What do ghosts read? An Open Book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Stolen from an X (Twitter) post: Which genre do you think ghosts prefer: mystery, thriller, horror, fairytale, or magical realism? 
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What a fun question! 

The answer might depend on your beliefs/philosophy about ghosts themselves and what exactly they are. After all, fiction gives us quite a range of ghosts. 

• Some of them are basically the same person they were they were alive, just transparent and unchanging now. In some stories, they don't even know they are dead. 
• Some of them are more like an echo of who they once were, trapped in a small moment, reliving it over and over. I'm not sure they can even interact with the world. 
• Some of them are malevolent--poltergeists, vengeful spirits, and the like. 

I'm thinking that the only types of ghosts who read are that first type: the ones that are still who they always were, just dead now. And for those guys, I bet they read whatever they liked when they were alive. Though it is fun to imagine that, once freed from the limits of the mortal coil, like a need for sleep or to earn money, a ghost could just wander the library reading anything and everything. 

Heck! Maybe this is my chance to actually read everything in my TBR!

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October Reads

 October was all about books for me…though oddly, I didn't read that many. 

I decided to take on a little project in October. I do this a lot. There's something about the combination of cooler weather and the advent of "spooky season" that bubbles up in my creativity. 

In other years, I've indulged in spooky movie marathons, participated in blog hops like Wording Wednesdays and October Frights,  or flash fiction challenges like Nightmare Fuel. One year, I wrote 31 blog posts, about 31 things I love about Halloween and all things creepy. 

This year I did 31 days of spooky reads videos over on my YouTube channel, highlighting 31 spooky/scary/creepy/eerie books that I have read and loved. 

I talked about a range of books and stories, from the terrifying to the merely odd, published as recently as last year, and as long ago as 1764.  I'd love it if you checked them out! 

Preparing those videos meant re-reading parts of 31 books, but I didn't re-read any of them in their entirety, so I don't count them as part of my reading challenge. (Now at 62 books, out of a goal of 52). 

So, outside of those, I only read three books this month: 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was a choice by my neighborhood book club for September. I didn't get it read it in time for our meeting (because The Count of Monte Cristo was kicking my butt), but I was intrigued enough to go ahead and read it afterward. It's a quiet book in some senses, but very intriguing and full of interesting insights about teaching, learning, growing up, relationships, and betrayal. 

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, I really liked. Like Beloved by Toni Morrison (one of my spooky reads picks!), it follows a family dealing with intergenerational fallout from past trauma--the death of a son at the hands of a white neighbor, time in incarceration, and cancer. It intermixes this very realistic family drama with ghosts and witchcraft to great effect. Heartrending and beautiful. 

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was a re-read for me. I was revisiting it because it's the next book for my First Monday Classics Book Club. The ideas of the book are still fascinating, and a little scary in their seeming accuracy, but the book lacks a lot on other fronts: two-dimensional characters, weak plot, jerky pacing. There's a better book in there somewhere, but Huxley didn't write it. Still, I'd recommend it if you've never read it, if only for the ideas. 

What did you read this month? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Horror as Comfort

 A lot of people I know don't read or watch horror, and they're surprised to find out that I do. Even more surprised when they learn that I sometimes write it. 

Actual quotes from conversations along these lines: 

• "You don't seem like someone who would write that stuff." 
• I guess? I mean, is horror only for people wearing dark eyeliner and capes? Or just for men? LOL. Some of the scariest stuff happens in mundane settings to people just trying to live their lives--you know: people like me. 
• "It's so dark." 
• It's hopeful and optimistic sometimes. And dark makes contrast, allowing you see the light. 
• "I just can't handle the gore." 
• Not all horror is a slasher film, you know. Some of my horror favorites don't involve any blood and guts at all.
• "The characters make stupid choices." 
• You could say that about ANY genre. If characters don't make ANY stupid choices, there's no conflict and the story is boring. Plus people do stupid things all the time in real life. 
• "They're so stressful." 
• Maybe? I find horror stress-relieving. And tension is kind of necessary for any sort of story. 

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It's not that horror doesn't scare me--it totally does! 

Ask my sister about the time I threw the popcorn during a jump scare during a really terrible, not-that-scary vampire movie. Or check out the mangled pillows on the sofa after I squeeze them while I watch something scary. When I was a kid and teenager, I used to read my Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and horror comics sitting at the top of the stairs with my back against the wall, so I could see anything that might be coming for me. 

But, the things is: the story ends. 

I close the book, or leave the cinema, or turn off the TV. And I am safe. I got that heart-racing excitement, but at no actual risk, other than perhaps the risk of being disappointed by a story that doesn't do it for me. Vicarious experience of the highest order.

And the stories, at least the ones I like best, are stories of resilience and hope. The heroes are not passively watching their lives go by them and wishing things would change--they take action to try to save themselves and others. 

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They *try something.* 

They take steps. Stupid ones sometimes. Foolhardy maybe. But life is risk and that's the heart of horror for me. 

