Connecting with Horror, and Myself
The later half of 2021, and so far into 2022, has seen me connect with horror—not as a consumer, but as an active participant.
Like many of you, I’ve been starring in my own horror, anticipating what’s been waiting for me around the corner, and in the dark places that have come to dominate not just the corners of my life, but the rooms and hallways, too. Monsters lurk in those dark places—some of them of my own making—and at times I’ve felt (am still feeling) like my shoulder is to a flimsy door, keeping them out, but losing ground as that door gets forced open, one inch at a time.
But it occurs to me that perhaps this is the wrong approach. Maybe instead of trying to keep the monsters out, I should let them in, see and acknowledge them, and face them in my own reckoning. It’s a thought. For now, here’s what I’ve been up to:
What I’ve Been Reading
Nightmare Magazine
I’ve been reading all of the back issues for the past year. What an excellent publication! They give a lot of attention to stories that haven’t been told, and authors that haven’t had voices.
One story in particular (“We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It,” by E.A. Petricone, Nightmare Magazine Issue 113, February 2021) has really stayed with me lately, and it’s about the nameless women who’ve been abused and killed by men, and so much of the story is about the focus on their killers, the women seemingly overlooked, even in death:
You want us to stop talking about ourselves. You want to know about them. Everyone wants to know about them, and if they ever get caught, they’re all anyone will hear about. You want to know if their mothers made them wear dresses when they didn’t want to wear dresses, if their fathers locked them in with rabid dogs, if some uncle forced them to kill baby rabbits with a sledgehammer—
Or you want to know what they did to us.
As though you don’t know what they did to us.
I’ve thought about that a lot, especially after the abuse and rape allegations against Mason Greenwood. Comment sections of Reddit are too full of people lamenting how he’s ‘thrown his life away,’ and that his football talent has ‘gone to waste.’ Look how far down I had to go in the comments section last week to find the first mention about his victim:
Hundreds of comments later, someone recognizes that there’s a victim in all of this, and it’s not the professional footballer. Granted, many comments prior to this were calling him out for his behavior, but the point is that the attention (even negative attention) was still on Mason, with little given to his victim.
I’d be over the moon to get my work published by Nightmare some day. Still working on that.
Apex Magazine
Glad Jason Sizemore & crew restarted this one, as they had gone on a hiatus for a while. After a successful Kickstarter concluding on August 18, 2020, they returned in January of this year! They raised over $33,000 from 779 backers. This is another one I’d love to see my work in some day. Though, reading January’s issue, there seems to be more of a futuristic/science fiction thrust to it than I recall, but it has been a number of years since I’d read it, so my memory may be off on that one.
Apex Magazine, Issue 129, January 2022
Billy Summers
I’ve always got a Stephen King novel burning. What can I say?
What I’ve Been Writing
I wrapped up the second workshop of Fright Club (a ten week writing workshop lead by my dear friend, Moaner Lawrence) not that long ago, and I think I came out with some good stories.
There’s a deranged man who replaces his teeth with shark teeth, a priest possessed by a benevolent demon, a canoe that talks to his murderous owner, and more.
A handful are out on submission right now—we’ll see what comes of them.
Finally, there’s the novel. I’m turning the short story I published in Flame Tree Press’ Strange Lands Short Stories anthology into something longer. I think that one has a lot of heart.
What I’ve Been Doing
Trying to pull myself out of the hell that’s been 2021 and so far 2022, I’ve been exercising (thanks, Peloton, and thanks Tuesday/Thursday night soccer) and working to lose much of the pandemic weight I’ve put on. I’ve been learning to cook (NYTimes Cooking is fantastic). I’ve been meditating. I bought a truck. I bought a kayak. I stepped away from Rocky, and from CIQ, because I had to. I’ve had to strip away much from my life, all but the bare essentials. In place of those things I’ve been trying to live, forgive, be forgiven, and once again become worthy of the tremendous and undeserved love and grace that others have shown me, even when I could not reciprocate. I have such a long way to go.
I’ve been reconnecting with myself. I’ve been covering my body with birds.
In the space of about two months, I’ve accumulated nine tattoos—all of them birds of varying designs and color. Why birds? They speak to me. They represent the stories my past, present, and future self have told, can never tell, would like to someday tell. Stories about my abusive childhood, and my survival.
Next week I have an appointment for even more.
I also went to Tucson for the first time to visit one of my closest friends, ‘Jenn with two ns.’ We went to the zoo and visited the Titan Missile Museum. I jogged through the desert. The southwest is a strange and beautiful place. When I got home, I wrote a flash piece about the hotel I stayed at. Alas, I did not sight any scorpions.
Where I’m Going
Not to Hell—though, sometimes it feels like I should be.
StokerCon in Denver, May 12 - 15! And just before that, the pre-party at The Stanley Hotel! You know, the one that the Overlook Hotel from The Shining is based off. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends there. It’s good to grow your tribe—something I’ve sadly been neglectful of, to my detriment.