Invisible Monsters and An Update or Two About Writing

I’ve been a bad blogger. It’s been a while but I’ve good excuses. First the holidays are always hectic and it’s hard to get anything recreational done. Next work has been nuts and I won’t get into that, suffice to say that well….it’s been nuts.

Most importantly I am in the end stretch of draft one of a novel length work. It has been consuming my free time, in a good way. I am enjoying the process and I know there’s a long way to go but it feels great. I can’t wait to finish it up and get going on the edits.

While I’ve been writing this novel sized piece my short story “Beth Hartley is Hot” was rejected.

I have not been fixin/resending any short stories because I don’t want to loose steam on the longer piece but all my little babies waiting to go back out into the world is making me itch a bit

In the meantime the most memorable book I’ve read in the past few months is Chuck Palahniuk’s “Invisible Monsters” a book that takes on: Transsexualism. Models. Riches. Shotguns. Makeup. Drugs. Disfigurement. Fire. Sexually transmitted disease. Estrogen. Real Estate. Weddings. Homosexuality. High Fashion. Yup, it’s a wild ride.

Interesting book. I liked it a lot, better than “Haunted” but not as much s “Lullaby.” What kept me from loving monsters? It had some very interesting twists and turns but the last one was just too much for me. I don’t want to spoil anything…but did you read it? What do you think?

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Desert Walker – Still on Shroud Magazines Short List

“Desert Walker”, a supernatural tale of family and determination in a barren world of sand and death, was added to the short list of stories to be accepted in Shroud Magazine. I was notified of this on August 23, 2010, so at this point I figure no news is still good news.

Not much else to speak on at this point. My writing resume to this point reads like this:

1. “Infestation” story #145, Pseudopod, June 2009
2. “Painkiller”, House of Horror issue #10, April 2010
3. “’Til Death”, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, July 2010
4. “Cookers”, Tales of the Zombie War, August 10th 2010
5. “Little Pieces” to be published in the October 2010 issue of Necrotic Tissue
6. “The Key” to be published in Morpheus Tales #15, January 2012

So, obviously I’m hoping Desert Walker will be lucky #7.

I have about 3 to 5 more short stories that I think are fit for publishing. I would love to hit double digits for when I finish my grand attempt at a novel. I’m at about 11,000 words in on the first draft. All my stories published to date are basically horror but the novel will be more of a dark, young adult novel. It’s going well so far although I am not sure how a novel manuscript should look, but let’s not put the cart before the horse.