Colleen Anderson's Blog, page 5

Women in Horror: Gerri Leen

[image error]This is what happens when you finish up a post at 2am. You forget in the first version to introduce your writer. So, ahem, Gerri Leen is another talent with a wicked sense of humor. Don’t ever try to feed her to dragons.

When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?

My aunt was a schoolteacher/principal, and she loved poetry.  She used to read it to me when I was child.  As a teen, I was a Star Trek fanatic, and I read Leonard Nimoy’s poetry when it came out back in the 70s, but beyond that I never really thought that much about it.  In college, I started writing poetry as a way to sort things out in life (massively emo things, most of which I would never submit now) and when I started to write seriously in my forties, poetry really clicked. Even though I don’t feel particularly drawn to rhyming poetry, I love the way songs are constructed and feel influenced by a lot of singer-songwriters across many genres.  I love the stories that songs tell and I tend toward narrative poetry more than other kinds.

Why do you write poetry?

It’s an outlet and brings me relief and a quick dopamine hit.  It seems to use a different writing muscle than prose—for me anyway.  And I just absolutely love writing it.

What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?

Finding your own voice even if it’s not what others are doing.  Being brave enough to try things, to admit what you don’t know, to play and work hard even if it seems to come easily.  I never studied poetry so there are probably all sorts of things I do “wrong” if you want to get technical with it, but since I’ve been writing it for publication, I’ve tried to be more intentional, to get better at it, to understand how it works (even to study some), to try some form poetry even (since I default to free verse). I also think it’s important to not get discouraged once you start submitting.  To keep improving and improvising—and keep the poems out on submission. Just like stories, you never know who might love your work and how many times a poem will be out before it’s bought.  And just like prose, there may be editors who never buy your stuff and others who love you.  Balancing realism and hope.  Just keep writing new stuff and don’t obsess over what’s already out on submission.

String Theory

It gets loose

In the night

That damned puppet

I can hear it

Clickity-clack

Running up, sliding down

It trips sometimes

Tangles up its strings

Takes me days to work them free

Even longer to clean up the blood

I should tell

Maybe a priest

Could exorcise it

Sprinkle it

Salt it

Make it stop getting loose

Let me sleep

Just one night

All the way through

Without having to clean up the mess

But maybe not

He’d wonder why

I never said a word before

How many dead?

I never told

I never tried to make it stop

And if I did

Would it stop?

Or would it come after me?

And who would clean up then?

“String Theory” first appeared in Paper Crow, Issue 0, 2009

##

Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why? ?

I love to retell mythology or fairy tales.  Give them a new slant, find an angle unexplored (or less explored—is anything really new?)  I like tales of redemption, honesty, unexpected connections, vengeance, and honor.  I currently have a poetry collection making the sub rounds—a mix of new and previously published poems focusing on mythology, fairy tales, and archetypal horrors.

What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?

The same thing that makes dark fiction or visual media appealing.  Dark stuff is fun.  It’s cathartic to let it out as a writer and take it in as a reader/viewer.  We all have the kinds of darkness we love and stuff we don’t do so well with (I’m a horror writer and yet I don’t like to be scared LOL and body horror is really hard for me to get through).  One reason I think horror writers in general are such nice folks is that they get their darkness out on a regular basis in such a positive way.

What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?

I write in a lot of genres and right now my projects aren’t horror or poetry. I have a middle grade mosaic novel featuring genetically modified racehorses that talk and race on their own/manage their own careers nearly ready to get out on subs to agents, and I have an urban fantasy/mystery/romance that needs updating/revising.  I try to create a lot of new poetry.  I have a chronic illness, so I don’t always get far on prose as I tend to check out when I’m going through a bad period, but poetry can be done in short bursts so I’m glad I’m inclined to write it.  Being ill is way less depressing when you have a side gig that accommodates crazy hours and not always being present.  I’m also always looking for anthology opportunities that spark the muse—both for prose and poetry.  I was super stoked to get into the HWA Poetry Showcase VI  last year and if there is a volume VII this year, I’ll be aiming for that too.

Eat

“More,” they say, pushing plates of sweets

And savories at me, smiling as they urge

Me to stuff myself until I can barely move.

The food is good—magnificent, actually—

So I eat and eat and eat and ignore

Their whispered “This will please him, yes?”

“He likes them plump and marbled.”

Does he now? Do they think I came here

Only to eat? “This dragon?” I ask and there’s

A hushed pall, a drawing away from the table

By everyone who’s not me. “Feed him often, do you?”

I pat my bulging middle. Even with all this food

I’m still hungry, still feel the mix of pain and nausea

Of an empty gut—babies will do that to you.

Did I forget to tell these folks who have their

Every wish granted by the dragon they so faithfully feed

That I am gravid, large with child? Well, children—

Well, they’re not human, so let’s just call them spawn.

My stomach growls and I pull another plate to me.

“When will I meet him, this dragon of yours? Soon?”

They look relieved—no more lies—and nod and murmur,

“Yes, soon” and there’s a beauty in their honesty so I

Decide not to tell them what’s to come.

My babes will be clutched with teeth, refusing this

Food I happily gorge on, for they eat only one thing:

Large, scaly, winged, breathes fire—you get the idea.

I wonder how these people will do once they have to

Fend for themselves? That is, of course, if they get away

Before I’m ready for my post-spawning meal.

My favorite treat after giving birth: humans.

“Eat” first appeared in Star*Line, Issue 42.3, 2019

##

Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?

I blame my love of dark things (even my fantasy and sci-fi often skews dark) on my childhood: I saw Dark Shadows when it first aired.  I snuck viewings of The Night Gallery when my Mom wasn’t paying attention and The Twilight Zone, which was allowed, could be creepy as frak.  I was hooked on Kolchak and The X-Files and the series Friday the 13th. And I was forever terrified by that damned doll in Trilogy of Terror.  I didn’t start out writing horror but it was inevitable that I’d get here eventually.

[image error]Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. She has poetry published in: Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Dreams & Nightmares, Songs of Eretz, Polu Texni, The Future Fire, and others. She also writes fiction in many genres (as Gerri Leen for speculative and mainstream, and Kim Strattford for romance). Visit gerrileen.com or kimstrattford.com to see what else she’s been up to.

Women in Horror: Lesley Wheeler

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I’m quite blown away by the talent of the writers I’m featuring for Women in Horror Month. Today, another multi-published, amazing writer joins me: Lesley Wheeler. I’m sure you’ll see why she’s been honored so many times.

When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?

I’ve been obsessed with poetry since childhood—I always had a strong attraction to the sound of it. Studying Romantic poetry in high school, Modernism in college, and late-twentieth-century poetry in graduate school shaped my aesthetics pretty strongly.

Why do you write poetry?

I can’t help it. When I don’t make time for it, too, I feel bad and even have nightmares. Working centers me and helps me focus my attention like prayer and meditation.

What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?

Closure! Finding an ending that is both satisfying and surprising is really, really hard. Sometimes you have to dig into your most uncomfortable thoughts and feelings to get there, too.

Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?

[image error]I’ve always been interested in sound, place, gender, and the question of what’s real (when and for whom, too). The fifth and latest book, The State She’s In, epitomizes those obsessions: it takes on what it means to live in Virginia right now, in light of the state’s terrible history and its beautiful more-than-human features. There are some spell poems—I’m still writing those, maybe for the next book?—although a good share of the horror is political. It’s also about menopause. I’m here to testify that turning 50 has some terrifying moments and can be major hinge in a person’s life.

From The State She’s In, first published in Cascadia Subduction Zone Vol. 8, No. 4, 2018

Racketing Spirits

Brownsburg, Virginia, 1825

She careened from kitchen house to dining room,

bare brown feet quick in the frosted yard, crying

of the old woman with her head tied up. Nobody’s

chasing you, Maria, Dr. McChesney chided, helping

himself to a glistening slash of ham. His daughter

Ellen giggled and pinched Maria under the table.

Mean. Also eight years old but freckled as a biscuit.

Free. Maria cast a chilly eye on her, stepped away

from the fragrance bread makes when you break it.

Nobody’s here, she thought, and soon you’ll know it.

A few weeks later, charred rocks began to fall, sharp

as fists, scorching hot. They volleyed against the roof,

blackened grass, cowed the family. Bewildered,

the McChesneys sent Maria to nearby cousins.

She strolled the miles so slow she could almost see bloom

come to the Judas trees, till the final rise. Then twitched

and charged, wailing of witchery. She found the Steeles

already stirred, starring the lawn, their backs to her,

as they stared toward a clatter in their house. A peek

showed furnishings piled up like sticks, of a sudden,

in the parlor, cupboard glass smashed by stones

from nowhere. Mr. Steele commanded her back home.

