We had some pretty crazy rain storms out here on the Cape last night, and afterward, there was a rainbow and an amazing sky. My friend and fellow writer Angi and I went up on the roof deck to get a better look, and before our eyes, the rainbow got darker, full-arched, and became a double. I felt the promise of something new and awesome coming into my life!
Later on, in celebration of Angi finishing her novel, we went for a night walk on the beach.
Last night was the night I spend every Cape Cod Writer’s Retreat waiting for: special and magical. There’s always one, and this time, last night was it.
I am not a good photographer. The sky just did this for me. It almost reminded me of something volcanic.
Angi is an amazing artist, but she’s also great with a camera. She was able to get a panorama and get the whole rainbow (to clarify: Angi took this; I didn’t).
Trisha’s lamp to guide our return spot was awesome. The one we had last year was so dim we couldn’t see it.
Obviously someone just pulled this boat out of the water for the night or whatever, but in the dark, in the glow of the lamp, beached, it was creepy.
This not-very-outdoor girl was very proud of herself that she wore a bunch of layers and socks and boots so she wasn’t cold. Fair attribution: my husband made me pack my boots. Because he is awesome.
Now that I have a new phone I’m DEFINITELY getting this app. I’ve been jealous of Trisha’s for like a year.
These are porcupine tracks. AWWWWW. Little porcupines looking for food!! So cute!!!!
This is my favorite beach house mug, although I always bring my own.
I leave Friday for the annual writer’s retreat at the beach house in Cape Cod with five other talented writers, and I couldn’t be more excited! I’ll be there until 9/23.
While last year was incredible, I have to admit that the focus was mostly on my enjoyment of the great outdoors and getting some rest and social time. This year? The focus will be completely different. I have tons of stuff to catch up on: the Wicked Sick anthology, outstanding 34 Orchard business, website/blog/general writing practical-end catch-up, blog posts, the NEHW classes I’ll be teaching, Bad Apple’s 10th anniversary release, some reading… and some writing. Maybe. My list is pages long. Way more than I can get done in eight days. But I’m going to do my best!
And, with any luck, the weather will be such that I can get some daily beach time in.
Back to class! I’m thrilled to announce Trisha J. Wooldridge and I will be hosting an online Master Toolbox Series for writers that micro-focuses on specific skills. There’s one session a month and, at $35/each, they’re affordable; you can take just one, multiples, or, if you wish, all of them at a discounted price. They’re also keyed to any skill level. Proceeds support both the New England Horror Writers and 34 Orchard. Details and how to register below.
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Tools of the writing trade need a sharpen? Need to pick up some new ones? No worries! Beginning in September, 2022 and monthly through February, 2023, the New England Horror Writers will present two hour Zoom webinars (which will include exercises and time for Q&A) that delve deep into the specifics of craft and business skills!
Open to the general public and NEHW members, each class will focus on a specific topic. Instructors are Kristi Petersen Schoonover and Trisha J. Wooldridge.
If you’re looking to build some new skills, these micro-focused, affordable classes are the way to go—and yes, we have plans to offer subsequent sessions with different topics every fall-winter going forward!
Here’s the full schedule:
Wednesday, September 28, 2022 – 7—9 pm
Story Openings Blueprint
We’ve only got one sentence to hammer that “you must keep reading me!” message home—and many writers don’t realize that sometimes, a piece getting moved out of slush is dependent on the strength of that one sentence. From do’s and don’ts to mining and can’t-miss criteria, this class gives the blueprint for great openers.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 – 7—9 pm
Excess Hardware: Wordiness and Filter Phrases
We build stories from words and phrases—but sometimes we use more hardware than necessary to get the job done! This course teaches how to thoroughly inspect the piece to identify extra words and filter phrases and how to remove them for a cleaner reading experience.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 – 7—9 pm
EnTITLEment: Top-Notch Titles
A title isn’t just a label in My Documents. A good one should tell the editor or reader something about the story—right down to its tone. EnTITLEment provides the tools to nail a top-notch title every time, so that it not only stands out in an editor’s inbox—it pops in a ToC!
