"Crazy Busy" is the new normal

In spite of life being crazy busy with the new puppy, I managed to get my zombie fairytale story polished and sent off well before the deadline.

My next project will be a little different: this time, the monsters are your neighbors. I'm currently working on a short story about middle America and its reaction to "the war on terror." The anthology I'm targeting closes at the end of the month, so I'm crunched for time . . . again. Good thing I do my best work under pressure.

The presentation I gave on writing horror seemed to go over well with our local writing group. I think everyone had fun exploring their dark side. Eventually I might turn these presentation into some sort of ebook for writers.

I also found a new well of creative inspiration: prompts on Twitter. I set up Hootsuite to collect any tweets that come through with the hashtags: "writingprompt" and "prompt," so now I have a stream in Hootsuite that's exclusively prompts (though the occasional complaint about friends who are chronically late occasionally shows up in the stream). If you find yourself staring at the blank page, you might want to check out those tags!

Now I've got a whole slew of prompts waiting to spark my muse . . . I just have to make the time to use them!

~ ~ ~
Recently finished reading:



The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror


The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks

Currently Reading:



The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

New addition

Although I did great for the whole first part of the month of Story-A-Day May, the last week was a bust. I think I got a story done for the last Monday of the month, but nothing for the rest of that week. Oh well, there's always next year.

Part of the reason the last week was so busy was because we were preparing for a big anniversary weekend. We planned on spending the evening at the casino in Hankinson on Friday (our anniversary), coming back Saturday, and then taking my parents fishing on Sunday. And we did all that . . . with a slight addendum.

Every time we go south, it's become a tradition to stop in Fargo and play with the puppies at Great Pets. I was especially looking forward to it this time because I lost my dog to a brain tumor a few months ago. Hubby had asked if he could get me a dog as a present for our anniversary, but I told him, "No. I'm not ready for another dog. Besides, I'll never find another dog I love as much as I loved Missy."

So, we stopped at Great Pets on Saturday, and they had a BUNCH of puppies. I decided to stop and play with one litter they'd just gotten in (about 10 pups). After I played with them a few minutes, hubby asked the storekeeper if we could take one out and play with it in the puppy area. I picked a black, block-headed looking girl pup to play with (thinking she would be the least likely one to tug on my heart strings). As the lady grabbed that one, she also grabbed another black pup. If one pup is fun, two is a blast, right?

And then something unexpected happened . . .

I fell in love with that second pup, the one I hadn't even asked to play with. Something just clicked.

And this is my new pup, Roscoe Pascal.

I really don't know how this happened. I wasn't even a dog person before my dog Missy. Now I'm a dog person, but I'm a hardcore "purebred-German-Shepard-and-always-girl-dogs" kind of dog lover. Or I was.

He's 1/4 Shar Pei, 1/4 English Bulldog, 1/4 Boxer, 1/4 Springer Spaniel (how does THAT happen?). He's jet black with four or five white hairs on his chest and a cinnamon-colored ticking on a few spots on his back. And when he looks up at you, his floppy-jowls and down-turned mouth make him look like a Grouper fish.

And I adore him!

So now I'm trying to juggle "writing time" with "puppy-time." I can't wait until he gets a little older and I can be working away on my latest manuscript in my writing room with him snoring peacefully on a blanket in the corner.

For now, though, I have to work in my writing time during his naps.

Story-A-Day Progress, Week 4

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Still going strong on Story-A-Day May . . . but (and I never thought I'd say this) I'm ready for some revision!

It's not that I haven't loved focusing on writing new short stories. I'm just getting impatient. I have projects I put on the back burner this month that I'm ready to get back to work on. And I'm anxious to work on revising some of the stories I've written this month.

I've had a great time with Story-A-Day May, but I'm glad it's drawing to a close.

~ ~ ~

Last week's Story-A-Day stories:

May 21st: "Spring Break" (apocalyptic horror);

May 22nd: "Jellyfish Summer" (horror);

May 23rd: "Tropical Getaway" (horror)-- I hate the title, love the story;

May 24th: "The Truth Hurts" (psychological horror)-- be glad you can't read minds;

May 25th: "Everybody Needs a Hobby" (horror).

~ ~ ~

Recently finished reading:



The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew


Currently reading:



The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 2008

Special Edition: The VBA Award

I received the Versatile Blogger Award from KG Arndell, dark fantasy writer! Thanks so much, KG!

The rules of the award state that you need to nominate 15 other blogs AND tell seven things about yourself.