Now the whole county gossiped. Mischief likes

ventriloquy. If Dr. McChesney peered out the door,

earth-clods pummeled him. His sister, Miz Steele,

kept visiting even when rock cut her scalp to the bone.

Almost dear in her dumb persistence. When Maria howled

of being pricked with pins, slapped by invisible hands,

Miz Steele clutched her in whispering skirts and flailed

to beat off an unholy presence. It didn’t work.

Nothing worked. Her hands as soft as pudding.

Nobody stopped food from going missing, or

the field hands’ tools. Bottles of madeira danced.

Embers jumped from the hearth to bite ankles. The doctor

retreated to his fireless upstairs room, his rows of books

and guilty medicines. In the closet, a skeleton. Whose?

For peace, they sent Maria across water. Not the sea.

The muddy green of the Mississippi, supposed to short

her electricity. Clever spell they conjured, the sale

to Alabama. Some say she fell on the way and died.

Girl with a scar on her head, and what a mouth.

She lasted longer than Ellen, anyhow, who married young

out of the fancy carriage envied by neighbors. Unfolded

those red velvet steps, pranced down, and chronicles

mislaid her. Like Maria, who could negotiate with land itself,

persuade the stones to rise and heat and hurtle

in revolt. There are other powers, better, though

they may not get your name engraved in books. Some say

she acquired them. Returned to haunt the child she’d been,

head tied up in red, to stop the future burning through.

##

What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?

The former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith once said something to the effect that we’re metaphysical people. We’re always asking ourselves what’s real, what matters, and other peoples’ answers help us figure out how to live. Speculative literature can be really, really good at giving us new angles on those big old questions. Plus people need song and story to survive.

What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?

Aside from the new poetry book, my first novel, Unbecoming, will be published by Aqueduct Press in May 2020. It’s a weird tale involving a changeling and a woman who thinks she’s developing magical powers with menopause. I think it straddles that interesting boundary between so-called literary and genre fiction. I’m really excited to see if people like it. In 2021 I’m publishing an essay collection called Poetry’s Possible Worlds about world-building in contemporary verse and I’m exciting to share those ideas with people, too.

Is there anything else you would like to mention about horror or poetry?

I think the campus I teach at is probably haunted; Robert E. Lee’s crypt is just downhill from my office. It’s haunted by a horrifying history, for sure.

[image error]Lesley Wheeler is a writer and professor born in New York, raised in New Jersey, and residing in Virginia. Her first novel, Unbecoming, is forthcoming from Aqueduct Press. Tinderbox Editions will publish her next poetry collection, The State She’s In, in 2020 as well as an essay collection, Poetry’s Possible Worlds, in 2021. She is Poetry Editor of Shenandoah. Wheeler’s previous poetry collections are Radioland (Barrow Street Press, 2015); The Receptionist and Other Tales (Aqueduct, 2012); Heterotopia, selected by David Wojahn for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize in 2010; Heathen (C&R, 2009); and the chapbooks Propagation (Dancing Girl Press, 2017) and Scholarship Girl (Finishing Line, 2007). Heterotopia was a finalist for the Library of Virginia Award. The Receptionist was named to the Tiptree Award Honor List and nominated by Ms. Mentor at The Chronicle of Higher Education for an Ackie (both rarely given to speculative campus novellas in terza rima). Her poems and essays appear in Gettysburg Review, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Cimarron Review, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, Poetry, Strange Horizons, and many other journals. The Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, Wheeler has held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation (New Zealand), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the American Association of University Women. In 2011, Wheeler received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia. She teaches courses in nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century poetry in English as well as creative writing and speculative fiction.

 

Women in Horror: Zoe Mitchell

[image error]The scalpel design for Women in Horror Month may be an apt logo for my next guest. You will see how Zoe Mitchell deftly wields the charge edge of language to expose another layer of meaning.

When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?

I was quite young when I started reading poetry, I loved Roger McGough when I was little – I was obsessed with a book of his called Mr Noselighter about a man with a candle for a nose which, looking back, is mildly horrific but at the time I just loved the sound and rhythm of the words and what they added to the story. When I was a teenager I went through a phase where I would read Ted Hughes’ Crow poems over and over, and later I loved listening to Simon Armitage on the Mark and Lard show on Radio One. Other teenagers go through phases with bands, I did it with poets – and I’ve never looked back.

Why do you write poetry?

I write poetry to make sense of myself and the world. The creativity and various forms give me different ways to explore ideas, process experiences and communicate something that seems difficult to share in other ways.

Shiv

Some women are born to work with knives.

Just as some must sing or stir their words, you

will stand behind them in the dark, their guilty

secret. They need the smallest eye you can cut

from a creature, they need the bloody shanks

to fill their blackened pots with magic.

They’ll say your arched back lacks music.

Your shoulder rotates to penetrate an innocent

or petty accuser on their behalf but they will not

let you dance. They can’t cauterize their disgust

at the ominous shapes you offer up to moonlight.

Your liberty lives only in the darkest corners

everyone else wilfully ignores. You’ll live your life

forever behind a half-open cupboard door –

everyone knows you’re there but no one wants

to acknowledge your steel. The words of women

cut deeper than the most pitiless dagger. And yet,

while men fret over herbs and muttered curses,

you can shatter bone. You will know your sisters

from the blood under their fingernails. Like you,

they have the soul of a surgeon, the eyes of a butcher.

Imagine the stealth of a mother with a sleeping child:

if you unearth our stories to anyone, she will advance

from her kitchen and cut out your tongue.

##

What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?

Finding the form for each poem can be a challenge – although it’s always a joy when it emerges. When I start writing I never have any idea of the form or even of where I want the poem to go, so the first stage I just have a mass of scribbled text and then as I start editing and refining I usually get a sense of what the poem is really about and from there, the form starts to become clearer and I can start chipping away.

Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?

I am fascinated by folklore and mythology, so that comes up a lot. I think those old stories have so much to teach us still. My debut poetry collection, Hag, features stories from Roman and Celtic mythology as well as witches and ghosts. I’m not quite sure of the “why” other than it is what interests me and what sparks my imagination. I think the overall theme of my book is survival – through heartbreak, destruction or despair – and it connects those ancient stories to modern lives as a way to express resilience. Although the poems often speak in the voices of supernatural creatures, my focus in the end is on what that tells us about our humanity.

What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?

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Hag, nominated for a Stoker Award in poetry

I think it’s for the same reason that people write it – to make sense of the world. The element of fantasy provides a way to explore feelings and challenges that are otherwise difficult to address. After my Dad died, I wrote a long poem about an evil ghost train designer who made a ghost train to another dimension – if you’d asked me to write directly about my grief, I don’t think I could have faced it but I felt safer exploring those ideas in a fantasy world. In fact, at the time I didn’t realise how much I was processing my loss through the poem, I thought I was giving myself an escape and it was only later that I could see what I was doing. For readers, myself included, I think it’s the same thing – an escape in some ways, but also a chance to consider subjects and emotions that can be challenging to face head on. I think also there’s just the love of stories and language, how that sparks the imagination, and poetry can intensify that.

What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?

At the moment I’m working on a creative PhD about witches in women’s poetry. I’m studying female poets who have written as or about witches and I’m creating my second collection which is all about witches and powerful women. As a female writer, it’s a liberating topic and it gives you a huge breadth of subjects and scope to explore everything from politics to love. I love the mischievous quality of witches, which allows me to play with form and language. I have a year to go before I finish my PhD so that’s my primary focus, and in the meantime I keep sending out the poems I write to magazines to see if I can get my witches to wreak a little havoc!

Hex

You carry all the eyes

that ever saw a horror

or glanced upon a mirror

and bristle with ears

to catch every whisper

that insists it is about you.

You scent the trail

of smoke, lick the grit

of something rotten.

Everything that goes inside

your mouth is stirred

with sex and violence –

simmering chastity too.

Everything that touches

your insides follows you.

Each stained organ

is accumulating infection,

proof that you are animal.

You are made of skin

and trapped within,

pulled apart and screaming

for someone to rip out

the gristle of your heart.

Your body is a hex bag

and all the things inside

make up this curse:

you, wherever you go

##

Is there anything else you would like to mention about poetry and horror?

I have long kicked against this idea that horror – and any genre fiction or poetry – is somehow lesser than other literary forms. I like to think things are changing for the better now, and I think perhaps horror is finally getting the recognition it deserves because the themes are so appropriate for the sometimes terrifying times in which we live. I would say to anyone who was thinking of studying creative writing but afraid that they can’t write what they love, or that horror wouldn’t be taken seriously by a university, that it’s not been my experience at all. In more than one instance, my tutor has pushed me to make my poems darker and creepier, so you won’t be expected to write in a certain style or genre. I don’t think you need any qualifications to write, but it’s certainly helped me gain some confidence and the experience has transformed and improved my writing to the point where it’s now a career.

