Spilled Ink #8

INTRO

Welcome back to Spilled Ink!

I hope you had a nice week and I’m here to give you all the updates about my writing and all the stuff that went on since we last spoke.

First of all Issue 2 of Nightmare Ink Presents is out as of last Wednesday and you can read the third chapter of our ongoing story here. If you do read it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback is really important to us at Nightmare Ink. There will be more about this project later on in the newsletter so I won’t bother you anymore with this.

This past Friday and Saturday I had my mini-book on sale at a local fair, the sales weren’t as good as one might have hoped but the book was on display and it was seen, and maybe people will recall it and look for it. Here’s hoping.

I also have a new item on Nightmare Ink Ko-fi Shop, as I found out that I still had three copies of the original Devil’s Rejects printing, and I decided to put them on sale. If you are interested in a copy just go to the link above, and of course, I’ll have them on sale whenever I go to a market, or can always DM me.

Guess this is it for the intro. Let’s get down to business.

WRITING UPDATES

If you’ve been following me on social media or through this newsletter you probably already know that I’m not much of a planner when it comes to writing. I usually have a general idea of the story I want and I just go with it. Most of the time I end up with something completely different from what I had imagined. But as I started to work more with other people and, spoilers, other media than prose I decided that maybe I should be a bit more “organized”. So with that in mind, I started outlining. And where has that got me? Nowhere. Why, you ask? Because even with an outline made in advance I’m able to butcher everything I planned.

You don’t believe me? Let’s use a practical example, in this case, my serialized story The Haunting of Blackwood Manor. I won’t get into the details of how this idea came to be. I already talked about that. What you might not know is that for this one I made a complete outline for all the chapters. Not comprehensive and with plenty of room for some alterations. What happened was that from the beginning of writing the story, I threw the outline not only out of the window, but said window was part of the fastest mode of transportation you can imagine the way I left the ideas on the outline behind.

You don’t believe me? Here’s the outline for the first three published chapters:

Now, go read the story, if you haven’t yet. You might argue that the first chapter is more or less the same as in the outline, and I’ll give you that. But the other two are totally different. And I can tell you now that the artifact mentioned in the outline is definitely out of the picture for the story, so no spoilers there.

This was not the only change I made when it came to this story. I also rewrote most of the characters from the idea I had when I originally outlined it.

So this was just a little peek at how my mind works and why I can´t plan anything… Probably it was boring but I was thinking about this and I had to share it with you all!

I must say that this project is not the only one I’m working on. Nor is the Secret Project I sometimes mention. I’ve been working on other short stories and I must say that I even did some rewriting for Project: Shovel, which I can’t wait to find the time to get back to.

BOOK REPORT

I began reading two books after finishing Blessed Skeletons. One is The Galleria by Alexander Michael and the other is Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman.

The Galleria is the third installment in a series of prequels to a novel that will be released later this year. I have only read the first one, Everything Is Summer, and I’m waiting for the second one, Home, to arrive, so I’m a little on the fence if I should keep on reading this one or wait to read them in order. Even if they work as standalone novellas, I know that it will be more rewarding for the overall story if one reads them in order.

I never read a full Josh Malerman novel. To be honest I haven’t even seen Bird Box. So, I can’t say that’s why I sometimes gravitate to his work. What I’ve read is Goblin, his masterful, in my opinion, collection of six novellas centered around the town of Goblin. I went for that one because I love shorter stories and I got out amazed at the way he interwove all the stories to give us a wider view of the setting. Yes, the stories work on their one, but when you read them together you get a complete view of what the author wanted you to see. Hence, that’s why I picked up Spin a Black Yarn, and while this book’s stories don’t create a wider view of a particular place they give us a wider view of the possibility of interconnection between a few other of Malerman’s stories (the reference to Daphne in one of the stories for example). I at the middle of the third story in this book, so I won’t go on at length about it now but you can expect me to do that soon.

PULL LIST

The only comic I read this week was a reread so I won’t talk about it, at least for now…

But I went to Mundo Fantasma and I got some new stuff that I will share with you guys next week for sure!

Oh, and I started to read James Tynion IV’s The Deviant #1, which I had on hold for some time because it’s Christmas-themed and I didn’t want it to influence me too much when I was writing my daily prompts in December, unfortunately, I had to stop it because life always finds a way to get in the way…

EDIT: I’m writing this close to the time to hit publish on the newsletter. I got some time to read The Deviant #1 and it was a great first issue. The story that’s revealed is enough to keep you interested and coming back for the next issues, as is the underlying sensation that there’s more to the story than it’s being shown. Just wanted to share this with you all instead of keeping it for next week.

The cover is cut where the snowglobe should be and there’s a full image with “Santa” at the center on the page behind itPLAYLIST

I’ve been listening mostly to metal on my way to work, especially folk metal. One of the songs that has been playing the most is Eluveitie’s Exile of the Gods for which I wanted to leave the video here but I couldn’t embed it (again) so hit the name of the song to get the video.

And of course, I have continued my Lore Marathon and some of the themes I’ve been listening to might spark some good writing ideas.

THINGS I’M HYPED ABOUT

There are two projects that I can’t wait to share with everyone but that I can’t really talk about. The only thing I can say is that they will differ from what I usually do.

There will also be an event that I will be part of that I’m really excited about. It will be really interesting and reunite a lot of people, which will be good to create more contacts and networking.

I’ve been extremely hyped about how things have been going even with all the snags and bumps in the still-new road that is 2024.

LAST WORDS

This is it for now.

Hope You have enjoyed this week’s content and as always I’ll be waiting to hear from you! Tell me what is your creative process and how it usually goes. Tell me what you think of mine. Tell me whatever you’d like!

See you on these pages next week, and don’t forget that there will be a new chapter of Nightmare Ink Presents later this week.

Until then, let the ink of nightmares flow.

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