If your character easily gets stabbed through the armour, what is the point of having them wear it?

Imagine there is about to be a big battle in a fantasy story. Chances are, you are thinking about groups of people running with weapons and armour. Well, there is a problem with that protective garment often described. No, I am not talking about historical inaccuracies, structural nit-picking, or anything that. Instead, the problem is with the protective aspects of the armour itself. Somehow, it…

There is something about the human brain that likes to think small. It reminds you of that stressful thing that happened last week, or that horrible moment the week before that.

This thinking small, I’ve found, does nothing for boosting self-confidence. It narrows in your focus so deeply that all you notice are the things you have failed to accomplish as of late. For some the shame might be motivating, but not for myself. I find by thinking about what little I’ve done only worsens the thoughts of “you are not a real writer.”

It wouldn’t matter if my house blew up and my vehicle was swallowed into a sinkhole with all my money, the next week I would be sitting on the curb thinking “See? You’re not a real writer. Writers write.”

That way of thinking also eats its way into other aspects of my life. It’s the “you didn’t work out yesterday. You’ll never keep it up, so why try” or the “you are still applying for jobs, but no one has, or will, answer.”

So, feeling down on myself on the night before New Year’s Eve, I forced myself to write a list. 2020 saw the start of the new decade, so my list included some of my favorite accomplishments in the last ten years. A lot can happen in ten years, and this widening of my lens helped me take the weight off of my shoulders. It made me realize I have done amazing things that I should be proud of, and thinking about those good things(rather than the bad) is incredibly motivating to continue working toward more of those good things.

Near the start of the ten years, I was working at the Walmart Photo Lab with dreams bubbling. On my lunch breaks I would write in a notebook, and when I would get ideas during slow times at work, I would scribble them on the backs of papers doomed for the garbage and stuff them in my back pocket for later. Towards the end of my Walmart days, I was working six days a week and getting in trouble for working overtime, despite being the only employee in my department.

I know this isn’t seeming noteworthy, but because of this I was able to finish The Purest Blood, and carefully tuck money away to save for travel. With my careful penny-pinching, I was able to travel across the world both alone and with friends(visiting places like the UK and Japan).

As you get older, adult expenses seem to pop out all over, so now I’m not exactly sure how I was able to save for so much travel on a minimum wage job, but I’m happy I did.

There were other noteworthy life points too. I got a wonderful dog named Tillie, I quit that Walmart job and found one at a bee farm, I started building a writing cabin with the help of wonderful teachers, and more. While I haven’t done anything writing-wise to brag about since that single self-published novel, I have been striving to improve as a writer through Wattpad and Webtoon and have found more readers and friends through the efforts.

So if you are feeling down, try making a list of some of your favorite accomplishments from over the past ten years. It certainly made my outlook on the next ten years seem a lot brighter.

Podcast:

Today’s interview was with Gabrielle S. Awe,  a talented short fiction writer and podcaster, but the interview actually went longer than I intended. So, to keep it on the shorter size, this interview is being split into two parts.

The first part is all about writing short fiction, while the next part will be about marketing. Listen Here. 

ART:

As usual, I have been drawing my characters from my novel. I don’t know why, but drawing my characters really helps me with getting into their head while writing. I suppose it’s because when I draw, I am focused on them for so long that it is sort of like a more fun version of brainstorming.

Thanks for reading, Cheyanne Murray

Links:

WEEBTOONS  |  WATTPAD  |  TWITTER  |  INSTAGRAM

For November’s guest we welcome authors Sarah L. Johnson and Robert Bose. They both reside in Calgary and have written a range of work published through publishes houses such as Coffin Hop Press, On Spec, and their own known as The Seventh Terrace. Sarah has also contributed to the blog with the guest article titled “The Agony and Ecstasy of the Short Story”. Together, Sarah and Robert have written the anthology Terrace VII Wall of Fire, full of humorous horror, devils, and the disturbed. Let’s welcome them to the blog!

Thank you, Sarah and Robert, for joining us, can you both give introduction about yourselves?

Sarah L. Johnson

I’m a left-handed, curly-haired gorgon, events coordinator for Calgary’s oldest bookstore, creative writing instructor, freelance editor, all ‘round super side-hustler, and maniac runner. You’d think keeping busy would keep me out of trouble…

Robert Bose

And I’m a right handed, hobo-chic Lebowski, toiling over fiendishly sinister spreadsheets as the technical architect for a small Calgary software company. I run. I collect books. I devour the luck of poets.

How did you two decide to collaborate on the Terrace VII Wall of Fire, anthology?

Sarah L. Johnson

I don’t actually remember. We always played around with informal co-writing for fun, but doing the book was probably a decision made while extremely drunk, or falling into mudholes on some terrible ultramarathon. Either way, it seems likely impaired judgment was involved, doesn’t it?

