Shannon Lawrence

My Kickstarter for Nuts! Squirrelpocalypse is live and 383% funded! It's got 13 days more, ending on October 13th (it seemed a good date to end a horror Kickstarter). There are all sorts of goodies, and we've hit several stretch rewards already, with more to come. I'm stopping by some blogs over the course of the Kickstarter. You can find the following guest posts: September 28 - Jennifer Lane generating Nut Buzz September 30 - Ronel the Mythmaker , who asked about the horror angle of the book October 12 - Jean Davis If we hit the next stretch reward, I'll be having an online launch party with Q&A and critter trivia. We're 77% of the way to that reward! One of my friends is also doing a Kickstarter. DeAnna Knippling's runs October 1 through 31, and is a Middle Grade-Plus Dark Fantasy for two hardcovers. But here's the crazy part: she's live-writing the third book as part of the Kickstarter! Check out The Waking of Witches ! Have you ever run or bac...

Wow, it's been YEARS since I checked into this list and read something from it. I read another book from the list recently and thought it would be simple to take up where I left off, but I can't find my original spreadsheet and I had to search through the dregs of my old blog to find information on what I'd read on it.  Years ago, I and two of my friends decided we were going to read all the books on Nightmare Magazine's Best Horror list to learn more about writing horror. I was going at a healthy clip before getting derailed. So I'm going to do a catch up here of what was on the list and what I've read. I did not review books I'd already read before finding the list, but maybe I should have. I might in the future, but there are plenty I haven't read that I'd like to do first. The list is below since it's 100 books. But here's my review of The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham. Triffids is a post-apocalyptic story, but what sets it apart i...

New post up at my travel blog, The Autistic Klutzes Talk, Tips, & Travails: Whitby, An Introduction

It's time for the September Insecure Writer's Support Group! Created by Alex J. Cavanaugh , the IWSG is a monthly gathering where writers share their insecurities and support each other through them. Anyone can join. Simply click on Alex's name and put your blog on the linky list. First of all, Happy 15th Anniversary, IWSG! The co-hosts this month are: Kate Larkindale , SE White , JS Pailly , Olga Godim , and Natalie Aguirre . Be sure to drop by and say hi. The optional question this month is: Do you have a favorite character archetype you tend to gravitate toward in your writing? I don't think so, so I'm skipping the question this month. I guess I'll just pop right into this month's insecurity: funding on Kickstarter . I had an opportunity to jump in with a great group of people called Learnable Peers , all of whom are doing a fall Kickstarter in darker genres, which meant giving myself a crash course on everything Kickstarter. It also meant my husband, who...

Hi! It's time for the August Insecure Writer's Support Group! The IWSG was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers to address their insecurities and lend support to their fellow writers. Anyone can join. Simply click on Alex's name and add your blog link to the list, then post the first Wednesday of every month. I'm co-hosting this month with deidre Knight , Liza , and Pat Garcia ! The optional question this month is: As a writer/author what is something you regret? Or something that you wish you'd done differently in your writing process? The only things I regret are the missed opportunities. I make it a rule to take on things that scare me and to learn and try new things, and I don't regret any of those things I've done. But I regret the times where I've been out of the writing world after various real world things, such as how long it took me to get back into the writing world when my dad died, or how I completely stepped out of it during my previou...

It's time for the July Insecure Writer's Support Group! Created by Alex J. Cavanaugh , the IWSG gives writers a place to air their insecurities and lend their support to others. Anyone can join. Simply click on Alex's name and put your blog on the linky list. This month's co-hosts are Rebecca Douglass , Ronel Janse van Vuuren , Cathrina Constantine , and Jacqui Murray . Be sure to stop by their blogs! The optional question this month is: Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry? I mean, probably a lot. It would be great if it got the kind of respect and treatment of the other arts. The gatekeeping. The imbalance. So on and so forth.  Do you have a word-count tracker that keeps a display of any sort? I wanted to be able to show novel word count and include it in my newsletters, but I'm not sure what's out there. I can track it on a spreadsheet, but I was hoping for something I input the word coun...