What’s new?

Standard

Screenshot of Infernal Delights anthology

Infernal Delights is available for purchase on the ‘Zon. This book is a fundraiser for people and pets impacted by Hurricane Helene in 2024, and living in an affected area, I can tell you the cleanup continues.

I made it through round one of the NYC Midnight Micro Fiction Challenge! Participants are challenged to tell a story in 100 words, and they are assigned a genre, an action, and a word that must be included. I was assigned comedy, which had me searching for things like “what do people think is funny.” I was outside my normal writing genres, but I pulled something together, submitted it, and made it through round one!

For round two, we were assigned a new genre, action, and word with only 24 hours to turn the submission in. I scrutinized every word, trying to make the most of what I could accomplish in 100 words. Results aren’t in for round two, so I’ll shout it out if I make it through round two.

I’ll be presenting at In Your Write Mind in Pennsylvania at the end of June 2025.

I’m currently writing a horror novella as part of a course I’m taking. I’m behind on my word count, but I’m not giving up. The two job hustle makes it challenging!

If you enjoy my work, you can Buy Me a Coffee (or a Car, whatever you want) through my link: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katcraig

Voice from the Dark: A Night of Horror Readings

Standard
Spooky tree

Photo by Kevin Rheese https://flickr.com/photos/129440207@N08/

You’re invited! Members of the North Carolina chapter of the Horror Writers Association will be reading scary fiction at Story Parlor in Asheville, NC. Join us May 31, 2025 at 7 PM…if you dare!

I haven’t decided what I’ll be reading just yet. Hope to see you there. Big thanks to Story Parlor for letting the creepy folks tell stories.

After Hurricane Helene

Standard

Cover of Infernal Delights novel

The mountains of western North Carolina, my home sweet home, were shredded by Hurricane Helene. We were without running water for a month in my household, and even with that, we got off pretty easy compared to many. Lives, homes, and businesses were lost.

It was an honor to contribute a short story to Infernal Delights, an anthology of horror stories. The proceeds from this charity collection are going to people and pets impacted by Helene. It’s available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

A Super Belated Celebration

Standard

Congrats to the Winner

Congrats to me, that is. While running down my dream of completing a writing MFA, I won the #Completethestory Challenge in an issue of Eye Contact, Seton Hill’s literary magazine.

My submission was Lucky, a piece of flash fiction. Flash fiction is shorter than a short story. The exact length allowed is often defined in the guidelines of the contest or publication.

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CWBc5eHrJqR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

I Did a Thing

Standard

Kat wearing graduation cap and gown

What have I been up to lately? Two and a half years of focused work and a lifetime of dreaming about being a writer, y’all. I earned my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction in June 2023!

A Five Day Writing Challenge Rocked My World

Standard

555 Story Challenge Logo

This is not a paid endorsement. This is me publicly thanking Nicole Breit and Spark Your Story for hosting a fabulous 5-day online writing challenge.

I am wrapping up an MFA writing program this summer. My thesis project is a paranormal mystery. I love my thesis, but after a couple of years of thinking about the project 24/7, my brain has been feeling tired and uninspired.

I am not even sure where I found out about the 555 story challenge? I’d love to give a nod to the source if only I could recall who that was.

Five days. Five writing prompts. Five submissions into a contest for gift cards and a snazzy writer’s subscription box from GoScribbler. I like prizes. I’m not ashamed of being open to bribery for my writing.

What reeled me was the daily output: 100 words of creative non-fiction. Writing about my own experiences and only 100 words? I’m in! Heck, I could do that on my phone on my notes app…and spoiler: that’s precisely what I did!

Know that writing 100 words is easy. Know that writing 100 good words is the challenge. Capturing a moment or a feeling in so few words is tough.

I could do the writing on my phone, so I didn’t have to pull out my laptop. Keeping my laptop and its unfinished grad school project out of sight kept my stress level low.

The prize drawings were random. Knowing I could win just by completing the daily writing was a great motivator for me. There was no pressure to be perfect.

I didn’t win any of the prizes, boo hiss, but congrats to those who did. Nicole shared with all participants that they could continue their writing journey with her Spark Your Story course, and it sounds fantabulous! It’s outside my budget right now, but based on how helpful just five days of prompts and guidance from Nicole were, I wouldn’t hesitate to sign up for more learning with her in the future.

The challenge let me revisit my creativity in a non-threatening way. Anyone, even someone with a full-time job and looming grad school deadlines, can get one hundred words done in a day. Hitting “submit” each day gave a little dopamine burst, a little feel-good way-to-go mojo that put some spring in my step.

Having a short but sweet date with my creativity for five days has given me my spark back. I’ve given over three hours today to working on my thesis novel, feeling good about it again.

My creativity wasn’t a shriveled up old raisin, long forgotten in an old lunch box. My creativity is a vineyard full of grapes, each having their season to grow, recover, and do it all over again.

Thank you, Nicole!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ghostbusters 1984, 2016, and 2021

Standard

I fully admit my bias here: I love the 1984 Ghostbusters. Anytime it’s on the big screen, I go and see it again. You can’t sway me. I don’t care how the special effects hold up. It was fantastic seeing it on the big screen as a middle schooler, comedy and spookiness coming together as a total treat.

Bill Murray is 100% a womanizing smarty pants in the 1984 film, and it doesn’t bother me. That’s the character he played in several movies of the time. Would it fly now? No. What’s considered comedy has changed since that time, but it works for the time this movie hit the box offices.

