Category Archives: blog

17 March 2015 · 9:02 am

Time Travel Media March

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All this month, I’ll be blogging about time travel media (TV, film, and literature). For the past two years, I’ve been working steadily on a time travel novel, The Curiosity Killers, as my thesis project for Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. As I inch closer and closer to graduation this June, I want to celebrate some things that inspired the writing of that book.

For today, I offer my favorite time travel TV series. What are yours? What have I missed? A few I like that didn’t make the final cut include Fringe (which, while great, is really more about parallel universes than time travel as its central SF trope), Alcatraz (a very cool series but cut so short we never found out much about the time travel mechanism), and Sapphire and Steel (super fun and creepy, but limited appeal today based on its glacial pacing and relative obscurity).

1. Doctor Who, BBC, 1963-1989, 1996, 2005-present)

The quintessential time travel show. Long-running, cheesy, and ever-changing, Doctor Who is the love story of a man and his time machine/spaceship. There are essentially three kinds of Doctor Who storylines: time travel, space travel, and aliens rampaging modern-day London. Give me a dozen gimmicky time travel stories over the others any day. The best always include a historical figure (e.g. “Vincent and the Doctor,” “Tooth and Claw,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” “The Shakespeare Code”) battling robots, aliens, or both.

2. Quantum Leap, NBC, 1989-1993

Instead of a visible time machine/spacecraft or a time traveler observing the events of the past or future, Quantum Leap rewrote time travel rules for the twentieth century. Our time traveler, Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula, later of Star Trek: Enterprise) can only travel within his own lifetime (roughly the early 1950s up through a near future in the late 1990s). Furthermore, when he “leaps,” he appears as someone else in the past, their “physical aura” replacing his own. A convoluted concept, but the series executed it much like a historical anthology series, full of period-appropriate music and fashion.

3. Lost, ABC, 2004-2010

Lost didn’t start out as a time travel show. In the beginning, it was almost a cross between Survivor and Gilligan’s Island: how will a group of plane crash survivors make a new life for themselves on a desert island? But then the smoke monster showed up, and there was a hatch, and suddenly in season 5 a group of the survivors are marooned in the 1970s for reasons that—much to the show’s rabid audience’s chagrin—are never adequately explained. If you view Lost as an allegory, with the survivors being “lost” as people even before and after their island adventures (in much the same way The Walking Dead refers a bit more to the survivors than the zombies), then this series still holds up as an interesting study into the dark spots of the soul. The video above is a set of fan-made opening credits, as the series famously had only a title card to start each episode.

4. Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, BBC One, 2006-2007 and 2008-2010


First of all, ignore the American remake, at least until you’ve finished with the original. The first series, Life on Mars, deals with twenty-first century police detective Sam Tyler being inexplicably sent back in time to the 1970s. Those around him think he’s a newly-transferred detective, but they don’t know he’s from the future. Throughout the series, Sam picks up clues that he may be hallucinating while in a coma from injuries sustained in a car accident. The spin-off series, Ashes to Ashes, features a new detective character, Alex Drake, being sent from the present back to the early 1980s and once again being stationed in the same precinct as Sam Tyler with many of his former colleagues. Like Sam, Alex thinks she might be languishing in a hospital after being shot. This sort of time travel device is more fantasy than science fiction, and the David Bowie-inspired titles, music, and imagery give both shows a trippy, post-psychedelic patina. LoM has a recurring Wizard of Oz motif threaded throughout as well, and AtA makes constant Alice in Wonderland references. In both cases, the series also serve as a kind of homage to the cop dramas of their respective eras.

5. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Fox, 2008-2009

It’s easy to forget if you’re not a hardcore fan that the Terminator franchise of films and TV series is technically based on a time travel premise: in order to save humanity from what is essentially a sentient internet, freedom fighters are sent back in time to ensure the birth of humanity’s savior, John Connor. Flesh-covered AI robots called Terminators are also sent back in time, to ensure John Connor (and his mother) are instead killed, preventing the human uprising. The Sarah Connor Chronicles focuses on John’s mother and her quest to keep her son safe at any cost. They’re aided by a female Terminator model who is actually on their side. The time travel in both SCC and other Terminator properties is unique in its focus on future travelers coming back to what the audience thinks of as present day. We may not see the effects of the time travelers’ efforts as much, at least not until 2009’s Terminator Salvation film, set in the year 2018.

