Dust Off the Cobwebs, Scour the Rust

I know I’ve been rather silent on, well, all fronts in recent months. There’s no point in making excuses; I have largely been idle with no real justification as to why. I’m putting my nose to the grindstone again, however. I’m working on a reread/revision of Morningstar with the long-term intent to republish; I’m fiddling again and again with the project I’ve been working on in the meantime, and I’ve even decided to return to what got me into the realm of fiction writing so many years ago: the short story.

The realization that I wanted to tell stories came in fifth grade, when I received accolades for a short story that I wrote in response to a standardized test essay prompt. It was something along the lines of “if you could meet anyone in history, who would it be and why,” and I somehow decided that I needed to spin a yarn about traveling back in time to meet the infamous pirate Blackbeard, who I unwittingly cast as a misunderstood and sympathetic Robin Hood-type figure, rather than the bloodthirsty marauder that he actually was. I’d done it without a moment’s hesitation, so it came as quite a shock when I was showered with praise from people I had never heard of but was assured were very important to the school district. At the time I wasn’t under the impression that I had done anything particularly creative, unusual, or interesting. What I did understand, however, was that people liked what I had written, and that was an experience that I wanted to repeat. Over my grade school career I penned a couple of additional short tales, all with similar results. 

My dad reminds me every so often that he still has a copy of that Blackbeard story. I can’t decide if it’s something I’d like to read as an adult.

But back to the present: I’ve been dabbling in short fiction again. It’s purely self-serving, of course; when I hit a block on one thing, I turn to another in the hopes that it will spark inspiration. I’ve long had ideas swimming around in my brain that I don’t think are viable enough for a full-blown book, so it seems only right to get them down. At least two of them deal with the spooky and the supernatural, so I’m hoping to have one of them done in time for Halloween. There you have it, readers. I’m promising a ghost story for Halloween. Hold me to it. Give no quarter if I fail to deliver. Pillory me and throw tomatoes. It’ll be what I deserve.

On the subject of Halloween: longtime followers of mine know that, each October, I make an attempt to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days. In a perfect world, that amounts to one a day, which is entirely reasonable, but life is rarely entirely reasonable, and I’ve only ever managed to pull off the feat once in the five years I’ve attempted it. I’m on track thus far for this year; hopefully I can keep it up. I’ll have a debriefing once the month is over, and run down the list and highlight my favorites (I have favorites already, but there’s still nine days to go, so no sense jumping the gun).

That’s all for now. If anyone knows of any underappreciated horror films for my endeavor, do let me know.

-NG

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