Thursday, October 30, 2014

Octoberfest 2014

(the view of neighbor's pumpkin patch from my living room window)
All summer long, while belting out fresh pages and finishing writing projects on my sun porch, our neighbor's pumpkin patch grew and put forth fruit, teasing my psyche with thoughts of Halloween while the trees still held onto their leaves.  One big, fat pumpkin swelled just outside my living room window, its lizard-green hide waiting for the weather to change, and the cold to turn it orange.

There's something bittersweet about this time  of year, especially here so far north in our new home town when the first chill manifests in August.  Summers in New Hampshire's North Country are too brief. I've always loved Halloween, dating back to my boyhood lived in the little house in the big woods, when my mother would broadcast the soundtrack from Dark Shadows down our remote country road to spook trick or treaters.  I love the particular golden bent of the light when it shifts, the colored leaves and their fragrance.  I even love the early twilight.  Right around the first of September, my pen gravitates toward the dark, and tales of ghosts, ghouls, and monsters are born.  This year was no different -- about a dozen first drafts, as of this writing.

(River Fire, 2013)
I love the house my small family purchased in 2013, and as the cold presses down from the mountains and the afternoons shorten, my instinct to nest and spend my days lost in writing deepens.  Every year at this time, the locals come out en masse for River Fire, in which the many rocky boom islands along the Androscoggin River are set ablaze. Hundreds of jack-o'-lanterns carved by kids and kids-at-heart are put on display on the walking bridge over the river.  This year, like our first here, we hosted a big buffet dinner for our writers' group pals and then set off to walk the bridge and watch the flames, where we met other group members, who then joined us back home for dessert.  All who attended had a blast, and I gathered more material for future use in stories short and long.

Throughout the month, I gave numerous interviews regarding "Comes the Rain", my short story appearance in the anthology Wrapped in Black -- to Michael G. Williams and Killion Slade, who both did fabulous jobs.  I also enjoyed an audio interview by the fine folks at Great Old Ones Publishing to coincide with the release of my next book, Tales From the Robot Graveyard, which creeps closer to reality.  Illness almost prevented me from attending the autumn writing retreat hosted by friends from my Southern New Hampshire group but thankfully didn't, and directly upon my return, we had our pipes and basement insulated against the gathering cold -- another of our upgrades to this wonderful old house.

In two days, I plan to dive headlong into the madness of National Novel Writing Month, in which I and zillions of others across the globe set forth to pen 50,000 words in thirty short days.  I tackled NaNoWriMo once before, and successfully wrote (and sold!) my novel in just three short weeks.  I hope to have similar success with my new fantasy novel idea, which jumped into my lap and has made me as excited as its predecessor.  More so, perhaps.

(Ozzie, snuggled down in the master bedroom)
November 1, the official start to NaNoWriMo, is expected to be cold, perhaps even snowy according to the local whether-men.  As stated, winters here are brutal and ominous.  Days take on a grayness that we countered last winter by keeping our happy home bright and warm.  I intend to do the same this year  -- helped along by playing a little game in which I plan to write numerous projects to conclusion that are set in summer months and hotter climates.  In fact, these last few weeks of 2014 are setting the stage for what I hope will be a very productive and happy 2015, what I've jokingly referred to as the 'Year of Writing Dangerously'.  In 2015, the mortgage will be paid off, I'll officially say goodbye to my 40s and hello to my 50s (where have the decades gone?), and I'll take a serious stab at finishing so many of the as-yet unwritten stories that have yet to find their THE ENDs throughout these many, many seasons.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Get WRAPPED IN BLACK!

Several years ago, I woke gasping for breaths that refused to come easily from a dream in which I, my late mother Diane, and my kid sister Lauren were cloistered inside my Grandmother Rachel's farmhouse on Foster's Pond, a magical, mysterious destination from my childhood that no longer exists in the real world.  In the dream, my grandmother was upstairs, trapped in a state between life and afterlife.  Outside, ominous storm clouds swirled directly over the house, and from those clouds a malevolent force descended, seeking to do my family harm.  We waited, eyes wide, as shadows passed by windows.  There was something dark and evil lurking just beyond the farmhouse's walls, and only my grandmother could stop it.