6. Being Erica, CBC, 2009-2011

What if you could have a second chance at all the pivotal moments of your life? That’s what happens to aptly-named Toronto book editor Erica Strange, who finds herself receiving therapy from a mysterious man named Dr. Tom. During Erica’s sessions with Dr. Tom, whenever he pinpoints something from her past that is indirectly affecting her present, she goes back in time to relive the original moment—in her previous body but with all her present memories and experiences and knowledge intact. The fun of this series comes from reliving the ‘80s and ‘90s, but at times it gets pretty deep. The underlying theme is, at its heart, understanding that even our most painful of experiences shape who we are.

7. Tru Calling, Fox, 2003-2005

From the Groundhog Day school of time travel: what if you could relive a day over again to intervene in a tragedy? To stop a crime? To save someone’s life? That’s what happens to medical student Tru Davies (Eliza Dushku) when she starts working in a city morgue. This series is notable for its premise as well as the presence of pre-Hangover Zach Galifianakis as Tru’s boss.

8. Journeyman, NBC, 2007

Journeyman was a victim of the Writers Guild of America strike of 2007; not enough episodes were produced before TV series experienced schedule-crippling hiatuses, and as no new episodes were available past the original 13-episode order, it was cancelled. This is a shame, because what started as a Time Traveler’s Wife-inspired fantasy romance gradually turned into a complex SF system of multiple time travelers from multiple eras working together to solve a large-scale problem in time.

9. Voyagers!, NBC, 1982-1983

To watch this series now is to see something almost proto-steampunk at work. Time traveler Phineas Bogg and his teen sidekick are part historical tourists, part solvers of time errors. Whenever history doesn’t unfold the way it’s supposed to, it’s up to them to correct it. Episodes usually featured famous historical figures. Bogg’s time travel device and vaguely pirate-like costume lent the series a quasi-Victorian sensibility.

10. The Time Tunnel, ABC, 1966-1967

The series that really started time travel on American TV. We see the starts of various themes that later spring up in Voyagers! (encounters with historical figures) and Quantum Leap (mysterious government program in danger of losing its funding). Though reboots were attempted in the 2000s, they have thus far been unsuccessful, perhaps because we now live in an era where time travel on TV isn’t quite so rare. A full-length pilot for a 2002 reboot attempt is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mETHT5npqOI and while it was aiming for gritty and dark, it comes off weirdly more dated than the original series at this point.

Watch this space for my top ten time travel movies and books, coming later this month!

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5 March 2015 · 1:53 pm

What I’m selling, pitching, writing, and doing

Happy Thursday! I’m starting a new blog series today called “What I’m…” Every few days, I’ll update this site with what I’m selling, pitching, writing, or doing. Today I’ve got updates in all four categories!

What I’m selling

I’ll be at the Dayton Book Expo on April 25th at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, where I’ll have copies of The Red Eye available for sale (and signing, which I’m also happy to do if you’ve already purchased it earlier). If you can’t make it to the DBE but also haven’t gotten a copy of The Red Eye yet, you can purchase it via the DBE’s Amazon store to enter me into the running for DBE’s online bestsellers! And remember, too, that owning an Alliteration Ink title in print means you also own the ebook!

What I’m pitching

I’m nearing the end of my studies in Seton Hill University’s MFA program, and so I’m starting to see if my thesis novel can get any agent nibbles. The new web site Writer Pitch connects authors and agents. If you feel so inclined, you can share my pitch for The Curiosity Killers on social media to help me generate some buzz!

What I’m writing

In addition to making final tweaks to TCK, I’ve also got three short stories out on submission; two short stories, two novels, and one non-fiction book all in the editing phase; and twelve projects actively in the writing phase. Other projects are still being outlined or planned, but I wouldn’t call them “active” yet (and besides, I have to get through these other works first!). My 2015 goal is to finish all active works in progress before really digging into the next wave of planned projects. I’m really excited in particular about The Curiosity Killers, Blood Makes Noise (an urban fantasy novel), and the horror/mystery/urban fantasy novella The Skittering, which may just be the next work in The Red Eye series!

