Tag Archives: leg injury

Show me your teeth: Friday Update

27 Friday Sep 2024

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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.

Ants at the picnic: Friday Update

28 Friday Jun 2024

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News:

No writing news, but in personal news, I’m walking, swimming, and up to 30 minutes on the elliptical, so I decided to take a chance on playing pickleball with my next-door neighbors. Everywhere else hurt, but my injured leg did not (although with compensating muscles stiff and aching, my leg ended up having some trouble for a few days).

It’s a helluva hellish season to start playing, and I need to figure out how to better protect my face from the sun, since it burned again despite sunscreen, but I’m already getting better second time around. It’s a lot of fun. (And hopefully less stiffness and aching this time. After the injury and due to other experiences, I suspect I’m slower than normal with muscle recovery in general. I feel like I’m not old enough for it to just be getting old, but with 40 creeping up in the next few years, maybe I’m wrong.)

Works in Progress:

I did the math and wished I hadn’t. Here, halfway through the year, I only have an 8% acceptance rate, two of them no-pay and only one was HWA pro rate. It generally hasn’t been a very successful year, and when I’m unemployed, the rejections hit harder from a financial standpoint (I did recently have a very nice personal rejection, though). There’s still another half year to go, and I know this is just how it sometimes goes. I have to keep reminding myself that the universe doesn’t actually punish desperation.

I’m this close to finishing Masque at almost 110K words. Period and post-flu fatigue got the best of me and pulled my daily word counts farther back than I would like. I will not be able to finish writing and editing the novel this month, given that we’re only a few days from July, so I’ll set it aside to edit later, which I think might be for the best. Sometimes I like it, but sometimes I think I’m the most horrible writer ever, which tells me to put some distance between us. I’m not entirely happy with the ending, but I get the feeling I’ll like it better upon the next read-through.

I am, however, really proud of myself for writing Masque, for taking the chance on a freaking ambitious story—in style and scope, given historicals (even alts) are not my forte—and committing myself to it with exceptional discipline (until ill health hit, but that’s not my fault and I shouldn’t penalize myself for it). More importantly, for finally tackling something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. I don’t know if anything will come of it. I came up with the idea pre-COVID, but there’s no getting away from the influence of COVID in the novel, and people might simply not be interested in plague stories for a long while. But I’m still proud of myself for doing it.

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Nocturne playlist
Old Favorites playlist
Bach organ music

Things I’m Watching:

The Little Mermaid (2023)
Ghosts (US) series (finished)
The Rookie series
Kitchen Nightmares series
Summer Baking Championship series
The Amazing Race series
America’s Got Talent series
Abbott Elementary series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
Supernatural series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: This lyric poem was written last year as a way to process the 2016 Pulse Massacre, 49 dead. I’m always late to the processing party. But it seems like a good way to conclude Pride Month.

a moment to remember
lifetime to forget
branded brass and
dust to dust
envy to ecstasy
a crater of regret

karma in a coma
mad fate lurks with teeth
slaughterhouse wild
kills and cries
an indifferent sky
and carnage beneath

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive

mirrors shatter
to spiderweb glass
on the dance floor
let all of the
othered world burn
a multicolored mass

heads held high
under brick-dust rust
a hundred needles
dirty for nothing
silent genocide
held breath hushed

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive

a moment of silence
what did quiet get us
dance dance revolution
blow out your eardrums
no thoughts no prayers
don’t let them forget us

we’ve both got rings
show us where to sign
where you get yours
and we get ours
and no one else
gets what’s mine

maybe sometimes we’re sex
and sometimes we’ve love
nothing wrong to hold
to sink and close
eyes in the dark
can’t that be enough

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive

Basket case: Friday Update

24 Friday May 2024

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News:

Attended Texas Frightmare Weekend last weekend with a horror/writing friend and had a great time. I like the Irving Convention Center over the DFW Airport Hyatt, which we’d outgrown two years ago. The building is better set up for a pleasant ambient temperature and doesn’t have that humid feeling of a hotel. The subterranean element of the Hyatt did feel more horror-like, and the C Terminal parking was a horrifying maze, but the Irving Convention Center is generally a much more pleasant experience. We can make our own horror atmosphere.

