Erin Zarro – Page 6 – Turtleduck Press

Posts tagged "Erin Zarro" (Page 6)

The Spell and the Burn

a free sci-fi short story by Erin Zarro This was the place. The school had stood here once, many years ago. The imprint of my trauma still lingered; I felt it in the wind. The Book had said to find a place with resonance. A place where the path of my life had completely changed. I took a breath, let it out. I didn’t want to remember, but for this to work, I had to face the memories. Afterward, my life hadn’t been horrible. I’d gone to college and had become a nurse. I had had a job at a prestigious medical center. I’d retired from there. My co-workers had thrown a huge retirement party for me. I’d gone home. I’d felt amazing. I’d done good in this world. I’d never married, but that had never bothered me. Until I’d found the Book. If I hadn’t been traumatized, hospitalized, and shunned by my peers …maybe someone would have loved me. I’d always felt wrong in my skin, completely unlovable. And then… I’d found the Book, and my life was about to change once again. Yes, this is the place where I’d do the ritual. I set the bag I’d bought on the grass and rummaged through it for my supplies. Salt for the magical circle. A pentagram necklace. A ceremonial blade. Candles. The sun was setting, and the sky became alive with multicolored hues and golden light. I…

Diving into the world of planners

It’s happened. I’ve been hit by the planner bug. For the past three years or so, my mom has always given me a simple planner for Christmas. I use it to track appointments and my daily to-do lists. I use it as a modified bullet journal, except without the bullets. But the idea is the same. I list what I’d like to accomplish and mark them off when I do. If I don’t, those tasks move to the next day. I also track wordcounts as well. And I do love that planner. It’s simple, easy, and I can jot stuff down and get to work. All three have been Bloom Planners, so I never have to figure out a new way to do things. However, a few days after Christmas, my mom told me that she’s actually bought me a different planner. Unfortunately, there was an issue with it closing once in a while, so she decided to not give it to me. She showed it to me anyway, and said I could still have it if I wanted it. And it’s a bit different than the Bloom Planner. So I thought about stuff for a bit and came up with the idea to use it as a Tracker. I had a bunch of things I wanted to track: wordcounts (yeah, I know it’s a duplicate, but I liked the idea of having them there, too) bedtimes (because I am still working on my schedule), food (because I am dieting…

Looking Ahead and Behind

So, it’s 2020. A new year. A new decade. Let’s see what I was doing in 2010: ~I launched Turtleduck Press with Siri Paulson, KD Sarge, and Kit Campbell. With that launch, I published my first poetry chapbook, Life as a Moving Target. It was my first publication, apart from poetry in literary magazines, ever. ~I had entered into my nth draft of Pirouette (now titled Death Dancer), hoping that this time it will be ready for a literary agent. This is before self publishing took over, and I ended up setting it aside on the advice of my writer friends who felt I was too wrapped up in revisions. I ended up writing Fey Touched instead (and published that in 2012).~I started writing an odd, supernatural thriller thing that to this day is still waiting to be finished. I’m close. It is important because of how the idea came to me, and how the story has warped and changed over time. It is also a new genre that’s a bit out of my comfort zone, but that’s a good thing.~I had been married for one year, yay! And we’re still going strong. ~I had three foot surgeries, the most recent this past March. I am hoping that’s the end of ALL surgeries for awhile. So, pretty major stuff going on. In the decade, I’d release another poetry chapbook, four novels, a novelette, a flash fiction collection, and a nonfiction book. Unfortunately, none of it is Pirouette or the supernatural…

I am a horrible boss

This year has been crazy for me. I had surgery on my right foot in March and then had months of rehab. I started having severely painful headaches and discovered that I had a pinched nerve in my neck, and by the way, I have several herniated discs in my neck as well. I’ve expanded my freelance business again. I’ve been trying to stay organized and efficient through all of this, and I think I might have succeeded except…my writing had to be put aside. I didn’t take this decision lightly. Anyone who’s known me for awhile knows that I usually write every day. I am always trying to reach a goal — a completed novel draft, complete a revision of a novel, or maybe an edit — and I work like hell to make it. I’ve always been this way. One of my main goals for the future was to publish at least one book a year, maybe even two if I could manage it. This was before my health got dicey again and I had a lot less time and energy to devote to it. I did start transitioning to dictation again, mostly to speed up the process, and I’m still working out the kinks. I had a deadline for Reaper Girl #3, The Vanishing. January 1st. Which would have been doable…had I had time to finish the draft and revise. I need at least three weeks minimum and that’s pushing it. My drafts change significantly in revision,…

Thankfulness

Every year around Thanksgiving, I write my post on thankfulness. I’ve been doing this for years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 I skipped, 2013, and 2012. You’d think I’d run out of things to be thankful for. Not so. On the thirteenth anniversary of the day my husband and I met, he was in a head-on collision. He was at work, making deliveries in Ohio when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit him. The airbags deployed, and I’m positive that they saved his life. Much how my sister’s did when she was involved in an accident several years ago. He called me around the usual time he checked with me — lunchtime — and I had every reason to believe that it was business as usual. When he told me he’d had an accident, I was stunned. He was talking to me on the phone, yet shaken up, so it couldn’t have been that bad. But still — the writer/researcher/worrier in me freaked out. Head injuries. Whiplash. Messed up knees (which actually happened to me two weeks after I started going to college. I had tendonitis in both knees for a very long time). Anything could be wrong and not obvious. But he was talking to me, which meant his brain was okay. He didn’t break any bones. No whiplash. You have no idea how relieved I was. We were supposed to go out to dinner for our anniversary. First, we made a trip to urgent care per…