What I’m doing

In just seven weeks, I’ll be done with a graduate certificate in instructional design. This has been a challenging program, but I just adore it. I can now toss around fancy terms like “learner-centered teaching,” “course management system,” and “beyond bullet-point design” like a pro.

I’m also spending a lot of time with the kitten my husband and I adopted late last summer. She is a whirlwind and—parental bias aside—insanely cute. If you don’t already follow me on Instagram, head over there for an embarrassing amount of kitten-related amateur photography.

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30 July 2014 · 3:53 pm

What I’m working on

I owe this blog some posts about my time this spring at both the Pennsylvania Literary Festival and the In Your Write Mind book signing, but while I sort through all the amazingness that was those events, I thought I’d stall with an update on my works in progress.

What am I working on?
– Three different horror short stories
– Two science fiction short stories
– A fantasy flash fiction story
– A new edition of my short story chapbook Grinning Cracks with new cover art, as well as an abridged audiobook edition
– Three different urban fantasy novels and one novella (two of which are set in The Red Eye universe)
– Four different YA novels of various subgenres
– Two different science fiction novels, one of which is my MFA thesis, The Curiosity Killers
– A literary fiction novel
– A non-fiction writing craft book on drabble writing
– A non-fiction writing craft book on speed writing
– An academic non-fiction book on gender and media

This might explain my recent bout of insomnia, actually. I have too many ideas swirling in the brain, and when I’m trying to rest it all keeps me up. In addition to all these things, I keep a file on my phone for new ideas, those nagging bits of story that you can’t write right now but you have to document lest they’re lost. Yeah, that file is ridiculous, but it has actually gotten me through some idea droughts in the past. I heartily recommend that every writer with a smart phone keep such a notepad file and mine it when you’re feeling stuck.

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15 June 2014 · 2:41 pm

Full List of Fiction Publications, 2010-2014

A friend recently asked for a full list of my publications to date and where he could find everything, so instead of pointing to a bunch of older entries, I thought I would create a new list with fresh links. These are my fiction publications only; most of my non-fiction work were newspaper articles written for the Dayton City Paper between 2005 and 2008, which unfortunately pre-date their web site’s current archive. I may archive my own pieces myself here at a later date via some sort of “Throwback Thursday” sort of thing. When you add all my fiction and non-fiction credits together to date, I reached fifty this year.

Since the last time I looked through my old fiction credits, several publications have gone out of print, which I have noted below. I have two older chapbooks—Curiosities and Creatures and Ages and Aliens—that were limited edition and are now no longer available, but the entire contents of them are collected in Grinning Cracks, along with pieces exclusive to that volume. I’m currently planning an updated edition of Grinning Cracks, with a print edition to be re-released in September of ’14 and production to commence on an audiobook in early 2015. The currently out-of-print stories will be collected in the new edition.

– Novels
• The Red Eye. Alliteration Ink. April 2014. Print and electronic. Available through all major online retailers or direct from publisher.

– Novellas
• “We Shadows Have Offended.” Etopia Press. Novella, released October 2011. Electronic. Kindle or Nook.

– Novelettes
• “The House on Concordia Drive.” Alliteration Ink. April 2014. Print and electronic. Available through all major online retailers or direct from publisher.

