Tag Archives: editing

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.

What year is it?: Friday Update

27 Friday Dec 2024

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News:

No news this week, but I do want to remind you, post Winter Solstice, that if you want erotic horror romance with Nosferatu vibes following your viewing of Eggers’ gorgeous gothic masterpiece (saw it yesterday as a Christmas gift to myself, loved it, precisely my thing), I wrote wintery gothic trilogy Nocturnal Creatures under my other name. You can get the giant doorstop omnibus paperback or the omnibus ebook. The paperback is admittedly expensive due to its size, but the ebook is an eminently reasonable discount for the three novels, Longest Night, Beasts, and Grayling.

It’s vampire/werewolf high dark fantasy (with forced marriage, monster romance, and an enchanted gothic castle), Beauty and the Beast meets Dracula (I’m nothing if not consistent), and I’m really proud of it. So if you need something to warm these longest nights, Nocturnal Creatures may be right up your alley.

Works in Progress:

I’m still rewriting/editing Masque. It’s taking longer than I’d like because of the retyping, even though that’s the process. It feels like I’m going so fast, and then I really I’m only about a third through. However, one good thing is that I’m really not changing much where I don’t outright rewrite.

I’m heading into delayed holidays with family, my period’s on my doorstep, add into that the weirdness of the week between Christmas and New Year’s and the impending darkness of next year, and this liminal space seems extra liminal.

I’ll continue working on Masque to the end of the year and hope I cross the halfway point, and I’ll have my Resolute post out for you on New Year’s. It wasn’t the most financially successful of years, but notable things still happened, and I have to remember that. I think I’ll share another longer poem as well, my gift to you.

Books I’m Reading:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Legion (it’s a Christmas movie)
Klaus
Holidate
Hot Frosty
Single All the Way
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Black Christmas (1974)
Mickey’s Christmas Carol
The Santa Clause
It’s a Wonderful Life
Nosferatu (2024)
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series (finished)
Holiday Wars series (finished)
Elsbeth series
Ghosts (US) series
Longmire series
Columbo series
CSI: NY series
S.W.A.T. series

In anticipation: Friday Update

20 Friday Dec 2024

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Novels, Poetry, Writing

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News:

My dark poem “Keeping Secrets” was included in the Breath and Shadow Fall 2024 issue. It’s free to read here. My inspiration for it was the fact that I’m pretty good at not telling secrets, but I absolutely cannot promise that I won’t tell under the most mild of interrogations. My secret integrity completely depends on the fact that people don’t ask me about them in the first place.

Undertaker Books announced their Table of Contents for Stories to Take to the Grave: High Seas Edition, and my story “Floaters” (referencing corpses) is included in the line-up. It’s quieter horror than I usually do, and with a little hope thrown in there. It’s one of my stories I submitted far and wide to a variety of publishers, but it kept getting rejected, and I really wanted a good home for it.

Works in Progress:

Since it includes some rewriting, the first-round edit of Masque is going more slowly than I would like. I’m sorry, crisis after crisis and anticipation of collapse is not conducive to creativity. Nevertheless, I’ve started, and honestly, it wasn’t as info-dumping as I thought it would be. Or maybe adding a character that needed context helped give the world-building info reason to exist.

But I’m not having trouble concentrating because I don’t enjoy it. When I’m working on it, I love Masque‘s lushness. The difference between the much sparer found-media transcription style of the Dracula reimagining and the Gothic embellishments in Masque is pretty stark. I like both.

By and large, my shorter creature features, Deep Down and Out of Curiosity and Hunger are both spare as well, Deep Down because of the protagonist’s numbed emotional state and in Out of Curiosity and Hunger because of both the protagonist’s detachment and sort of wanting to write found-footage style without actually doing so—very documentarian. Whereas my first book, Nocturne, and novella The Damp definitely leaned into the Gothic style as well. I think doing both allows me to enjoy them better, because I’m never locked into one way of writing and it keeps me interested.

I can also write somewhere in between. I would argue that, though the Thorns series books are long, they’re quite traditional in style, and so is Question Not My Salt. Drift and A Woman Alone are dreamy outliers, but probably fit in here, too, although I would argue they’re actually Gothic in elements rather than writing style.

