Horror Story Forthcoming in 9Tales Told in the Dark

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I received word this morning that my short horror story, "Sleep Study," will be published in Bride of Chaos's next issue of 9Tales Told in the Dark. It's a very fun horror magazine published exclusively on Kindle. The next issue should be up around June or July.

In the meantime, check out their latest issue here!

 

Popping In, Popping Out

Hi there. Quick update and some thoughts.

This post is mostly to say I'm still here, plugging away at my novel-in-progress, and it's a blast. The more I work with this manuscript, the more excited I am to get it into the world. I'm talking about Deathform, of course, which you can read about under "My Writing" on this site. My beta readers have given great feedback, so I'm finishing up a new round of edits. Hoping to begin querying agents and publishers in the next few weeks. Would love to have more news then.

Because this last semester was a nightmarish experiment in overworking myself at three universities, moving to a new apartment, getting more involved with my union, and various other adventures, I haven't had much time to think about this website, and unfortunately had little time to dedicate to writing. Now the heat is off, and I’m feeling a bit more sane, mostly because I have time to write again.

Piece of advice: Be kind to yourself when you need to focus on real life. I’ve known for a while that I’m miserable when I’m not writing. But, just sometimes, you need to prioritize financial stability. Money is a serious obstacle for aspiring writers. Nix that. It's an issue for all writers, aspiring or otherwise. All artists, in fact. For roughly three months, all I could do was slog through 60+ student essays a week, then let my brain recuperate while binging on Netflix. On top of that, as an adjunct, I wasn't getting paid very well, and two of the three universities I slaved for haven't asked me back in the spring. Well, one did, but it was about two days before the semester started, and I've already taken a part-time job I enjoy and that doesn't give me homework. Anyway. You can (and should) read more about the adjunct crisis elsewhere.

So, the past semester was a learning experience for me. After putting my writing on the back burner and having virtually nothing to show for it, I won't be doing it again. Without sounding too ranty, I'm done working for universities that hire you for one semester and dump you. It's not only disrespectful, insulting, or harmful, but it's downright fucked up (to use fancy ethical terminology), and I aim to do what I can to help others in that situation by continuing to speak out and work with my union.

In the meantime, I'll be hitting the gas on some new projects. Now that Deathform is getting close to the light at the end of the tunnel, I'd like to turn my attentions back to "Frankenstein Love" and its possible sequels. The first novella has been done for a while, but I aim to self-publish it (probably) and the sequel at the same time. No promises, though. Sometimes projects fall through the cracks because another rises up to take their place, and we're all better for it. Who knows. Self-publishing may not be the right route for that series, either.

Also on my radar: sci fi / horror stories. I'd like to get some shorter works done this year, but it's a form I've always struggled with. The first story I wrote in a college-level writing class turned into a 70 page novella about which my professor (now a colleague) said, "I think this has to be a novel to work the way you want it to."

So there's that.

Still, I'd like to flex my short story muscles a bit. If it doesn't work out, well. One of the first gifts my fiance ever gave me was a drawing of Cormac McCarthy along with the quote, "Even if what you're working on doesn't go anywhere, it will help with the next thing you're doing. Make yourself available for something to happen."

Sound advice, that.

One last thing: Expect less posts like this in the future. They're time consuming and a little distracting, and I tried the whole public journal thing when I was a moody teenager. It didn't work out. I'll drop in now and then if I have something to say; otherwise, feel free to follow me on Twitter for some inane non sequiturs, or follow me on Facebook for the occasional public post. If I go quiet, it's because I'm working. Please knock.

Some Things That Happened And Some Things That Are Happening

The fall semester has begun.

I am teaching at three schools. Five classes total.

It's going to be a lot of work.

It is already a lot of work.

About two weeks ago, I finished the second draft of Deathform, and it is a blast. I'll soon be taking it through another minor editing phase before handing it off to my beta readers.

I cannot express without many exclamation points how excited I am to share this project.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are moving to a new apartment exactly 8 days from today, and I think my head might fall off of my body. It may have fallen off already and been packed into one of our many cardboard boxes. I am not sure.

Working on a new short horror story. Haven't settled on a title yet. 