– Short Stories
• “Method Writing.” Night Hunters. Static Movement Press. Short story in anthology collection. In press.
• “Dharma.” The Grotesquerie: An Anthology of Women in Horror. Mocha Memoirs Press. Short story in anthology collection. February 2014. Electronic and Print.
• “Harmonia Axyridis.” 100 Worlds. Dreamscape Press. Short story in anthology collection. October 2013. Electronic and Print.
• “Chapter Six.” Weird Year. October 2013. Web.
• “The Storytellers.” Flash Fiction World. October 2013. Web. OUT OF PRINT
• “The Found Girl.” wordhaus. July 2013. Web. Also included in their anthology wordhaus Best of 2013.
• “Doomed.” Sidekicks! Alliteration Ink. Short story in anthology collection. March 2013. Electronic and Print. Available through all major online retailers or direct from publisher.
• “The Curiosity Killers.” Word River Literary Review. 4.1 (2012): 173-8. Print.
• “Bargain.” Farther Stars Than These. April 2012. Web.
• “She Lets Her Ladder Down.” Twenty or Less Press. March 2012. Electronic.
• “Iannic-ann-ôd.” Dark Fire Fiction. January 2012. Web.
• “The Lovers.” Daily Love. December 2011. OUT OF PRINT as of April 3, 2014.
• “Sparkling Teeth and Sacrifices.” Once Bitten, Never Die. Wicked East Press. Short story in anthology collection, released December 2011. Print.
• “Choleric.” Quarterlife Quarterly Volume 2. Summer 2011. Web.
• “Incubo.” Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine Summer 2011. Print.
• “Le Bel Homme Sans Confiance.” Iron Bound Magazine June 2011. Web.
• “Seasonal Affective Disorder.” Theory Train Magazine, issue #2, 14 May 2011. Print and Electronic.
• “Arcus Senilis.” Scribal Tales Magazine April 2011. OUT OF PRINT as of April 3, 2014.
• “The Wyrmen.” Aoife’s Kiss Magazine March 2011. Print.
• “Phlegmatic.” Diverse Voices Quarterly January 2011. Web.
• “But I Love Her.” The Fringe Magazine January 2011. Web.
• “Of Shreds and Patches.” Bending Spoons November 2010. OUT OF PRINT as of April 3, 2014.
• “The Death of Ed Goshi.” Aphelion Magazine November 2010. Web.
• “The Architect.” Yesteryear Fiction September 2010. Web.
• “Regression.” Golden Visions Magazine July 2010. OUT OF PRINT as of April 3, 2014.

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23 May 2014 · 11:06 am

#PALitFest!

Next week, I’ll be appearing at the Pennsylvania Literary Festival, along with a lot of fabulous authors of a variety of genres. The keynote speaker is John Dixon, author of Phoenix Island, which was the inspiration behind the CBS series Intelligence, starring Josh Holloway. Lots of authors, faculty, alumni, and students from Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular fiction M.F.A. program will be appearing, including horror authors Michael A. Arnzen, Lawrence C. Connolly, Jason Jack Miller, and Stephanie Wytovich; science fiction and fantasy authors Ann Kopchik and K. Ceres Wright, and suspense author Randall Silvis. Leading the charge is science fiction author Heidi Ruby Miller, who just released Book 1 in her Ambassadora series, Marked By Light. I will be there to read excerpts from the first two volumes in my Red Eye series, The House on Concordia Drive and The Red Eye. I’ll also be on a panel discussing feminism in genre fiction, alongside Kopchik, J.L. Gribble, Carole Waterhouse, and Christina Fisanick.

This is one of my first such events on the other side of the microphone, as it were. I’ve done several readings/signings on panels with other Alliteration Ink authors. I also used to host a semi-regular reading series at a local coffeehouse, where I served as organizer, master of ceremonies, and read some of my own work, and I attend writing-related events and workshops as a student all the time. But I look at this event as an unofficial launch party for The Red Eye, in part, and it’s great to be experiencing such a thing with so many Seton Hill folks; this is my writing family in many ways, and the greater Pittsburgh area is becoming a second home.

There are events for folks of all ages, musical performances, and much to do every day, so come on out to the Uniontown, PA Mall, Friday May 30th-Sunday June 1. Hope to see you there!

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29 April 2014 · 9:46 am

What’s up with needing characters to be likable?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about novelists—particularly female authors—feeling the need to make characters “likable,” and that perhaps one difference between literary and popular or genre fiction is that in the former, readers don’t necessarily expect to like/relate to/want to hang out with a character, whereas in the latter readers react badly if they don’t find a character (particularly a protagonist) likable. Furthermore, for a female author of a female main character, the pressure to create a likable protagonist seems greater.

