The Ready Writer

Sometimes you just have to reread something to remember why you love it. I was shelving books in the little library I work at, and I picked up a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway.  I haven't read Hemingway in a long long time and as I was holding the bookand remembering a short story that I had read in college when I was working towards my undergrad. I flipped through the book looking for the story: "Hills Like White Elephants" and found it.  I re-read it, and I realized why, after it had been 5ish years since I first read it, why I remembered it. It is just so damn good. I will do my best to not spoil it for you here, you have to read it for yourself. The premise is really simple: two people (a man and a woman) are talking at a Spanish train station while waiting for their train.  That's it.  But it is WHAT they are talking about that makes this story so powerful.  And not just what, but also how.  Again, I don't want to spoi...

The first date in the "52 Dates for Writers" book has us "Cook Something Luxurious" Although food doesn't play a major role in my novel, the setting sort of forces me to think about it.  My novel takes place in the "ambiguous south" (or at least the South is a major influence) and food plays a huge role in Southern living. My novel isn't some extravagant adventure story that is going to take my characters into far off lands, it takes place in one little neighborhood in the humble homes of my characters. My characters are middle class. Both parents work, kids go to public school, very similar to my own growing up.  Meals aren't multi-course, fine china events, but they are cooked with love and enjoyed around the table. And while my novel doesn't take my characters on grand external adventures, they sure go on some extreme internal ones. My MC is going to go on an emotional adventure, and it is imperative that my other characters notice...

I really think that in order to write productively you need to have your own space. Maybe your space is the couch or at a specific table at your favorite coffee shop, or locked in the bathroom while your kids are screaming on the other side of the door. That’s okay. You don’t need to have an office to write. This is my space: Sure the furniture is mismatched, and the view isn’t great, and it needs some better storage (and a good vacuuming and dusting) but it’s mine. I can go in there and close the door and write. I can make it smell however I want, I can organize the furniture however I want and I can put whatever I want on the walls. It. Is. Mine. And I hope to use it a lot more in 2018. I spent a ton of time in there during my grad school years doing work and writing papers, but I haven’t done a ton of creative work in there. My resolution is to change that. Words will be written in there. My words. Memento mori &;

It is 2018! There will be some exciting things happening here on the blog. New Things: Book reviews! If you're not following me on Goodreads yet, you should be.  I will be posting reviews of the books I read both on Goodreads and here on the blog.  If you wanna be a writer,  you gotta be a reader. More Flash Fiction! I'm on Scribophile now so if you want small tastes of my spooky short writing - you can find it there or here on the blog. Updates: Twice weekly posts! These will be updates, movie reviews, video game reviews, horror history, and whatever other nonsense I want to post. They will be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am going through this book  so I will record my progress here on the blog too during those Tuesday or Thursday posts. Last thing: 2018 is the year of the (online serial) novel! The first chapters will post THIS YEAR. More teasers to my online serial novel later. Share in the comments what your reading & writing go...

I guess I should change the name of this one to "Spooky Story Sunday" since it is coming out late. I got some news earlier this week... I HAVE A FULL TIME LIBRARY JOB NOW So I was a little distracted and giddy that I totally forgot to post this, but here it is: Babysitter Wanted  Eddie wasn't much of a career man.  He preferred the spontaneity of the occasional odd job.  Sometimes he'd be cleaning houses, or watching someone's dog - the next week he might be watering a lawn or cleaning up a construction site, and some weeks he might not be working at all.  It didn't matter to his landlord so long as his rent was paid on time. At this point, Eddie hadn't had a job in a week and half. Thankfully, there had been an ad in the paper for a babysitter. He drove up the gravel driveway, past a moving truck and parked in front of the home. He was ten minutes early, so he sat for a bit, admiring how the shadows of the trees reflected on the large ...

Hello Readers! It is October, which as we know is Halloween Month!  This is any horror writers favorite time of the year for sure. I'm no exception.  But! October means a couple of other things: 1. Freaky Flash Fiction Fridays!  That's right! For the second year in a row I will be posting freaky (more like spooky, but that doesn't work with the alliteration) flash fiction stories on Fridays. This allows me to keep writing short things while I work on a novel, but it also allows you to get a taste of how I write (a little, admittedly the stories I post are unedited first drafts, but still). 2. October also means we are 31 days away from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  This year, I am participating in Preptober (#preptober).  Now, if you participate in NaNoWriMo and are a pantser, you can disregard this rest of this post.  However if you are a plotter, or a mix of the two (which is what I am...though I want to be more of a plotter) then kee...

