IWSG - Coming Along, News, & Trading Card

It's time for the February Insecure Writer's Support Group post!

Created by Alex J. Cavanaugh, the IWSG servers to support insecure writers. We post our insecurities or our reassurances. Anyone is welcome to join. Just click on Alex's name and sign up on the IWSG tab. Then post and hop around to your fellow IWSG'ers to drop a note.

The co-hosts this month are:

Lee Lowery, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Jennifer Hawes, Cathrina Constantine, and Tyrean Martinson!

The optional question this month: Has a single photo or work of art ever inspired a story? What is it and did you finish it?

I love to write off prompts, including images, but I don't remember having a finished, published story based on a photo/work of art. At least not off the top of my head.

Things are coming along for me in getting back to writing! I've started a spreadsheet to keep track of words written and edits done, so I can keep track. I always find it interesting when people post their words written at the end of the year, so I figured I'd try that out. Given, I just started that two days go, so there's a full month missing. Still! It will be fun to track.

The next collection is coming along. I've given a list of visuals/subjects to my husband so he can start playing with the cover. The Table of Contents is finalized. Now for final edits and formatting. I'm still hoping for a mid-March release.

If you've signed up for my newsletter (link in sidebar), you'll be the first to see the cover and TOC!

I had a new release this week!

Hello my Earthling! Hello my starling!
Hello my space-time alien gal!

It Came From Outer Space! is a baker’s dozen of tales about creatures from outer space who may or may not have boldly gone where they really shouldn’t have. Tales of aliens who test the creatures of Earth…tales of Earthlings who test the creatures from other planets…aliens who attack…aliens who defend…and aliens who are a little too close for comfort.

Prepare to discover realms at the furthest edges of human imagination.

From the depths of outer space…

To the depths of the sea…

To Portland…and beyond!

Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Kobo • Apple Books • Universal Book Link • Goodreads

I'll be reading at a Women in Horror Month event on Valentine's Day: A Bloody Valentine. Cottonwood Center for the Arts is hosting us that night. I'm also a host and planner on the event. More information available on our Facebook event page.

Finally, I was interviewed at Superficial Gallery for Women in Horror Month, and I have another trading card! This is such a fun thing they do to support women in horror.

I haven't done stats in a while, because I was figuring out what stories to pull from submission, so here's the first one of 2020. January stats:

5 submissions

2 rejections (one that had been short listed)

1 withdrawn (magazine appears to be defunct)

1 acceptance

7 currently on submission

1 currently short listed

I'd like to get back up to 10 stories on submission (and above), so I'm jumping into edits. I've got several stories languishing as they wait for edits.

What are your insecurities? Are you working to improve on any of the causes of insecurity? Are you submitting? How are you celebrating Women in Horror Month? Any news to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Invisible Man

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

It's been almost a year since I last reviewed a book on here. Back in January, right before everything went chaotic in my life, I reviewed Naomi's Room. As with everything else, I'm trying to get back to my old normal.

This week I'm reviewing Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison.

I'm going to be honest. When I saw this title on the list, I thought it was THE Invisible Man, which is actually by H.G. Wells. But this book is on a list of scariest books ever for very different reasons than Wells' story.

Ellison's Invisible Man is a stark look at society, individualism, identity, and, most obviously, race. The examination of race is split between two different areas: the deep South and Harlem.

I wish I'd reviewed this after first writing it. It's been probably about eight or nine months. I read it just before things went upside down. I remember the raw emotion I felt while reading this gorgeously written book. The frustration, the anger, the sadness, and a host of other emotions. But I don't remember specific examples I could pull and more precise reviews to give you.

The "horror" of this book is the way people treat other people, the things that happen that are looked past or ignored. The way we train others to be, and are in turn trained to be. The wrong we can do, and the wrong that can be done.

If I remember right, we never get a true name for the main character. This is part of his invisibility.

All I can tell you is that everyone should read this book. Written in 1952, it flows in a beautiful arrangement of words that belies what we're reading about. To close, I'll put the opening paragraph of the prologue here:

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and  might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me."

I rank this right there with "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "The Handmaid's Tale" for commentary on society and a vivid, depressing look at the resilient and downtrodden in our society. The invisible, as it were.

Now for some links. Bear in mind I'm not endorsing these, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

HorrorAddicts.net is seeking horror stories set in the Victorian era for Dark Divinations. 2000 to 5000 words. Pays $10. Deadline October 31.

Flash Bang Mysteries is seeking flash mysteries. 500 to 750 words. Pays $20. Deadline October 31.

Utopia Science Fiction is seeking optimistic SF. 100 to 6000 words. Pays $15.

Mura Magazine is seeking poetry, flash fiction, and visual art. Less than 1000 words. Pays $1 CAD/100 words.

Czykmate Productions is seeking horror flash and short stories (plus graphic art). Pays $2.

The Bronzeville Bee is seeking speculative fiction, crime, and YA short stories. Up to 3000 words. Pays $.05/word.

Have you ever read Ellison's Invisible Man? How about the other books I mentioned? What are your thoughts? Do you find the subject matter chilling? Any of these links of use? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Stepford Wives

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin.

This is one that we all probably know the story of, whether we've read it, watched one of the movie versions, or none of the above. I'm surprised it took me this long to finally read it. It should be noted that, like Bubba Ho-Tep, I believe this is a novella, not a novel. 

Stepford Wives is a clever and frightening bit of satire. Like The Handmaid's Tale, I'm sure it's more horrifying for female readers than male, because it gets to the root of gender imbalance and how tenuous our current hold on things really is. How easy it would be to lose it all and become powerless again, controlled by the men in our lives. (If you'd like a good horror film that shows a bit of when this happened in real life in Iran, watch Under the Shadow on Netflix. Though there's a paranormal element, the real horror is the female main character having to adapt to living in a completely different world where she's become a second class citizen and can't even flee her home without a head covering on without being chided and threatened for it. It's chilling.)

