BECOMING THE 9 STORY HOTEL PROJECT
A Mostly Oral History (Through the Lens of Emil Ottoman) Pt. 2, Bringing Us To The Wretched NOW
(Colllage of every character image, photo, and most story images ever used for The Nine Story Hotel Project, Emil Ottoman, intro image for an Oral History of the 9 Story Hotel, 2025)
YEAH THE 9 STORY HOTEL WAS 5 MINUTES BEFORE ITS TIME.
Covered the basics. Read the first entry? If not here, load up below and then come back to me.
WELCOME TO THE 9 STORY HOTEL PROJECT
(Colllage of every character image, photo, and most story images ever used for The Nine Story Hotel Project, Emil Ottoman, intro image for an Oral History of the 9 Story Hotel, 2025)
Sometime in March I was alerted to something that’s a joke, but that for some reason coming from friends like Clevenger and Chris, I appreciate
And so off the most junior lad went to try and move the schedule of the hotel from the bottom of this picture, to the top, March 31st, 2024, when we officially opened the Hotel for business.
Mad plans were in place. Contributors had raised hands high for the actual publication, including
, the first outsider to come smashing through with full “We gotta have her write for the Nine,” approval from both Chris and myself.
The Nine Story Hotel had a Substack, a Timeline, a Series Bible, regular contributors with at least a month worth of stories in the chute, and one, fuckin’ problem.
Originally conceived of as a simple anthology, at one point Chris and I in private discussed the propensity through the lens of Walter White if he wrote stories “I'm not in the story business. I'm in the empire business.”
When you know you’ve set yourself on fire, when you know you have a good idea, when you have the strike, so rarified, leaving you honestly thinking and looking around at what’s coalescing and you KNOW this is bigger than you ever meant for it to be already. Pivot. Pray. And don’t, let, the idea, die.
People itchy for print alongside the names of Clevenger and Baer slowly fell off, more and more quickly after they figured out I’d been given the editorial keys.
I won’t lie and say it wasn’t a blow to me, people basically asking “well who the fuck are you?” just because I don’t have credentials. One of the divided members expressed his unwillingness to work with anyone not deemed the titular of “editor”, and so I was deemed officially. This divide alienated our most ardent and excited contributors though, mostly because they were NEW NEW voices, and led to a rift between those waiting for a book to coalesce magically, and those putting in work on the publication.
But either way, with stories in hand for a month, a schedule we all worked towards, and thus, with this proclamation, in character. The Nine is almost always in character you see, that’s important. But you should know that. But, with this proclamation on March 31, I opened the Hotel.
When the bell on the new shining crescent teak desk dings Arthur Pinch appears, stepping into the frame of the front desk from the right, behind glass and shining, solid brass bars, an eel slipping into your bathwater.
He clears his throat and squares his shoulders.
One deep clean breath in through the nose he looks down at you from:
Good evening. I am Arthur Pinch, head concierge of the Nine Story Hotel.
And yes my dear patron it’s true, the Nine has undergone necessary repairs and renovations in the past month and is once again fully restored and open for business. As you no doubt saw outside, the vacancy light is… ON.
What’s that? No… Payment is in cash only I’m afraid. We do not accept checks or cards. But what the Nine lacks in those facilities it makes up for in history, amenities, and most importantly, discretion…
As you can see there is a full bar, though be warned, Bishop, the bartender, is a foul little amateur philosopher with the mouth of a sailor, but I assure you he makes the best cocktails at any establishment in the city.
Yes? Of course. Let me check… Yes, we have a single Queen suite available. May I see your Identification so I may finish checking you- thank you.
Besides the bar there is a full service restaurant, the lounge you can already see. Here, you’ll be staying on the north side of the north wing on the fourth floor. Room 482. Here’s your key. Do not lose it. Yes, I know, it’s an actual key… No, I assure you it will work in the lock. No, wait, could you let me finish…
Yes… Thank you. You just take the north great stairs up to the first floor. No, no, this is the lobby. You take the. You take the stairs to my right. No, not your right, my right. Yes, those. You take them to the first floor, and you’ll soon be in sight of the elevator.
The Elevator operator is Valentine. Mind you he is blind and sometimes cryptic… But… Very polite. No, we have an elevator operator. Do you want your ID back? Because I could shred it?
Yes. Well, Valentine will see you to your floor, then head down the hall. You’ll notice the halls are generously spacious here at the Nine. Make your way down the hall, and your room will be on the left, after the second crossing hallway.
