Colleen Anderson's Blog, page 8

Women in Horror: Tabatha Wood

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Today, from New Zealand, I have Tabatha Wood who talks about writing and why she finds horror important.

Witches Brew – A Recipe For Writing Horror

Why do I write horror? It is a question often asked of me, and one I have asked of myself more than a few times. To most, I appear to be a cheerful and light-hearted person, although perhaps tinged with a slightly Gothic aroma. Why do I take such delight in writing tales of the dark and the distressing? Why create stories that get under the skin of my readers, or that leave them with a nasty aftertaste?

I always knew I wanted to be a writer, probably ever since I learned to hold a pen. I tried hard to write the stories that I most wanted to read, the books that I hadn’t yet found. My parents bought me a typewriter and I churned out hundreds of short stories, carefully cutting and pasting them to make books of my own. This was before the dawn of the personal computer, when cut and paste meant literally that. I’ve always believed that good work requires hard work. You have to pour a part of your soul into what you do.

Since my early teens, horror stories have been my favorites. They were the ones I could [image error]get lost in. The ones where the survival of the characters was not fully guaranteed. Absolutely anything could happen, and usually did. As a tween I started with an appetizer of Point Horror books, most notably Pike and Stein, then grew fat on a diet of King, Koontz, Barker and Hutson, enjoying every gruesome chunk of plot-twist and gore. It was female authors such as Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice and Daphne du Maurier who made me realize that writing horror was not solely a man’s game.

My early horror stories were monstrous, as in, they almost always focused on actual monsters or ghosts. I hadn’t yet had the life experience to refine my horror-writing palate. I do remember writing one in particular about my childhood toys coming to life, harboring malicious intent. Hardly an original concept, but I utterly terrified my twelve-year-old self. I tore the pages into teeny, tiny pieces and threw them into the bottom of the kitchen garbage bin. No one but me ever read that story, but I realised right then that I had the capacity to scare.

Fast forward a few years and the first books I actually got published were not horror stories; they were academic guides for professionals working in education. I was delighted to be published, but also strangely disappointed. This was not really the kind of writer I had aspired to be.

[image error]I fell into writing horror again quite by accident. Growing older, I experienced and recovered from, both mental and physical illness. I realized that horror is not always monsters hiding underneath the bed, or a slavering beast at the door. Horror is also loneliness, doubt, depression and loss. Horror can be being the new girl at the office, knowing no one and drowning in self-doubt. It can be a terminal cancer diagnosis, or the threat of losing a parent or child. For me, horror was waking up every morning with devastating chronic pain, not knowing how I would make it through the day but accepting that I must. I take these concepts and throw them headlong into nightmarish worlds, where no usual or expected rules apply, just to see what new demons emerge. Gender stereotyping tells us that women are allegedly more in touch with their emotions. If this is true, I am happy to admit I use it to my advantage, especially when I really want to chill my readers.

Good horror will leave you with a lingering feeling of unease. An itch in the brain that you can’t quite scratch, but equally you can’t ignore. It should squirm around in your head for a while, leave you still thinking about it for a few days afterwards. When I put my characters in the darkest and most terrible situations, I know that it is often what I don’t tell my readers, that will scare them the most. I recognize that, whilst it might be fun, I don’t have to write about blood and gore to elicit a visceral reaction. What is more frightening; being forced to fight a tentacled creature from Hell, or helplessly watching it steal your only child? As a mother, I know which idea scares me more.

Writing horror gives me the power to get into my reader’s heads and make them question all the things they believe. It’s a recipe I’ve worked hard to perfect. I can take an everyday experience shared by all, stir in a believable character the reader can identify or at least empathize with, add a pinch of the weird, strange, or supernatural, and serve up a truly stomach-churning meal.

Tabatha Wood lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband and two boys. She spends most of her days educating her children at home, and in her free time she writes short stories, online blog articles, and the occasional poem. Her stories are mostly horror, fantasy, and suspense; while her online blog focuses more on her life and experiences in New Zealand. 

Outside of writing, she has organised charity events to help promote and support equality and women’s rights; makes and sells her own jewellery; and immerses herself in the world of cosplay−often dressing up as superheroes to help fundraise for a good cause. 

She started an online collective in 2017 which promotes using writing and creativity as a tool for positive mental health, and helps run a regular monthly group and workshops to support other female writers in Wellington. She enjoys writing pieces which challenge the way people think, or offer a fresh perspective on the world.

She is currently working on a collection of short horror stories: Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange due to be published in March 2019 by Wild Wood Books.

  You can find her online at http://tabathawood.com/ and read a story from her collection here.

 

Women in Horror: Pippa Bailey

[image error]Today, for a Sunday read, with Women in Horror Month, Pippa Bailey offers a short sharp story. Enjoy the ride and I’ll see you back here tomorrow with another guest for Women in Horror.

Ride or Die

On her journey home from work Amy started to consider if she was perhaps dying, no one could endure this much pain and not be dying, surely?

The wait for the bus had been arduous, weighed down by grocery shopping tugging on her back through mesh backpack straps. The numbness in her arms wasn’t nearly explainable by the weight, she was strong she knew that, or she’d have never made it to the stop in the first place. Her arms throbbed, spindles of icy electricity pricked at her skin, chasing the thrust of pulsating arteries to her fingertips and back.

Staring out of the window streetlights flickered in the haze of rain and mist, their glow almost doubling the size of already blurred luminescence. She tried to focus her eyes between the dirt on the window and the distant lights but could only take in a wash of muted orange, eyes listing as she attempted to control her vision.

15 stops to go.

Image from thisisinsider.com

With headphones plugged tight into her ears no one would try to start a conversation. At this time of evening on a Friday the bus clientele consisted of exhausted workers, drunks, and druggies off to the latest crash-pad or lost-view hotel, for another fix.

