Sage advice.

While I queried, i wrote the first draft of a speculative upmarket novel.

And now I’m starting a new project in the genre I was signed with, paranormal and fantasy romance. This cozy portal fantasy romance has been a blast to plan and write.

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How do I plan a book? Great question, let me show you (with a made up example that someone is welcome to steal!):

Step 1 — Something totally random will spark an idea. Maybe it’s a random comment or observation. Maybe it’s a book I read that I wish had been for a different audience or had a different main character. Regardless, it will fester in my mind until I’m compelled to tell everyone around me about it and finally write it down. So, I typically start with a premise. Ex. What if a 200 year old shadow daddy retired and opened a tavern?

Download the Story Premise & Character Arc Template

Step 2 — Even the most commercial books feel most coherent with a theme. A theme is the BIG TRUTH a novel tries to convince you of. The novel usually begins by showing you the BIG LIE that opposed the truth. Ex. The best antidote to having done evil is to commit to doing good. The lie would be, if I ignore my past mistakes, they’ll go away.

Step 3 — Decide who the right character is to tell this story. What is their personal version of the truth and the lie? What do they think they want? What do they need to get to learn the truth? What do they sound like in the story? Ex. Solomon Shadesmar is a gruff tavern owner with a dark past. He serves his customers diligently but reveals little about his past. His voice is self-deprecating with an undercurrent of dry humor.

Step 4 — What are the logistical details? Best POV to tell this story? Word count? Genre. Ex. This 90,000-word cozy fantasy romance will be told in first person past tense.

Once I have these pieces in place, the story tends to tumble out of me in spontaneous interruptions throughout the day. I collect those into a beat sheet template, which I’ll share next time.

Happy writing!

When I was twenty-four weeks and five days pregnant with Westley, my partner and I packed up our truck, picked up burgers and shakes, and drove out to a cabin an hour from our hometown of Seattle. We were greeted by long-overdue hugs, and the excited chatter of old friends with a year’s worth of stories to tell over a short weekend. Four hours later, I went downstairs to rest, feeling unwell.

It turns out, I wasn’t just unwell, I was in labor. At 2:00 a.m., Dan rushed me to a rural community hospital forty-five minutes away. Luckily, they had a birth center. Westley was one pound twelve ounces when he was born and just thirteen inches long. He was flown to the Level 4 NICU in Seattle, and I sat alone in a hospital room, too shocked to fully process what had happened.

We spent four months in the NICU, including the day before and after our wedding. While I held my tiny baby, lights low and monitors beeping, I escaped into the fantasy worlds I had loved as a teen: Pern, Earthsea, Hogwarts.

Westley’s birthday was the day my former life ended. Rock climbing, stained glass, board game nights, sewing, rose gardening—all the things that felt like they made me me ended the moment that little nugget came into our lives.

He needed everything from us. Doctor and therapy appointments, checklists of developmental milestones, oxygen sensors and respiratory equipment—these became my singular focus. There was no time in my day or space in my brain for anything but him.

As Westley grew taller and stronger, I eventually returned to the classroom where I have taught middle school science for the past fifteen years. We also worked up our courage to have another kid, but complications from a miscarriage landed me with a rare, painful condition. I spent a year doing exactly three things: teaching, parenting, and advocating to a half dozen specialists until I had a successful surgery. Then came the second miracle of this story—I finally got pregnant with our second boy, Anson.

Against all odds, Anson was born full term and totally, perfectly, typical. When the fog of sleep deprivation lifted, I filled our days with long walks and audiobooks. Bram Stoker and Rebecca Yarros. N.K. Jemisin and Sarah J. Maas. It was during my fifth month of parental leave, while I snuggled a baby that would only nap in my arms, that I thought to myself, Could I do this? Could I write something like this?

I wrote all ninety thousand words of my first novel on my phone while holding an infant. And a part of me that I had long since forgot about woke up. A part of me that creates. A part of me that dreams. A part of me that sets a goal and works doggedly toward it. A part of me with passion and aspiration and a touch of ego.

While I edited the second draft of my first novel, Westley, four years old now, asked if he could write his name on my laptop. I let him, but then said I wanted to continue my task.

“But mom, what are you doing?” he complained. “You just go to work and take care of us!”

No, buddy. I don’t just do those things. At least, I used to do all sorts of adventurous, curious, wonderful things, before motherhood demanded so much of me that I couldn’t find two neurons to rub together at the end of the day. I realized, my boys need to see me as a multi-dimensional human. They need to see that women are whole people—curious, ambitious, creative—far beyond their roles in a family.

