Blog – Kit Campbell Books

Freedom!

October books: Still 5/6 (I have 3 pages left in the sixth, so tomorrow, I guess, or later today if I have time)

I feel sooooo much better having thrown all my baggage for the year out the window. Now the sky is the limit, and I can do whatever I want without worrying about deadlines or quality or what have you.

And the timing works great as well. Saturday November starts, and though Nano is dead there are plenty of other groups willing to step into the void, and writing is always a good way to take a break from holiday related stresses.

The other thing about doing a Nano-esque “challenge” is that it will force me to focus on a single project and not do the insane thing I occasionally try where I’m attempting two or three or sometimes even four projects at a time.

(The issue is, of course, sometimes I can work on several projects at a time and everything is great. And so then I think I can do it all the time, and never take non-writing projects into account when planning things out.)

Like any time where I am free to do what I will, there are a number of options, which I have narrowed down from even more options. But the breakdown essentially is in a couple of categories:

Novel/novella vs. Short Stories

I can pick a novel/novella project and focus exclusively on that, OR I could do a short story project. The novels vary in genre and ideas, but the short stories are either: 1) horror shorts, or 2) related shorts set in the world as the high fantasy trilogy I’m currently querying. If I do the related shorts, I have a SkillShare class idea to go along with it.

A novel would better help me focus, but a short story project might scratch the itch of doing many ideas at once, which does tend to build up when nothing has been done in a while.

Something Fun vs. Something Hard

I know I talked on Monday about working on something silly to get my groove back, but if I’m going to be writing just to write and without the pressure of doing something well, maybe now is the time to work on a project that is complicated or will require me to try out new skills. In Nanos past I have often integrated something new into the project–writing from a non-protagonist point of view, or trying a new genre, or a new story structure–so this could continue that tradition. Since the point of Nano was always Quantity over Quality, this could be the perfect time.

A few years back I did a summer series about stories I would like to write some day, and two of my entries were about dual timelines and interlocking lives. Maybe now is the time.

Alternately, I have a couple of novel ideas that have been floating around for a looooong time, and maybe we should do one of them. Both of them will be related but new genres (steampunk, straight science fiction without the horror I normally do) so they could still work.

So, over the next few days, I’ll need to narrow things down. Novel or short stories, complicated vs fun. I’ll let you know what I chose next week, when we will hopefully be a few days into the writing and things will be going well.

See you next week, squiders!

I Think I Need a Clean Slate

October Books: 5/6 (One of Those Faces, do not recommend, and House of Shadows)

Been doing a bit of soul searching, squiders, because I was supposed to come back from Disney/Universal and get going on organizing all the writing I have Not Done over the past few months, and have I done that?

No.

But also I’m realizing that I’ve kind of dug myself a giant hole that I am potentially never going to get out of.

In terms of writing, this year has been Bad. I mean, I always misjudge how much I can get done, so I am always behind my schedule, but usually things are getting done, albeit slower than expected. But we’re not even getting less than expected done. We’re getting nothing done.

Normally at the end of the year I look back and I’m like, oh, yeah, I sold two shorts, and I wrote 30K on this draft, and I polished this draft and published this book. But this year? I’ve failed two different revision projects (and I’ve only just remembered that I was supposed to go back to the World’s Edge revision after the critique marathon), have written one short story and had none accepted anywhere, and have only really managed to get my submission materials ready for Book 1, even though querying has been even more draining than I remember it being. (We’re like 40 queries in with only rejections.) The morning pages died in September.

Now, when I first started writing seriously in my mid-20s, I didn’t write all the time. I’d normally do, say, NaNo in November, and then come back to it in January and write through May or so until the draft was done. And then just messing around in between. But now that I’m in my 40s, there’s also a feeling of running out of time.

So that’s fun.

Obviously things aren’t working. It’s probably a combination of life responsibilities, the state of the world, the projects themselves, the way querying makes you wonder if you can actually write at all, and a number of other things.

Adding on to all this madness is that I signed up for a challenge called Novel90 in, like, April, that has now started. The idea is you outline in October, write in November, and revise in December. Earlier in the year, when things were bright and new, this seemed like a great plan. But now it just feels like something else that I’m behind on.