Her audio book mumbled, stuffing her cotton-filled brain with a jangle of words, excited characters to distract and entertain. Despite all of this she was always brought back to the pain. It tore through her like a knife, at first the image of sharp metal left a tangible taste of iron on her tongue. Peering down at her stomach there was no blade, no wound, simply a pouch of swollen flesh that had sprung over the previous three days.

Please arrive sooner, please arrive sooner, she begged. Furrowing her brow and hoping to force the bus onwards, she focused on the window as if her will was enough to change her circumstances.

Don’t die here, if you’re going, and this is it, don’t do it on a fucking bus.

She’d called her boyfriend from the bus stop near work, asking him to meet her when

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Pippa Bailey contemplating dark stories and tea.

she reached home. He’d sounded scared. His voice always a pillar of strength shook as he’d agreed. She’d ended the call at the next stab of pain, her voice an inaudible cry through grit teeth, flecks of spit hitting a metal bar that ran the length of the seat in front. A reflection of her face shone through layers of fingerprints. Tears scarred her cheeks, she’d expected them to be red and puffy but they were deathly pale.

10 stops

The pain rose again, scouring her stomach and up to her chest compressing her lungs. She wanted to vomit and cry and let herself crash to the floor amid the dirt and empty bottles that rattled from seat to seat, rolling along the scuffed plastic as the bus rounded another corner.

Sodden branches whipped against the window like ancient fingers desperately clawing at the glass as the bus trundled down another woodland road.

5 stops

She dug her fingers into her stomach, willing the pain away, her skin burning. Her blue jeans now stained red along the crotch stuck to her skin and dyed velvet seat fuzz from turquoise to crimson. She twisted in her seat, desperate to pull herself away from the mark.

2 stops

A shop sign glowed in the distance, she knew the sign albeit she’d never stepped foot in that shop. A beacon in the darkness for home. He would be waiting to take some of her burden.

This month’s period had been the worst. She’d always struggled when they came around, normally a couple pills and a bar of Cadbury’s helped. She’d try to shrug it off with a laugh and call it Shark Week.

There’s that joke that women are not to be trusted, what else could bleed for seven days and not die. A stupid joke, but it was feeling more like a question, how could she bleed so much for so long and not suffer the consequences?

Home

The bus doors opened ushering in a blast of frosty air, and two warm hands that gripped her bags and stroked a palm against her cheek as her world faded into black.

[image error]Pippa Bailey lives north of the wall in the Scottish Highlands. Principally a horror writer, YouTube personality and independent reviewer at Deadflicks with her partner, Myk Pilgrim. She’s known for supernatural horror with a vile sense of humour, and you can find her and Myk’s collections Poisoned Candy and Bloody Stockings through all good book retailers.

You can spot her drinking too much tea, making terrible puns, and bothering the local wildlife at www.pippabailey.co.uk.

Twitter handle: @Thepippabailey

@pippabaileyauthor−Instagram

@pugnaciouspress−publishing Instagram

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pippa-Bailey/e/B071W8DLDH

www.facebook.com/pippabaileyauthor

 

 

Women in Horror: Robyn Alezanders

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Today, Robyn Alezanders talks about acting, Dracula and the role of consent and sexuality with vampires.

Female Vampires in the Age of #MeToo

A couple of months ago I decided to challenge myself, try to check off a bucket list item, and hopefully get my creative mojo back by auditioning for a play. Not just any play either, but a community production of Dracula, and proud to say I landed it, portraying one of the vampire brides/Vixens. An absolute dream role, one I’ve coveted since I fell in love with vampires and the horror genre almost four decades ago.

The entire theater experience thus far has been amazing and inspiring, thanks to an amazing woman director and a cast and crew who have made me, the newbie, feel entirely at home. Everyone is very open, very candid about themselves and what they bring to their roles, and as to be hoped and expected for, consent is strongly instituted. In a production where the story dictates a lot of touching and physical interaction, we have all discussed comfort levels and boundaries.

Dracula involves multiple obsessions: sex, feasting (food), faith, love, life, and death, but [image error]it’s the sexual component that has me most intrigued. It’s easy to analyze the Transylvanian count and see the flaws in his seductive dance, especially when focusing on his behavior with Lucy and Mina. He pursues who he wants and takes what he wants, and yet it’s that kind of control that many men and women find incredibly appealing about vampires. I, like many of those admirers, have a vampire fetish, extremely turned on by the neck biting, the submission, the feeling of being carried away into the depths of erotic imagination.

During these rehearsals, I’ve thought back to my goth nightclub days, where I alternated between “baby vamp,” hair pulled up in Pebbles Flintstone style, baggy white nightgown, and large wooden upside down cross, and “sexy vamp,” black lace, velvet, and fishnet stockings. Under either persona, I attracted flirtatious responses, emulating that compelling creature that’s become no pun intended, a forever classic in literary, cinematic, pop culture, music, and role-playing ventures.

From Wikia.com

The Vixens are eye candy and then some in three momentous scenes of this production. Clad in vintage flowing wedding dresses, we slither and crawl, evoking that interesting line between lust and fear−sadistic, wild, feral women ready to pounce on what (and who) they desire. It’s many a heterosexual man’s fantasy, isn’t it, to have four bewitching women all over him, despite the ultimate reveal that they bear more than just a sexual appetite?

 

We fondle, grope, and hold Harker down, moaning, cooing, giggling, and sniffing, exhibiting an over-excitement at hopefully satiating our hungers. And this in particular has me thinking about the role reversal of the Vixens vs Dracula−the portrayal of aggressive, overpowering, coercive women. Are we simply owning our sexuality, that which we should, that which men often already do, or are we, in the same context of dissecting Dracula, something more suggestively sinister? Harker is a perfect match for the virginal Mina−he is conservative, cautious, a by-the-rules gentleman. It is that purity that adds to Dracula’s attraction to Mina, and the obvious contradiction between her and Lucy, who has presumably not behaved as virtuously with some suitors. If Lucy is still indeed a virgin, she is at least a lot more self-aware of her beguiling wiles than Mina.