There's something comforting in active characters trying something, especially if I really connected with the characters. 

It's still comforting even when they lose, falling into the zombie hoard after a heroic attempt. They died "with their boots on" so to speak, didn't they? They didn't just melt away on the sofa cushions hoping someone would save them. Those are characters worth admiring! 

What about you? Do you read/watch horror? What are your favorites? 

Wanna check out my horror writing? I had TWO horror stories published this month. 

"The Cleaning Lady" in Stories We Tell After Midnight, Volume 2 grew from a story prompt for the Nightmare Fuel Project and dares to ask who is going to clean up this mess. Dark humor can be so much fun to write!

"His Destroyer" in Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire revisits the Passover story from another perspective, wondering who exactly served G-d's justice on the first-born sons of Egypt during the time of the Ten Plagues. This one gave me chills to write and I hope it will do the same for you when you read it. 

Scary Movie Time: October Movie Watching

If I could spare the time, I'd probably watch a movie a day in October, using Halloween as my excuse to cuddle up on the sofa with Sweetman and my daughters, re-watching old favorites and discovering new ones, while I stuff my face with popcorn. 

Alas, I must keep us in house and home, so a movie a day is not a reasonable thing. 

Still, I do tend to stuff in as many scary stories as I can in October. My daughter, age 13, is a budding horror aficionado, so I have a willing playmate when I decide to try and scare myself silly . . . and I get the bonus of sharing old favorites with my girl. So, here's what I've managed to watch so far this October: 

We kicked off our spooky season watching with The Ring, 2002. It was three of us on the sofa for this one. My husband and I had both seen it, but I don't think we'd watched it together before. The teenager knew quite a bit about the film from seeing it referenced in other social media, but hadn't seen it herself. 

What I remembered was the imagery--who could forget all that horrible hair? And the moment when the evil just crawls out of a television set and into the living room with its victim? When I saw it the first time, I'd hadn't seen much Asian or Asian-influenced horror, so the style was all new to me. This time, that imagery and style felt more familiar, but it was still quite spooky and I still think Naomi Watts is brilliant as the skeptic who becomes a believer and young David Dorfman and Daveigh Chase rocked the eerie child vibe in two very different but equally effective ways. 

The special effects held up pretty decently on re-watch, especially since that feeling of images not quite fitting in the world they are in actually worked for the story. After the movie, we watched the extras, and I have to say that all the cut scenes belonged cut. The story is all the more frightening for NOT explaining things too thoroughly. 

The Others, 2001, is one of those movies with a big twist, and I wondered if it would have good re-play value since I already knew the twist. (No spoilers: I won't reveal the twist here, in case you haven't yet seen this one). 

I'm happy to report that even when you know what's coming, there's still excellent tension. I watched for clues throughout leading to the ending and I found them, but I also found plenty of red herrings that lead the viewer to consider several interpretations of the events they are seeing. My daughter, watching for the first time, gave me no fewer than ten theories about what was happening before we got to the big reveal (none of them correct, BTW). 

Nicole Kidman's portrayal of the fragile-yet-powerful Grace Stewart is the lynchpin on which the movie rotates, but all the performances are strong. I especially loved Alakina Mann as Anne, the elder child, full of big sister bullying, boundary pushing, and a wonderful stubbornness. 

And Fionnula Flanagan as Mrs. Mills stole nearly every scene she was in with her quiet, mysterious manner. Chris Eccleston broke my heart as Charles Stewart, who meeting his wife in a foggy wood tells her in a painfully haunted voice, "Sometimes I bleed." (shiver)

Wonderfully atmospheric and still riveting on rewatch for sure. 

Then, my husband and I watched The Haunting, 1963, together. It's a telling of Shirley Jackson's famous book, The Haunting of Hill House . . .which is not be confused with The House on Haunted Hill, another fabulous old movie featuring Vincent Price, despite the similarity in title (maybe I'll see if I can squeeze that one in this month, too!).  

It's a bit slow as a movie, maybe because it's so exceedingly faithful to the novel, including lots of voiceovers for Julie Harris as Eleanor to show us her fragile and excitable mental state. While I enjoyed the recent Haunting of Hill House television series, 2018, that wasn't a direct telling of the book, but more an update and homage to original work. This older film is for the most part extremely true to the novel--so if you love the novel like I do, you'll appreciate it for that. 

The set was AMAZING, really making use of weird angles and shadows to up the spook factor at every turn. Well worth it just for some of the imagery and creative camera work. 

Finally, the girl and I had a mini movie marathon, watching Poltergeist, 1982, and Hush, 2016 back to back. It's been forever since I watched two movies in a row, and that, in itself, felt decadent. 

My daughter didn't find Poltergeist nearly as frightening as I did when I was a child. Ah, jaded youth.

She hated the "false ending" and I had to agree with her that it wasn't as justified as it had been in The Ring, where the investigator thought she'd gotten to the bottom of the mystery and found there was more to discover. In Poltergeist, we get Carole Ann back and things are calm long enough for the family to pack up a moving truck and then Boom! We're back in the thick of things with no indication of what caused the escalation. You could argue, I suppose, that paranormal happenings don't have to follow logic, but it still made for less satisfying story-telling.