Yes, exactly. We also have a pool, laundry service, full breakfast service in the morning, and if you need anything you can dial 0 for me at the desk or 1 for me at the desk for an outside line. I should warn you that we have no wifi, and cellular phones just, well they just don’t work very well here in the hotel.
The 8th floor is a private residence and therefore strictly off limits, and do not ask to be taken to the basement. That’s not where the pool is. Mistakes have happened.
Checkout is at 1pm sharp. There are no late checkouts. We do offer wake up call services. And if you need anything, and I do sincerely mean ANYTHING… once you get up to your room and settle yourself, just dial 0 for the front desk.
Oh, and here. I just needed your information. Payment is due on checkout. And I WILL need that key back. Be very careful not to lose it. Yes, no, cash only. Gold works as well. There is a pamphlet in your room, yes, it lists all the amenities, I assure you.
Oh, and before you go, please do respect the privacy and discretion of the other guests. Everyone is here for a reason, just as you are. And that reason is never anyone’s business but their own.
Yes. Yes. No…. No… Ahhhh, yes. Do have a good night. Welcome, and enjoy your stay at the Nine Story Hotel.
(This is called Kayfabe in the business, and it involves NEVER BREAKING CHARACTER, much like I attempt as Emil Ottoman)
There’s more to the post, peep check it below. It’s not long.
I have no idea why, but these news posts, often posted on Sunday when we were rolling, were incredibly popular. And I’ll be honest, I pulled every single one of them right out of my ass, aside from what was coming up next week at the hotel.
Just like that, with check-ins from Chris and the occasional panicked email to Clevenger. I was running a fucking monster.
There are 55 published posts on NineStoryHotel 24 of them are between April, 1 and May, 1. another 12 are between May, 1 and May, 28. That’s 36 stories in two months. If it wasn’t for my life shitting the bed, and internecine issues that were handled as quickly as possible, I’d have put out five stories a week all year long. I loved the rush of getting a story ready for pub, cutting it up, laying it out, doing the news posts. I fuckin’ miss it.
Here:
(Fuck it, we ball)
I considered this as a proof of concept. CAN WE DO IT? Can we kick out the jams? Consistently good stories, different stories, interwoven, connected, (Talk about easter eggs. We kidnapped the fuckin’ Rabbit and put him to work.)
Zero hour
Week one. We were doing it.
Crushing it by standards. Notes had just launched. Oh, what a fool I was.
The spasming before silence.
One collaborator moved on to bigger and better things. Months dragged. We lamented missing the hotel but every restart was a false start. Something ineffable was missing.
I need to make a cast page, we overwhelmed them with content.
I need to explain some things, this has moved past “cool and intrigue” to “fuck I’m confused.”
It being the first anniversary of the project and me refusing to give up on things I love, and having found more community of writers, please, feel free to join us.
SO HERE’S THE DEAL
This is all in the series bible. But I’m throwing it on the table hoping it reaches the right ears and eyes. Because this is the sort of collaborative project ONLY possible on either prestige television (hah, yeah, lemme get on that) or somewhere like Substack.
And we’d like YOU to join in. So Writers and Strivers, ALL ARE WELCOME TO SUBMIT TO THE HOTEL. Details below.
Context
The 9 Story Hotel Project was created by Will Christopher Baer. It is used as a setting by a group of writers to tell stories. These stories include but may not be limited to, short stories, flash fiction, vignettes, novella and longform works, and various associated media. The 9 Story Hotel Project's inception was as the idea for a horror noir anthology. Originally metastasizing on involuntary.locals.com, since its start the project has ballooned in both size and scope to the point where it is necessary to create a complete series and story bible. This is that document. The 9 Story Hotel setting, any stock characters free to use in an authors own stories within the project, and anything associated with the stock characters is the intellectual property of Will Christopher Baer. Reprint and distribution rights are subject to permission. Monetization of any content set in the 9 Story Hotel must either be with the permission of Will Christopher Baer, or with the understanding that he is the owner of the IP in use unless offered under a free use license (not yet discussed) and at his discretion. The 9 Story Hotel Project now involves multiple authors across several domains working together to make something interesting while investigating a new world and setting provided as an idea by Will. This is boilerplate. Everybody chill. Just be cool and keep writing. The Project involves plans for a future printed anthology, and currently includes a newly launched Substack which will act as a publication for people already writing stories for the 9 Story Hotel project, and possibly DEFINITELY people at a later date who are either asked if they would like to contribute, or show interest in contributing. Much like a sort of themed online literary publication.
