Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Scott Rhoades Pimps His Bio


I’m Scott Rhoades, and this is my third year in PitchWars. I've never been picked, but I received great feedback the other times, and hope the new story gets some positive attention as well. 

So, what should I tell you about myself? How far back should I go?

In the beginning, there was darkness…

I was born in Oakland, California, on a dark and stormy night.
Not exactly a dark and stormy night, per se. A mid-morning in July. A Wednesday. But sometimes in a story you gotta tweak the truth to make it better. I spent much of my life in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Newark. Until one day a former employer exiled me to Utah. That’s where I live now. I’ve also lived in Austria and worked a summer in Germany. That’s why I speak German and Weanarisch.

Tramps like us, baby we were born to write

I guess I’ve wanted to write since I could read. I was first published when I was eight:
Notice the details that support my thesis, the rhythm of the varied sentence lengths, the twist at the end. Genius.
My eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Borchert, liked my writing so much she gave me a comp book and extra credit for everything I wrote. No trouble passing that class! I wish I knew where she is now so I could thank her.
I wrote for my high school paper and was editor-in-chief. I was entertainment editor for my college paper one year. I’ve also been published in college literary magazines. My poem “Buying Baseball Cards” was displayed in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Library. It was even, I’m told, used in a presentation given by the Hall of Fame librarian at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. A few years ago, I published an article in The Writer magazine.

A novel proposition

Although I’ve always written, I didn’t start my first novel for realsies until 2001. I now have four in various states of completion. My first novel (tween fantasy) is “finished,” whatever that means, and shelved. I’m actively seeking an agent for my second (MG), which was my other #PitchWars entry. I’m This time I'm pitching my third, a YA historical fantasy. I'm also working on my fourth (NA urban fantasy). I have other ideas struggling to get out. I think I’ll have to start one of them soon before my head explodes.

Going pro

Because writing hasn’t earned me enough dinero to support me and my family, I work as a writer. A tech writer, that is.
Over the years, I’ve written and edited for a number of companies, including my own, and edited several books for Waite Group Press. I started way back when for Atari, where I became one of the first people to ever use a hand-held computer when I helped document the Atari Portfolio.
Much of my work was documenting the Atari Lynx and its games. I was even the hand model for a diagram on the back of the first version:
Yes. That’s a line drawing of my hand. I guess that makes me a part of pop culture. In fact, my son was googling my name once and found me mentioned in a trivia question. Now being part of a trivia question is on his bucket list.

And that brings us to now…

I currently work for Adobe in Lehi, Utah, although I spend most of my time working from myhome office.
In addition to this new blog, I’m a contributor and co-admin of the Utah Children’s Writers Blog, and my son and I share our cross-generational views about classic albums on Our Generations: Father & Son Record Reviews. I also lend my writing experience to one of the two nonprofits I work with, SOAP International.

Favorite Things Interview

Favorite Movie: The Third Man.
Favorite Shakespeare Character: Bottom.
Favorite Musician: Brian Wilson.
Favorite superhero: Super Grover.
Really?: I have a t-shirt. Made it myself.
Favorite Video Game of All Time: Atari Adventure.
How About Something More Modern: Zork.
Not Exactly Current, Dude: Best I can do. Let’s move on.
Favorite Book: Beowulf.
Favorite Book, Really: The Lord of the Rings.
No, Really: The Grapes of Wrath.
C’mon, I Mean It: Independent People. Huck Finn. Harriet the Spy.
Seriously?: I’m supposed to choose just one?
That’s Kind of What Favorite Means: I’m Sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Who’s Dave?: Sorry. Check out my Goodreads page to see what I read.
A Link?: Best I can do.
Be That Way: I will.
Grrr: Whatev.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Buying Baseball Cards


Buying Baseball Cards

Me and Pat walked to Marv's Liquors 
jeans ripped from sliding into second 
until our shins bled 
Marv watched us like a cleanup hitter 
follows the spin of a curve 
Ten packs for a sweat-soaked buck 
We never picked the ones on top 
everybody knows good cards 
hide on the bottom 
Didn't want no doubles or belly itchers 
liked A's most of all 
doubles was ok if they was 
Reggie, Rollie, Blue Moon 
I had four Dave Duncans 
till I traded one to Pat for six Giants 
cause he thought he looked like him 