So I think I’ve got to just knock everything off my plate. Clear the ol’ project list. Find something to do for fun, something that’s not going to make me feel guilty or behind, until I can get my feet back underneath me.

Now to figure out what that something is.

See you later, squiders.

Rollercoasters and Mindset

October Books: 3/6 (Death on the Nile and Rest in Pink)

Howdy, squiders! Hope you’re doing well. Me, I’ve picked up a cold or allergies or who knows, but definitely involves sneezing and coughing and all that jazz.

Last week we talked about peanut butter, and this week we’re on rollercoasters, and maybe next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.

Last week we spent eight days in a row at different theme parks, five at Walt Disney World (Typhoon Lagoon, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom) and three at Universal Orlando (Epic Universe, Universal Studios Florida, Islands of Adventure). It was A Lot. We averaged 16000 steps per day, and we basically rode everything at least once.

(Except at Epic Universe because the lines were so long that it wasn’t doable to do everything. Or even most things. The only thing we got to do in Super Mario World was the MarioKart thing, and the only reason we got to do that was because we got a single use express pass because we waited for an hour for a show in Harry Potter land that ended up getting cancelled.)

(That said, the MarioKart thing was awesome and I enjoyed it very much.)

(We got to do nothing in the Harry Potter land.)

(The theming is very pretty.)

(ANYway.)

At Disney we rode all the rides together as a family, but once we got to Universal there were a couple of rollercoasters I noped out of. I am afraid of heights, and I have ridden enough rollercoasters in my life to know that there is a threshold where something is no longer fun for me, and on rollercoasters it is typically the large, near vertical hills where you kind of hover at the top before plummeting down.

None of Disney’s rollercoasters have this. I don’t mind fast, or backwards, or upside down (though the Rock’n’rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios does make me nauseous), but those big hills are a no go. And I did go on the Tower of Terror even though I absolutely hate hate hate being dropped so I felt like I had made my sacrifices.

When we made the switch to Universal, I explained to the kids that there were three rollercoasters I would not be going on, and that was just going to be what it was. (For those who care, it was the Stardust Racers (which is the one that guy died on last month), the Velocicoaster, and the Hulk coaster.) I explained my reasoning, and that I had ridden other rollercoasters in the past like them, and that I was speaking from my own personal experience, and that the rest of the family was welcome to go on them if they so chose.

And they were like, yeah, of course, Mom, we understand.

Until they went on them. And then it changed to omg, it’s so fun, you have to go, it’s great.

And I said that it was great that they had enjoyed them, but still no.

(Also I went off and got iced coffee while they did them, which was great. It was quite hot.)

But it got me thinking how difficult it seems to be for people to accept that others may feel different than them in whatever situation. I don’t like rollercoasters with big, steep hills. They do. But even if I give in and ride the rollercoaster, it’s not going to change my opinion. It’s just going to make me feel bad.

But you see this all the time. With people goading friends who don’t drink, or don’t want to watch a particular show or movie, or don’t want to hang out with certain people or in certain places. With some of it, I think people take it as a judgement against them, like with the drinking thing, like the other person has made a moral decision against them and their actions instead of just stating a personal preference or need.

Some of it does probably come from wanting to share something that they enjoy with people they love.

And in some cases, yes, you give in to the peer pressure and, oh, hey, you do like it, and your friends were right.

It’s an interesting thing to consider. It’s certainly one thing to not bother to try something, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether you have experience with that and have made an informed decision for yourself or not.

Humans are weird.

How do you feel about rollercoasters, squiders?

A Bad Peanut Butter Analogy

Hey ho, squiders. How goes it? Spoooooookily?

One can only hope.

Today I have an awful analogy for you. It may pan out in the end, but I guess we’ll find out together.

I’m not the best at breakfast. Like many neurodivergent people, my ability to accurately predict how much time I need to get some place is often skewed. If I have fifteen minutes before I need to go, I will start something new and then go too long, or have issues switching gears, or have forgotten that going means I need to have to have gone to the bathroom and changed my shoes and brushed my teeth, and I am invariably late.

