Category: professional life

anthology, books, collaboration, daily life, politics, prague, professional life, reading, Uncategorized, updates, wandering grove press, writing

Letters from Sunday: Muffins, Gloom, and a New Anthology

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Public-domain image of a hand holding a pen, apparently writing, at a sunlit desk with papers and a white coffee mug on it. The sleeve of a cozy gray sweater is visible.

(Thought I’d try writing here today. Maybe it would help to have a day to do it?)

It’s damp and chilly here in Prague. We breakfasted on English muffins with lemon curd, both bought from Marks & Spencer (I’m not sure, in retrospect, that lemon curd goes well with English muffins). We were at Václavské náměstí, where Marks & Spencer is, on an attempt to see Lucy and Selam at the National Museum. Tickets were unfortunately sold out, so we’ll have to go another day. We did pick up two shiny black pumpkin mugs, two Magic the Gathering packs, and a copy of Mona Awad’s Rouge, which I read about a year ago and have been thinking about.

Things are slipping back into their school-year usual. I was sick a couple of weeks ago and had to spend a few days at home, which seems like it will be the norm; I take public transit everywhere, and clients always bring something back with them from summer vacation. I’m trying to get a bit more writing done in the gaps between lessons, but the siren song of YouTube ghost stories is always very strong. (I’ve been enjoying Into the Fog with Peter Laws lately. I think I most enjoy the storytime videos, though, where people talk about being haunted by mimics or seeing phantom hands outside their windows.) I have no interest in inviting spooky things into my house, but I love hearing about the spooky things in other people’s houses.

News from home is, obviously, a horror show. It’s hard not to give up on the whole country in disgust. I never thought this could happen this easily in the USA. I thought there were at least a few more people in leadership positions who would be guided by their consciences to do the right thing, but it feels like the entire government is full of cowards. It would feel different if the whole country had been occupied by a foreign power: then, at least, you’d know that most people wanted them gone. It’s the ignorance and malice that get to me: so many people, it seems, have bellies full of hate. I’ve been trying not to post about it too much on social media, because I can see that hate growing in myself, too: I feel so much disgust and anger that it’s coming out my ears. I guess the only safe response to evil is compassionate resolution, because fear, disgust, and despair will twist you into someone you don’t want to be. Anyway, just take it as read, if I’m not posting about politics, that these feelings are all there, bubbling.

On a lighter subject, our antho collective, Wandering Grove Press, is starting work on our second anthology! My piece is a supervillain caper my sister described as a cross between Dr. Horrible and The Tick. I’ve been working on it all summer and am excited to see what others think (and I hope they’ll forgive me for going 40% over the word-count limit). (If you missed our first anthology, The Ceaseless Way, you can find it here. 😉 ) Now that that story’s done, I’m back to working on THE VOID AND THE RAVEN, my fantasy epic. This will be the penultimate chapter of book 2, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m also working on expanding and editing a short story I wrote back in 2020, which is very… COVID… but in a fantasy way. Hopefully enough time has passed that people can stomach quarantine stories now.

It’s October now, and my mood has been a little quiet. I’ve been tooling with a personal reinterpretation of the seasons based loosely on the Wheel of the Year. It’s Hallows now. The weather is gray and sad, and the trees are folding up to sleep for the winter. There’s not a lot of “spooky, scary Halloween fun” here in the Czech Republic; things are just gloomy and cold. This is the time to stay close to your loved ones, cuddle up, and batten yourself against the coming winter.

Take care, and stay warm,
KT

anthology, books, collaboration, fantasy, fiction, horror, long stories, professional life, reading, science fiction, short stories, wandering grove press, writing

Interview with Ceaseless Way contributor Ada Milenkovic Brown

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Hello, all! Here’s another long-belated publicity post for our new collaborative anthology (The Ceaseless Way: An Anthology of Wanderers’ Tales). This week, contributor Ada Milenkovic Brown talks about her two stories in the anthology and what led her to write them.

