A. Medlin

Hi friends! Welcome to another blog hop post, please do read the other authors who have contributed at the bottom of this post! ----- Val figured winning the county fair’s gardening exhibition for the third year in a row meant the most drama she would ever face would be her and Margaret Johnson’s courteous and not-so-friendly debates about the amount of water a Chinese marigold needed. After all, Val had always presented herself as a skilled botanist, and so none of the other gardeners in her club had any idea she was also a skilled necromancer. Val liked to keep this to herself. Toting the label of necromancer, let alone a necrobotanist, carried a certain kind of stigma. However, when Val suspected a faery was eating her petunias, she figured a bit of black magic might help. Val set her trap and hoped it would be enough to scare the faery away. Unfortunately, when she returned to her garden in the morning, and found a very chubby, dead faery lying among her trimmed and manicured...

Writing for me comes easily, but I don’t say that without the weight of experience pushing down on my shoulders. Art isn’t easy; I wouldn’t say writing is easy in a million years, even for people with innate talent: art must be worked at to be improved, it is part of the human experience, and it is a meaningful way to create and be a part of something bigger. It is not easy, no matter how “good” an artist may be – I promise you, they took a lot of time to get there. When I say “writing for me comes easily,” what I mean is that I’ve spent a lot of years under the oppressive hand of perfection and fear to be able to see the other side of creation. What do I mean here? When we create, especially as youngsters or beginners, there is an expectation to do well at all times, even to the point where the craft isn’t fun anymore – take my youngest sibling for instance: she is a TALENTED artist, one who has experience through high school art classes, but drew a lot in her free time as...

When I think about writing, I think a lot about character. I think it’s easy to come up with characters, to create whole new people who pilot the worlds of our imaginations. I think it’s easy to conjure up someone who is like us, or not like us, and place them into our stories. I’m not saying that creation is necessarily easy, but characters are limitless, and we can pick whichever ones we want to utilize. I think the hard part comes when our characters take on a mind of their own. Characters are largely controlled by us, the writers. We give them traits and personalities and appearances to interact with other characters and move about in the worlds we’ve conjured up. But sometimes… characters behave in ways we would not expect. Take my character Milton for instance, from DOG DOWN: Milton was originally written to be a sort of foil to Indigo, in which his personality would bring out some of the worst traits in Indigo. However, as the story progressed, Milton started ta...

Hi everyone! I'm once again a day late with the story time excerpt, but here is the latest sneak peek of Dog Down, specifically from chapter 15!! Please enjoy, and let me know what you think in the comments <3 CW: animals in danger, fox traps, zombies . . . . . “I smelled water, I’m gonna go look,” Indigo said to the group, who were all preoccupied. But instead of waiting for an answer, Indigo went ahead and broke from the group to head down to where she was sure a small river or creek must run. Indigo was quiet as she went, padding one paw in front of the other as she threaded her way through the underbrush, the tall grass, and the trees. Within moments, she was out of earshot of the group, and while this did cause her to pause for a moment, she figured she’d be able to sniff her way back easily enough. After a few more moments, the unusually cold Dogstar starting to droop against the horizon, Indigo could hear the trickle of water close by. She began jogging the rest of the wa...

Hi everyone! Welcome to story excerpt night! Today's excerpt is from a flash fiction piece I'm working on called Florals . Let me know if you like it so far, and if I should continue the story!! CW: supernatural, supernatural death . . . . . Val figured winning the county fair’s gardening exhibition for the third year in a row meant the most drama she would ever face would be her and Margaret Johnson’s courteous and not-so-friendly debates about the amount of water a Chinese marigold needed. After all, Val had always presented herself as a skilled botanist, and so none of the other gardeners in her club had any idea she was also a skilled necromancer. Val liked to keep this to herself. Toting the label of necromancer, let alone a necrobotanist, carried a certain kind of stigma. However, when Val suspected a faery was eating her petunias, she figured a bit of black magic might help. Val set her trap and hoped that it would be enough to scare the faery away. Unfortunately, when s...

Hi everyone! Welcome to novel sneak peak night! I've posted a lot about Dog Down , but I figured tonight, I'd post a little bit about my second novel WIP, (working title) ASTRO . Please enjoy this excerpt from chapter 2 <3 CW: blood, mentions of guns . . . . . The walk along the riverbank was dreadful. Susana had her moist coat wrapped around her like it would do any good and had followed the creature about a block down. It would be another half a block or so before she found where she’d parked, though Susana did begin to wonder if maybe the creature knew that. How? She wasn’t sure, but most of her disbelief had gone out the window when she’d decided to follow this thing down the river and away from Colt. As she stared at it, she realized that the creature was limping. Actually, now that Susana really looked, the farther they walked down the riverbank, the more the creature seemed to falter in its step. It was still dark, though the rain had subsided for a bit, but she could...