I’m getting published! The Second Corona Book of Horror Stories is available for pre-order now. If you like what you’ve seen here and want to be introduced to some really awesome authors in the horror genre, please have a look and consider picking it up!
Any outstretched hand
Holds violence
When you’ve been beat enough.
Bare your teeth and bite.
If you must.
But try also to remember
A before time
When outstretched hands
Meant gentler things.
Camp Kendall – Short
I recently started using a new social media site called Pillowfort. It’s been pretty great! No, they aren’t paying me to say this, I am just stoked. Why? Well, because the community is pretty great, but also because I started a horror writing group and will be posting weekly writing prompts that I will also be participating in. It is so great having motivation for writing. Not the long form stuff that I have to do by myself, but that quick stuff that lets you flex your writing muscles. That said, here is the short for this weeks prompt which was: “They have no mouths”.
We stood in the middle of the clearing, huddled together and clutching our flashlights. My sneakers were soaked from running through the dew coated grass all night. We were out of breath, dirt covered, and exhausted.
“I don’t see them,” Shelley panted, her voice breaking halfway through as she swallowed down a sob.
First Acceptance!
I’ve gotten my first acceptance and I’m stoked! My short story Back to the Soil will be in the Second Corona Book of Horror Stories by Corona Books UK. It’ll come out October 1st, though pre-orders will open before then.
It feels a little surreal knowing that after wanting this so badly for so long, I’m going to be legit. I’m getting published!
Writing, Mental Illness, and Abuse
So, there is something that has been stuck in my craw for a while now and it has a lot to do with the misconceptions regarding mental illness and abuse. People who have never lived with these things just blow my mind.
This is going to get very long winded, so I’ll stick it under a cut to keep blog clutter down.
Waiting Sucks. Moving on.
Don’t let the title make you think I’ve given up on the novella. Buuutttt, waiting to hear back from a publisher is making me way more anxious than I expected. The logical part of me says, “Hey, you only sent it in a couple of weeks ago. Chill.” The anxious mess side is checking my email daily as if that will make things move faster.
So, I plan on starting work on the next book. It’s not at all related of Of His Flesh, which was a stand alone story. Will it be dealing with the same sort of themes? Kinda. I love working with characters who have broken psyches.
However, it needs tons of research. As much as I want to just throw myself into writing this thing, I need to learn a lot about… open heart surgery.
I heard once that a writer is a jack of all trades. We write characters with pools of knowledge that are beyond our own and thus, for a little while, need to become as much of an expert as we can on subjects where our own expertise is so limited. All for the readers.
I can’t count the number of times while reading or watching something that some little detail I know quite a lot about is just off. The immersion is ruined. I know that no piece of writing is ever going to be perfect. I’m not going to get every single detail in a story 100% correct.
But I can get as close as possible.
Now We Wait
I did another edit of my novella. I’d been putting it off for ages it seems and simply didn’t want to touch it for fear that it was just too awful and not worth the effort. Got up the energy to give it a once over, spent five hours straight getting everything in order. Worried over if it was good or not again. Then said “fuck it” and sent it to a publisher. If I don’t send it to someone now I never will. I’ll keep editing for the rest of my life and get nowhere.
So, it’s out there, waiting to be looked and at hopefully loved.
Now we wait to hear from the publisher one way or another.