In the seduction scene between Harker and the Vixens, he is asleep, and we guess that he is most likely dreaming of his beloved. He feels the Vixens licking, nibbling, and stroking him, but is in that blurry state of applying those actions to what he’s dreaming about. He may even naturally be getting turned on, softly mumbling his fiancée’s name, before suddenly snapping awake, and realizing who is atop him. We hold him down, force against his struggles, and still try to dominate him (three Vixens at his arms and chest, me at and then between his legs), only to be cast off by Dracula entering the room and commanding us to stop. In those fleeting moments we have with Harker awake, is he solely aghast at seeing our fangs for fear of being killed, or because it hints at dangerous, unwillful sex? Were our fangs not evident, were the threat not so obvious, how far would the sexual element go? Would he even dare to touch us back? What of the metaphors between the Vixens and sex?

Our movements are animalistic, that of jungle cats on the prowl. We are also each from different centuries, and in this production, reminiscent of or inspired by historical female killers. There are multiple layers to muse on – did their inherent viciousness draw them to Dracula, or something else? What are they now, as compared to their mortal lives as rulers, forces unto themselves, formidable women not to be messed with? They have an essence of Manson Girls about them, that semblance of subservience, and what does that say? They’re trying to satisfy their lusts in the only ways they know how, but that’s quelled by Dracula−we are ordered to obey, and pacified like children. Lucy Westenra roams freely after becoming a vampire−it is her conspicuous behavior as the “Bloofer Lady” that leads to her ultimate demise. Have the Vixens just been lucky in avoiding the attention of vampire hunters, or are they kept quarantined to the castle? And if held to their home, why them, and not Lucy? What is the full extent of Dracula’s dictation, and how does it affect the Vixens’ sexual drives?

As with any centuries-old story, it’s not unusual for adaptations and variations to echo societal issues or notable distinctions of the present time period. So what to do in this age, where we are redefining boundaries, encouraging and supporting more outspoken discussions, and pushing #MeToo to the forefront of conversations? What are the obligations, if any, from horror writers, women horror writers, women horror writers who can personally relate to #MeToo?

Putting aside Dracula’s sole behavior being called into question and castigated for ignoring consent, what if the Harker seduction involved more than one male vampire pinning down a woman? Unless explicitly designed, promoted, or described as something otherwise, how would it not then seem a bit uncomfortable to watch or unseemly? Contrary to the titillation of multiple women trying to have their way with a guy, against his true will, strutting with sensual purpose, and oozing with their sense of empowerment.

Bela Lugosi in 1931 film Dracula. Creative Commons

As I said, I am loving this role simply because it’s personally awesome to portray a vampire, and because it has re-ignited a long dormant creative rut. But I’m also seeing the story in another light, and despite the still erotic components, also seeing that Dracula is not the only one with debatable actions. As horror writers, we evoke and depict that which scares and unsettles us, weaving commentary into our spooky scenes and monsters’ motivations. We create atmospheres that often have much more layers for analysis than the surface impressions and words. As writers in general, we also tend to insert our own experiences into stories, either as catharsis or as in-your-face terror.

Do I now soften the vicious women I write about? Mirroring real life, there are indeed women who are just as awful and criminal as men, so whether I keep my characters as mortal or otherworldly, they shouldn’t all be victims or the nicest gals around. At some point though, I may incorporate my own #MeToo experience into some story, which hearkening back to reality, would be in the guise of a male character. It’s all an entirely new scope to explore, in step with this recent landscape we are carving….one which may take interesting turns when (re)interpreted in creative works.

Robyn Alezanders made her horror debut with the short story, “Soul Stains,” in Des Lewis’ critically acclaimed Nemonymous 5, and earned an Honorable Mention in the 19th Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. Her work has also appeared in The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, Eternal Haunted Summer, and New Spirit Journal. She hopes to pursue more theatrical roles after Dracula, and to further explore the intricacy of haunting women characters.

 

Women in Horror: Jennifer Kennedy

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It’s Feb. 1 and that means it’s Women in Horror Month. I will ambitiously try to feature a guest each day of this month who will speak about horror. Today I have Jennifer Kennedy who talks about storytelling and writing horror.

About twenty years ago, I joined a storytelling organization, and shortly afterward volunteered to tell a story at a local Halloween event. I found myself telling alongside Marie Anne McLean, whose hair-raising versions of urban myths, re-set in and around Edmonton, set a very high bar. I still shudder when I think of the first time I heard her tell “The Furry Collar.” We both continued to tell at this event in the years that followed, and in the process I experimented with many different stories, some of which were more successfully frightening than others. One particular story was without a doubt my most successful: “The Night Doctors.”

I came across the basis for this story in a book of African-American folk tales. The entry

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Jennifer Kennedy likes to tell tales that scare

was quite short: just a paragraph or two. It was an urban legend from an earlier time, according to which there were certain doctors in the Southern U.S. who were famous for their experimental work during the time of slavery, and suspected of using human subjects. The story was that after emancipation, they were not willing to give up their research, and so they began snatching people at night, sneaking up on them in carriages with muffled wheels, and shooting them with drugged needles.

I imagined that these Night Doctors were still active, even in modern times, and came up with a story about a teenage boy who is captured by them. He almost escapes but is injured and foolishly goes to a hospital for help. I think that what made this story effective was not just the twist at the end, but the setting. There are few situations in our lives when we are more vulnerable than when we place ourselves under the care of medical professionals. In developing the story, I had tapped into some of my own fears, and it was clear from the reaction I got that I touched a nerve in others as well. It seemed like most of the really scary urban legends had crazed serial killers as villains, but in some ways those were easier to disassociate from than a killer who might be lurking behind a surgical mask.