Wednesday, December 14 – 7—9pm
The Architecture of the Submissions Process
There’s more to the submissions process than just clicking send. We’ll offer plenty of insider tips on everything from formatting, market searching and close reading of guidelines to cover letters and bios to ensure pieces get considered. We’ll also cover other mechanics like tracking and how to develop structured—but easy—processes that guarantee we don’t inadvertently screw ourselves.
Wednesday, January 25 – 7—9pm
Dampproofing Dialogue
At best, dialogue can say a lot about characters, make them leap off the page, and be incredibly memorable; at worst, it can waterlog the pacing, tell instead of show, turn the story into a boring lecture and quite literally, say nothing. We’ll not only study how to write effective dialogue that makes characters feel organic, we’ll look at formatting, dos and don’ts, and how to make choices about what comes out of people’s mouths.
Wednesday, February 22 – 7—9pm
Nailing Theme
When it comes to theme, many of us probably didn’t feel like the sharpest tool in the shed that was high school English—but as writers, understanding theme is crucial: it’s the support beam of the story. We’ve got a fool-proof, easy way to identify theme and thematic statement, and we’ll teach its use in building a story that will stand the test of time.
Class materials will be sent to registrants ahead of time via email and are included in the $25 NEHW Member/$35 NON-NEHW Member fees. You can sign up for any combination of classes. Want to buy access to ALL SIX webinars? You can do that too: Member price for all six webinars is $130; Non-member price is $175.
A little whirlwind tour of my experience at NecronomiCon Providence 2022. Enjoy! There are links at the end of the gallery for anything you might wish to know about further.
Every General Pilgrimage Pass comes with an amazing program full of fiction, poetry, interviews and art. These are gorgeous and make for wonderful reads as well as great collector’s items. I also liked the COVID comfort-level stickers for our badges. Masks were required at all indoor events, but this avoided any conversation—you just glanced to see if someone was green, orange, or red. This was a GENIUS way to keep people comfortable without tainting the atmosphere or bogging each other down in pandemic conversation and allowed everyone to focus on the subject at hand. Applause.
The junior suite! This proved to be a fantastic home away from home; Kristina and I would convene during the day, pull out our journals, and compare notes on the panels/academic presentations we attended. Those moments were some of my favorites at the con. I love going to cons where I can take notes and learn things. And, of course! We had our share of social gatherings in the living room in the evenings.
Hangin’ with the Maine contingent! Top, Michele (who owns Portland, Maine’s amazing THE GREEN HAND BOOKSHOP!) and my childhood bud Kristina. Lower left, me and Brandon Kawashima, who was the featured artists for 2019’s NECRONOMICON and is also a Staff Contributing Artist for 34 ORCHARD. Lower right, me and Kristina—roomies. We often joke about making great room sharers. We’ve known each other since we were six, so…yeah, a lot of sleepovers as kids. There’s just something very sister-like and easy about sharing a room with her.
The New England Horror Writers table in the Grand Emporium of the Weird (otherwise known as the vendor’s room). More stock was added to it as the weekend progressed as more writers showed up to vend.
New England Horror Writers board members: Scott Goudsward, who is absolutely the genius guru of running all of the vending tables for members at shows, Trisha J. Woodridge, and me. This might look like I did work. I didn’t. They did it all. It was done by the time I got there. That said, those two thrive on this stuff!
At the NEHW vendor table, copies of Grinning Skull Press’ COLOUR OUT OF DEATHLEHEM—their 2021 Christmas benefit anthology which opens with my story, “Feeding the Babies”—sold out. Since I paid full price for all of those copies, all of that money went to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDs foundation, and I’ve set aside this cash to buy more copies so there’s another donation. I’m very, very happy about that.
A bunch of us get ready to set off for the ARS NECRONOMICA Art Show, Necro’s exclusive weird art exhibit. From left, Jack Cullen, Scott Goudsward, Gevera Bert Piedmont, K.H. Vaughan, and Bert’s husband Will.