It was a vivid dream, complete with color and emotion, especially for my grandmother who once wrote for Highlights for Children and who has taught me some of the best lessons of my life as both a human being (my grandmother doesn't medicate, treats people with respect, wakes every morning with a smile) and a writer (she kept her ideas in a note card catalog that now sits in a place of honor in my Writing Room, didn't trust the human brain to remember everything, especially when the writer had multiple stories in progress). I wrote the story based upon the dream -- "Comes the Rain" -- and filed its longhand draft away, until I read the call for Sekhmet Press's latest call for manuscripts, Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult.  I pulled the draft out, edited it, and fired "Comes the Rain" off quickly (the deadline was fast approaching), and then on a memorable Tuesday night following my weekly writers' group meeting, I came home to a wonderful acceptance by editor Jennifer L. Greene. For a multitude of reasons, there's a special place in my heart for the story -- and also the anthology in which it is set to appear.

Many of my talented fellow authors shared the back-stories behind their Wrapped in Black stories.

Shenoa Carroll-Bradd on "She Makes My Skin Crawl": "My story started as an idle thought about the many forms domestic abuse can take, and how most people think they know what signs and behaviors to watch out for. That sparked some brainstorming on how a magic-user might take advantage of the general populaces' disbelief in the supernatural. Threatening to kill someone if they leave would certainly earn you a restraining order and police attention, but what if you could physically punish your partner in ways that left no mark, and would never be believed if reported? Luckily, I already had 'She Makes My Skin Crawl' on file in my folder of random titles, and the accidental pun fit too well to be ignored.  As much as I enjoyed writing this story, I know many people who have fallen into toxic relationships, and happily escaped one myself. There were a couple points where I had to step away from the keyboard, but I'm ultimately glad I powered through, and I hope readers enjoy my tale."

Eric Nash on "Pigeon":  "Social media: isn’t it great? Especially how it force-feeds our desire for attention. I’ve wanted to explore this idea for a year but hadn’t had the opportunity. Then Sekhmet Press sent out a call for witchcraft stories. Of course the words didn’t come immediately and for many an evening I sat in front of an idle cursor that flashed the hours away.  It wasn’t until a pigeon landed on the digital page and flapped its wings in a post-flight fidget that the creative cauldron started to brew. I should mention that it was simply a memory of a pigeon that had been inside my head since my school days and not a real one that would peck and splat all over my laptop. Nevertheless, the sweep of air its feathers produced disturbed Maddie, a frustrated and embittered young woman and the un-harnessed impetus of my story."

Allison M. Dickson on "Number One Angel":  "Lasso and Cappuccino. Those were the two words picked for a casual writing challenge between two friends. We were to write a short story that somehow incorporated those words, and then share the results. Each of us wrote vastly different stories, ranging from pulpy mystery to dark suspense. After going for broke, this is more or less what I came up with. I wrote it in about a half hour, fueled by little more than my desire to use 'lasso' as a verb, and after some fleshing out I had something slightly resembling what you see here. I eventually expanded it more over time, and have plans to include the events of this story, as well as my short stories 'Devil Riders' and 'The Last Wedding in the Midnight Chapel' in an overarching opus of sorts that has the tentative title Saints & Sinners. I look forward to meeting up with Phelan again, and I hope you do as well."

Aaron Gudmunson on "Pig Roast":  "While shopping at an old-school food market in another town, I rounded the corner and discovered a wall of mustard. Literally half an aisle had been devoted to the spicy golden condiment. Until that day, I had no idea so many varieties existed and realized at once I had the ingredients for a story. During my perusal of the vast selection, the tale took shape: I saw a boorish man who loved mustard-slathered meat more than anything—including his family—and asked myself what would happen if he was invited to dinner by a gourmet chef whose specialty happened to be homemade mustard…and witchcraft? When I finished, I had a story with a bit of acerbic bite. Not unlike, say, a nice Dijon."