The premise is technically absurd, but that's part of the satire. And Levin makes it convincing. He never goes into the nitty gritty details of how any of it's being done, but he doesn't need to.

 I expected the main character's husband to already be a sexist jerk at the beginning, but the thing is, he supports Joanna in her feminism, in her drive to fight the good fight. He supports the fact that she isn't a perfect homemaker, and that her photography career is worthwhile. And that's what makes it so hard to understand when the signs start pointing to him wanting a perfect Stepford-style wife, who does nothing but please her husband, clean the house, cook, and take care of the children. I actually found his turning to the dark side far harder to stomach than the concept of perfect wife-bots, but that's probably because the dread of having one's husband turn on them despite a seemingly good marriage plants seeds of doubt. It hurts to read, really. Just like The Handmaid's Tale.

This is a fairly light read, quick, witty, simple. But there's so much buried beneath the surface. Definitely a worthwhile read, even if you feel you already know the story.

My Top Ten: 

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

No idea what book on the list will be next.

Zenna Henderson & Quiet Horror - WIHM Guest Post - DeAnna Knippling

This month I'll be featuring several women in horror as guest posters in celebration of Women In Horror Month! Today, we have DeAnna Knippling, a prolific, multi-talented Colorado author who also happens to be one of my daughter's favorite authors and a friend of mine.

If you haven't signed up to help with my book release, please consider doing so by clicking HERE.

Zenna Henderson & Quiet Horror

The sci-fi writer Zenna Henderson died in 1983, which was years before I was given the short story collection The Anything Box by my cousins, and devoured it with such a passion that the front cover fell off. I eventually read the stories she was more famous for, her People stories, but I never really gelled with them the way I did with the stories in The Anything Box. 

Here’s the general idea behind most of the stories:

Once upon a time, there was a teacher. (Or a housewife, although in one particularly memorable case it’s a husband.) Something strange intrudes into her perfectly ordered life. She doesn’t know what to do about it. So she tries to pretend it away. This doesn’t work. Jeez Louise, this is weird, she thinks. I mean, if this is true, it changes everything. She tries to make it go away again…and again…but in the end, it’s useless. It’s not going to work. In the end, she either admits that the world wasn’t what she thought it was, or she gets killed.

 

Violently. 

But usually offscreen. The stories were written in the ’50s and ’60s. Slasher films and splatterpunk hadn’t happened yet. But there were definitely gory, shocking horror stories back then. Psycho was written in 1959. Lord of the Flies was even earlier, in 1954. The pulps were still popular, and they practically dripped with blood. 

So what was going on?

Zenna Henderson was writing what we would now call quiet horror—a horror where all the important things are happening inside the mind and spirit, not outside with a serial killer and an ax. It may or may not be relevant that one of the places she taught—she was a teacher—was in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. And if that’s not a setting of quiet horror, I’m not sure what would be.

Quiet horror never really becomes terrifying; it never really gets loud or outwardly, obviously violent, although if it does, the character assumes it was all a dream or something so they can more or less stay calm about it. Quiet horror just sits there at a low-key level, humming to itself in a corner, as it were. And often it’s just plain weird. Reality is broken and things have gone off the freaking rails, not that you’d really know it, since everyone’s acting like it’s business as usual. John Harwood’s books, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” Charles L. Grant’s stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Peter Straub’s novels, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Robert Aickman’s supremely odd novelettes, Rosemary’s Baby…

On the surface, quiet horror just putters along. It’s not until you take a step back that you get struck by what’s going on.

The essence of quiet horror seems to be the statement, “Wait…what?”

In “Hush!” a woman’s vacuum cleaner comes to life and murders her. In “The Last Step,” a teacher interrupts a group of children playing in the mud as their community prepares to evacuate from an alien invasion, not understanding that the children’s play directly controls everyone’s future, and she’s doomed them all. In “The Anything Box,” a teacher literally takes away a child’s imagination and shoves it in her bottom drawer. And in “The Grunder,” a husband who is becoming physically abusive to his wife is driven to catch a possibly magical fish that might take away his urge to hurt her ever again, rather than have to change.

Each situation, when you step back from it, is monstrous, horrible, intolerable. But on the surface, the characters tolerate their worlds with almost perfect equanimity. Definitely nothing gets as tense—let alone as bloody—as a single throwaway murder in something like the Saw series, even when the vacuum cleaner reaches for the housewife’s throat.  

I think this is because Ms. Henderson, like most quiet horror writers, laid the responsibility for feeling horror on the reader. She was willing to provide the story, but if you wanted to get wound up about it, that was up to you. Take it or leave it. 

I chose to take it. The quiet horror stories of Zenna Henderson’s The Anything Box are still some of my favorites.

DeAnna Knippling definitely hasn't been up to any funny business lately.  Rather, she's been writing stories.  Some of her latest stories are One Dark Summer Night, October Nights: 31 Tales of Hauntings and Halloween, and The Clockwork Alice, none of which should be regarded with suspicion, dread, or that spinny feeling you get after turning in circles very quickly.  She promises that she has put down the knife, locked the cursed music box back in its cabinet, and erased your name out of the book with all the murderers' names in it.  You know the one.  You can find her at www.WonderlandPress.com.  She lives in Colorado with her spouse and daughter, and nobody else in the basement at all.

Thank you, DeAnna! I hadn't heard of Zenna Henderson, but her stories sound like they'd be right up my alley. A bit Twilight Zone. Also, The Tell-Tale Heart is one of my all time favorites.

Now for some links. Bear in mind that I'm not endorsing these, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

Twisted Publishing is seeking horror for the Twisted Book of Shadows. 3000 words and up, though payment capped at 5000 words. Pays $.06/word plus royalties. Deadline February 28.