Would you tell me if you saw me walking around and my body did not have a head on it?

A ghost kept poking me in the thigh last night, waking me from a deep sleep in the early hours of the morning. I think the ghost does not want me to be well rested. 

There's got to be a better way to find a happy medium in regards to air conditioned buildings. Sweaters are one option. Carrying around a little space heater is another.

I don't know that it was a ghost that woke me up, but I'm pretty sure it was a ghost, you know?

So0o0o0o yeah. How are things with you?

What's all this hubbub about a "second Earth"?

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The title of this post isn't some kind of rhetorical question that I'm about to answer with a sense of journalistic poise--ah, let's explain why this is a huge discovery. It's a question I'm posing because, well, I'm confused.

Obviously, news about a newly discovered "habitable zone" planet in a distant star system is going around social media this week, stirring up discussions around the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, planets worth exploring, our humble size compared to the vastness of the universe, etcetera. But we've discovered plenty of exoplanets already, many of them in the "goldilocks zone." Just take a look at this Wikipedia page.

So why is this particular discovery blowing up across social media?

Maybe it has something to do with the terminology researchers are using to describe it. A "bigger, older cousin to Earth" and what-not. In terms of size, it's the most like Earth that we've discovered so far, so I guess that's interesting. Or maybe something else is going on. Something that makes me a little squirmy. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all about astronomy news being in the mainstream, especially when many people get genuinely excited about it, but part of me has to wonder if we have so lost touch with what's happening in astronomy that this discovery feels like big news when it kind of isn't. Researchers have been at this for a while, making similar discoveries for years. In fact, best estimates put the number of Earth-sized exoplanets in the habitable zones of other stars around 40 billion. And that's just in the Milky Way. We've found one. Neat, I guess.

Maybe I'm being a bit of a curmudgeon. My car is in the shop, after all, and I think I'm fighting a cold. Not the best time to post something to the internet. But, frankly, this feels like a minor form of sensationalism to me. And maybe that's nitpicking. Maybe I should shut up and be happy every time science is in the mainstream, even if terms like "God particle" and "Earth 2.0" get thrown around alongside artist renderings of planets that don't actually exist. Okay. I will try. But you know what I'm really afraid of? I'm afraid of science news turning into the Weather Channel website.

"SHOCKING NEW FINDINGS PREDICT LARGE ROCKS MOVING VERY FAST THROUGH SPACE."

"EARTH 2.0 DISCOVERED. YOUR TWIN MAY LIVE THERE, BUT WITH A SCARY MUSTACHE!"

Yuck.

Life on a Comet? Hmm.

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Well, this is pretty interesting, if just another mystery we don't have the ability to solve right now. Seems a couple of scientists are proposing that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (the one with the Philae probe on its surface) is displaying some signs of biological life.

Check out the article right here.

What's potentially troubling about this report is that one of the scientists making this proposal sounds a bit bitter that his proposed equipment didn't make it aboard the project before it launched. Could this be an instance of one scientist trying a little too hard to throw an "I told you so" in the face of colleagues, or is it that this person is very focused on searching for signs of life, and is therefore one of the first to notice them on the comet? I can't say, but it should be noted that this same scientist proposed that the flu pandemic of 1918 originated from an alien microbe. Seems a bit outlandish, yes?

Well, as things go in science, the most responsible thing to do in this case is keep investigating and wait for others to come to their own independent conclusions, then follow up with some real world investigation. Unfortunately, without the proper equipment, it might be a long long time (as in maybe never) before we get conclusive evidence about potential life on this particular comet.

What's Your #FinalPoem?

If the world were to end next week, what language would you want to leave behind? What's your final shout to the heavens? Your last written word? Janice Lee over at Enclave wants to know.

She's posting all received submissions, so long as they conform to the guidelines, which you can find right here. 

I love this project and the poems it has produced so far. Makes me wonder if every poem should be equivalent to a final poem. Why write it otherwise, you know? Having that designated space for apocalyptic poetry also creates a unique context for the words themselves. We are asked to weigh them against approaching oblivion. Everyone can understand that on some level, I hope.

I digress. My own final poem went live today. Read it here.

