Author: LK

Unfortunately we have to decline your story “Dark and Dreary”… !!!!!My release is out!!!!!

One of my first in depth declinations, I was told that my story was depressing and why would I think they’d want to publish that type of thing in their magazine?

This press is known for dark stories, but I suppose I had gone beyond dark and horror into the realm of sad.

But sad stories need love too!

The truth was I’d received about 20 rejections for “Vile” and a few others after my very first submission “Ever-after” was accepted right away…

Thinking it was all easy street after, euphoric, I told my family and friends, since this was the first piece outside of a competition to be published but then only later to be really REALLY unable to land much of anything else for a long-long while.

Sniff sniff.

Then came “Snowed”, my first story in _UNHINGED_ . I wrote it and posted it in a small hothouse where we all reviewed eachother’s work and submitted. A writer on there, who I respected but who also hadn’t much to say about my stories, read this one and commented along the lines of “I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know what happened!”

Being my first short story over 5000 words and hearing that someone “couldn’t stop reading” I suddenly knew what was more important than denials and lectures about depression, this exactly: People have to not want to stop reading.

SOOOOoooo you are thinking.. I submitted it and got right in?

And you would be right! Jussstt kidding.

I tried thriller since it’s a mix of horror/thriller and they decided thriller didn’t quite fit their magazine but the guy said to me “Hey btw, we all read it here and were on the edge of our seats.”

Again. That’s important. And even then I knew it. I knew that stringing a reader along would be far more important than publications even if I felt like my skin was pealing back a bit at the rawness of it all.

Though it still stung, I packed my baby away and have been editing the story off and on for about five years…until this debut that is ;)D

Readers.

Readers are most important.

AND SO (drum roll please)

..with the release of my very first self-publication (a very special shout out to the people that helped below) (raises-glass) here is to the readers!

May we put them on the edge of their seats forever!

GET IT HERE FOR FREE >>>> UNHINGED NEW RELEASE

A very special thanks to a few people who helped make this possible!

Mike Coombes for helping me get started on my shorts and believing in me back in our hothouse days where I wrote most of these!

Alianne Donnelly for the cover and moral support of yet another side project!

Kimberly Grenfell for some super ninja edits!

J Matthew McKern for ARC and my first five stars!

And Jim Adams for a review I will NEVER forget that kicked me off with inspiration and a goal to make the next one even better!

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Blank Document Braveheart > Pen to page. Think of the children.

braveheart-3

“It is our wits that make us men.” Braveheart

I was supposed to get on here and rant about characterizations, or even tell one of my stories since I have a good one.. but.

I’m in one of those moods again.

When I started this whole gig I didn’t call myself a writer. Even after being published the few times, I only dabbled. The label “Author” brings to mind the likes of Stephen King and not yours truly so I stuck with mumbling, “I write sometimes, yeah, sorta, no big deal.” And I still do.

Often times, I look in the mirror and ask myself questions. What? I get the best advice from that chatterbox on the other side. She is smarmy but talks long enough that eventually she says something of value.

My question: Why do I do this?

If I am a barely there writerish person who is not serious about it all then why put the pen to pad?

My mirror gal sat up a little straighter, dipped her quill a few times and said, Why not?

Now don’t get all soft on me. I’m not one of those people who gets all emotional about my writing (sniff). But if I were… Here is what I would say.

(Blurry story time with music)

The younger Logan walks into a bar. She spots a muscular mail man across the room.. Wait, nope, that’s the other blog. (backspace backspace backspace) Ok this Logan, the younger version who’s penned a few stories. She doesn’t think much of them, but her drunken Aunt raves about her talent and offers to pose for her cover.

Let’s look at the list so far: One slasher story, one guy murdering prostitutes after having them pretend to be his dead wife, and oh yes, the druggies who abducted a little girl, and the druggies who are stuck in a cabin, a few other stories that are even weirder, more druggies. (titters and shoves old pages beneath her keyboard)

She’d posted one of these onto an old site Logan prowled in her early writing debut. Checked back every once in a while for reviews… or that is to say every three seconds until comments popped up.