Again, if you’re interested in picking up a copy of this book, this is a great week to do so. The paperback version will remain on sale for $9.99 USD until January (at which point it will return to the normal price of $12.99). If you prefer ebook, it’s available on a number of platforms for $5.99 and will remain at that price. If you want to learn more about our collaboration group, Wandering Grove Press, you can join our Facebook group here or follow us on Bluesky here.

If you missed my previous interview with Fraser Sherman, you can check it out here. One more interview with contributor Allegra Gulino should be up in a couple of days.

(Ada also interviewed me, Fraser, and Allegra for this promotional mini-tour, so please check out those interviews as well!)

Headshot of Ada Milenkovic Brown
  1. Do you think your two stories are a good representation of your usual style and subject matter? Is there anything about them that’s unusual for you? 

    I think In Valleys is absolutely spot on the sort of thing I usually write, including the love story elements.  

    I was actually intending to write something more fantasy based for my Bigfoot story, Nnn’s Children, but it just came out more realistically than I expected. Other than that, it is my style to write as plausibly as possible within the framework of the story world. So maybe it is in my usual style too.

  2. What’s one style or plot element you’d like to “steal” from another contributor?

    If I could bottle Rich Matrunick’s tone/mood/voice in Fading, I would bathe in it, metaphorically speaking. Other than that, I envy everyone else’s apparent ease with getting their stories to arc in a satisfying way. It is so so hard for me to find that in the initial stages of writing my fiction.

  3. Are there any anthologies or collections you’ve really enjoyed reading lately?

    I loved and learned a lot about what makes stories work from Charlie Jane Anders’ collection Ever Greater Mistakes.


  4. What writers have had the greatest influence on you throughout your writing journey?

    When it comes to writers I’ve read, it’s Zenna Henderson, Ray Bradbury, N. K. Jemisin, and Jeffrey Ford. I would say the writers who’ve had the greatest influence on me as teachers were Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, Walter Jon Williams, and Nancy Kress.


  5. What is your editing process like? How long does it take you to bring a story from start to finish?

    Sometimes it takes me weeks, sometimes it takes me years. For the regular editing, I just pick away at it, like a painter adding a dab of paint here and there, until I can make it different, but I can’t make it better.  My real pitfall is plot holes and endings.  These are what take me a long time sometimes to find the inspiration to realize where the story needs to go. But I’ve gotten better at that over the years.


  6. Do you have any hobbies that aren’t related to reading or writing?

    Singing. I’m a lyric soprano and have sung solos in performances with choirs and at weddings and funerals. I tend to get asked to sing more funerals than weddings. I don’t know what that says.

    I’m also an oboist.

    Acting, although a case could be made that figuring out how to portray a character onstage is very akin to writing a character.

    Hiking and cycling, but I sometimes get story ideas while I’m moving around out in nature, so maybe that’s related to writing too.

    I do origami to relax.


  7. Are there any songs or pieces of artwork that capture the “vibe” of your stories (or of other stories in the anthology)?

    I vibe with surrealist paintings for the most part, such as: Paul Delvaux’s The Village of the Mermaids and just about any painting by Leonora Carrington. In fact, Leonora Carrington’s work could fit with our entire anthology.


  8. Are there any real-world places that inspired your two stories?

    Because five of my published stories take place in particular spots in North Carolina, I decided to continue writing a collection made up entirely of stories based in particular places in that state (where I live).  Littleton, NC and Medoc Mountain State Park nearby have had Bigfoot sightings, and that is why I wrote a Bigfoot story set in that locale.

    Although the medieval village in my In Valleys story is fictional, the original 1860 story it’s based on mentions a nearby village that does exist. It was my discovery that the nearby village was in East Germany near the (Communist period) wall that triggered the ideas for In Valleys Where Eternities Lie.


  9. What would be the ideal place and time to enjoy each of your stories? What snacks and drinks would pair well with your stories?