Stood by the Black velvet girl 
under the Two Minors at a Time sign 
carefully peeled waxy wrappers 
Maybe Catfish Hunter's green cap shone 
in the Budweiser glow 
like the gold ticket Charlie found 
in the Willy Wonka chocolate bar 
Pat got Joe Rudi 
'Oh man, I'll trade you' 
'No way Jose unless you give me a whole pack' 
I pouted 
said 'You're lucky' 
didn't trade 

Cheeks stuffed with bubble gum 
to look like major leaguers 
only difference between gum and cards 
is the gum doesn't have a picture 
Cards split in four stacks 
twenty five cards in a pocket 
makes walking hard 
if you don't want wrinkles or bent cards 
We stopped to read the backs: 
'Joe Pepitone is in the hair-styling business' 

Me and Pat in my room 
surrounded by posters and pennants 
tried to swap three lousy players 
for two good ones 
argued like real general managers 
Play by play voice faster than Lou Brock 
Men faking flu cheered from the bleachers 
Our world a big baseball 
laced with little boys 

--Scott Rhoades

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

by Scott Rhoades

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you this all happened on Halloween, but that doesn’t change the facts. What happened happened, and it was a terrible thing, and if you don’t want to believe me, oh well.

October was a weird month this year. It all started around 2 AM on October 29, when most of my classmates were asleep. I happened to wake up because the neighbor’s stupid dog wouldn't stop barking, so I saw the streak of light that made it look like day outside for about three seconds, although I didn’t know what caused it. The next morning, everybody wouldn't stop talking about a meteor that flew right over my neighborhood and probably landed somewhere in my town.

When I got to school—I’m a seventh grader at Raymond Frederick Harryhausen Junior High, or RF Harry as we like to call it—everybody gathered on the outdoor basketball courts. One of the poles holding up a basket was bent over. The wooden backboard was all busted up and splintered. The metal chain basket had been torn up and covered with a weird black dust. Little pieces of rock, most about the size of gravel, were scattered around the area. Apparently, the meteor hit a three-pointer right at my school.

And we thought that was weird.

Actually, it turned out to be a pretty nice thing because, after trying for a while to get us to stop picking up fragments of meteorites and souvenir wood splinters, the Principal canceled first period, so that meant no math that day. Most of us spent the hour making up stories about how we saw the meteor, when obviously almost everybody had been asleep. I had seen it out my window, but of course nobody believed me.

The next morning, somebody had put up a chain link fence with those plastic strip things that make it so you can’t see through. There was a van from the local university parked nearby, and guards dressed in black suits who wouldn’t let any of us climb up and look over.

It took maybe about ten minutes for it to turn into just another school day. A lot of kids were late for first period because they were checking things out on the playground, but they weren't that late. My Pre-Algebra teacher, Mrs. Apfelbaum, didn’t give any tardies even when people were late, but she threatened to if we didn’t settle down. See, my math room windows faced the playground, and we all really wanted to see what was going on out there. Eventually, Mrs. Apfelbaum pulled the curtains and got our attention, so she could start teaching us what x and y equal.

Things were feeling almost normal again until the girl behind me, Cassidy, screamed at the top of her lungs. It scared me so bad I almost jumped out of my pants. Literally out of my pants.

“A bug!” she yelled. “Somebody get it!”

I turned around. This weird-looking bug crawled over her open math book. It looked like a small centipede, only more beetle-like and bright red. It reared up on its back sets of legs, waved its front legs toward Cassidy, and hissed. I’m not kidding. It hissed like an angry cat with a kazoo.

Without thinking, I reached back and slammed her book shut.

“There,” I said. “That should take care of that.” I turned back toward the front of the class.

A few seconds later, Cassidy screamed again. “Ew!”