DING! She got one on the hook! Hurrah and the comments go:
“Hey there, Logan. Loved this, so interesting blah blah blah”

Her reply: “Thanks! Hermperderb I’m so flattered, omgerd.”

And then he said this: “Its three am here in Bagdad…”

___

And then, right then, it dawned on me—not at all. I answered back some kind of “ok thanks” and moved on never knowing how that one review planted a little seed in my barely writerish mind.

Over the years I’ve spoken about this art to people from all over the world, even having to use a translator a few times. And it all didn’t hit me until recently.

When I put a story onto the page, and it goes from here (taps my head) and through my hands onto the keyboard, it fills up the empty space on that little blinky white page, and it floats away from me into the universe.

It looks so ordinary. I look so ordinary. Just me and my fingers tapping away like a fat little pigeon (Mama from the train reference there).

And it’s alive.

“Every man dies, not every man truly lives.” Braveheart

It stretches its little legs and runs. Sometimes a little closer to home than I’d like but no matter the story makes its own way in the world.

So this dude overseas, tired, hungry, maybe even in a bad mood and for one moment, just one single teeny bit of time, maybe just maybe, I could give him an escape. My story lit his place on the other side of the planet. Glowing like a beacon, Read me!

What if I could make him smile or cheer on my hero? What if I could make him intrigued so that his stress and cares melted.. even for a while, away.

What about a gal fresh off a divorce, funeral, tax appointment right around my block? What if one of my jokes made her giggle at my silly character or shake her head ruefully at their argument? What about the guy who had stroke or put his dog to sleep? What if he clicked on my story next and thought my character had such an uplifting outlook, a fighting spirit, that against all odds he or she could really put it to this thing called life and so, so could he.

I found out my words were like a handshake. They stretched like a long arm across the continent, the seas, and firmly pressed into the palms of a perfect stranger.

They said “How you doin?” Ok for real though some of our stories are more like twerking in their kitchen, but either way it’s you. YOU! Not here. THERE! And them. For a while. That reader is all yours.

If you reach them in the sick ward, in the throes of anxiety, depression, joy, exhaustion, hyper, young, old, white, black, green, and pink.

You. Are. Part. of their world. For a short time…

AND…

That’s not just writing folks.

That’s freaking Braveheart.

L

7

Don’t be stupid. Write what you know: My new release!

Unhingedcover

So. Yes. I finally have something to offer (soonish). I know, I know you were all comfy with the fact that I had absolutely nothing to sell and guess what? I still don’t!

That’s right folks. Don’t be a punk, step right up to the fantastical, magical, inescapable madhouse that is my mind. Unhinged goes on free download in just over a month.

January 2014 is the hopeful release date and pending any major drunkenness or screw ups on my editor’s part… Ok fine, on my part, it’s gonna be available then.

But what is it you ask.

Can’t you read? It says it right on the front! A twisted collection of short stories as follows:

Snowed
Hush now Jeremy Boggs
Rainbow
Violent Delights

(takes deep breath for blurb)

A journey through claustrophobic withdrawals mountain side, a ghost of fathers past scraping across the linoleum floor urging those oh so lovely urges. The mad surgeon’s victimless victims and a Prom Queen with a sweet tooth. Their plea for humanity, or loss of it, is scrum-dill-eeumtious. (you can quote me on that)

See. I was told to write what I know.

And you should too.

L

7

If you want to have “the time of your life” watch Dirty Dancing… Also avoid becoming a writer

castaway2

Suuuuuuuure, B

Writing is fun! For like FIVE minutes. But after some time on a novel, like real time and not a monthish period of excited word vomit where you splurge your every thought into 200 pages like you have the flu – you suddenly see the sinister black lining.

Sometimes it makes you so high you can write a million pages and then jog five miles in glee singing “Weeeee are the champions my freee – eeends!”. While other lower moments you wanna take that same five mile jog off a quarter mile cliff.

You are told to write with your heart and so you do. Like an idiot. THEN someone comes along and says you need surgery cause your heart is really really lame, boring, it sucks, what a floppy heart. (Will somebody PLEASE get me a thesaurus)

So we come to lesson number one of my made up lessons that I made up and are also mine: People are full of crap.

