Tag Archives: horror writer

In it

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Today started with me not getting my workout. I was tired from yesterday and while I’m not sure why, I wrote this morning and finished a first draft of a story yesterday.

What I wrote today is something I wrote a while ago. It’s been years since I sat down a wrote a story like it and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

We’ve had more snow this week and I’m sick of looking at and shoveling the stuff. I know we’re in a drought but god I’m tired of snow.

I’ll be spending the rest of the day with my youngest while my oldest stream Overwatch 2 on Twitch. They’re very good at the game and are starting to get a following on the platform. I’m glad as they’ve had trouble finding work since graduating last June. I hope this gives them a job. I know it’s what they want.

My youngest is on spring break and I’m taking them to our local mall to look at clothes and doing a few other things.

I’ve enjoyed coming back to this blog quite a bit. Monday’s power outage last a little over 90 minutes but it through my day off and I only wrote a little later in the day.

My wife and I are playing Alliance characters in Warcraft again. I know she prefers the way the look to Horde and I’m good with either faction.

I have a few writing plans for this summer and I’ll talk about them Friday or Monday, and possibly on my Substack as well.

Have a good Wednesday. I’ll see you all Friday.

Back to work…

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I’ve had a lot of thoughts this week. All of them about my writing and which direction it’s headed.

As I said in a previous post, I’ll only be writing horror for publication from now on. Anything not horror will be for me. I have a list of places I’ll be submitting short stories and the novellas I’ve written. Those will be going out in the next few months.

I can’t not write. I’ve created stories since I was a little kid. It’s as much a part of me as anything else. I will narrow my focus on horror.

I love to watch and read horror and while I enjoyed writing books like Disunion, those will be trunk books or books that will never see the light of day.

I hope you’ll continue to follow me on here as well as Substack. I also recently pulled Disunion and my collection. I’m figuring out what to do with the collection. Disunion and Jax Reed are going to be done. While I love the world I created with him and Griggs and the research I did was a lot of fun, I feel those stories are not what was expected of me.

I’m going back to horror unless something pulls me another way. I don’t see that happening. Disunion’s reception hurt and it’s the main reason those stories are shelved.

Have a good weekend,

Brian

Comes a time…

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I wrote a lot of blog posts last week while in isolation. I started the rewrite for a story I mentioned in this post and I’m moving forward.

I’d had an issue with a certain part of the story. I thought about that story through the weekend and found some new ground within its borders. I figured out how to make it work while incorporating a story I wrote a few years ago into its borders.

The story itself ran into difficulties while I wrote it and I came to understand there was something missing. A larger story was missing and the novella will be novel.

I’m making an effort to take it slow with this story, something I talked about on Friday.

I’m also doing something that felt odd until I noticed an improvement while doing it.

I see places in my head but can’t get them down as well with my eyes open. It’s only when I close them that I see the story better, so I’m doing that.

When I sat down to write this morning the words came darker, more evocative of what I want for the story. They’re better words and I’m sure my patience with the story is helping a lot with that. Patience isn’t always my strong suit. I’m always in a hurry to get to the next story, but I’m going to slow down. Take it in smaller steps to finish this one.

The incorporation of this short story into the larger frame of the novella adds more to the story and while it makes it darker it also changes one of the aspects of the story I didn’t like as I mentioned above.

There are many aspects of this story I love. The main character and what he’s dealing with are the biggest as I can relate to some of it.

We find ourselves in our stories often. Sometimes it’s little things, this is a bigger one for me.

I’m hoping to submit it later this year. I have four other projects out on submission and I hope to hear something about them soon. I’ll let you know when I do, but for now I’ll keep working on this one. If you’re curious, here is the playlist on Spotify for this one.

Happy writing.

Navigating in new waters…

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When I set out to write the new project, I wanted to use an outline. There are many reasons for this, but the greatest among these are, the five stories I’ve written that are still out, were outlined.

The leads me to believe that when I outline the story comes out better. Because of that, I’ve decided to outline this story and anything else I write during 2022. I know this will be a transition from writing without an outline, but I know it will bear fruit, as it has so far.

Now that I’m doing this I have to understand how to outline better, and while I won’t follow everything, my writing and the story will have a better core and cohesiveness that it hasn’t had, except for the stories that are out.

I talked about music the other day, but the outline, and having a roadmap for the story will help a ton.

I know this is a short post, but I had to tell you what’s going on. I have a review on my other blog for The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 13, on my review site. I didn’t go as deep into the 24 stories, novelette, and poem as I wanted to, it would have created a larger article than I wanted, but here’s the link to that blog.

Optimism and Doubt

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If you talk to me about anything besides writing, I’m optimistic as hell.

For some reason when it comes to writing the optimism goes out the window. It doesn’t matter that I’ve written 11 books, 5 novellas, and over a hundred short stories. When I sit down in the chair to work in the morning, doubt is the first thing in my mind.

Nowhere has this been evident than in the current project. I’m in the beginning stages of it, but the feelings that I can’t write it, that writing it will take me to a really dark place, and it’s all because of the subject matter, which is to say it lightly darker than I’ve gone before.

One thing about writing horror is that the dark is my safe space. I love to watch scary movies, read scary books, and sometimes play scary video games.

But the doubt that I can’t create this story the way it needs to be written has me doubting writing it at all, which would be a travesty since I feel the idea is awesome.

I’ve told my wife this story will have me skipping some levels. I won’t just be doing things in the dark like some of my stories, they’ll be out front for the whole world to see, which is scary.

My wife told me that with the subject matter, she probably won’t be reading this one, and I’m cool with that.

I have trouble reading some extreme horror, and it’s because it don’t enjoy it. I have set books down that took me somewhere my mind didn’t want to go, and there are authors I won’t read because I don’t enjoy what they write, but some people do and that’s okay.

When it comes to optimism I have the lion’s share with the pandemic, when a family member is sick, or anything else in my personal life, but trusting my gut is harder when it involves writing a type of horror that is on the outside of what makes me comfortable to write.

Writing is about boundaries, at least for me, and knocking those boundaries down can be difficult, as can taking the story slower than I usually do. Having written three novellas in the last three months has me wanting to move quick through the story, but this one can’t be rushed.

I usually sit down, turn on Mac Freedom, set a timer for 25 minutes and write, with this one that’s been difficult, but I’ll keep going because not writing isn’t an option.

As I get past this boundary I know it will make me a better writer, and less afraid of writing out of comfort zone. This one is so far beyond my comfort zone that my optimism took a hit, but I’ll keep going.

Hope you’re all having a great week, and I’ll talk on Friday about something else.