Substack Archive – Page 2

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Welcome to the Newsletter!

Thanks for stopping by for my first newsletter of 2023! I hope you enjoy it and can share it with your friends and family.

Recent Announcements:

In late December of ‘22 I started a “Bookstagram” account on Instagram in an effort to further share news about my writing and do a little review work on the books and media that I spend so much of my time consuming. So far it’s been an interesting experiment, and if you want to check me out there my username is @bloperficiton.

Project Progress:

I’ve moved onto the next stage of editing of my sci-fantasy manuscript, grammar edits to prepare it for my copy editor. However, that process is taking far longer than I anticipated, because I did not get near the amount of writing done during the Christmas/New Year holidays I had intended. It’s likely that that planned deadline is going to have to be moved back to the second half of this month/early Feb.

Other projects are still on hold until this deadline is dealt with.

Recent Fascinations:

After finishing up THE FAR MERIDIAN, which I still highly recommend, I moved on to another podcast-audio drama titled GIVE ME AWAY, which I don’t recommend (check out my review on Instagram). However, as the year wound down and I progressively started focusing more of my free time into my writing, specifically the not-writing part of being a writer, I’ve found myself considering the idea of “being literary” and being a writer in general.

In December, my first story was accepted for publication. While it won’t be in print until the Summer, the guarantee of publication shifted the way I think about being a writer in a way I never thought it would. I had told myself for a long time, years and years, that once I was published I wouldn’t be an aspiring author but a real, proper writer of fiction. Even though I won’t earn a red cent from this publication, it’s still the lifelong realization of a childhood dream. I found out my story was accepted just as I pulled into my driveway after a long week at my day job, and I sat in the car for a minute, telling myself over and over again that I had finally made it.

I’m a writer.

Then I went inside and cooked and tended to my infant the same as any other day. The next Monday I woke up and went to work and did the same work I do Monday-Friday. There were certainly congratulations from friends and family, and I’m still ecstatic to have achieved this, but to me it seems that as soon as I reached that long-chased goal, another appeared just as fast.

I’m a writer, sure. Now let’s find a way to do it for money. And that, dear reader, is the real hat trick.

So I started a Facebook page and this newsletter and an Instagram and suddenly there’s more to all of this than writing. There’s building an audience and posting and being public. And to be quite frank, none of it feels very “literary” at all.

A part of me had always imagined big bookshelves and roll top desks and quiet contemplative writing framed by the chase of publication as the peak literary goal. Certainly that’s part of it, at least part of the mindset, but so too is the marketing and the audiences and the social media of it all. The meaning of “suffer for your art” really seems to have changed, at least for this social media luddite.

Anyway, @bloperficiton, like-share-subscribe, and all that good stuff.

Thanks for Reading!

Thanks for taking the time to read my newsletter.

Check out my website: billyloperhistory.com

Check me out on Twitter at: PineyWoodsHIS

Check me out on Facebook at: Billy Don Loper-Fiction

Check me out on Instagram at: bloperficiton

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY HOSTED ON SUBSTACK

Welcome to the Newsletter!

This one will be a little different than what I have planned going forward, but thanks for checking it out.

Why a Newsletter? (and why now?)

Author newsletters are the lit world’s standard, and Substack makes that process a lot easier than running a traditional email listserv. So instead of running a listserv, I’m going to try out running a monthly (as it is currently planned anyway) newsletter here.

As far as why now: I’m early in my writing career, having just had my first short story accepted for publication. I’m hoping that this space can become an accountability tool as much as a genuine place for delivering updates and other tidbits. Writing often and in many different ways is a key way to hone the craft, so that’s part of what I hope to do here.

So here is the first edition of my newsletter! I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading.

Recent Announcements:

In October my short story “Key to the Heart” won the Author Shoppe’s Scary Story Contest. You can read the story here: https://billyloperhistory.com/short-stories/a-short-story-key-to-the-heart/
In December my short story “Anatomy of a Waterfall” was awarded 3rd place in the Tishomingo Arts Council’s 2022 Fall Writing Competition. It was then selected to for publication in the 2023 Edition of THE VIEW FROM WOODALL.

Project Progress

I’m currently working my way through an edit of my current manuscript, a sci-fantasy series focused around a library. I’m planning to get it to a copyeditor by mid January.

Outside of that, I’m also working on a horror novella and a sci-fi story unrelated to my other manuscript. Those are both on pause until January.

Recent Fascinations:

Lately I’ve been working my way through THE FAR MERIDIAN, a magical realism audio drama focused on mental health and trauma. (Check it out here: https://www.whisperforge.org/thefarmeridian). It’s a fantastic show that is as thought provoking as it is genuinely charming. For me, audio dramas are hit and miss as a format, but this one has been an absolute hit. But it, combined with my read throughs of Stephen King’s THE INSTITUTE and a friend’s manuscript, has me thinking about theme in the context of different genres.

THE FAR MERIDIAN is a deeply introspective and emotionally powerful story, while THE INSTITUTE is a thriller mostly focused on fast paced action and shocking revelations (a standard for most King stories, to be sure), and my friends manuscript (which I will be providing no plot details for out of respect for him) is an absurdist comedy. Yet all three of these works focus a lot on repressed trauma in one form or another. The different genres of these stories lend themselves to different explorations of this topic, each does it with the reverence and respect it deserves.

Far Meridian focuses on the ways that unexplored trauma can fester in unexpected and unseen ways. Kings’ Institute spends most of its page count exploring the institutional exacerbation of trauma and oppressive unforeseen forces. My friend’s manuscript explores generational expectations and the trauma it imposes. Each of these stories are different from one another in almost every way except the underlying theme of trauma and what it means to the characters. Genre does not, after all, define theming.

I don’t know how I ended up going through three stories with a similar theme at the same time, but it has ended up topical to my own writing as I work through one of my own characters with PTSD. I’m a discovery writer, so as of now I have no real idea where this character will head in the coming sequels to my current project, but I know their past and their trauma will play a major role. All of these works have shown me that, regardless of the direction in style and tone the sequels of this project take, there will be a way to tackle this trauma in a respectful and accurate way.

There’s not much detail I can go into here beyond that (I don’t like to reveal details about my stories until they refinished and settled). I can say that all of those stories handle the theme well, and I hope to do the same.

Check out THE FAR MERIDIAN and THE INSTITUTE. They’re both worth your time.

Thanks for Reading!