[image error]Zoe Mitchell is a widely-published poet whose work has been featured in a number of magazines including The Rialto, The London Magazine and The Moth. She graduated from the University of Chichester with an MA in Creative Writing and was awarded a Distinction and the Kate Betts Memorial Prize. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, examining witches in women’s poetry. Her first collection, Hag, won the Indigo-First collection competition; it was published in 2019 by Indigo Dreams Publishing and is on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in a poetry collection.

You can order Zoe’s collection here: https://www.indigodreams.co.uk/zoe-mitchell/4594569914

Find out more about her writing on her website: www.writingbyzoe.com 

Or drop her a line on twitter and say hello: @writingbyzoe

 

Women in Horror: Jeannine Hall Gailey

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It’s Women in Horror Month, where we show the world that women have talent to dig into the deep pits of memory and experience and pull out the viscera. Last year I featured women who wrote dark fiction. This year, I have chosen to feature women who write dark poetry.

If you’re interested in exploring other ways that Women in Horror Month is celebrated, you can check out the site that lists many women in the arts and the projects going on. Just click the link above and check it out. You might find you already like more horror than you thought.

To start, for Feb. 1, I have Jeannine Hall Gailey, tears of the Disney layer on fairy tales. You’ll find information about her writing here, plus several poems to read.

From Field Guide to the End of the World

Introduction to the Body in Fairy Tales

The body is a place of violence. Wolf teeth, amputated hands.
Cover yourself with a cloak of leaves, a coat of a thousand furs,
a paper dress. The dark forest has a code. The witch
sometimes dispenses advice, sometimes eats you for dinner,
sometimes turns your brother to stone.

You will become a canary in a castle, but you’ll learn plenty
of songs. Little girl, watch out for old women and young men.
If you don’t stay in your tower you’re bound for trouble.
This too is code. Your body is the tower you long to escape,

and all the rotted fruit your babies. The bones in the forest
your memories. The little birds bring you berries.
The pebbles on the trail glow ghostly white.

##

When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?

I started writing when I was about ten years old. I liked e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay. In college I discovered Sylvia Plath, Rita Dove, Dorianne Laux, Louise Gluck, and Denise Duhamel. I found my true home when I found out speculative poetry was a thing –thanks to editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, who included my work in their early anthology, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (and I will always be grateful!)

Why do you write poetry?

I’ve always liked shorter forms–I’ve tried plays and fiction, I worked as a tech writer, copy editor and journalist, but I’ve always come back to poetry as my one true form.

What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?

The challenge is finding an audience. I’ve never had trouble writing–I tend to write more under stress, not less–but finding an audience for that work, that’s a little harder.

Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?

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Yes, my interests have always included mythology and women’s transformations – fairy tales, pop culture, video games – all have been inspiration. My first book is all about the journey from princess/victim to villainess (hence the title, Becoming the Villainess.) My latest book was all about the apocalypse, about a fiction female survivor of an apocalypse who is constantly posting postcards to people that don’t exist anymore. That’s what Field Guide to the End of the World was about.

From Becoming the Villainess:

Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon

I miss the tropes of Paradise – green vines
roped around wrists, jasmine coronets,
a thousand rainbow birds and their incessant chatter,
the improbably misty clothing of my tribe.

I dream of the land where they celebrated
my birth, named me after their patron Goddess;
they said I would be a warrior for their kind,
blessed me with gifts before my eyes lost the cloudiness of birth.

I still dream of my mother,
Hippolyta, shining golden legs,
the strength of her arms –
before her betrayal and death.

In my dreams she wraps me tightly
again in the American flag, warning me,
cling to your bracelets, your magic lasso,
don’t be a fool for men.

She’s always lecturing me, telling me
not to leave her. Sometimes she changes into a doe,
and I see my father shooting her, her blood.
Sometimes in these dreams, it is me who shoots her.

My daily transformation from prim kitten-bowed suit
to bustier with red-white-and-blue stars
splayed across my bosom is less complicated.
The invisible jet makes for clean escapes,

The animals are my spies and allies; sometimes,
inexplicably, snow-feathered doves appear in my hands.
I capture Nazis and Martians with boomerang grace.

When I turn and turn, the music plays louder,
the glow around me burns white-hot,
I become everything I was born to be,
the dreams of the mother, the threat of the father.

##

What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?

I think that definitely the mood of our current age is one of apocalypse–there’s a reason there are so many disaster movies and superhero movies. We look to the mythological and the epic to try to make our own stories make more sense.

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What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?

I have two book manuscripts in circulation to publishers and I have a speculative poem coming up in the latest issue of Ploughshares called “Irradiate” and an upcoming poem in Poetry called “Calamity.”

Is there anything else you would like to say about horror and speculative poetry and fiction?

I am really glad the horror and speculative communities exist and I’ve made friends within the SFPA (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association) and the HWA (Horror Writers Association) that are really important to me. Often, we can be treated as “outsiders” in the literary world, but we aren’t really outsiders–I guarantee there are more poetry fans of speculative and horror work than people think.

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Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA’s Elgin Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets: A Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work appeared or will appear in journals such as American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

They Are Not Regenerating

We are not zombies, thrown into a pool
of dubious origin and coming back beautiful
but decaying
unsure of how to live – pretending to swim,
eat yogurt like regular girls.

We are not clones, despite being drawn to specifications
(36-26-36) and bearing bouffants and bikinis
we might hack each other to pieces
but we are not confused about our identities

(living or not living) we continue
in this shape we were given
our cells cannot regenerate and the scientist
names us “Dead”
we are not regenerating we cannot reproduce ourselves we cannot be anything
but the fulfillment of your fantasy, flesh-eating or not.

##

Books by Jeannine

Becoming the Villainess, Steel Toe Books, 2006.She Returns to the Floating World, Kitsune Books, 2011. Reissued in 2015 by Two Sylvias Press.Unexplained Fevers, New Binary, 2013.The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Mayapple Press, 2015.Field Guide to the End of the World, Moon City Press, 2016. (Won the Moon City Press Book Prize and the 2016 Elgin Award.)

https://webbish6.com/books/

Where I've Been & the End of a Decade

[image error]Sometimes life is hills or valleys, and sometimes it dives so deep into the underlayer that you end up in orbit without a safety suit. To say I will be happy to see the end of the second decade of the third millennium is an understatement. Fair warning: this will be a long post.

2018 started with a bang…literally. I was driving to work on a slow, quiet, dry day. Thankfully, the traffic was light. My car had always had a sporadic and unpredictable issue of brakes locking at low speed. I always left lots of room in between cars before this. This time I was driving at 100km/hour when my brakes chose to lock, spinning me about and slamming me into a cement barrier. Totaled the car, smashed my leg but otherwise, with a couple of months of physio I was mostly right as rain (yet another permanent bump to my leg though).

In March, I visited my family. My mother, in her 90s, had nearly died in January, so I was seeing her while she had her health. I was also working on writing through my Canada Council grant and Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, the anthology of Lewis Carroll based stories, came out. That was the slow, almost normal time.

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I shot this in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic ©2017

In June, I fell and broke my hand, but the doctors misdiagnosed it for three months which then required some other treatments to fix it. Just after that, I finally landed a new job and was getting ready to leave my previous toxic workspace. Then my cat died on the July long weekend. My job ended on Friday, July 13 and I would be starting the new job the following Monday. Instead, at midnight the same night I was booking a flight as my mother was failing fast. I was in Calgary for five days, and when I booked the return my mother was recovering. But before I had left she was failing again. I returned to start my new job two days late. I worked one day when my new boss gave me a flight back to Calgary the next day. I arrived on the Friday, the last day my mother was really conscious. She died that Sunday morning.

I stayed in Calgary for two weeks to deal with her effects and for her celebration of life. I was only back a week, grieving these deaths, when my landlady of more than 20 years chose to evict me. I live in Vancouver, the land of exorbitant rents. My landlady had once been a friend but she turned into an even more passive aggressive and petty person, had stopped talking to me at all and claimed that she and her new husband (she became very bitter when she divorced her narcissistic ex four years before) needed more space when they lived in the biggest house on the block, with 2 floors, and 3 bedrooms and were semi retired. Needless to say, she had become more bitter and paranoid and odd, and I now had to grieve losing my home and moving. On top of that she had known since the spring that I was in Europe in October and guess which month I was going to have to move?

December came and I was still setting up my new place. My brother and sister-in-law came out for a short visit. I didn’t make it out for Christmas, being stressed and exhausted. My brother’s health wasn’t good and he was suffering the extreme effects of sleep apnea, including brain fatigue and memory loss. We were very worried about him.

2018 came to a close and I was thankful, thinking this was the end of a terrible year. That was not the end of terrible or trauma though. In March, my brother died unexpectedly, which sent the whole family into a tailspin. Dennis was much loved and as siblings we were all very close. Again I was in Edmonton, helping my sister-in-law and grieving terribly.