As for me, I'm like, WTF parents? They let their bloodied and traumatized son who had just been swallowed by a monster tree wander the house alone while the parents and teenaged daughter ALL THREE ran around panicking over the missing baby? No wonder he had middle child syndrome. He *really* was invisible, poor boy. 

Hush caught our eye as we scanned movie choices on Netflix with its interesting premise: a deaf/mute woman is being hunted by a killer. The fact that she is deaf is both what helps her survive and what puts her more at risk. She isn't unnerved by some of the killer's attempts to rattle her because they rely on her hearing the creepy sounds, which of course, she doesn't. It was kind of neat, the way the film let the audience hear the sounds, then toggled to a muted version to give the impression of NOT hearing the same thing. 

Both of us felt the film was longer than it needed to be though. It was hard to hold tension for a full movie length when all you basically had happening was a man with a crossbow circling a house and woman cowering within. Maybe it would have packed more tension in a short-film version. We also were both disappointed to never get any kind of motivation explanation for the rando killer who showed up, though we thought he was interestingly chill for a character of his sort. 

I'm hoping to work in some classic monster and a couple of scary films I haven't seen yet. Are you a scary movie fan? What kind do you like? I'd love to see your suggestions in the comments! 

Nightmare Fuel: The Collection

For the past few years, I've participated in an October Flash Fiction Challenge called The Nightmare Fuel Project. Fellow writer Bliss Morgan gathers pictures and posts one each day, inviting other writers to compose creepy flash fiction based on what they see.

I usually need a boost in my writing life at right about this time of year, and this challenge is perfect, letting me remember what it's like to play in my writing life and create pieces without worrying about their publishing potential. It has the side benefit of being thematic to my favorite holiday: Halloween. Each day, I wrote a story and posted it. I wrote each in less than an hour, so they are good practice on pushing my efficiency too!

I really enjoy this challenge and some of the stories are seeds I will come back to and grow into full plants, um, stories.

So, here's my favorite one of the ones I wrote this year. Below you can find links to all the posts on my author Facebook or on pluspora (in case you're not a Facebook user). I'd love to hear what you think about any of them, or about your own experience with writing challenges and what they bring to your creative life in the comments!
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Lantern Man:

Emily sat on the sand, weeping. She’d gotten separated from the rest of the kids on the way back from the pier and she was pretty sure she’d been walking in the wrong direction for an hour now. Exhausted and scared, she watched the last of the sunlight turn orange, then amber, dreading the darkness to come.

Her mother was going to be so mad. At least she hoped she’d have the chance to be yelled at by her mother. The alternatives were too scary to contemplate.

Then, she spotted the man. An older man, by his walk, wearing a hat and carrying a lantern in each hand. “Mister!” she called out, hoping he might at least tell her which way to walk, or help her get to a phone. She didn’t know the phone number of the hotel, but at least she could get to someplace dry and well lit to wait for help.

She chased after the man, but he didn’t slow his pace. Maybe his hearing wasn’t that good, or maybe the wind was blowing away her cries. She redoubled her pace, but never seemed to narrow the gap between them. The ground grew rougher, rockier and more uneven under her sand-filled sneakers, but she was afraid that if she stopped to empty her shoes or rest she would lose track of the lantern man.

It was totally dark now. The lanterns were the only light in the starless, moonless, and Emily could make out only the outline of the man. “Please!” she cried out again. She rested only a moment, bending to rest her hands on her knees, gasping for air. When she looked back up, the man seemed impossibly far ahead.

“Wait!” she cried and ran as fast as she could. She never saw the cliff’s edge. When they found her body, three days later, she was lying next to a much older body and the remains of two old fashioned lanterns.

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#31: Untitled Facebook Pluspora
#30: Foggy Morning Facebook Pluspora
#29: Vengeance Facebook Pluspora
#28: Jeannie Facebook Pluspora
#27: The Neighbor Facebook Pluspora
#26 Lantern Man Facebook Pluspora
#25:The Museum of the Macabre Facebook Pluspora
#24: Play with me? Facebook Pluspora
#23: Rumour in the woods: Facebook Pluspora
#22: Out of Darkness: Facebook Pluspora
#21: The Sand Mother: Facebook Pluspora
#20: Dead Man's Apartment: Facebook Pluspora
#19: Phantom Shrapnel: Facebook Pluspora
#18: Jean's Escape: Facebook Pluspora
#17: The Inheritance: Facebook Pluspora
#16: Hurry Down Doomsday: Facebook Pluspora
#15: Urban Exploration: Facebook Pluspora
#14: Nessie of the North: Facebook Pluspora
#13: Reggie: Facebook Pluspora
#12: Cursed: Facebook Pluspora
#11: Widow Jane: Facebook Pluspora
#10: Icy Death: Facebook Pluspora
#9: The Doll: Facebook Pluspora
#8: Virtual Reality: Facebook Pluspora
#7: My Sister's New Face: Facebook Pluspora
#6: Unfixed: Facebook Pluspora
#5: Helen's Heat: Facebook Pluspora
#4: Digging: Facebook Pluspora
#3: The Other Jack: Facebook Pluspora
#2: Anubis in Hakone: Facebook Pluspora
#1: The Stairs: Facebook Pluspora

Halloween Viewing: Tim Burton Favs

My youngest daughter is even *more* into Halloween than I am, so we are both so gleeful the entire month that it's a wonder the rest of the Bryants can deal with us at all.