Happy Eclipse day Y'all! In Southern Oregon where I am we got about 93% totality.  Got to watch it with my SO and then have a nice breakfast date before we both had to head to work. I know I've been absent for the last month, but I've been working really hard on my library career. The children's librarian position is open at the library I work at, and as someone with my MLIS in Youth Services, you can bet that I'm gonna apply! Though I am a published writer, it doesn't pay enough for me to quit my day job, so I have to make sure I have the day job of my dreams so I'm not too burnt out to write. But, in the meantime, that means that I'm spending so much time prepping for the interview (and for my first time doing story time tomorrow!) that I haven't been writing like I should.   I'm using prepping for the interview of my life as an excuse. But that can't last forever. I'll elaborate later.    Also, I'm not sure it'...

Hello! I'm hard at work working on my nano/serial project (5419 words in!) but I've also been working on a vision board project for my main YA novel that is my precious brain child. No real post today, but I thought I'd share with you some pictures from my vision board. I think they are vague enough that it won't give too much away, but will give you all some fun things to look at :) Post what you think I'm writing about in the comments! I'd love to hear your guesses ;) Until next time! Memento Mori &;

Hello! I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, just busy with 2.5 jobs and trying to get some writing in.  Actual writing trumps writing ABOUT writing.  But here is where I currently stand. I haven't touched my main project in months which has actually been a good thing for me. I've been reading, working on short stories, and generally just thinking about who I am as a writer and that has done me a lot of good. As I grow older, I find myself really trying to take the time to think introspectively and to think about who I am now, and who I want to grow to be.  This is especially good for me while I try to craft and create my writers "voice."   So, let me introduce myself: I am a horror writer. My influences come heavily from American Southern Gothic literature and American Spiritualism.   And knowing that now, my writing is taking shape. I'm finding my voice. All this time I didn't think I had a writing voice, but I do! I have ...

I've been thinking a lot lately about creative nonfiction - and that's probably due to the fact that for the first time in 7(?) years, I have been inspired by people.  Real life people. I took my first creative nonfiction class in community college because it was a term I had never heard before.  How on Earth could an essay be creative? But it opened up this new world to me, a world of memoir and a level of thought that I needed and ended up thriving on. the first creative essay I wrote landed me a spot reading in a swanky art gallery surrounded by middle aged, well dressed academics drinking wine (which was, and still is my measurement of success). I continued taking creative nonfiction as a writing major at Southern Oregon University. I got A;s, I was told I could easily be a biographer or a memoirist, or essayist writing for any number of journals, and yet, for some reason, I stopped. I attended Grad School where I studied Library Science, not just because I wanted to b...

Hello, Hello! We are past the halfway point for Camp NaNoWriMo and my current word count is 5,166 words of my 10,000 word goal!  I'm busy busy busy but I'm still trying to get the words in when I can. Not much else to update on, so I will do some shameless self-promotion! Be sure to pre-order the horror anthology "Death & Pestilence" by Sands Press, coming out June 15, 2017 which features one of my short stories  here . Or, if you are not in the mood for something scary, you can purchase my children's book here . That's all for now! Memento Mori &;

Hello, Hello! Camp Nanowrimo Update:  4592 words. American Gothic Update: This series will be coming in May.  April is tooooo hectic for me to be able to pen it out, but its coming next month :)  For my post today, I just wanted to share a couple of small things that have inspired me lately.  I wouldn't say that I am in a slump, but words are flowing a little slower than usual.  Maybe its because I'm a writer with 2 day jobs, or because I'm working 6-7 days a week.  I dunno.  It doesn't matter in the scheme of things. As many of you know, I'm working on my first novel projects.  One that I plan on publishing traditionally, and one that I plan on publishing serially.  But as a short story writer, I feel very much out of my comfort zone.  A friend of mine came last summer and helped me immensely with the outlining process (which is not the same for everyone, but I didn't even know where to start). But outlining is ...

I have written about writing resistance before, but seeing as I am currently in a slump, I thought I would bring the topic up again. I'm having some troubles with a short story. I wrote one for a deadline and because I had only finished the draft the day it was due for submission, I didn't get a chance to edit it.  It got rejected (which wasn't a huge shocker to me), and quite frankly I was a little relieved because that meant that I could polish it. I found another place that was accepting submissions, so I thought "Perfect!" and I got to editing. Only I wasn't really editing.  I was just cutting. My story was well over the word limit for this particular journal, so I just started cutting.  I chopped and chopped and chopped and eventually I just had a collection of fragmented sentences that were sort of going in a direction, but not really telling a story.  In the midst of all of this cutting, I missed the deadline for that journal too. So I scr...

First off, what do you all think of the new theme? I am liking it a lot better. Secondly, you get 2 posts this week! This one, and another shorter one on some writing updates this Friday.  I also have some suggestions, but I may put those in a 3rd post sometime next week (I have 2 podcasts and a documentary that are really great, and horror lovers will love). OKAY.  Now lets talk atmosphere. Last time, we went through the intro of Resident Evil 7.  Now I want to talk a little about a section later in the game. At one point in the game, you have to retrieve an arm in order to make a serum.  That's all I'm going to say about that.  I don't want to spoil more than I have to. What makes this part of the game so great, and so scary, is that it not only creates great atmosphere  but it draws on one of any horror lovers favorite tropes: Scary kid stuff! So to retrieve the arm, you have to go through the terrifying house that takes up 2/3rds of the game...

