Category Archives: Novelettes/Novellas

Resolute (7)

31 Tuesday Dec 2024

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Novelettes/Novellas, Novels, Poetry, Series, Short Stories, Thorns, Writing

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I think I’ve figured out that I just don’t like birthdays and the end of the year for the same reason. I don’t like looking back and feeling like I’m not where I want to be, nor do I like looking forward and not seeing much better there either. Although I have reverse SAD rather than regular SAD, I am a little affected by the extra darkness, especially when we’ve had gloomy weather, too. Maybe less light makes me less optimistic in general. Of course, there are other reasons why I feel like I’m holding my breath when I look ahead. Not going to go into it. I’m doing my best to cope, although my best still isn’t great.

(CW for this paragraph: Weight issues) I feel like, although I’ve been able to get back into movement and exercise, which is good, I’m in a losing war with my weight. I had to do insane amounts of high-resistance elliptical to even make a dent before, but prior to the leg injury in 2023, weight was already starting to creep back up. Since college, I’ve gained and lost significant amounts of weight four times, and this most recent weight gain is fifth. My brain is tired of self-denial and categorically refuses to give up certain things when it’s already given up so much; plus, FOMO when I worry that certain things aren’t going to be available to the same degree in the future. And I am tired of being at constant odds with my body. Before the injury, I feel like my body and I had reached a kind of detente, because I could say that at least I was strong and my blood tests said I was healthy. Detente ended around this time last year when I had gained back all the weight from not being able to exercise. It’s been a long struggle, frustrating because you can never just go back to the way you were eating before. You always have to give up more and more and more, and the goalposts of what you can achieve always move.

However, this time last year, I was still injured and healing, still limping, still in pain. Today, I’m walking mostly normal, if a little chaotically when I’m stiff. Still a slight limp sometimes, but no more pain. The main injury has (perhaps irreparably) weakened the leg, though, so I can’t up the resistance on the elliptical without causing strain in the compensating muscles. Even so, walking without pain and able to do cardio and play a full-movement game like pickle ball (which I started with neighbors this year) are all improvements.

My writing sabbatical was only supposed to last one year, but inability to find a new job made it last another. Election Day took some serious wind out of my ability to write, so I had to scrap a few end-of-year plans, and the stress of not finding a job at the beginning of the year surely contributed to my issues with writing what eventually became Tooth & Claw (Meridian Book 7). Naive little me really thought that, because I knew I was capable, I would be able to find a job in a few months, and it’s tremendously humbling and somewhat humiliating to not be able to. In the new year, I’ll probably have to join the gig economy, but I really need money flowing in, and after twenty years in the writing business, it’s still really not coming from that quarter.

In 2024, I made a little more than half what I made writing in 2023. It was a three-figure year. Some of that isn’t on me. The indie horror scene contracted significantly, thanks to billionaires behaving badly: Amazon removed its zine subscription service, which killed all but the biggest zines that were able to cobble together subscriptions in other ways; Musk bought and tanked Twitter; and gen AI overwhelmed submission calls (and their slush readers) with unsolicited slop. (I imagine the banning of TikTok will also have a significant market effect, because BookTok was a big viral push for word-of-mouth marketing, but I don’t hang out there personally.) There were also generally fewer calls from shuttering indie presses. Too many hungry writers (layoffs and post-lockdown changes likely played a role), and not enough well-paid opportunities. Like the job market in general. The indie horror boom is probably over, for now.

Some of it was on me, though, because I focused on writing long-form this year rather than producing new short-form stories, including writing for specific calls. Variety is good for me, so that wasn’t really my fault so much as a consequence of my 2024 plan. However, I did publish the following short stories:

“Hell Come Home,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction 2nd place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, February 9, 2024
“Full,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction 2nd place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, March 19, 2024
“Indigestion,” The Last Girls Club Spring Equinox 2024 issue, March 21, 2024
“Graphite,” The Pleasure in Pain: A Queer Horrotica Anthology, Dragon’s Roost Press, March 31, 2024
“Eye Spy,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, April 13, 2024
“The Glitter of Bile,” Cosmic Horror Monthly Issue 47, May 1, 2024
“Second Chance,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, May 12, 2024
“Snot,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction 3rd place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, July 22, 2024 (as “Sea Snot”)
“Predatory,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, August 22, 2024
“Nuisance Notifications,” Found 2: More Stories of Found Footage Horror, edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull, October 25, 2024
“Six,” Screams, edited by Judith Sonnet, December 1, 2024
“Hell Come Home,” Hotel Macabre, Vol. 1, Crystal Lake Entertainment, December 13, 2024

I would say that “Hell Come Home” is probably my best received short story this year, although “Graphite” and “Six” also got some attention.