So what’s wrong with women writing unlikable, complicated fictional people? And why as readers must we be so bent on this intangible, positive quality? I would point to a great many wonderful characters who aren’t so likable but who have achieved a hallowed status in fiction, both classic and contemporary: Holden Caulfield, Don Draper, Sherlock Holmes, Severus Snape, Walter White, every character in Gone Girl, every character in The Great Gatsby…and a great many figures of tragedy in Shakespeare are, at their heart, ridiculously unlikable. In fact, tragic flaws stem from personality failings, many of which are significant enough to make a reader or viewer seriously question the character’s worth. Furthermore, some characters we associate with “breakout” status—the Fonzies, the Michael Kelsos, et al—may elicit comic relief and fan adoration, but think about whether those characters would actually work front and center. Half the reason we love Daryl and Michonne on The Walking Dead is how sparingly and effectively they’re used. Would we really want to see them as the sole protagonist? Main character status for someone flawed, funny, and dangerous is bound to suddenly show their flaws more fully, which will then render them less likable. If Samantha were the lead in Sex and the City, she would be seen in a very negative light by viewers looking to castigate her freewheeling attitude. As one of an ensemble, however, she is funny and permitted her perceived flaws, so long as she doesn’t sully the slightly more sympathetic Carrie too much.

If we commit the literary sin of putting a complicated person front and center in a piece of genre fiction, we are asking audiences to read for character as well as plot, and this is where the discomfort happens. The supposition is that readers of genre fiction read for the story—the plot, the worldbuilding—but that only readers of literary fiction read for character, to explore the nuances of the human condition in all its real, raw agony. But why must it be all or nothing, one or the other? What’s wrong with writing about a social misfit but injecting that character into a piece of genre fiction? If readers are comfortable with a speculative fiction setting, for example, they’re already able to suspend enough disbelief to buy vampires, space exploration, or alternate histories. Why is it then a leap to also wade through an unreliable narrator, a series of extreme personal failings, or other forms of imperfection? Is this supposed preference for relatable characters a new phenomenon? Culturally, we’re eating up stories about zombie apocalypses, dystopian societies, wars between monster-beings, and worlds being brought to their ends by technology and invasion. We seem comfortable with exploring complete destruction of the very world we inhabit. And yet it is apparently too much to bear to explore that landscape alongside an alcoholic, a narcissist, a whiner, a jerk, a cheater, liar, bigot, criminal, or sociopath.

Really?

To me, characters who are perfect or only barely flawed are unrealistic. And because I write speculative fiction, where reality is absent in the elements that drive the story, I feel I must retain a shred of reality in those things unrelated to the fantastical components. Thus, in an urban fantasy novel where telekinesis and witchcraft exist, I create characters who have realistic day jobs, failed relationships, and quirks and failings that flesh them out and make them seem real. I might also add things that make them partially or wholly appealing, but I don’t expect audiences to focus on one or the other of those attributes but instead to take them as a whole. Just like with real life individuals, I suppose I assume some members of the audience will find that person appealing and some won’t, but it won’t necessarily hinder their collective ability to go along for the storytelling ride. I wouldn’t want to hang out with Jesse Pinkman, for example, but I rooted for him to stay alive at the end of Breaking Bad. I would loathe Sherlock Holmes as a real person, but I want him to solve every case. Wanting a fictional character to succeed in overcoming adversity does not mean we advocate their behavior, identity, or the approach they take in solving their problems. It means we are engaged in the storytelling give-and-take between author and reader and allowing ourselves an experience. To be unwilling to participate in that process if we don’t think we’d want to meet the character outside the pages of the book or the confines of the screen or stage is to limit our worldview to only the ideas that confirm our present state of mind. I would argue that fiction is better than that—it doesn’t always give us what we want, but sometimes it gives us what we need.

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13 April 2014 · 6:25 pm

Thought experiment

Recently while doing a rather repetitive task, my mind began to wander and I thought of how uninteresting the story of the hour spent doing this activity would be. My imagination began running away with itself, and I began to wonder the following.

What if you spent an entire year specifically eschewing anything boring? In fact, what if you took that a step further and were determined to only doing things that–when told later–would make for truly the most exciting stories? When you then look back on your life in that one year, how different from your present life would it be twelve months later?