As at every art show, things speak to me. There were several at this year’s ARS NECRONOMICA Art Show, Necro’s exclusive weird art exhibit, which this year was held at AS220 (I took classes there 30 years ago, so that was a nice trip down memory lane!). I love this. Nick Gucker’s I WANT TO BURN AGAIN talks to me about the stupid things you do over and over again because they make you feel good—even though they destroy you. Boy… do I know THAT dance!
There’s probably no art more appropriate for my collection than this fabulous weird volcano piece, TERRAFORMONAUT, by Rodger Binyone. I didn’t buy it because it’s paper, and I honestly don’t have a glass case to display it in and keep it safe. Otherwise, I would’ve brought this baby home.
Hey, it’s just not Necro without visiting the Haven Bros Diner for fries and shakes! I don’t eat that much anymore, so I only made it over here one time, but OH THOSE FRIES!
THIS is what I’d been waiting for—Narragansett’s limited edition beer for this year’s con. “Colour Out of Space” is my very favorite Lovecraft story for many reasons. I’ve special memories of seeing the Nicholas Cage film in Providence, I was thrilled to have my story “Feeding the Babies” in the Grinning Skull Press anthology COLOUR OUT OF DEATHLEHEM, and now here’s this cool beer! This grapefruit IPA not only had the coolest label art ever, it was light, refreshing, and delicious.
Clowning around at THE PARTY UNDER THE STARS, a kick-off street party with bands, food, and … beer.
It was a beautiful night in Providence. A shoes-off, camp out on the sidewalk kinda night.
Part of the reason NECRONOMICON is in August every year is because HPL’s birthday is August 20.
I had a bucket list of people I wanted to meet for the first time or see—and the passionate, do-it-all folks at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival were high on my list. Pre-pandemic, they were only doing the event live out in Portland, Oregon. Being a lover of short film, I was always bummed I could never afford to go all the way to the west coast to do it—but then the pandemic happened, and they streamed, so I got to “go”! They did a hybrid in 2021, and they’re doing a hybrid this year. Of course, I visited their vendor table prepared. I wanted to get the BEST OF 2020 collection, and had deliberately waited to buy it in person.
My microfictions, “Ghosts on the Sand” and “Dominion” were winners in the HP Lovecraft and Cthuluthon’s micro fiction contests and were published in these cute little books full of great writing everyone should own… and here they were on their vendor table (they were turned over to show the other half of the book—the CHALLENGE FROM BEYOND—but I flipped them over just so I could get a photo for my scrapbook. Then I put them back the way they were).
Remember that bucket list? Gwen of the HP Lovecraft Film Festival was on it (AND YES, I was a very embarrassingly behaved fan girl, I’m sure). She and Brian do such an incredible job of running this huge, and very exciting, event. I also attended a panel she moderated on cosmic film. It was informative and I learned (as I always do at Necro) so much good stuff!
Yay! Me and writer Lauren Elise Daniels! We’ve shared more than one ToC together—including GENERATION X-ED and the upcoming OUT OF TIME: TRUE PARANORMAL ENCOUNTERS. We started corresponding (a native Rhode Islander, she now lives in Australia), love each other’s work, and couldn’t wait to meet! Her book, SERPENT’S WAKE: A TALE FOR THE BITTEN, is plain awesome. She was also a paranormal investigator, and I plan on featuring at least one of her eloquently-written true encounters stories in 34 ORCHARD, because…oh my God, what a treat that will be for our readers!
Woo hoo!! I met Anne and Kevin at the Eldritch Ball at Necro 2019, and we’ve been looking forward to partying together again ever since! WE FINALLY HOOKED UP IN THE VENDOR ROOM!! From left, Anne, Kevin, me, and Kristina.
Ogimos is an awesome artist, and I’ve met him at a couple of cons in the past (many years ago). It was great to see him again. He did the cover for the New England Horror Writer’s anthology, WICKED CREATURES, which contains my story, “Carving Grace.” Turns out, his friend is dating a friend of mine I’ve known for thirty years, who appeared as a character in “Carving Grace.” Talk about coincidence! So this was a very special meet-up.
