November: the sign that the year is almost over...
November 2025 edition of the Boopish Newsletter
Topics (click the link to go directly to the thing):
A bunch of competitions (lots of links)
New works in progress
Irish horror novel by Alexander Lane
For Halloween this year, we decided to turn off our lights and hide in the basement to watch scary movies and eat homemade popcorn popped in rendered bacon grease. It was amazing. We’ll probably do the same thing next year.
When we moved into this house back in 2022, we were excited to hand out candy on Halloween. There are a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, a bunch of kids in the neighborhood next to us… we’d surely run out of candy, right?
Well, last year, we bought the full bar pack from Sam’s (bulk shopping for my non-US friends), along with a couple other bags for back up. We got one visitor. ONE. I’m pretty sure I’m still trying to work those leftovers off my thighs.
So anyway, we hunkered down and watched Weapons (highly recommend, currently on HBO Max), Coraline, and two episodes of Welcome to Derry (I don’t think I’ll continue the series. It’s not great, though there is a Shining crossover with Dick Halloran, which I love).
I also wanted to share something you may not be aware of… Amazon has changed their rules regarding the exclusivity of Kindle Unlimited listings. Before, if you had a book listed in KU, you couldn’t list it anywhere else. NOW, you can have a book in KU AND listed at the library. So that means, I’ve listed Metaxysm as a KU title, in addition to having it listed through libraries. I may do the same with Hillbilly Vamp.
BOOK UPDATES
Competitions
I did not win the Freewrite 500 challenge, so you can read the short little ditty below. I think it’s considered more “literary” than anything. I wrote this in one pass, so I’m sure it could be improved immensely! The prompt was an unusual companionship.
For all my competition submissions, I plan on posting them here, as well as (soon) on my website. I can’t post them before I get the results, per the rules of each competition. Sometimes I can release a story through the Writing Battle debrief, but I think I’ll just post them here for now.
OCTOBER’S SUBMISSIONS:
Fear Flash Fiction, a pro competition by Writing Battle ✔
A Misplaced Justice: This one is DONE. And I’m excited to share that this story has received 4 recognition pips from the judges; one for creativity, one for character, one for prose, and a Captivating Character trophy (which they say is rare, so that’s cool)! I’ll know more about the results of this competition by next month’s newsletter.The Not Quite Write competition ✔
I Understand: This one is also DONE. I’ll know more about this competition’s results on December 7th.Autumn short story competition by Writing Battle ✔
Concerto Memento Mori: I just turned this one in, and I’ll know more on December 7th as well. My genre was Alternate History, and as someone that has a very weak blind spot in history, it stretched my creativity beyond the veil.The Scary Story challenge hosted by NYC Midnight ✔
Last Light on a White Night: I just turned this one in as well, and first round results aren’t going to be revealed until January 7th. If you don’t know about NYC Midnight, every time a story advances into the next round, a whole new story needs to be written, and the time window shrinks until 3 or 4 rounds.
I’m still waiting on the Rhyming Story challenge I submitted a while back, but I’ll get those results sometime today.
Book 3 of “The Unnamed Fantasy”
I’ve gotten my edits back, and I’m currently working through them (while writing my next horror novel). I have something I’d like to try, which is to post side chapters of my characters.
One of the things I do to stave off writer’s block, is write separate scenarios with characters in supplementary chapters. I’d like to compile these sometime soon and have them available as side-reads for those interested in specific characters.
Query progress: Well… I’m in a waiting game still. I’ve gotten loads of rejections (56 so far), so that’s quite disheartening. But there are a few agents where my query rests between rejections, so I’m hoping that I’m in a “maybe” pile for them. This is what that looks like on my Query Tracker page:
Like I said, I have a few of these, but while I’m hopeful, I’m not holding my breath
Current Work In Progress
ProWritingAid has taken the mantle of Novel November (NovNov) after the dissolution of National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo). Of course I signed up for NovNov, and I’m using this time to chunk away at my newest horror novel. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a long running author’s motivator to get 50,000 words written in 30 days (a small novel). Metaxysm was created during the 2021 writing month, and for reference for those who’ve read it, sits at around 63,000 words.
I’m about 15K words into the newest book, and I’m doing something very different with it that I hope works out well with readers.
Stay tuned for title and cover reveals!
I’m also doing something else that’s new, which is open it up to beta reading. I usually like to get ARC readers for books, but for book 3 of the series, I had a couple beta readers that I found VERY helpful. So, I’d like to do that again!
Short Stories
Regarding the competitions earlier… although I plan on posting the competition stories here an on my site, I plan on creating an anthology book with everything in it, including some other stories I’ve written outside of the competition. The book will be separated by genre, but mostly will contain anything in the realm of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Mostly horror, because there’s definitely something wrong with me.
I haven’t decided whether or not to try Kickstarter again, but whatever I do, I’ll be posting about it here.
Need more scares? Check out this horror novel by Alexander Lane:
LH Soaps & Sundries
VISIT THE SOAP PAGE HERE to check out the “final call” soaps and/or the scrub bars.
I also have some first edition paperback copies of Metaxysm and Hillbilly Vamp listed on my soap site if you’d like to CHECK THOSE OUT HERE.
Anyway, that’s all for now, thanks for being awesome!LINKTREE | YOUTUBE | BOOKS | RED BUBBLE
