The Hardest Format, 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.

What has been the hardest format to write in for you?
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I've tried on a lot of different literary forms over the years. They're all difficult at first, because they're new. And each project is it's own critter, so even if it's a form I've written before, it's still a new challenge.

I began, in childhood as a poet, in formal and free-verse styles. I stopped pursuing poetry seriously (i.e. with an eye to publication) in my thirties, but I still write it for myself and sometimes share it. I might still someday produce a collection if I ever have enough that fit together that way. (My published poetry is all under my maiden name--Samantha Dunaway).

I really got into personal essays in my later twenties, writing a few that made it into magazines and newspapers. I was especially proud of a few that made it into We Alaskans. That led directly into some newspaper work as a book columnist for the Bering Strait (now defunct) and the Nome Nugget and attracted me to blogging where I could "sound off" more freely in this not-journalism-but-not-fiction area. 

I played with short stories off and on along the way but didn't really start to feel like I understood and made good use of the form until 2014 or so. Now I LOVE writing short stories, especially for anthologies, for the opportunity to try on different styles and genres without the long-term commitment that a novel entails. At this point, I've had 25 or so short stories published of 73 that I currently have in my pieces list on Duotrope. I'm in the middle of writing two new ones right now.

(SIDEBAR: Duotrope has been really useful to me for tracking submissions and helping me find places to submit my work. I pay $5 a month and consider it well worth it. It's great for folks like me who struggle to organize this stuff, and it's searchable, so I can make sure I didn't send that same story to that venue a year ago and just forgot.)

After my second child was born (2007) and I needed something to help pull me out of Post-partum depression, I joined a group of novel writers and started trying to write a novel. I started and abandoned three before I finished one. That one remains unpublished and is shelved for now, but I've since written an entire five novel series (The Menopausal Superheroes I'm always talking about) and seen it accepted for publication by two different publishers. So excited to bring that one to a close this summer! I've got several other partially completed novels I plan to finish up soon.

Novels are BIG, and it took me a while to develop a process and be able to track work that large and keep it consistent over a longer creation period. But discovering Scrivener software helped me a lot. It's so easy to re-arrange work and use color coding and image labels to help track things like POV or then-and-now timelines.

I've also written a couple of novellas along the way. I quite enjoy this form--longer than a short story, but not as involved as a novel, bridging what I love about short stories and what I love about novels. In fact, the project I'm working on now is a trilogy of romance novellas and I'm loving working on them. 

So that's a long-winded answer to a relatively simple question. The short version: short stories took me the longest to feel competent at, so I guess they've been the hardest for me. 

But I LOVE to try new things. Maybe screenplays will be next. I've got some friends who do some writing for indie films and that could be amazing to try my hand at.

So, how about you? Have you tried a variety of formats? What proved most challenging for you?

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Under appreciated novels, 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.

What's your favorite under appreciated novel? 

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Oh my, that's a tough one. I mean, when I LOVE a book, it's strange to me to realize that other people haven't even heard of it, but that's often how it goes. There are SO MANY books, and even among friends who read as much as I do and more, we only have some crossover. 

Under appreciated is also hard to gauge. It's not like I'm checking their Rotten Tomatoes rating or something, right? 

Still, a novel did come to mind when I read the question: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. 

It's not as obscure as other novels I could have chosen, but anytime I bring up Shirley Jackson, people say, "Oh yeah. She wrote The Lottery, right?" or maybe, "Is that the Haunting of Hill House lady?" Both of those are true, and both of those works are also genius (though I think Castle is better). It's this one that wanders the backrooms of my mind, and pops out to jump scare me from time to time. 

Like a lot of Shirley Jackson, there's not anything supernatural going on. Her horror is only rarely about ghost or monsters. Mostly, it's in what people do to one another. Some call her more specific genre "domestic horror" and I think that fits well. Other than Hill House, her stories mostly take place in mundane settings:  small towns, gardens, post offices, grocery stores, homes. 

What I love about Castle is Merricat, the main character and somewhat unreliable narrator. She's intense and scary in that way that very young people can be, and as the fuller history is revealed her complicated relationship with her sister Constance becomes fascinating. 

So, that's my pick for today. How about you? Do you have a favorite novel that no one else seems to love the same way you do? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

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My Year in Words: My 7th year pursuing writing for real

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2022 is coming to a close. That seems like science fiction in and of itself. How can it be 2022, let alone almost 2023? But I've survived a lot of bad predictions now.

