As the year winds down, I’m winding up in preparation for December’s many (many) events. For some reason (possibly because I’m a mother in her thirties), Instagram keeps suggesting posts where women grump about the extra load they have to carry through the holidays. Consider this my official request that we cut that out. Is it extra work? Yes. Is it still good? Yes. Does it become any easier when we sulk about it? Nope. But sulking does make the holidays less fun for the people around you.

In other news, my short story, Ex Cinere, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize! Each small press is able to nominate up to six selections, and winners are announced in April. There are thousands of submissions every year, so chances of making the anthology are slim, but I was still pleased that my strange little Domovoy story was selected! These were the nominations from Flash Fiction Magazine:

What I’m Working On

This was an odds-and-ends month for work, interspersed with plenty of everyday life (having a child in high-school basketball is its own part-time job). I wrote a short story for an anthology that will (I think) be coming out next year. I submitted proposals for three separate conferences I’ll be speaking at in 2026. And I read and wrote an edit letter for my thesis student’s final novel project.

My biggest task for the month was preparing a pitch for book two of The Second Greatest Thief. In the process, I realized that I really want to write two new books instead of one. So, I’m finishing up the pitch proposal for book three, and then I’ll send both of them over to my agent for her feedback. Then, we’ll decide whether we want to pitch them to my editor before the first book comes out. There are pros and cons to selling book two before book one comes out (pro: the security of having another book under contract, as well as real deadlines which I desperately need to get things done. Con: if Thief is a smash hit, we don’t have that bargaining chip to negotiate for a higher advance.

What I’m Reading

I’m continuing to work my through books of short stories, partly for the short story club and partly for a fun idea that a friend and I came up with a few weeks ago. (More on that in the New Year.) I read The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke which was fantastic. I also read Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones which had some good stories.

Having recently read Dracula, I thought I’d pick up a modern vampire story, and a friend recommended The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. The concept of 80s/90s housewives having to take on vampires is great, but I will say this one was squarely in the horror genre. Very adult, quite graphic. I was skipping scenes like a professional hopscotcher.

On the craft level, I also picked up The Idea by Erik Bork which was an excellent distillation of a lot of the concepts we teach in the Camperdown Program.

A Writing Tip

A harbinger reader sent in a suggestion for a writing tip. Her (or his? sorry I forgot to write down your name) problem is biting off more than she can chew when it comes to starting a new story. How do you decide what to narrow your subject to?

This is a complex question, but I think the best way to tackle it is by starting at the beginning, when you’re coming up with your novel idea. Sometimes, a student will pitch me an idea that sounds like this, “There’s a girl and she is being chased by vampires, and she’s trying to find the cure to her mother’s illness somewhere in the Midwest, but she also finds out that she’s the lost heir to the throne of a magical kingdom accessed through the pond in her family’s backyard.”

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the point is that sometimes a story can be pulling way too many directions, and you just need to simplify and clarify. Pick one goal for your main character and focus on that. If you can’t fit your story into one or two sentences, then you’ve probably added too many ingredients. One thing you can do is look at Blake Snyder’s 10 different story types and see which one yours is, and then only select pieces that fit within that type of story. So, if you’ve decided you’re writing a Monster in the House type story, you’re going to want a sin, a monster, an enclosed arena, etc. You might suddenly have a cool idea to send your character on a cool quest to retrieve some elixir to solve the problem, but you must resist. This isn’t a Golden Fleece story, and once you get your character out of the arena (house), you’re no longer working with a Monster in the House story. And your readers are going to feel like you’ve failed to deliver on the promise of the original premise.

Now, a story can have a lot of cool elements, so long as they are all working to advance your character’s main goal rather than sending him on unnecessary side quests. The best way to make sure they’re doing the former is by outlining your story, figuring out where your character starts, where he ends, and what would be the best beats to get him there. I often like to write at the top of my outline what my character wants and what they actually need, so that I can focus on that whenever a new idea presents itself.

That’s all for November, see you in December!