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Gratitude, wins and losses, and weird Bisbee (Weekend Coffee Share #9)
*Yawn* Good morning, and welcome to the weekend coffee share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! It’s Sunday morning, and I’m only half-caffed, so come on in, pull up a seat, and let’s finish caffeinating. I’m still scrambling to finish a Christmas horror story to submit for an anthology, so I’m going to keep things short today. Why losses seem to outweigh wins First, let’s talk about wins and losses–in writing and in life. Jenny Hansen on the wonderful Writers in the Storm blog has a great post called Writing and the Law of Loss Aversion. I’d never heard of the law of loss aversion before, but once she explained it,…
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Where do I draw the line? (#IWSG)
It seems like everyone has an opinion these days about what writers should and shouldn’t do: Show me all the sex! Keep the sex behind closed doors. Write about diverse characters! Don’t write about identities you don’t share. Write honestly about difficult topics. Stop writing about rape. And on and on. Yeah, those are oversimplifications, but sometimes the discourse about what writers should write isn’t very nuanced. So today I’m going to piss off everyone by wading into these controversial waters. I’ve written about this topic before, but I’m going to get into it in a bit more depth in this post. But first: This post is part of the Insecure…
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Snippet from “Open House,” my newly-published short story
Good morning, and welcome to this week’s Weekend Writing Warriors post! Today’s snippet is the first 10 sentences of “Open House,” my 80s haunted house story that JUST GOT PUBLISHED on the Storyteller Series podcast! Why yes, I am just a wee bit excited. Yes, I did squee all over this blog announcing it. Those of you who are veterans may shrug, but this is a big ol’ deal for little ol’ me. OK, on to the snippet: The woman in the Nike jacket was staring at Kim Idlewood’s husband. Oh, she was trying to be discreet about it—they usually tried to be discreet, unless they were young, hot, and…
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Looking back at September (Weekend Coffee Share #8)
Good morning, happy Friday, and welcome to the weekend coffee share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer. Grab a drink and pull up a seat. I’m going to shamelessly steal Natalie’s review-of-September format, but first I’m going to engage in some shameless self-promotion. Published short story–as an audio drama! My short story, “Open House,” was just published on The Storyteller Series podcast! I’ve published a couple of short stories in the Arizona Authors Association annual literary magazine, but this is the first time I’ve had one available free online and definitely the first time I’ve had one produced as an audio drama! Something I wrote is available on Spotify, y’all! (and…
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Open House is published on the Storyteller Series podcast!
It’s up! It’s up! It’s up! SQUEE!! Ahem. Let’s try that again. I’m delighted to announce that my short story, “Open House,” is published on Night Shift Radio‘s The Storyteller Series podcast. The Storyteller Series presents original short stories (like mine! SQUEE!) as audio dramas with a full cast of voice actors. Check it out on Spotify (use the player above) or your favorite podcast player (and while you’re there, check out the other great stories on the podcast. I especially liked Tom Witkowski‘s, “The Guardian Devil”). So why am I squeeing all over the place? Because I’m a teenager trapped in a 50-something body (Get me out of this…
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#FOTD: Apple blossoms from my Flagstaff garden
The gorgeous pink dogwood blooms in Cee’s Flower of the Day today reminded me of this photo, which I took in the early days of the pandemic, when I was still living in Flagstaff. Part of my stay-sane-during-pandemic strategy was to spend as much time outside as I could, so I’d take breaks between Zoom meetings to walk the garden and take pictures. It was a bit surreal, watching the garden come back to life as the world shut down.
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Beginning of an as-yet-unnamed Christmas horror story (#WeWriWa #2)
Good morning, and welcome to my second post for the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop (see all my Weekend Writing Warriors posts here). Right now I’m revising the first draft of a Christmas horror story I hope to submit to the Deathlehem anthology–if I can get it done quickly enough. I’m horribly slow at revising. Here are the first 10 sentences: Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child.Billy Foraker lifted the little boy off his lap, gave him a half-hearted, “Ho, ho, ho,” and rubbed his temples.Bye bye, lully, lullay.Ugh, that song again. He’d heard some version of it at least six times since his shift started at Stockton Galleria Mall.…
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Bisbee noir and a bit of non-news (Weekend Coffee Share #7)
Happy Friday, and welcome to the weekend coffee share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! I’m frantically trying to finish a short story to submit to my favorite Christmas horror anthology series, Deathlehem, so this week’s post will be short. I submitted last year and got rejected, so I’m trying again this year with a new–and scarier–story. Hubster and I spent part of last weekend in Bisbee, a copper mining town about an hour and a half from Tucson. It’s a fascinating place–and more than a little bit creepy after dark. We nicknamed it Stair Land, because it’s built into a hillside and has staircases everywhere–including some that seem to go…
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Anniversary, nominated for an award, new Facebook page, other odds and ends (Weekend Coffee Share #6)
Good morning and happy Friday! Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! Come on in, pull up a seat, and join me. It’s starting to feel like fall here in Tucson. We’re still having triple-digit temps (it’s Arizona), but the nights are cooler, and this morning we even have clouds. The featured image on this post was taken a few days ago outside my building at work. Everything is still so green and pretty from the monsoon rains. 30 years! How is that even possible? Today’s chat will be a quick roundup of odds and ends, because I’m leaving soon for a weekend trip to Bisbee,…
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Tumacácori National Historical Park (Weekend Coffee Share #5)
Happy Saturday morning! Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share! Grab your drink of choice, pull up a chair, and let’s talk. It looks like monsoon season is over here in Tucson. It’s supposed to be sunny and 103F today and triple-digits all week. But I promise I won’t spend this post complaining about the heat like I did last week. It’s hot in Arizona. We know. Instead, let’s pay a visit to a small but fascinating national park site less than an hour south of Tucson: Tumacácori National Historical Park, which includes the ruins of three missions from the Spanish colonial era. The site also does a good job of…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
