JM Bask

writes and writes...

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Fits and Starts

October 29, 2022 /

It’s almost NaNoWriMo time.  National Novel Writing Month, that is.  I think 2010 was the last time I participated.  I ‘won’ and hit the fifty thousand word mark…but I never finished the novel, nor was I even close.

Why was 2010 the last time I participated?  Well, in early April of 2011 I got married and, by the time November rolled around, I was about six weeks pregnant with my daughter…and puking so much I could not do anything but sleep or be sick most days.  And most Novembers since have been the same. Not morning sickness but dirty diapers or a stomach bug going through the house or teething or…

It’s hard to write sometimes when you can only write in fits and starts. Even now, with my kids 8 and 10, I have spent the last half of October dealing with multiple sicks days (one cold, one sinus infection, one fever from a vaccination, and one case of vomiting). And November will be more of the same, with a holiday thrown in and, likely, at least one trip out of town, and Christmas shopping and all that.  (Oh, and school, can’t forget school.  I’ve got at least one boring essay to write).  But I’ve got 20,000 words of a novel-thingie written that I told myself, way back in summer, that I would finish by the end of the year.

And then I didn’t write a damn word from August to mid-October.  So I’m in on the WriMo this year (kind of).  I won’t be doing the traditional NaNoWriMo (since that would require me to start a new project).  But I’ve set a goal to get another 30,000 words on the book by the end of November.  I’m probably going to have to write it around the aforementioned holiday and weekend trip and a sickness or two (and that boring essay). I might only get a few hundred words one day, and have to cram in a few thousand on a free Saturday.

It’s going to have to be done in fits and starts.  But I don’t like to lose, even to myself, so I guess it’s going to be a damn busy month.

A Walk in the Dark

October 9, 2022 /

This is the first fiction I’m posting to my website. I don’t know if I’d call it a story; it’s more a vignette or a slice of life served fantasy-style.  This was inspired by my fear of going out to the mailbox after dark. I don’t know why, but it always feel like something is following me. Anyway, enjoy. 

Alex shivered as she stepped out onto her porch. The only light came from the bulb dangling above her, causing her shadow to slink into a small circle around her feet. The air was thin and dry, silent except for the mile-away hum of cars out on the main road. The brick mailbox at the curb seemed farther than mere yards, a boxy shadow out in the gloam. She loathed walking down to the street after dark, but with night falling early this time of year, Alex didn’t have much choice. Pulling her thick cardigan tight around her shoulders, she took the handful of steps down to the path, her heels clopping on the stone.

No sooner had she moved out of the glow of the porch light and into the dark of the yard than a noise shook free in the shadows around her, an echo of soft steps.

“Hello?” Alex turned and peered into the dark between her house and the neighbors. The frame of the brick ranch and the shapes of shrubbery stood outlined in shades of gray. Nothing moved or breathed or shifted. It’s too quiet, her mind whispered. Nothing is that quiet.

Alex started walking again, her boots clapping the cement. A sound echoed behind her, just out of rhythm with her own steps.

She spun around again. Nothing. Putting a hand to her forehead, she peered at the darkness, as if blocking out what little light there was would somehow make the shadows sharper. Alex glanced up at the sky, coated in a blue-black shroud of wooly clouds.

She folded her body inward, against the icy air, and whatever was creeping after her. It was probably nothing, but her mind whispered about all the things that came out at night. Werewolves in the bushes. Alex glanced at the neighbor’s boxwoods, as still as everything else. Witches up the street. Her eyes flicked up the cul-de-sac, to the darkened windows of a single house. Ghosts don’t have to haunt houses, you know. She shuddered and ran.

Alex darted across the lawn, her footsteps soggy sounding on the damp, mossy grass. More wet steps bounced around her, first to the left, then to the right. This time she didn’t bother to turn but kept her eyes on the stone box at the curb, and counted in her mind how far she had to go. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Witches. Now, ten. Werewolves. Just five to go. The sounds moved behind her, and Alex prayed it was just a trick of the air, so thin and cold, that maybe it had nothing better to do than mimic her every sound.

At the mailbox, she stopped with one hand on the metal door and all her breath held inside her. Nothing on the lawn, nothing in the street, but the blurred and overlapping shadows of bushes and cars and trees and shrubs. Alex listened. Only her heartbeat and the low hum of the suburbs came back to her ears, the faint buzz of streetlights and far-off cars and electricity that were only ever noticed when it was taken away by power outages. She let her breath gush out, a white ghost drifting up into the dark.