[image error]I had barely written in 2018 and the weight of grief made it extremely difficult to think of writing. I applied to the Horror Writers Association for the Scholarship from Hell, a scholarship to attend the Stokercon convention and masterclass workshops, as well as free flight and accommodation. I didn’t win the scholarship but was awarded a runner-up scholarship that included free attendance and master classes. I desperately needed the energy of writers to inspire me.

During the con I took a master class in poetry with Linda Addison. I came back, somewhat inspired but still fatigued by grief. I began exploring a few short forms of poetry, which was one way I dealt with my brother’s death.

Then in July, just past a year from having broken my hand, I fractured my ankle. I’m lucky my job allowed me to work from home as I was stuck in a walk-up. I also damaged the tendons in my thumbs and my shoulders from crutches and started physio before I was even out of a cast.

You would think that was plenty but it still didn’t end. My boss reluctantly informed me that there wasn’t the budget to continue my job in the new year. So now I was back looking for work. Then in September I was stung on my hand by a wasp. My hand and arm swelled up with extreme itchiness. Several weeks later I had hives on my head, side and leg. My doctor was pretty useless and for over two months I dealt with hives.

Then I caught a sinus cold. Just a cold, no big deal. Except it brought tinnitus with it and I’m still suffering ringing in my ears. Three months later, the sinus drainage continues. I have been doing all sorts of self care–physio, chiropractic, massage, counseling–all to get me through these challenging years. On top of that, I ended up with a stye so bad that my nose and cheek swelled. My doctor sent me to ER but thankfully, it just turned out to be some very extreme version of a stye.

Stress can be brought on by various things and the grief and trauma of my last two years has left me with stress and a dread of what could possibly be next. One extreme health issue after another has had me worried. Stress can cause a candida infection and I believe that might be the cause of the lingering tinnitus, the stye, the sinus issues and the extreme reaction to the wasp sting. I’m working on getting this sorted out.

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Art by Jenn Brisson, published by Black Shuck Books

With everything that happen and still missing so very much my dear brother (I still can’t believe he is gone.), I do have to remember that there were some good things in my life. The compassion of my current employer was amazing and I will always cherish that I had the time to grieve with my family. My solo anthology Alice Unbound, as well as my collection, A Body of Work, were both published in 2018. I had received a Canada Council grant for writing, and a runner-up scholarship from HWA. I was also asked and will be a guest of honor at the Creative Ink Festival in 2020.

On top of that, I had record years in publishing my fiction and poetry. I wrote more new poetry this year than I had in years. In 2018, 12 poems were published and 3 stories. For 2019, 23 poems have been published and 10 stories. I’ll be listing links after this piece for 2019 and where most pieces can be read or bought. I don’t know if what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but I have weathered the worst two years of my entire life. I’ve had enough.

What do I hope for 2020 and the new decade to begin?

I want calm and peace, no endings, no trauma, no grief. I want health and the only excitement to be in what I get published. I want the continued support, love and compassion of friends and family, and hope that I can give it as well. I want to write more, maybe get that novel done and publish one of the two others that are languishing. For the world, I’d love to see an increase in understanding, empathy and compassion and a decrease in mistrust, fear mongering and hate. To all of you, may you have a wonderful, harm free 2020.

[image error]Poetry

“By the End,” James Gunn’s Ad Astra, Dec. 2019haiku (Wrinkles), Silver Blade #44, Dec. 2019“Don Quixote’s Quandary” in Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. III, Dec. 2019haiku (Feathers Flutter), Frozen Wavelets #1, Dec. 2019hay(na)ku (Laughter, Lovers Together, Hair Between) and horrorku (Jade Sarcophagus), Random Planets , Dec. 2019“The Storm Witch,” Eternal Haunted Summer, Dec. 2019haiku (young lips), Quatrain.fish, Nov. 2019“Stardust,” HWA Poetry Showcase VI, Nov. 2019 “Swords” Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #41, Aug. 2019“Perfect Lover” Starline 42.3, Aug. 2019“The Beetle Wife,” Polu Texni, June 17, 2019“Braving the Storm,” LiteLitOne, June 2019“Singapore,” LiteLitOne, June 2019“Fashion Statement,” LiteLitOne, June 2019“Between the Lines,” LiteLitOne, June 2019Haiku (I drink deep, Warm as red velvet, joined haiku, Scifaikuest , May 2019“New Order,” Polar Borealis #10, May 2019“The Briar Witch,” Eye to the Telescope #32, Apr. 2019untitled (The knife blade flutters), Quatrain.fish, Mar. 2019

Fiction

“Our Lady of Redemption” Nameless, Dec. 2019“Flight” Polar Borealis #12, Dec. 2019“Simple Pleasures,” Deranged, Darkerwood Publications, Dec. 2019[image error]“The Probe” Dark Moments, Black Hare Press, Nov. 2019“Uki Dreams” in Tesseracts 22: Alchemy and Artifacts, Edge Publishing, Jun. 2019“Sins of the Father,” Canadian Dreadful, Jun. 2019“Entwined” in the Pulp Horror Book of Phobias, Lycan Valley Press, May 2019“On the House” Dark Moments, Black Hare Press, Apr. 2019

 

 

Bad Behavior in the Publishing World

[image error]I’ve been gone for awhile from my blog, and was going to come back with a tale of what’s been happening in my life. However, with recent upsets in the publishing world, and specifically Canadian speculative publishing, I feel I must speak up as well, for several reasons that will become clear.

In some ways, the world of the small press, even the big mega publishers, is often fraught with financial mismanagement and suspect deals or questionable contracts. The recent events in Canada were about long time Calgary speculative publisher EDGE Publishing and long time Toronto dark fiction publisher CZP or ChiZine Publications.

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Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh series Book 5

Canada is rather small when it comes to population and even smaller with writing population. Most speculative authors know of each other and of any press that can publish speculative fiction. There aren’t many. Recent complaints by Marie Bilodeau not receiving more than one sales/royalty report and being blocked in other ways with the sale of her book started a discussion about EDGE. It spurred a minor rise up in the SF community and discussion on the SF Canada list, our own pro writers group. I believe the SFC executive managed to help in communicating with EDGE and Marie’s long outstanding case was resolved. EDGE has a reputation of not communicating, paying late or not paying and not getting contracts out on time. I’ve co-edited a Tesseracts anthology and been in various anthologies with EDGE. I was always paid, sometimes a bit late. I have received one contract after the book was published and a signed contract after another book was published. EDGE ran a risk that someone would pull their story without a signed contract and that would have meant the print run being pulled or face litigation. I was however, aware of the issues with EDGE.

When the EDGE accusations came out on SFC, people started mentioning issues they had had. I reported as I did above. This was not ever to say I didn’t believe other people’s reports. In fact, I very much believe them. It was only to report; I wasn’t going to lie. In this way people can determine that 75% of authors working with X publisher reported issues, or 100% did or 2% did. This is an important statistic and in any lawsuit that data would be used to show a pattern. It also indicates if a publisher is going through a tough phase, or if they have a regular habit of bad behavior. EDGE’s reputation is known but not everyone knows of it.

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Angel of the Abyss by Ed Kurtz

Then out came ChiZine Publication’s debacle. It’s been all over the web, on people’s blogs, on Facebook and I cannot report it all here. (This will be long enough as it is.) However File 770 will give anyone reading here a place to start. It started with Ed Kurtz’s complaints about rights and payment. It spread like wildfire with many authors reporting no or late payments and statements. Then it spread to allegations of misconduct, of gaslighting, of ostracizing and even trying to break up relationships.

This was extremely shocking stuff, especially because I considered co-owner Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi friends. I attended their wedding many years ago. I read slush for CZP, did a bit of editing, hosted the Chiseries readings in Vancouver for 2 years, and was co-editor of the online poetry section of Chizine with Carolyn Clink. I live on the West Coast. CZP is in Ontario. I didn’t even see Brett and Sandra once a year and maybe talked via phone once a year. I knew of one fight between them and another friend but that can always be chalked up to differences of opinion or personalities. Other than that, I had no clue. One blog poster has said, “we told you but you wouldn’t listen.” However, whoever the “we” were didn’t tell the “you” that included me or most of SF Canada. It’s hard to “hear” when you’re not part of whatever group is considered the “you,” so in many cases geographic areas of writers might be very well unaware of what is happening elsewhere. Perhaps Ontario authors knew but most of us did not.

Yes, I was shocked. I was disturbed and I lost sleep over it. I read many of the posts by Michael Matheson, Sam Beiko, Helen Marshall, Beverly Bambury and others. I know most of these people professionally; many of them worked for CZP, and I have talked with them in the past. I was so surprised, but I believed their statements. Unless there is a mass conspiracy, I would have had to stick my head in the sand to disbelieve the sheer number of complaints. There may be nuances to tales that haven’t been revealed. That, I don’t know.