    There’s never a bad time to read. But otherwise, good lighting and a comfy chair, sofa, bed.  Although I think readers might feel an extra resonance if they read Nnn’s Children outside, say under a shady tree.

    Apples figure into both of my stories, so maybe readers should eat an apple when they read them. Otherwise, I usually like having a glass of wine when I read.
Photograph of apples on a sunlit, leafy tree branch.

Thank you, Ada, for your interview (and for your amazing leadership in getting the contracts hammered out!). Tune in soon for one more interview and a bit more information about the anthology from my perspective.

Cover image by GetCovers; original cover concept by Arden Brooks. Headshot by/of Ada Milenkovic Brown. Apple tree image by kiyu_01.

anthology, books, collaboration, fantasy, fiction, horror, long stories, professional life, reading, science fiction, short stories, slipstream, Uncategorized, wandering grove press, writing

An interview with Fraser Sherman of ‘The Ceaseless Way’

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Hello, all! As I mentioned in my last post, our anthology group, Wandering Grove Press, has put out our first anthology: The Ceaseless Way: An Anthology of Wanderers’ Tales. The paperback version is on sale for $9.99 USD until the new year, so this is a great time to pick up a hard copy if you’re interested in one. If you prefer ebook, it’s available on a number of platforms for $5.99 and will remain at that price.

This is a collaborative effort, and so I’d like to introduce you to some of my collaborators. In that spirit, here’s an interview I conducted with Fraser Sherman, a North Carolina-based writer of nonfiction and speculative fiction, whom I’ve known since I was part of the Durham Writers’ Group more than ten years ago. For more details about Fraser’s two stories in our anthology, you can read his blog posts here and here (and check out his blog in general–he updates daily and has a lot of interesting things to say!)

(Fraser also interviewed me and two other collaborators, Ada Milenkovic Brown and Allegra Gulino, so please check out those interviews as well!)

Photograph of Fraser Sherman, smiling
  1. Do you think your two stories are a good representation of your usual style and subject matter? Is there anything about them that’s unusual for you?

    Impossible Things Before Breakfast is very much my cup of tea. Historical fantasy, 1970s (the decade of my teen years. I have a lot of affection for it). Fiddler’s Black is darker and messier than usual for me.

  2. Are there any anthologies or collections you’ve really enjoyed reading lately?

    Janet and Roger Carden of Crimson Streets, an online pulp magazine, gave me copies of several anthologies of stories they’ve published (I was in the first one). They’ve been fun to read.

  3. What writers have had the greatest influence on you throughout your writing journey?

    HP Lovecraft has influenced a number of my stories, including Fiddler’s Black, though none of them turned out classically “Lovecraftian.” Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler have influenced the style of some of my writing. And the Kaye Gibbons quote I mention below is a big influence on my editing.

  4. What is your editing process like? How long does it take you to bring a story from start to finish?

    No telling. It takes me several drafts to figure out where the story’s going, then a couple more (usually with beta-reader feedback) to work out the plot so it flows smoothly. Then I edit for errors, spelling and word choice. The novelist Kaye Gibbons says you should write until the next word is inevitable — I don’t think I usually succeed at that, but it’s what I aim for.

  5. Do you have any hobbies that aren’t related to reading or writing?

    Bicycling. Baking bread. Watching movies. Occasionally I do sudoku.

  6. Are there any songs or pieces of artwork that capture the “vibe” of your stories (or of other stories in the anthology)?

    Fiddler’s Black was inspired by Abba’s “Dum Dum Diddle” but it ended up poles apart.

  7. Are there any real-world places that inspired your two stories?

    I used Durham NC’s Bean Trader coffee shop for a scene in Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

  8. What would be the ideal place and time to enjoy each of your stories? What snacks and drinks would pair well with your stories?

    Your call, readers! If you read them eating something I hate, I won’t complain.

