A Writer’s Journey, continued

I began writing spooky stories when I was in sixth grade. I believe my first was a retelling of my mother’s real life encounter with a UFO. By the age of thirteen, I was working on my first novel. It was in no way inspired by The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, but featured a scarecrow that happened to walk at night. Probably close to midnight, but who’s keeping track? The novel, titled “The Saint” or “Saint’s Day” was not published, unfortunately. I don’t believe it was ever transferred from my spiral bound notebook to a word processor, more precisely.

I’ve always been a writer. I kept writing. Kept reading. In my teens, I could pick up a trade paperback Stephen King at the checkout counter of my local convenience store for 6-7 bucks. I was introduced to Robert McCammon and branched out of horror into fantasy. I subscribed to Writer’s Digest, which was, like, step five of the ten steps necessary to being a world famous published author. I wasn’t really writing much, but I was checking most of the other boxes.

I joined the Air Force at 23, married the same year. Surprisingly, I was quite busy my first few years in Air Force. Also, my wife, Miranda, introduced me to Warcraft, which was a mistake. Yes, I was a writer. I just wasn’t writing. Like, at all. I started taking college classes in the hopes of applying for a commission in the Air Force. Business classes. Yuck. Then I was stationed on Guam, and in our first year on the island we (she) were pregnant. I hadn’t written a story in ten years, but I was still a writer, damnit. I had sixty-one issues of Writer’s Digest in my shed after all.

I dabbled in writing. I started a blog. Bloody Banana Peels I think it was called. (It might actually still exist – I don’t know how to delete things like that) I mixed humor with my horror, hence the terrible name. As I neared the end of my degree, I started writing stories again. I was around 31 or so, approaching the halfway point in my Air Force career and living on an island with my wife, my baby girl, and not much else. Remember that Writer’s Digest subscription? Well, they also host competitions, and I sent a story, possibly the first complete story I’d written in fifteen years. Reading it later, it was rough. But, either from its rough but endearing quality or lack of competition, I secured an Honorable Mention in their annual short story writing competition. I was over the moon. I forced my family to buy the issue in which my name was listed. It was a big deal. This is presented as humor, and it is kind of funny. But it was also the momentum I needed to write the next story, and the next.

I wrote in a vacuum. My wife, milk-drained and sleep deprived, read my stories and enjoyed them. My mom and siblings, via email, did the same. The spark was back. I wrote stories about astronauts in space while the zombie apocalypse kicked off on earth. I wrote about a suicidal man who was forced to live out the last thought he had in life. (Available in Dreadful: Tales of the Dead and Dying) I wrote enough stories to make a collection. Now what? I puttered around the internet. Not a big demand for a no-name author’s first collection. Good news on the Air Force side, I was accepted for commissioning! Had to delay the writer thing a bit longer. Is that a silver hair in my beard?

The Air Force gifted us with Enid, Oklahoma. That’s a real city with people and everything. (not much more than people…”everything” is mostly indicative of dust and sunshine) I was a new officer with far more responsibility. Shit, now I have to get a Master’s in business, which I didn’t care about in the first place. I had all these stories and a little bit more money. I self published my first collection, warts and all. I watched it skyrocket up the Amazon charts…each time I made it free. Miranda kept bugging me about these things called “podcasts” which, with no comedic effect intended, I did not understand. Eventually, I stumbled upon The NoSleep Podcast. I was hooked from the first episode.

The Air Force rewarded a successful first tenure as an officer with an assignment in Alabama. Dreadful did not overwhelm and dominate the horror literary landscape as I had dreamed, but it was an honest attempt to contribute to it. I remember receiving my first acceptance email from NoSleep. I thought I’d made it. We danced in the kitchen. I called my family and informed them, in different words, than I was on a Stephen King-like trajectory. Oh, this isn’t the set up for some imminent disappointment. Sort of seems that way reading it back…

My first story landed beyond the paywall, and no one said a thing about it. I guess that is a bit disappointing. I kept writing. I submitted to contests and to anthologies. I empathize with Max Booth’s early writing career, tripping over themself to appease an anthology editor that was actually a money grab. I did not get paid for my first handful of “sold” stories. But I did eventually, usually around $40. I landed a few more stories on NoSleep, and I began compiling them for my second collection. For this collection, The Rat King, I partnered with an artist and paid for formatting. Among the more humbling experiences in my writer life was the NoSleep livestream launching the collection. I believe five people attended and most of them were related to me. Oh, I did place second in the Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition. Got $500 for that!