Highlights were the Queens of Scream panel with Jordan Ladd, Jane Levy, Marley Shelton, Cerina Vincent, and Dee Wallace and the solo panels with personal favorites Kevin Durand and Doug Jones, who seemed like the most delightful people. You’re always afraid to meet the actors you like, out of fear they’ll disappoint you by being arrogant (although sometimes that’s delightful, too, like Malcolm McDowell) or dismissive of fans, but I’m regularly more relieved than not when we meet them. (Other highlights from previous years include Alice Krige and the soon late Julian Sands.)

As far as PitDark yesterday, which I’d been looking forward to and prepping for, I received a significant amount of support from followers, but it unfortunately yielded no fruit, which took the wind out of my sails for the rest of the evening and will probably last through today. From what I could tell, a lot of us got more interest from porn bots than agents or publishers. Might have been a slow month, might just not have been intriguing enough, or maybe the earlier effectiveness of the event has run its course post-Elon.

That means In the Dollhouse We All Wait doesn’t have a home, and I’m not sure where it can find one. There’s one sub call opening in August that might be open to extreme. We’ll see. I don’t like finished works just sitting there, doing nothing, but extreme is a difficult sell. Usually, the stuff that’s in it is also in the ‘we don’t want’ section of submission guidelines.

In real life news, we are battling paper wasps building nests under our porch roof. They’re classified as aggressive, but in my experience, they’re fairly unaggressive. They just have no fear. So they’ll fly right up to your face, and they sting like the dickens if provoked. Since I’ve been spending most mornings and milder days working on the porch, I have to share space with them and point out the nests so Dad can knock ’em down. Wasps are good garden insects, but when the niblings are out here, you don’t want so many wasps at the same time, and this is the time of year they’re most industrious, trying to establish a home. Wasps are good, but not right here.

As far as the leg injury, I think the secondary injuries have calmed down, but I still have to be careful. I’m on the elliptical machine again, lower resistance and less time than when I started six years ago, but it’s so nice having anything, and I seem to be doing okay, with some adjustment to my stance. However, the originally injured muscles are still weak and atrophied a year later, no matter what I do, so I suspect that’s just my life now. Even if I can’t up the resistance or do high-intensity interval training, I’ll work on endurance instead. I’m just glad to have some decent aerobic exercise happening. It makes my cardiovascular system much happier.

Works in Progress:

After completing the long and short pitches for In the Dollhouse, I started working on a short story that’s been knocking around my head and that I’m trying to do justice to. It’s kind of turning into a novelette, which is fine. At its length, it’s not going to fit the sub call I was writing it for anyway. Just for myself at this point. Next, I’ll be writing for another sub call, borrowing from my Thorns universe to try to make a standalone short story. Then I’ll tackle the pro edits of Crooked House (Thorns 5).

Books I’m Reading:

Killing Time by Russell C. Connor (finished)
Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire (finished)
100% Match by Patrick C. Harrison III (finished)
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin (I love the movie and have wanted to read the book for a while now)
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (Hated it in my first reading, so I’m giving it another try)

Things I’m Listening To:

RAIGN
Fifty Shades trilogy soundtracks (never read the books or watched the movies, love the soundtracks)
Abyss/Ascent playlist
YouTube ambient tracks

Things I’m Watching:

Pandemonium (Texas Frightmare)
Basket Case (Texas Frightmare)
Brain Tumor (Texas Frightmare)
The Black Quarry (Texas Frightmare)
The Equalizer
The Equalizer 2
The Equalizer 3
Summer Baking Championship series
Under the Banner of Heaven series
CSI: Vegas series (finished)
CSI: NY series
American Idol series (finished)
9-1-1 series
NCIS series (finished)
NCIS: Hawai’i series (finished)
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

i don’t even know what to be angry about,
memories slipping away like ferrous sand,
leech slime through my teeth the mucus of tears.
is what i remember real or am i an amalgamation
of traumas and joys only occurred in dreams?