THE SETTING OF THE HOTEL
The 9 Story Hotel as a location for stories is a horror noir setting variably either in or out of the real world. (Currently we have nailed down that it is in an unnamed possibly fictional country in Asia, a mix of Bangkok, Memphis, New York, New Orleans, Prague, and Manilla, colonized so many times over that it eventually broke off into its own sort of existence, like Singapore, but… full of the worst people on earth) Physically the basic architecture of the 9 is a decaying grand lobby with two solid double doors. It is Deco, Beaux Arts, Baroque, Rococo, crumbling, et al. The set aspects of the hotel as established are that there are two wings, north and south. Each wing is accessible from the lobby by a curved staircase (Collectively the grand staircase). Between the staircases is the office. The office is directly in line with the front doors, but up a small set of steps from the main floor of the lobby. A set of rondels, 4 or 6, spaced evenly on either side of a walkway lead to the stairs up to the office and front desk. The office is Arthur Pinch's post. It is longer than it is wide, and at the front the check-in desk is curved, made of teak, and Pinch himself is behind brass bars and a glass window. He has a PA for addressing the lobby and a switch back there behind the counter that jams cell signals, bluetooth, wifi, etc. There IS a plate with the hotel rules carved on it back there. Mailboxes, a key board for room keys, farther back past a green door is a desk, cabinets, more like an actual office, maybe a fridge. The only door into the "bowels" of the hotel from the front of the hotel is at the back of this secondary office. It is gold and battered. On the north side of the lobby is the bar against the far north wall, and the dining hall to the east, more conventional white tablecloth dining tables are established in an area around the bar, like a restaurant. The south of the lobby is a lounge with chairs, couches, what have you, a grand fireplace. ---- The Hotel has two wings, north and south. Between them is the center of the hotel which is rooms on both sides. At the front of the hallway is a very large antique elevator operated by the elevator man. You will find him in the regulars section. The 8th floor is technically off limits to guests, but for being off limits a lot of really weird shit happens up there. There are 13 floors to the hotel (questionable), but this is not apparent to anyone who is not OF the hotel. Upon entry to the hotel the rules of the universe change. There are rooms 1N-99N and 1S-99S on every floor, so the hotel is quite large. The hallways that comprise the north and south wings have fire stairs at the end, past room 99, and at least one cross hallway for fire exits on the north and south sides of the building. Together this gives you somewhere in the range of several thousand various environments to play with depending on how much of a tesseract the hotel actually is. --- Any features not mentioned, garden sheds, etc, at the suggestion of Mr. Clevenger, can be worked into the hotel. The bowels of the hotel include at least a boiler room, an established storage area that acts as a graveyard for people dissolving in plastic barrels full of caustic solvents, and many, many horrors that it is up to the people writing the stories to flesh out. Just try not to completely clash with something that's established unless it fits well in its clashing. --- "in house" Staff and long term residents mostly stay in rooms on the 7th floor. --- Once entering the hotel it is possible to become disoriented, deranged, or confused. --- Things move, change, and fuck with human perception at their own want and velocity. EX. A protagonist may be on floor five, but since the hotel is 9 stories but actually 13, they may find themselves on a different floor five than the ACTUAL floor five. Have fun with it --- A note on the elevator operator: His job is not always to take people where they want to go, but to where they NEED to go, and he is vocal about it and takes pride in his work. --- More notes on setting. Assume anything from crumbling Deco/Gilded age to badly remodeled and very dirty Motel 6 with mold, water damage, and at least one appliance that doesn't work. One room may have a claw bathtub that's original. Another may have a stall shower that's covered in pink mold because they had to hastily redo the room in the 1970's. Another may have a very worn rug covering what was once the original hardwood, another room may have mostly linoleum floors because originally it was a kitchen and the hotel has been remodeled and remodeled ad hoc for the past hundred or so years. Play with this, don't go overboard, there is a limit to the tolerances of the hotel's decor. --- Feel free to use recurring elements among the bedding, furniture that was obviously bought used and in bulk, (The author of this document has a thing currently for featuring cheap worn blue and white chevron patterned furniture, wingback chairs and a couch so far) Final say on setting and the appropriateness of it is Will Christopher Baer, creator, executive producer, showrunner, and art director. Editorial exists just to try to keep things straight. There is a roof with a pool. The 9th floor is the private penthouse of the proprietor. There is a deep and cavernous underbelly. It's a sandbox, the rules are loose, don't abuse them. Thanks, and have a fun time at the 9 Story Hotel. (No multiverse bullshit, no high tech, yes, there are ghosts and worse, no, not everyone is sensitive or can see them, refer to Althea stories for more information, or ask the editor)
Notes on Use
1. It is not unheard of and not unworkable for two or more writers to pick the same primary character for a piece.
Several stories being written as of 02/07/2024 are taking place contemporaneously.
