Nicole M. Wolverton's Blog, page 6

Change Is the Only Constant

The other day I was talking with someone about being GenX. We have converted from vinyl to cassettes to CDs to mp3s to streaming services for music. For film, we gone from only in the theater to betamax to VHS to DVDs to mp4s to digital streaming libraries. For books and for phones, it’s a similar situation–the only real constant for us has been change.

The same is true of social media–and we’re seeing yet another mass migration with the downfall of Twitter. A significant portion of the folks I know online have, as a result of Elon Musk seemingly intentionally destroying Twitter, moved to Mastodon. I count myself amongst those migrating. If you’re on Mastodon, please do find me–my username is @nicolewolverton, and I’m on the @zirk.us server.

The writing community is a funny place. I kind of feel like you have to be where the readers are–and so Mastodon would be an easy decision. Some are retreating to their own websites/newsletters in hopes that they have a large enough audience that those who are interested will have a lifeline. Others are going to Instagram–and I get that, although it seems like Insta runs a similar risk to Twitter, considering Mark Zuckerberg is laying off a zillion people at Meta right now. Granted, while Zuckerberg is happy to assist bots and political manipulators, he doesn’t seem quite as eager to destroy his own product.

Despite Mastodon seeming to be a default place to land during The Great Twittering of 2022, for me it has been a superior experience: I really like how easy it is to engage with people, not to mention there’s no algorithm dictating to you what you see. Overall, the transition has been a smooth one, and I’m not bothered by there being a little bit of a learning curve to understand how Mastodon and greater Fediverse works. But maybe that’s because–again–change has been the only constant for me and my peers. The need for flexibility has always been part of life. Divorcing parents. Changing music popularity. Changing cultural values. Constant economic collapses. Maybe not all of us, but I just … go with it and make the most of the situation.

Because in another five years or so, everything will (probably) change again.

The Trouble With …

I’m terrible at keeping secrets. They sit in my stomach and churn. So you can imagine how difficult it was to keep it under wraps for EIGHT LONG MONTHS that I have a story in an upcoming anthology that centers, well, power and self-determination–but in a way that brings attention to the loss of bodily autonomy and dignity for anyone that has or had a uterus or otherwise identifies as female. Omnium Gatherum is publishing In Trouble, an anthology put together by E.F. Schraeder and Elaine Schleiffer, all net proceeds of which will be going to the National Network of Abortion Funds–pre-orders are available. And what a gorgeous cover!

I’ll be super honest: the overturning of Roe v Wade is deeply personal to me, and so being part of this anthology is deeply personal. For starters, I worked in the abortion industry for a few years as a fundraiser–and learning how little medical students learn about contraception and procedures that have anything to do with abortion while they’re in school is pretty stunning. I mean, regardless of you feel about abortion, you kind of want your doctor to know EVERYTHING there is to know about medicine, you know? Or at least knows enough to advise you properly and keep you healthy. It’s pretty common knowledge that the procedures used for abortion are also necessary skills to treat people who have miscarriages. After all, as many as 26 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. If physicians don’t know how to deal with miscarriages, think of all the other things they might not know. No wonder the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy countries (more than triple the other countries in this bracket, by the way).

There are a lot of reasons why my husband and I chose not to have children, but the significant risk to my health is definitely a factor. I’m now 50 years old with little chance of conceiving (the chance of getting pregnant after the age of 50 is one percent), but with the extra risk on top of the already high risk that something might go wrong with a pregnancy and a doctor might refuse to treat me appropriately lest they be sued or lose their license, well . . . one percent is too high a risk.

It’s possible that I feel this way because I discovered a family secret a few years ago: one of my great-aunts died from an illegal abortion in 1953. I’ll leave the details for another time, but it should suffice to say that forcing pregnant people to give birth against their will, to live as second-class citizens, and to let politicians with no medical training and whom they have never met determine what medical care they can access and when is absolute bullshit.

The only possible equivalent to this for men is if organ donors could legally demand their livers, their kidneys, pieces of skin, a retina, even a heart–to save a life. Because that’s essentially what politicians are telling us: that we should be happy to give our lives in order to preserve life (or something that has the potential to be a human being, as the case may be with pregnancy).

I could rant on and on about my absolute disgust at being legally considered nothing more than a hapless incubator, but I’ll cut it short to thank E.F. and Elaine for giving me an opportunity to be involved with the anthology–and to honor my great-aunt in this way. Abortion is very much on the ballot this fall, so if you’re not registered to vote, please do so. If you are registered to vote, please vote on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Vote for the candidate who doesn’t think it’s a great idea to give literal corpses more rights than women. And, of course, go pre-order a copy of In Trouble–you’ll get something good to read, and you’ll be supporting abortion funds.

Congratulations!

