Writing What I Know and What I Need to Know

I had every intention of getting this up within seven days of the last entry, but I've had a busy week of writing: I've tapped some of the outstanding submits that I hadn't heard back about in several months, and heard back on two of them. Life got as interesting for some editors as it got for me this winter; the wheels of the publishing process sometimes turn oddly.

I've also been been typing and editing a story for an anthology of horror stories involving... pizza. So I have a plucky Genre Savvy delivery girl walking with trepidation and hope that it's just her overactive imagination into a weird house.

Also, I've been working on two stories: one is a back story on Irena Stamos, the Salem Psychic who appears in "The Witch Who Blew In On The Storm", in which we find out about the tea room she used to work in as a fortune teller back in the 1920s (I ditched a previous draft and started a new one, since the previous one just wasn't working for me, but the new draft is working very well), and the other is a somewhat ambitious project which I mentioned in the last entry, ie. the Frankenstein/Reanimator crossover, which is taking shape. It's currently as much of a golem as the Creature, but I'm enjoying it immensely (and I've getting close to the big turning point in ye story).

Most importantly, on Tuesday, I took part in a writers' group meeting at the Wilmington Memorial Library, in part to attend a guest talk given by three local writers who meet regularly at the Dracut Public Library, who've put together their own little anthology, Tales From the Locals. A very informative talk, as I'm planning (hoping, knock on wood, light candles for the appropriate saints) to put together a small collection of my own stories and self-publish them, hopefully (please God) sometime later this year.

I'll also be guest speaking for this group, on May 22nd. I'll be posting more information as it becomes available, but I'll be speaking on the subject "Write What You Know (And You Know More Than You Realize)", taking that hackneyed piece of writing advice and putting a new slant onto it. I've always felt it's the stories that we only just know about that we need to tell, that we need to find out what happens next in, and then share it with the world, and I hope I can share that with these fine folks.