Couch potato sprouting: Friday Update

29 Friday Mar 2024

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News:

The Pleasure in Pain Queer Horrotica Kickstarter is still taking pre-orders and other perks, although it’s met its base goal. If they meet the stretch goal, Pleasure in Pain gets an audiobook.

Post-apocalyptic “Full” won 2nd place in the Shallow Waters flash fiction contest for the Murder of Crows theme!

Works in Progress:

Once again, I hit a creative wall with Shadow & Song, this time around 25K words, so I think this particular storyline is a bust. I’m scrapping it in favor of my next effort, Tooth & Claw, which I’d originally thrown out of the Meridian line-up because it was purely sapphic, which can’t go into the Meridian series (has to do with which Totally Entwined imprint it’s under, can be some queerness but primary needs to be female/male). However, one character going male doesn’t make the story suffer at all, so that’s what I’m going to do, and I can take two good characters from Shadow & Song and integrate them into the new story. It’s possible Lis just wasn’t meant to be a main character. I’m incredibly discouraged by two failures in the novel arena, and I’d like a win. I’d like a book Xed off my list.

Just to make sure I had a story, I outlined Tooth & Claw. I’m not an outliner, because it makes me feel like I’ve already written the story, but on certain occasions, they’ve just been necessary. And yes, I have a story, and there are scenes I’m really looking forward to, which wasn’t the case with the other two attempts. All I could see was the beginning, and as I went, the rest of it didn’t become any clearer like it usually does.

In the meantime, I put together another poetry chapbook. This has been an unexpectedly productive horror poetry year, for how ineffective I’ve been in other mediums. I’ve done enough substantial poetry and mined, expanded, or stitched together things from flash poetry to put together two impromptu chapbooks (for a total of three) and complete a collection.

We have family over for the holiday, so I’ll work on the second edit of a novelette for a sub call in April. Then I’ll start Tooth & Claw in the new month after I do necessary car things.

Health is doing better. I suspect I had a case of post-infection visceral hypersensitivity, which has a tendency to make me think I’m dying, and it gets worse with stress. Leg injury, however, is still reinjuring. I need to see the orthopedist, but I’m trying to wait until I have health insurance again, because MRIs are expensive. Job search is not going so well. I’ll have to eventually go with a temp agency again if I can’t get direct-hired.

Books I’m Reading:

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire (finished)
Killing Time by Russell C. Connor
Half-Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire

Things I’m Listening To:

Leonard Cohen
YouTube playlists
Singer-songwriter playlists

Things I’m Watching: (I finally got Tubi and wanted to watch a bunch of things before they expired)

Poor Things
The Shrine
The Possession of Michael King
Clown
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Madhouse
Catacombs
The Evil in Us
Raze
Extraterrestrial
Angel series (watchalong)
CSI: Miami series
Spring Baking Championship series

Poem of the Week: (throwback from March 2022)

you try so hard
to seem sinister
but my dear
mister mister
save the spooking
for my sister
your filed teeth
and damask swagger
won’t sink
underneath
my moonpale skin
stand back
cheekbones
no spine-chilling
i like your style

Quiet whirlwind: Friday Update

15 Friday Mar 2024

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News:

For Women in Horror Month, Jordan Triplett interviewed me for Alpha’s Court. I share my love of worms, how I don’t limit myself with genre, and how I combat negative thoughts.

John R. Little, author of Miranda, wrote some effusive praise for Question Not My Salt: “This is an absolutely terrific book, and I highly recommend it. … If you’re one of those folks who likes extreme horror, you really need to take a look. Just an awesome story from cover to cover.”

Cemetery Dance also posted a review for Question Not My Salt, excerpted here: “Don’t let the cover fool you, this is HORROR, not a cookbook…though a cookbook from this novella just might be fun to read. Imagine you’re a Canadian who goes to college in the U.S., is roomed with someone you become friends with who invites you to their home for Thanksgiving… and things go… awry. Do NOT piss off Mother. Do not ask for salt and for goodness sake, spit in that wine glass and pass it already.”