Huge congratulations to Black Shuck Books and editor of Dreamland: Other Stories Sophie Essex–the anthology has been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Society Award! My short story “Footnotes to the Travel Guide” appears in the book, and I’m so unbelievably excited to see the anthology get the recognition it deserves. I’m not just saying that because my story is in it–it’s genuinely a great collection of stories.

The Quiet Year

I knew 2022 was going to be a quiet publishing year for me. It’s difficult to think too much about writing a novel or submitting short stories to anthologies and magazines when you’re trying to finish up a master’s degree. What I never truly believed is that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade as well. That has certainly redirected quite a bit of my energy into political issues. I guess being stripped of your rights, dignity, and privacy will do that to a person. So much for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

Currently, I’m sitting on my couch, binge-watching disaster movies and recovering from my second bout of COVID-19. For July in Philadelphia, it’s a surprisingly decent day–and when I say “surprisingly decent,” I mean that the humidity isn’t high enough to make you want to hide out in the freezer. My dog, Myrtle, is snoozing on her bed. My husband is upstairs, trying to avoid my germs. So far he’s still testing negative, and I’m quite grateful for that. We have both suffered from long COVID (in very different ways) since our first go-round in November/December 2020, back in the pre-vaccination days. While my experience this time around has been incredibly different (30 hours of medium-level body aches/fever vs 2+ weeks of severe body aches/fever, plus double pneumonia and three days in the hospital), there’ve been studies about the effects of cumulative COVID infections that doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement. Let me just say that I appreciate everyone who is still wearing masks–and especially people who wear good quality N95 and KN95 masks that fit well. I never stopped wearing them, but when you’re stuck in a doctor’s waiting room for five freaking hours in a tiny waiting room full of unmasked jerks . . . well, a mask isn’t magic when you’re the only person wearing one. Thankfully, the vaccines/boosters work as intended.

Now that I’m feeling mostly better, this weekend I will be doing some writing–for the class I’m taking this semester. My uni doesn’t exactly have a horror curriculum, so when there aren’t creative writing classes to take, I’m hobbling together horror-adjacent classes wherever possible. Last summer I took a class on the history of witchcraft prosecution, and this summer I’m taking one on cults and new religious movements (both of which, oddly enough, feel very relevant to the precarious position women and anyone with a uterus find themselves in right now). And so for the cults class, I’m finishing up the first draft of my final project–a research paper on the Quiverfull movement (also related to forced childbirth, come to think of it). It’s not the writing I’m dying to be doing, but at least it’s writing–and it feels good to flex that muscle where I can.

The Bones of a Story

Happy holidays! It’s not quite the holiday we all envisioned, for sure. The COVID-19 Omicron variant has timed itself in such a way that I’ll be a hermit over my two-week holiday break instead of visiting my family, having a dinner out with my husband, etc. We’re all double-vaxxed and boostered, but my mom is in her 70s and my husband’s mom is in her 80s. We’d prefer not to take chances with their health, especially since my husband works at an airport.

All that said, there is one thing still happening as planned: the release of the second issue of Starward Shadows Quarterly–and with it, my short story “Bound to Be Bones.” I’ve been looking forward to this for a few reasons. It’s the final short story published in a very lucky year for me in publishing. Plus, I find it quite an achievement that this final 2021 story is set in Ben Franklin’s privy hole.

This particular tourist attraction came to my attention not long after I arrived in Philly as an 18 year old. For maybe the first month of my freshman year, much of my university was on strike. What else was I supposed to do other than explore my new city? The privy pit–covered over with a thick sheet of plexiglass to keep idiots like me from falling down the hole–is adjacent to the Ben Franklin Museum, and behind the B. Free Franklin Post Office. The hilarity and strangeness of looking into a hole that Ben Franklin and his family used to poop into occupied a small space in my brain ever since.

I can’t say that I ever thought I’d turn it into a horror story, but during the pandemic everything seems just a little bit horrifying, no?

At any rate, do head over to the Starward Shadows Quarterly website to give “Bound to Be Bones” a read! I hope you have a very happy and safe holiday, whatever your plans include.

Rarified Air

2021 has certainly been a year of firsts for me, publishing-wise. I mean, just in terms of work published, by the end of next month that’ll be 9 short horror stories (one of which was published via podcast, which is a first) and 1 short horror drabble, 1 reprint of a previously published short story, 1 short story that’s more literary, and five creative nonfiction pieces–the most ever for me. Oh, and two short stories (one published this year and one published last year) that were released in audiobook format, also a first.

There are more firsts: the first time a short story of mine received a mention from Ellen Datlow in The Best Horror of the Year, and another short story is on the reading list for a certain horror fiction award that I’m not supposed to publicize, so hence the vague-posting. And then today, my husband and I were out and about, running errands–and I’d opted to hang out in the car while he darted into a shop to look at shoes–when I found out that a recently published short story (“My True Love Gave to Me”) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for the press.