I turned around again, expecting to see another of those weird bugs, but her reason for screaming was obvious right away. A ton of goopy pea-soup-colored slime oozed out of the book, way more slop than could be explained by the guts from that little bug. There were red flecks of squished centipede in the muck. As I watched, the flecks turned into little copies of the bug. They all hissed at the same time, then dropped to the floor and scurried away through a small gap at the bottom of the wall.

Bug gunk covered Cassidy’s desk, and there was no more Cassidy in her chair. My heart jumped into my throat—not literally, but it kind of felt that way—because I thought at first maybe she’d been eaten, but then I saw her standing on the counter at the back of the room. She must have teleported there because nobody saw her run away, she had moved so fast.

The teacher helped Cassidy down from the counter and got a bunch of paper towels so she could clean her desk. Only Cassidy didn't want to touch the goop and neither did the teacher or anyone else. Finally, the teacher let her sit at David's desk, since he was absent anyway.

My skin itched all over, thinking about those bugs and how close they had been to me. I kept getting the chills. I had never seen bugs like those at RF Harry before, or anywhere else either.

Between classes, I ran into Reynolds, my best friend. I’d known him since second grade but if I ever knew his first name, I’d forgotten it years ago. Everybody just called him Reynolds, even the teachers. Even his mom, Mrs. Reynolds.

“The weirdest thing happened in Math,” I said.

“I can top it,” Reynolds said. “There was this freaky bug in English and that kid Brendan stepped on it and it turned into a huge pile of slime that stuck his shoe to the floor. A bunch of baby bugs came out of the slime and ran away.”

“Did the bugs hiss?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Too much screaming.”

“Same thing happened in Math, only I squished the bug in some girl’s math book.” I called her some girl to try to hide the fact that I had kind of a crush on her. “The bug hissed before I killed it, and then the babies hissed too.”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Reynolds said, “except I saw what happened with Brendan.”

I didn’t see any more of the bugs the rest of the day, but I heard other kids talking about them. Coach Quick canceled PE that afternoon, though, because I guess they found a bunch of those bugs in the boys locker room. Some people who had come in vans with giant cockroaches on top were in the locker room to kill the bugs. They should have just let us go home because it was last period, but instead we had to do homework in the library. I would rather have gone home, but it wasn’t so bad because it meant I’d have less homework.
RF Harry had a basketball game against Roger W. Corman Junior High after school and I wanted to go see Reynolds play. He was pretty good.

Reynolds had tried to get me to try out for the team because I’m tall and run fast, and I’m a pretty good player. But I don’t like it that much, so I didn’t. Coach Quick got all ticked at me and gave me a harder time than other kids in his PE class, but I figured he’d get over it someday. And if he didn’t, so what? I’d only be in that school for two years anyway. Not playing gave me more time to write for the school paper, and I really liked doing that. I might have been kind of a nerd, but that was OK with me.

I found Reynolds before the game.

“You should have seen all the dead bugs in the locker room,” he said. “It was a war zone, with all the bodies piled in the corners. They had to sweep out all the lockers. Good thing our uniforms didn’t get messed up.”

“Was it that bad?” I asked.

“Worse. Some of them had been squished, so there were puddles of goo we had to step around. They are still in there cleaning up.”

“Hey, Reynolds!” Coach Quick shouted. “Get over here with your team, and stop talking to that no-good kid. We have a game to play!”

“Guess I gotta go,” Reynolds said.

I laughed. “Guess so. Good luck! Don’t slip on any slime.”

Reynolds laughed and jogged over to his team.

The game went pretty well. If I counted right, Reynolds had scored about 14 points going into the 4th period. We were winning by six and it looked like we had the momentum.

About halfway through the 4th, this kid named Willie, who played guard, dribbled down the court, leaving the other guys in the dust, when he suddenly stood up straight. The basketball bounced away. He grabbed himself in a place that would be impolite to describe and fell down. He hadn’t been on the floor very long before the same thing happened to all the guys on the
RF Harry team.

