Posts

Too Much World Building

Image
As I write this, soon means hopefully October 2023. “ Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off . It is always better to be underdressed.” —Coco Chanel While revising Havoc’s Moon's prologue, I realized I had too many world building items crammed in. For a few months, I’ve had trouble integrating a specific detail about a specific weapon into this scene. While reading it back, I realized that the scene flowed much better if I cut that part out. Even though I really wanted to drop a breadcrumb about this weapon early on in the story, the story functioned much better without it. There are always going to be details that I want to include vs. details the readers need to get through the story. Most times a lot of what I want to include is extra. In this way, I am very much an over-writer. I worry that if I don’t explain everything related to what’s going on in that scene in that moment, readers will be confused. But in reality, including too many details abo
Post a Comment
Read more

Deconstructed

Image
What am I?  Guess 1: Pages of a manuscript bundled together. Answer: No. That's not your original idea. Guess 2: A pair of lost headphones or a scrap of song on a desperate wind? Answer: What? Are you a dadaist now? Try again. Guess 3: I am someone who makes fun of themselves to hide a darker truth. Answer: Yes, but your jokes are never funny. Guess 4: My inner editor is a raging bitch. Answer: Yes. Guess 5: I want to write poetry. I want to get back to a space that doesn't exist anymore because it's in the past. I want to eat the past and partake of its power. I want to go back, not forward. Answer: Existence is "a presence" you can't escape no matter how hard you try to break it. Guess 6: I want to stop wasting time. Answer: That contradicts Guess 5. Guess 7: I want my words to be vital. I want them to mean something. Answer: To who? Guess 8: To me, I guess. Maybe everybody else too? Answer: How can one reconcile reading the words of a revolutionary and the
Post a Comment
Read more

Commonplace Book

Image
With roots in the Roman era and in medieval European religious anthologies, commonplace books became popular in Renaissance Europe and flourished through the early twentieth century. At its core, a commonplace book is simply a collection of information for our personal perusal: a place to record notable quotations, aphorisms, letters, poems, and frequently referenced information.  Unlike a journal, which is chronological and usually contains personal reflections, a commonplace book is a compilation of external information that speaks to us, written down as we come across it. And unlike a notebook that you keep for a class or for a job, it usually covers multiple subjects, bound together by the thread of our personal interests. -- The Paper Mouse Welcome to my QUOTES page! I include attributes as often as possible, but some of these quotes are random things I've heard in conversations while eavesdropping people watching.  Enjoy! From Star Wars: Andor: The axe forgets but the tree r
Post a Comment
Read more

View from Sunset Motel

Image
View from Sunset Motel Sunset sounds like unexpected footsteps down the hall,  notes that scribble in the dark and slide from unexpected places like too-friendly switchblades. From the window if you look hard enough you can see Papa Legba walk by and I'm his shattered, dead dog with my ribs and pieces  glued back together, an espresso stained  chalice anyone can drink from. Sunset smells like pine, burnt kudzu, and date rape only the dick has no money to take you out on a date. Peach moonshine stains every carpet and the bathtub's full of cypress blood and all the stories that don't need retelling. Someone turns the key and someone else starts praying. "Pass me by." But every body is naked in the streetlight. Note: A previous version of this poem was first published in Black Heart Magazine , 2015.
Post a Comment
Read more

Goofing Off

Image
I am writing these words with a knife. --Bhanu Kapil When the hand deviates from the task it is set to, touching for money, hand to hand, orders passed from hand to paper to brain and out another hand again. When the brain receives from the paper and refuses the order and the hand writes something else instead, something you don't want to hear.  The click the pen made before the ink came out and the click of the door when it opens cover the sound of the paper folding. The paper hides in a uniform pocket. The ink smearing the fingers in a contraband gift from the words folded between the lines. When the eyes of the brain look up to the footsteps outside the door there are guilty, suspicious glances.  When the hand grips the pen again, when passwords are re-entered into sleeping snake nests of code and foggy ether, when the face of the brain looks intent, busy. When the words still fall out of the brain onto the paper from that hand that ignores the order. When the ears of the brain
Post a Comment
Read more

Things That Sound Like Never Going Home

Image
The Body 1. Every sickness involving the stomach or brain. 2. The taste of cinders. 3. Shaded windows. 4. The secret names of books I will never read. 5. Time dragged slowly forward like a dull furrow in the road, like a dull scrape across the skin as a smile drags across your face. 6. A streetlight burning in abandon. 7. The face pressed against the other side of the window. More of my poetry will be available in Promises and Other Stories: Speculative E-Shorts vol. 1. Coming sometime soonish... I've got one more story to go to my editor as I write this and then it will be ready for publication. Note: A previous draft of this poem was first published in pif magazine , 2015.
Post a Comment
Read more

Dark Moments

Image
Exciting news! I just received word that one of my dabble fiction pieces will be published by Black Hare Press in their Dark Moments Year Five anthology! Short fiction is my happy place and always dear to my heart. One of my New Year's resolutions is to send more stories and poems out to magazines. This is my first acceptance of 2023 (and I get paid for it 🥳). Isn't this cover gorgeous??? I cannot put into words how much I love this cover. I am so grateful and honored to be included. The Black Hare Press YEAR FIVE anthology is a culmination of all the nano-tales published in the Dark Moments online archive, and all the tales published on Patreon during 2023.As a champion of emerging writers, you'll always find works by debut authors in our publications, as well new pieces from established and best-selling authors. We hope you enjoy the hard work that has been put into these tiny tales. This anthology goes live in December 9, 2023, but it's already available for pre-ord
1 comment
Read more