• I made it through 1984, and if Big Brother was watching, he didn't speak up. 
• I made it through 1999, and the party wasn't over after all. 
• Y2K didn't eat my hard drive
• I made it through 2001 and AI did not kill off the humans. Sorry, Dave.
• Ancient calendars didn't end the world in 2012
• I made it through 2015 without getting hit by Michael J. Fox on a hoverboard. 
• I made it through 2019 without finding out if replicants dream of electric sheep. 
• Godzilla didn't return in 2020. Neither did the Terminator. (though both might have been preferable to what 2020 DID bring us)
• And here we are in 2022, and I'm not yet eating Soylent Green.

So maybe 2023 won't be as bad as science fiction led me to believe either.

Writing

My goals were a little mushy this year. After getting through 2020 and 2021, life didn't feel that predictable, so setting goals was harder. I didn't have my usual faith and optimism about what all I'd be able to get done. 

the Menopausal Superheroes novels so far

I've been working on the fifth and final Menopausal Superhero novel off and on for two years now. I was hoping I'd finish a draft this year. 

I didn't. 

But, I'm finishing the year strong, having written on it every day during NaNoWriMo and kept up that momentum in December, so I'm hoping to have a finished draft by March of 2023. 

Partly this was pandemic life. Partly this was me trying to close out a series for the first time, which is a very different task than just writing the next novel in the series, especially for a pantser like me. 

I tracked my word count across six projects: Menopausal Superheroes #5, Short Stories, Book Reviews, Social Posts, Business (by which I mean correspondence, blurbs, bios, etc.), and Blogs. I use Jamie Raintree's Writing and Revision Tracker, because I like how it lets me see my progress on several projects, and track both new words and revised words. Across the year, I wrote 287,642 words and revised 109,515. Not too shabby!

There are still two weeks left, so I'll add a little more to that word count before the New Year bells toll. 

Publishing: 

I did see some work into print though, even if it wasn't Menopausal Superheroes. 

My short stories made it into three anthologies in 2022: 

• Beyond: Horror Flash Fiction includes my short story "What I Can See" 
• A Woman Unbecoming includes "How Does Your Garden Grow?"  
• Post Roe Alternatives: Fighting Back includes "No Country for Young Women" 

I'm proud of all three, but especially happy to have used my writing for a bit of activism, in support of reproductive rights in the second two. 

I also had a few short stories included in magazines. You can read all of these online for free (or listen to them, in the case of the two podcasts): 

• The Beginning of You. 34 Orchard. 10 November 2022. 
• Under an Orange Sky. Allegory EZine. 1 November 2022. 
• Poison. Manawaker Studio's Flash Fiction Podcast. 8 September 2022. 
• Moondance. Night's End Podcast 13 June 2022. (my story begins about 7 minutes, 12 seconds in)
• The Mind Plays Tricks Dark Recesses 27 April 2022
• How Does Your Garden Grow The Fantastic Other, Issue 4 (page 13)  19 February 2022

I'd love it if you checked out any of my work! And, for the books, please consider leaving a review. A few words and some stars makes all the difference in a book's discoverability, and I'd love to see these small presses continue to thrive. 

Submitting

Another of my goals was to submit my work more often. I'm terrible about writing a short story, submitting it once, then letting it languish on my hard drive if it doesn't get accepted. (Hint: if you want your work to get published, you have to submit it). 

At this point, it's not even about fear of rejection for me anymore, but more about managing my limited time so that I can write new things, promote my published work, AND submit my work. 

I set a goal of submitting work 100 times this year and, as I write this, I've done so 99 times. So, you can bet I'll find time to submit one more piece of work before the calendar flips. I was helped by participating in challenges developed by a writing colleague Ray Daley. A few times a year, he collects a list of magazines he intends to submit to, one a day over the course of a month, and invites other writers to try and do the same. 

It paid off, too! Several of the year's publications are stories that met with rejection before finding success. Persistence is the name of the game. 

• What I Can See: written 2019,  submitted 4 times in total, and accepted in 2020 (for publication in 2022). 
• How Does Your Garden Grow? written 2020, submitted 5 times in total, and accepted twice in 2022. (reprints are sometimes welcome in anthologies)
• No Country for Young Women written 2022, submitted 5 times in total, and accepted in 2022 (that's pretty fast for me--to write a story and see it published in the same year)
• The Beginning of You written 2015, submitted 11 times, and accepted in 2022
• Under an Orange Sky written 2014, submitted 14 times, and accepted in 2014 (project folded without coming to fruition) and 2022
• Poison written 2020, submitted 5 times, accepted in 2020 (in a magazine), and in 2022 (as a reprint for a podcast)
• Moondance written 2019, submitted 8 times, accepted in 2022
• The Mind Plays Tricks written 2015, submitted 17 times, accepted in 2022

Promotion

Getting comfortable with promotion has been quite a journey these past seven years. 