I’m very much a believer of ‘form follows function.’ Sometimes you need a modular cottage and sometimes you need a big honking castle. One is not more intrinsically correct. I think I’ve once shared on here, though, that a more elaborate Gothic style of writing more closely resembles how my brain actually thinks. The denser, sparer writing, on the other hand, gives my head a bit of a rest.

Christmas to New Year’s is a weird time, even as a freelancer, so I’m not sure how much I’ll actually get done, but I’m still aiming to get Masque and the Dracula reimagining completed by end of January. At the very least, I’d like to get Masque done if the call I’m finishing it for is, in fact, open in January. If they’re open to novellas, I can submit The Damp if I don’t finish, though. The Dracula reimagining doesn’t really need to be finished. I’m just hoping to start subbing it out to agents as soon as possible. I’m also perfectly open to self-publishing it. I have two covers in my already-purchased folder that could fit the story.

Books I’m Reading:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Die Hard (My verdict? I don’t understand how this isn’t a Christmas movie. Loved it.)
Krampus
Christmas Inheritance
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Black Christmas (2006)
P2
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Holiday in the Wild
The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (Sherlock Holmes)
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series
Holiday Baking Championship series (finished)
Holiday Wars series
The Great British Baking Show series (finished)
Elsbeth series
Matlock series
Ghosts (US) series
NCIS series
Longmire series
Columbo series
S.W.A.T. series

Winter is a time for ghosts: Friday Update

13 Friday Dec 2024

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News:

I was futzing around and stumbled upon a podcast review of Question Not My Salt that warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart. Genre Junkies did their review for QNMS for their Thanksgiving episode and seemed to have a blast discussing all the disgusting elements (plus some talk about The Substance and Thanksgiving itself). The second half of the full episode is spoilery, so it might be better to listen to after you’ve read it yourself, or if you don’t want to read it and just want to listen to other people talk about the gross parts.

This review was completely unsolicited as part of Crystal Lake’s marketing campaign. They were recommended the book by word of mouth in extreme horror circles, which is the coolest thing, and they really seemed to enjoy it. They agree that, as extreme horror, it’s on the milder side and acts as a good gateway into the subgenre.

As evidenced in the last post, I finally went to see Wicked, which is such an important musical for me. It’s meant different things in every decade—it changes as I change—and as someone who grew up a belter and mezzo soprano, both Glinda and Elphaba’s songs have been formative in the development of my singing voice (which is just for my own enjoyment, which I feel ambivalent about on the best of days). I’m not the only musical theatre kid who was ridiculously pleased at how well the musical was adapted to screen. Everything we could want and more than we possibly could have expected. Approached with so much love from everyone involved.

I’m watching Die Hard tonight for the first time ever! I’m looking forward to experiencing a quippier Bruce Willis. I mostly know him through his more stoic phase. Not to mention a young Alan Rickman.

Works in Progress:

I’m nearly finished with the first round of edits for the Dracula reimagining. Then I’ll send it on to my alpha reader. She usually gets my first fruits to help me on the developmental end of things, so I’ll know how to approach first-round edits. But because I wrote the DRI out of order, I wanted to make sure the disparate parts flowed as a whole and there were no glaring consistency errors. So far, the part I needed to make the most changes to is the end, which I wrote first, so that makes sense. I should probably finish with the first round by the end of the weekend.

I had a nice lunch with my alpha reader this week, too, and we talked about her notes on Masque and how to approach some significant changes. I took additional notes, and although Masque will probably be my greatest challenge to rewrite since Nocturne (my issues with Meridian usually had me reworking the plot entirely rather than rewriting the plot I had, which is what I did with Nocturne and will do with Masque), I’m really excited to see what I can make with this story, which has good bones and some great scenes to work with. As gothic alt-history, it’s really demanding on a detail level, and that’s not necessarily where I shine (because I can’t just make shit up the same way I can with modern fantasy; even where I change history, it needs to be justified, and I need to understand the history to change it in the first place). But this story is so important to me and deserves my full loving care and attention. It’s been with me so long; I just want all the best for it now that it’s finally a manuscript.

I’d hoped to have Masque and the DRI edits finished by the end of the year, but now I’m aiming for the end of January, which is usually when early submission calls for novels close.