Copper Nickel is seeking poetry, fiction, essays, and translation folios. Pays $30/printed page. Deadline March 1.

Chizine is seeking speculative Christmas stories for War on Christmas. 500 to 5000 words. Pays $.08CAD/word. Deadline March 4.

Gehenna & Hinnom Books is seeking speculative fiction for Hinnom Magazine. Up to 5000 words. Pays $15. Deadline March 15.

18th Wall is seeking supernatural stories set in the 50s for Sockhops and Seances. 4000 to 20,000 words. Pays royalties. Deadline March 15.

Transmundane Press is seeking stories for Dreams, Nightmares, Visions, and Hallucinations. Up to 6000 words. Pays up to $20. Deadline March 15.

Deciduous Tales is seeking horror and dark fiction. 1000 to 5000 words. Pays $.03/word. 

Asymmetry Fiction is seeking speculative fiction and creative nonfiction. Up to 3000 words. Pays $5.

Of Interest:

In celebration of Black History Month, StoryBundle has put out a Black Narratives Bundle. 

How do you feel about quiet horror? Have you ever read Zenna Henderson? Have you signed up for my book release? Any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Needful Things

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm reviewing Needful Things, by Stephen King.

I thought I'd read this already, and then I found it on my unread books shelf (yes, I have one of those...doesn't everyone?) and realized I never had. I decided to read it, not realizing it was on this list, so yay!

This novel is about a small town (Castle Rock, which has featured in other stories, like Cujo, The Dead Zone, and The Body (Stand By Me)), and a man who shows up, opening up a mysterious shop called Needful Things. He gives everyone their most secret desires, but he exacts a price, ultimately causing the town to degrade into disturbing violence. It's amazing what people will do out of greed for their desires.

The main characters are the sheriff and his girlfriend, a local seamstress. She has horrific arthritis and is in constant pain. They're also the only ones to be able to see through Leland Gaunt's--owner of Needful Things--friendly veneer. 

The first we see violence in the book, a plan come to fruition for Gaunt, it's two women tearing each other apart, literally, in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. This is after several awful things have occurred to each woman, attributed to the other woman. Muddied sheets, rocks through windows, and a dead dog.

If you can't stand violence against animals and children, this is not the book for you. Stephen King pulls no punches (does he ever?). No one is safe in this book, not puppies, not cats, not birds, not children. Fair warning.

As always, King gets to the base of each character. He intricately weaves the lives of the townspeople together, hinting at, and eventually telling about, past sins. For a small town, they sure have big secrets.

Once the violence really gets going, it's an insane maelstrom of greed, rage, envy, you name it. In fact, I'd say all of the cardinal sins are covered. And for the most part, the breakdown in civilization in the town of Castle Rock is built up just right, so the violence makes some odd sort of sense. You can see why it happened, anyway.

The people being blamed (and attacked) for committing various evil deeds are not the people actually doing those. The plot is carefully set up, with a bunch of disconnected actions ultimately coming together and making sense as you read on. 

As a bonus, there are references to other King novels set in the town, with a character returning from The Body (I won't tell you who, but you'll know when he shows up). If you've seen the film, you'll know why I kept looking for the line, "I killed my wife. Is that wrong?" Yeah, it's not in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, even though the animal and child deaths bothered me. It's a slow (not boring) buildup to an explosive ending. 

My new rankings:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

3. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

4. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

5. The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 (Paula Guran)

6. The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

9. Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Ellen Datlow)

10. The Stranger (Albert Camus)

11. Dead in the Water (Nancy Holder)

12. The Witches (Roald Dahl)

13. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

14. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

15. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

16. Prime Evil (Douglas E. Winter)

17. Best New Horror, Volume 1 (edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell)

18. Flowers in the Attic (V.C. Andrews)

19. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

20. Shadowland (Peter Straub)

21. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

22. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

23. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

24. Penpal (Dathan Auerbach)

25. World War Z (Max Brooks)

26. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) 

27. The Red Tree (Caitlin R. Kiernan)

28. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

29. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

30. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

31. The Doll Who Ate His Mother (Ramsey Campbell) 

32. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

33. Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs)

Have you read Needful Things? Where do you rank it among King novels? What did you think of the buildup? What would your weakness be in terms of desires Gaunt could take advantage of?

May you find your Muse.

PPWC 2015 Recap & Links

Pikes Peak Writers Conference 2015 was a success! Now that it's done, I'm working on recovering. Talk about a jam-packed week:

Tuesday we had a meeting, so this was our short work day (though, as treasurer, I went home and had a lot of prep work to do before disappearing for several days.)

Wednesday we did the major prep-work for conference (stuffing registration packets, picking up supplies, setting up the bookstore, etc.), with the day starting in the afternoon and us wrapping up at about 12:30 at night.

Thursday was the add-on day, with programming from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. I attended a ghost hunt with Graves Paranormal as the PPW representative. It was fun seeing how the various instruments were used, and we had some interesting things occur, which weren't expected, as it's not a known haunted hotel.

Friday and Saturday were our full days of programming. I moderated a few sessions, read people's work in our Read & Critique 123 sessions, helped with ballroom, and did whatever else was needed. The book signing was Saturday. My minis got to come in, with my son excited to meet R.L. Stine. My daughter refused to go near him, no matter how nice he and his wife were, but she did get to meet a local author (DeAnna Knippling, who writes MG horror under the name DeKenyon) whose books she has been reading over and over, and who signed her quite worn copy of one of the books.

I had the opportunity to sit at the head table for all but one meal, meaning I got to chat with Mary Kay Andrews, Andrew Gross, and Seanan McGuire. I was seated with the winners of our Zebulon writing contest for one of the meals, which meant I didn't get to sit at R.L. Stine's table, but he was friendly and funny, as was his wife Jane, and I chatted with him at a staff/faculty mixer instead.