I also sold some great poetry this year:

“Cleanse,” Querencia Press Winter 2024 issue, January 31, 2024
“All of Us Witches,” Small Wonders Magazine Issue 12, June 19, 2024
“Vernal,” Renascentum: Crow Calls Volume VI, July 15, 2024
“Keeping Secrets,” Breath & Shadow Volume 21, Issue 2, December 13, 2024

“All of Us Witches” is probably the best received, and I was really happy that it found a place. For the volume submitted, poetry is probably the hardest to sell.

In addition, the following novels came out in 2024:

Strange & Familiar, Meridian Book 3, Totally Bound Publishing, January 16, 2024 (as Aurelia T. Evans)
Question Not My Salt, Crystal Lake Entertainment, February 16, 2024
Crooked House, Thorns Book 5, self-published, September 7, 2024
Avarice & Creed, Meridian Book 4, Totally Bound Publishing, October 1, 2024 (as Aurelia T. Evans)

Question Not My Salt was my first traditionally published novel under this name, and it’s been more reviewed than anything else I’ve done. Despite the fact that it’s extreme horror (mild for extreme, but extreme for regular horror), it’s also been mostly well reviewed; it seems like people have had gross fun with it.

Crooked House was the soft ending for Thorns, in that, if I died without putting out another book, the series would end with a satisfying resolution. Thorns has been an amazing series for me, allows me to go to the dark places and do the kinds of stories I’ve always wanted to do, and to play around within the fairy tale sandbox. I had planned to resume the Thorns series in 2025, but that will depend on my ability to, you know, write. Even so, I’m looking forward to the Thorns still to come.

Strange & Familiar and Avarice & Creed brought my gothic urban fantasy series Meridian to its halfway point. There’s something about my green-colored books under my Aurelia T. Evans name. Avarice & Creed, Skeletons, Cry Wolf… They’re kind of my low-key favorites, although my red-colored books (Fortune, Ringmaster, Strange & Familiar) are more obviously so.

I’m not going to do an analysis of my short-form acceptance rate this year, because when I checked in July, acceptance rate was about 1-2%, compared to 7-8% in 2023, and it didn’t really improve through the rest of the year. You can hope for improvement, but you can’t really set goals to be published more, because you actually have no control on the traditional publication side of things, only in what you finish. But like I said earlier, I also mostly worked on long-form, which is often a lot of work for less likely reward, and the whole process from creation to publication (if it even happens) takes such a long time—the very definition of working on spec.

This year, I wrote 14 short stories, and of course, I wrote a ton of poetry until November, when I had no more poetry left in me, and that still hasn’t come back. I may return to flash poetry in January 2025 to test those waters.

I also finished the following long-form stories/collections:

Tooth & Claw, Meridian Book 7, erotic gothic urban fantasy novel (possibly end of series)
May Cooler Heads Prevail, supernatural novella
A Nightmare for All Seasons, seasonal horror poetry collection
Masque, gothic alt-history novel
The Damp, gothic horror novella
The Dracula reimagining, found-footage/modern epistolary horror novel

(I’m not being coy by not sharing the DRI title. It’s just a bit spoilery about the concept, so I don’t want to share it until it’s going to be published, traditionally or on my own.)

Writing Masque and the Dracula reimagining were serious bucket-list novels, things I had played with the idea of for over a decade, so the fact I wrote them because I was finally ready, and I like what came out, is really an achievement. I really wanted to write one more long thing this year, like I said, but that ended up a bust. I edited a good number of my long-form pieces, though. Some of them are on sub; some are waiting for the right call.

For now, I have plenty of things to edit before I absolutely need to attempt writing something new in 2025. In January, my primary goal is to finish the edits of Masque and the Dracula reimagining. As soon as that’s done, I’ll self-publish my seasonal horror poetry collection, A Nightmare for All Seasons, to which I’m adding a new season: the last, with my short collection Lullabies for an Apocalypse. Then I’ll edit Tattered & Torn (Meridian Book 6) and probably fix and proof May Cooler Heads Prevail for self-publishing.

At that point, I have a number of things I can do, depending on ability and finances. There’s more edits, there’s short-form writing, there’s shorter long-form, and there are any number of sequels to tackle (for Thorns, UA, possibly Meridian), not to mention the rewrite of War House that I keep putting off. I have a general schedule set, but it’s flexible, as always. I could also do other creative endeavors, like drawing, piano, or cross-stitch.

