Rest of September Recap

So September got away from me and even though it was very busy, I don’t want to miss telling you about all the things that took place.

I had the amazing opportunity to meet Agustina Bazterrica on her North America Book Tour. Considering she lives a continent away in Argentina, I never fathomed having the opportunity to see her speak let alone meet her in the signing line. She was as genuine, funny, and full of warmth as her online presence. Which when seeing or meeting your heroes it’s a very pleasant relief to know that the virtual them matches the real-life them in some capacity. Agustina was gracious with my not-that-creative author question asking what advice she’d give a new author. How cliche, right? Her advice—read what you love to write and pay attention to the words, the story, the structure from a writer’s perspective. While I’ve done this to some degree in the past, I’ve been implementing it more, especially when it comes to word choice. Agustina choses every word very intentionally to have the most impact. As I read “The Unworthy” I found myself dissenting the linguistics and subsequently the impact of the chosen words.

Then there was the Story Beast Horror seminar. I was very fortunate to win a scholarship and took full advantage of everything that was offered from the amazing educators. Personally, I REALLY love horror. It’s cathartic, creative, and somehow everything there seems way worse than anything you could personally be dealing with. I’ve dabbled in writing horror or something with a horror-is vibe but the challenge for me has always been that some things I write are what I call “horror-adjacent”. They’re not obviously horror but the events in you were living them would be horrifying. I have a hard time putting what horror is vs isn’t in a box but I really loved the way they explained it. Specifically Taylor Groethe explained horror as a lens. Anything can be horror if the lens of horror is put upon it and that will dictate the way of which things are written. If the name sounds familiar it’s because their debut novel ( Hollow ) just came out, which after hearing their portion of the day I was hooked and immediately went to pre-order.

Finally in other news I applied and was accepted to a couple more podcasts. Currently I am scheduled to record with Book Shop Chats, Rebel Reads, Book Talk Babes, The Book Cellar Podcast, Cantina Book Club Podcast and Page to Picture. I of course always welcome more and I will be on the lookout for local events for authors, books, fairs etc.