What ensued next was just as disturbing to me. I posted on SFC, probably within the first 24-48 hours of the wildfire, stating I hadn’t seen this behavior, only what I had worked on for them, but that I was also on the West Coast and was not physically in the vicinity. Again, as with EDGE, I only posted my experiences; I didn’t lie. I also said, let’s see what they post about these allegations.

Immediately I was attacked and accused of ignorance, of negating the other reports and god knows what else. I stated again, that even in a court of law the accused gets a chance to speak. I reiterated that this did not mean I didn’t believe the statements. What ensued after was not pretty. Messages came out indicating that if you didn’t say anything then you were against the maligned authors, pretty much the black and white “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” belief. People were attacked, just because they were men or because of some statement about publishing or rights or this or that. If this were a street brawl there would have been bodies. There were members with their own agenda or trauma who will always see every statement through that particular lens. There were others who deliberately tried to misconstrue every comment, who intentionally dug into every word so that they could rise up in righteous anger. There was no asking to elaborate, just harsh judgment and accusations. Other people raised the torches and pitchforks. Some handed out blanket judgments of everyone on SFC or of this group or that group. Some people left the list. I’m sure some people unfriended me on Facebook. I don’t know so I can’t be offended but if deliberately misinterpreting my words is the way to go, then I don’t need them reading my posts.

What I did do was stop posting. After all, I was attacked once. I would now be seen as the enemy and attacked again. With the trauma and grief I’ve dealt with in the last year, this was triggering me and that’s partly why this post has come out several weeks after the initial event. I might never post again on SFC. I might let my membership lapse. I don’t know but I certainly don’t feel safe posting anymore. That’s a lot of fallout over one publisher and a lot of evidence of things that need to be fixed.

 

[image error]But are EDGE and CZP the only two publishers who have indulged in bad behavior? And is it only Canadian publishers? Absolutely not. I’ve experienced it myself more than once, from big companies to small.

I wrote articles for magazines called Best Whistler and Opulence. The first never paid me. The second was so far behind or just not paying writers that the writers rose up in force, contacted advertisers and formed a class action lawsuit. I helped get everyone in contact. I had played my cards close, having been burned by Best Whistler, and never let the amount they owed me get too high, also leaving enough time in between articles that they would often pay. Though before the mass uprising I had to threaten a lawyer to get my money and then leave. For that reason I didn’t join the lawsuit as I had no outstanding payments owed.

Even before that I used to copyedit for NY book packager Byron Preiss. They sometimes did work for other publishers and I was copyediting four related books in a faeries series. It was cancelled I think after book II but I’d copyedited book III. I spent a year fighting with them since they were arguing over who should pay: Penguin or Byron Preiss. In the end, I had to threaten lawyer to get less than $500 measly bucks. One of the biggest houses in SF exhibited disorganization when they lost not one but two copyediting tests I did for them.

Then there was Zharmae Publishing. Never heard of them? I’m not surprised. They were new. They gave me a massive contract that asked for all rights in perpetuity throughout the universe. Yes that was the exact wording. I sent them a sample of the SFWA contract. I figured they were earnest but misguided; we haggled the contract. “Tower of Strength” came out in the Irony of Survival. The true irony was surviving as a writer. I’m sure maybe eight people bought this anthology. For over a year after publication they never sent me my copies and they literally said the cheque was in the mail. The payment was $100, not very much and they knew it would be more expensive for me to get a lawyer.

What they didn’t know was I had a friend who was an entertainment lawyer and for free he had his assistant draft a letter. In 24 hours I had my pay but they still tried to wiggle out of the books. I had those in a week. These are just my stories of dealing with publishers. Publishing houses can still mismanage their operations, either intentionally or out of inexperience and bad business practices. I had other publishers disappear into the dark of night without ever responding on submissions or acceptances. That’s almost par for the course these days.

More recently I was invited to write for an anthology that was royalty based. I’ve not done this before and I will never do it again. There was no editing done on the stories and the publisher never gave any royalty reports. I never received a penny, or a hard copy of the book, only a PDF. I’m sure any sales that were done with the minimal marketing went to the publisher, and the editor who did nothing to deserve payment. But…I am unable to complain about this publisher. This is a case of me being a small pea in a pod, with little clout, not known well, and the publisher being a very well known member of a large organization. I don’t feel I would ever be heard or believed in such a situation. How does one complain to either SFWA’s or HWA’s grievance committees knowing that this person will probably have wind of it and that it could end up getting me ostracized in the writing community.

I need to mention that lawsuits and grievances have probably happened to many [image error]of the big publishing house’s. you don’t always hear of them because of NDAs. After all, entertainment lawyers make their money interpreting and looking for loopholes in contracts. Sometimes the publisher is to blame but sometimes an author can be to blame as well. There are notoriously difficult writers. If they’re famous enough, publishers will grin and bear it, but if they’re newer, then authors might be booted to the curb. It’s good to remember that not every complaint on any side may be founded and that it’s always best to hear both sides of the story. I believe this fundamentally, even in the workplace.

This is the power publishers and editors hold over writers. We want to be published. There’s more of us than there are spots to fill. People will often be paid peanuts for massive rights grabs by the publisher. The publisher can blacklist you. Big and well-known publishers and editors can spread enough word that you are a difficult author so that no one will touch you. It could be game over for whatever sales we can get. So yes, I’m still the victim of some publishing bad behavior that I cannot report on. And my rule is to always try to treat everyone kindly because you don’t how it can come back to bite you on the ass.

I’ve become more and more cautious and don’t get caught as much, and I’m a barracuda in going after my rights. I don’t care if I have to nag. I will keep on. But we don’t always know when a publisher might change or a new publisher might just forget to get contracts out or runs out of money. Even vigilance can’t save us all from getting caught.

There are various writers organizations such as the Writers Union, HWA, SFWA, etc. that can go to bat for authors but if one is not a member it’s not as easy. And as I’ve shown, membership won’t necessarily save you. There is no easy solution to all of this. Sometimes an author thinks they’re the only one that has the issue. I guess all we can do is communicate better, to grievance committees, to each other and listen calmly. We should be trying to hear all sides and not leaping to conclusions and condemnations without weighing everything. The era of social media means that judgment can come without knowing the facts. I just know I do not have the energy to be attacked by someone’s perceived assumption about my words. Try asking for clarification first. And publishers need to have better business practices. We’re probably going to end up with a gap in Canadian speculative publishing, which is already very slim. I guess we’ll see what the future holds.

 

TV Review: Into the Badlands

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AMC’s Into the Badlands

I’ve been watching Into the Badlands, and I think I’ll categorize it under guilty pleasure. It’s like a good mix of all those classic Chinese martial arts movies (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, any Jackie Chan film) with impossible feats using swords—Daniel Wu is amazing, like Jackie Chan who was a mentor, and it’s fun to watch. Badlands is some sort of weird world where the baron’s banned guns and people seem to use candles, mostly, but they have cars, opium and oil refineries. Lots of opium for some reason. (there will be some spoilers)

So, it doesn’t quite make sense that you have everything from vixens in skirts and high heels fighting, skintight dominatrix style outfits, steam punk clothing, weird semi-Chinese armor, and the proles in medieval castoffs. I would get tired of wearing all of one color which is what the “clippers” (warriors) wear for each baron they serve.

It’s awfully gory yet campy (think Kill Bill) and a future where violence is always the first answer, a bunch of conniving assholes as barons, and a lone warrior with honor. Yeah, part western, part martial arts, and the theme songs reflects this. I do love the clothing and the action scenes but some stuff is predictable and some is so dumb.

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Ally Ioannides plays Tilda, one of the Widow’s butterflies flown free.

Take the “Blind Cannibal Assassins” episode. Our intrepid adventurers (there is a sidekick and a man hunting them who feels he was done wrong—and made fun of because of silly “honor”) stumble upon blind cannibals. These people’s eyes were stabbed out by none other than our hero. All good conflict stuff, but for some reason, while these blind folks are so good in their blindness that they can do all sorts of crazy fighting feats and acrobatics—they can hear a breath, a concern, almost an idea, but somehow, they can’t hunt so they only hunt people. Yum yum! Because, yeah, once you’re made a monster you’re always a monster. They scrape their weapons along the walls of their underground cavern because if you’re blind you need to also live in squalor in the dark but preserve your dead babies in jars that you can’t see (I said there would be spoilers). And of course people who have been blind for a while actually already know where the walls are and can do it without touch. Oh, and these blind cannibals have an impeccable sense of color and all wear white. But they don’t wash and they don’t clean.

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Castor is a dark one, imbued with a mysterious power that only some have.