The 9 Story Hotel is an incredibly large setting, there are some house rules, but feel free to let your imagination go nuts as long as it fits the vibe of the hotel.
Final editorial or creative disputes are thrown up the ladder to Will or as a last resort should he be unavailable me (Emil Ottoman) with large amounts of input from the senior writers
At first glance it may appear that some of the stock characters are unkillable. They are not. There is no plot armor at the 9 Story Hotel. Thanks to the author of this document as of 2/7/24 there is a halt on killing face or named characters. You're welcome.
If two writers pick the same primary and their stories temporally or otherwise overlap with any stories or characters already being written you gotta get together and work it out so it doesn't fuck the timeline, or you have to have a really cool idea to get around the paradoxical headache you create for me.
So Where Is The Hotel
The hotel is in a city and in several mysterious other places at the same time. The hotel itself is an evolving organism. Some things written in may become permanent, some may exist within one story, that's okay. Someone may walk in the Hotel in one place and walk out of another building entirely. The hotel is designed to be flexible. Having said that, "What's that line from Breaking Bad? I'm not in the drug dealing business, I'm in the empire building business." (WCB, personal correspondence).
How Many Floors Does the Hotel ACTUALLY Have?
How many floors are there in the 9? Originally 9 in theory. Currently thinking 11 (WCB, 2/8/24). This is what we would call a general number. The approximate exterior physical size of the hotel and the official number of floors. If you have a good idea, or a bad one, pitch it or write it. We've survived the fuck around era, now we find out.
What Does This Mean for My Story?
This mens that you should not be afraid within the general confines of the setting to PLAY. Write your story and find out. If you have an idea you're not sure about, consult WCB, refer to this document, or in a pinch I have a REALLY good idea on some things when WCB isn't available (Emil) If it does not fit, it will be changed in post. You will be given editorial notes or direction, but your first job is to explore the territory and write A DRAFT. You have nothing until you have a draft. All final editorial and content management is left to management as long as it is set inside the hotel or involves a character they own or created. This doesn't just go for WCB, it goes for everyone. If you want to use the Green Room and the Lesbian Sex Cult, refer to Edith. If you want to use the Russians, refer to Emil. If you want to know why you have a riging in your ears that won't go away and blurry vision, call 911. GET A DRAFT DONE, EVERYTHING ELSE CAN PROCEED, BUT ONLY AFTER THERE IS A STORY: IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE IDEA/DIRECTION AND DO NOT WANT/HAVE TIME TO WASTE ON WRITING SOMOETHING THAT WILL GET EITHER HEAVILY EDITED OR CUT COMPLETELY, CONSULT EDITORIAL, FELLOW WRITERS, AND/OR WCB/EMIL DIRECTLY FOR IDEAS/DIRECTION.
IS THERE MORE?
No. That’s it. I’ve explained the project. The possibilities for collaboration and story are literally endless. At current count there are 30-33 named characters in the Hotel. Some are ghosts. Some are people. Some are functionally immortal. The original core are products of the mind of
, and some are mine, some are ’s some are ’s. Some could be YOURS.SUBMISSIONS/INQUIRIES/QUESTIONS/RESERVATIONS ARE OPEN
All inquiries shall be directed to:
a.pinch.concierge.9storyhotel@gmail.com
This is your invitation to join a project that would be impossible anywhere but here.
Can you get along? Can you color inside the lines? Can you come up with something worth reading? Can you work together with other writers, or do you just have ONE interesting story to tell?
It doesn’t matter, we’d like to hear from you.
But remember the house rules.
1.everyone at the 9 gets what they need.
2.some get what they want.
3. some what they deserve.
4. some leave in a box.
5. some disappear down a drain in boiler room.
6. some never leave at all.
There are no other known outcomes. Checkout is 1pm sharp. Because we’re civilized. No exceptions.
Payment in cash or gold only.
And do enjoy your stay.
This post took MUCH longer to compose than expected, and didn’t scratch the MADNESS or chaos behind the scenes (all in good fun) But it has served its purpose.
Right. I’m throwing my hat in the wringer. Mangel. Ring. Tingalingaling.
Might take a while, but hell I want to bury myself in this and see what comes up.
READ THE INSTRUCTIONS applies here too... I see...