Debbie Daughetee

As most of you know, I'm in Florida helping my dad after my mother's death. We've been going through things, making surprising discovers like the hoard of silver coins mom had in the back of her filing cabinet.

In that same file drawer there was a folder with geneology information. And in that file, along with birth and death certificates, notes on ancestors, etc., was a manuscript of one of my stories, The House On Hudson Run.

I wrote this story back at Clarion West in 2004. It is about a woman who looses her mom and dad in an auto accident, and returns to the family home, full of grief and regret, to get it ready to sell. In the garden she finds a hidden labrynith. One stone has the name of her mother, one has the name of her grandmother.

It's about letting go of grief and embracing the joy of life. The entire thing is based on my life with my grandmother and mother. The house on Hudson Run is the house I always look back on as 'home'.

I sent it to my mother, because it dealt with my grandmother's death of Lou Gehrig's disease. Actually it deals with generations of women's pain. My mother read the story and called me. She said it was like I had been inside her head and heart, that I wrote her feelings with such perfect accuracy. She couldn't believe that I could capture her pain so well when I was only 9 years old when my grandmother died.

I never sold that story. I'd been thinking about pulling it out and reworking it again.

Finding the manuscript in my mother's files made me stop and think about why we write the stories we do. There is a lot of emphasis on sending them out to be published -- and I'm a huge proponant of that. That's a good thing. We spend so much time and energy on our work we should get it out there so other people can read them.

But that's not why we write the stories. We write because we have something inside us that really needs to be expressed, even if it never seems the inside of a magazine or book.

And maybe, just maybe, we write stories because there's someone else who needs to read it, to be moved by it, and to help a healing process.

I sent my mom most of my stories. Well, not my horror, but my spiritual (as opposed to religious) work. I wrote about my grandmother and her garden in another story which was published in After Hours many years ago. Mom didn't keep those manuscripts.

So am I going to rework The House On Hudson Run? I don't know. I sort of feel like it's fulfilled it's purpose. And yet it's against my nature to just let a story go without trying to make it better and get it out there. What do you all think?

The new issue of SHIMMER is now available at www.shimmerzine.com. This issue has my story "The Girl Who Lost Her Way". For those of you who have seen the rough draft of my short film, this is the story I adapted.

I read a few of the stories so far. The M. K. Hobson story is fabulous. As is the Tinatsu Wallace story. You can get a taste for the issue here: http://www.shimmerzine.com/2008/08/07/issue-nine-spring-2008/#more-200

A very cool thing that Shimmer does is make author pages, where you can go and read all about how the story in the issue came about. My autor page is here: http://www.shimmerzine.com/2008/08/07/issue-nine-spring-2008/#more-200

Okay, enough shameless self promotion. On to Mad Max.

Max thinks I'm dense. I've been noticing this over the last week or so. He decides he wants something, I decide not to give it to him, but he thinks I don't know what he wants and keeps trying to show me.

So this morning I was eating cereal. I'm loathe to admit it, but I actually made him a little pyrex bowl of cereal as well. I like to eat my breakfast in my big oversized chair while watching the TODAY show.

Max finished his in a flash, of course. I ignored his attempts to get at my bowl. So finally he jumps down, gets the pyrex bowl in his mouth, carries it over to me and jumps up on the chair, placing it in my lap. I don't know what Paul was thinking when he got a smart dog.

So I go to the mailbox today -- and there's a royalty check for Dark Delicacies!  Three years later the anthology is not only still in print, it's paying it's contributors royalties.  Okay, it was only $38.00.  But what a cool way to make $38.00!

In other news, I had a great day writing today.  It was one of those days where words just flowed out of my fingers onto the page -- and I really liked them.  I hope whatever or whoever I was channeling comes back tomorrow.  And the next day, and the next, but writing was really, really fun today.

So my new moon goal is 15,000 words.  I'm 5,000 in.  I think it's a doable goal.  Wouldn't it be fun if I beat it? 

 After all the hospital drama of the last 3 weeks, things are much, much better.  That's good in itself.  But the really good news is that I sold my story Bone Whisperer to Dark Distortions!  Yippee.

While Bone Whisperer isn't officially one of my Clarion West stories I still consider it a product of Clarion West.  My littermate Ernie read it during that 6 weeks, and Jim Kelly and John Kessel agreed to read it during their week with us and gave me some great notes.  I think my littermate Deb Taber also read it not long after Clarion.

