Over the last few years I’ve been using different holidays as writing prompts.
For Halloween I wrote a story about a Halloween pale in the shape of the devil’s face. It converted those non-treats that religious households gave out, like dental floss, into forbidden objects, like cherry bombs and pinup playing cards. For Christmas I wrote Home Alone fanfiction that pitted modern day Macaulay Culkin against the Yule tide demon Krampus. For Valentine’s Day I wrote a story about the ghost of St. Valentine stalking the streets holding his severed head. The vengeful spirit targeted couples who were foolish enough to be out after dark and set his dire wolves upon them.
With all this holiday-centric fiction flowing I was looking forward to coming up with something for April Fool’s Day. I was trying to come up with some sort of meta-fictional mock journal entry, but it never came to be.
In late March I went and got myself seriously injured at work. Long story short: I was helping a customer lift a box out of his car. He walked away to argue about pricing with his wife. I worried about a line forming in my store and decided to lift the box onto the cart myself. I lifted, twisted, and felt a sharp stabbing pain in my back.
It turns out the box contained a 150 pound safe that the customer should’ve thought to mention before I went out there with him.
All April I’ve been out of commission, spending a lot of time in doors, limping around with a cane. The blog became less of a priority.
I eventually started writing something, but I decided not to share it on a self-imposed deadline. It grew into something really interesting. Right now it’s called The Lost City of Chrome (my stories change names a dozen times before anyone sees them).
I’ll tell you more about it as it develops.
In the meantime I’m going to try to get back to blogging. Graphic Artist Bryan Politte and I are already working on another entry in our Monster Mingle series, and I have more things I want to do with my novel He Has Many Names.
Stay Tuned.