K.E. Skedgell

...of sorts. It's called the Samhain Visions Cover Story Contest where you write a story, poem, or essay about the photo on the cover of Gaelsong's catalog. So I wrote a short story (the name of it is "Betty") and I think it's an okay little story. I need more votes though to win the big prize (hint hint) since the stories are voted on by your peers. Hence, it doesn't really matter how good the story is, or how well it's written, just as long as you can get enough people to vote for your story. Anyway, the voting runs until the 29th of October and you can vote on a story once a day every day until the the voting ends. I'm just looking to be somewhere near the top, I guess, and not dead last. I have ten votes as of writing this. Hope I get more. In other news... My progression on my Lake One Gothic romance novel, or novella, or whatever it'll be, is coming along slowly but surely. I have over 12k words written, some of which I'm sure ...

I haven't made a new post in over two months for good reasons. Not much has happened. Well, maybe a little. I have a job now, which being jobless was really taking its toll on my sanity. It's nice to finally have some money rolling in. I've been in a depression funk for quite some time and it still has yet to lift, but it's getting better. Not enough for me to get back into my writing, though I did start on a new project, sort of. I have about 3000 words written, The direction I wish for it to go is horror on the Gothic side, but since I'm a 'by the seat of the pants' type of writer, it could turn out to be anything. The working title is Lake One , and here's the gist of it: During the summer of 1923, strange murders plague the "friendly village" of Nashville, Michigan, and the residents don't know who could be behind the deaths. Young women and children are found drained of blood laying on the bank beside an old boathouse on Lake One...

QUILTBAG. What does that mean? Here's the definition according to the Queer Dictionary : QUILTBAG is an acronym. It stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer. It is meant to be a more inclusive term than GLBT/LGBT and to be more pronounceable (and memorable) than some of the other variations or extensions on the GLBT/LGBT abbreviation. When I first came across this acronym, I thought, what the hell does QUILTBAG mean? It can't mean a bag made out of a quilt, because, you know, silly me, that's the first thing that popped into my mind. So I looked it up and it all made sense to me. The acronym itself is befitting, like a quilt it represents patches of the different aspects of queer life, all wrapped up into one acronym like a bag. The representation of queer folks in entertainment has grown in the last several years as the world becomes more accepting: from books to TV and mo...

I haven't done a historical post in a while, so I thought since the start of book two in my Draculești series begins here, I will talk a little about Visegrád, a town in northern Hungary that holds one of King Mátyás Corvin's palaces. Visegrád Coat-of-Arms. Visegrád (Veesh-ay-grahd) is located about twenty miles (32 kilometers) north of Budapest on the east bank on the bend of the Danube River. The area is filled with dense forests and rolling hills and mountains, and from the top of the great hill shadowing the town one can take in the beautiful views from the partially reconstructed ruins of the thirteenth century fortress. Visegrád was first settled as a Roman military camp in the 4th century in a place called Sibrik Hill, located a little north of the current upper castle. The camp was later abandoned in the 5th century and a castle was built in its place, and thus the town had formed. In 1009, Visegrád was first mentioned as a county town and the chief town of an...

W ith the passing of the craptastic year that was 2012, I'm going into this year with a more optimistic outlook. Yeah, I was like that last year, had plans to finish the first draft of my novel by summer, have it edited by the end of the year and ready for querying by this time. Having my novel finished was my one big goal and I was positive I could accomplish it. Then shit happened, as it always does, and for much of the year I had dealt with a bout of depression. I didn't finish the first draft (though I am one chapter away from finishing it), I certainly didn't edit it, and querying for representation, well, you know. But this year, gosh darn it, I will have this book finished. I will have it edited and read by Betas, and I will start querying. And I will begin work on the second book of the series as well. I have chunks of it written already because I had thought I would be able to merge the two halves together into one. Nope. Not gonna happen. By the time I finish...