Anyway, bottom line is I've sold another story.  Line edits don't begin until next month.  And I don't actually get a contract until after the edits.  Editors want to make sure they can work with you before the legally commit to your story I guess.  But hey, I'm from television.  I'm used to rewriting on demand.

So - Happy Snoopy Dance going on at my house.

Today I proofed my short story The Girl Who Lost Her Way, which  will appear in the spring issue of Shimmer.  As many of you know, I turned this story into a short film for my 3rd semester project at Stonecoast.  So while I've listened to it over and over and over again while I was editing the film, I hadn't read the story since I sold it.

It's amazing how much you can forget in just a 6 months.  As I was proofing the story, I found myself asking, "Did I really write this?"  

Writing a short story you need to use precise language, keep it short, concise, etc, etc, etc.  But when you're doing the film, it has to be even shorter and more concise.  So while the film still has a lot of nice language, I relied on the Simon's fantastic images rather than words to convey mood and atmosphere.  But the words are all there in the story.  Scenes are drawn out a little longer.  Characters are more fully developed.

I was charmed by some of the things in the story that were cut for the film.  And yet I also wanted to make a few cuts that I made for the film because I thought the cuts made the story a bit stronger.   It was an interesting, thought provoking experience.

My MFA pop fiction group has had some discussions whether screenwriting has a place in a creative writing program.  I always thought it did, but now I feel even stronger about it.  I think making this story into a short film has given me a different perspective on the needs of the story, the needs of the two very different mediums and the intent of the writer.  Comparing the language of the two pieces has allowed to me see my strengths and weaknesses in this particular story and learn from them.  Actually, I think this would make a good class.

 My website has been updated for the first time since I've had a website!  I love the publications page.  Pati, my new webdesigner, is wonderful.  Check it out at dlynnsmith.com

So now that I don't have any annotations, papers on literarcy influences or third semester projects to write, I found myself struggling.  I really want to finish my novel, but I've been feeling very sorry for myself because I only wrote three short stories last year.  The good news is that I sold two of them and the third is almost ready to send out.  But that's also the bad news in a way.  I get a lot of satisfaction with the instant (compared to writing a novel) gratification of finishing a story and getting it out there.  Of course there's great satisfaction in selling said short story.  

But if I concentrate on short stories then the novel gets put on the back burner.  But if I concentrate on the novel, I start feeling sorry for myself because I haven't finished (or sold anything) in a long time.  Without the other papers to write, I found myself fighting with whether I would take the time to write stories or the novel.  What was I to do?

Finally, I made a deal with myself.  I have quite a number of short stories that need revisions.  So I've set up my days where I spend an hour each morning rewriting on of my stories.  Then the rest of my writing time is spent on my novel.  I've been doing this for several days now and it's working out.  I've got a my story "The Shadow Puppet" about three quarters of the way ready, working on it the last two mornings.  These same two days I turned out 2800 words (1400 a day) on my novel.  Whoo hoo!  Everything is moving forward and I'm a happy writer.  I no longer fight with myself or dread sitting down at the computer.

Anyone else out there make deals with themselves in order to get their writing on track?

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my story "The Fall" which appears in the Dark Delicacies anthology, is available online as a preview of the book.  

http://books.google.com/books?id=0akPDYhvpvcC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=%22d.+lynn+smith&source=web&ots=5oP1L8tf-F&sig=LccSeFZW9SjB5BZyEfmcRQP_qlc#PPA64,M1

This is the second story used as a preview.  The other is my infamous hammer story "A Building Desire" in Hot Blood 13: Dark Passions.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780758214133&itm=6#CHP

For a person who sells stories to a print magazine, I sure am showing up on the internet.  Crazy.

This is a first for me. I just got an invitation to attend Armadillo Con and participate in their programming. They offer free membership to me and a reduced rate for Paul, and I'll be expected to participate in 3 programming events. I can do that.

I'm actually quite excited by this invitation. It's amazing they even know who I am. So I'll be adding Armadillo Con to my convention list. I was going to go to World Horror as well, but Paul and I are moving this month and so I had to cancel. That leaves World Fantasy and Wiscon.

Since 'Summer Chills' comes out in May and the paperback of 'Dark Delicacies' in August, I'll have some books to talk about. 'Hot Blood 13' doesn't come out until October -- but that could mean that I'll have three stories circulating by World Fantasy. And I still haven't heard from 'Holy Horrors' so I'm hoping that's good news.

In the meantime I'm working on the screenplay for the short film I'm producing. We're looking to sign an animation director this week.

What a wonderful, beautiful day!