Yup.

Especially writers.

Pure unadulterated crap. Cuuuurrraaaaap.

Your friends and their attempts to cheer you? Crap. Your family and their flip little comments “Gee hun, that’s nice.” having no clue how much time you spent on an idea they just brushed off to tell you about this one time at band camp when they thought about writing… Like I said… Crap. Bookfacers? Crap. That guy at the store who you accidentally told you were an author to who spent five minutes of your life explaining his book and how he is going to write it “someday”. TOTAL CRAP!

Don’t get me started on editors who make you suddenly act like the staff holding Gandolf “You shall not pass!”. They give you “rules” about how to start a book, cut it back, add to it, and is this a “dream sequence”???? So last year! You can’t use prose like that! You need to stop trying to be so colorful. Stop being so blunt, blah blah blah, are you listening to me, Logan? Why do you have that look on your face? Is that— Is THAT A GUN!

And what is WITH this “muse thing”? You see everyone running around showing “muse” pictures. Little sexy muse guys and gals all dolled up, some with little quotes, “Hey there sexy girl. Write me a story and I’ll strip.” Or maybe that was just Sidda?
Anyway, CRAP!

Giving ideas to “jog” the muse as if he/she were Best in Show (Ha! John I stole that from ya.) When in reality YOUR situation is a bit closer to the Predator and YOUR muse slathers mud across their body Schwarzenegger style to stay away from you… With that same lovely stilted dialogue.

“But Logan, life is like a box of chocolates!”

No it ain’t you made up voice from one of my made up fans. It’s a box of dynamite. Add in some bits of cyanide for a slow death… but the poison tastes like chocolate. (nods)

Look. You wanna talk Tom Hanks? Fine.

Think less about Forest Gump and his magic shooo-oooeees and think more about Cast Away.

Yeah, uh huh. YOU are on an Island. No matter HOW much help you think you are getting YOU have to write, fix, make, create, be sick, feel good, cry, bleed, through this BY YOURself.

You WILL think you are losing your mind in the first few months. You WILL actually lose it by a year. And you will not even know you have lost a thing by three.
You WILL befriend inanimate objects like Tom. Talk to yourself, use prose in and out of dialogue, and become “Wordy” (thanks Sunniva;))

You WILL lose faith in your “friend” and throw Wilson into the ocean.

“Willllllllllllsooooooooooon! Willllllllllllsoooooooooooon!” I still tear up every time.

Then you will get him back and say you are sorry and never ever piss him off again. Ever. (Looks lovingly at her own beach ball. What? They were out of soccer stuff, it’s seasonal…)

Look. (Where is Alianne at? I mean I’ve used “look” like twice in a paragraph!) Look<<< (three!).

This marriage between you and your story is less Romeo and Juliet… Wait… No… It is EXACTLY that. Everyone dies at the end…

For you young ones needing a contemporary setting: Sexy young couple goes out, she shaves her legs, he gives her the good covered parking spots. Voila: Love.

Marriage ensues. But when the honeymoon is over, she is hairy with a dirty car, and he is paunchy because he parks in the closest spot he can find, “Shut up, Marge! It will fit!”. They argue over fish stick dinners and watch Jeopardy, “Hank! How do you ALWAYS guess these? I mean, really? Bengal Tigers with only the S on there? Come on!”

For all of the pamphlets on faceplanet that say “Writing is work” you’ll find exactly as many that say “Writing should be easy”. (Crap!)

Art is easy? Yeah, mmmm hmmm, and I’m a natural blond.
Get off your rocker writerdome. It’s a tough racket and you better stiff that lip and nose that grindstone or whatever other euphemisms I can mess up because this ain’t your grandmother’s book club!

And what IS the first rule of book club?
I can’t hear you!
What is the first rule of book club!!!!!!

We don’t talk about book club unless it is to say that we are foofy artists who don’t really do any work (wink wink).

