My poem, “Their Closet Existence” has been accepted for publication at Every Day Poets. This poem was based on a prompt from my 2013 April Poem-a-Day challenge. Because of how I work it took me a long time to get around to revising it, but happily not very long to find it a new home. It’s always a pleasure to be published at Every Day Poets and I will be sure and let everyone know when this piece goes live. 🙂
Dudes. I can’t write on weekends. Seriously. I keep trying and I keep failing.
During the week when I have the house all to myself (well, me and our pets) I’m golden. I can write 1,600 words in half an hour. Zip zip zip. The biggest obstacle there is getting my ass in the chair and keeping myself from being distracted by shiny things. On the weekend though… ugh.
It’s not like it’s Jo or Dani’s fault either. When I tell them I’m going to write they both respect that and don’t interrupt me… but just having them here in the house, that’s all it takes to keep me from being productive. Maybe it’s that they provide too much shiny to resist. Maybe it’s the sound of World of Warcraft being played behind me (or, when Jo uses headphones it’s just the knowledge it’s being played behind me) or maybe that I’d rather be doing stuff with Jo and Dani instead of writing.
Or maybe (and this is really the most likely) they just provide a handy excuse for the procrastination I’m so very good at.
Whatever it is? It’s really not good for my word count.
I’ll make it up starting Tuesday when Jo is back at work and Dani at school, but in the meantime I’m counting 500 words an evening as a victory. Because I can.
It’s Friday again, and because I’m participating in the Absolute Write NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain that means another excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel, Hollow Children (which I think I’m going to re-title. Possibly to just ‘Hollow’). This section has a whole whack of issues, but I promised myself I wouldn’t start editing before the first draft was done, so I’m swallowing my ego and sharing it warts and all.
Enjoy.
Running helps. As long as Morgan keeps her eyes straight, her right shoulder to the old prison and focuses all her attention on the sound of her shoes on the sidewalk, running helps.
It’s quiet. The only sounds are her feet hitting the pavement, her breathing loud in her ears and an occasional bird. The sound of traffic is a dull hum in the background but she hasn’t seen a moving vehicle in several minutes while she’s run laps around the four city blocks that contain the decrepit prison. It’s getting late enough that the sky is bruising and the streetlights are coming on, but their light is dim and there’s still more than enough sunlight to see without them.
The leaves are still on the trees but she can smell autumn’s bite in the air. She’s too warmed up from her exertions to feel it though. Her hoodie is tied around her waist and its hem slaps against the back of her knees as she runs.
Her body knows what to do, the movements are automatic and her mind is empty but for the one-two count of her feet on the sidewalk. One-two, one-two, left-right, left-right. She focuses on those numbers like she never does in math class, letting each one grow to fill her mind and push everything else out.
Usually she doesn’t have to count. Usually she just has to run. Usually, but not today. Today she walked in on her mother crying, so if she stops counting, Morgan knows the birdsong around her will be lost in the remembered sounds of twisted metal, screams and shattered glass.
As she rounds the northwest corner of the prison grounds something penetrates the barrier she’s put up around her thoughts. A voice. A very specific voice. Barry’s voice.
“Shit,” she whispers as her eyes flick one way and then the other, trying to discern where it’s coming from. Acoustics are weird around the prison grounds, the old prison and its outbuildings catch them and toss them around like a SOMETHING, and to make things worse the wind has chosen that precise moment to pick up and rattle the leaves in the trees.
The last thing in the world she wants is to have to deal with Barry. Especially f he’s with his friends, and if he isn’t, why would he be talking?
Finally she catches sight of him, he and his friends. They’ve just turned the corner and are walking toward her. That leaves her two choices. She can turn around and run back the way she’s just come from, or she can keep going and hope they leave her alone. She anticipates no joy from either choice. If she runs away they will know she is avoiding them and as soon as they sense any weakness they will be like a shark with chum in the water. History has shown her that. Still, the chances of them ignoring her as she runs straight at them are slim to none.