One way we're enjoying is by watching Halloween movies. We're on a Tim Burton kick right now. His aesthetic is right there in that middle ground between whimsical and disturbing…which could probably describe us as well (though there's less mascara and lace involved for us). She's already seen and loved The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, 9, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland. I'm planning to share a few more Burton favorites with her across the season.

But, the youngest Bryant had never seen The Corpse Bride (at least not that she can remember), so we kicked off our season with that.  I found it slower than I remembered (thought still good), but she really enjoyed it.

My take: I had forgotten the lovely wedding vows. Really some of the most romantic ones I've heard. It was also very sweet how the two misfit children whose families were trying to use them for social gain actually had a connection and some hope of making each other happy in the end. A more romantic story overall than I remembered.

Her take: She loved Scraps, Victor's dead dog (who reminded her of Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas), but agreed with me that the Peter Lorre aping worm was grosser than funny. She knew almost from his entrance that Barkis Bittern was going to turn out to be the long lost "love" of the Bride. Kids these days, so steeped in tropes it's hard to surprise them.

Next we tried on Sweeney Todd.

I fell in love with this musical as a college student, listening to the Broadway recording with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett and Len Cariou as Sweeney. So, when this movie version was announced, I was hyped. I was pretty sure the youngest Bryant would love it too.

My take: Visually, it's quite a treat, gritty and atmospheric. I quite enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett both in singing and acting, and she has great onscreen chemistry with Johnny Depp. Johnny's Sweeney was better in visuals and speaking than singing (I loved the way he held his jaw--so stiff, seething with suppressed emotions). He was "not bad" on the singing. If I didn't already know the music as voiced by Cariou, I might have liked his take better (much like I felt about Hugh Jackman's Valjean) . The best moment in Depp's performance, in my opinion, is when Todd snaps the rest of the way and goes from wanting specific vengeance to decide that "they all deserve to die."

Her take: She's becoming quite a Sondheim fan, having been enamored of Into the Woods for a year or two now. She loved the lyric complexity. She wasn't as sure about the obviously fake over-red blood for the gory scenes. She said it pulled her out of it too much, but she conceded it might have been "too horrible" if the blood had looked realistic. We agreed at the end that poor Johanna and Toby were damaged for life by the trauma of having wandered into this story.

Next up, I'm planning to show her Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, both of which I enjoyed when they were new and haven't really seen since. My girl likes Winona Ryder, both in Stranger Things and in some of her younger roles (Heathers, Beetlejuice), so I think she'll enjoy them.

Any other Tim Burton fans out there? Which ones are your favorites and why? Any that you don't recommend?

October Frights: Nightmare Fuel: The Other Jack

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop! I'm Samantha Bryant. If you visit here regularly, you already know that I'm a Halloween fan (if you're new here: Welcome to the Madhouse!).

Last year at this time, I posted a blog series on 31 days of Halloween. My *favorite* thing the past few years though, has been #nightmarefuel

The Nightmare Fuel Project is the brainchild of Bliss Morgan, a talented friend whose work you should definitely check out!

Each day in October, she posts a creepy picture prompt and invites anyone who wants to play along to create something macabre or magnificent and post it for the group to enjoy. This is my third year playing along, writing creepy flash fiction each night in celebration of spooky season.

Here's my favorite of what I've written so far this year. You can check out all my creepy flash fiction for the project on my Facebook page.

The Other Jack

Jimmy’s room wasn’t really a room, it was more like a partition. His mother had found some smoky plexiglass somewhere and used it to divide the space into two tiny bedrooms, each barely big enough for the bed and a narrow chest of drawers that was also the desk and the nightstand. It wasn’t much, but it gave him and his brother a little illusion of privacy, something that mattered more now that his brother was older.

Jimmy had to pretend he didn’t hear a lot of things these days, especially if Mom wasn’t home. He’d never tell, of course. Brothers didn’t rat on each other, even if the girls were mean or the smoke smelled weird.

But he missed the nights when Jack would turn a light on the plexiglass wall and make shadowpuppets for him or press his face against the wall smooshing it comically and getting them both in trouble for wild laughter.

Laying on his bed drawing, Jimmy heard a tap on the glass. He jumped. He hadn’t thought Jack was home. He looked over his shoulder and saw a hand laying against the glass. He laid his own over it on his side of the wall and Jack spread his fingers wide so Jimmy could compare the size of his hand to his brother’s. Jack was almost ten years older than Jimmy, so catching up was taking a long time, but he felt sure his hand was bigger than it had been the last time. Pleased he knocked three times, their secret signal for happiness. Jack didn’t respond.

