Fiction
by Peter Kovic

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to write.   Even when I didn't like reading, I liked to write.   I used to write long, rambling novels about sensitive young artsy-types.   I went on for pages about what the characters felt and how they met, but there was little growth or actual story.  

Now I've learned the beauty of outlining using the three-act structure, so that characters are defined not by their feelings, but by the choices they make, and how they change over time.   My default protagonist is no longer a spaced-out young dreamer, but an angry man who knows what he wants.   I've mailed my stories and novels to agents, publishers, contests, and magazines.   I'm beginning to see a glimmer of what might be called "progress."

I like to write about violence, confusion, doom, religion, hallucination, brooding, nostalgia, alienation, the South, the worthlessness of reason, and men who adhere to codes long past their usefulness.   I like long internal monologues, but I also like it when you never know what someone's thinking.   I like huge sentences like Faulkner and sentences that are like punches to the face, like Hemingway and Cain.   My fiction doesn't read very much like my movie reviews, or like this paragraph.

Some of my favorite novels include I Claudius, The Trial, The Naked and the Dead, Deliverance, Blood Meridian, Lolita, Heart of Darkness, Absalom Absalom, Old Man and the Sea, Crime and Punishment, All the King's Men, Catch 22, More Adventures of Samurai Cat, and The Big Sleep.

Read some of my fiction below.   I've only included excerpts instead of entire stories because posting on the internet sometimes counts as "first electronic publication."

-Peter Kovic, July 2010

"Reward"
First Draft Completed: 2009
Synopsis: Things go wrong when a well-meaning drifter trades places with a dead man.
Notes: Although I'm sure the feeling will one day wear off, I like to think of "Reward" as the most perfect thing I've written, with hardly an extra character, scene, or word. I haven't had any luck getting it published though.
Excerpt


"A Bounty Split Three Ways" (aka "Local Wizard")
First Draft Completed: 2009
Synopsis: Two bountykillers hunt a dangerous man across a fantastic landscape of airborne boats and floating trees.
Notes: I took many of the lessons learned in "Reward" about lean-and-mean storytelling and applied them to an adventure story in a steampunk universe. I've written a series of interlocking stories with some of the same characters and I hope to one day combine them into a novel tentatively titled Under the Crown. The novel would be a series of stories spanning a couple centuries, sort of like Go Down Moses crossed with I, Robot. "ABS3W" should be appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in late 2010.
Excerpt


"The Fool"
First Draft Completed: 2009
Synopsis: A court jester is given an opportunity to escape from the high castle where he is routinely humiliated and abused.
Notes: The second story in the same universe as "ABS3W," and so far my favorite. I've been sending it to magazines.
Excerpt


"Sugarcoal"
First Draft Completed: 2010
Synopsis: An alcoholic baron considers whether industrializing his land will save or destroy it.
Notes: This is when it occurred to me that, collectively, the Under the Crown stories would be about a fantasy kingdom moving from farm-based feudalism to factory capitalism.
Excerpt


"Midnight Auction"
First Draft Completed: 2010
Synopsis: The daughter of a rich industrialist becomes infatuated with a mysterious nobleman.
Notes: I'm not sure if "Midnight Auction" really works as a short story. It takes a lot of words to dramatize a girl going from being a snob about new things to being a snob about old things; it takes fewer words to explain two guys with swords chasing a third guy with a sword. But it'll make a good subplot for Under the Crown.
Excerpt


"Mage"
First Draft Completed: Unfinished
Synopsis: An boastful country magician discovers his magic no longer works when he joins a heist in the big city.
Notes: By the time I got to "Midnight Auction," I had strayed from the adventure storytelling of "A Bounty Split Three Ways," so I figure it's time to get back to the action. I only have an outline for "Mage" so far and might split it into two short stories, or even a novel.


"Days Since She Called Me"
First Draft Completed: 2006
Synopsis: A melancholy young man drives around thinking about the girl who broke up with him . . . while hearing rumors of an alien invasion.
Notes: "Days Since She Called Me" is an example of how I used to write, all experimental and aimless and flashback-y.
Excerpt

All-Night Photography
First Draft Completed: 2007
Synopsis: A classically structured film-noir, in which a failed filmmaker is lured into a web of murder and kidnapping by a rich man’s lusty, bored wife.
Notes: This would be a lot of fun to shoot . . . if I could get someone else to pay for it.
Excerpt One
Excerpt Two
Excerpt Three
Excerpt Four
Excerpt Five
Excerpt Six
Excerpt Seven


CARNO-CAR!
Co-written with: Lee Andrews, Jason Chase, and Frank Kim.
First Draft Completed: Unfinished
Synopsis: A malevolent Dodge Diplomat rampages through a town of slack-jawed rednecks in this horror comedy.
Notes: We've been kicking this around for a few years now . . . maybe CARNO-CAR! will always be better as idea than as something finished.

"A Bounty Split Three Ways" (aka "Local Wizard")
First Draft Completed: 2009
Synopsis: Two bountykillers hunt a dangerous man across a fantastic landscape of airborne boats and floating trees.
Notes: I took many of the lessons learned in "Reward" about lean-and-mean storytelling and applied them to an adventure story in a steampunk universe. "ABS3W" should be appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in late 2010.
Excerpt