The Sparrow's Nest

A story I wrote four years ago was finally accepted. I have a little notebook where I write down what story I sent to where. "Keepress" had like seven pages front and back of rejection letters. Editors said there was nothing wrong with it, but no. Very annoying. I dealt with it by saying all the editors were complete idiots. And since none of them are subscribed to me, twice the idiot. Mwahahaha! And if they are subscribed, I guess they're not a total loss. "Keepress" is a high fantasy in another world. The people have been plagued by a terrifying monster called the Bengadriss, killing off their guardians one by one. Nahleen has been handed the mantle of guardian at too young an age. When the Bengadriss steals her baby brother, Nahleen must face off with the Bengadriss in a violent battle to save him, or lose her life trying. Stay tuned for a thrilling tale of adventure, terror, and ultimate sacrifice. Coming to a computer near you in The Sc...

Lice, the bane of my little girl existence. Every few months, my elementary school conducted a lice check. The teachers each had their hour to bring the students to the nurse's office. We had a nice nurse's office. It was big and could fit a whole classroom into it. We all waited by the door while two or three nurses took a student and checked their hair with long sticks.  "Clean, clean, clean." And then it was my turn. Everybody watched as the nurse, in a loud, nasal voice announced to the universe, "This one has lice." All the little rats who'd been passed as clean gasped and whispered to one another until the info reached the whole school that Julia had lice. Had the nurse no sense of propriety? Why didn't she howl out who the clean ones were, too? She put me in a corner where all the dirty kids went to think about their life. "Julia has to go home." Me and the nurses were on a first name basis since I ...

Recent events have sucked and people aren't making sense. It's gotten others depressed and many don't know what the future will bring or how things will ever be normal again. Many lived quiet, little lives before all this. They complained about it. They started taking stupid selfies while they were driving on the road, and then said they were living life on the edge. Now that they are on the edge, they're wishing to go back to normal. I supposed back to the selfies, too, and dreaming for something more exciting. Let me tell you something, in the words of JRR Tolkien: Not all adventures are sunshine and pony rides. And we are on an adventure. This is a historical moment in time. Record it for your posterity. We are on a journey to The Lonely Mountain to battle a dragon. Gear up. We are all warriors and were not made to lose. For those who have died, their spirits live on in glory. Death is only a doorway.

Twitter. Yuck. Bleah. The place has become a toxic mire. In 2012, I joined Twitter, because I was told it was a good place to promote myself. I gained over 10,000 followers and was heading for 11,000. The rules when I signed up said, "Always be kind and courteous." So I was. In the last few years, there have been droves of people being absolute trolls, jerks, and taking offense at every tiny thing, to the point that everyone had to mince their words. Twitter didn't kick these scumbags off. I began to realize that after every session on Twitter, I came off upset and frustrated. There is a writing community there who lauds itself as extremely supportive. It's filled with self-proclaimed authors who laugh at procrastinating their writing. They have memes stating, "If you're a writer, you're on Twitter right now and thinking you should be writing." Another one was, "If you SAY you're a writer, then you're a writer."...

I've been gone for a while, because I went to Amazon Ad School hosted by Bryan Cohen. He taught me how to do ads and scale them, turn out marvelous blurbs and create hooks. I know what a conversion rate is and how to find it. If you heard thunder in the distance back in April, it was my mind exploding. That said, I have made a discovery that I would not have otherwise made. My cover and my blurb needed help. So I may put a hold on "Embers" until I can fix the issues with "Pariahs." I may even change the title. The cover itself is going to a mega professional and I'm fixing the blurb. In fact, I've been doing that all day. The original cover will still be up, with its confusing description, until its makeover is complete. The whole process is freaking me out, but it's got to be done. After that, I feel I'll be standing on a new threshold, and "Pariahs" will definitely be on another level. "Embers" will meet it ther...

Last week, I got one of the most awesome e-mails of the year. Alex Schiffer from the Sonic Dawn podcast told me he had read my story "Offering" in The Horror Zine and loved it so much that he wanted to read it in his podcast. Know what this means for you? It means you get to listen to "Offering," equipped with some seriously good sound effects and superb reading. Come on over and listen to it right  here . Episode 12. And while you're at it, listen to the other stories!

"Embers" is due out this year, not sure when, but start checking back for updates around July! It would be great if it could appear on July 4th, because that was when I was supposed to be born. Instead, I was born on July 1st, because the night before, my mom hit a dog on the road. She freaked out so bad that she went into labor. So, people, a dog gave its life so I could be born on July 1st. Maybe that's why dogs gyrate towards me. I went to visit my friend, who owns one of those annoying rat dogs. It raced into the room, jumped on my knee, and started barking at everybody, even at its owner. I used to visit another lady, who's now dead, and her dog always hopped in my lap and went to sleep. It snapped at everybody else. Someone had a whole theater inside his basement, so me and a bunch of other people went there to see "The Watcher In The Woods." I'd never seen it before. The guy owned a big, beautiful Golden Retriever. Everybody ra...