A reminder that we’re doing a read-along of Question Not My Salt at Goodreads group Horror Aficionados this month. We’ve had some fun interactions so far, including dream casting and favorite Thanksgiving dishes.

On the leg front, the reinjury seems to have mostly healed, although the muscle is still weak and needs some strength-building. I’m taking longer walks in sneakers, mostly walking around and going up and down the stairs barefoot again, which is preferable to having to wear shoes to support against the pain. I might be able to get back on the elliptical at low resistance as early as next week.

In the meantime, I seem to be dealing with some health issues—probably a bad batch of medication and possibly side effects of another, plus pulling a muscle or pinching a nerve in my neck, but I have a tendency to panic, and it’s making concentrating or doing anything important very difficult. It’s also putting some pressure on my job search, because I thought I’d have health insurance by now.

Works in Progress:

Despite concerns, though, I’ve managed to restart Shadow & Song (Meridian 7), and I finished the last required poems for the Spring section of my seasonal horror poetry collection. I can still add new poems to the Spring and Autumn sections if an idea or two arise, because they’re mini-collections rather than singular narratives like Summer and Winter, but for now, I can cross A Nightmare for All Seasons off my list as finished. I’ll probably put it together and edit it June/July 2024.

Just for fun, these are the section titles:
Verdant with Splinter and Thorn
Lusty Murders of May
The Halloween Parade
Bleak Midwinter

Also wrote and continue to work on some standalone poetry inspired by this month’s Quill & Crow Crow Calls. I like to add to my long poetry list now and then to keep it fresh. The more poetry I write, the more themes emerge for chapbooks and longer collections.

Received a handful of disappointing rejections. And yet I keep pushing, because I don’t know what else to do.

Books I’m Reading:

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire
Killing Time by Russell C. Connor
Nineteen Little Stab Wounds by Alexis DuBon (finished)

Things I’m Listening To:

Hannibal soundtracks
Abyss/Ascent soundtrack
Silent Hill soundtracks
Kamelot

Things I’m Watching:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer series (watchalong)
Angel series (watchalong)
American Idol series
CSI series
CSI: Vegas series
NCIS series
NCIS: Hawaii series
White Collar series
The Mentalist series
Ghosts series
Not Dead Yet series
Will Trent series
Spring Baking Championship series
Home Town series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: (throwback from March 2022)

Malignant narcissist
Whose currency is abject fear
Forgets that true power
Is not making them kneel
And basking in their submission
But having them lower themselves
To kiss your filthy feet
Of their own devoted volition

If the sun never rises: Friday Update

02 Friday Feb 2024

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News:

After the polar vortex dipped down here to blister my toes with chilblains, we slipped into a false spring. It’s been warm, but also cloudy and rainy. I like cloudy and rainy, but after a while, missing the sun disrupts the sense of day rising and night falling. The temperature is beautiful (even a little warmer than I prefer) and doesn’t look like we’ll get a big winter front for a while (if at all), but there are a lot of clouds in the forecast. Makes me drowsy.

There’s no immediate news really, although I can tease that I received another great blurb and did my first podcast interview for Question Not My Salt this week. First podcast interview ever, actually.

If you missed it, I put out the Puppeteer (Thorns 4) playlist. You can find all the book playlists under the Thorns series header above. The links are under each book listing.

Works in Progress:

I finished the second edit of erotic horror novella A Woman Alone and brought it down to under 40K words, which was the goal. Since January submission calls ended and February calls opened up, I submitted that, plus a novelette and a few more short stories. I also finished what might be my last poems for the Autumn section of my seasonal poetry collection. Now I just have to write for Spring.