All of this presuming that things don’t blow up as much as I’m worried they will. I’m bracing for impact; just because I can’t sustain paralyzing fear indefinitely doesn’t mean the fear isn’t there, and bad. Hope is certainly in short supply.

One-track mind: Friday Update

25 Friday Oct 2024

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News:

No writing news to report.

I went to Grapevine’s Historic District last Saturday to make glass pumpkins and have a nice lunch with my mom. We passed by the marquee, where I just had to take a picture. I ended up seeing Dracula on my own last night, too.

Works in Progress:

I finished editing The Damp and got it under 40K from 48K by roughly a hundred words. I wanted to get it done in time for PitDark yesterday, because I wasn’t able to get to my other two dark novels in time and I wanted to pitch at least one new piece.

However, based on the last few PitDarks, I don’t think I’ll do another one, as fun as it is. It’s just not effective, and I hit the same problem I hit everywhere, which is that I can’t seem to get any kind of momentum. With Twitter in general death throes (honestly, Threads is more peaceful, although that won’t last once they implement ads or boosted posts, which is inevitable, because we can’t have nice things), no one has the reach they had and I don’t know how many editors or agents were even participating.

I’m discouraged, because I can’t afford indie editing in order to self-publish, but I think that’s my only option with In the Dollhouse We All Wait, A Woman Alone, poetry collections, and the May Cooler Heads Prevail novella. It’s a dilemma, all right, determining whether anything can afford to go out without external edits. I don’t have a lot of notes from my editors, but there’s a reason I have them.

The poetry can probably go out without second eyes. Maybe I can also manage May Cooler Heads Prevail, but I think the subject matter is still too raw and needs to wait until after the election to gauge if it’s right. However, like the poetry, I don’t know whether MCHP has much in the way of an audience.

However, Twitter pitches or not, I’ll have proper novels Masque and the DRI edited and ready to send to agents and presses by next year, so I guess that’s something.

I was sent my edits for Book & Candle (Meridian Book 5), so I’ve been working on them this week, and they’ve been pretty easy. If I don’t finish them today, I’ll finish fairly early tomorrow. Once it’s done, I’ll probably take a day to switch laptops, because the one I’ve been working on is breaking apart on the outside, and it’s only a matter of time before it cracks something essential on the inside.

Then I’ll start on Rack & Ruin (Meridian Book 8), the last Meridian novel. It’s nuts that I’ve almost written two full novel series.

Things I’m Reading:

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Twisted
Fright Night (2011)
Late Night with the Devil
Dracula (1931)
Rose Red series
Unsolved Mysteries series
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Shogun series (finished)
S.W.A.T. series

Poem of the Week:

run home children run home soon
for the evening is dark and cold and long
and the monsters roam and the dead head home
as long as the lantern is still flickering
you will remain safe all the night
watched over by the harvest moon
low and large on the horizon screaming

Blessed cold: Friday Update

18 Friday Oct 2024

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News:

Nothing to share, except the cool front arrived. I don’t even care if I shiver. It’s been such a long, hot summer.

Works in Progress:

I finished the first edit of The Damp, and there almost isn’t anything to say because it was so easy. Past Amanda did me a solid and wrote a clean first draft that didn’t need any major changes, just little things all the way through and one bigger chunk I’d already separated out to cut.

I’m on the second round of edits now, which are always difficult, even though it’s usually just a polish. My brain resists reading the same thing back to back. I do it anyway because that grumpiness makes me less precious about what I keep.

The first edit brought the word count down from about 48K to 41K words. I’m hoping to bring it under 40K in this second round so that it’ll fit into novella calls.

It occurred to me a little bit ago that, if I can’t find a home for it, The Damp might make a nice novella double feature with A Woman Alone. They’re both period gothic novellas (A Woman Alone set during the Depression and The Damp vaguely set in the sixties) with body horror and erotic elements (in AWA’s case, outright horror erotica), but they’re not overly similar despite that at all. It’s a thought.

As a palate cleanser between edits, I updated my poetry collections with the new things I’ve written that fit them. What Witchcraft We Wrought looks more and more like it’ll be the first to reach a full collection after A Nightmare for All Seasons.

I’m still missing the Dracula reimagining. I have a sickness. Christmas, love. Just wait until Christmas.