Gordon White on "Hair Shirt Drag":  "Stories come to me like knots.  At a glance, I can see the general shape and guess at the size, texture, consistency—even a potential beginning and/or an end.  But to untangle that into an actual narrative requires pulling at one loop or whorl to see what comes next and what comes off.  Here, I started with the idea that hair, especially pelts and scalps, is a common (magical) fetish.  In knot-form, I thought this story involved a sect of rural witches using a totemic Bigfoot costume for their magical rituals, cloaked under an assimilationist guise of Christianity (Biblical references to sasquatch are…debatable).  Worrying those filaments, I pulled out the first sentence and the general setting, but Bigfoot and overt religion were dead ends.  So I cut them, and instead started unraveling the main character.  After pages and pages of non-canonical first-person musings and ranting, I finally heard the narrator’s cadence and digressive storytelling.  However, I couldn’t completely untangle that wounded outsider’s obsession with words vs. meaning.  Until, that is, I found a place where hair and fetishes and costumes and wounded outsiders thrive.  So, in RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season Six…"

Rose Blackthorn on "Beautiful, Broken Things":  "The initial idea for this story was not a particular character, or even a simple plot. It was a place. I saw a street at night, lit by arc sodium lamps and neon. The pavement was dirty, the sidewalks crowded with people. But this wasn’t a fun, bright scene. There was darkness everywhere, people trying to hide their pain, people lost with no idea of how to find their way. Across the street, an expanse of curtained window with oddities displayed. No garish advertising here, no way really to even tell what the shop inside sold. Just a hand-painted sign above the mirrored-glass door—a large black crow holding a human eyeball in one clawed foot. From that strange street-view, and an atmosphere of frenetically hidden despair, came ‘Beautiful, Broken Things’. Even in this spare and unforgiving future world there is magic to be found, although it might be dark."

James Glass on "The Rising Son":  "When kicking around the idea for ‘Rising Son’, one thing was certain: motivation. I already knew how the story ended up, but I never quite knew why it ended up there in the first place. Much like Cal, I have known heartache and jealousy—I think everyone knows those emotions and everyone has acted in a desperate way at least once as a result of those feelings. In ‘Rising Son’, I took it a step further and then leaped into one hell of a chasm. By taking that leap, I stared into Cal’s eyes and understood the last facets of his personality, which had not been present in later stories wherein he is featured. Here he was, this desperate and jealous man who sought absolute power not to subjugate the masses, but to win the heart of a hooker, and possibly impress his father in the process. He was suddenly so human and flawed that I felt for him for the first time, realizing his efforts were focused and with the intent to impress me."

Michael G. Williams on "Stories I Tell to Girls":  "I wrote this story to make a trilogy out of my entry in this anthology and my pieces in Wrapped in Red and Wrapped in White. I also really wanted to visit again with the character of Auntie Ann, who first appeared in a couple of scenes of my novel Tooth & Nail. She is based on a real aunt with whom I spent time as a child. Aunt Mary told amazing stories of growing up in the remotest parts of the Appalachian Mountains and of the pervasive belief in and practice of magic she saw in her childhood. She told me about real witches and about the time the Devil got under the church her father built, describing a setting in which magic was right there for the taking, and I sopped all that stuff up over a small number of long visits. I was raised in the Appalachians, too, just a little ways down the mountain and with a bunch more now around. Some of what Aunt Mary told me about magic was news, but I’ll say this: not all of it."

Mike Lester on "Not This Time":  "I have no memory of how this story came to be. I was sitting in a coffee shop, alone at a table. All around me people were buzzing on their phones and laptops. I had a yellow legal pad and a pen. Soon my hand was moving across the paper and approximately one hour later I had thirteen furiously scribbled pages. This is all I know, all I can remember. I don’t try to dig any deeper. The muses would not be happy."

Patrick C. Greene on "Unto the Earth":  "In the U.S, most of the magical traditions have borne the burden of misinformation, and outright slander, since the settlers. But while Native American and European disciplines are beginning to gain some grudging tolerance, Voodoo remains mysterious and largely taboo. I wanted to explore this fascinating system of belief from the viewpoint of the average American who is still immersed in the concept that it's a quaint, even comical superstition that no self-respecting educated person could take seriously. It's this arrogant assumption that so often causes our suffering, isn't it?"