After a short delay, they were able to keep playing, but after that they were a little slower. By the end of the game, it was more like they were shambling than running.

After the game, I waited for Reynolds to come out of the locker room so we could go to Burger Barn like we always did after a game.

“What happened out there?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.” He talked slower than usual and a little deeper, although his voice was changing anyway so other people might not have noticed. “Something weird with our jock straps, I guess. I don’t know. All I care about is we lost.”

“Good game, though,” I said. I wasn’t really lying. Most of it had been good.

Reynolds didn’t say much on the way to Burger Barn. I could tell something was wrong.
RF Harry hardly ever lost, and they didn’t take failure well.

We ordered and sat down to eat. Reynolds looked at his triple burger and flipped the patties like pages in a book.

“Is yours overcooked?” he asked.

“Mine’s fine. Yours looks OK.”

“It’s overcooked,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He took his food up to the counter.

I looked at mine again. It looked like it always did. I watched Reynolds argue with the guy at the counter. He came back a couple minutes later.

“There,” he said. “Much better.”

For a minute, I thought his eyes glowed red, then turned pale. It must have been the reflection from the red neon Burger Barn sign. Then I looked at what he ate. At first I thought it was dripping ketchup, but then I realized the meat was totally raw. “Dude!” I said. “Your burger is not cooked!”

“Tastes good,” he said. “I kind of like it like this.”

“Since when?”

“Since always,” he said. “Or at least, since now.”

I tried not to watch him eat, but the way he gulped that thing down, it was hard not to look. When he finished, he ordered another one. This time he took the meat out of the bun and just ate the patties.

“You OK?” I asked.

His head twitched a little. “Has Burger Barn changed their recipe? They’ve never been this good before.”

#

The next day was a normal school day. I didn’t see Reynolds in the morning, so I wondered if the raw meat had made him sick. Other than that, it was just another day. No weird bugs or anything. Workers were even putting the finishing touches on the new basketball hoop in the playground.

At lunch, the cafeteria served spaghetti with the usual rock-hard rolls. I don’t know how they did it or why they even bothered making those rolls. They baked them right here at
RF Harry, but they were impossible to eat. Somebody needed a new recipe.

I had just sat down at a table by myself when I heard a commotion at the back of the cafeteria.

“It’s Harry!” somebody yelled. “What’s wrong with him?”

Harry was our mascot. A goat, a real goat, and at lunch sometimes they let him wander around the campus so the kids could play with him. I stood up for a better view.

It was Harry all right. He had somehow gotten into the cafeteria. Usually, the students ran to wherever Harry hung out, but this time they either ran away or stayed glued where they were. I soon saw why.

Harry looked sick. I don’t mean ill. I mean sick. Big clumps of hair had fallen off and he had big open sores that oozed blood. His eyes were as red as Mr. Quick’s Toyota, and one eye hung loose from the socket. He looked like he had been partially eaten from the inside out.

Harry climbed up on a table and tried to attack anybody who came near. I had helped to take care of him last semester in this animal class I took, so he knew me and liked me. I thought I’d go see if I could help get him under control.

I slowly approached the goat, a baby step at a time.

“Hey, Harry,” I said. “Good Harry. Attaboy, Harry.”

Harry looked at me with his one good eye. He smiled the way goats sometimes do. Then he growled at me and I jumped back. No, I swear, he growled. Not some soft little growl, either. It was a serious I-mean-business growl, followed by a snarl. Then he bared his teeth. Fangs is more like it. I know how dumb that sounds. Goats grind their food. They don’t have sharp teeth, and I’d seen Harry’s teeth hundreds of times. And I’m telling you, whether you believe me or not, he had fangs.

I stood there, contemplating the situation from a safe distance. At least, I hoped it was a safe distance. When Harry jumped across two tables at once, I had my doubts. Then some more kids yelled across the cafeteria.

“What’s happening?”

“It looks like the basketball team. Only, it doesn’t!”

“They’ve got somebody barricaded in the girls bathroom!”