The writer of today looks a lot less like the olden times, quill in hand and ruffled sleeves coming out of a felt jacket. He/she better be a Rambo freaking Picasso, wearing Shakespeare’s hat and quoting Stephen King characters like a bad case of terrets, and if you don’t write your heart out to the point that your family calls the priest for an exorcism (the old one not these lame copies) you ain’t got what it takes!

If you think it’s all bunnies and Zen bubbles… Hit the road jack… with one headlight.

L

Sum of me pals

http://john-l-monk.com/

http://aliannedonnelly.com/blog/

http://www.sunnivadee.com/

http://siddaleerain.com/

13

Why no abs, Logan?

kurt

Dear B,

It has come to my attention that my non-ab sharing, liking, and profile pic might need some splainin’. Nothing to be found on my pages that could be labeled as “chiseled”, not even a decent flashing of man boobs. I assure you it is nothing so specific as aversion.

I’ve decided to address this lack of dress that has littered our fair facebook, as well as other organized spamming erm, communal sites of the various kinds.

Rather than take it head on, (or is it stomach?) and give specific reasons, or personal feelings behind the “Why” in a list especially because most of us emotionally impaired people don’t really do that anyway, I will instead try and avoid any pejorative connotations or slip ups that might accidentally connect to a specific genre and offend delicate sense and sensibilities (gasp).

“So, a story then?” you ask. Well, why stray from my usual way of solving my inner-feeling riddles?

I may never be famous, my dearest B, but think of all of the money I save in Therapy!

Firstly, before I begin:

‘Logan, is there anything wrong with abs?’ Absolutely not!
‘Logan, do you have trouble with your own sexuality?’ Please.
‘Logan ___’

No more questions, boys and girls. Come, let us travel back in time, to the year, well let’s skip the exact date shall we? No, no, put away your calculator. Ahem. I will wait.

Once upon a time…

A young Logan sits lonely on a mid-summer’s day, still donned with her original and more easily miss-said and misspelled moniker using a magnifying glass to burn what little there is of a Ken dolls bump for privates.

“Original name!” someone calls, and she looks up to see the other cheerleaders skipping by.

Was it time already? Yes, yes it was!

Gathering up her book bag, she sighs, kicks Ken into the gutter where that scum weasel belongs, tightens her pony tail at the root, and dusts off her cheer skirt, shirt wrinkled and un-tucked, to gallop along after the rest of the girls. All of them, of course, still neat and clean. No icky plastic pieces of Ken’s genitalia stuck under their shoes, no, sir.

Much time passed or at least when you are young it feels that way, and Original Name sat patiently during every football game, watching, waiting for the time when she too would be twitterpated by the boys in pads and helmets. When that didn’t happen she cheered loudly during half time, all the while scanning the crowd hopeful that someone would catch her eye, but, alas, still nothing. Every other girl was interested in boys by this age, and even some of them already proficient at flirting what with years of fake boyfriend girlfriend drama under their belt. Was something wrong with her? Well, she was a teenager… What do you think?

(everyone say awwww)

She had just given up when all of a sudden! Onto the screen slides this man-boy crooning sounds of total rebellion.

Here is Original Name, standing in the gym, with the tv blaring music videos a la MTV, and there in the tiny pre-hd screen are cheerleaders just like her, but they are jumping around differently than she does, with abandon you might even say. Pon her soul! They look wild, happy, free, and at the group’s middle— a band.

The lead singer looks up challengingly into the camera and sings.

Load up on guns —- and briiiing your friends
It’s fuuun to lose —– and tooooo pretend
She’s overboard —- and seeeeeelf- assured
Oh no, I know a diiiiirty worddddddddd
Hellooooo, hellooooo, hellooooo, heeeeeellllooooooo

Could this man-boy be singing to her?

And the rest is history.
—
You might have guessed it by now. That’s right, Nirvana. Kurt Cobain came onto the scene swiping my brain right out of my head and replacing it with a moody, thunderstruck wanna be rebel. He came in with his poetic lyrics and a zesty hate for life; suddenly it all made sense! A girl like me might have found her kindred fatalistic point of view, albeit with far too much optimism to follow him down the path of actual self-infliction, but totally of a mind to hear it on loop with a blossoming love of the wounded soul.