The hand moved away and Jimmy went back to his drawing. The cat-man he had invented was having an undersea adventure this time and Jimmy was having a hard time getting the bubble helmet to look the way he wanted to. After a few tries, he threw the wadded up paper at the wall in frustration.

There were two hands on the wall now, pressed flat enough that Jimmy could trace the lines in the palms. Jack was pushing hard, like he wanted to come through the plexiglass wall instead of climbing over his bed to get to the narrow hallway like a normal person. The makeshift wall scraped against the ceiling, groaning like a train car. “Stop it Jack! You’ll get in trouble if you break it.”

The pressure released. Jack could be crazy sometimes, but Jimmy could usually get him to stop before it got too bad. Just as he was thinking about picking up his drawing again, the hands were back, clenched into fists this time and pounding against the wall, making it scrape and groan and shake ominously. Jimmy yelled “Stop it Jack! Stop it!”

At the foot of his bed, the door opened. “Stop what, Squirt?” Jack leaned in, still wearing his fast-food tee shirt.

“J-J-Jack?” Jimmy pointed at the wall behind him, wordlessly. The Other Jack still pounded the surface again and again and when Jimmy turned to look, he thought the fists might be bleeding. His mouth went completely dry.

Suddenly, Jack had him by the armpits and was pulling him out of the trailer into the chilly night, barefoot. The two of them got into the car and Jack was backing away, driving before Jimmy had even put on the seatbelt. “Where are we going?”

Jack didn’t answer him. He was on the phone, talking fast to someone, He said their address and said there was an intruder. He said he didn’t know where their mother was. He said other stuff, too, but Jimmy couldn’t understand--it was hard to hear over the squealing inside his head. Then, his brother was shaking him, telling him it was okay.

There were blue lights flashing and a woman with a flashlight and a clipboard. There was yelling and a loud bang. An ambulance that took away someone. Jimmy wasn’t allowed to see. Jack held him too tightly, kept Jimmy’s head pressed against his chest.

It was years before Jack got the full story of the night his mother died and he almost died, too. They told him his mother was a hero, that he was lucky. She’d trapped the man in Jack’s room with her. If Jack hadn’t gotten home when he did . . .
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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please check out the rest of my site to see what else I'm up to, or subscribe to my newsletter (no more than one email per month). I've got a collection of Weird Tales coming out at the end of the month! Stories from Shadow Hill is a series of weird and macabre tales that take place on the dark side of a suburban neighborhood suspiciously similar to the one I live in . . . Details will be forthcoming in my next newsletter!

Be sure to also check out Deadman Humour, my most recent publication. This creepy anthology is a collection of stories about what scares clowns. My story "The Gleewoman of Preservation" shows that there are things scarier than clowns in the woods near Preservation.

If ghost stories are more your style, you can read my daylight ghost story, "The Girl in the Pool" in Off the Beaten Path 3 from Prospective Press, alongside some excellent ghostly tales from other fabulous authors. 

Remember to hop on over to check out the other participants' offerings as well.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The Word Whisperer

Hawk's Happenings

Carmilla Voiez Blog

M'habla's!

CURIOSITIES

Frighten Me

Winnie Jean Howard

Always Another Chapter

James P. McDonald

greydogtales

New Release! Deadman Humour: 13 Fears of a Clown

Look guys! New book!

One of the best parts of a writing life is the opportunity to try new things. I love writing something unlike anything I've written before. That's part of why I enjoy writing for anthologies. It's a chance to explore new styles, themes, and subject matter.

So when the fabulous Dave Higgins put out a call for this anthology, asking for stories about what scares clowns, I was intrigued. Though I enjoy reading and watching horror, I'd only tried my hand at it a couple of times.

The resulting story, "The Gleewoman of Preservation," played off a news story that circulated in North Carolina a year or two ago.

Mysterious clowns were spotted all around the state, hanging out in the woods near playgrounds. No one seemed sure what they were up to: trying to entice children, just standing there being creepy?

Whatever it was, it had the kids at my middle school all atwitter.

So, as I do for many a story, I began with "what if?" What if the clowns were there to protect people from something else?

The anthology releases this Friday, Friday the 13th, of course, during the same month that the new It movie released. So, if you can't get enough horror with clowns, I hope you'll check it out! Myself, I can't wait to see what the other authors came up with.

Here's a teaser for you, a bit of the beginning of "The Gleewoman of Preservation."

“CREEPY CLOWN HAUNTS LOCAL PLAYGROUND.” The headline screamed across the page in twenty point gothic font. Maggie snorted. This codswallop was news? Honestly! Across the breakfast table, her husband looked up from his phone. “What?”

Maggie turned her newspaper so he could view the lurid headline. “A little over the top, don’t you think?” 

