Category: Poetry & Short Fiction

The End

February 23, 2026 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

It smelled like mud today. Just the barest whisper on the breeze, the snow melting into soggy gray sludge on the streets outside. Hardly anything to celebrate, but for a moment—I had a hazy delusion, imagining warmer days ahead.

There will be many false starts and stops, and this is only the cruelest of teases, but I’ve learned to cling to each small drip of dopamine this time of year. We’ve had weeks of deep freeze and negative temperatures, so a balmy 20° F gives me joy.

Metaphors aside, I’ve also had the more than welcome warmth of writing news. In fact, I even find myself a bit suspicious of my good fortune. I’ve recently had an onslaught of positive responses to my writing, with acceptances in poetry, short fiction, and even more interest in my querying novel.

I think to a point, you become conditioned to a state of silence as a writer. However, it can make certain days feel incredibly surreal when your quiet work is recognized. I confess, I still find praise difficult to withstand. I have received such encouraging feedback from editors of late, and seeing my work connect with others is a wonderful gift. I am both extremely humbled and excited by these opportunities. Expect some publication news over the next few months, and I’ll update my Published Works section with the relevant links.

Let’s see, I’ve also lined up a few writing events for myself just to keep momentum going. I haven’t done a live pitch before so this should be an interesting learning experience. So far my elevator pitch of The Last Dawn has consisted of variations on; “This is a book about people who keep making bad choices. And it just gets worse.” Which is probably not a great way to stir interest. Mostly people ask me if there’s smut/spice. I still haven’t come up with a clever answer to that.

I’ll workshop something intriguing for my pitch sessions, or at least try. I tend to be polarizing in person, so this might be a struggle. I think there must be some extra awkwardness to having someone say ‘not for me’ directly to your face, but I didn’t endure years of live critique in college for nothing.

I also find myself thinking that the next few months will probably bring the end of my querying this project for now. Calling it on a project is always hard, but next month it will have been a year of querying. I have to be realistic about these things, and I do have a new novel that needs my attention. I refuse to think of it as failure, but more of a pragmatic pause.

I’m still proud of The Last Dawn, it’s exactly the book I wanted to write. If I’ve hamstrung myself by going too risky with it—that was my choice and I stand by it. I could have played it safer, and maybe that would have been the smarter call, but I chose not to. Willfully. Stubbornly. And if that isn’t my writing style in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.

I’m not throwing in the towel yet, there are still live opportunities for The Last Dawn, but I’m too restless to keep all my eggs in one basket. I’d like to keep on track of completing one novel per year, and work on The Patron progresses. I’m very excited to see what kind of response this one gets; and it’s definitely more literary (can you be literary and low-brow? we’ll find out!), more gothic, and more millennial-humor coded than my other work so far. It’s refreshing to step outside the fantasy space a bit and write something a bit snappier, a bit more present, and overall less lofty.

A fitting end to this blog would be to reminisce slightly on endings in general. I finished reading three books from my TBR stack this last week and I was summarily engulfed by the strange grief that follows finishing a book you connected with.

The Vampire Tapestry, by Suzy McKee Charnas left me quite bereft. There is a beautiful meditative, probing sort of philosophy that is threaded throughout the story that I think is so rare in modern publishing. I think it might be our collective attention span as readers has waned, so much that novels structured in this way get lost, but I devoured it. I found Weyland captivating, and the various characters that reflect him to be incredibly human, and impossibly empathetic. As I finished the last page I was hit with that old, wonderful feeling—a mixture of satisfaction, loss, and awe.

This is the power of a story, one that truly lasts. The ending matters. As a reader, you have trusted the author. You have allowed them to take you on a journey. When they leave you at the end, what remains?

Give me something to keep thinking about, because that is what will linger with me long after we’ve parted ways. That is what will make me eager to pick up a book and start all over again.

Keep me thinking, keep me wondering, keep me dreaming.

Wistfully—SMH

This is My Body: a horror story

September 6, 2025 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

As a kid, I never had a moment where I thought God was listening. The concept seemed flawed straight away, and my little six-year-old brain was ready to poke holes.

I had a hard time with the fact that people seriously believed in some Invisible Old Man in the clouds, presumably bearded, who just spys on people all day and guilts them if they don’t abide by his rules.

If I were God, I’d certainly find something more entertaining to do.

Still, I was mystified by the lengths people would go for this Invisible Old Man. The devotion, the fear, the righteous anger. The strange division between the various subsets of churches who all, apparently, thought they were the only ones really getting it right.

Catholicism especially fascinated me. There were so many rules! Strange clothes! Songs I didn’t know the words to! Every time I had to attend a first communion or a funeral mass, I felt like I was observing the most mysterious ritual.

