Tag: poetry

“Specimen”

February is Women in Horror Month (recently changed to March). My love for the horror genre goes way back, before I began voraciously reading. It likely developed the moment my parents told me to go back in my room as they sat down to watch Poltergeist. Instead, I did what any curious and rebellious six-year-old would: I snuck out, crawling on all fours, and watched Poltergeist, terrified from behind my dad’s recliner. Though I couldn’t sleep for a week after, I was addicted.

In a lovely bit of astrological alignment, my horror story “Specimen” came out in Trembling with Fear today. You can read it for free here. This is massive and deliciously circular to me because I remember when I was a wee babe of writing and putting my short, horror work out there, Trembling with Fear was one of the first venues I came across. It is such an honor to be included.

Here is how Editor Stephanie Ellis introduces it:

“First up this week is Specimen by Ashley B. Davis, a hauntingly atmospheric story of an abandoned naturalist on an island uninhabited by humans. His obsession with the specimens he is observing is gradually changed, roles reversing as he struggles to survive.”

Trembling with Fear

Looking for more ways to celebrate women in horror this month? Of course you are! You can read and listen to my other work by visiting my Published Works page, but here’s a quick rundown of my most recent publications. You can listen to me reading my poem “Time Consuming” at Liquid Imagination or listen to a full-blown audio production of my story “Feud” at The Grey Rooms 😱 (my story starts at 19:54). I also spoke (awkwardly) at length about my story and the horror genre with the inimitable Brooks Bigley at The Grey Rooms Podcast in my Behind the Door interview. Lastly, if you enjoyed the naturalist protagonist in “Specimen”, you can read about another scientific-minded protagonist in my story “The Wake” at Jamais Vu.

Happy reading, listening, whatever poison you choose. May your month be full of wicked female wiles and all the horror.

Bonesetting

For years, she will lie awake and tell herself stories of the girl she’d been, in hopes of holding fast to every fleeting fragment, but it will have the opposite effect–the memories like talismans, too often touched; like saint’s coins, the etching worn down to silver plate and faint impressions.”

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab

It’s difficult to find moments that reassure me of writing as my path. Especially, when most of the work is toiling away alone–as my fellow writing kind know–private achievements like meeting a word count for the day or finally finishing revisions on a certain chapter, or the snatches of paragraphs and sometimes only lines or words I fit in in 20 minute increments (how most of my raw words are drafted). But there is a recognition and sense of achievement and belonging I feel at having something published. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a poet more than just a writer, that achievement after twisting and molding words, phrases, concepts into something that reaches into another human being’s chest is so vital to a creator who works with words.

So it is pride and great pleasure that I get to say my sixth poetry publication is appearing in Months to Years now. My poem Bonesetting is so very close to my heart.

You can read it at Months to Years, a literary venue publishing works on grief, by clicking the lovely pitch perfect image below:

Photo Credit: Months To Years

This poem, specifically the final lines, was a revelation. It unveiled to me the purpose and inherent movement of poetry: write to discover. If someone had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate this feeling about my father’s death getting farther away from me after creating life. But when I sat with this strange, tender idea long enough, it formed itself into Bonesetting. I hope you enjoy it.

Reaffirmation

With the newest publication of a beloved author on the horizon, she’s been live-tweeting as she reads one of my favorite works of hers. Naturally, I am comparing myself to her and finding myself lacking. Yes, folks, you can make negative, unhealthy comparisons to someone for which you hold pure admiration.

As I sit here making my mental comparisons, I  wonder why I even bother. What do I even have to say that’s worthy of anyone’s time? Does my work have any Meaning? (I promise the tone of this post turns around).  But as I cuddle my sick toddler, I open one of my poems on a whim, Nest.

That poem still makes me so proud. My epiphany, however, was noticing the poetic devices I employed, some intentionally like the image of home, but more importantly, some unintentional, like my partial rhymes. And then the end of it, how everything just came together and…happened. How I had written no less than 10 poems before this poem, trying to capture my emotions about being a new mother and having lost my father, and that final stanza expressed everything I felt more clearly than all of those attempts combined.

I think that, that final marriage of meaning, form, feeling, and rightness is a key to this whole “what do I even have to offer anyone” question. That poem almost created itself, using me as a vessel; I didn’t have the option to not create it. Is that enough to give work meaning? To say, I HAVE to write, therefore it has meaning. I don’t think so. What I have to offer is how much I enjoyed creating it, and THAT gives it meaning, because if you did it right, others can feel that coming through.

