Some days are the kind of days that require glasses of extra strong tea with extra sugar, and today is some of those days. I feel hung over and exhausted, though have no reason to feel as such, and it is mildly annoying to know that the day will likely be spent recovering from some fictional last-night that would have earned the suffering.
Speaking of fiction, I have been trying to write. I say, "try", but generally would consider myself as having successfully written a decent fictional story that manages to combine my love of meta-fiction, weird fiction, and Alabama into a workable tale. I have written stories before, rough things that often were full of error or hid their inconsistencies inside of being very short. This is the first time I sat down wanting to write something that I was sure other people would read, and could appreciate. Could talk about.
The story is called "Night Showers", and deals with a writer's investigation of an Alabama town's urban legend about twenty people committing suicide one night back in 1917. As he explores this, he starts moving on with his life, and then it gets kind of weird. The title meant something different in earlier drafts, and now is kind of kept as an artifact, but I like it.
I am giving this story "two weeks to stew" and then I will sit down and do another read through, and then I will try and find out where/how to get it published. In the interim, I have two other stories I am working on, both set in the same rough part of the world as "Night Showers", though they are unrelated to it. And those three will be a start, or a finish. Time will tell.
The downside of this is that other creative projects, such as Doug Talks Weird, have taken a back-seat. I have been scripting episodes and doing research on them, but haven't got far enough long to really record any until at least this Friday. I want to try and build up a small stockpile of possible topics, and then try and do something weekly for about 10 weeks. After that, I'll figure out where I want to go from there. I just need to sit down and get those 10 out. If I can get it episode 13, I think I can consider it a full project, especially if I can keep improving the quality throughout those 13. After that, maybe we'll look at a second season of 13. Could be fun.
Possible/Probable topics for episodes I have planned:
There might be something like a round-table via Google Hangouts thing on Lord Dunsany, and maybe I will record and discuss my talk about HPL and his science horror, and that will be a good start to the whole shebang.
Speaking of things dealing with reading, I think I am going to be having a mild break-up with Goodreads. I like the website, and will continue to keep posting stuff to it, but for the past 18-months, I have posted book-reviews and tracked my reading lists on it, and not on my own homepage. I think it is time to bring back my reading tally to my site, and to prioritize posting my book (and movie, and other) reviews, here. I'll post them to Goodreads, too, at least shorter versions of them, but this site needs some love. I've let it rot a bit.
I think that wraps it about up. I have a review/discussion of the indie horror movie Resolution coming up, maybe today. Keep an eye out for that. As for the rest, I don't know. Let's see what bubbles up, here.
OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: July 2015