Things I’m Reading:

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Young Frankenstein
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Haunted Wedding
Halloween Kills
Halloween Ends
Worst Ex Ever series (finished)
Good Bones series (finished)
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Shogun series
S.W.A.T. series

Poem of the Week:

leave chants unsung
silence your pleas
there is no solace
lie with me among
the autumn leaves
there is only us

Waiting for autumn: Friday Update

11 Friday Oct 2024

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News:

Halloween and autumn decorations are up in the house, but a proper Texas autumn should be coming next week. In autumn and winter, we too often have to get by on vibes rather than weather, but I’m not complaining about the milder late summer or what autumn and winter we do get.

In Found 2 news, they’re pushing the release date back a week to the 25th.

Works in Progress:

I finished the Dracula reimagining on Saturday, which was a total of 26 days’ work. By the end, I had 103,246 words, which was less than I thought I’d have. So the final word count is actually quite manageable, because I should be able to cut it under 100K words without trouble. To give you an idea of novel size, the original Dracula is around 160K words (about the length of an average Thorns novel).

The 103K was prior to stitching everything together, removing the outline (which I always include as word count so that it feels productive), and writing a new scene a few days later. After writing the new scene, I had 46 separate files, most of them composed of only one scene and averaging about 2-3K words.

Once I stitched everything together, removed any parts already marked to cut, and added the new scene, my official first draft word count is 99,222 words. Yet, even a few days later, I’m still missing being in that world and wanting more, which I think is a good thing, that I was able to enjoy it so much for so long. I’m slated to edit the DRI sometime in December, depending on when I finish Masque edits, and those are going to be more involved.

However, I get the feeling that something’s missing from the DRI, like I either need to add significantly more or, paradoxically, cut down some things I like to make it even more streamlined than I tried to write it, closer to the original conception. I think I’ll do one editing pass for consistency, since I wrote it out of order, before sending it to my alpha reader to see if she can pinpoint what might be missing or if I’m just perpetually unsatisfied in the Dracula world, which explains the plethora of adaptations, retellings, and reimaginings in my collection.

With the DRI done and dusted, I’ve moved on to editing The Damp, which is the only thing I can fit in before PitDark. I don’t think anything will come of it, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll shop it around a bit, but in the absence of interest, I think it would actually make a good double novella feature with A Woman Alone one day. I think I can finish with the first round of edits by Tuesday. Honestly, the first draft is pretty solid. Most of these edits are minor. Maybe, just maybe, I can have it done by next weekend at the latest?

Cleaned up some poetry from September and early October. From some recurring themes, I might have an idea for another mini-collection/chapbook (because those have been so successful /s). A few of the pieces were really solid, however, even though I had some trouble getting into the long-poem groove.

Things I’m Reading:

Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull (finished)
The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon (bizarro horror picked up at Texas Frightmare, and it is weird)

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Craft
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Halloween (2018)
Thir13en Ghosts
The Order (2003)
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Abbott Elementary series
Shogun series
S.W.A.T. series
Supernatural series

Poem of the Week:

you won’t hear it
until it is upon you
with smothering wings
talon to pierce flesh
and wide lantern eye
an owl sure an owl
let’s go with that

False fall: Friday Update

13 Friday Sep 2024

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News:

As I posted earlier this week, Crooked House (Thorns 5) is out in e-book and now trade paperback.

Kindle e-book
Trade paperback
Universal link to all other vendors

I’ll probably put out the playlist as soon as I’m finished with DRI.

It’s mind-blowing to me that a series I’ve worked on and scenes I’ve envisioned since 2012 have been put to page. There are more stories planted in the first five books that seed the way for the next four or five, but the completion of the fifth book is the culmination of everything started from the very beginning. It’s a glorious soft conclusion, although I’m looking forward to the next era of Thorns novels that starts next year with Heart and Heads (Thorns 6).

If you enjoy shows such as Grimm and Once Upon a Time, novels like the Splintered series, the Magic Shop series, and the Lunar Chronicles, and authors like Robin McKinley, Gail Carson Levine, and Donna Jo Napoli, I think you’ll really enjoy the Thorns series. If you’ve been waiting until the series is finished, that might take a while, but the soft conclusion should satisfy you while you wait for the rest.

Works in Progress:

I finished The Damp when I thought I would, on Saturday morning, when I jotted down less than a thousand more words to finish the thing. As a story that’s been knocking about my head for longer than I care to admit and had one failed effort to write it in the previous decade, I’m so immensely relieved that 1) I wrote it and 2) I think it’s good.