Well, if you’ve gotta go down, go down fighting.
The novel is going okay. It was really, really fighting me at first, but I feel like it’s developed a little bit of momentum. Which is good, I’m going to need it heading into week two since I don’t have a buffer like I usually do. Also, I haven’t written yet today, so I really ought to get on that…
Fox and I have been engaged in a pretty serious poke war for the past couple weeks, but before that he was a contributor to Metastasis. I’d never heard of Fox before he submitted to Metastasis, but his ghost story engaged me and once I accept it I found him to be extremely easy to work with. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me while I was putting together such an emotion-laden project like this one. Fox is also contributor I’m interviewing on my blog today:
Who or what was the inspiration for your story in Metastasis?
I lost someone when I went through radiation treatment for Lymphoma, and I’m haunted—not just by her but all of them. Penn dealt with extreme cases. The Lady in the Doorway is a catharsis, one of my several attempts to try to heal.
How has cancer touched your life?
It’s touched all of our lives. I’ve suffered rare cell type of lymphoma. They didn’t think I’d survive it, and it shattered me when I did. I think about less in myself and more in others now. I worry for them. Cancer survivors have a connection, especially when you had it young. We’re esoteric, maybe even a bit pretentious about it, and we help each other survive each day. You never think yourself cured. You’re always waiting for it even several years later.
When it comes to cancer, what gives you hope?
Beauty gives me hope. I reel in largemouth bass at Peace, and I rejoiced when I release the fish back into the water. I adore the lights at Yule, the smell of pine. When I sell another story, I feel like my life means something. And then I’ll fall in love, and I know it’s going to rip me apart; yet I run into the storm and give it my whole self to rip and shred only to do it anon.
(POKE)
I am honored to be included in this anthology with such a fine and talented group of authors and artists.
T. Fox Dunham resides outside of Philadelphia PA—author and historian. He’s published in nearly 200 international journals and anthologies. His first novel, The Street Martyr will be published by Out of the Gutter Books this October, followed up by Searching for Andy Kaufman from PMMP in 2014. He’s a cancer survivor. His friends call him fox, being his totem animal, and his motto is: Wrecking civilization one story at a time. Site: www.tfoxdunham.com. Blog: http://tfoxdunham.blogspot.com/. http://www.facebook.com/tfoxdunham & Twitter: @TFoxDunham
(Note from Rhonda: *poke*)
Sandi Leibowitz is one of the contributor’s toward Metastasis. Her story, “Alchemical Warfare” is one of friendship and magic (not the My Little Pony kind).
Who or what was the inspiration for your story in Metastasis?
My inspiration for “Alchemical Warfare” was my friend Karen Spencer, who had leukemia. At the time Rhonda put out the call for submissions, I was spending a lot of time visiting Karen at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, during the third of her several-month-long hospitalizations for chemo treatments. This was the third and last, because she’d developed a fungal pneumonia. I couldn’t come up any ideas for the book, so I put the idea completely aside. Karen knew I was working on reviving a children’s book about dragons that I’d dropped a long time ago. In despair one day she said, “Make me a dragon to fight the leukemia.” I wish I could have. Instead, I was able to make her a story. Karen died on September 1st, just before Metastasis became available. But she did read and enjoy my story, making sure to correct my mistake of placing Recreation on the wrong floor.
How has cancer touched your life?
I’ve known a lot of people with cancer, mostly stories with good endings. Two childhood friends, and one college friend, had breast cancer but early detection has kept them healthy. Another childhood friend has a sister with lung cancer, currently undergoing treatment. Yet another childhood friend has been treated for colon cancer and is in remission.
When it comes to cancer, what gives you hope?
I am hopeful that scientists are coming up with new treatments and technology for early detection every day. I’d like to see cancer wiped out utterly in my lifetime.
Sandi Leibowitz has been the Sands Point hag, a medieval psaltery-player, a fundraiser ghostwriting for a Monsignor, a secretary at the Museum of Natural History working behind the caribou diorama and a school librarian. She is a native New Yorker whose speculative fiction and poetry appears in Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Niteblade and other far-out places. She has been known to consort with dragons.
