My story “Floaters,” accepted for Stories to Take to Your Grave, through Undertaker Press, is available to read for free here. It’s not so creepy as Pennywise. Instead, it’s a hopeful little thing imagining a different kind of interment after the oceanic ecosystem collapse.
Works in Progress:
I did manage to finish the edits for Masque on Friday night and pared down the synopsis and wrote the pitch on Saturday before sending it out on submission, so I met my deadline and my goal. After that, I was worn out and had work to do, so I haven’t gotten a lot done, but I’ve made a few alterations on Tooth & Claw (Meridian Book 7), and I should finish up the fixes on it before doing the second edit, which shouldn’t take too long.
And I’m starting to do flash poetry again, after a break of a few months.
Books I’m Reading:
The Fisherman by John Langan Playlist of the Damned edited by Willow Dawn Becker and Jess Landry Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Things I’m Listening To:
The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall album The Phantom (Maury Yeston) Original Cast Album
Things I’m Watching:
Moana 2 Fear Street: Prom Queen The Equalizer 3 Earthstorm series (finished) Jeopardy Masters series Say Yes to the Dress series CSI series CSI: NY series Brooklyn Nine-Nine series The Equalizer series
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
Amanda M. Blake 