WRITER THINGS
How long have you been writing, and what are your preferred genres and settings?
I’ve been writing since I was a wee little kid, creating stories about demonic murder cats for class in 4th grade, depressing adventurer tales gone wrong in 5th, and even an entire chapbook of Moby Dick-inspired poetry for high school English Lit! And so much depressing teenage angst poetry (which I still have copies of much of, LOL!), it boggles the mind.
However, I’ve only been writing professionally (aka, with an intent to publish) since around 2006 or so.
My early professional work leaned heavy into what I’d grown up reading, which was a lot of standard fantasy and a smidge of science fiction. However, as I entered the greater writing community, I became exposed to a much wider variety of works and authors and eventually ended up somewhere in the nebulous cloud of weird-dark speculative fiction (fantasy, SF, and horror), with an occasional side of weird humor. Oh, and giggle horror–don’t forget the giggle horror!
Who or what originally inspired you to try your hand at writing?
I’d always loved writing since I was young, but for reasons involving being able to feed and clothe myself, I went into computer science as my college career choice. After ten years of interning and working full time, though, I determined that while I was a perfectly adequate programmer, I wasn’t so in love with the career as I’d hoped. Though it did certainly do its part in keeping me clothed and fed and helping my eventual husband through college to his dream career!
So, around 2006, I started looking into writing professionally in my spare time, eventually submitting my first short story to an actual market for its inevitable rejection!
What lengths of stories do you prefer, i.e. short stories/flash fiction/novels? What formats do you like to release your work in, i.e. ebook, paperbook, audiobook?
I lean heavily into short fiction, with an especial love for flash fiction and all the crazy beautiful things you can do with it. As a short fiction author, that means my work is mostly in the hands of the magazines or anthologies that choose to publish it, so it tend to end up in a variety of formats. I do have a pretty nice “brag shelf” at home with all the print publications of my work, which is nice as some of my online work is no longer available as some of the older publications have gone under in time.
What does your writing environment look like? Are there specific or unique features to your drafting and writing process that you feel are interesting?
My writing environment is mostly my office. I tend to prefer as few distractions as possible when I am working because I am a very easily distracted creature and my brain has a tendency to spiral out when I least want it to.
Most of my flash fiction is born from a single line popping into my head, and then the piece grows organically from that. My short fiction tends to start in a similar way, but its path to completion is often much thornier, sometimes involving losing that beautiful opening line completely.
Once I complete an actual full draft of a story, though, it is usually fairly close to its final form. I think that is because with my style of writing, I consider the weight of every sentence to be highly dependent on each sentence that comes before it, so if a story starts to feel like it is veering off and losing focus, I usually go back to identify the failure point and rewrite from there. That tends to mean my story is doing most of what I want it to do by the time I reach the end of a draft…but it also means my process as a whole runs much slower than many other writers. It also means I am wholly unable to ever adhere to the standard writing advice of “just finish it–you can always edit it later!!”
What are your thoughts on pen names?
I think pen names are fine–and maybe I should have started of with one since my last name is a bit awkward for people not familiar with me! But it is too late now! I committed to my real name in 2006, and my real name now it shall be…
MEATY THINGS
What, if any, social issues do you feel like you address the most in your work?
The social issue my work most often deals with is mental health. I’ve struggled with depression, invisibility, anxiety, passivity, and body ownership issues since I was young, and as a result, many (though not all!) of my characters tend to struggle somewhere on a similar spectrum. I find we are often our own worst enemies, not just through the actions we take, but as well through the actions we fail to take, or the words we fail to say.
And while sometimes the characters in my stories manage to overcome these personal obstacles, that is unfortunately not always the case. Not every story has a happy ending, alas…
Are there any marginalized populations represented in your work, and how do you relate to those populations?
I do have a habit of writing LGBT characters. Attraction is such an odd thing that we often delineate into so many specific little boxes. Maybe not quite so much now–thankfully for the younger generation!–but certainly for my generation the peer pressure to conform to very specific expectations was strong. One of my greatest regrets of my youth will always be the potential relationships I missed because of peer expectations (or worse, the potential harm to some, like the boy at the skating rink I rejected out of fear of social ostracism as my friends hissed he was really a girl).
PROMOTIONAL THINGS
What works are in your current bibliography?
As a short fiction writer, this is a bit awkward. It is honestly just easier for you to head to my website and click on either the short stories or the poetry tab, and have at it! There are links to the things with links, and everything is organized by first publication date (with reprints just adding a new line to the existing title).
Which one(s) are you the most proud of?
“What the Stones Want”, “For What Dignity Remains”, and “The Marionette’s Daughter”
What stories do you have coming out soon that we can look for?
The Sunday Morning Transport recently bought my short story, “The Sky Unseen”. The publication date for the story is yet to be determined, though. Still, you should all totally subscribe to The Sunday Morning Transport because they publish fabulous fiction by a lot of fantastic writers. 🙂
Do you have any social media channels that you’re especially active on? Where can people follow you (in socially acceptable ways)?
I’m on Facebook.
