Update: #amwriting – fall, weird, bigfoot

#AmWriting in Autumn

The leaves have been fantastic around here the last few weeks. We’ve had some beautiful blue-sky days lately, though they have been a bit warmer for my tastes. Even though I’ve been going through some really hard stuff lately, I’m doing my best to get out and enjoy the greatest season in West Virginia. I even got me a brand new set of overalls. Continue reading

ebook for a buck – When the Watcher Shakes

Thus begins my End of Summer Sale on the Kindle versions of my novels! Head over to Amazon (US or UK) to buy my first novel, When the Watcher Shakes, for just 99 cents!

USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IBZFNEI

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IBZFNEI

The walls were meant to keep evil out—but they only hid the evil within.

“A chilling entry in the small-town horror genre. Huguenin combines suspense, mystery, and action in page-turning style.” — Scott Nicholson, The Red Church

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Looking for the sale price on Little One? It’s coming! If you aren’t already on my email list, click here so you don’t miss the sale!

End of Summer Kindle sale coming soon

It’s already getting very cool in the Allegheny mountains. Autumn is coming.
As the summer wraps up, I’m going to be doing a 99 cent sale on the Kindle versions of my novels (sale price will apply to the US and UK amazon markets only). When the Watcher Shakes will go on sale first for a week, followed by Little One for another week. Stay tuned.
Email list subscribers will be notified first.

Click here to make sure you get the notification.

Lewisburg Literary Festival THIS WEEKEND

Whoah! I have been so busy that August (and with it, the Lewisburg Literary Festival) completely snuck up on me. Can you believe that August starts this Thursday?
Refer to the website and Facebook page for details on schedule, speakers, workshops, and all that jazz! (Unfortunately, there is no literal jazz, as far as I know. One of the few things that could make Lewisburg cooler is a jazz lounge).
Come out on August 2-3; I’ll be there. More excitingly, so will Tobias Wolff and Sarah Vowell. And other cool people.
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This is one of the coolest literary events in WV in one of the coolest small towns in WV (nay, in all of America!—see Budget Travel Magazine‘s 2011 list). Everything’s so cool.

New edition of When the Watcher Shakes on Amazon

It’s time for a little update to my first book, When the Watcher Shakes. Behold this gorgeous cover from none other than Ben Baldwin, who also designed my covers for Little One and Antique Bed, and whose art has appeared in publications like Black Static, Stephen King & Richard Chizmar’s Gwendy’s Button Box, and too many others of note to name here.
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Please note that this is not a sequel. This is a new edition with some superficial changes to the text. Nothing has changed in regard to plot or characters, and no scenes have been added or removed. So if you already own a copy of the first edition, congrats! You don’t need to get the new one, unless you are, like me, a sucker for awesome artwork and need to have a copy just for the new cover. But now may be a good time to think if you have any friends that need a copy. 🙂

WTWS 3d book

Click here to buy When the Watcher Shakes on Amazon!

Publishers Weekly reviews Little One

“Kelsea is forced to face a little girl’s ghost from her past and the devastation she brings—as well as other, even more unexpected threats. The heart-racing mystery will keep readers wondering who to trust and how the story will end.” — Publishers Weekly

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Well this was kind of a surprise—as I submitted Little One for review through BookLife back in… June 2017! After a few months, I had just assumed that it was not selected for review and then forgot about it. Another weird thing about the review is it refers to the book as my “chilling horror debut” when it is actually my second book. Maybe they didn’t consider my first one as horror? To be fair, when I was getting ready to publish When the Watcher Shakes, I was wishy-washy and insecure about what genre it really fell into. At one point I was calling it “dark suspense.”
So, almost two years after publication, and calls my second book “a strong debut”—but you know what? I’ll take it. It’s Publishers Weekly. I can work with that! All the other stuff it says is really good, and I’m very happy about that.
Read the full review here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780997147438
 

Why I haven't made progress on the Bigfoot novel

I started working on a Bigfoot novel either early last year, or perhaps even in later 2017—can’t remember for sure. So far, my word count is somewhere around the 5k mark. Which is terrible, considering I’m pretty sure I wrote the first draft of Little One in less than three months. In January, I reviewed my goals and again committed to finishing this novel before the end of the year—not a lofty goal!
Patterson-Gimlin, 1967
You know how much I’ve written on it since then? Zero. No, actually I do think I went back and changed a couple sentences. Switched a barred owl call to a screech owl, or something like that. What’s the deal, man? Am I still suffering from chronic writer’s block?
Well, not exactly. For one thing, I have been working at a specialty coffee shop in Elkins (TipTop, come check us out!), so I haven’t had as much time to write. Though I don’t work very long shifts (about six or seven hours in a day), the commute ads another two to three hours onto that. Since I’m not good at little spurts of writing without larger blocks of unstructured time, that means I almost never am able to come up with anything during the days I work at TipTop. Occasionally I’ll get a bit done before work, but it has never been more than three hundred words, and it usually is nothing at all.
However, I have not been as blocked up as I was last year. Though I have not made significant progress on the novel this year, I have been writing. In January I decided to start off by writing a short story to submit to Hinnom Magazine, very cool horror mag that is taking great strides in a good direction. (They have published my work twice before, see here and here.) I was aiming to finish the short story before their submission window closed at the end of February. A reasonable goal, you might think, despite the new job. I still get free days, and it shouldn’t take me a month and a half to finish a three to five thousand word story.
Well, turns out this “short” story doesn’t want to end just yet. It’s currently weighing in at over twelve thousand words, and doesn’t look to be finishing up extremely soon. Of course, I will try to cut much of the fat off of it when I finish, but now it is hungry, now I can only feed it until it is full. (I ended up sending a different, already finished story to Hinnom). So while I really wish I had more done on the novel, I am pleased to have broken out of that horrible funk I was in since at least the second half of 2018, when I struggled even to come up with 150 words in a day. I’m anxious to see where this novelette goes (will it become a novella?)—and I hope that it turns out good enough that those 12k+ words weren’t just a big waste!