More recently, I became an actor at Deadmonton haunted house. The theme in 2018 was Quarantine and I ended up playing the part of a military nurse who checks people for signs of infection before they go into the building. Once again, it was clear that I was tapping into a deep discomfort in many people. One of the characters that came to mind as inspiration for the part was Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was not surprised to learn that many people rate Nurse Ratched as one of the most chilling characters in film. One of the essential traits of the character I was playing was the ability to dehumanize: to view anyone who was infected with our fictional virus as essentially written off as a human being. In a similar way, Nurse Ratched first writes off her patient as mentally unfit and then actually acts to erase the humanity he tries so hard to assert. In a similar way, the Night Doctors choose to regard their victims as less than human.

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J.Y.T. Kennedy has been published in these anthologies.

Institutions, and particularly hospitals and asylums, are always dehumanizing to some extent, and that is surely a large part of why they make us feel so vulnerable. Prototypical crazed serial killers also dehumanize their victims, but they do not generally change their status in the eyes of the outside world. There is something particularly disturbing about a monster that has authority behind them, and a society that, whether blindly or with complicity, places people in their power.

I have tried a few times to come up with a written version of my Night Doctors story, but I find that for me, some stories lend themselves to telling, and others to writing, and this was definitely a story for telling. Conversely, an unsuccessful attempt at an original ghost story to tell at the same event ended up working better written down, and was published in an anthology as “The Fatality Sign.” I expect I will come back to villains with a medical bent though, whether in writing or other mediums. The details of the story may not translate, but the fear that drives it remains powerful.

Jennifer Kennedy lives in Alberta, where she writes under the byline J.Y.T. Kennedy, as well as occasionally appearing as a storyteller or in other guises. Her poem, “The King in Red” appeared in the Alice Unbound anthology in 2018. Information on some of her other work can be found on her website.

 

 

Eye to the Telescope Submission Call

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Creative commons: photosteve101, flickr

Lisa Trimpf, editor of the Eye to the Telescope submission call on sports and games gives some insight into what she’s looking fr.

Wanted: “Sports and Games”-Themed Speculative Poetry

Star Trek’s three-dimensional chess. Quidditch, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. The race to solve a gaming challenge in Ready Player One. Those are only a few examples of sports and games popping up in speculative literature, movies, and television—sometimes in a feature role, and sometimes as a side interest.

When the call went out for volunteer editor for Eye to the Telescope, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association’s quarterly online magazine, I put up my hand. Tasked with suggesting a topic, I thought, why not sports and games? Having played a variety of sports throughout my lifetime, it’s an area of long-standing interest for me. Plus, the field is wide open for more speculation, more thought, more invention.

From where we’re standing in early 2019, it’s hard to predict with any certainty what the

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Lisa Trimpf writes and plays sports.

future of sports and games might look like. We might guess wrong, and we might guess right. The reality might surprise us, because it’s something we didn’t foresee at all. I can attest to that from my experiences as a female athlete.

When I was growing up, there were no girls’ hockey teams in my home town, and as for playing on a boys’ team—at the time, it just wasn’t done. So my friends and I played pick-up ball hockey instead, or rented the local arena occasionally for a game of shinny. We wore the jerseys of our favorite NHL hockey stars, because those were our only role models.

[image error]In the space of just under 40 years, so much has changed. Girls’ house league and rep teams abound in many areas of Canada. Women’s hockey is now in the Olympic Games—something that I would have found difficult to imagine in the late 1970s.

There have been, and continue to be, female role models young players can aspire to emulate, people like Hayley Wickenheiser, Marie-Philip Poulin, Cassie Campbell—and the list goes on. Women are now sports announcers and commentators. A handful of female hockey players have even been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, something I can assure you my friends and I never saw coming back when we were shooting a tennis ball at a goal my friend’s father cobbled together from two-by-fours and plastic netting.

There are other trends, too, that many of us wouldn’t have imagined a few decades ago. [image error]Fan participation in certain aspects of sport has broadened—all-star voting, for example, or fantasy leagues, in which fans get to pick their “dream team” and see how they perform. The Olympic Games now include events like aerial skiing or half-pipe snowboarding, sports that weren’t even a thing back when the modern Olympics were re-vitalized in 1896. And, of course, there are increasingly sophisticated sports-themed video games, a notion that seemed light years distant back in the 1970s when we thought Atari’s Pong was a big deal.

So, here we sit in 2019, almost 2020. What will sports and games look like four decades from now (or later) here on Earth? What new twists might we see on existing traditions? Will we eventually see gender parity in sports? Will parents of the future opt for genetic tweaking to produce the ultimate athlete? What sports and games will colonists bring with them to Mars, or the moon, or asteroid mining operations, or even further afield? What pastimes might aliens enjoy? Those are examples of ideas that might be explored or entertained in a speculative sports poem.

But the great thing about speculative poetry is that thinking about the future is only one avenue you might pursue. Speculative poetry opens so many other doors: magic and magical creatures, alternate histories, parallel universes, and so on.

Just one caveat: every editor has their own biases, and while I’m looking for good poems, I’m also looking for poems in which the link to the theme of sports and games is direct rather than oblique.

Some people like to participate in “theme-related” submission calls, while some do not. While everyone is entitled to their preference, I can say from my personal experience that themed submission calls such as the ones provided in Eye to the Telescope have spurred me to create works I might not have created otherwise.

In some cases, I’ve had success with submissions. In other cases, I’ve had submissions declined by the publication they were initially inspired by, but have later placed them elsewhere, making it worth the effort. Over the course of time I’ve learned not to look an inspirational gift horse in the mouth.

I’d encourage anyone with the inclination to do so to send in a poem or three Eye to the Telescope: Issue 32, Sports and Games. The complete guidelines can be found at the Eye to the Telescope web site, at the following link:

So, why not give it a shot? Deadline is March 15, 2019, and all submitters should expect to receive an acceptance or decline by April 1, 2019.

