Erik Gustafson's Blog, page 24

Burning old Sparklers: Getting ideas and bringing them to life

My daughter found a box of sparklers out of somewhere in the garage last night and she wanted to use them. I could not remember how long we had purchased them. I told her I didn't think they would work but we might as well try. So we did. Some of them sparked and fizzled out after a moment. Some wouldn't even light. We made our way through the box without much luck. For whatever reason, the very last one burst into brilliant green light and danced all the way to the bottom of stick!

Excerpt featured on Ebooks of Horror!

Just a short but exciting post this morning! There is an excerpt of my novel Fall Leaves and the Black Dragon over on Ebooks of Horror this morning!! Go check it out and if you write horror, you need to get your book featured there as well!

Go check me out here!

I am really happy with the way it looks!

Thanks to Shaina Richmond over at Ebooks of Horror for taking the time to do this!

Apparitions of Terror

I have been tinkering around with my blog to make it more interesting. I decided to name my place Apparitions of Terror: Horror that Sticks to your Brain. I never had a name for my blog but that seems like an important detail I left out.

I changed the colors around a bit and used one of my paintings for the background… Its a little less generic now at least and has a name!!

New connections and short story done!

Well I updated my WordPress settings so my blog is linked to all my social media outlets. It will be interesting to see how that impacts my traffic!!

I finished my short story called The Fishers! I had a different title but it gave away too much of the plot I found out. The story is about a father and son out fishing but soon they realize there is something fishing for them. The ending I changed from being open-ended and mysterious to a more final conclusion since its a stand alone...

Short stories here I come!

Well with my novel having been under the meat grinder for the past several weeks, I finally set it aside and hope its decent. I have another book I am working on but I decided to wait on that….I have been in a writing rut so instead I am going to try and churn out a few short stories and see if that sparks some creative energy.

I have a great start on two stories.

One is called (so far) The Fishers and its about a father and son who go out fishing but soon realize they aren't the only ones...

Major edit done!

Well I am sitting back a celebrating a bit…I just finished a MASSIVE line edit / proofreading of my novel. I think I made changes to nearly every sentence and paragraph. I moved some scenes around to make things flow better and removed a lot of repetitive sentences. I found I described something and then often had one of characters say what I had just described….not cool.

It was an exhausting experience…I think it took 6 weeks to line edit. I have uploaded the new version. Hope everyone e...

Tweeked my cover

I changed my cover a bit…what do you think? I made the smoke look like its coming out of the dragons nostrils!

I also reworded my description and am nearly done line editing…how does this sound?

A fire that burns through the years… Somehow six-year old Willy survived a huge fire. Except the memory of the flames engulfed his childhood and haunted him for years. Terrible secrets that should have burned away have come back. Now an adult, he must return to Iowa and confront the evil that haunts...

Editing sucks

Ok I have been editing Fall Leaves and the Black Dragon (my debut horror novel) for three or four weeks now and the labor sucks…its hard work.

Things I hate:

Adverbs

Wordiness

Rephrasing and repeating crap

Long paragraphs

Passive voice

Making stuff flow

But I am persevering and I think my book is a million times better for all my efforts…I just want to finish and set the darned aside. I can't wait to get it back out there and see what people think of it!

I have other WIPs but I can't focus on t...

Awesome interview!

I just got another awesome interview! This time its from @Creepywalker (AKA RL. Treadway) RL is an amazing and talented woman!! I have attached the link….go check it out!! You should subscribe to her blog!

http://creepywalker.blogspot.com/2011...

As always…thanks for reading!

Villisca Ax Murder House

I have been in Atlantic Iowa for a work conference for the past two days and since Villisca is only about 30 miles from my hotel, I decided to slip out of the conference and head down for a tour! If you don't know the history, 6 children and 2 adults were murdered there in 1912, with an ax. I had read about the place and saw the investigation on Ghost Adventures so I really wanted to check it out myself.

I went with a good friend of mine. When we pulled into Villisca the first landmark I...