And I deserved to find myself again.

My stories span high- to low-fantasy, second world to contemporary. And while I’ll always have a soft spot for stories with dragons, my three standalone novels share a common thread: because I lost and rebuilt my identity during those early years of parenthood, my stories follow women in times of huge transition, as they find their power, passion, and voice.

A few days ago, Westley and I were driving home from preschool, talking about Jupiter’s moons. Westley asked me, “Mama, do you have big ideas?”

I smiled. “I sure do, buddy.”

He smiled back through the rearview mirror. “I have big ideas, too. That’s why we love each other.”

I asked you all where I should go for good horror short stories and man did you deliver!

This post will serve as a first attempt to study what makes a horror short story effectively, well, horrifying. I imagine that horror is sort of like a good spicy romance scene—it’s deeply personal and no two readers will enjoy exactly the same thing. It may read like a Freshman English essay. Feedback is welcome. Here are my takes on a few SubStack short stories that really landed well for me.

What Works

After Dusk

Blood Orange, Vanilla, and Musk

I’ve always been fascinated by scent. I love how it attaches itself to our emotions. I’ve written about it before on Substack, in short stories in the past, but wanted to visit it again. I nearly didn’t press publish on this one but I promised myself I’d share a short story every month this year, so here we are. If you stick around to read it, know that…

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a year ago · 15 likes · 3 comments · J.J. Walker

Why it works

’s short story starts with character empathy. From the opening lines we feel a sense of sorrow and sympathy for our main character, which builds with each line. The horror comes in as a soft breeze of the grotesque, just enough to twinge in your gut without overpowering.

Consume, The Blog

Nelly's Note

Iona loved the sound of her mother’s spirit. She could tell that the musical composition of it was right. When she was 11, she tried to explain to her mother exactly what her soul sounded like: river water rushing over mossy rocks. Her mother nodded and smiled the way mothers do when they don’t want to hurt your feelings or tell you something you said w…

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a year ago · 18 likes · 9 comments · NJ Fiction

Why it works

leads with a sensory hook that is both immersive and relatable. She puts words to the intuition that we all have for the “rightness” of others, and then grows it beyond reality into something truly creepy. By the time the horror hits, it’s deeply personal and it hits hard.

Automatic Writer

King Flea

I watched the tiny black dots, one moment climbing through the hairs on my arm, the next lost in the pea-green shag next to Nathan’s bed. Why they didn’t suck my blood right then and there, I don’t k…

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a year ago · 60 likes · 58 comments · Sean Thomas McDonnell

Why it works

starts the story with garden-variety revulsion. I got the creepy-crawlies before anything out of the ordinary happened, so my body was primed for the scares that fell scene after scene. The tension stays high throughout the story—bolstered on by sensory details and breadcrumbs of symbolism. McDonnell utilizes both surprise and suspense in this story, the unexpected and the horribly expected.

Loser’s Fiction

From the Teeth of Sleep

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a year ago · 22 likes · 23 comments · Keith Long

Why it words

The foreshadowing! This short story by is a series of classic elements (creepy cabin, autonomous rocking chair) delivered with impeccable timing. Crisp prose are easy to follow and the imagery is visceral. When the horror arrives, it’s no surprise, but the suspense was so well developed that it’s terrifying.

Only Child Originals

Holdfast

The peddler had a secret smile…

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a year ago · 46 likes · 49 comments · Garen Marie

Why it works

patiently weaves a haunting and beautiful tale, taking the necessary time to build a world that feels rich and detailed and a main character that is at once relatable and naive. Even when the climax hits and the story ends, the mystery remains. This story sticks with you even after it’s over.

What Doesn’t Work

About half of the stories I stumbled on, I abandoned within the first 20%. Here are some of the things that prompted me to bail:

• Too many characters introduced without reason for emotional attachment

• An unclear action event that would require re-reading to understand

• Gore without purpose: it neither advances the plot nor develops a character

• Oversharing: this one is a personal preference. I like a bit of mystery.

Next Steps

This exercise was quite helpful in uncovering my personal breed of horror. I like a haunting, character-driven story with readable prose—lyrical but not flowery. Suspense more than surprise. A hint of symbolism but it doesn’t have to be the whole point.

Over the next two weeks I’ll take a stab at writing my own horror story. Stick around. I’d love your feedback!