Simcoe, Ontario resident Lisa Timpf first started writing speculative fiction and poetry in 2014 after retiring from a 26-year career in human resources and communications. She has had more than 30 speculative short stories and 70-plus speculative poems published. Timpf’s work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Star*Line, New Myths, Neo-Opsis, Enter the Rebirth, and Tesseracts Twenty-One (Nevertheless). You can find out more about Timpf’s writing projects at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/.

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Writer: Lorina Stephens

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Today, I asked Lorina Stephens, writer, editor, and publisher of Fiver Rivers Publishing to talk about the writing business. Before your read her article, note that Feb. 1 begins Women in Horror Month and I’ll be featuring different women who write horror. Take it away, Lorina.

The Hat Tree I Tango With

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Copyright Lorina Stephens

In 1980 I took a fall. A rather spectacular fall which is far too embarrassing to discuss in polite company. That fall had me laid up, with two small children careening through my days, and a gentle man of a husband slogging it out trying to keep us all afloat. I thought I would go insane during those months with nothing to do but recover and play with my bairns—that’s bairns, not brains. While I loved them—the bairns, not the brains—greatly, there’s only so far you can take Sesame Street and the quality of Pampers in conversation. I found myself creating doggerel out of Shakespeare: the quality of Pampers is not strained…. Trust me, you don’t want to know the rest.

So, I thought I would write a novel, which turned into three, which was in reality a trilogy with a great concept and all the wrong words. But that first foray into the rigors of being a full-time writer taught me a great deal about discipline not just of working hours, but of the economy and efficacy of words. So, I wrote another novel. And then another.

We moved to the country. Great! While parents, in-laws and friends fretted I was too isolated, spent too much time alone, I kept bashing away at the keyboard while the children were at school. I discovered one of the local newspapers was receptive to a column, which morphed into a half page feature called Lorina’s People. In between writing about worlds in my head, and characters who whispered over my shoulder while ferrying the kids thither and yon, I interviewed the diverse and rich society of artists and entrepreneurs in my region, and wrote about them. I wrote about them so much I found myself a celebrity in a small, regional pond.

That gig led to another with a regional lifestyle magazine, a gig I talked my way into [image error]when I lied to the editor and said sure I had images of hummingbirds. How hard could it be to capture the little buggers on film, I figured. Several rolls of blank film later, and then a new 35mm SLR Canon with a zoom lens, I had the article, and the images. The economy of that enterprise put me at almost break even on the gig.

Undaunted, I took that camera, my tape recorder, and my wit and carved myself a wee niche as a journalist, all the while bashing out fiction, mostly novels. I even ended up as the assistant editor for the lifestyle magazine, and just before they were bought out, and subsequently folded, I was asked if I would consider taking over as editor. The answer to that was no, simply because I was not prepared to assist in the crucifixion of the man who had given me a remarkable break.

Somewhere in between all that I wrote a book with my husband, Gary—who had taken over as photographer, thank the gods—on the Niagara Escarpment, which was published by Boston Mills Press. That took up two years of our lives. I wrote and researched, and wrote some more, then researched some more, digging through dusty archives and white-glove-only stacks. We traveled the length of the escarpment several times, often hauling our two unwilling urchins with us, thinking it would be a great experience for them. I sorted through 3600 35mm transparencies, and around 150 4x5s, all Gary’s work. It was a memorable two years, and some of those moments I will carry with me as nuggets of wonder until the day I die. And it’s important to understand that while I was cutting my teeth on the importance of accurate research, I wrote that book for Gary, so there would be a showcase for the remarkable photographs he captured.

[image error]I spent the next nine years perfecting a historical fantasy, Shadow Song, and tried to find a publisher for it. Had several near misses. It was cultural appropriation. It was genre-crossing. It was a square peg looking for a home in a world of round holes. Two agents tried to market the novel. And still no joy.

Then the publishing industry started a remarkable evolution, and print on demand with distribution became a viable entity.

Never one to back away from taking a risk, or flying in the face of common practice, I launched myself and that novel into self-publishing, defying anyone to tell me the work and the printed product weren’t up to standard. While some lauded my venture and work, others sniffed. But never mind. I’d achieved something remarkable. And fearlessly, I carried on.

But life is a fascinating journey, and while you’re busy making other plans, things happen. Or rather, you allow things to happen.

A colleague had a dictionary of historical colour names and definitions she wanted to publish, called Elephant’s Breath and London Smoke: Historical Colour Names, Definitions, and Uses in Fashion, Fabric and Art, and would I consider, so I did, and voila, I edited and created a book. It sold very well. And then another colleague came along and said I should print his book on how to write a book in 60 days. So I did. And it sold really well. And so and so and so.

Like most everything in my life, the journey from writer to publisher just sort of happened. One day I fell off a desk and was injured. The next I was hammering out stories. And the next I was publishing other people’s work, watching that work go on to be shortlisted for awards, tucking a catalogue of nearly 70 books under my wing after a decade, along with some 30 or so writers whose work I’ve given voice.

And somewhere along the way my own voice sort of faded. There wasn’t time to write. There wasn’t time or resources to promote my own work when I was deeply committed to giving voice to, and promoting the work of the writers I’d pledged to publish. How could I appropriate a portion of the budget for my work when there was this very profound obligation I’d undertaken?

So it took me some five years to write, polish and publish From Mountains of Ice, a [image error]cultural fantasy, about two to dust off and polish my speculative fiction, Caliban, and then another five to complete a modern novel of magic realism called The Rose Guardian. That novel releases September 1, 2019. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written, and also the hardest. And after this I probably will seldom speak of it and instead turn people to the next novel by Michael Skeet, or the two posthumously published novels by Dave Duncan, or any of the audiobooks being released next year. Or even Tesseracts 22: Alchemy and Artifacts, which I’ve edited with Susan MacGregor, and also releases next year.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still believe in my own work. It just means I have an overriding commitment to others.

