Home Articles posted by Kit Campbell (Page 2)

Chronic Stress

Hello, friends, how are you? I’m actually pretty decent, today at least. We’re taking a few days to just rest. Nothing planned, nothing in particular, just chilling and not worrying about anything. Well, in theory. In practice, my spouse has had two work meetings he hasn’t been able to get out of, the kids have whined about being bored, we had a miscommunication about how long to spend on an art project versus making dinner, and I’ve spent about four hours at the pool, which is a lot of pool but I suppose isn’t too bad. (May also have gotten sunburned. Whoops.) I’ve used the non-family time to read 75% of a novel and 60 pages of a nonfiction book, finish revising a chapter and start another, and take a nap (which was not terribly successful because everyone kept coming in to bother me, oh well). And I am purposefully not thinking about anything that’s been giving me anxiety lately–nothing related to school or volunteer commitments, nothing related to the basement flood or the tornado, nothing related to my furnace failing, nothing related to upcoming conventions. Will I have to think about all those things tomorrow? Oh, absolutely. Dance classes, a book study, an email to the other volunteers, choir practice, the furnace people and the landscapers, my neighbor whose wife just died. But those are for tomorrow. Today, we let ourselves relax. Today, we find joy and comfort where we can. I can’t imagine the chronic stress that we…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 5 by Kit Campbell

Part 1Part 2Part 3 Part 4 Across Worlds with You, Part 5Kit Campbell “I thought you locked this?” Will asked. They were, once again, up on the marble terrace, standing in front of a pair of massive wooden doors. “I didn’t lock anything, the Council did,” Theo said, his voice echoing even more here. “And it was the gate between here and Earth.” Will looked over at Destia, who shrugged. “World gates are weird sorcerer stuff,” she said. “I just stab things.” As if to emphasize her point, she pulled her sword out once more from…somewhere. Maybe it was a magic sword. It didn’t matter as long as it got the job done, Will guessed. “Okay,” he said, just to say something. “Now what?” “Now sorcerer boy has to put in the right coordinates for whatever world he’s tracked the amulet to, and in we go.” Destia took a few steps away and did a few practice parries. “Is that what you did to get us here?” “Sort of.” Very slowly, Theo retrieved a similar bag of supplies that had been left off to the side. “The difference is that I knew how to get us here. The amulet is on an uncharted world.” “Uncharted?” “Like I said earlier, there’s an infinite number of worlds. Until the Darkness came in from one, we didn’t know about any of them. Using the worldslips is a new skill, born of desperation.” Theo began to chalk up the ground in front of the…

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Playing Catch Up All the Time

Hey, friends, do you ever feel like you’re always catching up on things you should have done a while ago? Like, you can never start the day with a clean slate, because something’s already hanging over your head? Just me? Cool, cool. September is traditionally a busy month for me, and things–more things than normal–seem to get left by the wayside. So I spent today catching up on things–this blog post, some surveys for one of my kid’s schools, a bunch of important emails that I’ve been ignoring (still more of those to go, ugh), three emails worth of Moby Dick (I’m subscribed to Whale Weekly, though it’s not consistent on arrival), two chapters of a book for a book study, etc. It’s exhausting. My to-do list app has about six items in the red, and they’ve been there for about three weeks. What’s one to do? Is there a point where you abandon the things that haven’t gotten done? Change their due dates? Make sure you’re fitting in new things instead of always focusing on the past? I wasn’t one of those kids that was super eager to grow up, but I wasn’t against it. Little did I know adulting would be all never-ending to-do lists and eternal house repairs. Oh well. It is what it is. How are your Septembers going? Ready for spooky season? (Yay, spooky season!) Enjoying Across Worlds with You? Thoughts on the eternal drudgery of life?