Metastasis is available at:
Amazon.com
Paperback – $14.95
Kindle – $6.95
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
Smashwords
ePub – $6.95
Kindle – $6.95
PDF – $6.95
Createspace
Paperback – $14.95
Over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler there is a blog chain going on which I signed up to be a part of. In short, we are going to post excerpts from our NaNoWriMo novels each Friday. It’s kind of unfortunate that day one of NaNoWriMo falls on a Friday, but since it does I’m obligated to share an excerpt.
Excerpt from Hollow Children (a work-in-progress):
The house was dark when she entered it, and uncannily quiet. She shut the door behind her, turning the deadbolt in its place and learning her back against the solid wood with only the sound of her pounding heart and panting breath in her ears. She closed her eyes, wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs and willed her heart rate to slow, her breath to steady.
“Morgan?” Amy’s voice startled her and she jumped, eyelids flying open.
Amy stood across the kitchen, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, looking at her quizzically. “Morgan,” she said again. “Are you all right?”
No. No, I am very much not all right. “Yes,” she forced a laugh which sounded weak even to her own ears. “Of course I’m all right. I just got startled by a bird while I was running, that’s all.”
The best lies are those with a grain of truth, at least that’s what they always said on the police shows she loved to watch on A & E. “Just let me grab a shower and then we can start dinner.”
Amy nodded but Morgan couldn’t help but notice the worry in her eyes and the tell-tale way her hand was moving inside the pocket of her hoodie, worrying the button she kept in there. It was a habit she’d developed since the accident, something she did whenever she was scared or worried.
“Really,” Morgan said, contorting her face into a smile. “I just had a little scare is all.”
“Okay,” Amy said, but her voice was flat, unconvinced. “But you don’t usually lock the door against birds.”
For a little kid she was pretty sharp, there wasn’t going to be any convincing her of this lie. Not tonight. Morgan was filled with an odd mixture of gratitude and resentment. She was glad Amy cared enough to, well, care, but she didn’t want to talk about it and her sister’s big hazel eyes were making her feel guilty for that. What could a BLANK year old understand about it anyway?
“Go play Minecraft,” Morgan snapped, pushing by Amy on her way to the shower. “I’ll call you when it’s time to set the table.”
The shower washed the sweat off her body, but it didn’t make her feel any cleaner.
The following links will lead you to the blogs of the other participants in this blog chain 🙂 I’m going to go see if I can get a few hundred more words done before dinner.
~ orion_mk3 ~ robjvargas ~ AshleyEpidemic ~ vertigo78 ~ bdwilson ~ amaliegreen ~ meowzbark ~ wittyblather ~ skunkmelon ~ sunflowerrei ~
This month I am participating in my ninth NaNoWriMo challenge (Username: Midnyte If you’re participating feel free to add me. Drop me a line & I’ll return the favour). I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo yearly since 2003 (though I skipped one year because I just wasn’t feeling it). This year I’m going to write a new first draft of a story you’ve been listening to me talk about writing since July of 2011 — Hollow Children. For November I’ve taken all my previous abortive drafts, scenes and papers and stuck them in a drawer and I’m going to leave them there until this draft is done. I’ll peek at them again when it comes time to revise but I don’t want to get hung up on comparing drafts and such until I’ve got all the words on the page.
My biggest obstacle as a writer is myself, getting out of my own way and putting words on the page. That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in handy because for me the most difficult part of writing (even 1,667 words a day) is sitting my ass down and doing it. During November and NaNoWriMo I feel extra accountable and that helps me get my butt in the chair. So I’ll be doing 50,000 words on this draft in November and then hopefully continuing on until the entire draft is done. I’m hoping for somewhere around 80-90k altogether.