Her husband reached for the paper and she let him take it, picking up her coffee and taking a sip. It was still a little too hot and burned her upper lip. She touched the sore place with her fingertip. Not too bad. It probably wouldn’t even redden that much. George always did make the coffee superheated. She joked it was because his heart was just that cold. This is what it took to defrost him. 

He was back on his phone now, apparently in an active chat. She sighed, wondering why she bothered to get out of bed to have breakfast with him anymore. It wasn’t like they talked. They might as well be two strangers on the bus. Maybe it would be better when he retired too here in a couple more years. Maybe it would be worse. Time would tell. 

Suddenly, George stood. “I’m going to have to go,” he said, shoving his arms through his suit-jacket sleeves. He knocked his phone onto the floor. 

Maggie glanced at the clock as she moved to pick it up for him. It was still only six-thirty. “So early?”

George took a gulp from his still steaming mug, unfazed by the tongue-searing heat. “Things are already on fire over there.” 

Maggie held out the phone, startled to see a group chat labeled “Gleemen.” The last message said, “EMERGENCY. Here. Now.” What was the man up to? 

 George pocketed the device, leaned over and gave her kiss on the cheek, lips still warm from the coffee. “Lunch today?”

Maggie nodded, pulling her bathrobe tight around her. 

As soon as George was out of the house, Maggie went to the bedroom and pulled on her retirement uniform of yoga pants and a voluminous blouse, ran a comb through her gray and brown mop of hair, and grabbed her purse. What in the world were Gleemen? 

Crackpot theories went through her head. She’d heard stories about women her age finding out they’d been living a lie all these years, that their husbands have secret lives they’ve known nothing about. Mistresses. Gay lovers. Shady business ventures. Dark hobbies. She had to know what George was doing. It was the surest way to shut down her hyperactive imagination…

Check out the anthology for the rest of my story, and the works of the other twelve authors. Happy Spooky Season!

PURCHASE LINKS:
Amazon 
MOBI: https://smarturl.it/DeadmanHumourKindle
Paperback: https://smarturl.it/DeadmanHumourPrint

Kobo
EPUB: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/deadman-humour

Barnes & Noble
EPUB: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deadman-humour-dave-higgins/1133387783
Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deadman-humour-david-r-higgins/1133395385

iBooks
EPUB: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1478619815

My Year in Words

2018 was the first year since I launched my author life in earnest in which I did not publish a novel. I think that's why, here at year's end, I feel like I'm waiting for something. That could also be because I'm also literally waiting for something though. :-) (See November for what we're waiting for).

Here's a look back at 2018 in Samantha's Writing Life: the author events, the words written and revised, the works released, and the books read and reviewed. Given that it was also a year in which my daughter graduated high school, my husband changed jobs, my other daughter started middle school, two people I cared about died, and I took on a new course in my already jam-packed teaching day…I feel pretty good about these stats.

January: 
Events: Illogicon, Taught "Write Your Novel, Part I" for Central Carolina Community College.
Wrote: 35,410 words
Revised: 34,099 words
Read and Reviewed: 2 books

January feels so long ago now that it's a dim memory. I do know though, that I had picked back up in earnest on my WIP: Thursday's Children, a young adult near-future dystopian. That New Year's rush of enthusiasm and commitment kept me going at a good pace for a while.

This book has taken me longer to write than I expected (I'm still working on it in December, which means it's been about 18 months). I'd been spoiled by how much quicker it can be to continue with an established world in a series rather than creating a whole new one, but I'm still happy to be creating something new. Staying on one project too long can be stultifying.

February:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of War and Peace, Mysticon
Wrote:  27,266 words
Revised:  24,733 words
Read and Reviewed:  3 books

Mid-way through February I lost momentum on the novel. I still wrote every day, but I was cheating on my novel with short stories and blog posts and things that I could complete with a slightly scattered focus.

Conventions are great fun, and a great way to get the word out there about your work, but they do also take a fair bit of time: prepping for your panels and events, social media promotion, and the three days of the convention itself are a pull from whatever else you might have used that time for.

This could also have something to do with the fact that I was the cookie mom for my daughter's Girl Scout troop and February is the height of cookie season…

March:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Wrote:  28,475 words
Revised:  17,834 words
Read and Reviewed:  5 books

I read a lot in March. It was a "filling the well" sort of month. My momentum on the novel was low. Really, I only tinkered with it, revising a few thousand words and only adding 274 new ones across the entire month.

My publisher was imploding and I was worried about what this meant for my Menopausal Superhero series. I was dreading the confrontation that was coming about breach of contract and rights. I got the flu and part of me wonders if I got it in part because of the emotional stress weakening my reserves.

My support groups were so important in March! They kept me moving forward because I had commitments to uphold: promised chapters, stories, critiques, reviews, or blog posts. When you hit a rough patch, it's good to have friends and colleagues to keep you going.

April:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of Catch-22, Ravencon
Wrote:  25,791words
Revised:  20,856 words
Read and Reviewed:  8 books

Another month where I started strong on the novel, but fizzled on momentum halfway through the month.  The month included a convention (see above: TIME) and there was a lot of personal life to balance with my writing life: one of my daughters and I both have April birthdays.