You can see some of the silliness here, used to make the show more visual, with more contrast between evil and good and downright crazy. The storyline is good enough and there are some interesting powers beside superhuman martial prowess. Who are those dark-eyed ones?

It’s absolutely unclear what happened to the world before but there seems to be a lot of space, and a lot of idiot barons running the show in their two-dimensional nastiness. Mayhem constantly ensues. Shot mostly in Ireland, there are awesome backdrops to the wars and petty intrigues. The storyline has enough twists and the acting is competent and it’s visually enthralling so I’m still watching it. And hey, the lead actor is Asian. That’s refreshing. I’ll keep watching this guilty pleasure.

 

Guest Blog: Author JE Barnard

A small note that the last year has continued to bring trauma with a recent death in the family and a fractured ankle. As I literally get back on my feet I’ve asked a few other writers to be guests. Today, Calgary writer Jayne Barnard joins me. Feel free to ask some questions or leave comments.

KEYS TO A STRONG SERIES

[image error]Every new mystery author dreams of landing a series. Many of us have several novels in mind with our lead character before the first one is finished. Yet how many of us recognize the many pitfalls to writing a series, in which every entry must be strong enough to both build our brand and pull our earliest readers forward?

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Look for Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond here.

True confession: I don’t have the best luck with planning series ahead of time. The award-winning Maddie Hatter trilogy began with a fun, fast, one-off book titled Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond, into which I tossed every silly send-up I could think of, from Belgian detectives to games of Clue. Unexpectedly, the book received nominations for both the Prix Aurora and the Alberta Book Publishing Award, and the publisher wanted more. After a panicked week of pacing my office and shrieking, “I don’t know where the story goes next!” I finally found a couple of threads in the first book that I could pull gently forward into a second. Fortunately, Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Gauge worked out well enough to garner the same set of nominations, and was named the 2018 Alberta Book of the Year for Children & Young Adults by the Alberta Book Publishers Association.

For my second series, contemporary women’s suspense set in the Alberta foothills, the first manuscript was a finalist for the Debut Dagger in the UK and the Unhanged Arthur in Canada, but no publisher wanted it (A sad truth: some manuscripts are beloved of juries but not of publishers or agents). The second manuscript, with the same female lead—ex-Mountie Lacey McCrae—won the Unhanged and was picked up by Dundurn Press. The catch: they wanted that book and two further ones, but not the “first” book. In a rushed set of edits, I had to turn that second book into a first one, and shape a new series hook that would carry Lacey, and the readers, further into her future than I had planned.

The solution in both cases came from the same place: characters’ back stories. Somewhere in the history you gave them, perhaps planned or possibly on the spur of an inspired moment, is a clue that will lead you to a successful sequel, and forward through a series.Each book in a series has a central story question that must be answered, and it may or may not relate directly to the central series question. Both are important. One must carry a book, the other a series. In Flood the central story question is, “Can Lacey save Dee from a midnight prowler who may or may not be her ex-husband?”

The character arcs must also be addressed. The arc of the series protagonist must be visible in every book, and it must advance in some way during each book. It can evolve independent of each particular novel’s plot but is strongest when it is thematically or structurally related to that plot. Lacey’s own marriage, and her attitudes to relationships because of it, shape how she responds to Dee’s troubles, and how she interprets clues, even though we don’t learn a lot about the marriage during When the Flood Falls. In Where the Ice Falls (Dundurn, July 2019) we’ll see more events from her marriage and her RCMP career that impact events in that plot.

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When the Flood Falls can be found at Amazon.

While a secondary character’s story arc can be made central to a single book, like Dee’s danger is in Flood, it can also remain almost invisible until it’s needed in a future book. So, to think about the characters standing around the edges of your current project. Give them hints of a life beyond their immediate function. You’ll thank yourself later.

The series question must matter intensely to the character—and the readers—and yet be readily separated into segments partially resolved in each book successive book. Lacey’s marriage is present from the first chapter of the first book to the final chapter of the third. Early in Flood we are presented with the question: What happened in that marriage that drove Lacey not only out of her career but five mountain ranges away from her husband, and what’s she going to do about it?” Right up to that last chapter of that last book, we want the reader on that journey of self-discovery and growth right beside Lacey.

Your series question won’t be the same as mine, but take time to think about all its possibilities before you get too far into your series. Readers can feel it when the tension has left the central series question, and their emotional investment in your series will sink just about as quickly. Dig deep. Agents, editors, and readers will thank you for it.

To recap, a series needs:

Strong individual book questions to keep old readers and pull in new ones
A strong character arc for the protagonist that advances in stages with each book
Recurring secondary characters with arcs of their own that can be foregrounded
A strong series question to pull readers forward through all the books in order
And one I didn’t mention above: to be grounded in a specific place or milieu with which series readers will become increasingly at home. Familiarity breeds comfort, and brings readers back just as surely as a strong series question does.

Bonus points if there’s a theme that ties all your books together. Mine is “Falls” as in both the nearby Elbow Falls—grounding in a place—and “everything falls apart,” which it continually does in Lacey’s world, usually at the moment when she about to get Life back under control.

JE (Jayne) Barnard is a Calgary-based crime writer with 25 years of award-winning short fiction and children’s literature behind her. Author of the popular Maddie Hatter Adventures (Tyche Books), and now The Falls Mysteries (Dundurn Press), she’s won the Dundurn Unhanged Arthur, the Bony Pete, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award. Her works were shortlisted for the Prix Aurora (twice), the UK Debut Dagger, the Book Publishing in Alberta Award (twice), and three Great Canadian Story prizes. Jayne is a past VP of Crime Writers of Canada, a founder of Calgary Crime Writers, and a member of Sisters in Crime. Her most recent book is When the Flood Falls and her upcoming one is Where the Ice Falls, both small-town psychological thrillers firmly rooted in the Alberta foothills west of Calgary.

You can follow JE Barnard through the following media:

@J.E.Barnard (Twitter)

@JayneBarnard1 (Twitter)

Saffron.hemlock (Instagram)

https://www.facebook.com/FallsMystery/

https://www.facebook.com/MaddieHatterAdventures/

About When the Flood Falls: Her career in tatters and her marriage receding in the rear-view mirror, ex-RCMP corporal Lacey McCrae trades her uniform for a tool belt and the Lower Mainland for the foothills west of Calgary. Amid the oil barons, hockey stars, and other high rollers who inhabit the wilderness playground is her old university roommate, Dee Phillips. Dee’s glossy life was shattered by a reckless driver; now she’s haunted by a nighttime prowler only she can hear. As snowmelt swells the icy river, crashing whole trees against the only bridge back to civilization, Lacey must make the call: assume Dee’s in danger and get her out of there, or decide the prowler is imaginary and stay, cut off from help if the bridge goes under. Can she find one true clue either way before Mother Nature make the decision for her? Can they both survive until the floodwaters fall?

Women in Horror: Sèphera Girón Part II

[image error]Sèphera’s back today, talking about earning a living as a writer and specifically about Patreon and how it works.

One of the things that help people like me, single people who don’t have a partner to support me financially or emotionally or even with posting a tweet and trying to figure out how to earn a living and keep all the balls in the air and get the work flowing again, is a Patreon.

Nowadays, a lot of people can turn to fund-raising events like a Go Fund Me or a Kick Starter for a specific project and things like that. I myself had a very successful Go Fund Me a few years ago. I had hoped to go to the Stanley hotel for a writers’ retreat to try and get back on track with my writing and I wanted to pay my own way, but the recession was huge here with no jobs at all, not even Starbucks would hire me. I took Amanda Palmer’s advice and laid out some of my story on Go Fund Me and asked for help. People were very generous and kind and understood how important that this retreat was. It wasn’t just me trying to go to a retreat every year and make people pay for it. It was important for my mental health to really try to get there to be with horror peers and to see where my favorite book originated, there was rumour of casting for new horror TV show, and things like that. So, I got to do the retreat through incredible generosity from the horror community and I have been very grateful!

I saw another platform called Patreon which seemed to be a different approach. The first Patreon I started, I was trying to do it more like a Kick Starter and that was not successful at all. I was trying to write a book about ghosts and ghost hunting with major emphasis on the Lizzie Borden house and I also wanted to do a New England tour. I was trying to get funding for that through Patreon and I didn’t. Patreon is not for those things but back then it wasn’t really clear what Patreon was.

[image error]I found Patreon because I kept seeing Amanda Palmer coming through the various aspects of my social media talking about “don’t be afraid to ask for help.” I saw her blogs and TED talk and she talks all the time about not being afraid to ask for help, being on Patreon, interacting with fans and so on. For those of you who don’t know, Amanda Palmer is married to author Neil Gaiman, so theoretically he reaps the rewards of her hugely success Patreon platform.

I tried my Patreon again, taking her words more to heart than I did for the Go Fund Me and the first Patreon attempt. I restructured my Patreon and I’ve had it for over three years now.