I immediately thought of Reynolds. Had the team gone nuts because they lost to Roger W. Corman Junior High last night? I ran out to see what was going on.

The whole team, in uniform, crowded around the bathroom door, trying to break in. Somebody inside obviously had the door blocked somehow, which wouldn’t have been easy because the door opened out. A bunch of us kids were gathering around in a half circle, like if somebody had yelled “Fight!” or something. Inside the circle, teachers tried to push us back, but the crowd pushed in as everybody tried to get a better view.

Then Reynolds turned around and looked right at me. At least, I think it was Reynolds, He was the right size and wore the right uniform, but his skin looked pale gray with patches of blue and red. He was covered with huge sores, like he had been eaten from the inside out. He looked me in eye. His eyes were red, like the neon Burger Barn sign, and he snarled. It reminded me of Harry.

Other members of the team were like that too, all rotten and oozing and nasty. They moved like there were no muscles attached to their bones, in a jerking, loose way. Some of the kids were laughing because they thought the team was pulling some kind of prank. This was Halloween, after all. But I could tell this wasn’t a joke.

“Who’s in the bathroom?” I yelled out. Somebody said it was that girl Cassidy who I had saved from the bug and who I kind of liked, and a couple other girls were with her.

Reynolds and his teammates were scratching at the door, and it looked like they were going to break through. It’s not easy to scratch through a metal door, but somehow they were doing it.

Somebody had to do something. I had to do something. If only I had a weapon. Where could I find one?

The cafeteria! There were knives in the kitchen!

I pushed my way past the teachers and out of the crowd that had pressed in behind me and ran back to the cafeteria. The kitchen workers were there, surrounding Harry, with knives in their hands.

“Give me a knife!” I shouted. “Fast!” They didn’t respond. They were too busy trying to fight Harry. “Please?” I added. Even the magic word didn’t work.

I saw Coach Quick sitting alone at a table. He looked up at me. “My boys won’t listen to me,” he said. “For the first time, they won’t listen.”

“What happened, Coach?” I asked.

“Be glad you didn’t make the team, kid,” he said.

Didn’t make the team? I didn’t even try out. He always tried to make that sound like some kind of a failure on my part. This was no time to worry about words. “What happened?” I asked again.

“It must have been those bugs,” he said. “Apparently, they turned the boys into flesh-eating zombies.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. But I’d seen them. Maybe it wasn’t so impossible. I remembered Reynolds and his raw burgers at Burger Barn. “But how?”

“They laid their eggs in the only things they could find in the lockers,” Coach Quick said. “The jock straps. When the boys put them on—“

“You mean, the first thing to be zombified—“

“Better not to think about it, son. At least now I know why we lost. To Corman, believe it or not. Corman!”

“Coach, we have to do something! They have some girls trapped in the bathroom. I think they want to eat them!”

“Corman!” Coach Quick said. “Of all schools. Corman?”

He wasn’t going to be any help. I had to do something, and I had to do it fast. But what? I looked around at the tables. The plastic knives that kids who didn’t know any better tried to use to cut into the rolls wouldn’t do anything.

The rolls!

I ran around the cafeteria, grabbing as many rolls off the tables as I could carry, being careful to stay away from Harry and the cafeteria workers. I hurried back to the team, trying not to drop too many rolls as I ran.

I pushed my way to the front of the crowd again and threw a roll. It hit that kid Willie, the point guard, between the shoulder blades and he dropped to the ground. My next roll missed, but the third hit Reynolds and he crumpled to the ground. Other kids followed my example and went and got rolls. The rolls didn’t kill the basketball players, but stunned them momentarily. Some of the rolls shattered if they hit something hard, like the wall, or Reynolds' head.

When the players were all down, I hurried to the door and tried to open it. Of course, I couldn’t do it if a whole basketball team of zombies couldn’t do it.

A roll hit me in the back of the head and I saw stars. I turned around. “Don’t throw them at me! Keep the zombies down!”

“Sorry!” A kid looked sheepish. “I thought you were one of them.”

“Do I look like the undead?” I shouted.

