I haven’t posted in a while. I think a lot of you know why. There was a post a while ago about it, but in any case, thanks to everyone for sticking around all this time. While I got my head screwed back on.
An Announcement!
I’m writing this to make a fun announcement (one you may have guessed, based on the title): I’m going to be a published short-story author soon! This is a goal that I’ve sort of always had. Probably since I was a little kid. And, well, I wrote a bunch of stories last year and thought it might be fun to send a few of them off. And, well, yeah.
“Selling Drugs to the Funny Kids” is going to take a major item off my bucket list! The anthology the story will be in is called Howls from the Scene of the Crime.
The Howl Society
If Howls sounds familiar, that’s probably because I’ve written about the Howl Society a few times now. Their full name is the Horror Obsessed Writing and Literature Society. I found them originally when scouring the internet for a group of writers who might be willing to trade feedback on their stories. It turns out that this is really hard to find. Everyone wants to talk about their own projects, but few are part of a community with strong enough bonds for people to stick around and try to contribute more than they take. In other words, you find a lot of ephemeral statements that go nowhere, or exchanges between people who never expect to speak to one another again, so nobody wants to be put out. So, it was a bit of a discouraging search. It took months to find a group like this one, but once I did, man. It was so valuable—it’s hard to explain in summary except to say that you learn a lot and feel a sense of community.
Anyway, this community releases an annual anthology, which contains stories produced during an extensive summer writing workshop. Check out the article from last year about it. I joined up, and, in short, my story was one of those blindly selected to be included.
(Thanks to all 9+ people who gave detailed feedback during that workshop. It really helped tighten the story up!)
Howls From the Scene of the Crime
So, this year’s anthology is about crime horror. And the kickstarter is live right now! I believe it was half-funded by the end of day two, and still has about a week to go. I’d love if you checked it out. There are some really cool stories in here.
The kickstarter is LIVE, so please check it out. If you shared the project, that would be even cooler. This is going to be their fourth annual anthology and it’s a good one
Audio / Upcoming Interview
As it happens, since I have this newsletter, I was able to trick some project members into agreeing to an interview about the audiobook version of this anthology.
Why about the audiobook? I’ll write a lot more about this soon, but the short version is: I wanted to feel less disempowered, and learning new things can really help with that. I decided it would be rewarding to learn about audio production so I could try to produce an audio drama. Maybe this summer, maybe in the fall.
Wish me luck.
Coming Soon— The Telltale Puppy, narrated and in audio format. This isn’t the audio drama, just a warmup to get used to recording.
Actually, there will start to be audio versions of most of these posts starting… soon? I’d make an audio version of this one, except I need to finish editing the interview in REAPER—
Anyway, expect another post in the next few days that will contain the interview. It is a good one: I got the producer of the audiobook / founder of HOWLs, a voiceover artist, and an author/voiceover artist/former actor/former chief editor of Howls from the Wreckage. If you have ever wondered about audio production or audiobooks, this was a great conversation.
By The Way-
PS: another substack author has interviewed various Howls anthology authors—including me! Here’s a link:
That's epic! Well done Nathan!
Congratulations, man! That’s big! Being in the same anthology as someone like Gwendolyn Kiste, wow!