The 15 Blogs I pass the award on to:

1. Coffee Spoons:  Devan Burton  (http://thedlburton.blogspot.com/)

2. Electric Shock:  Nicole Easterwood   (http://niceasterwood.blogspot.com/)

3. Alex Carrick’s Blog  (http://www.alexcarrick.com/)

4. The League of Extraordinary Writers   (http://leaguewriters.blogspot.com/2012/05/wonder.html)

5. 1st BOOKS: Stories of How Writers Get Started:  Meg Waite Clayton (http://megwaiteclayton.com/1stbooks/about/)

6. L’Aussie Writer:  Denise Covey  (http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com/)

7. Fi's Magical Writing Haven  (http://fionajphillips.blogspot.com/)

8. Practicing Writing:  Erika Dreifus  (http://www.erikadreifus.com/blogs/practicing-writing/)

9. Kelly Hashway  (http://kellyhashway.blogspot.com/)

10. Mystery Writing is Murder:  Elizabeth Craig (http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/)

11. The Bookshelf Muse  (http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/)

12. Writing Spirit:  Julie Isaac  (http://blog.writingspirit.com/)

13. Kristen Lamb’s blog  (http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/)

14. Jolina Petersheim’s blog  (http://www.thehappybookblog.blogspot.com/)

15. Start Your Novel (http://www.startyournovel.com/)

Congratulations!

Seven Things About Me:

1. I never learned to swim. I've learned to float (not tread water, just float) well enough I probably wouldn't die in the water, as long as I was rescued before I sunburned to a crisp. It explains why so many of my horror stories involve water.

2. I used to run a shelter for unwanted ferrets and I invented a variant of the "Duck Soup" cure for ailing ferrets--but I call my miracle cure "Beefcake" after a product Cartman uses in an episode of South Park.

3. I once had a buck charge me while I was out deer hunting. My gun was empty at the time, so I was going to turn it around and bonk him on the head with it. Luckily, it didn't come to that.

4. I worked on a road construction crew one summer, years and years ago, and I had more brushes with death that summer than I've had the entire rest of my life . . . so far.

5. I collect winged felines: cats and lions, etc., with bird wings and bat wings.

6. When I was ten or eleven, I turned the extra room in my parent's house into a nature museum, full of fossils, animal skeletons, fur and feathers, all appropriately labelled with their genus and species names.

7. I went through a Madonna-phase as a teenager (but hopefully all the photos were lost when we moved).

Thanks again for the award. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog posts!

Story-A-Day Progress, Week 3

I'm still going strong on Story-A-Day May.

Last week's stories were:

May 14th: "Reality Bites" (horror);

May 15th: "The Isle" (horror)-- definitely going into the revision queue because it freaked me out just writing it;

May 16th: "Infestation" (horror)-- I needed a shower and a can of Raid after this one;

May 17th: "Every Seven Years" (horror)-- another bug story;

May 18th: "Father Goodman" (horror).

In addition to doing Story-A-Day-May, I'm also trying to finish a short story for a looming anthology deadline, revise two other short stories, AND work on a presentation on "writing horror fiction" for our writer's group. Whew!

~ ~ ~
Recently finished reading:



Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen


Currently reading:



The Dry Grass of August, by Anna Jean Mayhew




The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008

Story-A-Day Progress, Week 2

I made it through another week of Story-A-Day-May. This week's stories were:

May 7th: "The Piper" (horror);

May 8th: "Paul Bunyan & the Zombie Winter" (weird horror-comedy-folk tale; no way I'm finding a market for this story!);

May 9th: "Little Green Men" (horror with a dash of sci-fi);

May 10th: "Cold Snap" (horror);

May 11th: "Deja Vu" (horror);

I like at least two of the stories ("The Piper" and "Cold Snap") and I'll probably put them in the revision queue for June. But first I have to get through May!
~ ~ ~

Recently finished reading:






Currently reading:

Story A Day Progress...And Ponies

The first week of Story A Day is over and I did pretty well. It wasn't easy, of course, and I had to burn the midnight oil a few times, but I did it. Of course, I admit that I'm one of those people who always has more things to do than I have time for, and my "to do list" is rarely ever complete.

The stories I wrote this week are:

May 1st: "SALIGIA" (horror);

May 2nd: "Solstice" (fantasy, but with a little sci-fi crossover);

May 3rd: "The Emperor's New Clothes" (psychological thriller);

May 4th: "Human Error" (apocalyptic horror).

I'm only doing Story A Day on a Monday through Friday basis, so I took the weekend off and went fishing.

This year, I remembered to stop and take photos of one of my favorite "points of interest" around the lake. It's some sort of a horse ranch, which is unusual enough in my area, but what makes these horses really interesting in how unusual they are. They are bigger than most ponies I've seen, but they are very stocky and square-jawed, have ridiculously thick manes and tales, and grow one heck of a winter coat, which you can see some of the remnants of in the picture. Some of the others had more of their winter coats left, and it's really woolly and makes them look almost prehistoric.

One of these days, I hope a rancher is out there working when I come by on my way to the fishing area. Then I'll be able to find out more about these horses. For now, I will have to be satisfied just admiring them from a distance.