Well, Nanowrimo didn't work out: November kicked my posterior this year, but the ways it did so were for the most part unpreventable and only slightly foreseeable, so I don't feel but so bad about it. I fell out of love with my concept about midmonth, too, which didn't help.
However, my falling out of love came largely because of a new enthusiasm: horror and weird fiction. In the run-up to Halloween this year, as I mentioned a few posts ago, the guys in the Magic City Writers group suggested that I look into horror writing, since I enjoyed our spooky/creepy exercises so much.
The more I think about it, my very tactile, very description-heavy style might well lend itself to horror/weird. I'm already a China Miéville fan, and some of the Dean Koontz and Stephen King I've read has been quite compelling. So, I've been buying up all the Kindle horror I can find/afford (and putting the rest on my Christmas wish lists), and I've begun a search for my much-neglected (and buried in my recent office renovation) copy of Vandermeer's anthology The New Weird, which along with comprehensive Poe and Lovecraft anthologies, ought to give me a suitably diverse place to start as I try to build up my literacy in these areas.
I've already got a few story ideas percolating to get started: as I produce prose I'll air some of it here, but I fully expect to be raw and stumbling for a while as I discover which ends are the pointy ones.
So, the request, for those who've read this far: in the comments, if you have favorite horror or weird-fic authors or titles, please recommend them! I need to read as widely and as deeply as I can, so I'm inclined to try a little bit of everything while I find my feet. Thanks!
-Rich
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