Season 16 was a big one for me. I had a few well regarded stories in a row, including A Sundown Town, The Hole in the Great Grass Sea, and Knocking After Midnight. A change of plans also presented me with the opportunity to pen the season finale, which I did with They Have Suffered. To balance things out, I’d probably invested $1,500-$2000 in The Rat King, and was selling 1-2 (and often 0) copies a month.

In January of 2022, I decided to take a different approach. I created a spreadsheet of upcoming short story calls, and very deliberately wrote for them. I targeted markets paying professional rates as I wanted to build my catalogue to apply for HWA-Active. The first short story I submitted was to Cemetery Gates’ Picnic in the Graveyard anthology. I wrote past my own level of comfort, fixing a spotlight on scenes I might have skipped previously. I wrote from the hip. The story I submitted was titled Corpse Fucker Joe. Within minutes of submitting it, I regretted sending such a vulgar title. I started writing a backup story. Also, Corpse Fucker Joe was renamed to Cemetery Joe.

Joe from Cemetery Gates (no relation) posted about the story on Twitter, which caught Sadie Hartmann’s eye. I submitted to her Human Monsters anthology the second the call opened, and I’m sure she knew my name because of Joe’s tweet. The Bystander was accepted, and we began a dialogue about novellas and her upcoming My Dark Library line. By April, I was getting a sneak peek at the artwork for Stargazers. By May, I was signing over 1K stickers for Night Worms.

By summer of 2022, I had enough pro paid work to qualify for HWA-Active. Stargazers was doing well. I was invited to a pro paying anthology, a first for me. I was also rejected from other anthology calls, a grave mistake on their part. (that’s a joke) In 2023, I put together my next collection, No Gods, Only Chaos. I worked with Truborn Design on the cover, and lucked out on an awesome formatter on Fiverr. I brought five copies of my fully finished book to AuthorCon and placed it in the hesitant hands of several publishers. I guess that isn’t a normal thing to do, because they all acted like it was the first time.

I lost a lot of money at AuthorCon, but I had no regrets. Brian Keene made a point to let me know he had his eye on me. I met Gemma Amor for the first time. E.C. Hanson was an outstanding table neighbor. Within a week, Kevin from Cemetery Dance reached out via messenger and said he was reading the collection. I was ecstatic. Within two days, we signed the contract.

StokerCon was next. I got to hang out with Neil from Talking Scared, along with some Texas Horror Crew: Agatha, RJ, and Johnny. I met one of my writing idols, Catriona Ward. I came back pumped and ready to take over the world. I started on a new novella and pitched it to Joe from Cemetery Gates. No Gods wouldn’t come out for more than a year, meaning I would have nothing new to bring to 2024 cons. Joe accepted and I began writing In the Valley of the Headless Men. Oh, I was in Texas now. That move would have been 2021.

I gave review/blurb copies of No Gods to author friends. Neil and I discussed coming onto the show in October of 24. I was doing the legwork to make a successful launch. By December, I wasn’t hearing back from Cemetery Dance. In January, I was out in the field for a week-long training exercise when I received the email that my contract had been canceled. I barely had a bar of service in the field, which made it difficult to navigate those early days. I announced the cancellation on Twitter. I wish Cemetery Dance had made a statement, as emailing to cancel a contract and leaving it to the authors to publicize is bad form in my opinion. Not offering a statement calls into question the reason for the cancellation, including the possibility it was related to quality.

This is the pivot. I didn’t realize I was at the top of the hill, and this action was momentum to push me over the edge. In the moment, it felt awful. Dreams of sharing a label with Robert McCammon and Stephen King were gone. My collection was homeless. I’d wasted the time of my author friends. I’d have to cancel with Neil. Although I had a novella due in February, that would be it for the foreseeable future.

Within hours, I’d received dozens of supportive comments and several direct messages. I began fielding interest from indie labels, I think close to ten by the time the dust settled. Well known authors reached out offering their support, several stating they would talk to their agents or publishers. After a short but robust exchange about the vision for the collection, promotion details and the like, I settled on DarkLit Press.

As I write this, we are due to release in a little over a month. I recorded my episode of Talking Scared with Neil yesterday. But something else happened this month. I signed with Becky LeJeune, an agent I have admired from afar for what feels like years. In our conversation discussing my previous work, current projects, and plans for the future, she revealed the moment I came onto her radar. It was the Cemetery Dance debacle.

We often don’t understand the path we’re on until we’ve walked it. Some people believe they deserve to be further along. They compare themselves to the people walking around them, often to the ones ahead of them. You don’t deserve your path. You just walk it.

A rejected story, contract cancellation, or a press going belly-up are all tough situations in isolation. But they are just debris on the path you’re walking.

So keep walking.