Jumpstarting by Jane Kindred

If you’ve seen my recent posts, you know that I’ve been going through an extremely dry spell. The well of ideas I’ve been dipping into since childhood has been coming up with a ladle full of nothing but dust. Though I tried to drag two murky characters up to the surface and into the light (okay, so it’s a mixed metaphor; just go with it), “Armand and William,” mentioned in my previous blog post, refused to speak to me. Even after I threatened William with being called “Billy.”

I took a week off from work at the end of May just to make myself write something, anything…and did nothing but work puzzles on my iPad and color in my mandala coloring book while watching Hallmark mysteries and romances. (In other words, the same things I’ve been doing for months.) Since finishing the final book in the Sisters in Sin series in February, I hadn’t written a single word.

But this past Sunday, I decided to go to a café down the street and try to write. Part of my difficulty with writing in recent months is dealing with my elderly cat and his literal caterwauling every moment that he’s not sitting in my lap, so I thought maybe a change of scenery with less howling would work. I honestly didn’t think it would, because I usually can’t write with other people around, but I was sick of hating myself for doing nothing. I got a latte and a pastry, perused social media until the pastry was done, and then set the timer on my phone, telling myself that I had to write for 15 minutes, no matter how stupid the words, and then I could look at Twitter again for 5 minutes as my reward. (A dubious reward, but these are dubious times.)

And despite the fact that there was music playing in the café, another thing I usually can’t write with, I just started writing a completely new story. And I wrote for three hours.

It’s some serious crap at the moment, but it’s crap with promise. Two new characters (not the sulking Armand and pouting William—who can just sit there and think about what they’ve done until I’m good and ready to listen to them should they deign to speak) just came out to play like they’d been there all the time. I wrote 1,800 words, and on a second day at the café, I managed another 2,000.

I’m still mostly unable to write at home (thanks, cat), but my head is no longer echoing like a new apartment without furniture or rugs while I wander around in it aimlessly. There are unpacked boxes in the corner to go through and interesting clutter lying about that needs to be assembled into something usable. And I’m also channeling my rage at current events into this new space instead of trying to keep it clean and nice for company, so things could get interesting.

I still don’t know where or when the story takes place or any of the specifics of the plot beyond a very vague beginning and a fairly definite end (and, of course, a love story), but I’m hopeful that those will come. I might not have any idea where I’ll end up, but at least I have a beginning. Sometimes you just have to piece together a bunch of disembodied parts and apply a little voltage and see what happens. Even if what you end up with turns out to be a little misshapen, the important thing is that it’s alive.

What's haunting my TiVo and my Nook

It’s October, and that means one thing and one thing only: SyFy’s 31 Days of Halloween. (Okay, two things: it also means Pumpkin Spice Lattes.) Oh my goodness, how I love stupid (and not-so-stupid) horror movies. I can’t resist watching them all.

Last week, I watched Children of the Corn and all four of the Omen movies. Then I had a sudden yen for the original Fright Night, so I streamed that one on Netflix this past weekend—ah, Chris Sarandon’s over-the-top vampire mugging; is there anything better? And yesterday (on mute, peering over my monitor while writing at the standing desk), I watched bits of Stephen King’s Rose Red mini-series and glimpses of some awesomely bad slasher films. (Wonder how that’s going to affect my MC's disintegration into madness scenes?) I’ll watch just about any and every horror and paranormal movie there is, except torture porn.

But there is one thing I really hate in this genre, and that’s zombie movies. I appreciated the classic Romero movies and enjoyed some of the remakes, and loved Shaun of the Dead, but I am so over the zombie fetish that seems to have overtaken the world. The Zombie Apocalypse isn’t coming, it’s already here, come to bore you to death with endless iterations of shambling-and-yet-fast-moving, face-eating, rotting bodies, and heads being blown off. Ugh. Why is this a thing?

I know. It’s not fashionable to hate zombies. I’m not a fan of The Walking Dead, for which I am clearly going straight to hell. (Where there will probably be zombies.) But I just don’t get it. I prefer magical monsters, ghost stories, superhuman lunatics, and improbable beasts. I want a little sexy in my scary. (But do not even think of recommending any zombie love stories to me. Do. Not. It’s not happening.)

Tomorrow, unfortunately, appears to be “All Zombies, All the Time” day in the 31 Days lineup, so I’ll be skipping that one. But Wednesday? A full day of Ghosthunters! I’m a sucker for ghost hunting. I can’t say I believe in ghosts—but I want to believe. I eat up every dubious EVP track, every REM Pod and EMF monitor beep and scree, and every blurry shadow that moves across the IR camera’s field. So along with the return of some of my favorite SFF shows—Doctor Who, Sleepy Hollow, and Haven, to name a few—it looks like my TiVo has its hands full for the month.

Yet somehow, I do still find time to write (Idol of Blood is about 85% finished), and even to read. On the literary front, I recently started reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and I want to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein before Halloween. I’ve seen these classics of horror filmed a million ways (and I am SO stoked—no pun intended—to see the new Dracula Untold coming out this weekend!), but never got around to reading them. I’d heard Dracula was horribly flawed, but so far, I’m pleasantly surprised. I love the very proper and flowery Victorian wording, and Stoker weaves the dark mood in every physical setting and detail. It’s long, of course. Books used to be. It’s also refreshing not to read a book riddled with the infuriating grammatical errors of confusing “lay” with “lie” and “led” with “lead” that seem to plague all modern fiction. So, yeah, maybe Stoker’s no Dostoevsky, but I’m enjoying the read. ;) And even if it turns out to be a dud, it’s October, and it’s horror, so I win either way.

So what's haunting your devices this month? What are your favorites to watch and read during the season of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins? Will you be lining up early with me to see Dracula Untold?