Has being a publisher honed my own skills as a writer? Without question. Ask anyone who has been on the receiving end of one of my edits, and they will tell you I am a bear about the nuances of the English language, of historical accuracy and material culture, of the necessity of good grammar and spelling. And in all of that I find myself craving a well-crafted plot, with a tight story arc. In seeking these requirements in the work I read, and in the work I edit and publish, I find myself continually questioning every word, every phrase, every aspect of the way my own story unfolds. Whose voice is this? What is their raison d’être? How do they interact with their environment, with the people and creatures around them? To borrow a phrase from Den Valdron: how do they live? And moreover, what are their justifications?

Would I change this journey if I had it to do again? Not sure. Don’t think so. Because every occurrence had a lesson, taught me something, either directly about writing, or about life which is sort of the same thing because all of life is reflected in art.

What’s next? More of the same. It works. Or rather I make it work.

Lorina Stephens has worked as editor, freelance journalist for national and regional print media, is author of eight books both fiction and non-fiction, been a festival organizer, publicist, lectures on many topics from historical textiles and domestic technologies, to publishing and writing, teaches, and continues to work as a writer, artist, and publisher at Five Rivers Publishing.

She has had several short fiction pieces published in Canada’s acclaimed magazine Postscripts to Darkness, Neo-Opsis, Deluge, Strangers Among Us, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s fantasy anthology Sword & Sorceress X.

Her book credits include:

The Rose Guardian, Five Rivers Publishing, 2019
Caliban, Five Rivers Publishing, 2018
Stonehouse Cooks, Five Rivers Publishing, 2011
From Mountains of Ice, Five Rivers Publishing, 2009
And the Angels Sang, Five Rivers Publishing, 2008
Shadow Song, Five Rivers Publishing, 2008
Recipes of a Dumb Housewife, Lulu Publishing 2007
Credit River Valley, Boston Mills Press 1994
Touring the Giant’s Rib: A Guide to the Niagara Escarpment; Boston Mills Press 1993

Lorina Stephens is presently working on a new novel, Hekja’s Lament. She lives with her husband of four decades in a historic stone house in Neustadt, Ontario. You can find her at lorinastephens.com, Facebook, and Twitter @LorinaStephens.

 

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Writing Guest Blog: Joshua Pantalleresco

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Today, in my New Year’s attempt to keep my blog active, I give you Joshua Pantalleresco who talks about writing and interviews and podcasting.

How do I do anything creatively? By accident. The whole of my creative career is that I’ve been smart enough to recognize when I stumble onto a good thing. I’ve been doing interviews on my blog for a while. I had been interviewing people for written interviews, featuring writers such as Liana Kerzner, Simon Rose, Saima K. Sophia and others. Finally, I had an opportunity to interview the one and only Robert J. Sawyer. Robert was an amazing interview, and as we finished someone came into the room and asked what we were doing. Rob said, “I just did an interview for his podcast.”

[image error]Podcast? my brain said in its nervous Peter Parker like voice. I don’t do a podcast. Never thought to do a podcast. My inner Parker disappeared as genuine curiosity took over my process. Could I do a podcast? I had no idea. But as I’ve stated on my podcast, I never let not knowing what I’m doing stop me. So I did some research and went about the business of acquiring interviews.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t make some conscious decisions in the process. For starters, I wanted a podcast that felt like something Larry King or Joe Rogan would do, only going more towards a half hour to an hour segment. When you create a podcast, length of time is important. While I do tease a little in current episodes just hovering over an hour, I tend to keep my episodes within that constraint. Beyond that, I was becoming comfortable letting the interviews go in any direction they wanted to. I’m a storyteller who loves to hear stories. I still remember my hard times in Arizona, when I was travelling twenty something miles however I could to just get to my day (re: night) job, all the while balancing somehow eating with trying to get a comic book out.

I admire people able to do great things. Artists with works out there are some of the most courageous people I know. It takes guts to go out into the world and present work and say, “here I am” to people who are indifferent and apathetic and don’t have that drive to share and express. The journey to produce the work itself is sometimes daunting. I admire anyone who dares to do such a thing, because I know how hard it can be. It’s why I love interviewing people. It’s always amazing to see how the person I’m talking to came to be. It’s never boring and more often than not, inspiring.

Also, if you do listen to the show, while not every guest of mine is Canadian, the good majority of them are. That also is by design. One of the things that drives me crazy about Canadians is that in general, they undervalue themselves. Canadians are some of the most creative, wonderful, magical people on the planet, whether it’s someone like the pop sensation Sofia Evangelina, or the heart-on-her- sleeve Ellen Michelle, who dares to start a publishing company (which you should check out. Her Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/constellatepub) to promote Canadian people. Or someone like Adam Dreece, who opens up about some of his trials in his life. It’s so cool that people like this let me in to share their lives.

My motivation was clear; all that was left to do once I had all those concepts in my head about the type of show I wanted to do was to name the thing. I wanted a really cool name. Something that sounded epic, legendary even.

I got “Just Joshing.” Not once but three times from different friends residing in London Ontario. It received the most likes too. My podcast would not have the legendary name from the outset. I could make it work. I would make it work, dang it.

I had a good buddy of mine named Lance Buan design my logo. I wanted something that felt a little bit like a diner from the past. I love diners that have that retro fifties vibe to them. You can go in, order a decent burger, have a great meal and be entertained by the jukebox, or the whole ambiance. I wanted Just Joshing to feel like that. I wanted the show to feel like your entertainment value came from listening to me talking with a guest. I like to think I succeeded.

I’ve done over two hundred episodes and have an Aurora Award that says I’m awesome and made of cheese. Or at the very least, that I’m doing something right. I’ve made some amazing friends and have gone about the business of turning this into a career. Right this minute, I’m working on setting up my own Patreon and acquiring sponsors and advertising revenue for the show. My audience is growing as is the appeal of my show. I’ve hit a magical moment where momentum seems to be going my way. It’s time to ride it and see where the next accident will take me.