I was a guest at ConCarolinas and Multiverse this year, and sold my books at GalaxyCon, Queen City Book Fair, Bookmarks Book Festival and PopCon. 

I also presented a workshop at Orange County Public Library and continue to run the First Monday Classics book club with writer-colleague James Maxey every month.

I've started to stretch my geographic reach in hopes of finding new audiences, and seeking out more one day festivals and events. I'm still trying to find that balance between promotion and protection of my writing time that leads to a wider audience and more sales. Now that I'm no longer a teacher, I'm a little less tied to the academic calendar and look forward to the new opportunities that will open up for me. 

I've also been taking advantage of the wider array of digital opportunities. I record panels with ConTinual Convention on the regular, as well as with Strong Women Strange Worlds, Go Indie Now, Write Hive, and other organizations. 

I try to gather all those together into a playlist on YouTube: 

I didn't put up much new material on my own YouTube channel this year, so I'm hoping to get back to this more regularly next year. 

I've also been exploring new social media options this year, building a presence and a following on CounterSocial, Mastodon, and Hive (@samanthabwriter) in case Twitter finishes imploding, while still keeping up Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which have been my main channels for a few years now. 

See why time management is such a thing?

How did your year go for your creative or business pursuits? Any insights to share with girls like me who want it all? 

Open Book Blog Hop: Writing Short Stories

 

Welcome to Monday! I'm trying something new this week: the Open Book Blog Hop. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. This week, we're talking about short stories: 

Do you ever write short stories? What do you see as the biggest difference in the writing process between a short story and a full-length book?

Though my primary work is novels, The Menopausal Superhero series and some other as-yet-unfinished and unpublished works, I also LOVE writing short stories. 

Novels are not small endeavors. I'm a writer with a day job, stuffing my writing life into a couple of hours a day most of the time, so drafting a novel is the work of a year or more for me. Writing a series of novels means living in the same imaginary universe for multiple years. I've been writing my Menopausal Superheroes since 2014. 

Even though writing is always a labor of love for me, staying on track and meeting publishing deadlines for my novels can start to feel more like work than play. 

When I need a break from the current novel, I cheat on her with short stories. 

Short stories give me an opportunity to try on something new without the same level of commitment that a novel requires. I can explore new characters, new worlds, new situations. I can play around in new genre sandboxes. I can finish a draft of a short story quickly, sometimes in only one or two writing sessions. That feeling of finishing things is addictive. 

For me, short fiction is all about play. They are key for keeping me connected to the joy of a writing life, even when it feels like my novel is trying to kill me. It's my chance to say, "I've never tried that! Let's go!" 

Interestingly, a lot of my short fiction comes out dark. 

It's quite a contrast, because my novel series is light, dramedy in tone, intermixing comedic elements with action, with a heavy focus on women's friendship. 

I think it's because I'm usually writing short fiction when I'm feeling frustrated with longer fiction, so I walk into it in a darker mood. Plus, honestly, I just have a taste for the creepy. 

My first loves as a child were Grimm's fairy tales and Tanakh, as recounted for me by my mother and grandmothers, who didn't pull any punches about the scary bits. No Disney-fication for little Samantha. I tell people that I might look more like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but inside? It's all Wednesday Addams. 

My most recent publication is a horror story. "How Does Your Garden Grow?" is featured in A Woman Unbecoming, a new charity anthology in support of reproductive rights from Crone Girls Press. 

If you like horror, or are just horrified by the most recent attacks on women's health and rights in the United States, I hope you'll check it out.

And after you do, please check out the posts from my fine colleagues below: 

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August Reads

School started in mid August for me, so that really put a dent in my reading time. Still, I managed to finish a few books: 

A little romance, a little horror, some supernatural happenings, a heist or two, and a health dose of wit and humor. Really, quite a good month for reading. 

I started with Eleanor and the Egret, a graphic novel by John Layman and Sam Kieth. My local coffee shop keeps a spinner rack stocked with a variety of comics and when I buy my "hurray! It's Friday!" treat of a pastry and a fancy coffee, I also often buy myself a comic. That's how I found the first issue of Eleanor and the Egret and I loved it so much, I ordered the trade. 

I'm so glad to have run across this bizarre and good hearted story of a young woman and an egret who become art thieves together. 