If you ever have the chance to meet him, I highly recommend it. Both he and his wife are friendly and funny. Both of them, plus Seanan McGuire and DeAnna Knippling, were great with my kids, which I appreciated, as there were a lot of people at the signing, so it was a bit overwhelming to my littles. DeAnna got down on the floor to talk to my daughter and sign her book. Seanan told her jokes and sweetly waved at my son (who is more bashful than my daughter). Jane Stine told people in the signing line that kids come first, and insisted she and Bob take the time to get a picture with my son and sign both books he picked up.

At the Saturday banquet, I was awarded Volunteer of the Year. Much to my relief, I'd thought we were hopping into the contest awards, which I was helping with, so had already done a face and tooth check (as in, "Is there any food on my face/in my teeth?") And I was feeling blissful from a heavenly chocolate cream pie I'd just eaten for dessert. Mmmm.

I moderated sessions I was interested in, so ended up attending a workshop on short stories presented by Rod Miller, a session on female serial killers presented by Pete Klismet, one on prologues by Laura DiSilverio, and one on rejection by Mike Befeler. I also attended one on other serial killers by Pete Klismet, but I wasn't moderating that one. I look forward to listening to all the ones I missed on the recording.

Sunday was a half day, with morning programming, then everyone heading home after lunch. For staffers, that meant clean up, closing up the bookstore, etc. I got home about 4:30 and promptly dozed on the sofa. That night, I slept 9 hours, which is amazing considering my sleep at conference consisted of 13 hours total from Wednesday night to Sunday morning. As you can imagine, I was exhausted. Given, no one sleeps well at conference. For me, I wouldn't have slept much better at home, but I'm betting I would have gotten a tad more. Happily, I had a roommate who worked hard to not disturb me in the mornings, and seemed to know not to engage me, even when I was awake when she got up. You don't talk to insomniacs in the middle of the night/early morning unless they talk to you first, people! It's an unwritten rule. Once I'm engaged in an interaction, especially verbal, all chances that I might fall asleep are gone, ffffft, out the window. A combination of a helpful roommate and spa and rain sound apps I downloaded onto my phone gained me a few hours of sleep from my first night (during which I got 1 hour of sleep). Yay!

Not only was the event a hit, but I had great fun with friends, got asked to dance spontaneously by someone in the bar line (who then went on to dance with a bunch of other random gals for the rest of the night in the bar), tried out a new restaurant one of the nights where food wasn't included in the conference (Thursday), and chatted with agents, editors, and writers galore.

As treasurer, much of my work began when conference ended, so I've spent the last couple days working on that. Note to self: arranging coins on the floor and using a dry erase board to track counting of cash is ineffective when you have a cat. I should have taken a picture of her managing to lay across both the piles of carefully arranged coins and the dry erase board. Sigh. Despite her help, I got the counting done, and she has continued to follow me around, getting into anything I'm doing, since I got home. I'm fairly certain she missed me more than my children did.

Ah, well.

(All posted photos taken by Jared Hagan, official PPWC photographer.)

With all that said, it's time for links!

Accepting Submissions:

Zero One Publishing is seeking short stories for their anthology, Whispers From the Abyss. Flash fiction and short stories up to 4500 words. They want stories in the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. Pays a penny per word and contributor copies. Deadline May 30.

Arc Poetry Magazine wants spoken word poetry. Deadline May 15. Regular poetry submissions end May 31. Can submit up to 3 poems. Pays $40 per page, plus contributor copy.

One Story is looking for literary fiction short stories. 3000-8000 words. Pays $500 and contributor copies. Submission period closes May 31.

Glimmer Train has three free submission periods per year, with one of them in May. Short fiction, open genres. Pays $700, plus contributor copies. Reading period ends May 31.

SpeckLit is looking for drabble length fiction and non-fiction. Speculative fiction. 100 words. Pays $.05/word. Deadline May 31.

The Liz McMullen Show is looking for lesbian historical romance for Through the Hourglass. 3000-5000 words. Pays $30, plus contributor copies. Deadline May 31.

Crossed Genres seeks science fiction and fantasy with the theme of the year 2065. 1000-6000 words. Pays $.06/word. Deadline May 31.

Pole to Pole Publishing is accepting stories for their Hides the Dark Tower anthology. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror involving a tower. 500-5000 words. Pays $.02/word, plus contributor copies and possible royalties. Deadline May 31.

Christina Escamilla Publishing is looking for dark fiction for the anthology The Deep Dark Woods. Flash fiction up to 500 words, short fiction up to 8000 words. Pays $.05/word, plus contributor copy. Deadline May 31.

Pulp Modern is looking for genre fiction, including crime, horror, science fiction, and westerns. 2000-5000 words. Pays 1/4 cent per word. Deadline June 1.

Any of these of interest? Anything to share? Publishing news? Who is your favorite author to have met?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Imago Sequence

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends, posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) So far, I've reviewed Poppy Z. Brite's Drawing Blood and Robert McCammon's The Wolf's Hour. This week, I'm reviewing Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence.

The Imago Sequence is a collection of short stories (and the title of the final short story). The first thing I noticed was that he seemed very introspective about age. Perhaps this is just because the first story dedicated a lot of attention to age. The male characters tended to be fighting on, despite their age, or dealing with life changes, whereas the female characters that focused on age tended to be evil hags or a bit of a joke (that joke holding something evil behind it). Not always, but there was a tendency. I'm not sure this would have stood out to me so much if DeAnna Knippling hadn't mentioned it in her review of this book first. Would I have, or was it a case of the Oracle telling Neo not to worry about the vase he broke? I couldn't tell you. I was so curious, though, about where he was when he wrote these that I looked up his age and when the book was published. (His thirties, if they were written around when the book was published, but with a short story anthology, there's no guarantee, and I don't have the time to research individual short stories--that's crazy talk.)

