Tag Archives: gothic horror

Winter is a time for ghosts: Friday Update

13 Friday Dec 2024

Posted by in Novels, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.com

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

Show me your teeth: Friday Update

27 Friday Sep 2024

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Novels, Short Stories, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

News:

Another break in the dry spell of short story acceptances: My story “Six,” about being haunted by a number (inspired by my obsession with maths while in fever dreamstate, not even kidding, it’s a recurring thing), is going to be part of Screams, edited by Judith Sonnet. I’ve been wanting to work with her since we were both in Ruth Anna Evans’ Ooze, so this is a real treat. It’s not a themed anthology but is meant to be a throwback to classic horror, from gory and pulpy to quiet—just downright spooky or scary. It’s slated to come out on Christmas.

Somewhat eerily, “Six” was finally accepted after six rejections. *Twilight Zone theme song*

I also had another job interview today, and I think it went really well. Crossing my fingers.

In leg injury news, my legs are almost completely back to normal except that the original injury isn’t recovering. It’s healed. There’s no pain, no tugging, but it must have healed with too much tangled fibers or scar tissue, because the muscle remains atrophied. The muscle isn’t working, so the other muscles continue to overwork, and the whole leg is weaker. I can’t up the resistance on the elliptical machine, but I can do a whole hour now without reinjuring. I can play pickleball with more vim and vigor. I can walk without pain, although I still start out stiff and sometimes limp a bit. So I still have to be careful going forward, because all these injuries have made me more susceptible to reinjury, but I think I can fairly say that this is as good as it’s going to get, and since that’s without pain, I’ll take it, even it isn’t the ideal outcome.

Works in Progress:

I’m still working on the Dracula retelling. I don’t think I’ll finish by the end of the month, but maybe by next Friday or the end of that weekend? I’ve got to say, the way this book is flowing for me is quite amazing, and it’s so much fun. And I’m incredibly thankful for the outline; it keeps me on task. I have detail for every scene regarding what elements are most relevant and why they’re important. A lot of the verbiage is dialogue, which I like to keep naturalistic, occasional tangents and all, so I sometimes forget what the point of a scene is. So it’s nice having something I can reference to remember where I’m going.

I’m at around 70,000 words and still have three pages’ worth of outline to tackle. I did skip forward earlier this week to do one of the really important scenes, then jumped back to fill in the undone bits (not quite caught up, but close). Otherwise, I’ve actually been working chronologically, to develop the character and conflicts set forth by future scenes already written.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up hitting 110-120K words. To be clear, I envisioned this as a taut, modern reimagining at about 60-80K. The way I viewed it, the shorter size would justify the changes to the story and the found media (new epistolary) format.

I’m not disappointed, per se. As I said above, I’m having a blast, because this has been a dream project, and it’s going so much better than the last time I tried to write it. But it’s not what I wanted it to be, I’m not sure it’s justified as anything but a novelty pet project, not sure if I’ll be able to get it short enough to effectively go on sub. I’m not sure what it is or what to do with it now that it isn’t what I set out to write. Are the formatting and changes enough to keep it interesting to other people who love a good Dracula reimagining as much as me? I guess we’ll know the answer to that eventually.

Things I’m Reading:

Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Dracula collection playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Columbo series
Abbott Elementary series
Shogun series
America’s Got Talent series (finished)
American Horror Story: Cult series
Worst Ex Ever series
S.W.A.T. series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series

Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)

I bring with me
A harvest of sour apples
And slices of honeycomb
Cut with soft cheese
Drizzle with honey
This must have been
What the serpent offered
I too would have fallen
For a cool breeze
And a sharp feast
Served on scales.

False fall: Friday Update

13 Friday Sep 2024

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Photo by Flora Westbrook on Pexels.com

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

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels.com

(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

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

Cutting Thorns Off Roses: Friday Update

11 Friday Aug 2023

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Poetry, Series, Thorns, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

News:

Actually not a lot of news to report this week. I’m in waiting mode for rejections/acceptances, and there’s been some behind the scenes stuff, plus a few things coming out this week, like “A Bug in the Design” at Crystal Lake Shallow Waters, if you want to get in on that Patreon for some exciting new flash every month.

I had a comment to a Twitter post that’s doing some real numbers (for me), and it amuses me that a throwaway comment seems to have resonated like that.

I had my annual-ish ear cleaning, so now I can hear and I’m not stuck in my own head, which is nice.

I also saw Talk to Me, which I thought was amazing, a throat-punch for the first three parts. I agree with some people that it whiffed the ending and pulled the last few punches, but not in a way that negated the excellence that came before. It felt viral and modern without feeling too much on the phone; it felt like an authentic teen scream without watering itself down. It’s what the movie Slender Man aspired to and was too afraid to let itself be.

Works in Progress:

I finished the first round of edits on Crooked House (Thorns 5). I made a few small additions, but not what I was expecting. I think I’ll ask my beta readers and editors if they think I should add more, but for now it feels pretty solid as is, and I really, really like it.

As a Thorns novel, it’s as short as Puppeteer (Thorns 4) is long. It started at 158K words, and I cut it down to a bare 133K words. Still more than Nocturne, which is my longer gothic-style supernatural horror novel, but generally the Thorns novels average about 150-155K words.

I’m letting the edits breathe and doing another patch of short fiction. I’ve written two shorts and plan to write three more in the flash range. Then I’ll do the second editing round.

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (finished)
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

Music I’m Listening To:

Ambient dark music
Dracula musical (Orton/Evans)
Kamelot
Halestorm

Things I’m Watching:

CSI series
CSI:Miami series
Great British Baking Show: Junior Bake-Off series (caught up)
Not Dead Yet series
Murder She Wrote series
Red Notice movie
NOPE movie
Fright Night (1985) movie – Why did no one tell me how delectably queer this movie is?

Poem of the Week:

should you sleepwalk
within the halls
please don’t hesitate
to ring a bell or call
but be extra careful
these darker nights
not to kindle candles
of strangers alight
you never know what
roams there with you
or, if it knows you know
it’s there, what it will do

“Eat His Heart”

02 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in Short Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

I honestly wasn’t sure what I could do for the Shakespearean-themed Tragicomedies issue, because I enjoy Shakespeare, but the only play I know (and mostly understand) backward and forward is the comedy Much Ado About Nothing, and how do you make that horror?

So I considered my favorite line over and over again and thought about how easily Much Ado could have been a tragedy. Throw in my favorite kind of supernatural, and while I’m sure some scholars of the play might turn in their graves, I love the way “Eat His Heart” eventually emerged. Also, I got to do all the wordplay my giddy heart could wish.

You can read it for free at the Crow’s Quill site.

“The Warmth of Many Skins”

17 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Short Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

My winter gothic tale “The Warmth of Many Skins,” LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD x HUSH, is loose upon the world in the second volume of BLEAK MIDWINTER, SOLSTICE LIGHT, from Quill & Crow. It appears to be doing well in some early reviews. I’m blushing.