This has been an issue my whole life. As such, as a child and a teenager I just didn’t eat breakfast, because I was hardly ever ready to go in a timely enough fashion, and also I didn’t tend to be hungry anyway.

In college I rowed on the crew team, and I’d get up at 4 am, practice for an hour and a half, and then have to eat breakfast or I would die. (I had to eat 4000-ish calories a day to maintain my weight. Oh, those days.) That’s when I started to eat breakfast on a regular basis.

But breakfast and I still have kind of a weird relationship. It never feels like I’m doing it right, so I’ll do something for months or years and then switch it up to something new and, in theory, more healthy.

My current breakfast is a piece of brioche bread with creamy peanut butter on it. I don’t particularly like toast so that’s why it’s just bread, and peanut butter apparently has more protein in it than egg whites, which is what I was doing before. (Though not consistently, because Cooking and see above about time management and getting out of the house.)

So far this has been working fine. Generally I buy organic creamy Jif or something along those lines, which is great. But recently we acquired a Costco membership, so I picked up a 2 pack of Kirkland creamy organic peanut butter instead.

This, squiders, was a mistake.

You know what organic nut butters tend to do?

Separate.

The Jif never separates, I’m just saying.

Also the Kirkland just doesn’t taste as good.

Here we reach our terrible analogy. Two jars of discount peanut butter are not as good as a single jar of my normal peanut butter. We can equate that cutting corners is never the way to go, and you will regret it. (For months, because those jars are ginormous and take forever to get through.)

And, since I have to mix the peanut butter together every morning, it takes longer than it would have if I bought my normal stuff too (which does not separate).

(Is it organic, or natural? Not sure, actually. Whatever doesn’t have a ton of ingredients in it.)

So, yeah, sometimes trying to do things easier, or cheaper, or lazier, or whatever, just isn’t worth it in the end.

Hope your week is going well, squiders. See you next week!

Committing to Spooky Season

October Books: 1/6 (a collection of local ghost stories)

Life continues to be AAAHHHHH but the books are getting read, so that’s something, at least.

October, being the best month of the year (this year’s data being an outlier and not the norm), is of course also spooky time, which is the best time of the year.

(Here, have a remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6-ZGAGcJrk You’re welcome.)

Anyway, because everything continues to be a disaster (oh, and apparently I’m developing carpal tunnel, hooray hooray), I’m committing to only reading spooky reads this spooky season.

Ghost stories. Mysteries. Thrillers. Dark fantasy. Horror.

My first book of the month was a collection of ghost stories from some of the mining towns in the mountains here. I often buy folklore or ghost story collections when I travel, because I think nothing really encapsulates an area like its local legends. You can learn a lot, both historically and culturally. Interestingly, I bought this collection in a different mountain town than the one the book is about. (I have, since, visited the one the book is about. And went on a mine tour that then someone died on almost exactly a year later. Things to think about.) I guess the first town didn’t have its own ghost stories? That seems unlikely, all mountain towns are haunted, I’m pretty sure. Maybe they were just boring.

The second book I’m working on, also interestingly, was given to me by my oldest on that same trip to the first mountain town. It’s Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. I have seen the movie, though, so I do kind of remember what’s coming.

And I’m also reading a thriller called One of Those Faces because I can’t focus. And Unraveling which I can’t quite pinpoint a genre one, but does revolve around a serial killer.

And then I’ve got some gothic horror novels I’ve been collecting but have yet to read, so maybe those next?

Do you guys do anything for spooky season, squider?

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Howdy, squiders. Here it is, October, best month of the year and Spooky Season.

September Books: 5/7 (Heir Apparent, Love Your Enemy, and Drinks and Sinkholes)

So I need 14 more books for the year and have three months in which to read those books, so I’m setting a 6 book goal for October, because I have yet to actually read as many books in a month as I’m supposed to. But that gets me to 4 books each for Nov and Dec, which is where we’re supposed to be anyway.

Today I’m going to tell you a story.

When I was a kid, I lived near a small amusement park. There’d been grand plans to rival Disneyland when it had began, but that had never materialized, so instead of a massive complex of various lands, we had a fully-built out Old West town-themed main central shopping and dining district, and then your normal garden variety carnival rides like a tilt-a-whirl and bumper boats, a fancy restaurant with nice views, a train that went around the whole thing, and an alpine slide.

