A New Woe
My spoiler-filled review of the new Netflix TV series, why it’s a subversive departure from the normal Addams Family tropes, and why I think that’s a good thing. Did I mention the spoilers?
All posts tagged: #WPLongform
The Importance of Checking Boxes
(Or: How I start a novel, Agile-style.) So as I am hitting the ‘send’ button on sending two manuscripts off to my agent, I am naturally planning my next book. As one does. And I thought it might be interesting, if not helpful, to go over what I do and why. Because at heart, I will always be a project manager. I have to do this because I have ADHD. However, long before I was diagnosed with such, I’d learned coping mechanisms that allow me to function to varying degrees of success. (My closets are still filled with craft projects I have thrown myself into with obsessive gusto and then abandoned several weeks later, but at least I know why that happens now.) One of the best methods (for me) is the satisfying feeling of accomplishment that comes from checking a box as ‘done.’ (Similarly, moving a task from column A to column B.) If I can break it down into a small task and put it on a list, there is a much, much …
Kumiho
Kumiho was a short story I wrote about 10 years back, and semi-autobiographical. I chanced upon it when looking through some old files and decided to share it. _______________ Since my boyfriend lost his car last summer, I’ve been taking the bus a lot. You meet a weird lot riding the bus, especially in Los Angeles, where public transportation is the option of last resort. There are the people who hop on and immediately open up the cases of stolen watches, the homeless who haven’t bathed in weeks if not months and sometimes, the people like me who are just enduring the commute to work. These are generic descriptions, but there are some very specific characters I’ve encountered: one fellow who carries a white cane and pretends to be blinds so he can ride for free; an old sweet-looking grandmotherly woman who always wears the same tweed suit with lace gloves and is so terrified that there won’t be any room for her on the bus she always cuts in front of the line, even …
Annie and the Wolves
Introduction: Another short story, this one focused solely on my favorite bad girl, Lucy Belogh. Obviously I’ve taken huge, sweeping liberties with historical figures, but not nearly as much as I would have liked to have taken: I wish how Phoebe Ann Mosey was mistreated was fiction. I only tinkered with how she survived the experience. She never identified the family who abused her when she was a child, only referring to them by her nickname: the wolves. Rating warning: this story is the most violent I’ve published on a blog so far, and not for kids. *** The little girl’s blood stained the snow pink when she fell. She didn’t cry out. She was long past the point of feeling pain, reduced to numbness by the cold and her wounds. She had felt cold originally, but that was before the sun set and night shrouded the forest. She pushed her hands against the snow, brushing sap and ice and bits of broken twigs from her bloody fingers as she stood, unsteady and teetering. In …
The Girl Who Stole High School
This worked out to be quite a bit more open-ended than I originally intended, so I suspect more stories are probably in store for later. _________________________________ There was a girl at Charlie’s high school no one else could see. The first time Charlie Du saw the girl, it was at lunch in the cafeteria. Jessica Simmons and Leica Hamilton were doing that thing again, the one where they and all their friends would gather at the table right next to Charlie’s and loudly ask supposedly innocent questions. “Why do you think someone names a girl Charlie, anyway? Do you think her father must have wanted a boy? Do you think he beats her because she’s not a boy?” “Do you think his father named her that because he killed lots of people during the Vietnam war?” “Do you think her dad dresses her in boy’s clothes?” “She’s so tall. Maybe she really is a boy, you know, but just, you know, like that movie with the girl who was really a boy, The Crying Game?” And …
On Book Covers
I used to be a graphic designer. This isn’t exactly a secret, and I was a graphic designer for something like 20 years (a little over, but close enough.) I became something of a specialist in logos, which are often considered the hardest work a graphic designer can do. Nope. I wasn’t giving enough credit to book cover designers. This stuff is HARD. Keep in mind: I am an artist. I have that advantage over most writers — I still think this stuff is hard. Insanely hard. When I say writing the book was the easy part, that is nothing but blunt honesty. You’re probably wondering why I’m designing the book cover at all, if I have a publishing contract. The truth is: I don’t have to. I’m very lucky in that my publisher is open to the idea of letting me take a crack at it (even if they go with something else, which would be their contractual right.) As a graphic artist turned writer, I have it within me to be the most obnoxious of …
Dark Son
Another reposted story from There by Candlelight: ——————————- Marty Lucas walked into the principal’s office like he was about to receive an award, maybe something for bravery or valor — a citation for standing up to a bunch of punk bullies who thought they could get away with beating the candy out of every kid who was weaker, smaller and different from what they thought was ‘cool.’ The difference in posture was transforming: most of the kids who knew him in class wouldn’t have recognized him. Marty normally walked through the world with his head down, his hands stuffed into the pocket of his tan jacket, his eyes on the street, lost in his own thoughts. Today only, he walked like he owned the place, like he was a foot taller and could take on anyone who gave him the wrong look. The school secretary, Nina Collington, looked distinctly bemused as she observed him. Nina was saucy looking redhead in her mid-thirties with short page-cut hair and mod cat’s eye glasses who has worked for the school …
Jenn Lyons 