I had someone come up to me while visiting friends in Maryland this weekend and say, "I knew you wrote, but I didn't know you were an actual writer". That was unbelievably flattering. For the past year and a half, I have been patiently building a small empire of sorts. I want to be a writer, I know where my future lies, I know what I want. To hear someone say that they've read something I wrote and actually enjoyed it is music to my ears.
I've been doing a lot of writing lately. Blame it on the lovely weather we're having in North Carolina, my positive outlook on life, or all of the inspiration that surrounds me on a daily basis.
And I have something else very exciting to share with you all! I've been developing this since the summertime, when I took a graduate poetry class at North Carolina State University (my alma mater). I've been developing an entirely new way of looking at my writing, and I've investigated ways in which I could incorporate a new angle: magic realism and surrealism. I've studied Chilean writers like Neruda and Allende for many years and wondered how their brains worked, how they cultivated these visions into words.
And do you remember that grungy rock band, Nirvana? While Kurt Cobain admittedly creeped me out as a kid in the '90s, I was always drawn to the song, "Where Did You Sleep Last?". The macabre tonality of it mixed with Cobain's eerie, I-see-a-bright-tunnel-of-light-ahead-of-me voice, immediately made me think of decay, heat and death. I did a little research to discover that it was actually a remake of a 1917 recording called "In the Pines" sung by a black musician named Lead Belly. Being the history buff and research enthusiast that I am, I dug a little deeper to discover that the song dates back to the 1870s, believed to be of Southern Appalachian origin.
Cool, right?
Without further delay, I'm introducing yet another short story for my growing repertoire, appropriately entitled "Specter". Without giving too much away, imagine an failed writer suffering from delusions and heartbreak, a old plantation reformed into a hotel, and a pretty, young stranger who doesn't remember who she is.
Aren't sufficiently creeped out yet? Check out these lyrics, and the accompanying music provided below.
I can't wait to share this with you guys! :)
"Black girl, black girl, don't lie to me
Where did you stay last night?
I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines
And shivered when the cold wind blows"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXYz0gtJeM]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsfcUZBMSSg]
When I published In Leah's Wake in 2010, self-publishing was, for all intents and purposes, in its infancy. Yes, authors had been self-publishing for years, but it was only when e-readers finally entered the mainstream that self-publishing exploded. Suddenly, platforms like Amazon's Kindle Direct, Smashwords, and B&N's PubIt made publishing an e-book inexpensive and easy. Still, there were hurdles: proper formatting and conversion posed challenges and there were few services to help indie authors.
