Category: Writing

All the World’s a Page: Adapting Acting Techniques to Strengthen Your Fiction

Exciting new adventure time!

This winter I’ll be teaching a class for Odyssey Online, All the World’s a Page: Adapting Acting Techniques to Strengthen Your Fiction. Because I am a theater geek and will gladly talk everyone’s ear off about how useful acting techniques can be when applied to fiction writing.

Seriously, whether it’s character development, description, point of view, portraying emotion, generating plot momentum, or writing dialogue and subtext, there’s a technique you can steal from the acting world to strengthen it!

Details at the link, or you can check out all of the upcoming Odyssey Online classes here.

I have an agent!


I am thrilled to announce that I’m now represented by Emily Keyes at the Keyes Agency LLC!

If you’ve ever been in the agent querying trenches, then you know it can often be a long, slow, demoralizing slog. This is the third novel I’ve completed and queried. A lot of folks find it helpful to hear how the process has gone for others, so here’s how it went down for me.

Novel #1: Back in the early 2000s, young naive me wrote a crappy epic fantasy novel, basically a rewrite of a crappy epic fantasy novella I had written as a teenager. Young naive me of course thought it was brilliant. That novel was the first one I ever queried, back when the querying landscape was waaaaay different. Many of the queries I sent were by email, but some had to (gasp) be printed out and sent via snail mail.

Anyway, I sent 50 queries and got 4 partial requests, all of which resulted in rejection. Rightly so, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I made some attempts to fix the novel after attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop and realizing why it wasn’t working, but it was fundamentally flawed and so mostly I ended up breaking it further. Eventually I trunked it. Wise move.

Novel #2: I spent several years primarily focused on short stories. But there was this one story that kept getting “this reads more like the start of a novel” responses. After sitting on the back burner for a while, it eventually became Novel #2, a steampunk/fantasy novel called The Ashdowners, which I started querying in 2020. Yeah, during Covid lockdown. Good times. I sent 123 queries and got 4 full requests—three of the agents ultimately passed, one never responded. So that felt awesome. 😕 For added brain exploding fun, I got personal feedback from two agents, and it was completely contradictory: “I enjoyed the protagonist and the romance but the setting is working against you” followed by “The setting is cool and exciting but the romance immediately lost me.”

Novel #3: I started Novel #3, Keepers of the Barren Earth, in February 2021, and I started querying it in May 2024. In total, 83 queries and 3 full requests. Of the fulls, one agent passed but said it was a very close call for them, and one said they enjoyed the worldbuilding but didn’t think the story was big enough. Luckily, one good offer is all you need, and I got that with Emily. After the phone call in which she offered rep, I felt that even if no one else offered, I’d be perfectly happy to sign with her. And now I have! I’m excited that she’s excited, and I’m looking forward to digging into revisions on the novel before it finally goes on submission to publishers.

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.