And the Music Hall.

The Music Hall was a local theater that served dinner beforehand upstairs, and then performed downstairs. We went fairly regularly and were very fond of it (when it went out of business when the amusement park closed for good, myself and several of my theater friends from high school made the trek back to see the final show, which was, as we shall get to, Sweeney Todd).

It was always the same actors and they were great, very funny and talented and excellent when they would invariably break character or something would go awry.

And, yes, my favorite show that they would do was Sweeney Todd. I suspect it was everyone’s favorite show, and it was always hilarious and I loved it a lot, and that’s no doubt why it was the last show they performed.

But, Kit, I hear you say, Sweeney Todd is not funny. It is, in fact, mostly horrifying.

As I know now but did not know then, they did their own version of the show. (They did it as a musical as well, but I’m not sure they didn’t make up some of their own songs. Or maybe all of them.) And while it follows the same storyline as the normal version, it was definitely played as a comedy, and that’s what I grew up knowing.

So when the movie came out, I said to my now-spouse that we should absolutely go see it, it was my favorite play, it was so funny, he was going to love it.

And he did love it! But I was horrified. What was this? Where was the silliness and the laughs? Where was the inspector sticking a fake eyeball on the end of his pipe?

(Also, the singing in that movie is Not Good, and now-spouse bought the soundtrack and listened to it incessantly, which was Very Annoying.)

There’s a lesson in here, but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s to not assume that your local favorite community theater group is doing shows the way the original playwright meant them to be done. Maybe it’s to watch the trailer of a movie before you go see it. Maybe it’s that nothing is ever as it exists in your memory.

It also feels like places like my little local amusement park no longer really exist. It was free to get in (but the rides cost money) so my friends and I were there all the time, talking to other friends who worked in various businesses, hitting the haunted house that arrived each autumn, window shopping, just chilling. Now everywhere is so expensive, there’s almost nowhere you can spend enough time at to really make your own.

Woop, this post got more nostalgic than I meant it to.

Anyway, I hope your week is going well, squider.

How Deep is This Hole Anyway?

September books: 2/7 (The Legacy)

Yo, squiders.

My emotions seemed to have stabilized, though we do seem to be anxious all the time this week, which is Not Fun and I need it to stop. Or maybe it’s time to find a therapist.

Old Job ended last Thursday, which was a bit sad but also needed to happen. I will miss my coworkers but I have already seen three of them since at various things so it’s not really goodbye. (Not socially, for Other Things.)

Also I’m still doing the Fat Bear Week bracket with them even though one of my bears has already lost. (Which reminds me, I’d better go vote.)

(I’ve picked 856 to win, so if you want to help me, you can vote here.)

(I know this is a hot take to go against both Chunk and Grazer but she’s a big bear and I think she could go all the way.)

My hope was that life would calm its ass down once we were down to a single job, but it has not. I can at least think about writing again, which is already a huge improvement, however.

(My youngest broke a tooth at school today, so I need to find coverage tomorrow so I can take her to the dentist. Yay.)

(On the other hand, something that was super stressful and which I had been procrastinating for a month ended up being relatively easy, so yay?)

I am considering, since things have been going so poorly on the writing front, pushing everything to the side and writing a horror novella.

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ve been here through my spouse’s cancer and COVID and the school shooting at my oldest’s school. And you’ll know that I find that when life starts kicking your butt, sometimes the right response is to stop trying to force things that aren’t happening and work on something else.

With COVID, I couldn’t do fiction at all and wrote a series of nonfiction writing guides. And the rest of the time, I turn to horror.

Horror is, I think, at least partially, a trauma response. For me, and maybe for others as well. The world is a dark and scary place, but writing horror allows you some control over the dark and scary. I’ve essentially got the whole thing plotted out in my head–the story came immediately. If I ever get a moment to breath, I’ll get it outlined and hopefully be able to start soonish.

But, really, I just need everything to slow down for a few days so I can get my ducks back in a row.

See you next week, squider.