When I look back on what I got done in April, I see that my structures served me well. I had planning meetings, networking events, and critique sessions booked in advance and there's nothing like "But I promised" to get me working even when I don't feel like it. I'm very much a "keep your commitments" girl (Thanks, Mom and Dad), so I still wrote every day. It's obvious I was still hiding from the work though when you look at how many books I read.

Ravencon was a highlight. It's a well organized convention and I've enjoyed both my sojourns there as an author guest. This year, Chuck Wendig was there as a the author guest of honor. I managed to introduce myself without making a total ass of myself and we even had a nice conversation about parenting. His munchkin is still quite little, whereas I was preparing to send one to college, so we talked about how weird that is.

May:
Releases: Pen and Cape Society's The Good Fight 4: The Homefront
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of  True Grit,  Free Comic Book Day at Atomic Empire
Wrote:  29,955 words
Revised: 11,139  words
Read and Reviewed:  7 books

May is always hard on schoolteachers. Testing begins and all the work of the past year is called into account. Everyone is exhausted and a little mean, especially the other adults. (see my thoughts on why May should be optional)

Add to that a daughter taking four AP classes and two Honors classes who is about to graduate high school and is managing college and scholarship paperwork alongside a part time job and you have an idea of the tenor of our home life in May. My poor husband! (He's still here in December, so he must really love us).

The new release helped. "Coming Out as Leonel" is one of my favorite Menopausal Superhero shorts that I have written and I was happy to have a chance to get it out to a new audience. (You can get it for free by signing up for my newsletter, BTW). Leonel is a crowd favorite character. Seeing your work in print is always validating and motivating, too.

I made NO HEADWAY on the novel at all in May. 300 words revised one afternoon. I guess so I could still tell myself I was working on it?

I did, however, write a new short story that had been on my backburner for a good long while, and was really pleased with how it came out. "Late Bloomer" is one of my Shadow Hill stories (a series I work on between larger projects, weird stories that all take place in the same suburban neighborhood, suspiciously like the one I live in). The story is out on submission right now, so we'll see if it finds a good home.

I also did a fair amount of journal writing, which is useful to me when I'm going through rougher times. Getting it on paper (on into a document) seems to let me set it aside and focus where I want to.

June:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of A Wrinkle in Time,  ConCarolinas
Wrote:  24,485 words
Revised:  29,360 words
Read and Reviewed:  4 books

So, I survived and made it to summer break. The girl graduated. The other girl became a middle schooler.

I enjoyed that side step into short stories in May, so I stayed there all of June as well, revising old stories and writing new ones. By the end of the month, I had written 7,128 new words of fiction in short stories and revised another 29,360. That feeling of finishing things is addictive, I think. It's definitely one of the appeals of writing shorter things.

Working with a friend, I built a database of what was available for submission with the intention of getting my work back out there in submission. After all, no one will publish stories that just sit on my hard drive. You've got to submit work to see it published!

That meant that I still stayed stuck on the novel though. I didn't check in on it at all during June. Not even a token afternoon of editing like I'd done in May.

ConCarolinas was contentious in 2018, and I waffled until the last minute about whether or not to keep my commitment to go after some controversy surrounding one of the scheduled guests and his behavior towards other panelists and con go-ers. He ended up not attending, and I ended up having a great con, both in terms of sales and networking, and the controversy remained low-key, at least in my presence.

I was on several panels with Seanan McGuire, the author guest of honor, an experience which only deepened my admiration of her work. I gifted her the last print copy of Going Through the Change I had with me when she expressed interest, and I'm hopeful that she might even read it someday :-)

July:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of The Good Earth, Con-Gregate, my yearly Writers Retreat
Wrote:  34,832 words
Revised:  15,303 words
Read and Reviewed:  2 books

Thank goodness for writer's retreats! My critique group has, for the past few years, scheduled a few days away from home in July for writing. We rent a house together, share meal planning and prep, and write and talk about writing, enjoying the respite from our other responsibilities.

This year, we went to Pelican House at the Trinity Center in Morehead City, NC, a place where I have taken writing retreats solo before. I love it because the meals are prepared for me and there's a lot of lovely setting to explore when you need to clear your head.

This is where I found my footing in my novel again. I'd been reading Gabiela Pereira's DIY MFA, which is a great collection and analysis of a variety of advice surrounding writing process and productivity. There's a technique she suggests called scene cards. I've never been an outliner, but I thought it couldn't hurt and might help, so I gave it a go. I wrote about it more detail in this blog post. But the TL;DR is: it worked! I started moving forward in the story again.

August:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of The Grifters
Wrote:  21,201 words
Revised:  16,286 words
Read and Reviewed:  2 books

So, 21,201 might not look that impressive when I just said that I found my footing in the novel again, but 3,225 new words and 16,186 revised words on a project that had all but stalled felt wonderful! I worked on it steadily, too. A little each day, with real progress on over half the days of the month. Thursday's Children was back on the road to becoming a completed novel.

