Tag Archives: haunted house experience

Manufacturing fall: Friday Update

11 Friday Sep 2026

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The pool spa is shaded in the mornings, and it was actually quite cool to dip in for the whole hour I was reading. When you get out and feel a breeze, it’s like having a little dose of fall in summer.

Plus, I’m writing a haunted experience novel and listening to Halloween. So it may be hot as hell here in Satan’s fajita skillet, but I try to make fall moments where I can. The brown leaves make me sad, though; that’s not fall, that’s tree exhaustion, and their distress distresses me.

News:

Nothing this week.

Works in Progress:

My body decided to catch another cold this week (I tested negative on all basic baddies). That’s two colds in four months, when I hadn’t otherwise gotten so much as a sniffle since starting the grocery gig. Still in the ‘feeling not quite like myself’ phase of it. Once I feel more like myself, despite persisting symptoms, I’ll probably be in a better place to push a little harder on the We Follow You in the Dark rewrite. For now, I’m being as gentle as possible, because I’m only sleeping properly every other night.

I’ve made it to about 21K words, which I would say is about a third of the way through. If I had wanted to get through the whole thing by the end of house/pet-sitting, I would be disappointed. I still think I’ll be able to get it done before the end of the month.

Books I’m Reading:

The Jackal Man by Russell C. Connor
The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson
The Deep by Nick Cutter

Things I’m Listening To:

Let’s Hear It for the Girls playlist
Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Valentine
Immaculate
The Rite
The Long Walk
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Haunted Harmony Mysteries: Prelude to a Wedding
Ghosts (US) series
The Closer series
America’s Got Talent series
Hawaii Five-O series
Prodigal Son series (finished)
The Rookie series (finished)
The Following series

Poem of the Week:

squishy little yellow elephant
i thought i forgot you
left in a box in the burning attic
with the other memories
crinkle crinkle little star
your soft yellow legs took you so far
i don’t remember did i take you out?
did i leave the door open?
what else came through the door?

The great American road trip from house to home: Friday Update

04 Friday Sep 2026

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This is a year of milestones. Because of working the grocery shopping gig and trekking back and forth from home to where I’m house-sitting (a little farther than the last place where I house-sat), I crossed 100K miles on my car. Miss Emma may be getting up there in car years, but she’s doing well, all things considered. Can’t say the same for the one driving her and the milestone quickly catching up to her in the next few months. I feel like I’m starting to fall apart; human body maintenance is even more demanding than car body maintenance.

News:

Nothing this week. I’m taking a few months off from working the Shallow Waters themes. I wasn’t happy with the last story. It was fine. Fine. But it didn’t excite me or make me proud. That tells me to step away for a bit. Still reading the finalists every month, though. It’s a lot of fun.

Works in Progress:

I started the We Follow You in the Dark rewrite. Although things were a little shaky to start out with, because there were still some questions I hadn’t answered yet in my head, I think I’ve ironed those things out. I’m looking forward to how the character changes will alter the story, which is a good sign. I think any clumsiness in this rewrite can be fixed in the edit.

Got a rejection on that short story collection. That kind of hurt, even though I was expecting it. The longer works always hurt a little more. I’ve been getting a lot of rejections lately in general. Doesn’t help that the horror short story market has contracted, which means more people are fighting for fewer anthology spots.

Books I’m Reading:

The Jackal Man by Russell C. Connor
Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman (finished)
The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson

Things I’m Listening To:

Let’s Hear It for the Girls playlist
Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Whisper Man
Nope
Ready or Not
The Closer series
America’s Got Talent series
Hawaii Five-O series
The Rookie series
The Following series

Poem of the Week: (throwback to Sept 2022)

i cannot emphasize too strongly
the catastrophic slide of civilization
that was always a tenuous veneer
and now slips down the face of it
like wax in a climate crisis
a collective effort undercut
by an individualistic myopia
and a sense that freedom
never meant sacrifice
on every level but rather
from the undesirables
of which there should be none
in no world is the eagle
more important than the ant

Demon-Cuddling: Friday Update

25 Friday Aug 2023

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

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News:

So I got my dates mixed up for The Devil Take You from Sentinel Creatives, which includes my short story “The Plank in Thine Own.” The Kickstarter opened on Monday, so you can get your book through that, plus some great perks if they reach their stretch goals. Sentinel Creatives go out of their way to create immersive experiences, so they do audiobooks and soundtracks, and it’s really pretty neat.

Last month was my first time properly on sub with a novel since my early twenties. I received my first novel rejection this week. It’s not exciting, but it’s all part of the process, and being a part of that process is exciting. I’ll continue to try to shop around with it to appropriate novel/novella calls (there’s a new imprint that looks like a good fit), but because it’s a weird length—novella by some standards and very short novel by others—I don’t know whether it’s a great piece to sub to agents. At the very least, I have it there in my trunk, as needed.

Otherwise, things are pretty quiet on this particular front. I have handfuls of short stories on sub but probably won’t hear back on them until September and October.

Works in Progress:

I finished Crooked House (Thorns 5) edits and sent the most recent draft out to my editors and beta readers.

The next thing on my docket was editing We Follow You in the Dark, a short horror novel set in a haunt experience, but I got spooked (no pun intended), so I edited down a few short stories to gather my courage. But I’m working on We Follow now and about a quarter of the way through.

It’s a more difficult draft. Usually, I’m just paring and cleaning up what’s there in the rough, but for We Follow, I knew by the end of writing it that I needed to move whole sections around, which fudges with my transition bridges. I’ll probably have to fix more in the second round of edits. This book, however, is definitely novel-length by multiple house standards, so it might be in a better position to sub to agents if I can tidy the manuscript changes.

If you’d like to support a writer through a rough edit, buy me a coffee?

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard
The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss

Music I’m Listening To:

Billie Eilish
Fleurie
Svrcina
Jordin Sparks debut album
The Silent Force by Within Temptation
Hide and Seek by The Birthday Massacre
Joanne by Lady Gaga
Live Around the World by Queen with Adam Lambert
Crooked House playlist

Things I’m Watching:

America’s Got Talent series
CSI series
CSI:Miami series
Murder, She Wrote series
White Collar series
The Great British Baking Show: The Professionals series
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt series
Locke & Key series
The Pope’s Exorcist movie (didn’t like)
M3GAN movie (loved)
Star Trek (2009) movie
The Black Demon movie (didn’t like)

Poem of the Week:

every night I leave the flame
flickering on the porch
there’s nowhere and
no one for miles
i light the lantern
so anyone and anything
may find a way home