It always feels so odd to get the kind of news that makes you blink because you think you might be hallucinating while doing something as mundane as waiting in the car. And, of course, when my husband came back and I told him why I was grinning like a lunatic, he was like, “Oh, that’s nice” and then started talking about the dog. The perils of being married to someone who doesn’t pay attention to publishing, I guess.

Although, to be fair, his reaction reminds me of the now-famous essay that tells writers to stop bragging about Pushcart noms because 10,000+ short stories each year might be nominated and it’s not all that special to be nominated unless you win and blah blah blah. That piece has launched a thousand responses, as you might imagine. Personally, I come down on the side of celebrating a nomination–not only because it is nice to feel as though your work spoke to someone, but because I believe in celebrating any good news. To not do so just seems . . . kind of ungrateful. Plus, why NOT let us feel good about our accomplishments? If 10,000 Pushcart Prize nominations happen each year, and there are over 7 billion people on the planet . . . that’s only 0.00014285714285714 percent of people getting their work nominated for a Pushcart each year. Rarified air, to be sure.

2021 Eligibility Post

Apparently it’s that time of year when speculative fiction writers do an eligibility post, highlighting the work they’ve done this past year that’s eligible for nominations for the various speculative fiction/horror awards that exist. Far be it from me to buck tradition–and, of course, it goes without saying that I would have kittens if anything I wrote were recognized in any way. Feel free to nominate away for “best of year” or other awards if anything I’ve written this year catches your attention.

So, here’s everything published this year that’s eligible for a speculative fiction/horror award:

“Waiting for Winter.” Shiver anthology (ed. Nico Bell), January 2021.
The daughters of the “final girls” come together on a cold winter day: serial killer Leonard Stauder has finally succeeded in killing off the last of their mothers, and now he’s started coming after them. They hunker down to protect each other–but new revelations reveal a more immediate threat.

“Imaginary Friends.” The Half That You See anthology (Dark Ink Books, ed. Rebecca Rowland), March 2021.
Julie Rittenhouse’s nephew Augie gets in trouble at school for selling imaginary friends to his classmates, something she chalks up to youthful enthusiasm–after all, she had an imaginary friend herself in childhood: a red-headed girl named Mona, who had knives for fingers. But are Augie’s imaginary friends really so imaginary?

“Footnotes to the Travel Guide.” Dreamland: Other Stories (Black Shuck Books, ed. Sophie Essex), August 2021.
Found footage recorded by an intrepid couple of ghost hunters reveal the legendary haunting that plagues Pinel Island in the Caribbean after the tourists have gone for the day–and neither of the ghost hunters may last the night.

“Knit, Purl.” Blood & Bone anthology (Ghost Orchid Press, ed. A.R. Ward), September 2021.
Elmira McFadden passes away suddenly, leaving behind a beautiful half-knit blanket for a charity auction–as well as talk amongst her knitting group of the terrible varicose veins from which she suffered. When group member Quinn volunteers to finish knitting the blanket, she inherits more than a bag full of Elmira’s hand-dyed yarn . . . with horrifying consequences.

“Terrified Lambs.” Released anthology (No Bad Books Press, ed. S. Faxon and Theresa Halvorsen), October 2021.
Olive brings home a souvenir from her trip to Madrid: a battery-operated Nativity figurine of a shepherd slaughtering a lamb, the shepherd’s knife slashing over and over. The sound it makes infiltrates her dreams–and when her mom comes to visit for Christmas, it might be more than the lamb that is slaughtered.

“Collection Day.” Diabolica Americana anthology (ed. Keith Anthony Baird), October 2021.
A small town soul collector sets out for her daily duties–but things quickly go awry when she is trapped by a falling ferris wheel, unable to properly attend to newly dead souls. She is unprepared for for their anger–or the consequences of her unintended job abandonment.

“My True Love Gave to Me.” Evilmas anthology (Creative James Press), November 2021.
Melanie Walker receives a dead and very maggot-filled partridge in a pear tree on the first day of Christmas–and there are 11 days left worth of gifts, according to the Christmas carol. She must contend with the growing assortment of gross presents as she tries to woo her next door neighbor, but he may not be worth the effort.

“Bound to be Bones.” Starward Shadows Quarterly, December 2021 (available online)
Liss would do anything for her best friend, Ezra–including helping her to break into Ben Franklin’s privy pit on Independence Day to find mysterious bones that Ezra is sure have been left by those who excavated the pit decades ago. Ezra goes radio silence, though, after descending into the hole, and Liss works up the courage to find her and makes a grim discovery in the process.

There are a few more stories in the horror area published this year–a drabble, a co-credited story on a podcast, a reprint of a story–as well as one story that’s not horror and five pieces of nonfiction that are not (or likely not) eligible for speculative fiction awards this year.