I feel on one hand like this would be a very dangerous experiment, of course, but it would make for a truly fascinating short-term memoir. It also perhaps smacks of the “I want it now” mentality of the times we live in. We expect excitement or at least an alleviation from boredom every minute of every day, and that’s neither realistic nor practical. Still, I have to admit liking a culture where waiting in line is no longer interminable, so long as you have a fully-charged cell phone, and where many of the most time- and labor-consuming clerical tasks are automated or simpler.

More broadly, I’m usually quite fascinated with books about people taking on challenges like this, whether it be committing to optimism or walking across a continent or making all of Julia Child’s recipes or what have you. The common ground with all such writing and doing is twofold. First, it’s the actual act of wanting to do something strange and different, to shake up your life and use it as some sort of example for others of how you, too, can be crazy in a confined, usually safe, way. And two, it’s the further act of then memorializing the experience as a memoir. Not of your life, not an organic work looking back on a specific time, but a constructed one, wherein you seek to document that which you also create. As a memoir subgenre, it’s kind of fascinating, and if also used as an act of activism (as with something like Super Size Me, for example) it can also say larger and broader things about society and culture and be an agent of change.

Am I brave enough to ever take something like this on? I don’t know. Perhaps with a safe experiment like that pursued for a shorter amount of time, I could embark on my constructed memoir idea with essays covering weeks instead of months. A journey of a thousand miles, as they say, begins with a single step.

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30 March 2014 · 2:08 pm

Big Publishing Milestone

The House on Concordia DriveMy urban fantasy novel The Red Eye and its prequel novelette The House on Concordia Drive (both 2014, Alliteration Ink) mark the publication of my 49th and 50th pieces of writing.

I didn’t actually realize I hit the big five-oh until I started working on some bio/promo things for querying something else. Suddenly I saw that my list had grown, and I decided to add number bullets.

The Red EyeThere it was. 49. 50. FIFTY.

For someone who used to write nonsensical (yet somehow endless) Dickensian soap operas every summer growing up, for someone who’s never quite felt “good enough” as any sort of artist (see my failed attempts as musician and painter), this is kind of huge. So even though I demur a bit and really don’t always feel like the most confident writer, I have to kind of say, “Good for me” for once.

I’ve had help. Every English teacher, from high school, college, and my M.A. program, and my colleagues in several arenas of my life certainly inspired this love of words and forcing them together into sentences and stories. I’ve had more specific help from the members of my writing group, my M.F.A. program classmates and mentors, spouse, and various helpful editors and publishers, some of whom even helped in their rejections.

Every day, I encounter something that makes me a better writer, whether it’s formal notes and edits on a story or something I read in which the author makes a particularly deft turn of phrase (or a not-so-deft one, one I then take pains not to emulate). I’ve learned from others’ success and failures, learned from others’ reactions and support and very occasionally the lack thereof, truth be told. But it’s both the acceptances and the rejections that make a piece of writing better, and I think sometimes in life it’s acceptances and rejections on a larger scale that make us better people, stronger people, more resilient people.

I was excited to figure out that I’d hit 50. A few years ago, I had a goal of trying to get 35 before I turned 36 (which I did do, but just barely). Once I stopped counting, something interesting happened. With this arbitrary goal gone, I just kept going, without real target in mind other than to keep writing and then sending things out. Once I stopped counting, I racked up more credits than when I was counting. Kind of funny how that works, huh?

The love of the craft is the goal, of course. That’s the real lesson. If I were only in this game for any reason other than the need to write stories, no matter the outcome, I would have either never started in the first place or kind of petered out after meeting that magic number. Instead, I just kept chugging away. The placement of a piece now is secondary to the thrill of really, finally getting a story into tip-top shape. Getting a full-length novel into truly tip-top shape is also paramount, which explains why The Red Eye was first due last fall but delayed a bit—I wanted it to be as perfect as I could make it more than I wanted to actually hold the thing in my hands.

When you do something for the love of it, some of the other stuff will come, too. Maybe not the way you think, the amount you think, the timing you think, but something will, and it’ll often be all the lovelier because you didn’t crave it quite so desperately but instead cherished it enough to wait until it was really meant to be.

