The 2023 Writerly Recap

It’s that time of year, y’all: the naval-gazing yearly round up!

Published in 2023

“Dead Maiden Chic” in Weird Horror Magazine (Undertow Publications), issue 6, Spring 2023

“Reasons This Is Not a Horror Story” in The Maul, issue 2, April 2023

“The Girl Who Welcomed Death to Svalgearyen” reprinted in Cast of Wonders, episode 535, May 16, 2023 (audio)

“The Perfect Instrument” reprinted in The Cosmic Muse: Best of NewMyths Anthology Volume IV, November 2023

Sold in 2023

Two of the stories above (“Reasons This Is Not a Horror Story” and “The Girl Who Welcomed Death to Svalgearyen”), plus two more forthcoming in 2024: “The Pitch Pipe Forest” to DreamForge, and an audio reprint of “Self Storage” (originally published in In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror) to Tales to Terrify.

How I Did on the 2023 To-Do List

Goal: Revise the new novel, then throw it out to folks for feedback

Done! Finished the revisions on Barren Water in February, then got feedback from some awesomely insightful folks. It took a while for me to wrap my brain around how to tackle the next round of revisions, but finally dove into those in the Fall, and now I’m close to halfway through the next pass.

Goal: Revise “Reasons Not a Horror Story” (after getting some more critiques in a few weeks) and start submitting it

Done and sold!

Goal: Write some new short stories

Only one new one this year, a SFish horror piece called “Terms of Service Have Been Updated.”

Goal: Possibly revisit my novel The Ashdowners. I received an invite to revise and resubmit from a small-press publisher, but I need to let it simmer a bit before deciding if it’s something I want to tackle.

This one remained on the back burner.

Goal: Who knows!? Let’s see what happens.

Much to my surprise, I started a new novel while waiting for feedback on Barren Water, this time horror. I only got about 30,000 words into it before diving back into Barren Water revisions, but it’s fun so I will totallybe getting back to it.

The 2024 To-Do List

  • Finish revising Barren Water and start querying agents
  • Get back to the first draft of that horror novel
  • As always, maybe write some short stories

Shiny writer things!

Thing the first: A panel! On March 25, I’ll be participating in Storycrafting Sessions: Drafting, a free one-day virtual conference hosted by Weeknight Writers. I’ll be on the 5:30 p.m. EST panel, “Nailing the Ending: How To Write a Satisfying Story Conclusion.” There are some other great panels lined up as well, and did I mention registration is free?

Thing the second: A publication! Issue 6 of Weird Horror Magazine is out this month, and it includes my flash story “Dead Maiden Chic,” as well as some badass cover art, which Super Great insisted on showing off with the help of some friends:

Thing the third: A sale! My short story “The Girl Who Welcomed Death to Svalgearyen,” which was originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, will be appearing again in audio format thanks to the lovely folks at Cast of Wonders. Release date TBD. This story is close to my heart and, of all the stories I’ve written over the years, still one of my absolute favorites, so I’m happy to see it get more love.

Thing the fourth: All the novels! A few weeks ago I finished revisions on a fantasy novel that has now been tossed out to first readers so I can figure out what else needs tweaking. Tentatively titled Barren Water, it’s a bit of A Handmaid’s Tale blended with magic and an Old West-ish fantasy world. And now I’m outlining a horror/supernatural romance novel where an opera singer recovering from an onstage nervous breakdown takes a job housesitting an isolated beach home during the off season only to become entangled with a ghost and a cursed piano. This will be my first stab at a novel-length work set in the contemporary world rather than a secondary fantasy world, so all new challenges!

The 2022 Writerly Recap

Oh hey, it’s that thing I skipped doing last year: the naval-gazing yearly round up! Here’s the quick and dirty version since there’s way too much other stuff I need to get done:

Published in 2022

Sold in 2022

The three stories above, plus:


Written in 2022

  • First draft of a new fantasy novel, tentatively titled Barren Water
  • One new short story, “Reasons This Is Not a Horror Story”
  • Revised and started submitting a short story written the previous year, “The Pitch Pipe Forest”

Other Writerly Things I Did in 2022

  • Did online readings in January and December for the awesome folks at The Story Hour
  • Participated in a great online panel (Crossroad Blues: Exploring the Boundary Between Life and Death) as part of Weeknight Writers’ Storycrafting Sessions: Horror, a one-day virtual conference

On the To-Do List for 2023

  • Revise the new novel, then throw it out to folks for feedback
  • Revise “Reasons Not a Horror Story” (after getting some more critiques in a few weeks) and start submitting it
  • Write some new short stories
  • Possibly revisit my novel The Ashdowners. I received an invite to revise and resubmit from a small-press publisher, but I need to let it simmer a bit before deciding if it’s something I want to tackle.
  • Who knows!? Let’s see what happens.