Thursday, October 9, 2014

October 2014 Writing Retreat to Maine

(Writing on the big porch)
It was the writing getaway that almost wasn't.  Four days before I was set to depart for the autumn retreat to my Southern New Hampshire group's venue, a friend's wonderful and welcoming house in the town of Rangeley, Maine, I got socked by a miserable illness.  As Thursday approached, it became clear I wouldn't be able to attend.  I was beyond disappointed.  My good pal Douglas Poirier -- one of those upcoming names in literature to keep watching -- called and said he wouldn't be heading up until Friday, and if I felt better, he'd be driving right past my house.  I don't medicate apart from aspirin and melatonin, but I choked down copious amounts of the over-the-counter pink stuff, and on that bright October Friday morning, I woke feeling infinitely better. I was a day late, but I ultimately made it to the retreat.

Normally, I'm meticulous about these grand events.  I have my bags packed well in advance, have mapped out the projects I want to work on, and leave nothing to chance.  But this time, with my attendance pushed back to the Eleventh Hour, clothes got tossed into my overnight bag at the last second, and I decided I would write whatever called to me once we landed, no preconceived expectations.  After paying the mortgage and shopping locally for Friday night dinner (I was asked to cook the Thursday night welcome meal but was, on Thursday night, in bed feeling lousy), I hopped in Doug's car, and we drove steadily north through the mountain landscape.  The foliage was stunning, and our conversations on the writing life beyond inspiring.

We arrived and, after greeting my fellow scribes, I camped on a rocker and began work on "Hibernation", a novella that has haunted me since the previous winter.  The fresh pages flowed fairly quickly, and I stopped only to make a luscious dip for chips and vegetables.  Then I capped my pen and cooked dinner for the gang -- a massive boneless pork roast, mashed potatoes, salad, and apple sauce.  While dinner simmered, I snuck in a few more pages, sipped raspberry-lime seltzer, brewed a pot of coffee, and luxuriated in that rocker beneath a maple tree dressed in a cloak of bright pumpkin-orange leaves.

(Group photo, minus Doug)
Our hostess, the wonderful Melissa Gates (another of those exciting new voices to be on the lookout for -- Melissa's just had a publisher request her first novel), has graciously opened her home to members of the Southern N. H. group as well as those in our group up here in the Great North Country now three times over the past eighteen months.  We've seen all manner of the wild and unexpected, including a violent microburst (a kind of localized tornado) that knocked all the rockers off the porch and blew a massive barbecue grill across the yard during the first retreat.  This trip had its plot twists, too -- not limited to my medical travails, which appeared to clear up right in time for the bulk of the weekend stay.  But as I settled down for that first night's dinner with my fellow scribes, a sense of happiness embraced me and I caught myself smiling on numerous occasions.  I slept like a corpse in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and got writing again the next morning after a big breakfast.

For lunch, it was suggested we take a walk to the local barbecue restaurant down the road.  My lunch consisted of an amazing apple cider-brined brisket, fries, and a kale/Brussels sprout slaw.  After we stuffed ourselves, we moseyed down to Rangeley Lake.  A moody gray mist hung over the surrounding mountains, and the foliage seemed to glow against the gloom.  We returned to the retreat house, wrote, and I grabbed a quick afternoon nap while the night's dinner slow-cooked: boneless lamb and vegetables.  Now, I'm not the biggest fan of lamb, but it was beyond delicious and added that proper decadent note to our last big meal of the weekend.

(Saturday afternoon on the lake)
Dessert was a giant German chocolate cake from the famous bakery near where we used to live before we bought Xanadu and moved so far north.  A chocolate disk at the center of the cake bore a single word in German: Schriftsteller -- 'Writer'.  The cake was beyond delicious.  We enjoyed our second reading of the weekend (during which, Melissa gave me a manicure; sadly, no photographs exist of that hilarious and decadent moment).  I returned to my room and again slept soundly. Sunday morning broke gray and melancholy, because it meant the weekend had ended. After breakfast at a restaurant in the downtown, we took our big group photo and began to depart for home. Still, as I returned to family and Writing Room (and some nifty snail mail, including a contributor copy containing my story "Calliope") my inner voice reminded me how grateful I was to have made it to Maine.  I can't wait to be back within that house's inspiring geometry again!  Possibly in April, we've been told.