It threw me off schedule a bit. I certainly didn’t plan on writing a novella, because it means I have nothing to offer several novelette calls, which are rare and I usually try to take advantage of them when they happen. I had planned on a novelette that took me four to five days to write; I ended up with a novella that took a week and a half. Technically, at 48,202 words (amended from what I reported on social media after some last-minute adjustments), it’s more a short novel by some standards, but I’ll likely cut it down under 40K during edits.

It’s just as gothic as I wanted it, with more body horror than I thought I was going to manage, and more erotic content than I planned, but it was relevant to the story, and I wouldn’t quite call it erotic horror so much as horror with erotic elements.

I took the weekend off, then outlined DRI on Monday. At this point, my perimenopausal uterus decided to give me a heavier period a little over two weeks after my last one (why?!), so Tuesday was tough and I didn’t get much writing done. However, although I usually dislike outlining, I had real fun coming up with all the epistolary pieces for DRI on Monday. This novel is going to be unusual for me in every way, I can tell, not least in that I’m writing it out of order.

I’m normally an Alpha and Omega writer; I write beginning to end, with very little variation. But I tried that the last time I wrote DRI, and I finally had to stop at 75K words (why?!) because the characters became quite different than intended and ruined the trajectory of the story, even though the writing was still flowing. There were some intriguing developments, and I’m not averse to letting characters alter things or making adjustments, but the writing plodded to a halt because it stopped working. So I wrote some notes and put it aside to try again later, as the Magic 8 Ball advises.

I never write out of order, but because this is an epistolary of disparate media, it might be the best format to try, and maybe by writing the destination first, I’ll be better equipped to set up the journey. And that’s exactly what I’ve done this week: I’m writing the end (all but the final final scene, which I’ll save for last). These scenes have been strongest and so significant in my head over the years, and they’re the most important pieces to the puzzle that I wouldn’t have been able to reach in the original effort. Already, I’m more confident with my ability to go backward, knowing what everything should be aiming at.

I’m also not writing to a word count, although I’m trying to write as much as I can. Everything’s being worked on in different documents to put together at the very end. This is a situation when Scrivener might actually serve me, but because this is so atypical for me and I’ve worked in similar ways with poetry collections, I think I’ll be okay. I’m keeping an informal word count in my spreadsheet and update it every time I close a finished document, because that helps me feel like I’ve made Progress (like crossing things off my outline), but I don’t have a word goal per day, which is also new.

I have a good feeling about writing DRI all ‘wrong.’ I’m only at the beginning—the honeymoon—but it’s feeling good, right. I’m concerned it’ll actually be longer than I planned (what a surprise). My original and preferred projection was 60-80K words, but given the length of the outline, I’m wondering if it might push 100K or more. Of course, some of these sections will be so short, I may not have to worry. I’m still aiming for finishing by the end of the month, if possible.

Things I’m Reading:

Needful Things by Stephen King
Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios (finished)
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull

Things I’m Listening To:

Fleurie
DRI playlist
Dracula collection playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Damaged (2024)
Tamara
Warriors of Virtue
The Blob (1988)
The Ward
Hatchet
The Bone Collector
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
American Horror Story: Cult series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series

Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)

Sultry the evening
Heavy hanging
In low dark clouds,
In creeping mist
Through the maze
Of verdant weeds
And tall grass
Concealing indolent serpents,
While wheeling above,
Crows call like ravens,
Framed by flashes
Of blue light
In the hungry belly
Of an impending storm.

Hourglass sand: Friday Update

06 Friday Sep 2024

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(ETA: Things I’m Reading, Listening To, and Watching, slipped my mind)

News:

Nothing much this week to share. I did forget to write last week that in addition to what I worked on then, I also put together some promotional material for Question Not My Salt that I’ll be sharing on social media in October and November, since QNMS is a holiday-specific story. I, for one, love watching holiday-specific horror at certain times of the year.

I was trying to create deliberately dated graphics for some cheesy material, like old Thanksgiving newsletters in elementary school or Sunday school bulletin boards. Even so, I probably shouldn’t quit my dayjob. Oh, wait…

In that respect, I have nothing to report, and this fills me with simultaneous dread and despair. The job market is the worst it’s been for a while, so I know it’s not entirely my fault, but I’m not sure exactly when I need to lower my standards, and when I do, how much worse will I feel when they don’t want me either.

I write so that I’m doing something, working hard every day, but I know I’m not the only one experiencing a publication slump as well while the anthology and magazine markets dry up, and I ran through all my self-publication budget.