His stories didn't lay out the monsters for the reader most of the time. In fact, some of them left me thinking long after I'd finished reading them, just to process what I'd read and how it had ended. For the most part I liked this, though at least one left me scratching my head instead of intrigued. One of my favorite stories was so beautifully written, yet was the one that left me puzzled about the ending. I'm pretty sure my subconscious will work it out eventually.

I've seen H.P Lovecraft mentioned a lot in connection with Laird Barron, and I can see why. He delves into the surreal, ancient horrors. These stories don't just focus on the age of the characters, but also on the age of evil. Inevitably, each antagonist is ancient, hearkening back to something long ago, something wild, an all-devouring force. And a force it is. No monsters, no serial killers. Forces. Something in human form may lead them to their doom, but that doom isn't so much an entity in most cases as a power.

Barron's protagonists are well drawn inasmuch as we get to know a little about them as individuals, but it strikes me that this was necessary, because each character felt much the same on reflection. As I was putting my notes together, I could remember each story and each male protagonist (they were all male), but they were very similar to each other, at least in voice. The exception to this being probably that main character of Shiva Open Your Eye and the main character of The Royal Zoo is Closed.

One thing I can say for his characters is that they never just lie down and wait to die. No hapless victims thrown into a story to be eaten or tormented. No, they fight their damndest to get out of whatever has befallen them. 

Though the characters are similar on the surface and in voice, he skillfully weaves what we need to know about them into the narrative. The same can be said about his settings, which are laid out for us nicely in most of the stories, once again weaved into it so we aren't just sitting there while he describes what everything looks like. I had a distinct image of the setting in almost every story, and he has left pictures in my head since my reading, courtesy of the strength of some of his scenes.

I'm not sure how best to review a collection of short stories, so I'll break down the stories a little bit while trying to avoid spoilers.

Old Virginia - An older man, crotchety and washed up, is tasked with guarding a group of scientists as they conduct some manner of experiment out in the woods. Someone's messing with them in small ways, but who is it? Rival scientists? The government? Or something darker and older? This is one of the stories where age played a major role, both with the main protagonist and the crone who is part of the experiments. We see that a man who appears washed up still has fight and intelligence in him, and learn to never underestimate anyone.

Shiva Open Your Eye - This one once again features an older man who is deceptively decrepit. A contest of wits and wills ensues between him and another man. This one lost me a bit to boredom. There was so much word play, the POV character ranting on and on about his history, that my attention wandered. The words were delightfully grotesque and oddly beautiful at times, but without anything of interest being said, it just wasn't enough for me. In the end, it didn't come full circle for me. I wasn't clear on what even happened to bring the situation to a close.

Procession of the Black Sloth - A man is sent out to Hong Kong (IIRC) to investigate espionage undercover. On the way there, he sees a strange sign that things aren't going to go well. Once there, an odd witchcraft seems to be afoot, and he falls more into a frightened irrationality as he tries to figure out what's going on. This was an interesting read, with a classic sort of story behind it. We plunge into confusion with the protagonist, trying to figure out along with him what's happening. The ending was a bit forgettable after the rest of the story, though. This was a story where women of advanced age were a bit of a mockery, though it was the characters doing this mocking, not to be confused with the author (maybe?).

Bulldozer - I never figured out what the title referred to on this one. But I enjoyed this story. It followed a Pinkerton man in pursuit of a strongman with a stolen book (stolen from PT, himself) of some importance. The Pinkerton man is responsible for getting that book back. Set in the Wild West (my favorite era, as some of you probably know), we ride along with a man who has gotten himself in way over his head. The setting is well realized in this one, with a variety of interesting Wild West characters crossing his path. The only females in this story were ladies of the night, but I guess at least they weren't described as crones? This story is discombobulated at times (hallucinogenic?), sending us into a mental maelstrom with the POV character.

Proboscis - This was one of my favorites. The protagonist is a bounty hunter, having had to change his life. He begins seeing things, sensing something wrong, but he doesn't share it with his compatriots. The evil in this is insectile, leading him to the isolation of the Mima Mounds (also mentioned in at least one other story). The buildup is slow and steady, a taunting of the protag who gets sucked back in no matter what he tries to do to get away. As with some of his other stories, there is a bit of dissocation that occurs, a pulling back from the story and becoming confused, which serves to show us the mindset of the protag.

Hallucinogenia - An older man and his child bride make an unscheduled stop, only to be sucked into something horrific that follows them home, him wounded, her with severe brain damage. He can't remember what happened, but he can sense that it's not over. He's wealthy, so he throws money at it, hiring an investigator to find out more about the place their accident occurred. But even as he delves into it, it gets closer to him. This story was excellent at showing us a great evil without actually drawing a beast to go with it. Though there's never a physical presence, it looms there, just out of sight, creeping up on him. A P.I. makes an appearance in this and one other story, making me wonder how many of Barron's stories he's been in. I did find this story too long, checking my progress to see how close I was to the end. I think the buildup could have been more quickly paced.

Parallax - This was another of my favorites. A man gets a severe migraine and wakes to find his wife missing. The police think it was him, and they, as well as the press, begin hounding him. The more they hound him, the more he doubts himself. I was drawn into the story, unable to figure out what might have happened to his wife. The twist ending was interesting, and had me asking questions long after the story was done. I'd write them here, but it would give away the story. About half of what I jotted down in my notes consisted of questions I asked once it was done.

The Royal Zoo is Closed - I don't remember what this one is about. Seriously. I just went and looked to see if I could find what it was about, and found nothing that clued me in. So I won't tell you what it was about, but simply tell you what I jotted down on my little bedside notepad (I do most of my reading to wind down at bedtime.) I wrote that it was beautifully written, that I had the urge to read it out loud to feel the words coming from my mouth. But it became a constant onslaught of words, a battery. And I was confused at the end, because there seemed to be no end. Maybe I should read it again.