I’ve learned not to get in my own way because of the podcast. I try my best to let the magic happen. I don’t overthink it or try to take an absurd amount of credit. I learned to just let success come my way, and let myself be open to the possibilities of where things can lead. If there’s anything my career can hopefully teach others, it’s that it never quite goes the way you plan. But you know what? It’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes better things come your way. This podcast is one of those best things I’ve ever done.

And who knows, that Just Joshing name may become legendary after all.

Joshua Pantalleresco writes stuff, and podcasts too. His podcast, Just Joshing, won the Aurora Award in 2018 for best fan related work. The podcast airs twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays on Podomatic, Itunes, Google Play and Spotify. His books The Watcher, Stormdancer and The Wandering God were published by Mirror World publishing. He writes a column at First Comics News dot com and his next book, Alice Zero, may have been inspired by a certain editor. He lives in Calgary. His blog can be found at https://jpantalleresco.wordpress.com. 

Writing Guest Post: DD Barant

Happy New Year to everyone the world around. I realize that in other cultural calendars the year begins at different times and that in some ways a new year is an arbitrary thing. If I look at all the things that happened in 2018 it definitely began with a bang last January (a car accident) and ended with settling into a new place.

Because of a very tumultuous year ,many things were sidelined including my writing and my blog. In an effort to have posts appear more regularly I have asked some writers to do a guest post. The first one is by DD Barant. Take it away, Don.

Thanks, Colleen, for letting me guest. Your earlier post about life sucking you into a vortex got me thinking−you see, I know a little about the Life-Sucking Vortex and how much its suckage can suck. I also know something about Alice−which is the subject of the short-story collection Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, edited by you−and now I’m going to stop addressing Colleen directly because it sounds like I’m mansplaining.

When I first heard about this collection, I was in the midst of my own Alice-related project. I wanted to submit something, but didn’t. Partly because my project is a webcomic, not prose−but mostly because of the Life-Sucking Vortex.

When you get to a certain age, you’re abruptly at risk for the Big Trifecta: parents dying, divorce, and health problems. Guess who nailed all three? (Hint: it me.)

And suddenly, like Alice, I was falling.

The main difference between the Rabbit Hole and the Vortex is that the Vortex tends to be rather aggressive. It grabs you and sucks you down, and while you’re in there you tend to smash rather a lot into other things. What those things are doesn’t really matter; the point is, you usually wind up breaking them or they break you.

But eventually−like Alice−you find yourself somewhere else. Confused, shaken up, hopelessly lost. And you can either sit and drown in your own tears, or get up, fortify yourself with whatever’s at hand, and go have adventures.

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Barant created strange creatures from second-hand toys as he escaped the vortex. Copyright DD Barant

Like Alice, I did both. Like Alice, the experience was transformative: I made myself into an artist. I’ve been a prose writer my whole life, but I love comics and have always wanted to make them. I can’t draw worth a damn, so I taught myself how to manipulate digital images instead. I downloaded hundreds of public domain images from online museums and art galleries, scoured the internet for Creative Commons photos, took stills from old black-and-white films, made bizarre creations out of second-hand toys and stuffed animals and took pictures of them.

Alice had no control over which unusual creatures she encountered, but I did.

My Alice goes by the name Liss. She comes from an alternate fictional world known as an

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Liss searches for other Alternities. Copyright DD Barant

Alternity, one where Alice Liddell refused to believe that her childhood adventures were a dream, and devoted her time to the study of the occult. She grew up to be a powerful eyemage under the tutelage of Londinium’s most powerful magician, until she was forced to flee her own reality. These days, she works as an interdimensional thief, pilfering alternities for private collectors who’ll pay through the nose for a genuine artifict−a prized item from a fictional universe.

She does most of her business in a multiversal bar known as The Crossover, neutral ground for all manner of smugglers, thieves, and assassins. She uses a flamingo as a weapon.

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Help from strange beings in the Alternity. Copyright DD Barant

Everybody has their own Vortex, sooner later.  It sucks you in and whirls you around, you smash into things and things smash into you.  We all live in worlds of both chaos and order, and this is the chaotic bit.  But as dire and deadly as chaos can be, don’t forget that it’s also what makes freedom possible.  That can be hard to see in the middle of all that whirling debris . . . but it’s there.  When I look at my webcomic, at the mishmash of styles and images and ideas and characters, I see that chaos; but I also see how I’ve used it, nudged it here and there, made this piece bounce off that piece to wind up in a new orbit, got it to twist and swoop and lunge in a particular way.

You can’t control the Vortex.  But you can teach it to dance.

THE CROSSOVER is now up at : http://thecrossover.thecomicseries.com/. You can find more information about it at my blog, on Facebook at The Officialicious DD Barant page.

DD Barant is best known for the Bloodhound Files series: Dying Bites, Death Blows, Killing Rocks, Better Off Undead, Back from the Undead and Undead to the World. He also writes science fiction under the pseudonym Don DeBrandt: The Quicksilver Screen, Steeldriver, Timberjak, and V.I., as well as numerous pop-culture essays for Smartpop Books, and the Buffyverse media tie-in Shakedown (an ANGEL novel).

As Donn Cortez, he’s written five CSI: Miami novels, two CSI: Vegas novels, a murder mystery set at Burning Man (The Man Burns Tonight) and a thriller (The Closer) which became a bestseller in Germany. (The sequel, Remote, is available as an e-book in English).

As Dixie Lyle, she writes the paranormal animal cozy series The Whiskey, Tango and Foxtrot Mysteries: A Taste Fur Murder, To Die Fur, A Deadly Tail, and Marked Fur Murder.

Books: Steeldriver: https://www.amazon.ca/Steeldriver

Timberjak: https://www.amazon.com/Timberjak

V.I.: https://www.amazon.com/V-I-Intelligence

Bloodhound Files: https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Bites-Bloodhound-Files

WTF Mysteries: https://www.amazon.com/Taste-Fur-Murder-Whiskey-Foxtrot/

Remote: https://www.amazon.com/Remote-Suspense

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When Life Sucks You into a Vortex

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Creative Commons: http://dancurtis.ca/2010/07/

I have written very little on this blog this year and I was trying to do at least a few posts every month. But I really do have a good excuse or few. Sometimes life gets in the way of doing all those things you plan in life.