On January 31st, I felt weird starting something new right at the end of the month, and I didn’t have any more small projects to fuss with, so I took the day off to binge-watch Buffy, Angel, and The Mentalist and feel sorry for myself because I’m still struggling with leg pain. Sometimes you just need to wallow. I don’t really take days off and often downplay my own work as actual work—even though I put in full effort seven days a week—because I don’t receive commensurate compensation. But rest will occasionally force itself upon you

Wallowing over, I started on Silver & Steel (Meridian 7) yesterday, and it started pretty strong. I broke from my usual style for the series and decided to do it in first-person present tense. Whether I finish it mid-February or not, that’s when I’ll clean up my resume and start putting out job applications. Hopefully, winter doesn’t decide to come back with an icy vengeance at that point. It did when I started my last job nine years ago.

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire
Ending in Ashes by Rebecca Jones-Howe

Things I’m Listening To:

Sara Bareilles
Eurielle
Timber Timbre
Agnes Obel
Tina Guo

Things I’m Watching:

Bullet Train
Saltburn
Taken 2
Buffy the Vampire Slayer series (watchalong)
Angel series (watchalong)
CSI series
The Mentalist series
Abbott Elementary series
Helix series
All Creatures Great and Small series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

save your vitriol for someone
who wouldn’t eat your soul
instead of a sandwich
if it satisfied their hunger
more efficiently

If the Fates allow: Friday Update

08 Friday Dec 2023

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SONY DSC

News:

I forgot it was Friday there for a bit.

There actually isn’t a lot of news. A handful of rejections. The only thing is that I’m a finalist in Crystal Lake Shallow Waters for this month, themed Reflections for the end of the year. My story “The Green Room” will be popping up later this month—on December 19, if I’m counting right. Y’all know I love reading other people’s flash fiction and that it’s like having a new themed anthology every month for a minimum of $5 a month, and the reading, commenting, and voting is so interactive. Reminds me of Livejournal fanfiction.

In real life news, I had what is probably my last physical therapy session. I still have a little way left to go, but I have my exercises and instructions and, barring reinjury, should be able to manage my own PT. My bank account thanks me. My elliptical machine thanks me, too, since I can start slowly building up my time on it again (in about five-minute increments a week, unless I start experiencing problems). It’s been almost six months to the day that I tore my muscle on the stairs. I know now that I probably have to be mindful of my calves, Achilles tendons, and ankles, that they’re prone to stiffness. But I’m almost back to my normal.

Works in Progress:

I received my edits back from Ken for Question Not My Salt right at the end of NaNo2023, so I was able to take a needed break by editing. It actually wasn’t much, so I still seem to be doing pretty well cleaning things up in my pre-sub edits. Go me! I sent those back three days later, requested blurbs from some people (so hard to ask), and now I wait. I don’t know whether there’s a proofreading round. We’ll see.

Now I’m back to writing Tattered & Torn (Meridian 6) for the other name. Taking that break in the middle of writing it makes it hard to jump back in. My brain is telling me, ‘But it was done, no, it’s done, no more.’ And I’m telling my brain, ‘No, you have about 25-30K more words to write.’ And my brain is telling me, ‘Done! Done! Done!’ It’s a really fun game we play.

Hopefully, by next Friday, I’ll be done and starting the small number of short stories I’m scheduled for before tackling the next Meridian novel to close out the year.

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
This World Belongs to Us edited by Michael W. Phillips, Jr.
Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire

Music I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Ultimate Gift
A Christmas Prince
Single All the Way
Contagion
Outbreak
The Silencing
Prometheus (stealth Christmas movie)
Primal
Holiday Baking Championship series
Holiday Wars series
Elf on the Shelf: Sweet Showdown series
Christmas Cookie Challenge series
Great American Baking Show: Holiday Edition series
Celebrity Jeopardy series
Great British Baking Show series (finished)
Hoarders series
NCIS series
Dancing with the Stars series
The Mentalist series
White Collar series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

was that my sin, a flaw?
for the thermals to drive
my feathers up in a swell
until i fell in a dive
for a final swan song
about the evils of ambition?
how dare i enjoy the
thrill of flight
instead of succumbing
to fate? how dare i fight?

Exorcism, in this economy?: Friday Update

10 Friday Nov 2023

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Bloody Ghost feels sparkly.