The Imago Sequence - A man becomes compelled to search out a series of paintings for a friend (who has the cash to fund it.) But his search leads him into something he didn't expect. There's something going on with these paintings, something deadly (at least to the rich.) I don't really have anything new to say about this one, because it followed the patterns of the other stories. 

Overall, I liked this. It was thought provoking and held powerful imagery. However, the voice of the characters was often the same and I think some of the stories traded actual story for an impression. Pacing was mostly good, but a few of them were too slow or meandering for me. And I'm not sure what to think of his female characters or his take on women. His stories were like a comfortably bumpy road, with the bumps exactly where I expected them to be. Rinse, repeat. Having said that, I feel he's a strong writer, and one that probably improved after this, seeing as how it's an earlier set of his works. I'm surprised they selected this as his best, rather than later collections or novels. But the general impression it left for me was favorable, rolling about in my head for probably awhile to come. I'll be looking into other works of his to satisfy my curiosity.

Also, this is the first book that I think truly belonged on a list of horror. I didn't look at this and wonder what caused them to put it on this particular list like I did with the last two. There was a solid creep factor in many of the stories, and all were obviously horror.

My next review will be of Coraline, by Neil Gaiman.

Have you read Laird Barron? What did you think? Have you read this collection? Did you agree or disagree with what I've said here? 

May you find your Muse.

S is for Sphinx, I Survived & Short Story Contest

Hello! I'm writing this late, so will also delay my "T" post until later today in order to give both some reading time.

I attended the Pikes Peak Writers Conference this weekend, and I survived! It was a great weekend, with interesting keynote speakers, as well as a bit of controversy related to one of them (Barry Eisler), which resulted in a bit of a social media war between agents/editors and writers, debating some of what he said about legacy/traditional publishing versus self-publishing.

Anyway, I was exhausted after the conference, and I made the executive decision to NOT stay up and research a topic for Monday's "S" post, instead deciding I would write it Monday. My kids had the day off school, though, and I had to take my son to his 8-year checkup, in addition to some other things, so here I sit at 11 p.m., just beginning the post.

Before I get to my "S" topics, I'd like to pass along a short story contest that one of our faculty members has thrown out with an Amazon GC as a prize. It's not as simple as just writing a short story. No, the faculty member, DeAnna Knippling, has issued an additional challenge. She wants you to not only send your short story, but proof that you've submitted it to someone. This was issued in her 4-Hour Short Story workshop, where she taught how to write and submit a short story in four hours. You can find more on the contest at the PPW blog, Writing From the Peak.

Now, S is for the riddle of the Sphinx.

Did you know that a mystery surrounds the date of the creation of the Sphinx? You see, while it has generally been assumed that the Sphinx was made during the same period as the nearby pyramids, the era of the Old Kingdom, sometime between 2589 B.C. and 2500 B.C., there is a discrepancy in the type of weathering that has occurred, and how much there's been.

There is evidence that water erosion occurred on the Sphinx, but after 5000 B.C. there has been extremely insignificant rainfall in the region, and none of the pyramids or surrounding sculptures show the same type of weathering. Before 5000 B.C., there was more significant rainfall in the area.

Some have postulated that it could be wet sand that weathered the Sphinx, not just water, but to do that, wouldn't that still indicate more water in the sand, meaning more rainfall?

By en:User:Hajor [CC-BY-SA-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

There is also possible evidence of its age carved into a stone tablet/breast plate between the feet of the Sphinx. A translation has been made that says King Thutmose IV discovered the Sphinx already buried up to its next around 1400 B.C. In order to be buried to its neck in sand, it would have to have been much older than Old Kingdom era.

There is no documentation on the building of the Sphinx. It isn't mentioned anywhere. Why might that be?

One of the indications that it is Old Kingdom era is the fact that the style matches that of surrounding sculptures. Styles of building and design change over time, so if it had been built in 5000 B.C., for instance, it should have been a significantly different style of building from the pyramids. That is far too long for designs to stay the same.

And yes, for those of you who love the alien tales, it has been suggested that aliens built the Sphinx, then returned to teach the Old Kingdom Egyptians to build in a similar fashion.

So, was it aliens? Did the Sphinx stand long before the Old Kingdom was a desert? Or was there perhaps a mystery underground spring that might have eroded the Sphinx?

Other topics to look up that start with "S" are Stonehenge and the Servant Girl Annihilator, a serial killer some insist was actually Jack the Ripper, living in Austin, Texas before he struck in Whitechapel. Although I have my doubts...lots of them.

May you find your Muse.

W is for Wild Bill Hickok & Wicked Links

THREE MORE DAYS OF THE A-to-Z!  Hang in there, everyone!

First, a couple links:

I wanted to pass along Deanna Knippling's Writer's Negativity Checklist , which I found quite interesting.

Fear and Trembling is a paying market, looking for horror flash fiction, short stories, and some novellas, poetry and artwork.  Their submission window closes April 30, so hurry!

The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is taking flash fiction submissions of 600 words or less, and is a paying market.  Submission window closes in August, so you have a little more time for this one.  They accept fiction and creative non-fiction.

Yearning for Wonderland is hosting a flash fiction contest with the theme Unexpected Fairy Tales.  This closes April 29, eek, hurry!

This is the last week to get your flash fiction entries in for the Pikes Peak Branch, National League of American Pen Women Flash Fiction Contest.  The theme is Are you Devious at Heart?  May 1 is the deadline.  You can find details at that link or the tab at the top of my page.

ild Bill Hickok

On May 27, 1837, James Butler Hickok (Wild Bill) was born in Troy Grove, IL.  He grew up on a farm with his four brothers and two sisters, a farm that happened to be a stop on the Underground Railroad (which automatically makes them aces in my book!)  Due to their involvement with abolition, his father was killed when Hickok was fourteen years old, forcing him to find work to support his family.  When he was eighteen, he became a stagecoach driver, heading west to the land he'd always dreamed of.