Alexandra Christian and I share a publisher, and I got her new book, Dr. Watson and the Ladies' Club Coven, as soon as it released in May 2021, but I hadn't read it yet! Wanting something short that I already knew I would love, I put this book next in my e-book queue. Like her previous Shadow Council Archives novella, The Ghost and Dr. Watson, this novella features Dr. John Watson after Sherlock Holmes has died in a world where supernatural happenings don't turn out to be phosphorescent paint and humans with ill intent, but the real deal. Highly recommended for fans of Sherlock Holmes and the supernatural. 

Earlier this summer, I read Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson, a sort of annotated bibliography of works of speculative fiction by women across history. In that book, I learned that Edith Wharton, an author I knew from her literary, historical classics like The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome had also written a number of Gothic tales. So when I was offered a good deal on a collection of her Gothic tales from Chirpbooks (a discount audiobook company), I jumped on it. The Wharton Gothics included stories with real ghosts alongside atmospheric tales in which the dread came from natural instead of supernatural causes. 

Meanwhile, over on my Kindle, I pounced on the next of Lucy Blue's Stella Hart Romantic mysteries, just released in July. You might remember that I read two of them last month and enjoyed them immensely. The third one, The Baronet Unleashed, was just as much fun. This one took us into old Hollywood which was a fun setting, and kept all the witty dialogue and charming romance going. I'm already looking forward to the next in the series!

Sad that I couldn't immediately read another Stella Hart, I dug through my Kindle library for something else that might scratch that particular itch and found the first of the Miss Fisher's Mysteries series by Kerry Greenwood, Cocaine Blues. I bought it some time ago, when I was watching (and LOVING) the television series, but I hadn't read it yet. 

Like Stella Hart, Phryne Fisher is a firecracker of a woman, though she's more adventurous and less concerned about what other's might think of her than Stella. I quite enjoyed this introductory adventure with Miss Fisher and will definitely be back to read more of them. 

So that was my August in books. Right now, I'm in the middle of two books: The Count of Monte Cristo, which I'm reading for my first Monday Classics book club and quite enjoying as an audiobook and 2,000 to 10,000: How to Write Faster, Write Better, and Write More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron, a very practical book I'm hoping will help speed my process as a writer. In paper, I'm mostly reading comics right now. 

How about you? Read anything fabulous this August? I'd love to hear about in the comments! 

June Reads: Short, but not Sweet

Here I am halfway through the year, and I've already nearly met my yearly reading challenge. I always plan to read 52 books: one per week. Generally, I read a bit more. This year I'm already at 41 books. 

I read nine books this month, though to be fair, they were mostly quite short. I found my attention scattered, what with end of school year burnout and a suddenly very crowded social calendar with family obligations and writer-life opportunities now that vaccination has re-opened some possibilities. I was out of pocket for 11 of June's 30 days which is quite a lot, especially after my homebody habits of pandemic life. 

I started with Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, a choice by my neighborhood book club. I had previously read his Underground Railroad, and liked it overall, but was a bit put off by the intermixing of fact and fantasy. This story was much more succinct and tight and I think that's part of what kept me engaged a bit more. Now that I've had a little time to think it over, I think I prefer Nickel Boys which stuck closer to actual historical events and realistically likely events. But it was a heartbreaker. 

So after having my heart broken, I picked up Un-Girls by Lauren Beukes. At some point Audible had offered me this book and others in the Disorder series for free or at low cost (I don't remember), and since I already admired Beukes's Broken Monsters, I accepted the offer. I found both these works horrifying and creative, taking angles I'd not seen before. Her body horror is shudder inducing. 

Having peeked into the series, I became curious about the other five books in the Disorder series and quickly read the rest of them: the twisty and ever-changing The Beckoning Fair One by Dan Chaon, the fascinating but inconclusive Loam by Scott Heim, an Edgar Allen Poe retelling in Will Williams by Namwali Serpell, the all too realistic Anonymous by Uzodinma Iweala, and the deeply sad Best Girls by Min Jin Lee with its echoes of Thomas Hardy. I recommend the entire series. Each is 1-2 hours long and each takes on horror from an unusual angle. 

After that horror, I was ready for something lighter so I chose The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by RA Dick (the pseudonym of Irish author Josephine Leslie). I already knew and loved this story from the 1947 movie edition.

I was happy to find that much of what I loved about the movie was also present in the novel and was especially touched by the plight of "poor Lucy" who had to learn to stand against that most difficult of obstacles to an independent life: people who love you.  

Quite a charming and romantic story which also has a lot to say about the importance of taking charge of one's own life. 

I finished with Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, a story I knew from the 1983 movie, but had never read. It, too, was a relatively short work I had purchased some time earlier and found waiting in my Audible library when I sought short books to read. 