Story Reading & Story Release!

Two quick bits of fun news!

First, this Wednesday, December 7, I’ll be returning to The Story Hour, a weekly livestream of speculative fiction short story readings where I’ll be reading alongside author Rebecca Gomez Farrell. You can watch live via Zoom or Facebook (7pm Pacific Time, 10 pm for my fellow East Coasters), so hope to see you there! The reading will also be available to watch on Facebook afterwards.

Second, I’m thrilled to say that my horror story “Unraveling” is now out in Vastarien, vol. 5, issue 2! You can buy a copy of in print or electronic format from Grimscribe Press.

The blog lives!

It’s been a hot minute (or year) since I’ve updated this thing.

(blows off the dust)

(coughs)

This is getting to be an unfortunate habit.

So what’s new?

On the fantasy end of the writer ‘verse, I’m very pleased to say that my story “A Conspiracy of Cartographers” is now up at GigaNotoSaurus! Opera composers! Magical maps! A title stolen from some Tom Stoppard dialogue!

A Conspiracy of Cartographers

And on the horror end of things, on October 8 I’ll be participating in Storycrafting Sessions: Horror, a free one-day virtual conference hosted by Weeknight Writers. I’ll be on the 2:30 p.m. EST panel, “Crossroad Blues: Exploring the Boundary Between Life and Death.”

Hopefully I will have more news and ramblings to come in the near future instead of disappearing again.

In the meantime, I should probably be writing.

Short update on equally short stories!

First, my story “Ceiling Snakes and Slithering Saints” is now up at Mysterion! Inspired in large part by these two images—a rattlesnake named Buzz and some trusses pulling away from a church ceiling:

Second, the Kickstarter for In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror is now live. Please consider supporting this awesome project and the awesome writers and artists involved in it! Oh, yeah, I might have a story in there too.

Miscellaneous Updatery

Oh, right, I have a blog. Hi, blog.

So what’s been happening since I’ve been gone?

For starters, two shiny short story sales!

My fantasy story “Ceiling Snakes and Slithering Saints” will be appearing in Mysterion later this month. Thrilled to be making my second appearance there.

And just announced, my story “Self Storage” is going to be included in the awesome-looking anthology In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror, forthcoming from Tenebrous Press.

And that back burner novel idea I babbled about in my last post way back in February? It has been officially moved to the front burner since then. As in I am about 20,000 words into the novel now. After doing some research and preliminary worldbuilding, I decided to try out the Snowflake Method, which I’d read/heard a lot about but had never given it a whirl. Now I am why-wasn’t-I-doing-this-before levels of in love with it. It was fun! And I have an outline! There’s a plot! And I didn’t break my brain developing it!

Speaking of, I should probably be writing, huh?

Writing Isn’t Always Writing

Like many writers, I have a daily word count tracker. This month so far, I’m at -1,174 words.

Yes, negative wordage. But that’s not a bad thing. 

It can be too easy to get hung up on the idea that you must be constantly cranking out new words, and that anything short of meeting a daily word count goal means you have failed as a writer in some way. But there’s more to writing than piling on new verbiage.

Sometimes stories get longer in revision, but sometimes they get shorter. Sometimes you realize you have sentences, paragraphs, or even whole scenes that aren’t carrying their weight. That was the case with a horror story I was revising earlier this month. I wrote it back in the summer/early fall, and after having set it aside for a while, I saw several spots that either weren’t moving the plot or the characters forward, or that were muddying the thematic waters. Oh, and there’s also the part where the original ending was kind of cliché and needed to be changed. So technically, new words were written, but at the end of the day, I cut more words than I wrote, bringing the story down from 6,800 words to 5,900.

Another story I worked on this month was in that nebulous 1,500-word zone, where it’s a bit too long to be flash fiction, but it’s also too short to feel like a fully fleshed out short story. I wrote the story several years ago and could never seem to get it out of that zone. But something prompted me to revisit it, and whatta ya know, this time I was able to knock it down to 1,000 words and turn it into a proper bit of flash fiction.

The other thing I’ve been working on is developing a novel idea that’s been simmering on the back burner. With short fiction, I often dive in with only a vague idea and write an exploratory draft to figure out what the hell the story wants to be. But with novel-length works, I do better when I have more of a clue what kind of waters I’m jumping into. So first there was some research I needed to do (and I’m sure there will be more), and today I started doing some worldbuilding—working out the magic system and the setting and all that fun stuff—and jotting down some preliminary ideas on how the story might unfold. And then I shall confront my nemesis: plotting.

So that’s been my February so far: writing that kind of isn’t writing even though it really is.