I have a great support system that other people don’t have. As long as I don’t get seriously sick (which is what I’m afraid of), I should be okay. But it’s still scary. I had a plan, but I always have a plan, and you know what they say about hindsight.

I have also killed two large cockroaches in the last two days without completely losing my shit. Please clap.

Works in Progress:

I think I’ll be able to finish The Damp either tonight or by early afternoon tomorrow. Rather than a novelette, I’m a little over 40K and approaching 50K words—much longer than I thought it would be and planned for—but I don’t think I’ll go over. During edits, I’ll probably shoot to get word count under 40K so that it’s a long novella rather than a very short novel. I might have a market or two to submit it to later. I’m happy with its weirdness. I sometimes feel like I’m not weird enough, but I’ll occasionally hit a good minor chord.

After The Damp is done, I’ll take the weekend off to rest, then proceed to work on the Dracula reimagining (henceforth DRI, because I feel like the title is a bit of a spoiler that I’m not ready to give). I’m nervous about writing in a different way, but I don’t anticipate it’ll be a long novel. I’m aiming for finishing before the end of the September, which will hopefully give me enough time to edit The Damp and Masque before end of October, although if I’m given Book & Candle (Meridian 5) first edits, that’ll require an adjustment to the schedule.

However, after NaNoWriMo’s massive missteps over the last year, I will not officially be doing NNWM this year, so it’s not like I have to block off November like usual, as long as I finish a novel in that month, which I can still do with a dayjob and even more easily without.

Things I’m Reading:

Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Haley Reinhart
Hollywood’s Greatest Themes by Tina Guo
Silent Hill: Revelation soundtrack
Stigmata soundtrack
Nightwish instrumentals

Things I’m Watching:

Jumanji
The Nun II
Pandorum
Crossword Mysteries series
Curious Caterer series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
Abbott Elementary series
White Collar series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: (after today, I’ll be using a previous year’s flash poems, since I’ll be working on longer poems this month)

i see through your eyes
the silent witness pulling strings
an alternative perspective
clearer sight parasite
whispering truths from the other side
of your convenient entrance ear

Two steps back: Friday Update

30 Friday Aug 2024

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News:

Nothing this week.

Works in Progress:

In the effort to continue giving my brain a bit of a break, instead of starting immediately on the next project, I decided to take out the next poetry collection, put everything together, and polish it up for eventual publication. I’d hoped to put it out this fall, actually, but between financial considerations and exclusivity for a few of the poems (as well as some still being on sub, although I’m not sending out any more), I think it’ll be best if I wait until next year.

However, I am ridiculously pleased with A Nightmare for All Seasons as a collection. It’s four seasonal sections, two of which are segmented long poems and the other two of which are mini collections:

  • Verdant with Splinter and Thorn: mini collection of 11 poems
  • The Lusty Murders of May: segmented long poem, one piece per day in May
  • The Halloween Parade: mini collection of 15 poems (I posted the title poem last Halloween to herald in the season)
  • Bleak Midwinter: segmented long poem, one piece per day in December

By the time I have everything ready to put into the path of publication, I may add a few more poems to the mini collections if the appropriately themed pop up in my daily poems or on a whim, but I’m not planning for it. Dead Ends had more of my flash poetry in it, mostly because I like making a concise point and sometimes a punchline, and because Dead Ends emerged from a common theme I write rather than a concerted effort to write for a theme, like A Nightmare for All Seasons. Like the difference between assigning my short works to a potential future collection based on broader themes I keep writing and my Bathroom Omens collection, which I specifically wrote short stories (and some poems) for. As a result, a lot more of the poems in the mini collections are longer, two to three pages, and more narrative, like the two long poems.

Now, I’ve been committed to writing poetry for the last three years (four, if you count lyrics), and I learned about poets and their works in English Lit classes. But try as I might, I do not know what makes good poetry. I know what I like, and I understand correct structure (at least where structure is used), but I don’t know whether I’m good or how to improve, no matter how much poetry I read (and I sometimes just don’t like what some call good, so I trust that it’s good, just not for me). All I can really do is what rings right and clear in my brain. It’s disorienting, feeling as though I’m reading some of my best poetry, but most were soundly rejected by poetry markets, and I wouldn’t know a masterpiece from a marketplace.

Regardless, I’m very happy with the latest draft, and I’m looking forward to when I can pull it back out again, either to submit to a call for collections or to publish it myself. In general, I’m amenable to publishing my own collections, poetry or short prose, because they tend not to be as profitable for publishing companies.