I have really enjoyed a lot of Bradbury's short stories over the years, though some of them can feel "quaint" these days in that they are less cynical and less concerned with startling and unpredictable plot twists. His mild paternalistic misogyny can be annoying, but like Asimov, he mostly avoids the problem by having very few female characters and never focusing on them if he does have female characters. 

In trying to describe this one, I said: 

"This book is a celebration of that cusp moment of childhood into adolescence (particularly for young boys--one of Bradbury's consistent failings is creation of meaningful female characters). It's a meditation on aging and regret. It's nostalgia brewed into a fine tea that, while faintly bitter, still pleases the senses."

I finished the month with Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, which I have not yet finished, so I'll have to tell you about it next month. So far, I'll say that it holds up quite well and that much of what you know and love about these characters from all the movie and television adaptations came directly from Dumas's pen. 

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

April Reads

 I only read three books this month, but they were all wonderful! I listened to all three as audiobooks, though I also went back and forth with Kindle for the Gaskell. 

I first found Tananarive Due through her work in The Apocalypse Triptych, an ambitious set of three anthologies where authors imagined life before, during, and after an apocalypse through three interlinked stories. I remembered her name and when I got a good deal on an audiobook of My Soul to Keep, I nabbed it. 

Great slow build horror that went in very different directions than I expected. I'm with Stephen King on this one. Fascinating!

Haven't watched the miniseries yet,
 but it's on my list now!

After that I turned my attention to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, the May selection for my First Monday Classics Book Club. I'd heard Gaskell's name many times, mostly as a writer whose influence could be seen on other writers, but I'd never read any of her work. 

In the first chapter, I thought I was going to hate it because it opened with a drawing room scene full of superficial chitchat about dresses and fabrics and such, but it quickly became clear that we'd been given that scene as contrast as we followed our heroine into a trying period of her life and into the most unexpected journey to a happy marriage. 

I'm so looking forward to the discussion next week! And will definitely make room for more Gaskell in my reading life. 

I finished my month with Becky Chambers. Chambers is one of my no-questions-asked authors, who works are on preorder as soon as I hear about them. I've read all four of her Wayfarer series books and loved all them. The Galaxy and the Ground Within returned to all the themes that draw me to Chambers's work: optimism, unexpected friendship, kindness and acceptance, found families. For a book ostensibly about aliens (only one human character active in this story, and she had a bit part), there's a lot to consider about humanity in these pages. 

So, that's my reading month. I began a few other books, and hope to finish them soon, so I'll tell you about them next month. 

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

IWSG: Calculated Risks

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

April 7 question - Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work?

The awesome co-hosts for the April 7 posting of the IWSG are PK Hrezo, Pat Garcia, SE White, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diane Burton! Be sure to check out what they have to say, and visit other writers in the blog hop!
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So, am I a risk-taker in my writing? Well…kind of. 

I'm trying to build a writing career, one that will eventually financially support me. So, when I make choices about what to write next and where to focus my energy in this moment, I'm considering marketability and cross-pollination with my other published work as one of the factors. So, sometimes that means putting down one project that doesn't have a publisher waiting on it, so I can work on one that does--selecting what to work on when based on slightly more mercenary criteria rather than merely following my artistic whims. 

But I don't let that make me play it completely safe. While I don't seek out controversy for its own sake, I don't pull back from it if it arises naturally in my work. My novels address some pretty serious issues: ageism, sexism, misogyny, violence, trust. I don't pull my metaphorical punches any more than my heroines pull their physical ones. If the story needs to take on something potentially controversial, then it will. 

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On the other hand, I also LOVE trying new things as a writer. So, there's a balance to be struck between moving forward where I've had success and in experimentation and growth. I use short fiction for this. So, while I'm continuing to write The Menopausal Superhero series, I also slip in a little time to write in my first-love genre of horror stories and to try on other sub-genres of speculative fiction. 

It lets me try out different approaches, narrative styles, and forms without the time commitment required by a novel. 

My favorite way to challenge myself is to write for anthologies. When I hear about a themed call that captures my imagination, I jump in. Even better if it's something I've never written before, like that time I wrote a vampire story for Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire, even though I'd never written a vampire story before, just because I LOVED the premise of the anthology so very much and wanted to be a part of it. 

It's always a risk to try writing something new, but I'd argue it's a risk to never try writing anything new, too--stagnation is real, and can cost your passion as well as your opportunity to build a career. 

So, I'm a planned risk-taker, I guess, willing to try something new, but only when the time is right. How about you, fellow creatives? How do you balance risk in your creative life? 