News:

My short story “Swallowed” was posted for this month’s Crystal Lake Shallow Waters flash fiction contest, themed Trick ‘r Treat. So if spooky season doesn’t last long enough for you, celebrate an extended Halloween all through November with this month’s stories. ($5 tier and up)

Under Her Eye: A Woman in Poetry Showcase Vol II came out this week. Under Her Eye is a charity anthology of domestic horror poetry. A portion of the sales goes to an international organization to end violence against women. I don’t sell a ton of poetry (it’s a really difficult market), but I’m honored to have my poem “A Woman Possessed” as a part of this anthology.

I also received news that Dear Human at the Edge of Time, a collection of poems about climate change, received the 2023 Best Book Award in the Poetry Anthology category. My poem “Displaced” was a part of this one.

Sad news to report, though. Quill & Crow Publishing’s gothic horror magazine The Crow’s Quill is ending after December. They really helped give me my start with shorter pieces, so it’s disappointing that they’re closing. The zines should remain available for at least another year for 2022 issues and two years for 2023 issues, and they’re free to read.

In more sad news, that portfolio of some of the best poems I’ve written didn’t get taken up, but I did get a personalized note on one them, so that was decent. I had to sit in my unhappiness for a while and wrote another poem to feel better.

On the leg injury front, I continue to have improvement by following all my exercises, and I can tell the lower part of my lower leg is stronger than the last time I reached this point in my healing, but I’m still struggling with my gait while barefoot. I’m a hair away from normal, though, when I’m wearing shoes. I have new exercises to do, and I’ve been cleared to use the elliptical machine again for up to fifteen minutes every other day, which I’m super excited about.

My PT always exclaims how hyperflexible my feet are when I go up on my toes, unusually so, like ballerina feet, and he asks me if I’m hyperflexible everywhere else. I have some double-jointed fingers, but no. I’m just ridiculously elated that I’m flexible in at least one area of my body. Going the other way, flexing my toes back toward my knees, the foot on my injured leg only reaches half as far as my left, but it’s an improvement. It didn’t used to bend past ninety degrees at all.

Works in Progress:

I finished In the Dollhouse We All Wait on November 5, total word count of 116,160 words. It was significantly longer than anticipated, given that I’d forecast about 70-80K words. I’ll have to cut it down significantly, I think—at least under 90K if I want to try to send it off to places that accept extreme horror. But as I opined last time, I’m not sure how I feel about this story and how ugly it is in a very specific way. I accomplished certain things that I set out to do, among which was writing an absolutely awful woman villain, because we need more of them. Even so, I’m not sure what place this story has. However, sometimes writing something hits as more extreme than the reading of it, because I’m more immersed in the world rather than with a barrier of a page. In any case, I’m shelving it for a while to get other writing projects done, like I usually do with projects to get some perspective for edits.

The next day, I immediately turned around and started Lost & Alone, intending it to be the sixth book in the Meridian series under my other name, but I’d already anticipated that it might end up too short for the series. It would need to be at least above 70K after edits, during which I usually make significant cuts to the word count, and I’m not sure it’s even going to cross 60K here. If that’s the case, I’ll reconfigure it as a standalone novella. It’s the least Meridian-y of the Meridian novels, since it’s a prequel set well before Meridian becomes a bustling urban center. Like, oh no, I have a stray novella to sell…say it ain’t so.

It does mean that I’ll probably have to add another Meridian novel to my writing line-up this year as I wrap up my writing sabbatical, which is not ideal. Really wish I had another year to work on the long things on my docket, but I just don’t know how. I’m also dreading heading back into the general workforce. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, I tend to not feel like a competent and capable human being, so I’m worried I’m going to screw things up, on multiple levels.

As far as general NaNoWriMo word counts go, I’m at 48K and heading for crossing the 50K line today after finishing this post, which puts me on schedule with a little cushion, if needed.