The Photograph

a free horror short story by Erin Zarro The strange picture hung in the hallway near my bedroom, cloaked in shadows. It was a picture of a woman who wore a black dress. A black veil covered her face completely, obscuring her facial features. I’d grown up in this house, and the picture had been there for as long as I could remember. Unfortunately, the only way to my bedroom was past that picture. Every time I passed by her, goosebumps raised on my arms, the hairs at the back of my neck stood up, and I’d get this painful twisting in my stomach. It lasted only seconds, but it was enough. My brother and I were walking home from school one day. The air was crisp with the feel of approaching autumn. Leaves had started to turn color. My heart was heavy, because at school I had friends. At home, not so much. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you broke Mom’s vase,” my little brother, Evan, said in a sing-song voice. “They’ll believe me. They always do.” It was freaking inevitable, so I didn’t bother arguing. “Whatever.” Evan stopped dead on the sidewalk, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Something’s wrong with you. You always argue with me. ‘Specially when I lie to Mom and Dad.” I shrugged. “I dunno. They’ll blame me anyway, so what’s the point?” Evan started walking again, and I followed. Yep, that was the ritual. Evan blamed me for something I…

The End of the Great Surgery Adventure of 2019

So I saw my foot doctor this morning. She asked me some questions, then told me I was “all set.” My mom jumped in before I could really process it. She asked if I still needed to wear my orthotic (my “cyborg leg,” lol) that I’ve been wearing for about a month to stabilize my Achilles’ tendon so it heals better/faster. She said yes, until I am one hundred percent pain free, then I need to wean out of it. I’m done, unless there’s anything that comes up. It feels a bit surreal to be done. I’ve been seeing her since Dec. 21st. I’ve been dealing with this foot issue since maybe last September, which puts us at just under a year. (That’s an estimation because I don’t actually remember the exact onset of the pain). I’ve been working upstairs in our kitchen at least since December. My plan is to get down there ASAP but it needs to be cleaned and organized badly. I might just start working there anyway—I miss my solitude. It’s been rough working in a different space long term. I am truly a creature of habit and need stability in my routine. It’s hard to believe that on March 1st —five months ago—I had surgery and wasn’t able to walk for a month. In that time, I’d been cleared to walk (March 29th—two days after my birthday…it was the best birthday present ever!), had physical therapy for almost three months, and have been in an…

Face Everything and Rise

This is my new motto. The idea behind it is that F.E.A.R. can be an acronym — Forget Everything and Run or Face Everything and Rise. And I need that so much right now. Recently I started having these weird, head-in-a-vise kinds of headaches. They are mostly in the back of my head, but sometimes I’ll get pain on the sides just behind my ear. It is mostly on the left side (which is my TN side), but once in a great while the pain will migrate to the right. They also tend to flare up the TN which makes it a double whammy of pain. At first I thought it was the trigeminal neuralgia, but the trigeminal nerve doesn’t go to those places. The occipital nerves do, though. But according to my research, there would need to be some sort of damage, so I don’t think that’s it. These headaches can at times be worse than migraines. There’s the feeling of major pressure, and I find it difficult to concentrate. Maybe it’s from having migraines for years (since I was eighteen), but it’s difficult but not impossible to work with a migraine (I once worked with one that lasted six days. I actually wonder now if it was a TN attack and I just didn’t know it). So it’s affecting my work, my sleep…everything. And I’m in constant fear of the next onslaught. While at the neurologist on Wednesday, I told her about the headaches and she believes it…

Sun Touched

a free serial set in the Fey Touched universeby Erin Zarro Part 5 Get caught up: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 DAY 2 – Continued The hallway was strangely quiet as we walk-hobbled. I kept waiting for more rogues to materialize from the shadows, but none did. “How do we get out of here?” I asked Ry. There were several doors on both sides of the hallway, but nothing jumped out to me as the way out. It reminded me of an old, creepy castle. Ry took a deep, rattling breath. I remembered that tomorrow was day three. If I didn’t heal him…he would die. Tomorrow. It felt like a sucker punch. I wasn’t even sure I liked him. I wasn’t sure I was going to heal him. But the thought of him dying clearly did something to me. Something I didn’t understand. And I didn’t want to think on it too deeply. “There’s a door on the left that leads to another hallway. We take that all the way down, turn left, and we’re there.” Ry coughed. “Sounds pretty easy,” Tanya murmured. “Oh, but it might not be. Not if I have anything to do with it,” a voice said. It was male, and it was coming from in front of us, but no one was there. “That’s Andre.” Ry coughed again. “He’s mastered the art of hiding behind illusions. C’mon, Andre, show…

When I’m Not Writing…

I get twitchy. Out of sorts. Ideas feel like they are going to explode out of me if I don’t get them down on the screen. It’s just not pretty. There have been a few times when I stopped writing regularly. Once was after my first ankle surgery, where I didn’t touch the computer for a week. Another, which I’ve talked about at great length, was due to the trigeminal neuralgia attacks and not being able to concentrate. I could write around 100 words a day (and I did, resulting in this) but while it felt good, it also felt like not enough. I need to be able to immerse myself in the world and characters of a story. I need momentum. I depend on it, actually, to keep me moving. I can rack up quite a few words even at 500 words a day if I do it every single day. Let’s talk about the last time I wrote anything regularly. That was the Fireborn revision back in December, which required some rewrites, but not a whole lot. There was my antho story, Of Poison and Promises. The anthology released in March. I’ve also finished my online serial, Sun Touched, and I just need to revise the last installment before posting it on May 1st. I did write a bit on Oubliette, an older novel, but for only two days. And last week, I started book #3 of my Reaper Girl Chronicles, The Vanishing. The muse/right brain/writer brain is…

Tag: Erin Zarro