He was already quite a marksman, but this was put to the test as a stagecoach driver, with frequent robbery attempts.  In 1858, his coach broke down in Colorado (you knew I'd work it in there somewhere, right?)  As they were waiting for help, he took a nap in some bushes.  The passengers, who had remained in the stagecoach, heard a ruckus and ran out of the stagecoach to discover Hickok fighting a bear.  Though he was hurt, he won the battle, killing the bear with his knife. (An alternative story says the road was blocked by the bear, so he got down and shot it to scare away, but the bullet merely angered it.  They did battle, he shot it again, and then he was able to slit its throat.) His injuries caused him to have to rest up in Monticello, Kansas, where he was asked to be a police officer.  He didn't do this long before he began working for the Pony Express out of Nebraska.

In 1861, a man named David McCanles got into an altercation with Hickok, which involved his son and two other friends.  McCanles' son was the only survivor, thanks to Hickok being a crack shot.  This was proven as self defense, and he moved on to Missouri, where he signed on with the Union Army on October 30 as a scout.  This is the point at which he earned the name Wild Bill.

He received an injury while fighting an Indian in the war, and left the Army.  He went to Hays City, Kansas, where he was sworn in as sheriff in 1869.  During his time as sheriff, he killed three men, giving up his position after a fight with several Cavalry men who attacked him in a saloon.  He killed one, injured another, and he was done with Hays City.

In 1871 he became City Marshal for Abilene, Kansas.  He took to hanging out with the infamous John Wesley Hardin, treating him almost like a son.  Their friendship was ruined one night when Hardin woke up in a hotel, thanks to someone snoring loudly in another room, and fired through the wall, killing the other man.  He jumped out the window and hightailed it out of town, knowing full-well Hickok could take him out.

For whatever reason, Hickok started focusing less on his police work and more on gambling, drinking and prostitutes.  On October 5, 1871, Hickok responded to gunshots in town.  He ran into a man named Coe, who claimed he'd been shooting at a dog.  When Hickok told him there were no guns allowed in town, Coe took a shot at him (it should be mentioned that they were also courting the same woman, so who knows what transpired).  Hickok fired back, shooting Coe in the stomach.  Footsteps sounded behind him, and Hickok turned and fired, killing his deputy.  The city of Abilene forced him out of his position and asked him to leave.

He tried to form his own theater company, but his first show in Niagara Falls was a massive failure that ended in a buffalo stampede, and he was forced to sell his buffalo to send his actors home.  Buffalo Bill Cody, an old friend of his, brought him into his show for a bit, but he wasn't happy there, so he left in 1874.

In 1875 he married a woman who had patiently waited for him for quite some time.  A month after their marriage, he left her behind to go look for gold.  He became fast friends with Calamity Jane, who later claimed they were together.  This claim was not supported, however.  He never got his gold stake, instead falling back into drinking and gambling.  His drunkenness kept him from being a good gambler, and he was arrested repeatedly on vagrancy charges.

One night, he beat a man named McCall soundly.  He felt sorry for the guy, so he gave him enough money to buy some dinner.  When he came in to gamble the next day, August 2, 1876, McCall snuck up behind him and shot him in the back of his head.  Coward.  The hand he was holding, two 8's and two Aces, became known as the Dead Man's Hand.  McCall was tried and found innocent in that town (Deadwood, Dakota Territory), but his sentence was declared unlawful due to Deadwood being Indian Territory at the time, so he was tried again in Yankton, South Dakota after traveling all over bragging about having killed the famous gunslinger.  He was found guilty and hanged March 1, 1877.

His wife never saw him again, but he had sent her a letter professing his love, which she received after his death.  Calamity Jane claimed him as the love of her life, and was later buried next to him.

My research on Hickok turned up some greatly varied information, so I pretty much went with anything that disagreed with Wikipedia (haha).  Actually, I always try to have at least three sources for these posts, and I go with the information that appears to be the most consistent.  This time, that was against Wikipedia's information.  It was claimed that he was a Jayhawker (the vigilante army that defied Quantrill's Bushwacker's.  I only found this in one place, and could not confirm it.  It was also claimed he was an Indian hater in one spot, but that was not confirmed anywhere else, either, and I'd prefer to not believe it.  Sigh.  There was a lot of other disparate information, which causes me to believe that the sensationlistic Penny Dreadful details have been well and truly mixed in with his information, and the truth is probably pretty filled in with fabled details.

<b>Have you heard information that was opposite any of this?  Which set of information do you believe?  Any links to share?</b>

May you find your Muse.

*Letter W courtesy of Ashley, clker.com
**James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok ca. 1873-74.; Wikimedia Commons
***Wild Bill Hickok with two Navy Colts in his famed handles-forward rig, with Bowie Knife; Wikimedia Commons

Write Brain Notes: New Models in Publishing, An Indie Author Speaks

This is the third, and final, portion of my notes from the Write Brain workshop New Models in Publishing, presented by Pikes Peak Writers. Today, I will pass along notes from DeAnna Knippling, an independently published author.

DeAnna Knippling gave us advice on indie publishing. She pointed out that we should do research on self publishing, whether we're going traditional or not, so that we know what to look at. For instance, if you've done your research on what makes a good cover, you will know what to consider when a traditional publishing house sends you their design for your book cover. Is the font good? Will the colors stand out? Can you read the title? Is the image eye-catching? Studying up on details like this will help you insure your book is high quality, even if you're being traditionally published.

