Authors! What does your writing space look like? Tall desk or wide? Is it secluded? Accessible? Do you keep things around to give you idea or remind you to work?
Here’s mine; it sets a mood. Yeah, I’m kinda hyper-organized about my work area. My desk also has TWO cup holders; made ’em myself. And that door to the right? That’s an evil effing closet.
What does your writing space look like?
Share!
After recently completing my own vampire novel, I decided to relax a bit and read one from someone else. I’ll admit that, in spite of the usual “capable girl on cover” meme that dominates paranormal fiction these days, I found the cover unusually striking, prompting me to turn it over for a look at the back. The cover text promised that Lucy, the character from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” awakens as a new vampire to discover the lies Mr. Stoker has spun for his so-called novel, deciding then and there to seek him out for an explanation. Sounded good to me!
While certainly alternative fiction, it wasn’t a retelling of Dracula so much as it re-envisioned the character of Lucy; even author Bram Stoker has been relgated to a character himself. What was surprising were all of the other elements introduced in the book, borrowing bits of British Empire history and legends to fuel the plot. At first, these things suggested they might overwhelm the characters with a ridiculous number of story points, but the central character of Lucy kept the story grounded and moving along.
Continue reading “Just Finished: “Incarnation” by Emma Cornwall”
After finishing both copyediting and proofreading, my new novel, The Matriarch, is off to my publisher for final check and out of my hands. Whew!
There are still a few more things that have to happen before I can announce the actual and official publishing date (aka when you can get your mitts on this thing), and I can’t wait for you all to read it. This was one of the first ideas I ever had for a book, and seeing it finally come to fruition is a dream come true.
If you’re on Facebook, follow the progress at https://www.facebook.com/thematriarchnovel.
Halfway down the corridor were two recreational rooms, one on either side. Unlike the solid condo doors, these rooms had glass door fronts. The one on the left had shades drawn, but the room on the right was full of elderly folks, including two she immediately recognized. Louisa stepped aside and held the door to allow Janiss to enter first.
“Mr. Fisher! Vivian!” Janiss could hardly believe it. They looked great, and Mr. Fisher was out of bed. How was he standing up on his own when he couldn’t walk before?
“Just call me John, my dear,” Mr. Fisher replied. “It’s good to see you again.”
Janiss gave both her old acquaintances quick hugs, then noticed how everyone was looking at her. It was as if she was the most important person in the room, or possibly the one that something terrible was about to happen to. It all seemed too well and good, as though something sinister lurked beneath the surface of the situation.
Then it dawned on her: it was their movement. None of them were doddering or shuffling about. Their actions were quick and deliberate, like a younger person’s movement. Janiss imagined that people half their age might have been wearing the masks of the people they had become. What was happening? Janiss looked back toward Louisa, who was conferring again with her thin assistant.
“Questions?” Louisa asked, looking toward her potential new employee.
Continue reading “Everything Old Made New Again (an excerpt from The Matriarch)”
On November 1st, 2012, I suspended work on my current Spooky Chronicles book and spent the month cracking out a brandy-new, completely from scratch version of an old book I tried to write in college. It was an itch I had to scratch, you know? I found the original notes and two full drafts of the story, neither one I was happy with. Two and a half months later, The Matriarch is nearly complete and a publishing date is just around the corner. Now I find myself with something of a dilemma… what to work on next.
I may do a sequel to this book and have outlined a strategy and a few chapters. I could also finish the Spooky book I have half done, or I could finally start working on my other long-shelved project, a first draft of my Kindling Moon fantasy story. Zombie kids, West Virginia vampires, or world-shattering sorcerers?
I’m leaning toward the magic-users, just to let you know.
You can keep a secret, right? I trust you completely.
It was getting close to sunset, but there was no sun to be seen; the sky was fading from gray to black. The driver of a black Cadillac Escalade parked off the side of Route 5 took notice of a red Kia Soul as it passed him heading toward Glenville. He casually started his vehicle, checked for other traffic, and followed.
The Kia turned into a shopping center just before the merge onto Route 33 up to the college. It was the only chain grocery store in Glenville, so either it or the sandwich shop next door was the most likely destination. The Escalade’s driver turned into the other side of the lot and inched along for a moment, waiting to get a better look at the Kia’s owner. He noted the Glenville State College parking sticker.
The woman who emerged was young, taller than average but on the thin side, and pleasant-looking enough. Her clothes looked more expensive than how most locals were dressed and certainly nothing a young lady would wear for visiting a prison. He had seen enough, at least enough to ask her a carefully worded question. With luck, the answer would be all the confirmation he’d need.
It just wouldn’t be so lucky for her.
Continue reading “Clean and Professional (an excerpt from The Matriarch)”
It was unusually cold for the first Sunday of November. The sky was clear and the moon was full.
Just after midnight, an old man placed two rusty gas cans next to a plastic fuel container, all of them full, into the bed of his 1965 Ford pickup. The truck’s red paint was scratched and faded. He kept the vehicle patched together with duct tape and coat hangers, but it still ran all right.
After locking up his trailer, he drove to the top of the hill and parked his truck just off the two-lane highway. Across the road was a one-room church next to a cemetery. No one used the church anymore, but headstones kept popping up next to it as the tiny West Virginia community continued to die.
With his good hand, he was able to carry the two cans together and still manage the plastic one in his weak one. He carried them to the other side of the road and looked up at the door to the old church.
It terrified him.
Continue reading “He Said He Was the Devil (an excerpt from The Matriarch)”
Janiss opened her eyes.
Was it still dark? How early was it?
The bed felt wonderful, like waking up the first morning after getting over being sick. She closed her eyes again. The smell of freshly turned soil made her remember helping her Grampa work in the garden.
Soil?
Her eyes snapped open. She was laying on her stomach with one arm behind her and the other against the bed, only it wasn’t a bed. She clawed at the imagined sheets only to dig her fingers into earth.
Sitting up with a start, there was a hint of light coming through a small opening very high up on the wall. It looked familiar. Her mind raced; where had she seen that light?
The cellar. She was in the cellar?!
Continue reading “An Awakening In the Cellar (an excerpt from The Matriarch)”
Every October, the freshmen at Glenville State College are told stories about Sis Linn, the local ghost who haunts Clark Hall and the graveyard where she’s buried. Murdered in 1919, she was beaten beyond recognition, the target of a brutal killer who was never caught.
The stories are wrong.
After present-day college student Janiss Connelly finds herself in the cross-hairs of the immortal who murdered Sis Linn, her only chance to stop the killing after her own murder rests with the killer himself.
Thanks to NaNoWriMo, one of the first ideas I ever had for becoming a writer is finally getting the attention it deserves. At over 50,000 words and climbing, the first draft is complete and getting its first edit. Hope to have it out and about before too long!
“On the outskirts of a college town in rural West Virginia, a young woman finds herself the target of two immortals hell-bent on bringing an end to their century-long blood feud.”
Back in my college days, I had an idea about a supernatural happening in the rural backwoods of West Virginia, specifically located in and around the college I went to school. A “suitcase college” is what they called it then, where no one stayed on weekends and the campus became a ghost town (it was literally forty miles in any of three directions to the nearest McD’s).
This is the kind of place that not everyone knows about (or wants to), where communication is limited and things can happen that don’t reach the public stage of awareness. Away from the wifi-connected bright lights and cell-towered big city, this is where modern monsters and the misunderstood might retreat to, a place where they could be left alone or, in those rare cases, operate uninhibited. It’s not backwards, just behind, where what most people accept as “today” has to be trucked in. It’s a wild, wonderful place to set something sinister in.
Kevin A. Ranson 