When I first started it, I thought, “OK, I’m too depressed to write horror and so I’m going to write science fiction and I’m going to work on a space opera.”

For the first year I wrote a chapter a month for my space opera and I had one patron for the longest time (and I didn’t even know him in real life!) but then I started to realize from reading market reports that where I want to send it won’t take work that is previously on the Internet and specifically named Patreon as being previously published so I removed my monthly installations from my Patreon.

Now, my main goal is to show people the crazy writer’s life that I lead since a lot of people tell me my life is weird and it is and so I share my life with my patrons. I write or video several blogs a week, I talk about if I’m on a TV show or movie, I discuss what’s [image error]bugging me, I am disgusted with my weight, weird things happened to me such as I burned myself waitressing. Patrons of a certain level got to see pictures of my horrible burns and scars. I get weird allergies, so my patrons get to see my face all puffed up with hives and silly things like that. I might sing or do other stuff but it’s all part of the writing process, part of the being a creative human being process and so I like to amuse my patrons with various things. Sometimes I’m able to share short stories I’m working on, depending on which market I’m writing them for. Sometimes I’ll just put up rough drafts. Sometimes I’ll just put up the cue cards for the character notes, it depends on the project. There are three books I keep working on and off on for over the last few years. When they are finished, my patrons of a specific level will be acknowledged in the professionally published books. All of my patrons are thanked whenever I can on some YouTube videos. I did thank some patrons in a couple of books I republished that had been published long before I ever had a Patreon (A Penny Saved, Captured Souls, Gilda and the Prince). My patrons got to see the rough version of this blog post!

A lot of people consider Patreon to be begging. This means they don’t understand what it’s about. There are, I think, over a million creators on Patreon now. When I joined, there were a couple thousand, now there are over a million.

There are a lot of very important famous people on Patreon who have thousands of patrons in that they make thousands of dollars a month on Patreon. There are huge writers on Patreon who make thousands of dollars a month. Everybody expects something different with what they want to give and with what they want to receive.

I like to think that since I do a lot of things, I offer different experiences. Patreon is only one of many ways I attempt to earn an income so that I can get back to the business of creating actual novels and other entertainments for people. I do love to entertain other people. But when I see people calling Patreon creators “beggers” I always find that upsetting.

Patreon is more like a subscription service. There are writers who write books in a month on there. There are musicians who will create songs for you. Artists who will draw for you. YouTubers who will mention you. It’s endless in what you can offer and receive. I would bet many of us creators on Patreon work pretty hard for your subscription.

[image error]I look around on Patreon sometimes. You can only see so much if you’re not actually paying however, I do notice that some writers have Patreons and they haven’t even posted for their followers in over a year, sometimes many months, and yet they still are getting thousands of dollars. So this shows that those of you who are thinking about setting up a Patreon but not sure what to offer, some fans just want you just to get those books written and out in the world and they don’t care if you actually post on the platform, they just want to support you in your career and help you get some dental work done or see a doctor or whatever.

Speaking of which…here in Ontario, yes, we have free health care as in going to the doctor but if anything’s wrong with you, you have to deal with it. I’ve been be so grateful to my patrons that I’ve been able to get prescriptions when I got bit by a dog, had to get various prescriptions and bandages for burns and allergies, when I didn’t have money in my bank account for such things. I dream of the day I can see the dentist for the first time in ten years if my teeth stop falling out so that I have some teeth left to fix. Whether it’s through an influx of pledges from Patrons (I’d need a few hundred patrons!) or whether it’s from advances and royalties from work I’ve been inspired to create because I have patrons rooting for me doesn’t matter.

I have some health issues, a shaky hand for a few years that is growing worse every day, so my waitressing days are over. One can’t discount the impact that emotional illnesses can have on a creative person and yes, we have free “healthcare” here in Canada, but we have to pay for dentists, eye doctors, prescriptions of every kind, birth control, psychiatrists and psychologists, therapy, counsellors, chiropractors, and more. We can get diagnosed by a family doctor and can get “free” surgery, but god help you if you have anything you need to take drugs for and don’t have insurance. I’ve had dozens of jobs over the decades and have never once had insurance as it’s not a given widely here as it is in the States. I’m supposed to be on a few prescriptions like anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication and something related to the gall bladder operation, but I can’t afford them, so I just plow on through and lose days/weeks/months of work when the Black Dogs bark.

When you’re going through trauma, “going out and getting a job” isn’t so easy and when you have no present-day skills and are over fifty, well…

These days, everyone is an editor and the fees that hobby editors charge are destroying the industry much as writers who write for free destroy opportunities for all writers to get paid better. It also seems that everyone is now a tarot card reader as well so my tarot business has also been destroyed when people can get cheap/free tarot readings everywhere including from apps instead of paying a proper wage for skilled, professional work. My safety guard backup careers are just as unreliable as writing at this point. Background work pays minimum wage and I usually work one day a month. So, what do you do when you’re pushing sixty and divorced and lost everything you ever had?

So, my longwinded point in this blog, is that, ladies, especially single ladies (even if you’re married) who get nothing from the government, nothing from any spouses−I don’t get any support from anyone except my patrons−ladies, consider starting a Patreon. Patreon is a blessing for me, emotionally and financially.

I’m happy to see more people join the platform. Everyone who has joined my Patreon has stayed on the ride. Only one person ever quit on me ever in all the time I’ve had my Patreon.

[image error]So maybe I’m doing something right. I don’t know but it’s a fun platform for me. It keeps me from being depressed and from spending days going “what the fuck is my life?” because I have to answer to my patrons. I do make schedules and I try to hit them. I take pictures and videos at events, knowing I’ll be sharing them with my patrons. It’s helping me get back on my feet, really helping me focus on having most of my space opera finished, most of my next Witch Upon a Star book is nearly finished and I’m almost halfway through my next horror book.

My Women in Horror Month wish for all of you is to start a Patreon if you don’t have one. And if you have some extra money kicking around, consider supporting an artist or two on Patreon. Even if you sponsor for $1, when one hundred people give $1, that’s $100! (minus Patreon fees, of course!)

Be warned, you cannot find someone on there. Their search function sucks. There is no way to look for writers or anyone else, even if you punch in their name! The only way you can find someone on Patreon is if you already know they are there. Feel free to add your links at the bottom of this blog.

Patreon is a really great tool for getting focused and organized, building your fan base and rewarding your fan base. You can create whatever rewards you want depending on whatever it is you do and your finances.

Interesting that three times I put a call out on my Facebook for people, women, to post their links for a Women in Horror Month article I was writing about Patreon. I was hoping for lots of women for this article. But much like calls for horror stories and novels, men are quicker to respond. In a nutshell, you can see by the Patreon response, how it likely reflects horror writer submissions.

Even though I have nearly four thousand Facebook friends, you can see here, how many people shared their links.

Do we need a Women in Horror Month? I’m still not sure. But I do know that some of us sometimes need a helping hand to get back on our feet, or maybe to get on them for the first time. Keep writing and more importantly, submitting. Don’t worry if you’re a woman; you’re a WRITER! Use your real name and stand proud behind your work.

First, let’s acknowledge Amanda Palmer who drew my attention to this ride:

https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer

http://www.patreon.com/sephera

https://www.patreon.com/GaryABraunbeck

Http://www.patreon.com/monicaskuebler

https://patreon.com/maryrajotte

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=1002984

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2887829

https://www.patreon.com/ObnoxiousAnonymous

https://www.patreon.com/westonochse

[image error]Sèphera Girón is an author, actor, tarot card reader, and mom. She has over twenty published books. Watch for Taurus in the Witch Upon a Star series to be released this year from Riverdale Avenue Books. She has stories in Dark Rainbow, Dawn of the Monsters, Abandon, Group Hex 1 and Group Hex 2, Intersections: Six Tales of Ouija Horror and more. Sèphera is the astrologer for Romance Daily News. Be sure to watch for her monthly horoscopes at https://www.romancedailynews.com/ Sèphera lives in Toronto.

Drop by Sèphera’s Twitch TV channel and get a free daily tarot card reading. Be sure to follow so you know when she’s online. Click Witch Upon a Star for her series. Sèphera can also be found on her website, her Tarot Card Reading website, Instagram, and Twitter. Check out Sèphera on YouTube. Be sure to follow so you know when the next video is uploaded!

Sèphera’s courses are also available on Udemy!

https://www.udemy.com/secrets-of-a-background-performer/?couponCode=BGYOUTUBE3

https://www.udemy.com/read-tarot-cards/?couponCode=TAROTCARDYOUTUBE

https://www.udemy.com/so-you-want-to-be-a-horror-writer/?couponCode=BLOGHORROR2

Women in Horror: Sèphera Girón

[image error]Straight-shooter Sèphera Girón talks about earning a living and is my last blogger for Women in Horror Month, though you will have to come back for part II as she will post over two days. I lost a few writers to health and work commitments. It seems only fitting that since I started with a Canadian, and am a Canadian, that I also end with one.

