News:

I’ve had a brief break in the drought with “Nuisance Notifications,” a short story that was accepted by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull for Found 2: More Stories of Found Footage Horror. I’m really honored to be a part of it, and it’s HWA pro-rate, so that’s a bit of a relief, too. It’ll cover one month’s medications, thank goodness.

I make no bones about how much I love epistolary and its progeny, found footage. Found media in general is such a great way to write spare, tight horror. The first Found is amazing so far, and Found 2 is available for pre-order and is coming out October 18.

Works in Progress:

This is my second week working on the Dracula reimagining, and I think I figured out why I’m having such a good time with it. I mean, sure, I’m living the dream of writing a DRI, which has been on my bucket list for a long time, and especially since the last effort was such a disaster, having it work makes a helluva difference.

The reason why it’s consistently fun, though, in spite of the fact that I’m doing everything differently than usual, is because it doesn’t feel like I’m writing a novel. Because it’s modern epistolary/found media and I have discrete documents for each piece, it feels more like I’m writing a bunch of themed short pieces, even though I know I’m writing a novel. Every few thousand words (give or take), I close a document and cross it off my outline, and it hits my brain with endorphins like I’ve finished. So instead of having to wait a month to get that little high, I get one or a few a day. It’s nice.

It wouldn’t work for just any project. This epistolary novel really is like making different-sized granny squares for a throw blanket rather than do a continuous series of crochet stitches. Sure, I have a pattern. I’m not just stitching willy-nilly. And both kinds end up the same size one way or another. But each granny square has its own end, to eventually be stitched together when they’re all done, rather than building a single giant throw on my lap. I couldn’t separate out chapters this way, because it all still feels connected. It’s a unique project, with a unique process, and I’m really enjoying the novelty of both.

Right now, I’m at about 37,000 words of a projected 90,000, but I’m still concerned this is going to cross over 100K, maybe even up to 120K, because I have an awful lot of my outline left to cross out (although some scenes have more notes than others, so it’s a little deceiving). In edits, I’ll probably remove a lot of editorializing; it’s there for me more than the story right now, despite some intended subjectivity. But it’s definitely bigger in scope than I thought. I’d originally conceived DRI to be minimalistic, kind of a counterpoint to the original Dracula tome. Maybe some of the things I’ve written simply won’t be included? But I love relevant detritus and effluvia. It’s like the pumpkin spice of a novel. I guess, as usual, we’ll see.

Definitely throws me even more off-schedule, though. I probably won’t get as much edited by next PitDark as I’d planned, especially if I get the edits for Book & Candle (Meridian 5) back within the next month.

Nevertheless, I’ll aim for crossing off as much of DRI as possible this month, finishing as soon as possible in October, and editing Masque and The Damp before PitDark. Masque will be the wild card, because I already know I need to rewrite the end, and I’ll hear from my alpha reader if there’s anything else I need to reconfigure. Maybe I’ll get The Damp out of the way first, because it feels like all it needs is a standard double edit, and it’s shorter.

Things I’m Reading:

Needful Things by Stephen King (finished)
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull

Things I’m Listening To:

Hannibal series soundtracks
DRI playlist
Dracula collection playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Hannibal
Aliens
Nosferatu (1979)
Columbo series
America’s Got Talent series
American Horror Story: Cult series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series (finished)
Worst Ex Ever series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Murder, She Wrote series (finished!)

Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)

The nexus of our roads
Holds the power of convergence
Within this taut place,
This knot of paths taken
And paths not taken
And paths yet to take.
We call upon the dervish wind
For all curses and hexes
Under a dust-cloud sun.