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Across Worlds with You, Part 4 by Kit Campbell

Part 1Part 2 Part 3 Across Worlds with You, Part 4Kit Campbell The Historian was an elderly woman who lived, or at least worked, in a small cottage on the edge of the village. Her long, gray hair hung loose around her shoulders as she opened the door and beckoned them all inside without saying a word. Inside, the cottage was clean though cluttered, mostly with books and tea cups. Theo wrung his hands. “Greetings,” he started. “Sit down,” the Historian said. They all sat, squeezing onto an older sofa. Will found himself stuck between Destia, who took up more room than her size would entail, and Theo. “I know we’re early…” Theo started again. “Early? Ha!” The Historian put a kettle on a wood stove in the corner before bustling over to one of her overladen bookshelves. She pulled a large book, papers hanging out of the sides, off and dumped it unceremoniously onto Will’s lap. It opened onto a random page, where the drawings of three…necklaces?…were displayed. Wordlessly, the Historian waited. “Okay,” Will said. “Um, let’s assume I don’t have any idea what’s happening.” Destia gave Theo a look across Will. Theo glared back. “Oh, this is that timeline.” The Historian sighed, then dragged an armchair over. She lowered herself into it. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. When she breathed out, her breath misted, creating a dense cloud which floated between her and Will. “Many years ago, before you were born, a Darkness came.” On…

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Imposter Imposter Syndrome?

Hidey-ho, friends. Pay no attention to what day of the week it is. Let’s talk about Imposter Syndrome. The Oxford dictionary describes it as “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.” Writers run into this periodically, even famous, best-selling authors. Not necessarily about works of the past, but current works. “Oh, sure,” one might say, “that book is great, but this new book is trash, I’m a hack, it was pure luck that I have gotten anywhere,” etc. But what I’ve found is…sometimes that feeling is justified? There have been times where I have written something that has felt like pulling teeth, that feels pedantic and repetitive and uninspired. It feels bad. Just bad. And while most stories do go through a “this is bad and I am a hack” phase (normally in the middle somewhere), sometimes something is truly bad, and when you give it to your betas or your critique group, they do come back and say “oh, no, you’re right, something’s missing, this isn’t working.” It’s not Imposter Syndrome if you’re right, and it actually is bad, right? So if you’d asked me last week if I was a good judge of whether my own writing was actually bad, or just me going through the tough phase of the story, I would had said I was pretty good at telling the difference. However, I spent the last weekend pulling apart…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 3 by Kit Campbell

Part 1 Part 2 Across Worlds with You, Part 3Kit Campbell When the light finally died down and Will could see again, he was in yet another new hall, though this one was made of a gray-ish stone, maybe marble, with a large terrace in front of him overlooking a green valley. He blinked once, rubbing his eyes. Then Destia and Theo barreled into him, and all three went down. “Shut it, shut it!” Destia scrambled to her feet, sword in hand. “It’s shut,” Theo answered, not bothering to right himself. “I built that into the spell. What we need to do now is lock the gate.” He finally sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I have no idea how Deathcrawlers are managing to move between worlds, but I don’t like it. And we have enough Deathcrawlers here without having to worry about more coming in from elsewhere.” Will was half-pinned under Theo’s legs. “Where are we now?” “Beautiful Helstena,” Destia replied. “Or what’s left of it, anyway.” Will twisted so he could see over the terrace again. “Looks fine to me.” Theo’s eyes went blue and something unseen blew through, messing up everyone’s hair. Will had the strangest urge to straighten Theo’s. After a moment, Theo’s eyes faded back to normal and he extricated himself from Will, offering him a hand. “I’ve sent a report. They’ll take care of the gate.” Will accepted Theo’s help. The other man pulled him up with surprising strength, his grasp lingering…

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Creating a Serial

Hi friends! Hope you’re doing well! I’m not, we got hit by a TORNADO what the hell, but we persevere anyway. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice you’re getting a section of Across Worlds with You each month. There will be 7-10 parts in total (not sure exactly where I’m breaking it up yet) so we’re good for the rest of the year, and then, in theory, it’ll get consolidated and released in book form. This is the fourth serial I’ve done. Hidden Worlds (one of our launch titles, recently received a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite) started as a serial, many many years ago, and I had a scifi one that I wrote for a prompt community over the course of 10 years. (That one is a mess and will never see the light of day, unless I am very bored one day and feel the need to rip a project to shreds.) Last year I had Deep and Blue here, if you’d like to read over that, and now we’re onto Across Worlds with You. I actually outlined Across Worlds with You something like seven years ago. I’ve found that, sometimes, it’s better to outline a story (or at least write down important parts) even when you know you’re not going to write it right then. Brains are stupid; they forget stuff all the time. I don’t know how many stories or parts of stories I’ve lost over the years because I was like “Oh, yes, that’s amazing,…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 2 by Kit Campbell

