I am so excited to be in the middle of a new/old project.
As you may or may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge where you try to hit a word count goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. Originally, I thought I would focus on the follow up to my Mary O’Reilly Paranormal Mysteries Kindle World story, Kinder Garden, but instead, I launched into a series of themed short stories, officially making me a NaNo Rebel.

Since the time I first joined the DeKalb Area Writers Group–gees, eight, nine years ago now?!–I have wanted to publish a collection of short stories. We would meet once a month and write a brief piece to a shared prompt. I really enjoyed the exercises and acquired a tidy collection of flash fiction (1000 words or less). Several of those stories have been published over the years online and in print.

When I left DAWGs and became a founding member of In Print Professional Writers Organization, I wanted to continue that monthly writing routine so I started The Prompt Club. TPC met for five years, and I collected even more stories.

I still haven’t put together a compilation.
But Chris Cacciatore, a member of The Prompt Club did! She recently published a collection of eight of her TPC stories in Weird, Wicked Tales: Creepy Stories for All Hollow’s Eve. 99 cents for 8 original shorts on Kindle! Download it now!

A while back, with DAWGs, one of the prompts was to write a story about a phobia. I ran with it. I wrote three or four shorts that month and decided I wanted to write more—13 to be exact, and publish them in a collection titled, Foe Be Us. Say it…yes, see? Word play! And it works because we are our own worst enemy, you know, nothing to fear but fear ourself. (I’m so clever, lol)

Chris’ launch got me thinking and that thinking coincided with NaNo. I’ve written seven new phobia stories since the month began. I’m having a lot of fun with these disturbing tales and since they are no longer limited to the thousand word count recommended for TPC, I get to flesh out the fears fully. My subjects range from the obscure Rasemaphobia to the much more common, Glossophobia, with a variety in between.

NaNo is a fast and furious technique with few rules and little editing, so once the month is complete, I will still have a lot of work to do before these stories are ready for public consumption.

But never fear (pah dum pum), Foe Be Us is coming…

Here is the link to Otis, one of the phobia stories I wrote for DAWGs about Cloutaphobia. It’s been published several times and will not be in the final collection. Because it doesn’t have to be! I have so many stories in progress, there may very well be two volumes.

And that’s what I’m working on NaNow.

Thank you folks, I’m here all week.
(I crack myself up.)