There was no one. Just your fear. And witches. And werewolves. Ghosts, too, probably. In this silence, she would have heard something. Alex opened the mailbox, and took out a slim pile of white envelopes, their paper a bright spot in the gloom.

Then, she sprinted back across the lawn, the terrified voice in her head, and her panting breath drowning out her own footsteps and anything else that might be padding along behind her.

Only as she scrambled back up the stairs and into the glow of the porch light did she let herself slow down. Her shadow resolved itself behind her as she moved out of the darkness.

Alex noticed it then, solidifying below her on the patterned brick of the porch, as it formed itself back into the simple shape of her and reattached itself to her feet. She opened the front door, the warm foyer light throwing the shadow into stark relief. It flinched at the brightness. Looking down at it, she sighed.

“You promised me you would stay inside while I got the mail.”

The shadow shrugged, innocently.

“You know you scared me half to death following me across the lawn like that.”

It nodded, too enthusiastically for Alex’s liking.

“Do it again,” she scolded. “And I’ll get the witch five houses down to sew you on so you can’t escape.” The shadow shrunk down, head-shape hung sheepishly.

“Okay. Promise me you won’t do it again?” A curt nod. “Alright, let’s go in and watch TV with the lights low so you can wander around. I know you’ve barely stretched yourself today.” The shadow fell in stride with Alex as she stepped into the bright light of the foyer and shut the door.

 

END

Review: Wendy, Darling by A. C. Wise

October 8, 2022 /

I hadn’t heard of A. C. Wise before a few months ago, when I read her story, “The Amazing Exploding Women of the Early Twentieth Century” in issue 122 of Apex Magazine. I loved it and started following her on Twitter, where I found out she would soon be releasing her first novel. I preordered it on a whim and I’m so glad I did.

Wendy, Darling brings us back into the life of Wendy, from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, just has Peter has returned many years later to steal away her daughter, Jane. From there, the novel follows three lines: Wendy searching for her daughter in 1931; Jane, trapped in a darker Neverland with an ominous Peter Pan; and Wendy in 1917-1920, trapped in an institution by John and Michael, after refusing to give up her belief in the flying boy and his magic island.

The novel is well-paced and immediately gripping, but the thing I applaud the most is how Wise has made Barrie’s characters her own. She managed it beautifully, making Wendy, Peter, and the rest familiar, yet darkly different. Peter is both the boy we remember, and something shadowy and sharp-toothed, with danger lurking just behind his glinting eyes. And anyone who wanted to believe in fairytales as a child (or adult), whose imagination has ever run wholly wild, will empathize with this Wendy, unable to let Neverland go, even at the cost of hospitalization and a strained relationship with her brothers. The soft Wendy we knew becomes fierce and motherly, but in a real and raw way, not the playful pretend of her childhood. There a few other familiar characters prancing through the pages of Wendy, Darling (and some new ones to fall in love with), but I’ll leave you to discover them, yourself.

Not only is this new Neverland cast in sinister shadow and dark magic in a way that draws the reader in and brings them into its mythology and magic, but Wise also skillfully brings the reader into the adult lives and relationships back in London in a way that is heartfelt, deep and true. I’m not much of a crier, but a few of the scenes between Wendy and Michael brought me to the edge of tears.

If you’re hoping for a wonderful fantasy in A. C. Wise’s Wendy, Darling you’ll get it. You’ll also get a touch of horror and a bit of romance. It’s a story of siblings, a mother-daughter tale, and also a retelling of the dark side of fairy tales, of the terrible things that can happen when we let childhood go…or the things that happen when we don’t. This book has something for everyone who ever believed in magic, in monsters in the closet, or anyone who has longed for love and childhood lost.

Find Wendy, Darling in paperback, eBook or audiobook here.

Map Days

October 8, 2022 /

There are some days you trudge through your writing and each word on the page takes effort and consideration.

There are the good days where you get in the spirit, and the writing flows freely enough to keep the fingers typing or the ink flowing.

And then there are map days. Map days are when the story unfolds before you like a map, and you’ve got to jot down the directions as quickly as possible before the paper blows away.  These are the days where the ideas come so fast you have to go from actually writing the story to just sketching the quick details of each scene before they fade away.