I never went fan girl, it was much deeper than that… Shut up! It was! (sulky teen face)

No matter how much money he made, he still had greasy hair and a sweater on, but as long as he wrote me songs about fish with feet, I was smitten.

Sorry…

That’s how I roll.

And B, I know what you are thinking. No this is not to say one or the other is mutually exclusive, but the ab blast 500 for me is an afterthought indeed.

So no beefcake for this little zombie, she is quite sufficient to moan, “Brainnnssssszzzzzz” into the night.

“All Apologies”

L

6

How to kill a Beta…

Drew Barrymore in Wes Craven's "Scream"

B,

Seems as though you and I need to have a little talk. This likely will be an uncomfortable conversation— well mostly for you, but listen to what I say very closely… And please don’t interrupt.

What’s that? I can’t hear you? You want me to remove the tape from your mouth?

All in good time, my sweet, all in good time.

You remember not too long ago when I was all about the finishing of my book? Oh how I toiled. And then one day! Start. Middle. Ending. It was finished! Done. Finito. Termine. Getan. Acabado. Fin. I typed the end…

I even sang Free Falling in the car, and rubbed my eyes whenever I looked at her sitting there within my laptop. It had amazed me that nothing had stopped her from completion, or from becoming a real living thing. Not the times I’d given up, not the busy-ness of my life, and not the ups and downs of being uninspired. Nope. She was my imagination that had somehow hacked herself loose from the inside of my head and ran freely onto the pages of a novel that would maybe cleave onto the minds of many readers someday. This was what I had hoped most.

You did not see me in that moment, rubbing my hands together in preparation. I figured that with a few edits, voila, B, you would see my work and applaud, maybe even sob at the sad parts, or send me messages about how the world was my oyster. I pictured myself and my reactions as you told me such wonderful things about my writing and encouraged me to mail it out RIGHT THEN to an agent. Why B, in this version, the one in my head, you even sent me the postage stamp!

But I was very, very, wrong.

As all things go, the marriage between you and I took a turn for the worst and unexpectedly careened from happy little notes of “Oh this looks good.” to “Hmm, I dunno that this will work.” You started to sound more and more like I might need to correct things and then more and more like I’d be working… And working… And working. But-but I was finished!

What about this part right here, huh? What are all these notes about me needing to make myself clear? I bet I’m making myself real clear now aren’t I! Don’t you shake your head at me. Stop that!

Okay, lets everybody calm down. There are quite a few pages that you said I’d nailed it, right? What’s to be so upset over anyway? It’s not real life. I should just take this as a learning experience and fix the mucked up lines. Yes, yes, everyone takes a step back before they go forward. Night is darkest before the morn. Only a fool does not want correction or some such saying…

I see, yes, you are nodding that I am right. Of course I am. We don’t have to stop being friends over this.

To be honest, I never thought those corrections were a problem, not really. It wasn’t them that really put me over the edge anyway. I had actually started to sort them all out in my head, but, you see, it was when I flipped the page then it became clear what deviousness you were about, when you started to dig away at my characters. Somewhere along the way I’d been overzealous in my making of them or this was how you so delicately put it, and you seemed to be saying that I was lumping them (the flaws) all too high, too much, and not enough of other things, too much here, too little there, here – there like a yo-yo of criticism.

These are my characters, B! They are who they are! OH THE IRONY of it all, that you would want them so clean when you sent back my book in tatters and dirty, so so dirty now with red marks and <<>>>> pointy things slicing away at my heart!

Can’t you see it? I will make you see it. Yes, yes I will!

What’s the matter? Am I scaring you?

No, no, it’s gone on too far my love, and I won’t stop now, can’t-won’t it’s all the same these days. Time to say goodbye … I’ve got to bury you, B, I’ve got to stop you from doing this to some other poor unsuspecting creature and… Shhh shhh shh… It won’t hurt— Much.

Until I can fix the supposed problems of my book you have to die a slow death as punishment. You see this will help me find the things I need, and I so desperately need them, to fix, remake, a little death never hurt a story.