Here’s how my year started: I was driving to work on a dry January day when my brakes locked at 100 km/hr and I spun out into a cement barricade, smashing the car and myself. The thing was, my mechanic had never found the issue and it had only happened (sporadically) at low speeds. That was the one and only time at high speed, and if it wasn’t that traffic was light, I left lots of space in front of me (because I was always cautious of the car’s issues), and that there was a barricade, someone would have died. My leg was smashed badly but unbroken and I needed about four months of physio and chiropractic to get everything fixed. But because I’ve done pilates for several years, I’m better now.

At the end of June, I broke my hand, but they only figured it out two weeks ago. In July, I was ending one job and starting another so it was a hectic few weeks of finishing up the old job. In that time, my kitty, Venus, who was about 16 years old and had a slow going tumour, hit the hard part and I had to put her down. I finished the last ten days of my job and on July 13 (yes, Friday the 13th) I finished and within 12 hours was booking a flight back to Calgary as my mother was not doing well. I was supposed to start my new job the next Tuesday.

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My mother Amy Anderson was almost 95 when she passed.

By that Sunday, it looked like my mother had made a turn for the better so I booked my flight back on the Wednesday. Then before I left, she started to go downhill again. I flew back and started my new job late on the Thursday, and my mother was doing very badly. I worked one day at my new job when my new boss gave me a ticket back to Calgary. I arrived Friday and it was the last day my mother was aware and able to respond even a little. She had a bad heart and it finally gave up on Sunday morning. She was an amazingly tough woman and was not always easy to get along with. I’ll do another post about my mother but I wrote this about Amy Anderson for the obituary.

I then spent two weeks in Calgary with my siblings, going through my mother’s effects, writing her celebration of life and generally dealing with stuff. I then went back to my new job. I was only back a little over a week when my landlady, out of the blue, evicted me (because they didn’t want to be landlords anymore). It became very messy and nasty but needless to say after a couple decades and the cost of rentals in Vancouver, I was dealing with a move. The reality in Vancouver is very bad and that will be all for another post.

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A Body of Work, available through Black Shuck Books & Amazon

In amongst all of that I had a trip to the UK planned and paid for so I went to England and Wales and my book A Body of Work was launched by Steve Shaw and Black Shuck Books at Fantasycon. This collection features my dark fiction and I hope to do a N. American launch soon. I came back to more moving and packing and I haven’t stopped yet.

Needless to say, I’ve done little writing in six months. Yet, I have to remember the good things: I edited Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, and that came out in the spring from Exile, and a review in Publishers Weekly. I also was working

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Alice Unbound contains stories and poems inspired by the world and character of Lewis Carroll.

on fiction through my Canada Council grant back in the spring. “Sir Tor and the River Maiden” came out in By the Light of Camelot by Edge Publishing. I managed to sell another story but cannot as yet mention it.

And I would be remiss to not mention the poems that came out. It’s amazing I sold anything considering I’ve submitted very few things this year. “Mermaid’s Comb” came out in The Future Fire  #45, “Cinderella’s Pumpkin” in Polu Texni, “Savor” in the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. V, “Learning to Run” in Polar Borealis #7, “Washday Blues” in Polar Borealis #6, and “The Sand Witch” won second place in the Balticon poetry contest. There could possibly be a few other things but I’ve really lost track, including contracts that I’ve signed/been signing.

I hope to be here more often in the near future and might pull in a few guests to write some posts. But this is the reason I’ve been quiet of late.

 

Alice Unbound Readings

Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland has hit shelves and with successful readings and launch in Ottawa and Toronto, it will now be the West Coast’s turn. I’m hosting a reading on June 3, in Vancouver at the Heatley. The Heatley is a cool E. Van, wheelchair friendly venue on the corner of Heatley and Hastings where local bands play. It’s bright and just the right size (though it can get quite warm on a summer day.)

A few reviews have started to come out and Derek Newman-Stile has reviewed two stories on his blog, Speculating Canada. Cait Gordon’s “A Night at the Rabbit Hole” and Patrick Bollivar’s “Operation: Looking Glass” are highlighted and, if you scroll farther down, you’ll find a write-up of my story “Sins of the Father” in OnSpec last year.

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Alice Unbound launches in Vancouver on June 3.

Patrick is also one of the West Coast writers, along with  Linda DeMeulemeester, Mark Charke, Nicole Iversen and Lisa Smedman. Smedman and DeMeulemeester were also in Playground of Lost Toys and have many writing credits. Nicole Iversen’s story “Mathilda” is a fun romp through our world, battling the forces from Wonderland, and this is her first professional sale. Mark Charke presents a strange tale of madness when a person of magical ability meets the bizarre reality in the rabbit hole.

Lisa Smedman’s “We Are All Mad Here” is a sad story that looks at the crazy world of war, and Linda DeMeulemeester’s “The Rise of the Crimson Queen” combines a certain personality with magic and opportunity to present a mix of our world and Wonderland’s. In fact, Patrick Bollivar’s tale also has a blend of worlds but where Wonderland must be infiltrated. In fact, the most common theme when I read the stories submitted for Alice Unbound, was that of wars and of the readers for June 3 only Linda’s doesn’t have a direct battle. But conflict there is aplenty.

The reading is free and the book, with the beautiful cover, will have a special Vancouver launch price of $20 including tax. Considering that it’s pretty much $25 plus tax regularly, it will be quite a steal.

Anyone is welcome to come out to the reading and be entertained on a sunny (I hope) afternoon. Come support Canadian culture and writing on June 3. List to a few tales and buy a great looking book with fantastic tales as a super price. I hope to see you there.