After I put A Nightmare for All Seasons aside, I started work on what I had hoped would be a gothic body horror novelette and which now looks like it’s going to be a gothic horror novella (I’ve crossed 15K words and think I’m only halfway through), with not enough body horror to qualify for the subgenre and therefore no longer appropriate in theme or length for the call I’d hoped to write it for. However, since The Damp (formerly Ooze) has been swimming around my head for over a decade as something I want to write (like Masque), I’m not frustrated by writing it without a market (although I’m disappointed I won’t have something for the body horror novelette call).

What I am frustrated about is that I don’t feel like I have a handle on the story, even while I barrel forward. I don’t know how factual my feelings are, but I feel like I’ve been writing badly very well for a while, not just The Damp. And by that, I mean that on the sentence level, I’m on fire, but not on a character and plot level. Maybe I need to write badly and character and plot will improve? Yeah, that sounds like a plan. (It does not sound like a plan.)

This may be a case of hating the writing while I’m in it but thinking it’s workable by the time I get around to editing it—which usually hits midway through the writing. It may also be a simple case of pressure, because I need the money, yet my writing is not making me money because this is the year of rejections, and of course that will make me question the quality, even though I reread through pieces and don’t know what I’m doing wrong (and I’m usually better at quality discernment with prose). Desperation and insecurity breed low self-esteem, after all.

Nevertheless, all I can do is what I’ve been doing and hoping it’s right in spite of myself. I expect the word count on The Damp will be around 30-35K instead of the 15K I’d planned for. Which is another mental issue, because I hit 15K and end of August when I wanted to be finished, so my brain is like, Welp, I’m finished. And I am not finished. Aiming for finishing by end of Labor Day now. (Think I can reach 20K by end of day?)

Then day or two off and jumping straight into the Dracula reimagining, which I’m going to try writing in a new way, not just with an outline but maybe even out of order, working outward from a central story line, and adding supplemental material afterward as needed. These are interesting times.

Things I’m Reading:

Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

The Village soundtrack
Stigmata soundtrack
Nightwish instrumentals

Things I’m Watching:

Pumpkinhead
The People Under the Stairs
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
CSI: Miami series
Abbott Elementary series
Great British Baking Show series
White Collar series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

standing on the edge of a cliff
wondering if you should try
to change your point of view
madness isn’t a push or plunge
but a numb sweaty-palmed descent

Dreaming of autumn: Friday Update

12 Friday Jul 2024

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News:

I wouldn’t normally share a promotional Instagram post, but I so rarely do videos of myself. The Brazilian company that’s putting Question Not My Salt out in Portuguese wanted an intro video, so I obliged. It’s short and sweet and here.

Works in Progress:

Because I’ve been writing hard horror for over a year, which my alpha reader doesn’t like, I forgot that Masque could be sent to her. When I realized, I tossed it her direction, with a goal of editing in September.

I finished editing May Cooler Heads Prevail. After the initial cuts, it went under 20K words, but then I added a few more scenes and brought it back up over 21K, which officially makes it a short novella. However, I don’t know what genre it is and, therefore, who to send it to. It’s supernatural or fabulism, but both of those are subgenres, and there aren’t enough elements to make it either fantasy or horror. I can only think of a few markets with broader speculative calls. I might end up self-publishing.

MCHP took longer than expected, but after I wrote a piece of flash that made me feel like a piece of chewed gum writing it, and next on my docket is working on the professional edits of Crooked House (Thorns 5), which is the soft conclusion of this portion of the Thorns series. I think I keep delaying because I don’t want this part to be over or to move on to the next.

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin (finished)
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Old Favorites playlist
Fourth of July playlist
Ambient YouTube playlists

Things I’m Watching:

Independence Day
Jaws
Lucy
Longlegs
Elsbeth series (finished)
The Rookie series (finished)
Kitchen Nightmares series
Hoarders series
The Amazing Race series
America’s Got Talent series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
Supernatural series
White Collar series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

it doesn’t matter
how our bones break
and blood blooms beneath
our exteriors
it doesn’t matter
that our wings have been
snapped from our shoulders
and our halos tarnished
with rust like mold
a devil’s only response
to the fall
is to rise
again

Twisted nerve: Friday Update

05 Friday Jul 2024

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Drift is an excellent vacation read, short and sweet. Highly recommend reading it by the water.

News:

My sea story “Snot” is a finalist in this month’s Crystal Lake Shallow Waters contest. Enjoy the Horror in Paradise theme for $5/month.