Thank you, Fraser, for your interview (and for being our rock and general tech wizard throughout the creation of this anthology). Tune in soon for more interviews and a bit more information about the anthology from my perspective!

Cover image by GetCovers; original cover concept by Arden Brooks.

anthology, books, collaboration, fairy tales, fantasy, fiction, flash, horror, long stories, professional life, reading, science fiction, short stories, slipstream, updates, wandering grove press, writing

Anthology Release: The Ceaseless Way

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Cover image for The Ceaseless Way: An Anthology of Wanderers' Tales. Cover shows an androgynous figure with a backpack starting to walk onto a winding road that leads through a rocky desert.

Hello, all! I’m happy to report that after three years, our collaborative anthology, The Ceaseless Way, is now on sale in ebook and paperback formats. A lot of work has gone into this project, and though there have been bumps in the road, we’re really proud of the project we came out with.

This is a speculative fiction anthology (mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a little bit of horror), and each of the participating writers contributed two stories. Besides myself, the writers involved are Fraser Sherman, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Secily Luker, Allegra Gulino, Arden Brooks, and Rich Matrunick. “Wandering Grove Press” is the name we’ve given to what’s essentially an online writing co-op. The book is self-published, but a lot of time and work went into it.

The paperback version will be on sale for $9.99 until the new year, at which point it will go up to $12.99, so if you’re interested in purchasing a hard copy this is the best time to do it. The ebook version will remain at $5.99. If you’d like to follow our group for updates, you can find us on Facebook here or on Bluesky here.

I’m a little behind on my publicity posts, but check this space for the next couple of weeks for interviews with some fellow authors and a couple of insights into my own stories in the antho, “We Go Hiking” and “Jenny and the Fairy Queen.”

Cover image by GetCovers; original cover concept by Arden Brooks.

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Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy

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I’ve been listening much more to Spotify lately. What’s most fun for me is making playlists, which reminds me of burning mix CDs when I was in college. Here’s one I made of songs that felt longing or wistful, including a lot of old favorites and others that just came up on shuffle.

I’ve been submitting a lot of stories lately, which slowed down progress on my novel but was a lot of fun. For some reason there’s a big market currently for short stories about evil mermaids, so I’ve written three in the last few months. One of them, “In the Nevergo,” was recently published in Dangerous Waters: Deadly Women of the Sea, an entire anthology of evil mermaid tales I was delighted to take part in. The others were a bit different in subject matter, and I hope to tell you more about them later.

I’ve also been dipping my toe back into poetry in the last year or so, with mixed results. I used to write poems quite a lot in high school, but they were very strange and I never shared them with anyone. Lately I wrote sets of poems for two different calls for submissions. None of them were accepted, but I’ll keep practicing.

Here are some very strange ones I’d forgotten I wrote last year. The project was called “The Unquiet Nursery,” with the idea being that each poem would be structurally based on a famous nursery rhyme but have much darker subject matter. About half of them were terrible, but I kind of liked these. I wonder if you can guess which nursery rhymes they’re based on.

1 I am not going to sleep.
The lines have gone too deep.
There’s whispering sin
Upon my skin
And something is starting to weep.

2 My little love
Is up above,
Pretending she is an angel.
But in her wings,
Unholy things
Are burning like a candle.

3 My little dumpling
Really is something,
Sunning herself to sleep.
She cannot be killed
She cannot be held
She only can rattle and weep.

4 Go to school,
Little fool.
See what they do
Before they come for you.
They’ll take your home and they’ll take your lands,
They’ll crush your heart and they’ll cut off your hands.
The strongest house is the one that stands,
So go to school.

5 Something in the atmosphere
Has made me very cold.
The sun is full of cinders
And the stars have all been sold.
I cannot look away from it.
I cannot break the spell
That echoes in the twilight
Like the tolling of a bell.

6 Into the dark!
Into the night!
Sing with the nightingales!
Drink delight!

Out of the dark.
Back from the night.
Gone are the nightingales.
All is quiet.