People go into a cupboard, and confess their secrets to a stranger. People eat stale crackers and call it a blessing. Of course, as an unbaptized child I was a stranger in a foreign land.

Myself, I didn’t pray, I wished on stars. I plucked petals, and broke twigs. I made promises to trees and dirt and called it magic. I just couldn’t comprehend trying to strangle the concept of ‘God’ into a single entity.

I prefer the vast unknowable universe.

It makes me feel insignificant enough.

But I digress.

Just yesterday, This is My Body was published by the wonderful folks at ExPat Press.

You can read the full story here: This is My Body

Every time someone says something kind about this story, I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s a hard thing to be proud of, knowing how some people feel about the subject matter. I suppose I expect the response to be angry, and when it isn’t, I’m a bit lost.

Though I didn’t write this to be controversial. Spoiler alert; the story isn’t about Catholicism, or even God, really.

If you want to know how this story came about you can check out my previous post about it here: My Byronic Horror Weekend

One last fun update, I have decided to attend StokerCon 2026 – though I have no idea what to expect. Now that I’ve published my first horror story, I can at least enjoy being among my fellow HWA members without feeling like a total fraud. I’m excited to meet all the wonderful horror folks!

From somewhere in querying limbo–SMH

a face full of flowers: poetry chapbook release

July 6, 2025 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

Poetry was my first love.

Poetry to me was dream speak. Where you have the freedom to say what you are thinking, without the burden of explanation. Where a dream could become a memory could become a poem could become a spell. You could haunt people with words. The ghost of a moment lingering long past the reality.

I fell in love with that blurry vision at a young age, and found there the truth I so longed for. I read Plath and felt like I was home. I devoured Sexton, Snodgrass, Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, Shelley, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Sappho like they all had something to teach me about the strangeness of being alive.

So, despite the disapproving looks my childhood English teachers lavished on me during our ‘creative writing’ lessons— I have always written poetry. Terrible teenage confessionals, petty depressives, half-remembered nostalgia.

Poetry must be bad, at first.

So must everything, if I’m being honest. If you mean to be good at anything you must first be terrible, accept that you are terrible, and keep going anyway.

Yes, my early poetry was bad. But it was honest. And if I didn’t learn how to be honest through those trite confessionals first, I wouldn’t have written a face full of flowers.

I am equal parts horrified and proud to announce that Bottlecap Press has published my debut poetry chapbook, a face full of flowers, which spans poems from the past ten years.

I’ve included 19 poems, under the themes of ROOTS, FEVER, and BLOOD, which explore motifs of detachment, manic obsession, and renewal of spirit. These poems are my tiny offerings, fragments of truth. The dregs of a dream you just woke up from.

This is my first work to be published in print, and it brings me so much joy that these poems are made tangible by sacred ink and paper. I’ve been criticized for my romanticism, but I will forever support the flesh and blood / paper and ink of printed books.

As a final note: to claim oneself as a poet in the current state of society feels anachronistic at best, and like the butt of someone’s starving artist joke at worst. But I think even with the current state of the world, despite it even, we owe it to ourselves to pursue art.

We deserve a world with poetry, both great and terrible, and I’m very lucky to be able to make my own small contribution.

Oh, What a world—SMH

a face full of flowers

This 36-page collection features 19 poems that explore grief, inheritance, myth, and the uncomfortable beauty of decay. Fusing confessional voice with surreal imagery, a face full of flowers maps emotional wreckage with a sharp, intimate edge.

Bottlecap Press, based in Los Angeles, is known for championing bold new voices in contemporary poetry. Hund joins a growing roster of emerging authors whose work is reshaping the boundaries of small press literature.

The chapbook is available for purchase online in both print and digital formats.

Bloody Nose

June 12, 2025 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

Writing requires a certain amount of masochism.

Even when you’re doing it all right, and technically doing well – your life is at least 95% hearing ‘no.’

I wonder sometimes if we’d all be much better humans if we were forced to fail that consistently. I confess, I don’t always take it elegantly. I do try, but I can also spiral into levels of melodrama Lestat himself would be ashamed of.

I always come back to that story about Hans Christian Andersen flopping face-down onto Charles Dickens’ lawn, refusing to leave. Dickens, the unwilling host, just anxiously wringing his hands like ‘Can you have your tantrum literally anywhere else?”

I can relate. I’m a lawn-flopper.

I try to remember writing requires some level of professionalism, though as a rule, you’re gift-wrapping your unfiltered thoughts, lobbing them at strangers and trying not to wince.

It’s brutal.

And yet, I get up, every morning, and keep going.

For example, this week I received 4 rejections in one day. Across multiple genres. That was a new all-time low.