Suggested Reading for Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, and this book and the men it discusses are in the back of my mind. In the USA, we like to herald our veterans as heroes at sports venues and during commercial breaks, put nice bumper stickers on our cars, and pat ourselves on the back on our social media accounts, but too often veterans come back from war traumatized, conflicted, and bereft. I don't have a slew of friends who are veterans, but one of the few I did know killed himself earlier this year. I can't help feeling that his death might have been prevented if the system weren't so dysfunctional.

In Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of WWII in the Pacific, Gavin Daws doesn't just discuss the nightmares that came true for many POWs during WWII, but details the failure of the US government to help returning soldiers. Men came back and were told to suck it up and move on with their lives. Sure, it was the middle of the 20th Century. We like to excuse ourselves from that time period, saying psychology was poorly understood, but it's a well known fact that PTSD is stigmatized in the armed services even now. In other words, we are doing the same damn thing to our soldiers today.

Furthermore, after WWII,  the US had little interest in making Japanese perpetrators of war crimes pay, adding insult to injury in a very literal sense. Some were executed, but many were put in jails for around 10 years and then released. Many of the Japanese generals responsible for pervasive brutalities (widespread rape of civilians, beheadings, beatings, torture, starvation, slave labor, prisoners burned alive, medical experimentation, etc.) went on to become successful politicians. Modern Japanese textbooks do not discuss these things. Many people still deny that they occurred, as if thousands upon thousands of men and women just sort of vanished, I suppose. The emperor of Japan, who declared war on the US, was pardoned. Imagine if Hitler hadn't killed himself and the US decided to make him a trading partner.

I realize some of this might feel hyperbolic out of context. So all I can do is suggest that you do some research. Read this book and others like it. Pay attention to the injustices and stop getting caught up in right wing vs. left wing nonsense. Governments don't care about their people unless the people make them, regardless of party affiliations. The same goes for a country's servicemen and servicewomen.

We have a terrible track record of giving our vets the support they need. I don't know how to go about solving the problems other than to keep them alive through language. The more you understand military history--or history in general--the more you see the same mistakes repeated again and again. The only way to stop the cycle is by being conscious of it and holding our leaders responsible.

A Bunch of Science Links I Didn't Actually Read or Anything

I have tunnel vision. Not literally. I mean I am overwhelmed with working on the second draft of Deathform, starting a new job, and grading at the end of the semester. Still, I've spotted some interesting science articles floating around these here internets, and though I only have time to skim them, I thought I could share them all the same, along with a brief, half-assed synopsis. So here we go.

The Smithsonian realized that cosmic rays are, like, bad. This article says something like, "When you shoot a mouse full of irradiated junk, it doesn't do well at all." It goes on to describe how the irradiated mice of death do really poorly at pretty much everything.

I found an embedded link in there about plastic spaceships, too. This has to do with stopping astronauts from becoming irradiated mice. That seems interesting. I didn't read it even a little bit, so I am just picturing a giant Lego spaceship zipping through the void. Pretty cool.

Oh, and the only probe to ever explore Mercury done fell down. That's okay, though, because it was supposed to fall down. It took some pretty nifty pictures before it fell down. Honestly, Mercury is not a good place to go tanning because usually when you tan you don't want to start on fire.

I have no idea what this video is about. I saw it on Facebook, though, and someone shared it after I saw it the first time, so it must be good. The thumbnail looks like a guy is stroking someone else's arm, and the title promises that you can control other peoples' arms with your mind. This might have something to do with going up to a person and saying, "Hi. Could you please move your arm?" Mind control is freaky.

Elon Musk unveiled a thing. It's a battery. It goes on the wall. You put it on the wall and say to people who visit your house, "Check out my battery." They look at the battery and say, "You must be wealthy to afford such a battery." And you say in return, "Yes, I am wealthy. I love batteries. Batteries will save the world! I named this battery Elon Musk, after Elon Musk, the creator of this particular type of battery."

That's it for today's articles! Enjoy!

I just watched a good movie and this is inspired by that. "Cool," you say.

