I’ve been busy, busy, busy.

Writing, project organizing, interviewing, emailing, cutting, pasting, gluing in place. In case you’re tired of reading about my novella, today free ebook anthology The New Flesh: YEAR ONE goes live. It features my short story In Case of Armageddon, and 49 other creepy, twisted, funny, and just plain weird stories that didn’t have a home anywhere else on the web. Stop by and have a look.

I think I’m now also allowed to talk about the horror anthology Monster Alphabet Book, which I will be featured in with my introductory chapter to Flesh Trap, tentatively subtitled The Girl on Mooreland Street.  The project, led by John Prescott, was super-secret and by invitation only, which kept me from saying much about it the last few months.  It features 26 authors from around the globe, writing a story about a monster based on a letter of the alphabet (D for Demon, V for Vampire, W for Werewolf, so on and so forth). I was lucky enough to sneak in and steal T for Trap for myself, in an effort to expose as many readers as possible to my Flesh Trap while I finish the novella. Scheming? Maybe. But it’s worked out pretty well so far.

This will be going on sale on October 31st, last I heard. I will be acquiring a number of copies from the first printing run to sell through my site. Any copy bought directly from me will be personally signed and shipped to your house with a nice little card, because I’m just that kind of a gal. More on that as I receive more information, and we approach the publication date.

I’ve also taken up freelance writing, in case I was afraid I didn’t have enough to do. I’ve published two articles so far this month, nothing fancy or terribly note-worthy, but it’s a place to start at the very least. Padding the writing resume and all that. I will soon be adding them to my Publishing credits page, along with all the information on any upcoming projects and anthologies, as new stuff comes in. So watch this space.

Finally, tomorrow I leave for holiday. Four days spent lazing around hotel beds, shopping, and hanging out with friends. It’s about damn time.

The other day I was in a thrift store on Camp Bowie, in the old side of Fort Worth. Go down the right streets in Fort Worth and you travel backwards through time, to ancient diners and barbershops and roadside motels out of picture books and 1950s B-movies. I was standing in this thrift store, somewhere in 1969, looking at the collection on $2 books on the shelves on the back wall. And I had a thought.

There were all kinds of books there. Horror and history, cooking and crime,  everything from J.D. Salinger to Stephen King. Some of the books were made into movies, some of them were published by little printing outfits that fell away in time, blockbusters and no-names on the same shelf. But that’s the point: They were all on the same shelf, in a thrift store, sold for $2.

I think we all labor under the desire to be timeless. To write something great and be remembered, or to publish something profitable and be successful. Your mileage may vary, but it comes down to doing something that people will love, in one form or another. We want to be something more than just ourselves, in our little houses and hometowns. We’re all rushing around, trying to find agents and publishing contracts, following trends and trying to break into the market and make a name for ourselves in these crowded rooms. We want to be storytellers, astronauts and rock stars, because we want to live forever in our words. There’s nothing wrong with that.It’s one of those things that makes human beings such an interesting bunch to spend time with, I think.

But at the end of the day, you and me, J.D. Salinger and Stephen King? No matter how beloved we are, no matter how treasured we are, whether for a day or for a hundred years, we all end up at the thrift store. Somebody may love our words for a while, and even if a lot of people cherish our work, a lot of other people will still put us aside, saved for the thrift bin to make room for the next big thing. We all have a small window of opportunity to make a mark on this world (around 70 years or so) and it’s up to us to do all we can with this time before we’re pushed aside.

Knowing this, I feel free. It makes me want to work just that much harder on my stories, try to reach that many more people. If I’m enough lucky I’ll end up with a publishing deal, and if I’m not, I’ll find another way. This is what I chose for myself. All I can hope for now is to keep working and to write something somebody will love enough not to throw in the thrift bin. If I can do that, I feel like I’ve come out ahead.

Don’t you?

Chapbooks. I make them. At least, I will very soon.

I’m printing and assembling, a one-woman-press. Formatting, reformatting, punching holes and binding pages. This was just the first step, an experiment with my short story, Ain’t No Grave (currently being illustrated by my collaborator in Austin, the talented John David Brown), just to see where I stand with my process. I have it down now, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I’ve settled on a collection of short stories from The Diving Bell, the serial I’ve been starting-stopping-rewriting-retooling-starting again for the last two years. I want to tell Noam and Elliot’s story in snippets and scenes, moments of time caught on Polaroid film and notebook pages. There will be five stories. Some have been published, most have not been seen online in months, if at all. I want to keep it small, keep it personal, like the story itself.

I’m calling the chapbook Letters from the Ocean. I plan on making a small run, ten, maybe fifteen at most. If there’s enough interest I’ll do another run. At the moment, I plan to have them available here around mid-August. If you’re interested in acquiring a handmade anthology, watch this space and let me know.

For now, it’s back to work.