This cold has been kicking my butt, for some reason, but I have made it to 33K on the We Follow You in the Dark rewrite, hope to make it to 35K by the end of the day if I can avoid napping for too long. I’ve been getting a lot of sleep and reading plenty, which is uncommon for me. I hope I can sustain it when I can actually add cardio back into my routine.
I’m not sure if I’ll meet my goal of finishing by the end of the month. That disappoints me. But I don’t think it’ll take me much longer than that.
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:
Enola Holmes 3 The First Omen Gone Girl Falling into Place The Blackening Best Medicine series Criminal Minds series The Closer series America’s Got Talent series Hawaii Five-O series The Following series
Poem of the Week: (throwback from Sept 2022)
do not concern yourself with enigmatic words of high-styled prescience too often only understood in hindsight or used as a bludgeon by those who fear what comes or who would bring what comes sooner useless prognostication or self-fulfilling prophecy
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?
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
“Pick a Card” was posted at Crystal Lake’s Patreon for the Shallow Waters theme Mad Magic. (For $5/month tiers and up)
Works in Progress:
I’m pet- and house-sitting for a while, so we’ll see how the new environment affects my productivity. The company, of course, is adorable.
I finished my essay on The Others and The Awakening, 4770 words total, which means three essays done and dusted. I have a few more I want to do this year, but with the new venue, I want to work on something that doesn’t have required viewing, so I’m going to at least start on my rewrite of We Follow You in the Dark to make it more sellable. I’m not sure how this is going to go, especially since the original was good, but I think it’s worth a try while I’m waiting for edits to come in.
It reminds me of Nocturne, in that what will change is almost solely on the character side. There will be whole swaths of the novel that stays the same, which will hopefully help me get through this in less than a month. I’d love to finish it during the house-sitting, but I’m terrible at gauging how long things will take and I’d rather not get my hopes up that I’ll finish it up that quickly, even with extra days off work. As I’ve resolved to continue, I plan to be gentle with myself rather than push toward word goals or a conclusion. I won’t return to word goals until I start The Twelfth Wife later this year, and they’ll be less demanding than in the past.
Books I’m Reading:
The Jackal Man by Russell C. Connor Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
Things I’m Listening To:
Fourth of July playlist Let’s Hear It for the Girls playlist Eurielle
Things I’m Watching:
Buddy The Closer series America’s Got Talent series Hawaii Five-O series The Rookie series The Following series Private Practice series All Creatures Great and Small series (finished)
Poem of the Week:
from shadows, light strikes angles, curves, gleaming mouths, slavering ivory. freeze like rabbit in the way of a hare, little nose quivering against ordure and offal dragging along the floor. it shuffles, searching blind through your shuddering beam, then beyond. brief relief.
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.
Bloody Ghost meets Thing. It’s good to make new friends.
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
No writing news this week, actually. We’re kind of between calls, and most of what’s coming out later this year has been announced.
Works in Progress:
It’s a new month, so August calls are done and September calls have begun. I just sent a small slate of pieces where appropriate, and there are a few more calls opening in the next few days I’ll send out, too.
Mostly, I’ve been working on We Follow You in the Dark. I finished the first round of edits and cut about 9K words from the story, so now it’s around 55K, which might be too short to try to sub to agents as a novel, like Question Not My Salt, but I guess we’ll see once I’m finished with second-round edits, which should be today or tomorrow. I was worried I’d have more to do on this second round because of how demanding the first round was, but nope, it’s still just polishing. I’m not complaining.
We Follow is resurrecting all kinds of nineties nostalgia for a shopping mall now dead and gone that meant a lot to me as a kid. It inspired some poetry in the editing process. In addition, my daily Quill & Crow Crow Calls have been inspiring some horror lyrics. They’ll probably get turned into poetry, but I like song structure.
After We Follow, I have a novel under my other name to edit. Then I have a few small-long projects I’m thinking about just buckling down and tackling through some intensive writing months. There’s not much short story writing on my docket except for flash contests, unless a call really inspires me, but we’re heading into spooky season, which tends to bring out more calls.
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:
Ruelle Tina Guo Lindsey Sterling Agnes Obel Buffy the Vampire Slayer score Neverworld’s End by Xandria The Heart of Everything by Within Temptation Mirrorball by Sarah McLachlan Modern Alchemy by Zayde Wolf Moulin Rouge albums No Moment but Now by Wendy Colonna
Things I’m Watching:
America’s Got Talent series Dr. Pimple Popper series CSI series CSI:Miami series Murder, She Wrote series White Collar series The Great British Baking Show: The Professionals series (finished) The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt series Locke & Key series
Poem of the Week:
these two hands joined perfect union tie the satin ribbon white and pure around their wrists bind together loyalty and love tighter smooth insidious dents burst capillaries knot again between clasped fingers dye the fabric a deep red tighter
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
Amanda M. Blake 