I wasn’t particularly jazzed about the 2016 Ghostbusters with an all-female cast when I first heard about it. I love the original Ghostbusters crew. I didn’t want to see Ghostbusters with different actors, male or female. I think that’s important enough to reiterate: I don’t care who they were putting in the cast; if it wasn’t the original gang, then it wasn’t going to float my boat.

The 2016 movie is ok. I don’t think it’s bad, but I wasn’t terribly excited to watch it again for class. One thing they tried to do with 2016 is keep the story as a comedy. It’s supposed to be funny, and there are some laughs to be had as they bust the ghosts running rampant in New York. The comedy just isn’t quite as tight as the 1984 film, and the feeling of a team just wasn’t there for me.

I’m going to go a step further and bring the 2021 Ghostbusters into this. There are way too many emotions lurking around the 2021 film. Instead of holding to the comedic code, we’re supposed to rally around Spengler’s bitter daughter who is certain her dad abandoned her for no reason. Gross.

My Ghostbusters don’t have teary-eyed feelings! My Ghostbusters have laughs and a cool theme song!

The Exorcist (Book) vs The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Film)

Standard

The Exorcist as a movie was one of those films my parents didn’t want me to watch. There were never restrictions on what I could read, so that was always my loophole. Besides, my imagination is usually much scarier than what’s on the screen.

The book scared me as a kid. The idea that imaginary friends, like Captain Howdy in the book, could really be demons ready to vacation in my skin was frightening.

As an adult and a parent, I read it differently. It reads more like ignored child of busy starlet entertains herself by opening herself to demons. I can’t imagine knowing my child was playing with an Ouija board alone and was talking to someone through it; I would freak out with sage and salt and holy water and Florida water.

Early in the book, Regan tries to show her mother how she talks to Captain Howdy through the board, and then they both just walk away. Superstitious me was screaming, “NO!!!! You have to close the connection! You have to end the session! Great googly moogly, this is how you get demons!” Of course, Regan becomes possessed and the story focuses on ridding her of evil.

The biggest differences for me when looking at The Exorcist as compared to the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose are the family dynamic and the priests. In Emily Rose, the family is close knit and religious. In The Exorcist, the family is a little more loosey-goosey with mom chasing her career; they are worldly, not sheltered, and not overly religious.

In Emily Rose, it is Emily herself that chooses to depart this world, to give herself over to God as a lesson to the world and a final gesture of her faith. In The Exorcist, it’s those involved in the exorcism that take death to rid Regan of evil.

Which story works better for me as a scary tale? I’m surprised to admit that right now, it’s Emily Rose, the movie with a studious good girl from a solid family. Reading The Exorcist in the context of a parent, it’s more like single parenting career-focused moms are half-assed parents that might as well have the devil for a babysitter. Yes, The Exorcist has the good against evil theme present in Emily Rose, but to me it feels a little like a lecture: stop hosting dinner parties, Chris, and focus on your daughter and maybe then she won’t pee on the rug.

The Shining and “Twenty-Five Cent Words”

Standard

 

Phrases.com shows the definition of “twenty-five cent words” as “an uncommon word, often used in place of a more common one with the intent to appear sophisticated.” Something that stands out to me in my re-read of The Shining by Stephen King is the use of many fancy-shmancy words.

 

Perhaps ol’ Steve wanted this work to be considered a more literary read than horror. Perhaps the editor put those words in place of some better-known words that had been repeated. Either way, there are words in The Shining that I think I understand in context but don’t recognize easily. I’ll share some of the words that caused me pause.

 

Malefic. Color me a dork, but I gather from the name of the Disney villain Maleficent that this means something especially bad. A Google search tells me it means “causing or capable of causing harm or destruction, especially by supernatural means.”

 

Flambeaux. Flambe desserts are on fire when they arrive at the table, so maybe this is something on fire or lit. The “eaux” on the end helps me to know it is plural. Looking it up, the definition is “a large candlestick with several branches.”

 

Yaw. I know “maw” but I don’t think I know “yaw.” Similar maybe? The definition didn’t really help me: “a twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft around a vertical axis.” “Yaw” is used on page 584 of my copy in the description of an elevator’s entrance. I kind of think that really he meant “maw.” Will someone call Steve and ask if it’s a typo? Thanks.

 

Roque mallet. Maybe everyone else in the world knows what “roque” and “roque mallets” are, but I didn’t. If a roque mallet is going to be used as a weapon, I needed to know what it was and what it looked like to really embrace the scene in which it was used. “Roque” is apparently an American version of the game “croquet.” A roque mallet is wooden. I remember on my first read of this book, I assumed there was some metal involved in this implement, though I don’t recall why I thought that.

 

The biggest reason I’m calling out the twenty-five cent words is that they pull me out of the story. I, perhaps arrogantly, consider myself to be well read. It’s rare that I run across words in modern fiction that stop me.

 

The Shining was written, I assume, to entertain. When we write to entertain, I think we have an obligation to our readers not to dumb it down, but to make the writing approachable enough that we can create a mood that is understood.

 

Maybe it wasn’t written to entertain, and I need to suck it up that I didn’t know all the words. Perhaps it was intended to be a profound literary work, written in such a way as not to appeal to the masses.

Another day and time, we can get into why so many characters stutter in Stephen King’s books.