My Publishing Year: A Horror Show with Unexpected Heroism

2020, man. Whew. Don't those numbers just wear you out every time you see them? Between the pandemic, the social unrest, and the politics, I've never been so happy to see a year end. 

Oddly, it was an excellent publishing year for me, though. I guess there's balance in that? 

Seriously, though. I had eight works published in books this year! Holy-freaking-cow, that's a lot. 

Since time was this weird warped thing this year where days could last for years and months go by in a blink, I didn't really realize so much of my work had made it out there into the universe until I took a moment to look back and reflect. 

I am greatly amused to realize that I published 4 super-heroic works and 4 works of horror. That's 2020 in a nutshell isn't it--a horror show with unexpected heroism. 

Long time readers might remember that I had some publishing turmoil in late 2018, early 2019, when I had to reclaim my rights from a failing publisher and seek a new home for my work. The story has a happy continuation though, in that my Menopausal Superhero work is now housed with Falstaff Books, a thriving mid-size publisher out of Charlotte, North Carolina, full of the "Misfit Toys of Fiction." 

Because their publishing schedule didn't allow for seeing a fourth Menopausal Superhero novel into print until 2021, we decided to release short works in the series this year. Friend or Foe, a novella that bridges book 1 (Going Through the Change) and book 2 (Change of Life) came out in March of 2020. 

The Good Will Tour, a stand-alone adventure for Flygirl and Fuerte came out in May. 

And Through Thick and Thin, a collection of short stories set in the Menopausal Superheroes universe came out in August. 

Finally, all the short works were collected into an omnibus edition in Agents of Change, which includes all these works in a single volume and came out in November. 

While all this was happening, I was busy writing Be the Change, the fourth Menopausal Superhero novel. I'm in the last of my self-edits/revisions right now, with plans to send the finished book to Falstaff by January 1st. I think you're going to love this one--I know I fell in love with my character all over again writing their stories here. 

Then came the horror! Although horror was one of my first loves as a reader, I didn't start out writing it. In the past few years, though, more and more of my short work has leaned toward the weird and frightening, and this year, four of my horror short stories made it into anthologies. 

Stories We Tell After Midnight, Volume 2 from Crone Girls Press has been described as traditional horror. These are the kinds of horror stories that drew me into the genre in my youth--stories that give you a good shiver and might make it a little harder to fall asleep at night. That's not to say that they are staid, boring or without humor and innovation. My story, "The Cleaning Lady," began as part of a Halloween flash fiction challenge proposed by writing-friend Bliss Morgan and might have been influenced by the fact that I was watching Downton Abbey at the time and thinking about servant-master relationships. 

Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire from Mocha Memoirs Press asked for vampire and vampire-slayer stories set in the African diaspora and featuring black characters. My daring little tale, "His Destroyer", is a retelling of the Passover story, about the 10th plague of Egypt during which the first-borns of Egyptians households were slaughtered. The story as I learned it never specified who exactly His Destroyer was, and how exactly the children were killed. So, I wrote this story imagining those details for myself. I gave myself the chills, so hopefully you'll get them, too, if you read it. This is a giant collection--with 29 stories of HUGE variety. I'm so excited to have my work included among such giants of the genre. 

Hindsight's 2020 came about when a group of writers who used to share a publisher came together as a support and recovery group for each other (yes, *that* publisher--see link above). Our theme was regret, or hindsight, and I wrote a wonderfully creepy little thing called "I Should Have Known" set in the Victorian era about love, sacrifice, and monstrosity. So much fun to write! 

Outsiders Within from Abstruse Press just came out yesterday! It's a collection of cosmic horror stories and you might enjoy your trip through madness with Margaret in my story, "Margaret Lets Her Self Go." This is the same press that published Deadman Humour: 13 Fears of a Clown in late 2019, which includes my bit of Lovecraftian horror, "The Gleewoman of Preservation." 

And if that's not enough of my work yet, you can also support the Kickstarter for Ravencon to read my story, "If the Moon is Real." Hear an excerpt here, on YouTube. 

Since Ravencon, a small Virginian convention close to my heart, had to cancel the 2020 and 2021 live events, they've put together this collection of short stories featuring corvids--a class of birds that includes the eponymous Raven of Ravencon. 

The hope is that the Kickstarter will earn enough money to keep the organization afloat and "in the black" until we can gather again as an unkindness or conspiracy of ravens in person. 

Because support has been so strong, they're already working on a stretch goal to create a second volume of the anthology! The Table of Contents includes some pretty impressive names as well as some new writers just establishing a foothold in the industry. Well worth the few dollars, AND you get to support a small convention at the same time. 