S o I took a break from writing yesterday because I had the itch to draw something, but when I got pencil in hand and paper on desk, I couldn't get my hand to draw what my mind was seeing. Hate that! I wanted to draw this image of my character Izsák, servant boy to my main character Vlad, sitting in a window seat gazing through the window with a leg bent upon the seat of the bench and his foot tucked beneath his other leg, holding onto a pillow. I can still see it in my mind, but I'm so out of practice with drawing the human form, which used to come so easily, that I couldn't get the position right. I drew comic book characters back in the day, all the time, and that was how I got used to drawing the human form in many positions. Nope, couldn't do it today. I made several sketches trying to get it right but I gave up and went to trying to draw his face. Key word, trying . Eventually, though, I hit the jackpot, sort of, and came up with this profile sketch: Izsák, ...

I 'm pretty proud of myself tonight. I finished a chapter within two days, about 4300 words total. That's fantastic for me, since it usually takes me a week to squeeze out a chapter or two. I got two chapters done in less that a week, 8,900 words in all. I'm getting closer and closer to the end of this first book in my series. If I can keep this momentum up, barring nothing coming along and ruining my mojo like usual, I should have the first draft finally,  FINALLY , done by the end of the month. The next chapter I'll be starting had pretty much been pre-written a year ago when the idea for it came to me and I wrote it out so I wouldn't forget it. Most of it will remain much the same as I had originally written it without a whole lot of major tweaking, so assuming I am left alone to work on it tomorrow (the boyfriend will be home from work, need I say more) I should be able to finish it and begin the following chapter (eh, he'll be out in the garage all day, I ...

So, I got tagged for this about a month ago by writer  Katie S. Pendergrass   but I had been too lazy to participate. Shame on me! But now I will finally participate.  What is your working title of your book? Draculești has been the working title for many a moon, but since my story is going to be a series, I thought it might be better suited as the over-arching title for the series, and have individual titles for each book. For the first one which I'm still working on, the idea for the title just came to me the other night: Draculești - Blood of the Dragon, Tooth of the Wolf . Where did the idea come from for the book? Way back in the day when I was a young lass (19), I had an idea to write a book on how the son of the Impaler came to be a vampire and his vampire exploits after his "turn". It was only meant to be about a hundred page story, instead it grew into a crappily written 190,000 word novel. At the time I thought it was some pretty go...

 Lakeview Cemetery, Nash ville MI. Photo by Rhonda Cook   V ampires have been a passion of mine for twenty plus years, ever since my friend Jennifer introduced them to me in our early teens (and to Ouija boards and ghosts and other fun things). Her and I would go for walks through the local cemetery, a place we often hung out since it was so quiet and peaceful, and one of the prettier small town cemeteries I've been in, but I could just be partial. Another friend, Samantha, and I often walked the cemetery too, and it was her and I who wrote vampire stories together and stories about many other things, spook and non-spook alike. Something about the mythical creature has always allured me, perhaps it is my fear of blood (and needles) that, in some ironic way, has kept me intrigued with them. Or maybe it's their immortality, or strong yet weak nature. Maybe because they are denizens of the night. Whatever it is, I don't think about why I like them, I just do. Lake...

I 've been a member to a couple of writing forums for a few years now, and one common complaint I see over and over again is the lack of non-writer's understanding of how hard of work writing really is. Sure, anyone can put words to paper, or to computer screen, but there is more to writing a coherent story than where Johnny did this and Susan said that. It involves more than just an understanding of basic grammar and spelling and to be able to string together words so the reader understands what is going on in the story. For some people, that alone may be enough of a challenge, to write a story that makes a smidgen of sense. But for writers, it goes much deeper. It's not about writing sneakily placed metaphors, nor so much as delivering a message to the reader. It is about emotion, making the reader feel and see and touch and smell and taste what the characters in the writer's story does, to make them feel sadness, despair, happiness and love. To take the reader from ...