In addition, because sanity is overrated, I’m also going to be doing the November Poem A Day Challenge. The PAD challenges at Writer’s Digest (in November and April) have also become sort of a tradition for me and are the source of most of the poetry I write in a year. One of my favourite parts is that I know my friend Beth will be doing them too, and even though we don’t compare notes every day or whatever, as the month goes on we do check in with each other to see how it’s going, and it’s nice to feel like you’re not alone. This year I’m working on a sekkrit collaborative project with someone (not Beth) and I’ll be using the theme of that as my theme for NovPAD. It should be super efficient (which my vulture brain loves) and fun. Win/win.
Oh, and did I mention the renovations? We’re having our yard dug up and weeping tile installed starting the middle of the month… so that’ll be… fun.
I’ve also decided to drop out of the ‘Not the Whittakers‘ challenge I was participating in. Historically speaking the Whittakers have provided me with the incentive and momentum to write some great short story first drafts but this year I’m not really feeling it and am seriously time-challenged. Still, I should be kept plenty busy and challenged even in their absence 😉
Between NaNoWriMo, NovPad 2013, reading for Fae, promoting Metastasis, readying the December issue of Niteblade and just, ya know, having a life, I think I’ll be kept pretty busy, but not quite as crazy as last month.
Happy Halloween to you, and Happy Anniversary to Jo and me 🙂
The picture there is the most recent one I have of Jo and I together. It was taken at the book signing for Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories in February. Jo and I co-wrote a story that was included in that book, Sea and Sky. Anyway… this isn’t about that book, it’s about our anniversary 🙂
Today is our 9th anniversary. Ask me how I know it’s the 9th… c’mon, ask me. I know it’s the 9th because Danica is in grade ten and she was in grade one when we got married. That is also how Jo knows it’s our 9th anniversary. We are so screwed once Danica graduates from school LOL It’s kind of appropriate that we keep track of our anniversaries that way, though. I don’t know that we would have gotten married it if weren’t for Dani. We both loved each other very much but we didn’t really feel like we needed a ceremony to prove that however Danica really wanted us to be married, it meant a lot to her and so we did. Now I’m happy that we did. We didn’t need a ceremony to prove anything, but there’s something that really appeals to me about being Jo’s wife and partner.
Now, you don’t need to run away, I’m not going to spend a whole blog post gushing about how much I love him but I do want to share one short story with you that will illustrate just how awesome he is.
A few years ago I was all like ‘Gawd, I need a new job!’ and Jo said, “Well, if you could do anything in the world what would it be?” I replied, “Writing, but that will never happen.” Jo looked at me, I mean really looked at me and said, “Why not?” Why not indeed. If not for that question I might still be stuck in a job I hated and so many stories I’m incredibly proud of would never have been written.
Thank you for being awesome Jo. You rock and I love you.
And now… back to business.
Anniversary or not, today is also the last day for two work-related things. It’s the last day you can enter my draw for a goodie bag full of awesome:
It’s also the last day to get your copy of Metastasis at a discount:
Amazon.com
Paperback – $14.95
Kindle – $6.95
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
Smashwords — Use coupon code LM63L in order to receive 25% off your order
ePub – $6.95
Kindle – $6.95
PDF – $6.95
Createspace — Use coupon code TGERED9J in order to receive 25% off your order
Paperback – $14.95
My poem, Potty Party Girl, has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of Gold Dust Magazine. Potty Party Girl is a weird little piece that I wrote as part of a poem-a-day challenge (I don’t remember which one off the top of my head). I was pretty sure it was just going to sit on my hard drive collecting dust because, as you may have guessed from the title, it would be a wee bit difficult to place. Then I discovered Gold Dust Magazine and I thought it would be a good fit. Turns out the editors thought so too, which means I’ll be able to share the poem with you come December 🙂
As to that photograph… well Gold Dust didn’t have a handy logo and I thought this post needed something, so I decided to use this one. A picture of how I write first drafts. I try to keep the cats off my notebooks but in this case I stepped away for just a second…
Joely and I first met, interestingly enough, when our stories followed one another in the 3 hundred and 65 project which benefited a children’s cancer charity. It was no surprise to me then when she submitted a story to Metastasis. Let’s here what she has to say about it:
Who or what was the inspiration for your story in Metastasis?