I have previously experienced the slow-drip version of this, one rejection a day for a five-day streak. I assure you, both are awful in their own special way.

But the thing I keep coming back to, even when friends and family side-eye my lemming-like need to seek brutal rejection is this:

Technically, I’m still getting more yeses than I should be. By far.

Every ‘no’ hits harder, but when I do hear yes? Those beautiful, rare words of praise? The ones that actually get it? There’s nothing like it.

I’m not known for my smiles, it’s true.

Somewhere, there’s a picture of elementary school me, dressed in a black velvet dress with a white lace collar (thanks 1990s) and utterly bereft of a smile. In my defense, the photographer didn’t say ‘smile’ so I took it as optional.

However, when I hear anything that remotely sounds like ‘I liked your story/poem/novel’ I start grinning like a drunk. It’s rather unsettling.

So I guess that’s why I keep opening that door. I keep tossing work out there like it doesn’t matter. Because most times you get punched in the nose. But sometimes… someone hands you a flower.

Grudgingly—SMH

My Byronic Horror Weekend

May 26, 2025 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

Patience has never been one of my virtues.

Sometimes, I liken my brain to that of a shark. I can’t stop swimming or I’ll die. It makes me insufferable. So, I find myself with a holiday weekend, completely frozen creatively as I wait for feedback from my editor.

This isn’t something I can stand. I find myself itching for the pen, and writing anyway. Writing deep, dark lore for my series that should never see the light of day. This helps ease my twitchy fingers, but only slightly. I need more purpose.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written any short fiction, and I’m tempted to push myself. There’s something so inherently attainable about writing short fiction. Anyone can write six-thousand words. I’ve spent a year struggling to bear the creative weight of an ambitious trilogy narrative— and as soon as I conceive of the idea, I’m enchanted. Oh the exquisite freedom of unbound words.

Of course, you need an idea if you’re to write, and all of my ideas feel gobbled up by my current novel. Good thing I’ve spent the past two years learning how to reliably conjure them.

For me, there’s a bit of a sacred ritual to it all, the summoning of these tidbits. I file details away in my brain, which may take years to resurface, but when they inevitably do, it often feels like kismet.

I allow myself creative meditation. I pluck words, images, and concepts from those sleeping recesses of my imagination. Then, like my surrealist muses, I blindly combine them, rolling them around in my head until they take on a shape of their own.

I love this process. This is where I feel closest to writing. It’s no different from the way musicians pluck out a tentative new melody that jangles in their mind. Or the way a painter holds the pencil loosely, allowing expressive motion to guide the first lines of a sketch.

There is no commitment at this stage. I conceive of many ideas, but some sink to the bottom, while others float, worthy of my attention. And that’s where I found one.

Short fiction is the perfect place for me to challenge myself, to fail, to try a voice I don’t understand. It feels like a breath of fresh air when I’ve been languishing in four-hundred pages of structure for the last year.

That’s how my Byronic Horror weekend began at least. I conjured the demons on Thursday, began drafting on Friday, and completed the draft by Sunday morning. While all over America, families ready their yards for Memorial Day Weekend barbecues and beers, I sank myself deep into a haze of grotesque religious horror.

It’s equal parts arrogance and amusement to imagine myself as a modern-day Mary Shelley, quietly obsessing over the darkest story my mind could conjure. In fact, it must have been catching because my wary husband also caught the feverish bug. We agreed to both write a short horror fiction, with a religious theme over the weekend, keeping the details secret from each other, until we could swap stories at the end.

So I wrote like I always do, half-mad, forgetting basic human requirements outside of caffeine intake, and dreaming of scripture I don’t understand. Even now, as I sit smugly, my finished manuscript printed and waiting to be read, I can hear my husband clacking away at the keys, occasionally catching him standing in the kitchen rubbing his face in frustration.

This is the kind of creative madness I adore. In so many ways, this is what keeps me writing. I feel renewed by the ritual of completing something, even when it remains unread. I feel the possibility. I feel the terrifying fear that I wrote something I do not understand.

Because if what I’m writing doesn’t scare me, I don’t know that I’ve been digging deep enough.

Fretfully—SMH

P.S. For those unbearably curious (and I applaud you for it) I will tease this about the aforementioned story:

“This Is My Body”

A visceral religious horror story set in rural Pennsylvania, 1962. It follows Father Francis Callahan, a devout and repressed Catholic priest whose obsession with ritual purity and divine suffering spirals into self-mutilation.

Exploring themes of martyrdom, spiritual longing, and bodily violation, This Is My Body is both a meditation on Catholic devotion and a grotesque fable of faith gone too far.

Perhaps you’ll get to read it one day.