Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

So here I am at the first Banff Horror Writing Residency. It's absolutely gorgeous here and reminds me of when I lived in Valemount, BC as a kid. The big difference is that I lived in a travel trailer then, in campgrounds or squatting in someone's woodlot. Now I'm staying in a nice hotel room and hanging out with incredible writers from all over Turtle Island. My mentor is Jessica Johns.

My first day was a whirlwind. While I was getting a tour of the library, a fellow writer by the name of Rebecca asked me if I was the Shantell with a shortlisted story in Brave New Weird.

"Uh, I don't think so?" I remembered submitting something to Brave New Weird about a year ago, but it was rejected.

But then I looked it up, and yes, my story The Snow Hath No Queen is indeed on the Brave New Weird shortlist.

Cool!

Later on that day, I received another email notifying me that I'd been shortlisted for another prize. I'm not allowed to say which one (for now), but I'll announce it as soon as I can.

I had a difficult time sleeping that night.

Yesterday, my poem Pyrocene went live on Emerge Literary Journal. This is my fourth publication for the year.

So far at my residency, I've worked on my novella "The Development." I hope to finish the first draft here. I'm so close.

But I'm also working on other projects, so who knows? I put together a weird western called "He'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When He Comes." It comes from my novel "The Everwhen."

There are a lot of folks here writing about cannibals, and they inspired me to write another short story about man-eaters. I started work on that this afternoon. It features a group of wine moms. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

In other news, I was recently part of a women of horror panel. Here's The Villain Edition, Feminine Rage and Beyond, and Real-Life Horrors and Beyond.

And today, my poem "Stillborn" was accepted by Nightmare Magazine for publication.

My poem "Exile of Nuliajuk" has been published in the Heredity issue of NonBinary Review. You can get a digital copy of the whole magazine for five bucks!

I recently did a workshop on writing violence in horror and had fun with one of the writing exercises. We were to choose a classic monster (I chose a vampire), and then write the same attack from three separate perspectives. I'll share my results with you. We were given 7 minutes to write each bit, so if stuff looks like it could use an editing, it's because it was written very quickly.

1. I used a crowbar to pry the plywood off the basement window and cut my hand open in the process. I dropped the crowbar and took off my shirt, wrapping it around my dripping hand. It hurt, but I had to get in there before the thing noticed. I edged myself past the broken glass, and just as my feet should have touched the floor, they were yanked out from under me. My head smashed into concrete and I saw nothing but scintillating spots of nothingness. I awoke in mid scream. Needles plunged into my thigh over and over again and I tried to struggle, tried to tear myself free, but only tore my skin further on those needles. Teeth, I realized in horror. They weren’t needles, but teeth.
   
   
2. Darcy took a prybar to the basement window, and with a few deft movements, the plywood came loose with the squeal of nails being pulled free. Darcy lifted the wood out of the way, gashing his hand open on a shard of glass. He swore under his breath and peeled off his shirt. He wrapped it around his hand before sliding in through the open window.
   
   Something waited for him within. Something fast. It grabbed Darcy by the feet, smashing his head into the cement floor. It dragged Darcy further into the darkness before it began to feed.
   
   
3. Nails squeak and wood cracks, and then a shard of light slashes into my basement. I edge closer to the wall, away from the light, but close to whoever is breaking into my home. I can taste the fear rolling off him. Acrid sweat in his armpits, full notes of testosterone and adrenaline. I feel something awake in my belly. And then the sharp tang of blood as he slices his hand open on the window and my fangs drop.
   
   He edges himself in through the window, and I seize this gift. I sweep him off his feet. Let the concrete kiss his head, and then I’m drinking from his femoral artery.

Which do you think works best?

My play "A Time for Dolls" will be published in the Native Voices Anthology this summer. My play is a coming of age story about a young Inuk and her mother. The collection is now available for pre-order.

A few weeks ago, I saw a listing for a play competition in honour of a playwright I was once "mentored" by. This person was specifically awful to me in the early 90s. I was an English drama major in university and spent a lot of time in the theatre community. I reviewed plays for the student paper, the English department newsletter, and on radio. I was a theatre sound tech, and also an assistant stage manager, playwright, actor, costumer, etc. I even got married in a theatre. I studied classical Greek theatre, too. I wore a lot of theatre hats, and for a while, I thought I might make my career in theatre. But working with this particular playwright shriveled up that desire. They took an active dislike to me. They ordered me to change things in my plays without even asking me what I meant by them. They made no secret of their dislike of me, yet because I had no one else to work with, I continued working with them for two or three years. And the last time I worked with them, they intentionally displayed my work in the worst possible way to an audience.

Professional actors did a reading of a section of my play before a packed audience. Under my mentor's direction, the part of my play performed was a tiny section immediately before and after a scene change. There was no context, and the ~2-minute excerpt made no sense whatsoever because of it. Whereas other playwrights had entire ~10-minute scenes performed and appreciated, the incomprehensible snippet of mine made the audience all go "HUH?" audibly. I was mortified and fled the theatre.

That was the last play I wrote for about twenty years.

"A Time for Dolls" is the first play I wrote after being treated so abyssmally by my mentor. I didn't realize until seeing the listing for the play competition that the reason I hadn't written another play until recently was because of the trauma they had inflicted upon me.

Maybe I'll write more plays again some day, in spite of that nasty person.

To this day I don't know why this playwright was so awful to me. I don't know what I could ever have done to inspire such mistreatment. But it has taught me a lesson. Be kind to upcoming writers. Be kind to baby writers. It's easy to kill a seed, but more fulfilling to nurture it.

Being mean is easy. Being kind is worth the effort.

In other news, my ghost story "The Last Trench" is to be published in the flora/fungi horror anthology "Bitter Become the Fields." A kickstarter is planned for it. I think this is a really cool concept for an anthology, and I'm looking forward to it.