final free episode – of Flight from Hell is out.

Quote:

The way he was still touching the maid-clad woman was both disturbing and as eye-catching as erotica written on dirty sheets by a naked writer with a cigarette between his lips and three-dollar whores serving as muses.

Warning: There’s a lot of sex-related stuff in this one (sex Hell, duh). And probably disturbing stuff as well (although I’m sure slash fans and fetishists will enjoy it). If you’re repelled, try to remember that Ashmedai is a sex devil and acts accordingly. If you’re one of the slash fans, please try to remember that Ashmedai is a sex devil and Nakir acts accordingly.

(I’ve been dying to say that since forever)

Read it here.

Flight from Hell – episode 2

Sun, 11 Aug 2013 18:09:10 +0000

A reminder that the new episode is out and that it’s free to read and free to listen to.

Quote:

[H]e leaned his sword against the warm, reddish stone and it occurred to him that the image created was beautiful in a simple, elegant way. When his sword would drop and his blood would seep into the reddish ground, that would be beautiful, too.

Read it here.

Flight from Hell – episode 1

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 13:46:13 +0000

The first episode of „Flight from Hell” is out!

A dying angel, a strange magician human woman, and a carnivorous horse met in sex-Hell. If this was the beginning of a joke, Nakir couldn't wait to hear the punchline.

Check it out on the Big World Network website!

New episode every Sunday, first three episodes free – look for Roxana Kiril 😉

Audio version also available (read by yours truly)

(genre: Horror/Supernatural; rating: 18+)