Movies inspire me. They inspire me as an artist and as a person. If you think about what a movie is, regardless of the budget, it’s a bit insane. Try describing the concept based on the physical realities of what it takes. “Well, it’s kinda like all these people standing around under really bright lights pretending to be other people, and someone records it, but when it’s edited and all the other stuff is added in like the soundtrack and colorization and it’s edited down, it’s like, um, this really cool story that comes together and makes sense and moves people."

Yeah, sure. Please go back on your medication.

It only comes to fruition because a whole lot of people work their asses off to make it happen.

So when I watch movies, it’s for entertainment but it’s also for inspiration. If a team of people can turn an idea—a writer’s concept—into this thing that I pop into my Blu-ray player and get absorbed into for two hours, then I can put a bunch of words into a document and take readers on a journey with language.

You can apply this to virtually anything you want to do, despite the hangups and all your fear. That might sound cheesy, but I believe it is inarguable.

Interactive Model of the Solar System

One of the best things about writing science fiction is challenging myself to get some of the science right. For Deathform, I'm playing it pretty loose when it comes to human technology, but I want the astronomy to be as accurate as possible. In the early stages of my research, I ran into this little gem, an interactive model of the solar system.

Pretty fun to spin them around and watch the calendar tick away. Grab a hold of Jupiter or maybe one of the dwarf planets and watch the Earth years fly like nothing.

I recommend changing the settings to "realistic." It's not all 100% to scale as far as I can tell, but gives you an idea how tiny these bodies are in the grand scheme of things.

Current Reading List

Here's what I'm going to be working through in the coming days/weeks/months, not necessarily in this order. Have recommendations? Send them my way! (I'd especially like to add more female writers to this list. I didn't plan for this to be a dudefest, but there it is.)

  • Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific, Gavan Daws. (as research for my novel in-progress)
  • Peckerwood, Jedidiah Ayres
  • The Silent Girls, Eric Rickstad
  • Black Gum, J David Osborne
  • Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
  • Twilight of the Wolves, Edward J. Rathke
  • The Fish and the Not Fish, Peter Markus
  • The Old Reactor, David Ohle
  • Theatre of Curious Acts, Cate Gardner
  • The Laughter of Strangers, Michael J Seidlinger
  • Skullcrack City, Jeremy Robert Johnson
  • Fluency, Jennifer Foehner Wells
  • 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill
  • The Guild of St. Cooper, Shya Scanlon (coming soon)

There are plenty more on my radar and in my e-reader, but these are yelling at me loudest.

What's on your current reading list, internet?

The Internet is Extra Annoying Today

If you are seeing this message, switch off, take a breath, run for the nearest window, jam it open, stick your head out, and get a whiff of reality. Listen to a bird or two and the wind. Note the color of the sky and the temperature of the air. Now remember that today is April Fools Day, and all of this is a joke. You are at work and you can't open the window because that's disruptive, or the windows don't open. Why the hell doesn't your place of business have windows that open? Why can't you take a moment to bird watch in the middle of an important meeting? "Hold the hell on!" you might shout. "Let's just take a minute to watch the goddamn birds." Shouldn't there be a time for this? If not during an important meeting, then when? Better not to dwell on it. Take out your phone. Scan your social media accounts. Anything going on? Here, a funny prank. Here, a lame prank. Here, a stagnating website. White screen, black text. Information. Endless information, oh god. Where is the nearest window, anyway? How far? My windows have plastic over them to seal out winter. It is April Fools Day and it is finally getting warm out, but it might be colder tomorrow, so better not to pull the plastic off. I rarely check the forecast. Just a joke in Central New York. Ha-ha, the sky is gray. Ha-ha, mounds of snow block every corner. I still need to get chairs for the balcony. It overlooks a beautiful parking lot. At least we have a balcony. Why are chairs so expensive? Plastic and fabric. Really? 25 dollars for plastic and fabric? 60 dollars? What? John Green is not writing a sequel to The Fault in Our Stars, dumbass. Stop taking everything so seriously. Who cares if you can afford your rent? Rent is sort of serious, I guess. You paid it yesterday. Forget about it. Today is April Fools Day. Be fooled. Fool someone. Fool yourself. If you are seeing this message, you are probably not in an important meeting. You can find a window that opens.