Not gonna lie, though. Now I’m wondering if I can’t hit 60 in the not-too-distant future.

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12 February 2014 · 4:28 pm

Women in Horror Month

February is Women in Horror Month. Even though I don’t only write horror, it is one of the genres I read widely and write frequently. I always consider myself a “speculative fiction generalist,” but to many folks that primarily means science fiction. Horror was the first genre I was widely published in, however, and horror novels were the first pieces of adult contemporary fiction I read without a school assignment involved.

As part of WIHM, Mocha Memoirs Press has released a collection of women in horror, entitled The Grotesquerie, edited by Eden Royce. My short story “Dharma” appears in this anthology, alongside pieces by Michele Garber, Chantal Boudreau, M. Von Schussler, Kris Freestone, Marianne Halbert, Nicole DeGennaro, Rie Sheridan Rose, Lisamarie Lamb, M.J. Pack, Marcia Colette, Nicky Peabody, Caryn Studham Sartorus, Violet Tempest, Jessica Housand-Weaver, Selah Janel, Evelyn Deshane, Kierce Sevren, Carrie Martin, Lilliana Rose, Ekaterina Tikhoniouk, and Vivian Caethe. I’m honored to be a part of this collection, which is available in both paperback and ebook.

There are more women writing horror than you think, but in this post-Anne Rice/Stephenie Meyer world we think more of paranormal romance or quasi-literary horror, or they’ve been mostly writing for the YA market. But I think there’s a need for more women writing adult horror, and doing so in particular ways that perhaps speak to either a feminist mindset or at least a mindset that acknowledges that gender itself can be fodder for some reason interesting discussions of identity and terror. Some of the most disturbing stories I’ve ever read are by women.

My own horror mostly involves themes of transmogrification. Not shape-shifting usually, not often a voluntary or magical transformation, but the sheer body horror of physical nature altered in terrifying, painful, and often permanent ways. While certainly male horror authors deal with similar subjects, I see this theme less frequently in their work, and when I do there isn’t quite as much focus on the sensations associated with such changes. Is this because women are uniquely suited to writing about this concept, due to a deeper connection to the body? Obviously everyone’s body goes through transformations over time due to normal things like puberty and aging, but only women’s bodies also go through monthly changes and the potential change of pregnancy. Women’s bodies, too, are judged more harshly in the broader cultural landscape for undergoing changes, as our bodies are co-opted as being more an object than an identity or functional container/conveyer owned by individual women. Do we own ourselves, or do governments and photographs and media outlets own us? Are we the sum of how we choose to present ourselves to the world or are we merely things? The idea of no longer being in control of our physicality is terrifying, and it’s something that I think is a uniquely female experience.

As the month goes on, I’ll be discussing a few female horror authors’ work and talking more about The Grotesquerie collection.

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4 February 2014 · 10:09 am

Minor Short-Term Illness and Working from Home

While I do have a day job, writing is still part of my professional endeavors. A recent battle with a nasty flu had me thinking about whether or not I should be trying to write while sick, which led me to ponder those who are about to write full-time or work from a home office in any other field.

For independent contractors who don’t get a non-hourly salary, working when you’re sick may be a necessity. But I can tell you that in the midst of the worst of my fever dreams, congested head, and muddled brain, I would absolutely not have been able to write a single coherent word. Novelists and those who teach long-form fiction writing will all agree that a first draft is garbage anyway and the real writing comes in revision, but do you really want to have to slog through a medicine-fogged first draft? Why make this even more of an uphill battle if you don’t want to?

Certain kinds of illness can still be fought through, of course, and if writing actually helps you take your mind off the pain, go for it. What I’m advocating here is simply not beating yourself up over not working while sick. I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I love while I had the flu, including totally non-writing-related activities, but I knew I’d be able to resume them once I felt better.

The write-every-day advice (which I think is still vital to a healthy output of work and maintenance of your skills) is only good if you allow for the same kinds of things you would if you worked a 9-to-5 gig, such as sick leave and vacation days. Give yourself a break. The blank page will be there when you feel better.

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