August also came with a bit of an ego bump, just when I needed it. A magazine found me and sought me out for an author interview. That "out of the blue" stuff is the best! I definitely appreciate it when friends and colleagues notice and promote my work, but part of me thinks they only do it because they like me, as a person. So, it's personal rather than professional recognition. When it's a stranger, it's easier to believe that they honestly admire the work.

September:
Events: Ravencon 13.5
Wrote:  26,512 words
Revised:  13,355 words
Read and Reviewed: 6 books

Spring 2018 had been rough in terms of time management and I decided that going forward, I would do fewer spring events and show a little respect for the demands of my day job and family as well as my own physical and emotional limits. So, I was thrilled when Ravencon added a .5 event, a smaller convention in September. I signed up right away and had a wonderful time! 

Since some of the bigger name authors who travel the same convention circuit I do weren't there, I got to feel like a bigger fish in the pond than is typical. The whole convention had an intimate feel that was right for my comfort levels as an introvert faking comfort with public events.

September was also good for forward momentum on Thursday's Children, with another 2,378 in new words added and 13,355 in revisions. Revisions in my case often means serious expansion of a skeletal scene or structural re-arrangement, so those 13K words are not to be sneezed at as window dressing or surface edits. They are real progress.

October:
Releases: "The Girl in the Pool" a daylight ghost story in Off the Beaten Path 3; "Ashes" a southern gothic demon lover tale in Beyond the Pane
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of Les Misérables, Conapalooza, Real Life Ghost Stories
Wrote:  36,444 words
Revised:  0 words
Read and Reviewed:  3 books

I didn't work on my novel in October.

The difference was that it was intentional.

A friend of mine does a flash fiction challenge each October called Nightmare Fuel. She provides visual prompts and the participants write flash fiction to go with each. I've participated for a couple of years now and I find that the story-a-day format is a great refresher, a sort of vacation from the work of writing to remember that it's fun by playing with work that I'm not applying as much pressure on. (You can view the stories I wrote for the challenge here).

More than once, these play-pieces I've begun for Nightmare Fuel have grown into something I saw published, which goes to show that leaving yourself space to play can be good for your work.

I also wrote 31 blog posts here at Balancing Act in October, each celebrating an aspect of Halloween. Once in a while, it's nice to just let my inner fan girl squee about the things she loves, you know.

Conapalooza was fun, if light on sales. They're new, in an area of the country where there aren't that many conventions and geek-centric events, so I think they'll continue to see growth in upcoming years. A highlight was hearing my sister do her first public reading of her work. Yep, writing is contagious y'all. Watch out, or you might catch it, too!

The big news was that the tension with my publisher resolved. I asked for and received my rights back without struggle or animosity. I'm so relieved!

November:
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of To the Lighthouse, Local Authors Book Fair
Wrote:  27,828 words
Revised:  28,723 words
Read and Reviewed: 2 books

I jumped back into Thursday's Children with both feet on November first and made steady progress all month, adding 7,162 new words and revising 20,723.

I also made a big push on submitting all those short stories I worked on earlier in the year, which including a bit of revision time on those as well. All in all, I made 17 submissions in the month of November. For comparison, I submitted 0-1 pieces all the other months in 2018.

The Local Authors Book Fair held by my local Friends of the Public Library was a great success. I sold a fair number of books, made some new writer friends, and had a great day.

I signed with a new publisher! The Menopausal Superhero series will soon be re-released and carried by Falstaff Books, of Charlotte, NC. I'm so pleased to have signed with Falstaff. Everything I know of them is positive, and I expect to be treated fairly and expand my readership under their auspices. I'll share publication dates and information as soon as I have it!

Knowing that my books are in a stable home has me excited about the series again and I expect to get back to that long-stalled fourth book in the series in 2019.

December: (numbers as of December 21)
Releases: Tracing the Trails: A Constant Reader's Reflections on the Work of Stephen King
Events: First Monday Classics discussion of Little House in the Big Woods
Wrote:  23,172 words
Revised:  8,756 words
Read and Reviewed:  4 books

December has continued the positive trends started in November, with steady progress on the novel and continuing to get my work out there on submission. A few rejections came back and I just immediately turned those puppies around and sent them seeking a home somewhere else. 

A writing partner, Nicole Givens Kurtz, and I have sent out proposals for our nonfiction teaching book On Teaching Speculative Fiction and I'm feeling hopeful that we'll find a good home for our work. 

A nonfiction essay I wrote about Stephen King's collection of short stories, Nightmares and Dreamscapes (especially Dolan's Cadillac) was published in Tracing the Trails,  a labor of love from a long-time writing friend and my nemesis on the Magic Spreadsheet, Chad A. Clark. 

I feel as though I'm ending 2018 on a positive and productive note that will carry me into 2019 full of hope and energy. So despite the rollercoaster feeling of the year, I'm glad I got on the ride!