For me, it’s like watching a movie in my head, and I’ve only got a few seconds (and words) to describe each scene. These are my favorite days because, when they happen, they usually unfold the rest of the story for me, so even if I don’t finish it that day, all the directions are already laid out, like a paint-by-number just waiting to be filled in.

Today was a map day for me.  The kids were away at the grandparents, and my husband was chugging away downstairs on his own work.  I’d done the dishes, folded some laundry, worked a little on my day job, and had just finished Neil Gaiman’s last Masterclass video, and thus had no excuses keeping me from writing.  So, I grabbed the story I’d been working on the night before and told myself I had an hour.

It was hard at first.  It’s always hard to start writing, at least for me.  Inspiration always seems to come when I’m as far as possible from being able to pick up a pen. When I sit down to write, it seems like a chore at first and I’m often talking myself into starting (even though deep down it’s something I __want__ to do).  By the end, it’s usually something I’m glad I took the time to do.

I chugged out a few paragraphs. I crossed out a few lines. I did it again. Crossed out an entire paragraph.  Then, suddenly I was on page two, and then on page three, and then my hour was nearly up, and the map was before me and I was scribbling the rest of the story on sticky notes as fast as it came to me, which was pretty damn fast. I didn’t have time to write the whole first draft, but the whole story is there, just waiting for the minor details.

Days like this are why I keep writing.  Days like this are __magic__.  Writing is the only thing that makes me feel this way.  Writing is the only craft I’ve ever done that gives me a feeling of __foresight__.  I painted and drew for years, but I was never able to ENVISION finished paintings the way I can sometimes envision stories. It really does feel like a muse is guiding me, like I’m pulling something from the other side of a veil.

I never know when my map days are going to come.  With some stories they don’t, and with some they come when I least expect it. (I barely liked this story when I started it yesterday, today I love it).

I hope every writer or artists reading this has some map days of their own.

Review: Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

October 8, 2022 /

Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song is technically horror, and if you go in expecting as much, you might be disappointed.  To me, the novel was a dramatic story of friendship and persverance that happened to have a horrific setting. As always, with Tremblay, the story was also much more literary than the average horror novel.

The book begins in Massachusetts as a violent and fast-acting strain of rabies is starting to spread through the human and animal population. Our main character, Natalie (“Nats” for short), eight months pregnant, loses her husband very suddenly to an attack by an infected man and is bitten herself during the altercation. She reaches out to her best friend, pediatrician Ramola “Rams” Sherman, to help her get medical attention. From there, the story traces the two in the short few hours that follow.

Survivor Song was much more down to earth and less supernatural than the previous Tremblay books I’ve read (Disappearance at Devil’s Rock and Head Full of Ghosts). Because of this and, perhaps, because I also found it more drama than horror, the story seemed slow to start, other than the nerve-wracking prelude. However, even with the slow beginning, the bond we have with Nats and Rams makes it worth it by the very end.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

The best part of Survivor Song, for me, was actually the appearance of two ‘randos,’ Josh and Luis, whom Tremblay fans may recognize from Disappearance at Devils Rock. They sweep in to assist the women about two-thirds of the way in and take the reader on a little detour of their own, before departing from the story. If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading Disappearance before this book to better understand that side journey.

Unfortunately, this is also why Survivor doesn’t rate as highly for me. I found myself more engaged with these familiar side characters than I was to Nats and Rams by the same point in the story.  That said, the climax of Survivor, though expected, is still brutal, touching and well-told in a way that makes the climb to get there worth it.

Out of the three Tremblay novels I’ve read thus far, Survivor Song may rank third, but a novel that can keep you engaged–even when the eventual ending is inevitable from the beginning of chapter one–is worth the read.

 

Coming Soon…

October 7, 2022 /

Believe it or not, I plan to post stories here that I write.  You don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. I most certainly can’t make you.  But if you DO read them, I hope you like them. If you don’t like them, please don’t tell me.  Like most writers, my ego is very, very fragile.

Man, this is gonna take some work.

October 7, 2022 /

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. A website that is.

Isn’t that the damned thing about doing anything these days? If I want to be a successful writer, not only do I have to write stories and then edit those stories (I really hate that part) and then send out those stories, but I’ve also got to do this kind of stuff. Write about writing. Write about my life. I’m probably going to have to start an Instagram at some point. Boo.

Well, here’s the first post. Hopefully, it won’t be the last. Please excuse the mess while I’m figuring out how I want this thing to look.

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