Monster Fest photos

Some time ago, I promised to post a few photos of Monster Fest 2017, so here they are:

The first one is of me doing my presentation on Ed Wood, titled "Your Stupid, Stupid Minds," the second is of me in front of the schedule of my presentation, the third is me and a statue of The Fly, fourth is Dr. Madblood, the horror movie host of Hampton Roads, fifth is the winner of the costume contest, and last is the other winners and runners up of the costume contest. Can't wait 'til next year!

So I joined the Horror Writer's Association

I teach at several higher education facilities, that's at one university and one community college to be exact. I do it part time at both schools with the hopes that one day I can do it full time, which is just part of the reason I've been preparing to enter an English PhD program next year. Another piece to that puzzle is that I'm finding that higher education facilities want you to belong to organizations in your field of study. For me that would be literature, or writing, mostly writing. It's best to join the organization that holds the most interest for me, as it is the  area I will do the majority of my research. That's why I decided to join the Horror Writer's Association.

I've been in contact with this organization for last few weeks, and just paid my dues to join earlier today. I'm supposed to receive some correspondence through the mail in the next few weeks or so. According to the organization some of the benefits of membership (besides being able to put it on my CV when applying for jobs) are that I have access to mentoring programs where other writers can help critique my work and help single supporting members (like myself) get published. They also provide exclusive access to some publishers, agents, and publications looking for more horror short stories.

Here's the link to the HWA's website in case anyone is interested in looking them up.

So, we'll see how this goes. I will again keep readers up to date on this endeavor. Hopefully it works out and turns into an investment.

Today's picture is of this year's jack-o-lantern I made at the request of my 11-year-old daughter. Yes, it's supposed to be a bat, in case you couldn't tell.

Writing group no more.

I guess no one stepped up to save the writing group. The lady who said she would step up to be the group leader said she didn't realize there was a $15 / month fee through Meet Up either, so she also declined to become its leader. I am now in the market for a new writer's group. I'd like to start my own, and may look into that come the new year. I still have a huge stack of papers to grade that will last me until the end of the year, so a lot of other projects are waiting right now. So what did I get out of the writer's group? Besides a few new Facebook friends, I did manage to latch onto a Beta reader for my current novel project. That is pretty important.

Meanwhile, I also took the GRE to get into a PhD program at Old Dominion University. I reached my goal for the verbal section, of just over the 70th percentile, but fell short of the required 50th percentile for the quantitative math section. However, I blew the writing section out of the water, and scored in the 90th percentile! Counting that writing score alone would get me into Harvard (I looked it up).

Meanwhile, I received another rejection for a short story in my e-mail this week. Such is the writer's life.