I See Decaying People

Twisted Tongue Issue 12 is now available (yay!) So if you want to see how my disturbing novella about marauding, intelligent zombies ends, go buy a paper copy or download a free PDF.

Remember, undead is a state of mind

I’m a Print Whore

I’ve had a good, busy week this week. So maybe this won’t be another depressing post (here’s hoping!) I received my contributor’s copy of Ballista and it looks great. It was nice to see my name next to some really decent stories. I particularly enjoyed Between Mist and Cloud by Alison J. Littlewood. It’s completely different to anything I write, there’s no full-on gore, but it’s really creepy. Me, I like writing about blood… and guts… and sometimes the consumption of body parts. I’m a visual visceral hoochie. Oh, and my name’s on the front cover! Yes, all the contributors’ names are on the front cover, but it still gave me a cheap thrill

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is also out, along with part three of The Undead Alliance. I thought my novella would be ending with this issue, so was pleasantly surprised when I realised there will be a part four published before the end of the year. Very cool.

Both these magazines are professionally put together, well edited and full of excellent writing (if I do say so myself, except I don’t want to because I’ll sound like a big-headed fool…), which is more than I can say for certain other publications I’ve had the misfortune to be associated with. I put up with my name being spelt incorrectly the first time, because I know better than most that typos happen. The second time however, even after my extremely polite email trying to rectify the matter (which was obviously ignored), made me more than a little angry. It’s Barnard-Smith, not BERNARD-SMITH for gawd’s sake. Learn it, use it, it’s my goddamn name, feel free to wear it out.

New writing is going well too, although I’ve been hard at work on something very different from the carefully planned, meticulously sculpted novel I thought I would be hard at work on. There is a character from my first novel who just wouldn’t leave me alone until I continued his story. I have a weakness for tall dark men with fangs and an unholy appetite for blood, so obviously I obliged him. I thought I would take this new story as far as I could before running out of steam (I already knew what happened in the first three chapters before I started it), then go back to the meticulously planned novel and work on that until I had more scenes for the new story. Well, I’m into chapter four now and I’m still going. Writing about vampires is just too much fun. Maybe I’ll finish that grand novel about the labyrinthine city next year…

Beware of Zombies

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is out which means that the first two parts of my lil zombie novella, The Undead Alliance, are now published   If you want to check out the awesomeness for yourself, you can either purchase a paper copy of the magazine or download the free PDF. here.

How cool is this cover?!

I also found out today that a story I wrote about an imprisoned werewolf called The Lycanthrope Technician has been published in Dark Fire Fiction, and it was chosen as this issue’s Feature Story!  Check it out…

Vampires, zombies, werewolves… If I write a story about a Frankenstein-ey monster I’ll have the whole set!

In other Caroline-related news… I’m becoming scarily obsessed with getting a new tattoo.  My lack of money and a disapproving husband have yet to deter me (a girl can dream, after all.  That’s what writers are good at).  But not just any tattoo, oh no.  I want a fan-boi’s wet dream Lord of the Rings inspired tattoo.  I love hobbits and I’m not ashamed to admit it!  I want a tattoo like this…

Or this…

(Minus the goatee beard )

But not this.  Dear God, not this…

This tattoo would give me hideous nightmares.  Me and any innocent bystander who saw it.

Is it over-the-top-geek to want a Lord of the Rings-esque tattoo?  Maybe…  Now I just have to work out the Elvish for “I heart the Shire”…

Sometimes, Bob Geldof is Wrong

I wrote a novella a while ago (feels like a long while ago, now) called The Undead Alliance.  And I sort of loved it.  It was the first time I had ever coherently plotted a piece of writing (I was mid-way through the first draft of Dunraven Road at this point, and seriously wishing I had given more thought to the rapidly spiralling plot holes) – and I was amazed at how quickly the story spun itself out once I got to work on it.  If I’m truthful, much as I love the finished product I have never found writing easy.  I stop and agonise over a single sentence for half an hour or more.  I look out of the window.  I stare into space.  Only after much lengthy and profound procrastination do the words begin to flow.  That wasn’t the case with The Undead Alliance.  It was only a strange little story about zombies… tongue in cheek, really… but writing it was largely effortless, and immensely enjoyable.  Plus there’s a zombie sex scene (almost), an eye gouging using a letter-opener and an undead, screaming head on a stick.  What’s not to enjoy?!

In private, I called this my ‘Zombie Love Story’. For who could ever love a zombie? One with a bad maggot infestation and breath like fetid cabbage? (Maybe a blind person with no sense of smell…)

Much as I enjoyed writing this story, I began to think I would never find a home for it.  It’s very hard to sell novella-length work – too long for most short fiction venues and too short for regular book publishers.  Well, howdy do, I only received an email this morning to confirm my strange little zombie novella has been accepted for publication in Twisted Tongue Magazine.  I was just as excited to be included in the magazine itself as I was to have finally blagged The Undead Alliance into print.  Twisted Tongue is a humungous horror fiction magazine, and you can download it as a free PDF.  I’ve been a fan for ages, and now I get to see my name among all the others on the (very long) list of contents.  Giggity giggity, oh yeah!

So today, I do like Mondays.  Cool.