News:

Because I somehow completely forgot about it last week, here’s the link again for “Of the Many Faces,” a gross and sexy and beautiful story (free to read) about a demon exchanging faces to overcome heartache.

Queer Saints Vol II has its cover reveal, plus the retooled cover for Vol I. They look pretty darn cool.

Other than that, there’s not much going on to announce.

I have, however, received so many rejections in the last week that it was a bit of an emotional beating. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take rejections personally, but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. And I like validation as much as the next writer.

Usually, if a rejection particularly hurts, I give myself thirty minutes to feel bad about it, but this week, my emotions just didn’t want to be scheduled. So I took advantage of updating to Windows 11 and didn’t work at all on Wednesday. Sometimes, in doing work I love to do seven days a week, especially work that doesn’t pay well, I forget it’s still work and I need to take a break now and then. I read most of the day while I was locked out of my computer and felt significantly better afterward.

I reminded myself yesterday that I like my writing and psyched myself back up by scrolling through my short story collection I’m submitting in October, which is full of bangers, in my ever-so-objective opinion.

Works in Progress:

I finished We Follow You in the Dark, and it’s now on sub, even though I’m still not sure if it’s too short to be a novel (house styles can differ on word counts). So I’m between significant projects right now.

On a whim, I decided to work on a shorter version of an idea that already turned into a novel. This is not the first time I’ve done this, just to see if it can be scaled down to better match the sheer vibe of the original concept. I’m playing with the idea of eventually compiling a collection of these alternative versions.

After this, I’ll probably tackle a short story that isn’t due for a few months, but it would be nice to have, and I believe a few flash themes will be available, so I can work on that, too.

Then I think I’ll do the last proofreading pass on Puppeteer (Thorns 4) to send to the formatter, which means Puppeteer will probably be released in October.

After starting this trend in August, I’m still producing gothic horror and fantasy lyrical poems every five days or so. It’s exciting to unironically and unself-consciously explore these themes and just sit with the atmosphere in such a beautiful structure. I really like lyrics, even if the verses themselves wouldn’t translate well, perhaps, into song. They’re structured in a way that encourages rhyming, but it’s also flexible, because you can choose your own structure.

I’d kind of like to write a sestina one day, but every time I look up how they’re built, they give examples that don’t follow it, and I get confused, so I’ll keep pushing that back until I understand what’s going on.

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 (finished)
Pornography for the End of the World by Brendon Vidito

Music I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Agnes Obel
Billie Eilish
Fleurie
Eurielle
Symphonies by Emily West
Abyss playlist
All I Ever Wanted by Kelly Clarkson

Things I’m Watching:

The Last Exorcism
The Haunting in Connecticut
Wounds
Hell Fest
Turistas
American Monster series
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:

whiff of smoke and lavender
dried petals and stems strewn
over carved wooden pentagram
pour the wine and steep the milk
with rose hips and cardamom
copper hovers amid ash
blood not from the palm
hydrogen peroxide with bandage
over the safer tough arm
smells like witchcraft in here