Hello Everyone! This is Part II of my Scary Video Game series.  We are talking about Resident Evil 7, which is one of the newest, and one of the scariest video games to come on the market. Before I go on, I'm gonna post this first: THIS POST WILL CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS If you haven't played the game, or watched someone play it, you may not want to read on. Okay. So the reason that I want to talk about this game is because it surprised me. All I had known about the Resident Evil franchise was that it had zombies in it.  And while I am not offended or even dislike the zombie genre, a lot of it relies on the fantastical, gross, and the jump scare.  However, Resident Evil 7 doesn't rely on that. That isn't to say that it doesn't  have those things, in fact, it has a lot of those things, but when I think of "what kind of horror" this game is, I would have to say that, at least for the first 2/3rds, it is an atmospheric horror. Why? Because for th...

Hello! I'm back from vacation, my SO has a new job, Lent has started, so now life is ready to get back to normal. I'll write a post on writing progress later, but first, I want to write about....video games. I know.  I'm a librarian, writer, and reader, what the heck am I doing writing about video games? Well, I am all about the scary experience.  What draws me (and many others) to the genre is how it makes us feel.  Not like "the feels" but physically how we feel.  We may sweat, or get the chills, or goosebumps. Our heart may race.  We may see things out of the corners of our eyes.  And horror enthusiasts LOVE that.  That's what horror writers strive for.  That's what horror readers crave.  But there is one outlet that seems to be doing it the best.  Video Games. Video games are interesting because they give the player the first person experience.  When books are first person, you are reading from the perspective of s...

Hello everyone! Just a quick writing update before I head for vacation later this week.  There probably won't be an update next Monday, and the usual Weekly Writing Progress posts will resume in March (I'll do another quick update before then). As I've mentioned, I am in rewrites for my main project.  I finished the rewrite of chapter one (and it is somewhere just over 2,000 words). While my rewrite is going better than I anticipated (now that I know the direction that I want to go), I still find that writing long is difficult. I'm so used to writing short stories, that when I try to write something long, I know I tend to ramble. I am sure that is something that will get better the more the write and the more I practice but for right now its a fine line for me between writing not enough, and just sort of...rambling. I've never been one for what I like to call "fluffy" language. I don't like a lot of extra detail, but at the same time, this ha...

So I have to confess that I haven't been the best at writing so far this year.  And yes, I know that the year is still young.  I DID submit a short story in January, and that is exciting, but I haven't done much else. Here are my excuses: -New Years Party -Grandfather Passed Away -Water Heater Leaked -Been working lots of extra hours since my SO lost his job -Applied and interviewed for a job that I really wanted and then didn't get it (which put me in a bad place) -My Birthday Okay. Got that out of the way. But things are on the upswing. My SO starts his new job in March, I'll be back in town (I'm going out of town to visit family in a couple of weeks) and my hours at both jobs will be back to normal (ish). I know I already stated my writing goals in a previous post.  But I'm committing to it (again). Right now. I'm in the process of re-writing the ENTIRE first act of my novel so it works with the plan I have for the next 2 third...

Get ready folks, this is gonna be kind of a long one. Also, for those who only prefer to read about my writing and not so much my political and spiritual life, scroll down.  I'll get there eventually. So I've been thinking a lot about water lately.  My dreams have been full of it, I've been drinking a lot of it, and since it's January in Oregon, there's just a lot of it around. Water has a lot of symbolism. America's new President was sworn in earlier this week and as it was happening, it started to rain.  Many people thought it was a sign from God.  A positive thing.  Of course the reason behind this wasn't something divine.  It has to do with precipitation and clouds, I remember at least that much from public school science class (I also did an interpretive dance about the water cycle in Outdoor School when I was in 6th grade). But even so, the first thought I had was a divine one.  I thought about John 11:35: "Jesus Wept." Counter th...

I can't believe it is time for another writing update! I hate to say, but I've been in sort of a slump.  I haven't worked on my main project in a few weeks, and I've been writing sporadically on a short story in 50-100 word chunks. Part of it is because I'm working a lot, so I just write when I can squeeze in a few moments, and its easier for me to work on my short story in tiny chunks than my main project. But another part of it is because I'm just...tired. Between my 2 jobs I've been working full time, and when you work one job that you hate, and another job that you feel stuck in, it feels like a LOT more than 40 hours, and all of that leads to writing resistance. At the beginning of the year, I did a tarot card spread for myself and it told me that the one thing that will make this year successful for me is moderation.  For me, this doesn't necessarily mean cutting out things that I want to do, but rather it means allowing myself to not do ...