Hi friends! Happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all having a wonderful week. As some of you know, I’ve been focusing primarily on my clients the last few years (copywriting, line-editing, resumes, publishing assistance, etc.), but in 2020, I decided it was time to dedicate some time back to my own writing (and not just essays).
I’ve been writing more frequently on Medium and am aiming to write there three times per week going forward; I started writing a standalone literary fiction/magical realism novel; I outlined and started writing a 4-part YA Paranormal series; I started writing dinosaur poems that I’m collecting into a chapbook on childhood and false memory; and I got really, really into horror.
Since I’ve allowed myself to start genre-blending a bit more, I’ve welcomed light horror elements even into my literary fiction novel, and I’ve allowed my YA series to be a little spookier than I originally planned. Not to mention the horror poems/poems with horror elements I’ve been writing alongside the dinosaur ones.
It’s been a really great time for me. Slow at times and frantically fast at others, but I’m loving the process of rediscovering myself and my work after putting it on the backburner for way too long. I still love working with other writers and seeing their works come to life… but I’m happy to be giving myself a turn, too.
That begins this spooky season with a full collection of short horror stories called What We Find in the Dark, which will be available on Friday, October 29, 2021, just in time for Halloween.
To get ready for that, I’m sharing one story from that collection, “The Duplex,” that you can download and read for free. I had SO much fun writing this story and designing it for us to enjoy.
I want to say thank you to all of you who have supported me over the years and to all of you who will give this a read. I can’t wait for What We Find in the Dark to get here, so there’s more to read!
“The Duplex” will be available for free download from now through midnight (EST) on October 28, 2021.
Sprawled out across cornfields and a man-made lake the kids say plummets forever, the small town of Cresentstance feels isolated, a little ominous, and anything but small. But with tragedy just behind them and nothing to look forward to, Sonya decides this move to the town will be a good thing. Sonya and her daughter, Maddie, move into an old farmhouse renovated into a duplex, and when she discovers the other half of the house is occupied by another single mother and her son, who is the same age as Maddie, the situation feels like fate.
But when Maddie starts to physically change and her new friend exhibits some dark behaviors, Sonya decides staying as far away from their new housemates as possible would be best. That’s until Maddie goes missing in the middle of the night, leading Sonya down dark hallways on the other side of the house where there’s laughing and screaming in the walls, and secrets the rest of the town would rather stay far, far away from.
A perfect short story to read by the light of your creepy Black Flame Candle this fall season—and to get ready for the full collection, What We Find in the Dark, which drops right before Halloween, with just a few “ch-ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah-ah”s to spare.