Robert Bose

I’m pretty sure it started at Arby’s. Everything terrible always starts at Arby’s, or possibly in hot tubs after three plus bottles of rosé. But it definitely congealed while running. One recurring topic devolved into whether sex-dolls required heads. This lead to investigation into robot sex brothels and cumulated in curiosity around sex brothel robot cleaners. The rest is history.

The Seventh Terrace website is described as “Curl up by the wall of fire and tickle your tentacles with tales of the disturbed, the dark, and the damned. Welcome to The Seventh Terrace.” Nice!

Tell us about the Seventh Terrace and the Purgatorio Towers series.

Sarah L. Johnson

An unexpected part of the co-writing process was the shared world we ended up creating for the stories. The Seventh Terrace is a nod to Dante’s Inferno and the tower of purgatory, where each of the seven levels corresponds to one of the deadly sins, with Lust being at the top. Seemed natural for us to set up shop in the penthouse. You can see all of Purgatory from there, and every lost soul with a story to tell.

Robert Bose

Even before we’d jumped into writing the book, we’d had this idea of writing stories involving a malevolent uber-Factory, a mirror universe Amazon anchored in Purgatory with a strong Welcome to Nightvale vibe. The idea infused a couple of other stories we wrote, and it felt natural to continue with it. As we fleshed it out, we came up with all sorts of characters and locations, tying everything together with the actual Purgatorio Towers acting as a wrapper for the series.

I’d been working with Coffin Hop Press publishing dark crime and pulp, and we thought why don’t we start a little horror press and see how far we could run with it.

What’s it like working on the same story with another author? Pros and cons.

Sarah L. Johnson

Cons? Rob forces me to be organized with his pathological love of spreadsheets. Pros? It’s the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. Co-writing requires you to use new language, work in a voice not your own, navigate the architecture of someone else’s imagination. In doing so you conjure not only a story, but an entire universe that could not exist without merging creative energies. If that’s not a kind of dark magic, I don’t know what is.

Robert Bose

Amazing. Our styles are different, yet blend together in ways I never expected. It helps that we spend a lot of time running together, kicking ideas around, putting together detailed outlines and splitting up the work fifty-fifty. The cons? She deletes all my cleverly injected adjectives. 

What’s the next project for the both of you (together or separate)?

Sarah L. Johnson

I’m working on a literary novella about a pharmacist who finds herself in an unconventional relationship with a hypochondriac who sells counterfeit batteries on the internet. We’ve also got six more levels of the Purgatory Towers series planned, the next of which is Gluttony, tentatively titled Terrace VI: Forbidden Fruit.

Robert Bose

My current project is a Lovecraftian horror novel about a guy who takes a summer sabbatical in a small, creepy Colorado town so his girlfriend, who grew up there, can train for a difficult trail ultramarathon. I’m also working on a new short story collection, a couple of weird and wonderful collaborative short stories with Sarah, and, of course, Forbidden Fruit.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share with the readers and aspiring writers?

Sarah L. Johnson

Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. There’s nothing like it to cultivate creative depth and agility. It’s like improv in that the only real rule is to “say yes”. Your partner tosses out an idea, you pick it up and run with it. Don’t be intimidated. Say yes, and you’ll be amazed where it takes you.

Robert Bose

Find your people. And yes, you’ll know them when you do. And your passion, which you already know, though maybe it’s buried deep down under all sorts of day-to-day detritus. Read what you want. Write what you want. Don’t let yourself be constrained. Ever. By anyone or anything. And, most importantly, eat at Arby’s.

Thank you, Sarah and Robert, for joining us!

You can find Sarah L. Johnson’s and Robert Bose’s work from the links below:

The Seventh Terrace

Sarah L. Johnson

Amazon

Twitter

Facebook

Website

Robert Bose

Amazon

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

For October’s guest we welcome author I.B. who currently resides in Calgary where he writes in a broad range of genres as seen in his short story work. Some of his writing has been published by Stray Books ZINES and an anthology novel titled Future Fables and Strange Stories. Let’s welcome Ian to the blog!

Thanks, I.B., for joining us, can you give us a brief introduction about yourself?

Thanks for having me on! I’m I.B., a science fiction writer that lives in Calgary, passing time dreaming in imaginary worlds.

You have an anthology, Future Fables and Strange Stories, which spans a variety of genres with the future being a primary theme. What interests you in the topic?

I got really into Golden Age Sci-Fi, genre stories from the 40s and 50s, and was drawn to their visions of the future. Those old novels and pulps have a strange mix of futures, ranging from grand visions of humans colonizing the galaxy to bleak nuclear wastelands, and just about everything in between. Reading all those stories, it was like seeing a big conversation — a bunch of voices talking about emergent technology and all the possible roads it could take them on.

