News:

My short horror story “A Bug in the Design” was posted yesterday for the Crystal Lake Shallow Waters Flash Fiction Contest, for $5/month patrons. It’s horror grounded in reality rather than supernatural, inspired by one day when I left work on a weekend when my car was the only one in the parking lot and something did not want me anywhere close to my car.

In addition, my humor-horror story “The Cut,” about a baking-karaoke reality show, has been published again in Shallow Waters Vol. 9, which hit first in horror anthologies, so that’s exciting. It’s only 99c, with previous winners from the contest, so it’s got some great pieces.

My medieval story, “The Plank in Thine Own,” about an ambitious monk and his demon experiment, should be coming out today in The Devil Take You, initially through Sentinel Creatives’ Kickstarter, but it doesn’t look like they’ve opened yet. I’ll include the link in next week’s news update.

My family visited my brother and sister-in-law, so we had a great time in Oklahoma with my niblings. I can’t read on car trips anymore because I get carsick, but I can write during them, since I don’t have to read much as I go. I look out at the horizon and make all the typos I need to. It’s a great three-hour stretch of time when I’m not connected to wi-fi, so I can’t do anything but write. Good way to get a story done on the way there and another done on the way back.

Earlier this week, we had a stretch of three days without triple-digit heat where just walking outside didn’t feel like a convection oven. It was strange to go out and think this is so nice about 95 degree weather.

I injured my leg about two months ago, grade II muscle tear in the right calf and a grade I strain on the left, and it’s been a long recovery (for me). But I’ve transitioned out of a support boot into supportive shoes, and now out of the supportive shoes for more barefoot walking through the house. They’re more stressed than I’m used to after long walks, but I can do them as long as I take a break if I get close to a strain. The first time I tried swimming as low-impact exercise in the first month, my leg couldn’t push me back out of the water, so I had to nix that, but now it’s strong enough for swimming. Still not at a point I can go back to my usual workouts, but definite improvement. I keep telling myself to be patient, or I’ll reinjure and have to wait even longer.

Works in Progress:

Finished my latest patch of short stories over the weekend with the help of the car trips. Generally, for longer pieces I ask myself if I can use the pieces for something else of my own. I have a list of short story collections that I’m slowly building either for self-publishing or for collection calls, but there’s no hurry on most of them, since they have stories in them that need to wait for exclusive rights to clear before I can reprint anyway.

However, for flash contests, I love trying new things and going in more random directions. They only take an hour or two of my time, so it’s a nice exercise, both to write these stories and then to trim them down to their most fundamental elements. I’ve discovered that all this short story work has improved my editing of longer works, too.

I’m on the second edit of Crooked House (Thorns 5) now, and it’s so much easier than second rounds used to be. The way the edits worked before was round one was macro edits, lots of cutting and rearranging and getting rid of my crutches, then round two would be micro edits. But I’m getting more of the micro edits done in the first round, so second round so far has been more of a polish. My editors are going to have plenty of things to change, of course, but in terms of my work, it’s cool that I notice marked improvement.

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard

Music I’m Listening To:

Dark ambient music
Miranda Lambert
Taylor Swift
Ruelle
Puppeteer (Thorns 4) playlist
Blacklist playlist

Things I’m Watching:

America’s Got Talent series
CSI series
CSI:Miami series
Not Dead Yet series (caught up)
Murder She Wrote series
White Collar series
Count of Monte Cristo movie

Poem of the Week:

put me under the knife
sophisticated barbarism

barbers used to be dentists
surgeons used to be butchers

small dog energy life
in hands and between blades

clambering for the pedestal
afraid the table will tilt

don’t need but want so hard
stomach pinches through muscle

it’s a horror show in here
I will pay dearly to be victim