Me and Ogimos
Ogimos did the cover for WICKED CREATURES.
Just before my reading, Kristina and I did some shopping. I came across this necklace—the artist had lots of hearts, but this one was special because of the dinosaur fossil inside. The story I was reading involves dinosaur ghosts, so I JUST HAD TO HAVE THIS! The artist’s shop is called Hibernacula.
Shot this just before my reading on Friday, August 19—the truth? I was hungover, and I have a lazy eye that was corrected, so it only sometimes presents itself when I’m tired, anxious, or hungover—and I CAN ONLY SEE IT IN PICTURES. So every time I have a big thing coming up, I take a bunch of selfies to see what’s going with that eye. It was actually looking close to normal here (if it was bad, the right eye’s iris/pupil wouldn’t be near my nose…it’d be floating out in the middle when my head’s turned). My friend Heather convinced me to use this as my headshot for my books going forward for a bit, and I think I might (and honestly? I actually look pretty decent for being hungover…)
Yay! The 3:30 pm New England Horror Writers reading crew! From left, Catherine Grant, Christine Lejewski, and Kevin Lewis.
Nothing’s more beautiful than the city of Providence from the Graduate Hotel’s 3rd Floor veranda on a warm summer night. This was taken during THE OUTER DARK PODCAST’s party.
SURPRISE GUEST ON SATURDAY MORNING! My good ol’ friend Stacey!
One academic presentation I was looking forward to was THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and Lovecraftian Horror.
HWA’s Rhode Island chapter had a reading and release party for their anthology, WE ARE PROVIDENCE. Check out this custom cake!
My friend Lauren Elise Daniels, who co-edited WE ARE PROVIDENCE, introduces the WE ARE PROVIDENCE party.
K.H. Vaughan reads from his short story, “Ghost Catch” at the WE ARE PROVIDENCE release party.
My accessories for the ball ready to go!
Me, Scott Goudsward, and Trisha Wooldridge dressed and ready for the Eldritch Ball. Right now, much to Scott’s chagrin, me and Trisha are threatening to put it in the New England Horror Writers newsletter. We probably will. It’s a cute pic.
The theme of the ball was Poe’s THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and it was beautifully decorated. That committee in charge spent hours on dressing the room, and wow, did it ever pay off!
The evening’s cocktails. Basically? LIQUOR ON CRACK. Delicious too. I had one of each.
Kevin, Ann, and me, dressed up and ready to party!
The Eldritch Ball’s costumes are always a sight to behold.
From left, Trisha Wooldridge, Necro’s 2022 Poet Laureate Bryan Thao Worra, and Adam Bolivar take a much less serious photo for their group pic after their reading (I have serious ones, but this is pretty awesome).
Wow, what a weekend! I stopped to have a cup of coffee with HWA-CT’s Stephanie (we ALSO met for the first time!) before heading out of Providence and back to Portsmouth to my friend Heather’s, which was twenty minutes away. Yeah…there was NO WAY I was going to make a three hour drive all the way home. I was totally bone-tired. Which is, of course, always the sign of a great con.
My book purchases!
My swag!
What an amazing weekend. See y’all in 2024, NECRO PEEPS!
LINKS
Here are links to things mentioned in the captions, in case you want to check them out!
My sister put this little blue arrow on the pic to show where I am.
How was my time at Necro? I’ll be posting a round-up with some of my favorite pics later this week. Imagine my surprise this morning, though, when an article on NECRONOMICON PROVIDENCE showed up in my news feed. I was reading the article, and I was looking at all the pictures closely to see if I could ID any of my friends or people I knew. I spotted, up in the corner of one picture, this tiny little person that had the same dress as me.
LOL. See me checking out my book to try to find the room this party was in? The back of my neck looks amazing.
It turned out it WAS me. Don’t you think the back of my neck and my $13 Target backpack look amazing? I just cracked up! Still, it’s kind of cool. What’s extra funny is that this photo was taken on Saturday night, probably at around 7:40 pm. I was getting ready to go to the HWA-RI chapter’s release party for their awesome anthology, WE ARE PROVIDENCE, and I couldn’t find the room the party was in. So I pulled over and looked at my guide to see if I could figure it out.