Today, I find a lot of sci-fi is dystopian, with apocalypse stories and technology turning on us being the dominant themes. With Future Fables and Strange Stories I wanted to capture that conversational tone, an exchange of ideas, found in Golden Age Sci-Fi, writing stories with a mix of futures that questions where we can go. Now, more than ever, technology is changing our lives at an incredible rate, and there’s no better place to ask questions about that technology than in sci-fi.

Which story in the anthology do you hold closest?

That’s a tough one, each story means alot to me, but I find myself thinking about Cult the most — probably because it ties in heavily to a novel I’m working on, but still, it holds a special place in my heart.

Cult was the last story I wrote for Future Fables and Strange Stories, and it, in a loose way, starts to tie all the stories together. It also gets into a big topic, a clash between the American government and tech companies, which, reading the headlines, seems to be coming true. And the main character, Denby, I recycled from an old piece of writing I did, and getting to bring back an old character in a new form is always fun.

You’ve also had other short stories published in ZINES, what types of genres do you write about for those?

Those stories are very similar to Future Fables and Strange Stories, and are connected to them in big and small ways. The story in Pulp Kings #2 is a follow-up to a A World of Options from Future Fables.

While everything is meant to stand on its own, the stories work like a mosaic, each one part of a much larger work, revealing a larger, overarching plot. I’m a big fan of Isaac Asimov, and he tied a lot of his work together to create a fictional future, and in a different way, I’m trying to do something similar — tell the story of a fictional future(s).

Are short stories your primary interest with writing? Or have you focused on other forms?

For the last couple of years, short stories have been my main focus, but I’m steering away from them right now. In telling that bigger, overarching story made up of independent works, short stories were a good starting point. I also had a whole lot of story ideas in my head that I wanted to get out, but now I’m interested in exploring larger, bigger ideas instead of short concepts.

Currently, I’m finishing a novel, It’s Dangerous To Go Alone, and while it ties into Future Fables and Strange Stories, it’s self-contained, and getting to work on one piece with one cast of characters has been great.

Is there a second Future Fables and Strange Stories in the works, or something else entirely?

There sure is! I’ve got my next few books planned out, and intend on doing a sequel to Future Fables and Strange Stories after a couple of other projects. A lot of the short stories I’ve written for Pulp Kings are going to be in the sequel, and way down the line, I’m planning on doing a third to close out the bigger, overarching plot I’ve mentioned. Before the sequel, I’ve got It’s Dangerous To Go Alone, which is coming out soon, and Sleeping Sickness, a novel which expands on one of the short stories from Future Fables.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share with the readers and aspiring writers?

Writing is like any skill and needs a whole lot of practice, but it can be a hard thing to practice. Try to find any writing gig that pays — the internet has lots of freelance opportunities — and pick up whatever project you can. Don’t be picky. It doesn’t matter if it’s not what you want to write; it helps you gain the skill to write what you want to write. And read, read lots, and read a whole bunch of different stuff. Reading a mix of authors is the best way to develop your own style, and broadens the amount of ideas you’re exposed to.

Thank you, I.B., for joining us!

You can find Ian and his work from the following links below:

Stray Books

Goodreads

Inventing Plants For Your Novel | Worldbuilding Help

With my current novel, I created a thick binder full of world-building notes, and in these notes are a few pages dedicated to medicinal plant life in the world my novel takes place in. I wanted to do this so that if one of my characters gets sick or injured, there could be some sort of medicinal plant to help them, and I did not…

Check out author Simon Rose’s blog where he had me as a guest to chat about the second edition of Mental Damnation: Reality.

Guest Author Konn Lavery

We cover the following questions:

Konn Lavery, can you introduce yourself to us and your writing?

Thanks Konn, last year you discussed your Mental Damnation series. This year you are working on it, what is new?

What have you changed in the series?

Is the new edition of Mental Damnation Reality quite different then from the original?

Now that Reality is released, what will become of Mental Damnation Dream and Fusion?

You mentioned a fourth and final book for the Mental Damnation series?

When can we expect the fourth and final book?

What are these other books?

Calgarian author Simon Rose offered to have me on his blog to chat about the Mental Damnation series and my upcoming works.

Guest Author Konn Lavery

We cover the topics of:

Firstly, can you tell us a little about yourself and your writing?

Have you always been interested in the fantasy horror genre?

What was the inspiration for the Mental Damnation novels?

Tell us about Fusion, Book Two of the series.

Why did you choose to publish the books yourself rather than taking a traditional publishing route?

What are you doing to promote the books?

What are you currently working on?

Check out author Simon Rose’s blog where he had me as a guest to chat about the launch of Seed Me.

Konn Lavery Launches His New Edmonton-Based Horror Novel Seed Me

We cover the following questions:

Konn, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your new book?

What is different about Seed Me from the Mental Damnation series?

What was the inspiration to write a horror novel based in Edmonton?

You mentioned a musical score that goes with the album, can you tell us about that?

Where can readers find your new novel Seed Me?

What’s next on your list now that this novel is completed?