February 2024 Wrap-Up

The Oldest Writing Challenge

Mar 04, 2024

I ended last week debating with myself whether or not to remove one of the longest stories from my upcoming short story collection.

In all honesty, it was a very fast debate.

To remove the story would be too devastating in every way so I decided to make it as long as it needed to be and keep it in regardless.

29/01/2024

This week started by posting last month’s wrap-up. It seems to have gone well.

I’ve been reworking a story for my short gaslamp horror story collection and I keep going off the ideas that I have.

The story is about heavy rain in the city - that bit has always remained the same. It’s the content of the story that I couldn’t settle on.

I went to the pub because it felt like the right thing to do.

Then by Thursday, I had an idea for this story that I am satisfied with, thank God.

Toward the end of the week, I made significant progress with my next article - Monsters & Aberrations. The pieces of this article seemed to fall into place with an ease that was very much welcome.

05/02/24

I posted my article, Monsters and Aberrations: The Dark Depths of Gaslamp Horror. It wasn’t read by as many people as would usually read my posts, but I have had some good feedback.

I spent Tuesday evening at a friend’s listening to Counting Crows & Ryan Adams, eating pizza and drinking Balvenie single malt scotch whisky.

Later in the week, I picked up The Watchmaker of Filigree Street again. Briefly.

And I read a bit more of the HP Lovecraft biography, I Am Providence by S.T. Joshi.

Have any of you seen the 2018 film, Cold Skin? It is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Albert Sanchez Pinol (which I didn’t know existed).

It is similar to the film The Shape of Water directed by Guillermo Del Torro, but much more horror-centric and set around WW1.

I watched it on Amazon Prime and I thought it was excellent. It leans into themes of gothic horror like isolation and bad weather, and explores the idea of coexisting with amphibious creatures otherwise unknown to humans.

It is somewhat Lovecraftian, and the creatures reminded me a lot of those creatures from the Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I recommend you watch it!

lighthouse beside house near the edge of stone island during day — Photo by Mitch Mckee on Unsplash

I dug out an old USB which had my GCSE creative writing project on it and decided to post that for the upcoming Macabre Monday.

It must be okay because I got a grade A, but I cringed when I started reading it.

With burning red cheeks, I pasted it into a new post and scheduled it for publication on Monday 12th February.

12/02/24

Despite a high chance of cringing to death, my GCSE Creative Writing Project went live, and I went to the pub. There was a man in the pub that came in and ordered a drink, sang All Night Long by Lionel Richie, got his drink and sat down.

L.L. Ford

, with a display of bravery, accepted the challenge of posting an early piece of writing. You can read The Passenger below.

The Trials of Astra (and other short stories)

The Passenger

Okay, so first off disclaimer: This is not my oldest piece of fiction that I still have in my possession, but it is one of my oldest pieces of fiction that I had typed out and saved to google drive. On this past Macabre Monday, A. B. Frank submitted a challenge to those of us who partake in the horror-sphere on Substack. His challenge was as follows…

a year ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · L.L. Ford

And

Saumya Sharma

also demonstrated courage in the face of cringing by posting the first and only chapter of a novel that may never see the light of day. You can read that chapter below.

If anyone else posted their oldest piece of writing that I am unaware of, please comment below and let me know so I can link to it!

I attempted to carry on with The Way of Kings audiobook but I can’t be arsed with it. There have been a few cool moments in the story so far, and I have no doubt that there will be plenty more to come. I’ve given it a good go, but I’m not invested in it. Lots of people enjoy spending time with the characters and reading their conversations. I, on the other hand, want things to happen. I’ve not got the patience for fluffy books. So this is where I part ways with it.

I’ve got most of Monday’s article written now, just a few bits to add in and it’ll be good to go.

19/02/24

I scheduled Monday’s article Where to Start with Gaslamp Horror and got to reading some of the other Macabre Monday posts.

I didn’t have a plan for next week’s post, but I got an idea in that strange way an idea presents itself - unexpectedly and without much thought. So I got to work and 2500 words later I exhaled.

Other than that, it was a quiet week.

26/02/24

This week’s post was about dreams in horror - The Haunting Realm of Dreams: Victorian Horror Literature’s Gateway to the Subconscious.

This week I watched the American Conspiracy: the Octopus Murders documentary. Did anyone else feel extremely unsatisfied by the end of it? I mean, there was no resolution!

I also started to listen to Waylander again (book 1 of the Drenai series by David Gemmell). The narrator of this series, Sean Barrett, has the best voice on earth. This series is excellent by the way. Simple fantasy stories with masculine men!

Other than that, I find myself wondering where the week went. Did I black out with disappointment after watching American Conspiracy?

Anyway, that was February 2024, folks.

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