Works in Progress:

I finished Masque soon after last week’s update for a total of 110,972 words. I’ve already come up with a few ways to improve it in the first edit. Given my attention span, I think I’m almost certainly burned out from pushing the pace (not to mention reasonably afraid and depressed with the state of the Union), so I took the weekend to try to recover. Editing all month should help that, too.

I’m working on the edits for May Cooler Heads Prevail now and should finish the first edit by end of day. Since it’s so timely with its themes, it’s difficult to push through, but depending on escapism is difficult, too, because it feels like falling for bread and circuses, being the toad in the boiling pot and telling myself everything is fine and I don’t need to worry. The trouble is that I don’t know what to do if things go more wrong than they already have. If the rim of the pot is too high, what’s a poor toad to do when they realize the pot is boiling?

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Old Favorites playlist
Fourth of July playlist
Witchy YouTube playlists

Things I’m Watching:

The First Omen
Midsommar
Under Paris
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
Hamilton
The Bay
Elsbeth series
Kitchen Nightmares series
Summer Baking Championship series (finished)
Hoarders series
Worst Roommate Ever series (finished)
The Amazing Race series
America’s Got Talent series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
Supernatural series
White Collar series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

the universe is a night-blooming flower
creation its opening into light in darkness
stardust the persistent scent of jasmine
expanding in hedonistic spread
but preparing eventually to close


Never early, always late: Friday Update

07 Friday Jun 2024

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Novelettes/Novellas, Novels, Writing

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News:

Nothing to see here, other than fact that it seems appropriate that I’m finally watching all the Omen movies around the time of Damien’s birthday (which my nephew shares). I’d only ever seen the 2006 remake prior to this (it’s largely faithful to the original and I actually appreciate it more after watching the original), but I wanted to watch the rest of the franchise before tackling The First Omen, which I hear good things about.

Works in Progress:

I finished May Cooler Heads Prevail at 21,633 words. I still can’t say whether it’s a novelette or novella, since it could go either way in edits. I’m really pleased to have that concept story written and waiting for me when I’m ready to work on it again.

I then proceeded to throw my previous schedule out the window to attempt writing and editing a full alternative-history gothic novel, Masque, before the end of the month. I’m doing it to try to make a novel submission call, but also for myself. This story has been with me for years, probably since the mid-2010s. I’ve put off writing it all these years because it was one of those ideas where I would think, I’m not ready for this one yet. I need to cook more as a writer before I even try. I still have stories like that, and I’ve had stories that I tried to write before I gave myself time to cook.

I’m not sure whether I’m ready, but I’m 25K words in and still going strong. It helps that I wrote a comprehensive outline, which I think I will do for every story going forward so I can see where I’m going without having to hold the whole story in my head at all times. I just don’t have the attention bandwidth for that anymore, so my methods have to change. But the timing couldn’t be better, because it occurred to me while I was writing that I would not have been in the best position to write a plague story prior to COVID. I can and have read about plagues, but going through a pandemic answers questions you don’t think to ask and don’t always know where to find the answers.

The other wonderful thing about this story is that I’m going full-out gothic prose, with long sentences and giant paragraph blocks, whatever my heart desires. I cut my teeth on 18th and 19th century literature, and even Stephen King was of a more elaborate and gothic style for his time. The way I think very much resembles how these stories’ syntax was structured. I’ll clean and tighten it up in edits, of course, but it’s been fun letting the style run wild for now.

I’m going for my usual 5K words per day that I try to do for a novel. In theory, banging this novel out is entirely doable, depending on how much longer it is than my initial estimate of 100K words. As usual, we’ll just have to see.

Part of the reason for writing the novel instead of editing Crooked House (Thorns 5) is the frustration that I am still not employed and cannot yet spare the formatting costs. But as soon as Masque is completed, I’ll start Crooked House‘s final edits anyway. I may or may not be able to tackle a short story before the conclusion of a June call, but I can’t promise anything, and the story for it is more undefined than I’d like.

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Pop playlist
The Village soundtrack
Knowing soundtrack
Sacrificium Instrumental Versions by Xandria
Nightwish

Things I’m Watching:

The Omen (1976)
The Exorcist: Believer
Pearl
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Damien: Omen II
Omen III: The Final Conflict
Omen IV: The Awakening
Summer Baking Championship series
The Amazing Race series
CSI series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
9-1-1 series

Poem of the Week:

no matter what you do
whether you spin the world
off axis
untether sky
from earth
steal worth
from paper and precious metals
stain great lakes red
marry the newly freshly dead
you can always count
on family
to stand with you
at the altar