Books I’m Reading:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Home Alone
A Cinderella Christmas
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies
The Thing
Wicked
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Holiday Wars series
The Great British Baking Show series
The Irrational series
Elsbeth series
Ghosts series
NCIS series
Longmire series
Columbo series
S.W.A.T. series

Too many marshmallows: Friday Update

06 Friday Dec 2024

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News:

For the first time, I was included in Ellen Datlow‘s list of the best short horror recommendations of the 2023 year with “Show Me” from Bound in Flesh and “The Thing That Crawls” from Unspeakable Horror 3. It’s a long list, but it’s still an honor to be part of it.

I sold some things this week; I’ll share more info when they’re announced.

Had what seemed like a really good job interview this week. Crossing my fingers for a second.

Don’t have a lot of Christmas spirit, but I’ve started to have a little. Creeping into its realm with eggnog, Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes (I don’t know why they’re better than LD’s other vanilla cakes, but they are, especially frozen), Christmas viewing, and Christmas music.

Works in Progress:

I’m about halfway through the first-round edits of the Dracula reimagining. I don’t know what the coming world is going to be like and what place my writing has in it, but I think the DRI is a solid piece. It’s unmistakably a reimagining but functions independently from its source material as well; it’s not superfluous or simply a beat-for-beat retelling. It reminds me of back when I read really good fanfiction, how it felt like it was in conversation with canon but was its own thing, too.

I’m still not quite at my full strength, speed, and attention span yet, but it’s improved this week. I did get my period, which was milder than usual (yay!) but occasionally uncomfortable enough to interrupt my work, plus something that seemed like a UTI (sorry, TMI), which I’m treating, yet I still moved forward faster than the weeks before.

Might try to do some poetry this next week. I had plans for long poetry this November, but my soul just couldn’t do beauty last month after the election. I function best like the Romantics: great emotions remembered in quiet stillness, of which there has been precious little in my heart or head.

Things I’m Reading:

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon (finished)
Borrasca by The_Dalek_Emperor (r/NoSleep) (finished)
The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Things I’m Listening To:

The Mist soundtrack
Dracula soundtracks
Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Elf
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
Wishmaster
Is It Cake? Holiday series (finished)
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Holiday Wars series
The Great British Baking Show series
The Irrational series
Broadchurch series
NCIS series
Columbo series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
S.W.A.T. series

Feast days: Friday Update

29 Friday Nov 2024

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News:

Question Not My Salt is 99c for an ebook (for those without KU) through December 3. Question Not My Salt also got a great shout-out from Paul Preston at Books of Horror.

Screams, edited by Judith Sonnet, is also coming out next week, December 1, through Amazon. You can pre-order it now. My short story about being haunted by a number, “Six,” is part of this anthology.

Works in Progress:

I went ahead and let Unhallow’d Guests go for now. I am in no state to write, and I’m just going to have to accept that. I’ll probably try easing back into it with short stories in the new year, but considering that the inauguration hasn’t even happened yet, who knows if I’m going to be in a better state then.

I’ve started editing the Dracula reimagining. That’s also slow, in part because of family in town this week. I’m hoping I have more of an attention span next week. I still may not be in the best state to properly edit this on a developmental level, but I can at least clean it up. I also may not be able to take joy in this like I did last month, but I’m still reminded how much my brain gloms onto Dracula things, regardless of anhedonia. So I’m probably enjoying it somewhere in my brain, but I can’t feel it.

I don’t like when I can’t write or edit, because then I feel like I’m doing absolutely nothing, and I don’t need help feeling useless. I’m still aiming to finish editing the DRI and Masque by the end of the year.

Things I’m Reading:

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon
The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Things I’m Listening To:

Nightwish
Dracula soundtracks

Things I’m Watching:

Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man
Alien: Romulus
Abigail
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Holiday Wars series
White Collar series
Ghosts (US) series
Abbott Elementary series
The Irrational series
Broadchurch series
NCIS series
Columbo series
9-1-1 series
Doctor Odyssey series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series

One-track mind: Friday Update

25 Friday Oct 2024

Posted by in Novelettes/Novellas, Series, Writing

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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

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

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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

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

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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

Two steps back: Friday Update

30 Friday Aug 2024

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

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Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

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