Time Consuming

Clock

I’ve been watching YouTube videos reading about manifestation through parallel realities, how envisioning what you want as reality can manifest it. Well, at the risk of sounding like someone who just joined a cult, it worked. Liquid Imagination published my poem, Time Consuming, today! I love this poem and the little monster inside me that whispered these words. You can read it AND listen to it for free (shout out to my husband for all of his EQ-ing and recording program wizardry)! I feel like this poem and the beast at the heart of it exquisitely translates to audio. This publication is extra exciting, because I’ve always wanted to be a voice actor or audiobook narrator. Don’t worry. I’m not one of those weirdos who is immune to hearing my voice on a recording. See tweet below for evidence.

But I do enjoy reading aloud. I’ve always been faster at understanding what I’m hearing than silent reading. I will say though, after twelve takes of this poem, I appreciate how much work goes into audiobooks.

In my last post, I suggested some different mediums to celebrate Women in Horror Month. For more ways to commemorate, check out Annie Neugebauer’s 9 Ways to Celebrate Women in Horror Month on Lit Reactor. In keeping with Annie’s third way to celebrate this month, I have to give a shout out to another woman in horror who gets me to my desk every Sunday morning to dabble in my dark proclivities: Carie Juettner. We met back in 2013, and our history just goes to show that online friendships can be just as strong. We’ve exchanged snail mail, attended a horror conference together, and traded our horror stories, novels, and poetry over these last six years. Check out her poem Night Walk in Dreams & Nightmares and her shudderingly good story Makeup, which you can listen to on Tales To Terrify. The narrator is fantastique!

To close out Women in Horror Month, I also want to share my first ever published work, The Insolubility of Nightmares, published by Hello Horror in 2013. Cutting a path for oneself in writing of any kind is an arduous, time-consuming process. Because of my publication today, three years since my horror flash, “The Wake“, and because I like circles, it seemed befitting to dedicate this post to the friendly person and fierce writer who inspired me to first submit my work, Annie Neugebauer.

If you checked out my first poem, The Insolubility of Nightmares, or read/listen to my new poem, Time Consuming, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The Horizon of Possibility

stargazing stock photo
Photo credit: Greg Rakozy

God, it’s been a long time. I blame work mostly, but before that it was a general lack of inspiration. I was even flirting with the idea of just never updating this blog again, but for some reason, I couldn’t let it go. Now that I have actual thoughts to relay, I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t even know if anyone is still with me, here. Hello? Is thing on?

Anyway. Nanofreakinwrimo brings me out of my self-imposed hermitude. (I’ve dutifully transcribed my experience with this novel writing month here, here, and yes, here) Possibility is in the air. Do you feel it? Do you see how it breathes through the leaves on the shivering trees? Wait. Is it growling? Just me? Okay. So many ideas and current works-in-progress to dedicate myself to, and I just want to–do them ALL. My gothic work in progress, Wrathmoor, that I’ve been writing since 2011; my contemporary work in progress The Rosen Tales; and Other Points of Contention, which just makes me giddy and terrified every time I think about it; the short story I wrote for a contest that didn’t win, but that I love so hard I want it to have a face so I can pinch its cheeks; and the poem that is writing itself in my brain right now, revealing itself to me from the end going backwards, so yeah, that should be interesting.

This month makes me want that exhilaration of a cause and accomplishment and fighting tooth and nail to do the thing I love and what matters to me. I will never have an acceptable answer that “demonstrates critical thinking” or is particularly unique and especially meaningful for why I love writing and why writing these novels matters to me. Why does a child love painting and drawing? Why do we love to go to parties? Or, contrarily, why do we love to stay in and submerge ourselves in fanfiction? Just because I don’t have a textbook or Nobel worthy answer for why I love it, is it any less valuable?

No.

This life is too transient to get caught up in abstract, diaphanous terms like Meaning and Purpose in attempting to justify why we do the things we love. You get all tangled up in Plato’s Perfect Forms, and when you live in an imperfect world, it’s just not an ideal place to be, am I right? So, I say to you, my friends, on this day of new beginnings, of fresh, dewy eyed wonder, go. Find your horizon of possibility. Grasp its coat tails and let it carry you through the night.

Anyone else venturing into the great beyond with National Novel Writing Month? What will you be working on? Something new or something you’ve already started? I’m curious to hear how other people do NaNoWriMo: a little every day until you reach 50,000? Or just push yourself into the project with more gusto during this month of possibility?