A. Medlin

Please enjoy another excerpt from my current novel project, Dog Down ! CW: mentions of death, mentions of zombies, mentions of sickness . . . . . “How did you two end up together?” Indigo broke the silence shortly after as she looked towards Sir Squibbles and Milton. Milton looked annoyed, his eyes half-squinted at her, but Sir Squibbles stood up on all fours, tongue lolling from his mouth as he began to speak. “Funny story, chica,” he started. “Milton’s actually been out here on his own since before the Loud Night . When it all started, I was hurt. Got out of my yard back home, but the dead walkers were on me like flies on shit,” he shook his head. “I got bit, thought I was a goner. But Milton found me. He had a different safe spot at the time. I just sorta… stuck around after that,” he finished, looking over at Milton who had an unreadable expression on his face. Indigo thought hard about that. She glanced at Zephyr, who had a similar expression on his face. “You got… bit?” Sir Squib...

I want to premise this by saying that world building if one of the hardest fucking things to do – how much is too much? How little is too little? Where’s the sweet spot between story and exposition? These are questions I consider frequently, regardless of the genre I’m writing in – yes, some genres take more world-building like fantasy and science fiction, but that doesn’t mean there’s no world-building in romance, historical, horror, mystery, etc. The settings may be familiar, may take place in our world, but that doesn’t absolve a writer or author from IMMERSING us, the audience, in that story. So, how is this accomplished? How does one begin to world build? There’sa million techniques, questions, workshops, theories, etc about how to world-build appropriately. And at the end of the day, you should be using at least one or two of these tactics to flesh out the world you’re writing about. But at the end of the day, only YOU as the author or creator will know what’s enough and what isn...

H i folks! Please enjoy this excerpt from my newest short story ✨️ if you'd like to read an even longer excerpt, click here ✨️✨️ CW: religion, Catholicism, demons, the bible . . . . . It was raining the Sunday we came back to church. I trailed up the glossy, wet marble steps that led to the multi-doored entrance, my parents walking just ahead of me with their heads bowed as we ushered past other churchgoers who had also arrived. On the ride over, I’d been expecting laughter, music to be playing from the organ upstairs as people took their seats and greeted one another after nearly five months away. But I was met by a wall of silent parishioners, each curled into their heavy raincoats as something dark and dim now coiled within the high rafters of the church. We went through the motions, kneeling, singing, repeating “Amen” and mouthing through I confess. The psalms felt hollow and no one looked at one another the entire mass. But more than anything else, I watched the sunken cheekb...

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...