When I was nine, my uncle died of a brain tumour. He was 37. We used to go and see him at the hospice in London. I became very curious about how a brain tumour changes the very nature of who we are, after watching how the tumour changed him. We get our very selves, all our creativity and thought, from the brain, and cancer changes that radically. I wanted to explore how that might change a person, but not in a uniformly bleak way.
How has cancer touched your life?
I’ve never had cancer myself, but I’ve lost three close relatives to it. My uncle’s death stayed with me a long time, as he died very young and made me conscious of how early cancer can claim a person. My grandfather died of prostate cancer when I was a teenager, which felt like a battle of the wills between him and the disease. I understand he never properly sought treatment for it, which is why he died so quickly. And of course, my other uncle died last year. That was a hard one; the cancer was concealed by his Alzheimer’s, and it’s awful to think that many of his unusual behaviours were caused by a tumour rather than the degenerative dementia.
When it comes to cancer, what gives you hope?
Many of my friends are scientists, constantly working on tiny pieces that fit together to produce cures. The speed with which we’re learning about new treatments, new techniques and new medicines is astounding. I think we’re making progress, especially when it’s caught early.
Joely Black is a writer and author living in Manchester, England. She has published a fantasy trilogy and is currently writing a new fantasy serial called Five Empires. She has also written for the Manchester Literature Festival and appeared in One in Four magazine. You can find more info at joelyblack.com.
Metastasis is available at:
Amazon.com
Paperback – $14.95
Kindle – $6.95
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
Smashwords — Use coupon code LM63L in order to receive 25% off your order
ePub – $6.95
Kindle – $6.95
PDF – $6.95
Createspace — Use coupon code TGERED9J in order to receive 25% off your order
Paperback – $14.95
All coupons codes expire on October 31, 2013.
Sara Cleto is today’s participant in the series of Metastasis contributor interviews I’ve been hosting here on my blog. Sara’s poem, “A Hunter Reflects Upon the Properties of Sunlight, and Also of Ashes“, is just one of several pieces from this anthology which touched on sunlight (Cat Jenkin‘s story “Like Sunlit Honey” being the most obvious other example). It was a theme I wasn’t expecting to find as I read submissions, but at the same time, it wasn’t surprising either. Which is not to say that Sara’s poem or Cat’s story are without surprises, because that would be a lie. I’m going to stop rambling now so we can hear what Sara has to say:
Who or what was the inspiration for your story in Metastasis?
Despite my lifelong fascination with vampires–my favorite novel is Robin McKinley’s Sunshine, and my first academic article discusses Gothic vampires– I’d never written anything creative about them because vampiric literature can veer very quickly towards the cliche. The prompt for Metastasis offered an opportunity to invoke vampires in a really unconventional way, and once I made a connection between sunlight, cancer, and vampires, I knew exactly how my poem would unfold.
Both my mother and my maternal grandmother have survived cancer. They faced illness with incredible bravery and grace, and my poem is dedicated to their strength. My partner’s extraordinary grandfather passed earlier this month after his own battle with cancer, and I don’t yet have the words to talk about it.
Beth Cato’s poem “Hunter” just about broke my heart with its magic, sweetness, and sadness.
Sara Cleto is a PhD Student at the Ohio State University, where she explores folklore, literature, and the places where they intersect. She spends most of her time reading, writing, and teaching her students about fairy tales and the supernatural. Her creative work can be found in Cabinet des Fees: Scheherazade’s Bequest, Ideomancer, Nightblade, and others.Metastasis is available at:
Amazon.com
Paperback – $14.95
Kindle – $6.95
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
Smashwords — Use coupon code LM63L in order to receive 25% off your order
ePub – $6.95
Kindle – $6.95
PDF – $6.95
Createspace — Use coupon code TGERED9J in order to receive 25% off your order
Paperback – $14.95
All coupons codes expire on October 31, 2013.
