Tag: short fiction

Weeding the Garden

May 26, 2026 / samanthahund / 0 Comments

I’ve been elbow deep in my garden, which became so overgrown I’ve had to take drastic measures. It’s a little bit meditative, and a little bit cleansing, to uproot the sprawly woody lavender, and tug out the encroaching weeds until they give with a satisfying little pop.

My roses, like my brain, need breathing space.

Mental clutter, just like dirty dishes, or persistent weeds, always accumulates when you aren’t paying attention. And the work of untangling it is a lifelong chore.

Still–these cyclical, brief respites are a pleasant place to sit and reflect in.

I’ve had a few new acceptances for poetry (my first micro poem!!) and short fiction, so I’m looking forward to having five (I think it’s five, anyway) new pieces published in June.

I’ve also been doing weekly chapter swaps of The Patron with my CP – which has been extremely motivating and really helped focus the story. I was doing something while writing this one that I don’t normally do; hopscotching around to write my favorite scenes first and skipping the ones I was less enthused about.

Now- I am dealing with the consequences of my actions. Having gaps in my story is unreasonably painful to bridge, and I am never indulging this again. I regret everything and from now on I’m forcing myself to be disciplined and finish this draft linearly like a good writer.

But it did make me notice something structurally that I might have otherwise overlooked- and I’m going to try a little experiment. I do so love a little experiment.

It’s been pointed out to me that I categorically struggle with my male characters. There is this inevitable phase where I realize I’ve been restraining them too much—and in doing so the reader fails to truly connect with them.

Case in point: Silnan originally had six lines of dialogue in my first draft of The Last Dawn. That’s it. Kind of hard for a reader to empathize with a character who has the charisma of a sentient rock.

I’m learning, and trying to allow them more space. Since The Patron is quintessentially a romance, I really can’t have the dynamic feel like a one-sided conversation—as entertaining as Toby can be. So, I’m going to experiment a little with my narrative structure, and see if we can’t give dear Bastien a bit more stage.

Doing the damned thing –SMH

Currently Reading:

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

This deserves more credit than pop culture would have you believe. I was expecting some sort of bloated male-centric fantasy, but instead I found it to be a compelling examination of power dynamics as well as masculine and feminine archetypes.

Also, I’d have to say that Sacher-Masoch presents one of the most empathetic depictions of female psychology I’ve ever seen. Bravo sir.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

I think what I found the most compelling about this story, was that while Grenouille is ostensibly the main character, the narrative is structured to orbit him like dark matter. He is unknowable, and presented so supernaturally, that the story only becomes truly understandable through the perspectives of the supporting characters.

There is also a movie from the 90s, which while enjoyable enough, wasn’t nearly strange enough to do credit to the source material.

Flying High by Cletus Crow

A new release from one of my favorite current poets, I can’t say enough about how blunt yet prescient, crass, and utterly honest his poems are. Pick up a copy- you will not be disappointed: https://newritualpress.com/flyinghigh/

Disquieting Levels of Egg by James Donald Forbes McCann

I’ve always been interested in the intersection between comedy and poetry, and I really did not expect this to work so well, but of course it does. As a comedian and poet, McCann delivers a clever mix of satire, observation, and dry humor.

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

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.