“Well, kinda,” he said.

Stupid kid. I wasn't even wearing a uniform.

I went back to the door. A zombie hand grabbed my ankle but some cafeteria rolls rained on it and it let go. A couple of the rolls bounced and hit my leg, which didn’t feel good, let me tell you.

“Cassidy,” I yelled. “Come out! Hurry! You can make it now, but we can’t hold them off forever!”

The door opened a little, and a girl looked at the basketball team. It wasn't Cassidy. I think it might have been that new girl in the 8th grade. The players squirmed on the ground like bugs being pelted by bread.

The three girls rushed out of the bathroom, screaming. They made it to safety just before the zombies got back on their rotted feet.

“More rolls!” I yelled. “Throw more rolls!”

“There aren’t any more!”

“Crud,” I said. Well, that’s not really what I said, but it’s close enough. I was in trouble. The rising zombies stood between me and safety. I tossed or kicked some rolls back toward the crowd, but I couldn't give them enough to make much of a difference.

The players started toward the crowd, and I slipped away along the wall behind them and ducked into the library. There, the chess club played their games, completely oblivious to everything going on outside.

I caught my breath. “Don’t go out there,” I said. “There are zombies outside.”

“Unlikely,” said one of the chess players without looking up. “Zombies can’t exist. The desiccation would keep them from surviving long enough to do any damage.”

“Right,” said his opponent, Howard Kascinski, who I knew from the school paper. “Not only that, but every dog in town would see them as food. Every hungry carnivore would go after something that shambles slowly and can’t get away.”

“And smells bad,” one of the other club members said. “Don’t forget they would smell bad. Almost as bad as Burger Barn. Definitely minus-three Charisma, tops.”

“If there are zombies,” another kid said, “I'm not going out there. Not in this shirt.” He wore a red Star Trek shirt.

“Well, whatever,” I said. “They’re out there. Stay inside.”

“This I have to see,” Howard said. The rest of the chess club followed him out, with me at the rear.

The team threatened the gathered crowd, who were running out of room at the back of the quad outside the cafeteria.

I looked around at the chess club. How would these guys be able to help?They’d be sitting ducks if the basketball team attacked them. And jocks always went after the nerds at
RF Harry. And probably every other school.

That’s when the idea hit me. What do zombies like more than anything else?

I shouted, “E=mc2!”

The zombies stopped with a jolt and turned toward me.

“Quick,” I said. “Say smart stuff and get ready to run!”

Howard caught on quickly. Good old Howard. “A sum isn't changed at rearrangement of its addends,” he said.

Reynolds pointed at the chess club. “Brains!” he shouted.

“The hypotenuse is the side of a triangle opposite the right angle,” a girl from the chess club said.

“Brains!” Willie shouted. The zombies shuffled toward the chess club.

“That’s too easy,” Howard said.

“What? And ‘A sum isn't changed at rearrangement of its addends’ isn’t easy?” the girl said.

“Braaaiins!”

“Quick,” I said. “Keep talking and grab a trash can.”

We each grabbed a trash can and emptied out the garbage from today’s lunch. Cafeteria spaghetti spread all over the ground.

“Brains!”

The players shambled toward the nerds, as the chess club continued to shout nerdy stuff. The basketball team slipped on the spaghetti and fell to the ground. The chess club attacked quickly, putting trash cans over the zombified athletes, who were unable to figure out how to get out. All except the red shirt kid. One of the zombies got hold of him and, well, it wasn't pretty.

The players stayed there, stuck under the garbage cans, as the authorities approached and took them away in a truck. I don't know what happened to them, but I never saw Reynolds again.

Cassidy ran up and threw her arms around me. “You were awesome,” she said. “You want to hang out at my house for a while? My parents won’t be home until late.”

“Do you need help with your homework?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” she said.

“Oh. Oh!”

And that’s what happened the day the zombie apocalypse came to Raymond Frederick Harryhausen Junior High. You can believe it or not. I don’t care. I have a date with Cassidy Jones, so I have better things to do than sit here and try to convince you.