Category: writing

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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

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Interview with Ceaseless Way contributor Allegra Gulino

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Hello, all! Here’s one more interview with another contributor to our collaborative anthology, Allegra Gulino. Remember, The Ceaseless Way: An Anthology of Wanderers’ Tales is still on sale in paperback for a few more days, so if you’re looking for something to read while you’re home for the holidays, this is a great time to check it out! The paperback version is available here, and the ebook version can be found on a number of platforms here. (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 interviews with Fraser Sherman and Ada Milenkovic Brown, you can check them out here and here.

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?

My stories in Ceaseless Way are a good representation of my usual style and subject matter because they’re excerpts from my novel,  Monsters Unbound, which I’ve been working on for about two years. This project has become my world, and its tone is a culmination of a lot of my previous work.

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

If I were to ‘steal’ from any other contributor here – which I don’t condone doing – I’d probably take Ada Milenkovic Brown’s folkloric elements, Fraser Sherman’s brevity and quick action, Katherine Trayler’s dreamy atmosphere, Rich Matrunick’s sense of peril, Secily Sluker’s metaphysical vision and Arden Brook’s whimsey.

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

I recently subscribed to the classic Fantasy and Science-Fiction magazine. While it’s not officially an anthology, its collection of short stories, one or two poems and a few pages of book reviews do feel like one. So far, I’ve enjoyed diving into a diverse variety of writing styles, genres and themes within its pages (yes, it’s a physical magazine). I always find tales to admire, be intrigued by and sometimes, to figure out – I’m not the best at parsing hard Science-Fiction.

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

There are a plethora of author influences for me, starting with YA classics, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe series by C.S. Lewis, and A Wrinkle In Time trilogy by Madeline L’Engle. I cannot remember which came first, those two, or when I picked up J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but I was instantly hooked by the wonderful journeys that all three authors illustrate. In High School, I fell in love with Frank Herbert’s Dune series, and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. In class I was awed by Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, A Separate Peace by John Knowles and Jayne Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In college, my English Literature major steered me toward classical literature. I came to favor the works of Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Lawrence Sterne, William Blake, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence. More recently, I’ve come to love Ursula Le Guin, Emile Zola, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Pynchon, and Marcel Proust. Over the years I’ve learned about writing craft (and continue to do so) and also about the attributes that I admire in books, so my reading standards have risen. Though my writing is grouped under the umbrella of Speculative Fiction, I’ve always read widely.

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

I edit while I write, instead of throwing the words down quickly and then going back to edit. This is because when I write, my vision for the scene is keen – I feel a sense of urgency about getting it as close to how I picture it as possible before I move on to the next section. Therefore, I’m not a fast writer, so focusing on daily word counts would only frustrate me because they’re usually not very high.  I spend lots of time refining and reworking, not just on typing more words, However, once I’m satisfied with a chapter or section of the piece – it’s very polished and I don’t need to revisit it often. Then I can tackle what comes next.

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

I love to sing – usually karaoke singing, though I was a community choir member for twelve years. I also love music and to dance – nothing professional. I frequently perform at No Shame Theatre events. Aside from that, I’m a consummate lap swimmer and gym goer. I also love to hike and to travel. When not out and about, I enjoy staying at our home in the woods, by a creek, where I give attention to our three darling rescue cats, a sixty gallon aquarium, house plants and garden.
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7.   Are there any songs or pieces of artwork that capture the “vibe” of your stories (or of other stories in the anthology)?

I have a playlist that I’ve used for writing Monsters Unbound. It’s instrumental music from classics like Mozart, Franz Liszt, Beethovan, Chopin and Vivaldi, to more recent composers such as Satie, Leonard Bernstein and Leos Janacek, Igor Stravinsky. I also enjoy global pieces from South America, Africa, India, Romani culture and so on. I love composers like Andreas Vollenweider or the Silk Road Ensemble, that have multicultural instruments, rhythms and tunes. That playlist also includes soundtracks, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Merchant and Ivory films, to Frida, to the Lord of the Rings and the Hannibal series. I love music that takes me on a journey, full of pathos, drama, or tenderness, but usually with at least a hint of darkness.

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

Absolutely, for Monsters Unbound. To inform and inspire my book, we went to Romania for two weeks last summer to collect information, imbibe atmospheres and explore historical sites. It was a fantastic trip and I want to go back! However, while my two stories in Ceaseless Way are set in real places – environments that I researched – they are not specific locations within that backdrop.

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?

A fascinating question. For Demon, He Called Me, it would add to the atmosphere if you could read it on a dock, by a river or on a boat, so you can hear the water lapping.  As far as what to eat, I have two suggestions. The more luxurious would be a caramel/chocolate confection with sea salt, and a port wine. Or a nitty gritty option –  sardines or anchovies and water to drink. For The Ortega Wolves Migrate North, some good Mexican fare, like pozole or chalupas, with sangria, consumed in a desert environment or at least near some cacti in a sunroom.

Thank you, Allegra! Happy holidays, everyone. I hope these interviews have inspired you to check out the book! : )

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

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.

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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.

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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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Upcoming Projects: Haunted Houses Collection, Baubles from Bones, and Journeys Anthology

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Hello! Sorry to have left you hanging for months and months. I’m not great at blogging regularly, but I guess you know that by now.

Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

My largest ongoing project (besides my ever-in-progress fantasy series THE VOID AND THE RAVEN) is a collection of ghost stories, tentatively titled HAUNTED HOUSES. This is a long-term project I’m hoping to finish and self-publish in the next five years, or possibly sooner if I’m able. It will include new editions of older stories like “Wake Your Ghost” (which you can read here) and “Spirits in the Dark” (a novelette first published by JMS Books, which unfortunately didn’t get much attention although I was really fond of it). I also hope to include stories like “The Angel,” which you can currently see in Literally Dead: Tales of Holiday Hauntings by Alienhead press, and about fifteen other stories now in various stages of development. I’m currently editing another novelette called “The Woman at the Top of the Stairs,” which is a gothic romance story set in Prague, and hope to start sending it out soon.

On the subject of publications, I have an announcement to make! A very cool new magazine called Baubles from Bones has chosen my story “The Feast of the Changes” for publication in its inaugural issue. “Feast,” inspired by Where the Wild Things Are, is a soft, dreamy fantasy story about a boy traveling the world with his best friend: a large, furry monster. I had a great time writing it, and I’m really happy that it found a home with this venue. You can read the magazine (or purchase a copy) here.

Cover image for Baubles from Bones, issue 1

There’s one more project I wanted to let you know about: some friends and I are putting an anthology together. It’s a collaborative project on the theme of “Journeys,” and it’s been in the works for a few years now. Everyone involved is a writer friend and occasional critique partner (including several from the Durham Writers’ Group), and all of us write speculative fiction of one stripe or another. Since late 2020, we’ve been batting things back and forth on Discord, deciding the anthology’s theme and parameters and editing each other’s contributions. Given that coordinating with other writers is like herding cats under the best of circumstances, and adding the specific complications of having to play chat-tag across disparate time zones, we had some trouble keeping things going, and there’s been a lot of trial and error involved in this process. But we’ve kept going, and we’re almost finished, and we’re pretty excited about it.

We’re hoping to publish the anthology in September. It will probably be released as an ebook first and then in hard copy. I’ll let you know about preorders as soon as they’re available. If you’d like to receive updates, you can join our Facebook group here.

Contributor Allegra Gulino has also created a Facebook page where you can see promotional artwork she’s created for this project.

We’re really looking forward to telling you more about this project as we get closer to publication time. In the meantime, thank you for tuning in, and have a great month!

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Upcoming publication: ‘Fish Gather to Listen’

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Hello! I’m happy to announce that my new flash piece “Sea People” has been accepted for publication in Fish Gather to Listen, an upcoming horror anthology by Horns & Rattles Press.

The book will be out quite soon (maybe as soon as August), but there’s a Kickstarter in progress with stretch goals to make it extra fancy. Check it out, and I hope you’ll check out the anthology when it’s published. : )

Best,
Kate

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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.
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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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Life update, March 2023

amongthegoblins

It snowed off and on all day today, which felt like a bit of a joke with all the flowers blooming. The Easter Market is set up in our square, and all the trees are covered in blossoms. I had a fairly busy day, but the kids weren’t too rambunctious, and Fran and Donut and I had a nice walk in the evening.

I’ve had the very pleasant problem of a thousand different projects to work on. I’ve been hard at work hammering out two different stories, both of which are due for submission on Thursday. These are open calls, so it’s a wait-and-see game once they’re turned in, but I’m pretty happy with both of them. The one I’m still drafting is a nautical fairy tale based on a sea shanty, and the other deals with ominous snowflakes.

Meanwhile, I’m still plotting the next scene of VOID, which has been startlingly complicated to manage: it’s essentially a long complication between two characters, but it’s unfolded some questions about the magical system that I never took the time to answer before, and I’ve spend weeks already just mulling them over in my head. I think I’ve got the answers more or less settled now, but chapter is still in the planning stage, and every turn of the planned conversation is surprising me. I’ve been working with these characters for more than three years (or thirteen, depending on how you count), and it’s lovely to settle into the world again after spending lots of time on other projects.

Fran and I have been watching Parks and Rec, and I’m trying to channel April and Andy just a bit more in my approach to life. It’s great to be a Leslie if you’re passionate about something, but devoting 100% of your energy to everything you do (and losing sleep in the process) is a quick way to make yourself sick. Taking more time for fun, couple time, and sleep is making me feel a lot better, and after I spent a few days trying to complete a “must-do checklist” of writing projects, I realized that if I tried to maintain a full-time writing schedule on top of all the other work I do I would never have time for anything else. And when you’re well rested, it’s much easier to work quickly and with full energy, so it’s a win-win situation in the end.

For a sample of what I’ve been working on, here’s a short clip from the sea-ballad story I’m writing:

“Have you ever thought of going to sea?” I said. “I’m first mate on the Golden Vanity—that lovely galleon there—and we’re leaving for Constantinople in the morning. We need a cabin boy, and you look like a likely fellow. What do you think of signing on with us?”

He tipped his head again, and for a moment there was no sound but the grind and squeak of his auger and the patter of shavings to the ground. I could see him measuring the Vanity with his gleaming gray eyes, judging and weighing it somehow, and in a way he looked much older than a child. Then, finally, he nodded.

It took me aback how easily he’d accepted, and I wasn’t sure he’d understood. “Better think carefully,” I said, “for it’ll be a long time before you see your home again. It’s possible you won’t come back at all. But there’s good pay, and plenty of room for advancement  if you do your work well.”

He nodded again, almost impatiently, and beckoned, as if I were the servant and he the master. Well, I thought, I’ll teach him more deference than that if he signs articles. But I was curious, and I had a bit of time before I needed to see about the cargo, so I followed.

Hope you’re all well! Let me know what you’ve been up to in the comments. ❤