If you're being traditionally published, she stresses that you should READ THE CONTRACT CAREFULLY. Don't just sign it in a flurry because you're excited to be getting published. Read every nitty-gritty detail and make sure you're being treated fairly.

DeAnna pointed out that being consistent in the types of stories you're putting out can increase your sales. She'll be the first to tell you that she doesn't do this across the board, but that her children's series is consistent and sells better than some of the more varied offerings. People will come back to something they liked.

The following is summarized from her handout on Indie Publishing, and is what she feels is the bare minimum (for the full handout, please see it on the Pikes Peak Writers' official blog, Writing From the Peak, where there is fantastic information I did not pass along in this series of posts):

You need material that you own the rights to; a freelance business (properly set up) for tax purposes; various forms of marketing (an author website, social media, contact with reviewers (send them a free e-copy), contact with any specialty markets that may apply to your book (websites with related content) and writer's groups); proper editing, proper formatting, a good and legal cover design, e-publishing in all formats, validation of your product once published, announcements/marketing and limitless patience. **NOTE: All of this is further explained in the handout, linked above)**

Some links:
Goodreads
Library Thing
Nolo
Step by Step Self-Publishing
www.blog.deannaknippling.com
Smashwords Style Guide
Gimp.org
Scribus
Dreamstime free images and software
Smashwords
KDP Amazon
PubIt!
Zen Habits for patience

Some additional resources:
The Copyright Handbook by Stephen Fishman (this comes highly recommended by her, and seems like an excellent resource, whether you're self-pubbed or traditionally pubbed).
Nolo's checklist: Start Your Own Business: 50 Things You'll Need to Do

DeAnna always has valuable insight, and can be found in the following places:

Her personal blog, deannaknippling.com
Her small publisher website, wonderlandpress.com
Her middle-grade pseudonym blog, dekenyon.com

She also does e-book and POD formatting for hire, so feel free to contact her at the above places. Her books can be found under the names DeAnna Knippling and De Kenyon.

Do you have anything to add to this?

This concludes my notes from the Write Brain workship, New Models in Publishing, by Pikes Peak Writers.

May you find your Muse.

Social Media for Writers

I've questioned various forms of social media since starting this blog: why should we use them, what good are they, how do they help, are they just time wasters? I signed up for Twitter after a lot of recommendations on my Twitter post during last year's A-to-Z challenge, because I was told it was valuable for writers. I was already on Facebook, and MySpace was obsolete to me before I joined Facebook. As far as LinkedIn, I only joined because I kept getting requests from people. But what should I be doing with them?

For Twitter, I've followed publishing houses and such, and some have even found me first, which I imagine is for their advertizing purposes, but it works for me, either way. So far, it has not had major use yet, but I imagine its day will come. Also, I would have to spend more time on there to give it a real chance before I complain. I can see how it would be a good source for finding publishers, learning about agents, and hearing about contests, though. And when the day comes that I've got something to advertize, I'm sure it will be helpful there, too. I know that I have valued it when someone has "retweeted" or "RT'd" something I've put on there, and I wonder if some of my readers haven't been discovered that way.

I'm still trying to figure out some of the logistics of Twitter. When someone "tags" me with a "FF" tag, for instance, am I supposed to respond in some way? I don't right now, because I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Help? I don't respond every time someone thanks me for following them on there, for various reasons. Am I supposed to always respond? Am I supposed to tag everyone who follows me with a thank you message? Do people prefer that, or are they happy without it?

Facebook has a bunch of uses, so while I can see how it can be valuable, I'm not sure how to get a Facebook page out there where everyone knows it's there. For instance, I created one for the Pen Women, but how do I get people to follow it? Of course, I have one for this blog, too, but I figure for right now just having the button on the side of my blog referring people to it is good enough. If someone wants to "like" the Facebook page, they can find it on here. As of right now, though, it is mostly used to notify people of new posts on here. I tried starting conversations on there a few times that were related to what I had posted, but it didn't work. Maybe in the future when I have five trillion followers/readers?

One that I never bothered much with until recently was LinkedIn. Like I said above, I added it because I kept getting requests. I mostly had a couple friends on there and that was that. However, I started getting requests from fellow writers who had found me on here, and then I got recommendations for others to add, and I've started doing a teeny bit more that way, but that was really it. Then, maybe about a week or so ago, I got a nice little form message recommending some groups I could join. I had no idea there were groups! I clicked on the groups and checked them out, and there were some neat groups of writers, so I went ahead and joined.

Lo and behold, a few days ago someone posts in one of the groups that their anthology deadline has been extended. I click on that discussion, it sounds interesting, and I go to the site. Their prompt instantly sparked something, and I immediately wrote a personal essay to submit. I've never submitted an essay for publication (I've hardly submitted anything for publication...), so I have no idea if it's good, but I'm delighted to have done it. In case you're interested, the anthology is Sofas I've Slept on. I believe they're taking submissions until March 20, 2012.

Image courtesy of OCAL at CLKER.com

I'm learning that I maybe shouldn't be so skeptical of social media, and that it has value. The problem is learning how to use it to my advantage without allowing it to suck me in and become a time waster. That's true for every single bit of social media I take part in. Other than the lure of CastleVille, I'm getting better at brief, pertinent visits most of the time.

Quickly, I'd like to mention the Pikes Peak Writer's Write Brain, occurring tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17, 6:30-8:30 at Celebration Place in the Citadel Mall. It sounds like a great program. I'll likely write it up if I get good notes, and share it with everyone, but if you're able to attend, I'm sure personal attendance would be far more valuable than my write up. This Write Brain will be run by Deb Courtney, Robert Spiller and DeAnna Knippling, and concerns New Models in Publishing. Each of these people has been involved with both traditional and self-publishing. For more information, click HERE.

What forms of social media do you use? What do you find most valuable? How do you insure you aren't wasting time?

May you find your Muse.