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
The First Five Minutes of the Apocalypse edited by Brandon Applegate
This World Belongs to Us edited by Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

Music I’m Listening To:

Nocturne playlist
Taylor Swift
Joanne by Lady Gaga
Jordin Sparks debut
Kerosene by Miranda Lambert
Kill the One You Love by GEMS
Kill the Sun by Xandria
Laced/Unlaced by Emilie Autumn
Princess Pepper playlists on YT
Don’t Panic! playlists on YT
My Witchy Diary playlists on YT

Things I’m Watching:

Exorcist: The Beginning
Alien vs. Predator
Blade
Blade II
Blade: Trinity
Halloween Wars series (completed)
Halloween Cookie Challenge series (completed)
Halloween Baking Championships series (completed)
Outrageous Pumpkins series (completed)
Great British Baking Show series
Buffy the Vampire Slayer series
Scream Queens series
Kitchen Nightmares series
Good Bones series
Hoarders series
Helix series
NCIS series

Poem of the Week:

sometimes i see her
the daughter that never will be
sometimes i argue with her
despair of what a bad mother i am
sometimes i hold her in my arms
after reading a book to her
that i always wanted to share
sometimes i want space from her
but then i remember that she
never was and never will be
and i’m sad i’ll never know her
she’ll always just be
a voice a baby a child
a teenager an adult
that could have been

False Fall: Friday Update

15 Friday Sep 2023

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Novelettes/Novellas, Short Stories

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News:

Nothing of a writerly nature, unless you count a light redesign of the website.

However, as I wrote in a previous entry, I injured my right leg, assumed a grade II tear of the calf muscle. I was progressing all right, with some stumbles on the way, but about three weeks ago I tried using the elliptical machine. I felt okay on the machine, but after, I felt the strain. The healing process regressed, but worse, it didn’t improve much after and there’s consistent over-stress in everything between the ankles and knees.

So I went to the doctor today, and I’m getting an MRI tomorrow to determine what might be going on and how to proceed. My health insurance is basically catastrophe insurance, so I’m paying out of pocket, if you’d like to help. I’m not going to go broke, though, so don’t feel any pressure.

In less grave news, I’m finally buckling down and watching the end of MCU Phase 3. The length of the Avengers movies is prohibitive, but I’m committing to it this weekend. That’ll make proceeding with Phase 4 while working out easier (if I’m ever able to work out again).

Works in Progress:

This last week was something of a pet project week.

I wrote a novelette version of We Follow You in the Dark with more short-story pacing to see if I could write something closer to the original vibe. Because the short version and the long version have the same setting but different characters and outcomes, it’s less like a different version and more like different stories in the same universe. I’m still pursuing publishing the novel, and novelettes are murder to sell. I’m thinking about providing a collection of short story/novelette versions of longer stories, kind of a ‘what might have been,’ because, strangely enough, I happen to have written more than one of these. So they’ll be useful eventually, but for now, it was more of an experiment.

I also wrote a long short story that was supposed to go one way and ended up another, and was definitely supposed to be shorter. It’s too long to sell as a short story and too short to sell as a long story, but it’s weird and erotic and uses some of my for-funsies college subjects. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but it was great fun to explore that world. My wanting to finish it is why I’m writing this so late.

This week, we had a break in the three-digit heat with a delightful false fall, so I worked outside on our porch for most of the week (see the photo above). Tomorrow will probably be the last day I can do that for a few more weeks, but I assure you, the mosquito bites were worth it.

Coming up, I have a short story I need to edit and send back to the editor. Then I’ll be doing my proofreading run of Puppeteer (Thorns 4).

Books I’m Reading:

IT by Stephen King
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard
Pornography for the End of the World by Brendon Vidito

Music I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist (it’s that time of year)

Things I’m Watching:

Grave Encounters
Devil
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
The Wrath of Becky
The Avengers: Infinity War
America’s Got Talent series
Dr. Pimple Popper series
CSI series
CSI:Miami series
Murder, She Wrote series
White Collar series
Locke & Key series
Buffy the Vampire Slayer series

Poem of the Week:

You’re looking for my sister, you say?
Well, you just missed her on her way
to the graveyard for our father’s funeral.
Such a yawn, gravestones and funereal
blacks, but someone has to represent
a repressed and resentful family.
She’s the one who stands to gain the least,
so she could not have slain that beast.