Well, I Jinxed It

September Books: 1/7 (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)

(Also I forgot it was September for a hot minute.)

Last week I was so on top of things! And then this past weekend I had a volunteer commitment that took the whole weekend and broke my streaks, and I haven’t really recovered.

And then, yesterday, I had two family members experience a school shooting.

This is not the first, not the second, not even the third, but the fourth school shooting that has affected me and my family. (Though this was the worst, where they made eye contact with the shooter and were shot directly at.) America has a problem, and anyone who says otherwise has their head in the sand. Or is a horrible person.

I have thought through so many different ways to word this entry. But I am tired. And I feel defeated. How many times does someone need to go through this? How many children need to die?

Back when I’m back.

An Old Game

Hey ho, squiders, when was the last time I posted on all the days I’m supposed to in a week? WHO KNOWS

(In case it wasn’t clear–and it’s probably not–I post on Tues/Thurs every week.)

(In theory.)

I’m being a little more abstract with my morning pages lately, partially because sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to look up a prompt before I get going, and partially because, yeah, starting fifty million stories and finishing none of them may not be the best practice in the long run. So I’m doing some stream of consciousness, some writing exercises, and some brainstorming in addition to the stories.

But doing so reminded me of a game I used to play in middle and high school.

I started writing around when I was 8, and enjoyed a period of popularity in middle/high school when I had a series of short stories about the Evil Teachers’ Association (the ETA), all of which were punny and silly, and sometimes included actual teachers (with their permission).

(For example, there were pi fighters, which you couldn’t get an exact lock on.)

(Oh, yeah, these took place in space.)

(The ETA got a bit distressingly popular. I stopped sharing them outside my friends’ group when I found someone else had posted them online without my knowledge or permission.)

So, flush with success and the admiration of my peers, I started this game. “Tell me anything, and I can write a story about it.” My friends would come up with increasingly strange things (though the only one coming to mind right now is rotten tacos), and I would go off and then present them with a couple pages of story a few hours later.

I got writing practice. My friends got a fun story. Win win for all. As far as I know, no one ever disliked one of these stories. Or, at least, they were too kind to say so.

(In retrospect, this game is probably how I was victorious at the Chopped Writing Contest I did at MileHiCon a few years ago, despite the fact that I was going up against much more highly decorated authors, including a Hugo Award winner. It was set up like the Chopped cooking show, where each round we got new story elements that had to be incorporated into the story we had written previous rounds. I don’t remember everything, but there were definitely nuns, a space elevator, and Willy Wonka.)

The changes in the morning page routine reminded me of this game. I’m not sure this is a useful skill in the long run (unless one is routinely doing Chopped-style writing contests. Maybe for money) but it is, indeed, one I have.

I may start asking the kids for random ideas, here and there, and add the game back into the routine.

We shall have to see.

Hope your week/month is going well, squider, and I’ll see you next week!

For Some Reason September Feels Like a Ray of Hope

September books: 0/7

Hey-ho, squiders! Hope you’re doing well.

I’m feeling pretty darn good. Like…September rolled in, and all my goals were suddenly achievable again.

Which is ridiculous, because literally nothing has changed except the label on the calendar. I’m still working two jobs and have all the other life things going on that have been causing me stress.

I believe we’ve talked before about how time is arbitrary, and about how there’s really no reason to put any sort of stock in starting new projects or new things in a new year, or a new month, or even a new week (hence why so many resolutions fail).

So there’s no reason to be suddenly optimistic. Yet, the hope remains, that we shall get on top of things and be productive once more.

Maybe we’re getting used to the chaos? So the overwhelm isn’t quite so bad and everything feels calmer, even if it’s not.

I’ve once again laid out my goals for the month. Mostly these are the same from month to month–some number of books to read, a couple of Steam games that I will probably not play in favor of some other game instead, some writing goals, some life goals.

The way these typically go is I fixate on a couple of them, then occasionally remember the rest exist and try to stuff those in for a few days (with varying success), and then forget and go back to whatever I was fixating on again.

Again, no reason to suspect that this month will go any differently than the last three.

And yet…maybe it will?

It can’t hurt to hope.

See you later, squiders!

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