Across Worlds with You, Part 2 by Kit Campbell Part 1 “Will? Will? Can you hear me?” Oh. He wasn’t dead. At least, not if the aching in his body meant anything. Gingerly, Will raised his head. He was lying on a tiled floor in a large hall of some kind where he’d definitely never been before. Beside him another man, his same age, knelt. He, like the hall, was also new. But, hey, not dead. And the dragging, hissing noise was nowhere to be heard. But, oh hell, his final. Dr. Frobisher had probably burned it. The man beside him wrung his hands. He was a lanky fellow who looked like a strong breeze would probably best him in a fight. “Can you hear me?” “Where am I?” Excellent, his voice worked too. The tile beneath him, and, indeed, all of him, was drenched. “Did you drag me in from outside? Which department is this?” “Oh, well,” the other man said. Then, instead of saying anything useful, he ran his hands through his hair, which served to make it stand up straight. Will managed to push himself up into a sitting position, only having a hand slip out from under him once. The hall was easily four stories tall, made out of a deep red stone that he hadn’t seen elsewhere on campus. Several stone columns held up the ceiling, and other archways led off, well, somewhere. It was fairly dark past the archways, making it hard to tell…

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Let’s Talk About Books!

Oof. May was A Month, friends. But it’s behind us now, and let us not dwell on the many disasters it contained (except perhaps the basement, which is still having, shall we say, issues). (Also, if you missed it, the first part of my new serial, Across Worlds with You, is now up! You’ll get a new part every month until we’re done.) But anyway, let’s talk about books. Specifically the books I have read lately. I mostly read scifi and fantasy (and my guilty pleasure, cozy mysteries) but I do try to read outside of that periodically to expand my horizons and all that jazz. We Have Always Been Here, by Lena Nguyen (2021, science fiction) I really liked this one! Aside from colony missions and strange new planets and other things you’d expect in scifi, you also get an interesting delve into consciousness, what makes us human, androids, and interpersonal relationships. I basically read it all in one sitting, which is hard because it wasn’t short. Built, by Roma Agrawal (2018, nonfiction) We have a local restaurant that uses random books for decorations, and this one caught my eye, and then when I looked it up it sounded interesting, so I hunted it down. Ms. Agrawal is an architectural engineer, and she explains how things like skyscrapers and giant bridges and what have you get built, as well as looking at historical examples and how they worked (or didn’t). I learned quite a bit! Not least of which…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 1 by Kit Campbell

Across Worlds with You, Part 1Kit Campbell Will was six before he realized his reflection was wrong. Oh, sure, most of the time it was nothing, but every now and then his reflection misjudged what he was going to do, and would have to flail a bit to catch up. And once, when he was about ten, his reflection sneezed when Will did not. At first he’d tried to point this out to the adults in his life—his parents, his teachers. But his reflection was always perfect when someone else came along, and after a while Will had stopped trying. It wasn’t hurting anything, after all. As he got older and into college, he came across stories of ghosts and other paranormal entities and mirrors, but his reflection wasn’t like that at all. Will came to think of it as a slightly-confused but mostly well-meaning friend who just happened to look exactly like him. Well, mostly, he didn’t really think about it at all. It just was. On his twenty-second birthday he woke up, rubbed his eyes, and stumbled into the bathroom. After splashing water on his face, he toweled off and looked into the mirror to find…nothing. His reflection was gone. The towel dropped out of Will’s hand. He could see the dingy tiles of his apartment’s shower, the mismatched towels hanging haphazardly on the towel bar, the toilet which leaned subtly to the left. But he—or his reflection, at least—was conspicuously absent. Will rapped gently on the mirror.…

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