Trying to Earn a Living as a Writer in 2019!

Well here we are in another Women in Horror Month. I’ve been working in the horror field since before Women in Horror Month was invented and at the time, I didn’t really feel like it was something that was truly necessary for I didn’t see the world quite as I see it now.

[image error]I think because I came from a mid-sized University town and from very educated parents who already worked in the arts that it never occurred to me that I couldn’t grow up to be a horror writer as I had dreamed of since I was around 14 years old. And it never occurred to me that I was a woman or that being a woman meant anything at all. In my naivety, I thought that the best story would be picked, and it was up to me to work as hard as I could and learn as much as I could about the horror genre and how to be a writer in order to become successful in the horror field.

I was off to a flying start; I read voraciously, I took writing courses, I even graduated from York University with a BA in Fine Art Studies. By majoring in Fine Arts, I was able to embrace my love of all the arts because even to this day I still have my finger in several artistic pies. I am a writer, I’m a working actress, I’m a podcaster or YouTuber, I dabble in drawing badly, I still pick up my violin once in a while, and I love to sing. I’ve not done musical theater in many years, but I do earn a bit of a side income as a background performer in various movies and TV shows that come through Toronto.

In my quest to become a writer, I started to attend conventions in the late eighties, and I was one of those people who would sit in the audience and actually take notes and try to learn secret tidbits from the professionals who would give us wonderful advice. Back in those days, you really couldn’t get that advice unless you actually went to a convention and listened to these people speak. There was no Internet and so you had to wait a long time to get information month to month from the Horror Writers Association newsletters or from market reports like the Gila Queen and so on.

It was a much different time.

So, as far as I was concerned, my hope to become a woman horror writer just meant I [image error]had to work really hard and it never occurred to me I would have to work harder than a man or anything like that. I just knew I had to be the best writer I could be. I spent a lot of time (YEARS!) writing and re-writing my books and eventually became a Leisure (Publishing) author until Leisure died and then a Samhain (Publishing) author until Samhain died and I published at several other houses as well alongside those. (Never put all your books in one market!) However, over the years it did come to my attention that perhaps women weren’t getting the recognition that they needed to get. For me, I believe that I got all the recognition I needed for the work that I did because it just never occurred to me that I didn’t. I still stand by that.

As time has gone on and society keeps changing, it almost seems like things are going a bit backwards. Now there is more call for women writers, diversity, and so on. Now the world seems to be splintering into factions of labeling and stereotypes, everyone is sorted into a little compartment and quotas are created to be filled. And yet, now, it does seem that women do have to work harder to get ahead in some instances because now there’s a big ol’ spotlight on us. And I still say, despite all that, editors just want to buy a good story, they don’t care who writes it, just make the publisher lots of money!

[image error]I have said this many times and I will continue to say it, that a large part of the problem with an imbalance of women in horror (and I can’t speak to any other genre because I haven’t asked people in other genres) is simple to see. Over the years I’ve spoken to many women authors while gauging whether there is a problem with women being published and recognized or not. It did come to my attention several years ago that often women aren’t getting published in horror because they aren’t writing it and they aren’t submitting it. PERIOD.

Sometimes women have to be encouraged a little more than men to actually show their work or to get it out there. It is not enough to say you’re a woman horror writer and that you are writing when in fact you’re not submitting and getting published. You are responsible for your own career and you need to make it happen. No one is going to come to you and ask to see your novel. You have to put it in front of people’s faces. And using initials as your name doesn’t fool anyone, so cut it out.

I guess in my naivete in not believing that I would ever be told “no” simply because I was a woman has definitely helped me in my career because I’ve always felt that if I want to do something, I can do it and I’ve always been that way about most parts of my life. So even though I’ve not been terribly prolific the last few years, it is because my energies are a bit scattered, because I am enjoying other aspects of my life as I have mentioned and also I had some emotional issues that have taken me about ten years to deal with and writing horror didn’t really go along with some of the stuff I’ve been trying to work through. In my case, the only person to blame for not having books out right now is myself because I have been taking an emotional break. However, this is all changing, and I do have many stories out or about to be out and I do plan to finish and have my publishers put out a couple of books this year.

One of the tools that has helped me heal and get refocussed is that I created an account on Patreon. Now before I get into my Patreon spiel, I also would like to recognize that in my twenty or maybe now it’s thirty years in the business that I’ve had observations about ways that women aren’t as supported as men when it comes to relationships; a kind of behind the scenes sort of thing.

I have met many male writers over the years who have the luxury of being full time writers because their wives work full time, or their wives at least make enough money to support them both until the husband earns a better income. These husbands are often very productive, they eventually earn a lot of money as writers because they can focus on their work and ultimately have a double income with their wives. Sometimes the wives not only provide an alternative income, but they also are the ones that do all that boring business stuff that writers have to do. It is fine to write a book or a story but then there is so much other work that goes into it, especially these days. Back before self-publishing and before publishing houses got all splintered and weird, you basically wrote a book, sent it out and then you would have to market it, send out press releases, maybe do a party, a reading, a launch, and more. A lot of these male writers let the wives do all the business aspects, like administrative assistants, secretaries, personal assistants, shoppers, and groomers. The wives would send out press releases, they would send out to markets, they would search market reports, they would deal with the agents, editors, publishers. They deal with publicists as they could hire publicists because they had double incomes, they arrange the parties, they do all the taxes, they do all the income, outcome, receipts, letter writing, letter campaigns, the fan clubs, the blogs, deal with the children, aging parents, and so on. This continues to this day.

[image error]I just began online teaching almost a year ago and I attended a workshop here in town put on by the company as a “road show” not long ago and I saw this exact same thing going on with online teachers as well. A lot of male teachers prepare their courses, write them, and film them while the wives do all the film editing, the marketing deal with the phone calls, and students and getting press releases out, preparing downloadable handouts, uploading endless hours of videos, promoting, creating coupons, and blasting it all out on social media. It was actually discussed at the workshop that the spouse should do these exact things to help the teacher spouse. It’s part of the strategy of success.

 The male writer or teacher gets to just focus on being a creative entity and put out the best work they possibly can with lots of time for writing and re-writing and dealing with the editorial notes because the wife is taking care of all the business side and so they don’t have to worry their pretty little heads about all that. I have never seen it in reverse. I’ve never seen quite the same dynamic where the woman is the sole writer breadwinner and the husband does everything else. I do know there are lots of supportive husbands who will help a little bit. There are husbands who will do some of the stuff but not like women do for men. I know this sounds sexist but hey we’re talking about Women in Horror Month and the Reality of Life. I figured as my own life went on, I would see more of the dynamic going the other way, but I don’t. I never saw it in my personal life at all and never expect to. There are a lot of men recognizing the hard work their wives do but I don’t see a lot of men actually giving up their lives to become personal assistants or secretaries for the women writers to make the women’s careers super dee duper although there are always exceptions and feel free to pile on me in the comments of how wrong I am. This rambling leads me to explore the reality aspect of things, which is earning a living as a writer in these totally difficult times of 2019.

In the nineties and early two thousands, I actually was earning a living as a writer and an editor. I made decent money, I had a beautiful home, I could put my children into various classes and activities. I wasn’t wealthy but I could do my thing and get by, go to conventions and things like that. However, over the last ten years my personal life took a huge blow, I was thrust into instant poverty for the very first time in my life, and at the same time, there was a massive recession with NO JOBS AT ALL, traditional publishing crashed and burned, and self-publishing became a thing. I don’t have the beautiful income I used to have, my editing job that I had for about ten years went good-bye that same year (thanks to off-shoring to cheaper countries) and major horror publishing houses went good-bye and so it’s been a matter of creating a new life in a new world order. After many years of struggling just to survive in this expensive city and being on a waiting list for five years, I ended up in an artist co-op which is where I am now, and I’ve been here for about a year and a half. This helps a lot with the rent and things like that because the rent is a bit lower than regular Toronto rents so that buys me a tiny bit of wiggle room as I re-calibrate my life and career and move forward.

(Tomorrow, I’ll continue with the second half of Sèphera’s, where she continues talking about earning a living as a writer.)

[image error]Sèphera Girón is an author, actor, tarot card reader, and mom. She has over twenty published books. Watch for Taurus in the Witch Upon a Star series to be released this year from Riverdale Avenue Books. She has stories in Dark Rainbow, Dawn of the Monsters, Abandon, Group Hex 1 and Group Hex 2, Intersections: Six Tales of Ouija Horror and more. Sèphera is the astrologer for Romance Daily News. Be sure to watch for her monthly horoscopes at https://www.romancedailynews.com/ Sèphera lives in Toronto.