Tis the Season...to Gut a Pumpkin

Karla and the kids get in the spirit of the season....



Sheridan and Rowan each designed their own Jack o Lantern, and the knifework was left to Mom.

Bedtime Stories

Check this out...





Rowan shows off her reading skills. She is autistic, six years old, and two months into first grade. Some of what she is saying is hard to understand, but she is reading the words correctly. Sometimes she insists on somebody else reading a sentence or two, but she is quite capable of reading the book herself. She has really been coming on lately, and we're so proud of her.

Look Ma! I Published Something!

Today, LL Dreamspell announced the release of their latest horror anthology "Dreamspell Nightmares II."
I set a personal best in this anthology, by getting three different stories accepted for it. And I feel they are three of my better short stories.

The first story is "Closing Time". It tells the tale of Erin, who discovers that some stalkers are tougher to shake than others...especially the dead kind.

The second is "Rite of Passage". Some people feel this is one of my more frightening works, and it received high marks at the writer's workshop at Apollocon where I had it critiqued. This is actually an earlier work of mine focused on mood and setting, along with back story.

The third is "Under a Racer's Moon," which is a bit of a layered work...and also has a touch of humor thrown in to balance things. Two young men are out looking for excitement, and find it in a big way when they find themselves in a race with a spectral De Soto.

Anyways, it feels good to see this come out and I hope everybody enjoys it!

Nate

Holy Crap! I Turned 50 Today!

Lovely. There are now full grown oak trees younger than me.

Bah! I don't care!

*shakes cane at world*

Everybody, get off my lawn!

A Step in the Right Direction

Today, I just finished the very rough draft of the 10,000 word novelette, "A Long, Cold Forever of a Night." It is a ghost story, and features the young lady on the cover of the anthology. As I stated earlier, I hate it when a horror anthology has a really cool cover that ends up not having anything to do with any of the stories within. So I felt it would be slightly hypocritical of me to have this really cool cover that was made for me, and then not have this haunt show up in the book.

The story is still very, very rough but I think it's solid. I'm going to put it on the shelf for a few days and pursue a different project before returning and editing this with a fresh pair of eyes. I also wrote it because I wanted the stories in the Shades anthology to be more about ghosts than anything else, and currently its an even split between 4 ghost stories and 4 stories of other types of horror.  Now I just changed that split to 5-3. I would like to make it 6-2, or even 7-1, but we shall just have to wait and see if I can do it.

Anyways, it feels good getting it done. I have been needing a confidence builder, what with all the struggling I've been doing on novels lately, and this helps. I needed to finish something.

So that's that. There is still a lot to do, but I feel better about my odds of doing it.

Blog Announcement

As of now, the regular schedule of A Dark and Stormy Blog will be discontinued. For the near future, there will only be updates and announcements on here when I actually have something to announce.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. What it means is that I am now focusing even more of my energies into becoming a writer again. I have come to the conclusion that a writer is someone who finishes manuscripts and gets them out there to be read...and I haven't done that since publishing The Mushroom Man last February. The only thing I have actually been getting published is this blog. I have allowed myself to get hung up on several different projects, and it's time to focus all my energies on finishing things.

The other bright side is that there will be no more "forced content" for a while, just stuff that I feel is actually worth posting. So we shall see what we shall see.

I hope everybody has a good weekend. I will be out in the wilds of Kingwood, having a Cub Scout campout with the boy...so if you guys never hear from me again it may have nothing to do with me writing at all.

Aloha...

Ghost Stories and Eight Year Olds

The above book cover is my current background on my computer screen, since it is one of the projects I'm working on. Lately, I have been working with my laptop hooked to my big screen TV so it was only a matter of time until my eight year old son, Sheridan, took notice and commented.

"Hey, Dad? Who's the weird lady on your computer?"
"She's a ghost, son. She's going to be in one of the stories I'm writing."
"Is that story done?"
"Almost."
"So, what's the story about?"
*I give him a slightly sanitized version that's was also made more accessible to the eight year old understanding of the world*
"Oh," he looked at the screen thoughtfully, "I guess that's cool. But you need to make her really scary."
"Really scary? Okay, kiddo...what would make her really scary?"
He studied the picture judiciously for a moment longer.
"Give her a rocket launcher. That oughta do it."