I've already got a few more works in the pipeline for 2021, so despite the weirdness of this year, I'm feeling pretty successful on the publishing front. If you've read any of these works, please drop a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Even just a few words is enough to help the visibility of my work. Just "I liked it" or "that woman writes some crazy stuff, yo!" is the best gift you could give me. 

Book Birthday! Agents of Change

Look guys! We've got another sister in the Menopausal Superheroes series! Actually, this one is sort of triplets :-) 

If you've been following along this year, then you already saw the two novellas and collection of short stories released this year: 

Agents of Change gathers all three of these into a single collection. It's a great choice for new readers coming to my work who want to find out what the universe is all about and get a glimpse of the characters without committing to an entire series just yet. 

It's also got a few Easter Eggs for those already in the know :-)

And, if you love it, it's a great time to start reading the series of novels, since book 4, Be the Change, is on the docket for 2021! 

I can't wait for you guys to meet Patricia's mother and find out about the latest trouble to hit Springfield! 

October Reads

October was all about writing for me--I had two short story releases in anthologies to promote and a novel to finish, so I stole every moment I could get at my computer. Plus it was October--my favorite time of year for watching scary movies :-)

All that is to say that I didn't read much this month. But I don't feel bad about it or deprived in some way this time. I still got my share of story in my life--it's just that I was writing it or watching it this month. 

Since I had really enjoyed my foray into short Audible productions last month, I continued that trend, listening to The Machine Stops by EM Forster,  A Grown Up Guide to Dinosaurs, and In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire. I enjoyed all three for different reasons. 

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The Machine Stops is maybe a little "on the nose" by contemporary standards. A little blunt and obvious in its moralizing, but when you realize it was published in 1909, it begins to feel a little more prescient. 

The short story takes place in a nonspecific future year, when the earth, having experienced some kind of unspecified human-caused disaster that left the surface uninhabitable. Our characters live completely underground in near-complete isolation from each other with all their needs attended to by a giant complex of machines. 

I know, right? What could go wrong? 

Since I knew EM Forster as the author of period pieces about relationship difficulties and the oppression of early twentieth century moral strictures--you know the types of stories Merchant made sun-drenched costume dramas about--this story was definitely a bit of a surprise. I had no idea the man had dabbled in science fiction. 

A Grown Up Guide to Dinosaurs delivered just what it promised: a program of adults enthusiastically fan-peopling over dinosaurs. The work encourages us to remember our childhood dinosaur obsessions and gives us the chance to catch up on some of the latest thinking is about what dinosaurs really were and how they ended up as chickens. 

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire is the fourth story in a series called Wayward Children. I've also read the first one, Every Heart a Doorway but none of the rest. That didn't matter. Book 4 stands alone quite well. Quite, quite well, indeed. I loved it. The premise of the series is that there are portals in the forms of magical doorways throughout the world and that sometimes children go through them and are changed in ways that won't let them rejoin ordinary life. In this one, Lundy finds such a doorway and ends up in the Goblin Market. Gorgeous story with some wonderful life advice wrapped in its pages, like the best of fairy tales. 

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Blue Highways was the single long work I read this month. I read it as a combination of audiobook and kindle edition, moving back and forth between the two. This one was the selection for my Classics Book Club at my library…if it wasn't for the commitment I made to the group, I might not have finished it. Too meandering for me. Pointless. There were some lovely, lyrical moments, but in the end it felt like I'd listened to some guy natter on for hours and hadn't learned anything, gained any insight, or even come to like the guy. 

So, there's my short reading list from October. How about you? What did you read? Got any good ones I should add to my TBR? 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. 

New Release Day: Stories We Tell After Midnight, Vol. 2

 

My first love as a reader and a writer was horror. Though I'm not primarily a horror writer now--I'm best known for my dram-edy (half comedy/half drama) Menopausal Superhero series--I still love to read and write scary, creepy little tales. I love nothing so much as giving myself (and maybe a reader or two) a good shiver. 

And today, I'm proud to announce that Stories We Tell After Midnight, Volume 2 is released! It includes my flash fiction horror story, "The Cleaning Lady" which came about from my participation in the Nightmare Fuel Project while I was also watching Downton Abbey. The combination left me wondering what the human servants of a creature of darkness might think and say about their employers behind their backs. 