7 Mary Artless,
Vain and heartless,
How did you sink so low?
The sons you should have cared about
Are running like wolves in the snow.

8 First comes the matter of the monster,
Next comes the matter of the nun,
Then comes the matter of the long walk
Into the valley of the sun,
And last is the matter of the silver star
And how the world was won.

9 Pretty little Mabel,
Sitting at the table,
Softly tells me,
“Life is like a fable.
But I don’t know the lesson
I was meant to learn
When I left my homeland,
Never to return.”

I guess they’re basically doggerel. But so are the originals they’re based on. Anyway, it was fun writing them.

One more thing to tell you about: I have an upcoming publication in a friend’s anthology! My friend Sonya Lano has been working tirelessly on Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy, an anthology of gothic romance, and the book will be out on April 29. My story, “The Wind Chimes,” is probably more “romantic gothic” than “gothic romance,” but I had a lot of fun writing it. The book is available for preorder here, and I’d love it if you checked it out.

Lots of love to all of you. I hope you’re doing well.

Best,
Kate

Public-domain image of a hand holding a pen, apparently writing, at a sunlit desk with papers and a white coffee mug on it. The sleeve of a cozy gray sweater is visible.
fantasy, fiction, professional life, Uncategorized, updates, writing

Writing updates

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Stayed up late last night finishing edits on two stories, which I wanted to submit to two different anthologies both due the same day. Thanks to the feline ballet that started as soon as I got in bed, I got about four hours of sleep, but there was a very nice sense of accomplishment in getting those stories done and submitted. Of course, I received a very flippant rejection note only a few hours after sending one in, but at least it gave me the opportunity to slide the story under the wire for another submission call due today.

Back to work now on THE VOID AND THE RAVEN, my ongoing fantasy epic that was meant to be a single novel and is now looking at at least six parts. Two volumes are done. I could submit them for publication, but I’d rather get to the end and edit the whole series together for the sake of cohesion. I’ve been working on this story in different incarnations since about 2010, and I’m about three years into this particular try. I’m guessing at least another three to five years until the whole series is completed. (Of course, if someone wants to give me several hundred thousand dollars, I can stop doing other paid work and start writing full-time, which should speed up the process immensely.)

Public-domain image of a hand holding a pen, apparently writing, at a sunlit desk with papers and a white coffee mug on it. The sleeve of a cozy gray sweater is visible.
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Updates January 2023

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I’m working on a short story for an anthology my friend Sonya is putting together. It involves murder, ghosts and other spirits, romance, wind chimes, and a dark forest. I hope you’ll enjoy it when it comes out.

Anthologies are difficult in general. Some other friends and I were trying to put one together, but more than a year on it’s still in limbo because it was so difficult to allocate responsibility. I’m really proud of two stories of mine that were published in recent anthologies, but I’m not sure how they were received because neither book has gotten very many reviews. It can be a little discouraging. But then I realize that I myself haven’t read that many anthologies recently–I haven’t even finished reading the ones I was published in. So maybe everyone’s just busy.

Anyway, anthologies are an incredible way to discover new authors, and I haven’t been doing enough reading lately. Are there any collections you’d recommend?

On a completely different subject, I realized last night that the publication of “In the Nevergo” qualified me for an “Affiliate Writer” membership in the Horror Writers’ Association. I applied and was accepted today. I have a few more dark fantasy pieces in the works, so I’m hopeful that I might be able to upgrade to an “Active Writer” (i.e. full) membership before too long. I’ll see if there’s a badge or something I can put on my website. There aren’t a lot of concrete benefits to joining writers’ associations at this point in my career, but it’s a nice boost in a field where it’s hard to feel like a working professional.

(***I just checked and saw that under the updated membership requirements I also qualify for an Associate Membership in SFWA. I’m not quite ready to pay two sets of dues, though, so I’ll keep working towards a full membership there for now.)