What’s that? This is real life you say?

Well then… You should have thought of that before you decided to become my Beta.

Xoxo

L

Want to read more on writer rants? Click HERE

34

Hot off the press!

Dear B,

I can’t tell you how much I have learned over the past few weeks in these edits.

• Formatting
• Chapter to chapter flow
• Red Penning
• Speech Tags (that make sense)
• Past perfect vs. Past perfect continuous
• Insanity
• Complacency (although I was fairly familiar with this one before)

It’s no surprise to you that most of this is new to me. I enjoy the journey with an anxiety that is regulated by fat and sugar frozen into my favorite “Cookie dough Ice Cream” and sold by the pint. And as always there is coffee – beloved brown goodness that keeps the tiny anvils from my lids .

An incredible thing has started to happen in my writing life too that actually isn’t unpleasant. Now that I am more effective and regularly in the frame of mind, a novelista that is, I am constantly making parallels from this land of fiction to the usually more dour reality.

Is it true that I may be a character in a much grander and larger book that is called life? Could it be possible that we are entranced by ourselves not just because we are vain but maybe it is because the story we live could never be less interesting than the ones we read and write? B, I think it could.

I’ve found that I am developing just now, like my characters, and it comes in instant growth spurts that only happen with great happenstance or lulls of nothing but thought (rarer is the latter). It is quite painful I might add but where is there growth without some sort of pain. It’s not all doom and gloom though, no not at all.

When I look around me, I find that I have indeed written the greatest story I’ll ever know already. I believe you do know of her dear B, she is about three feet tall and has a penchant for making her teal my little ponies fly around my office. Whenever I am hard at work on my next scene it is not unusual for the toy horses to end up right in my lap amongst my red penning in print. I am not annoyed, because to her these are characters as well and they do far more interesting things than mine. I mean flying is definitely part of the fantasy genre and they seem to never stop with endless amounts of energy, boy who couldn’t read all about that? She makes them kiss a lot too, which speaks to romance… But more on that later.

Here are the first fifty pages in real print. I stared and stared at the cover page for so long after it was printed.

ssphoto

There is a certain amount of pride already taken in this endeavor but I do feel extra so whenever I can multitask and juggle a work schedule, dinner, grocery shopping, horseback riding, and feeding the dog, diapers, husband love, and church Sunday school, all the while saying to myself, “It’s done, it’s done, it’s done! Well not quite done done, but fin for now.”

Thank you for taking this journey with me dear friend.

Ciao for now

L

2

Dearest B…

Dear B,

There are two things to post as an update but first let me start by saying my journey as a “novelist”, full book in hand, er_ book on Microsoft word that is, has started out a bit… Rocky.

You know better than anyone the truth, B, as not very long ago I blogged a happy writer who had finished her first entire book with a real back and front and everything. A virtual sitting duck of blissful ignorance soon to be shot down by the tragedy that is the act of cleaning up her own mess. To put it in one word “Hysteria” struck, and I realized that it all actually had to make sense, and enjoy making sense. Not easy to do when you know I have a penchant for the overdone, underdone, and creative bounce around, aka sloppy, ill thought out, and lack of flow. Hmmm.

Not long after my first post here on my lovely new website, I sat down Starbucks in hand, cookies and other sweets as I dusted off the parts that needed dusting and filled in the parts that needed filling. I do not need to say to you how this was a sunny day with maybe even a rainbow outside of my window and the energy flowed with ease. Day number two was a bit less so as you might imagine, and then even later that week fitting in edits between a yelling child, and dinner I told myself “It wasn’t so bad” in the most unconvincing inner voice you have ever heard, B, if you chose that day to be inside of my head..

Day ten and more was all downhill from there…

You know how something seems so easy in theory but once you set upon the actual doing you realize that it. Is. So. Not. Yes, this was me, is me.

One computer dead, and a few clumps of hair sacrificed, I am glad to say it seems that I am back on track towards the edit finish line still within the same amount of time, hurray!

August is still the plan. Onward and upward my friend!

For now…

Ciao

L

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