Here's the blurb: 

As a deadly scourge overwhelms the continent, four survivors race to find a last exit out of Australia. Up in the attic, a bedtime story outlives its storyteller. A city boy visits his country cousins and stumbles on a terrifying family secret. From a film set in the Arizona desert, to an overgrown rambling old house in the Florida swamps, to the dusty streets of a small Mexican town, the stories in this volume plunge the reader into the shadows of a world almost forgotten by modern fables of cold science and bright sunlight. They are the brushed over voices who call a warning to those who would comfort themselves in the thought that monsters aren’t real, and those things can’t happen here. Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 2 offers up tales of revenge, of hunger, and of the horror that stalks you just beyond the glow of your cell phone light, but only to those who dare turn the page.

I'm so pleased to have my work included and hope that you will check out this collection of spooky stories, out just in time for your Halloween reading pleasure. May it give you a good shiver and make you examine the shadows in the corners more closely. 

Writing Short Stories, or the Joys of Anthologies

I've had sort of an odd trajectory in my writing life, having started as a poet, and jumped from there to  novel-writing. Maybe it would have made more sense to start with shorter fiction, but that's not what happened for me. I didn't really start writing short fiction until after my first novel was accepted for publication. 

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Short fiction is like novel writing…and it's completely different. Structurally, a novel and a story need similar elements, but they use them in different proportions and levels of complexity. Some novelists are able to write short stories easily, and others struggle with the shorter form. 

For a long time, when I sat down to write something, I'd have no idea how big it was going to be until the project was well underway. 

I've started novels that turned out not to have enough to them to fulfill that form, so they became novellas or short stories. More often, I've tried to write a short story only to have the story grow and grow and grow, until I have another novel on my hands (or *another* series-length idea: sometimes I just want the idea to stay small!).

I'm getting better at gauging the length I'll need to do a story justice these days. It happens less often that I'm surprised by the length the work ends up being. Experience is useful in that way. 

Here's the thing: novels take a long time to write. 

Generally, I need between six months and a year to write a novel of 85K or so (the length most of my novels seem to come out at, at least so far). The longest I've spent on a novel was four years, but it was also my first one, so it makes sense it would take longer. 

Short stories, on the other hand, can sometimes be drafted in a single writing session. And that feeling

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of FINISHING is such a rush! I can see how a person could become addicted to short stories just for the feeling of having finished a complete piece of writing in a relatively short timespan. 

Making a living from short story writing is even more challenging than from novels though. You can sell them to magazines or to anthologies mostly, and the pay ranges from "exposure" to lovely by-the-word prices. 

Anthologies probably help your career more if you also have some longer works to sell, allowing you to attract new readers with that short work and guide them to your longer work. 

What I love about writing for anthologies is the opportunity to experiment with something new on the page without the large-scale commitment represented by a novel. 

This is my fifth year as a professional writer, a moniker I started applying to myself when my first novel was published in 2015. In that time, I've had work included in sixteen anthologies. So, yeah, I might like this :-)

Nonfiction essays, in-universe stories for the Menopausal Superheroes, accidental apocalypse, fairy tale, ghost, Lovecraftian clowns, demon lovers, aliens, romance, retribution, SO MUCH FUN! 

I've got at least two more anthology stories coming out this year, and two more on the horizon with not-yet-set release dates. Check out these books coming out in October! (and click on the covers to visit the pre-order links, while you're at it--authors need love…and reviews!). 

Coming October 1: 

As a deadly scourge overwhelms the continent, four survivors race to find a last exit out of Australia.

Up in the attic, a bedtime story outlives its storyteller.

A city boy visits his country cousins and stumbles on a terrifying family secret.

From a film set in the Arizona desert, to an overgrown rambling old house in the Florida swamps, to the dusty streets of a small Mexican town, the stories in this volume plunge the reader into the shadows of a world almost forgotten by modern fables of cold science and bright sunlight. They are the brushed over voices who call a warning to those who would comfort themselves in the thought that monsters aren’t real, and those things can’t happen here. Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 2 offers up tales of revenge, of hunger, and of the horror that stalks you just beyond the glow of your cell phone light, but only to those who dare turn the page…

Coming October 13: 

Mocha Memoirs Press is proud to present SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire — a revolutionary anthology celebrating vampires of the African Diaspora. SLAY is a groundbreaking unique collection and will be a must-have for vampire lovers all over the world. SLAY aims to be the first anthology of its kind. Few creatures in contemporary horror are as compelling as the vampire, who manages to captivate us in a simultaneous state of fear and desire. Drawing from a variety of cultural and mythological backgrounds, SLAY dares to imagine a world of horror and wonder where Black protagonists take center stage — as vampires, as hunters, as heroes. From immortal African deities to resistance fighters; matriarchal vampire broods to monster hunting fathers; coming of age stories to end of life stories, SLAY is a groundbreaking Afrocentric vampire anthology celebrating the rich cultural heritage of the African Diaspora.