And that’s the moment the picture was snapped.
I’ve made TheNew York Times. Maybe not in the way I expected, but achievement unlocked! 🙂
The full article in The New York Times about the con can be read at this link, in case you’re interested:
Me and Trisha clowning around at Stew’s. It’s kinda hard not to, especially when you’re with an out-of-towner!
A couple of months ago, I attended Book Fiend Reader’s Fest III up in Manchester, a little less than an hour from my house. My friend and fellow writer Trisha Wooldridge, who lives in Massachusetts, came down for the weekend, as the morning drive from my house was shorter than hers—but also, we LOVE having weekends together and would use any excuse to get one.
When we were planning food for the weekend, I asked, “well, what would you like me to get?”
Her immediate response was, “Can we go to Stew Leonard’s when I get there?”
She hadn’t spent the weekend here in Danbury since 2013, when she and another friend and fellow writer, Nanette, came here for a writer’s retreat (we were all broke and couldn’t afford to rent a place). On that trip, I took them to Stew’s—and Trisha, who wasn’t familiar with it, remembered her experience.
So, for those who’ve never heard of it, what is Stew Leonard’s? Billing itself as The World’s Largest Dairy Store, it’s a wonderland of pretty awesome stuff, but the biggest attraction is probably, honestly, all of its crazy singing animatronics. Most of these displays entertain the little kids, but they’ve been a great balm in Gilead for any adult who’s feeling down. Nothing a little video of singing animatronic chickens can’t cure, right?
It was after work, and I was in the parking lot, getting ready to back out of my space. I checked both ways behind me before pulling out—physically, which means I turned around and actually looked—and then slowly crawled out. I had barely gone a couple of inches when suddenly? WHACK!
I thought for a second perhaps I’d struck the light pole I was parked next to, but then I turned around and saw a black Jeep Cherokee sitting several feet past me—he’d been passing me. Not head on, just driving by in the driving lane.
Shit. Where the hell had he come from? He had to be going pretty fast to just show up out of nowhere, and because he was past me, he either didn’t stop at first or it took him a while to stop his vehicle. All of this pointed, at least in my mind, to unreasonable speed. In addition, it was a straight away. I definitely would’ve seen him coming.
This was what I saw just before I backed out of my space, which is to the right of the photo.
The driver, a kid who would later prove to be in his mid-20s, leapt from his car, phone in hand, screaming “I’m so sorry! Are you hurt! Are you hurt?”
Well, at least he asked the right question.
He had some damage to his driver’s side door. Mine was a different story—it was pretty severe, probably more damage once it got opened up at the shop than could be seen with the naked eye. We agreed to exchange information, but I wanted to call the police. He was very uncomfortable with the idea, but I’m a Gen-X adult who knows better than to not call. I wanted the cop to see us both walking around and breathing, mostly so that this kid couldn’t invent terrible injuries later. He wasn’t acting like a jerk—in fact, he was polite, just totally confused and didn’t know what to do because he said it was his first accident—but his discomfort with getting the police involved signaled he couldn’t be trusted.
He hedged around the parking lot, pacing, calling his mom and his wife. Then, he asked, “Can you call back and find out when they’re going to get here? I have to go to a Mets game tonight.” Read the rest of this entry →
Even as I juggle fifty million projects (an anthology, the 10th anniversary of Bad Apple, 34 Orchard, HWA-CT business, a short story deadline and critiques I owe people)…I’m getting ready for NECRONOMICON PROVIDENCE, in Rhode Island August 18—21, 2022! The main website for the event is here: http://necronomicon-providence.com/welcome/
I made my own schedule book so I can choose all the things I want to go to. See all those flags on the right? Yeah, I’m gonna be BUSY!
In between whatever I’m doing, I’ll be taking in panels—both pop and academic, readings, at least one performance, a few short films, and hooking up with friends old and new. I’ve got my wish list ready to go, but it’ll be a busy weekend, and it’s very fluid.