Yeah. So this is the wisdom I get when sharing my work at home. Just thought I would offer that snapshot in the home life of a writer.

(on a side note. It has always annoyed me in horror anthologies when there would be some super cool scene or character on the cover that turned out not to have a single thing to do with any of the stories within. So I felt duty bound to try and give the ghost girl on the cover a story of her own)

Anyways, work continues to proceed at a snails pace but it proceeds. Not a good week for writing though because of all the chores that need doing. I gotta get ready for the exterminator today. Maybe do some more laundry as well.

 I'm doing more reading nowadays with my new Kindle DX, so that's one improvement. I'm reading lots of ghost stories to see how I might do things different... short of a rocket launcher.

Happy humpday!

Maintenance Day

Karla is off today, so we are taking advantage of the extra pair of hands to get some things done around the house. Rooms are being cleaned, and laundry is getting done. Appts are being made for prescriptions and for exterminators. Things are getting taken care of.

So I will return to writing tomorrow.  I'm just taking a ten oclock break to recover from the exertion before jumping back in for another hour. Then I think the two of us will go out and eat...something we almost never get to do since the kids came along.

So stuff is getting done, and there's not much to report. Sometimes, that's just the way things go.

Happy Monday!

CMT Awareness Month Post

Well, it's nearing the end of CMT Awareness Month and I realize I have never made a post about it. I almost chose not to, but in the end a strange sense of obligation compelled me...so here goes.

CMT (Charcot Marie Tooth) is not a very big part of my self image. Even though I've been wrestling with the symptoms of it for nine years now (wow, it's been that long?) I have never really identified with it. The truth is, even after all this time I still don't have CMT in most of my dreams. So I very seldom write about it, even though it's something I'm always compensating for.

Now that doesn't mean I don't think about it, or that it doesn't intrude into my life on a daily (or often hourly) basis. It does, and it's often the source of frustration, anger, resignation, or just plain old tiredness. But it's always been a thing apart from me...not who I am. Sure, I have to make concessions to it, and I hate it, (except for that nifty handicapped parking license plate. That thing rules) but the fact remains that to me it's usually been something I've viewed as an external event. It's just not who I am...so it never really occurs to me to join organizations for people with CMT, or take part in events having to do with raising CMT awareness. I have never really identified myself as part of a group.

And that probably means I'm dealing with a super-sized case of denial.

I wonder why? I'm not embarrassed by it. Actually, I tend to wear shorts that leave my braces openly visible simply because it helps keep my legs from sweating inside the plastic molds, and it also acts as an easy visual cue for other people to understand, without asking, why I may need a little extra room or time to maneuver through an aisle in the supermarket or mall. Hell, I'm paralyzed from the knees down so the fact that I can walk with little more than a pair of plastic braces the same size as my socks is hardly something I'm embarrassed about. So I don't think ego is involved.

If there is anywhere it drives me crazy, it's in two areas. One is not being able to do things with my kids that other Dad's do with theirs. I remember being at the zoo with my son when he was four and he saw another kid riding on his Dad's shoulders. He wanted to do the same, and I couldn't...and realized I never would. Ouch. I don't know how to describe how that felt, other than to say you never ever want to feel it.

The other area is attempting simple tasks that I have had a lifetime to get used to the idea of doing. Now that I'm fighting it in my hands, I have had to concede the husbandly role of Household Jar Opener to Karla. Okay, there may be a teensy bit of ego involved in that one. But other than that, it's mainly just infuriating little things like discovering that things you used to do without thinking (like opening your gas cap on your car) now needs to be planned ahead for. (such as realizing that a tool might need to be procured against that day the fingers will no longer unscrew that cap).

So thats my Charcot Marie Tooth post for the year.

I've got it, but so far it's not who I am. That's not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. Identifying with it more might actually let me be a little more forgiving of myself when I fail at things, but that's just not where I am yet. I know it could be a lot worse. Some people have to put up with everything I am, and have to deal with pain on top of it. Fortunately, pain was never a very big part of this for me. (except when I have one of my spectacular crashes to the floor...dragging dishes, furniture, and kids down along with me. Trust me, even the Hindenburg didn't do it better.).

Anyways, that's the way it is. I'm a husband...I'm a father...I'm an author...and on the side I struggle with CMT.