Kathryn Meyer Griffith's Dinosaur Lake back story

Dinosaur Lake’s Backstory Essay

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Dinosaur Lake is available at Amazon Kindle

 Of all my 16 novels, Dinosaur Lake has the strangest story attached to its creation, death and rebirth…20 years later…of any of them.

Not so much because, as a few of my books, it took so long to write or publish, but because in 1993 it was contracted, edited and the final galleys had been proofed by me for a 5^th  paperback book release from Zebra (Kensington Publishing) after 3 earlier novels with Leisure Books. I even had a stack of the full-color, printed and embossed covers; it was only weeks before it was to go to the bookshelves (in those days the brick & mortar stores were still king, no Internet or ebooks). I strongly believed it’d be my breakout book. You know, the book that’d make my career and launch me into the stratosphere with Stephen King and Anne Rice? How wrong I’d be. But, hey, I thought who wouldn’t love a tale of a cunning but malevolent rampaging prehistoric dinosaur living in Crater Lake, Oregon, and the Park Ranger who, along with a ragtag gang of heroes who’d try to stop it? I mean, I’d always loved anything about dinosaurs…dinosaur books, playing with those little plastic figurines and watching old stop-action dinosaur movies of the 1950’s and 60’s…who hadn’t?

Apparently someone. My new editor at Zebra.

By 1994, after four novels with them, I’d lost my sweet editor there and a new one took her place...and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my book (Predator…which never came out but still lingers to this very day like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. When we were editing the book and deciding on the title and the cover, I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator (his choice as they hadn’t liked my American Loch Ness Monster title), bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and the movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book–my first ever–dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and my final edits were done! But nothing my agent or I could say or do would change their minds. They said they were cutting their horror lines and setting adrift a lot of their mid-list horror authors because horror (in 1994) was on the decline. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “And no one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” Yeah, sure.

And six months later Jurassic Park the book came out! We all know how that story ended, don’t we? People loved the book, the movies; they loved dinosaurs.

I’ll never know the real reason they cut the book but that male editor never bought another book from me…which was another weird thing because when I’d met him in New York (I went for a Horror Convention) in the summer of 1993 he’d taken my husband and I out to lunch and gushed over me and said how much he’d loved my last release WITCHES. Hmmm.

Anyway, I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. It never came out. I grieved.

I was so disgusted I stashed it in a drawer somewhere and tried to forget it.

Until now. After I’d finished revising and rereleasing all my new/old 15 books (and besides paperbacks they’re in ebooks for the first time ever) from Eternal Press/Damnation Books in June of 2012 I remembered about my American Loch Ness Monster novel, took it out and reread it.

Whoa, like a lot of my older novels now years later I could see what was wrong with it and how to fix it. Back then I hadn’t seen the head-hopping I did or the awkward phrasing, stiff or overly dramatic dialogue, repetitive words and other things I’ve learned since to recognize and stay away from. Of course, computers help make the editing so much easier. I think I’d done the original book on my electric typewriter.

Anyway, telling myself the dumping of that book had been a turning point in my writing life–sending me in the wrong direction for a long time apparently…I couldn’t sell a book for eight long years after that–I decided to rewrite and finally release it. In fact, I was going to do something that twenty years ago would have been unheard of and frowned on…self-publish the book myself. With Kindle Direct. For the first time in forty years I was walking away from the traditional publishers and going on my own. Thank you J.A. Konrath’s blog! I figured I could sell the Kindle ebook a lot cheaper and, thus, use it to introduce (as enticement) more readers to my writing and perhaps, if they liked it, they’d buy more of my other fifteen novels, novellas and various short stories.

It could work, right?

So here it is, retitled, rewritten, updated and with an amazing new cover I love by Dawne Dominique… Dinosaur Lake. I hope my readers will like it.

Written this thirtieth day of Aug, 2012 by the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith  

***

About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

                                                                                                            

Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith.

All available on Amazon.com on my page: 

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, June 2012) 

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)

Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2012)  

Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out 2010)  You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZU77j_q4S8

Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out 2011) 

The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)  You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cogCNYKzPqc 

Winter’s Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) You Tube Book Trailer address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYCs2DVhHg

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28HZqu-my1g

Don’t Look Back, Agnes novella & bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out; Eternal Press 2012)

You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3q9rZryFMo

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Damnation Books 2010) 

You Tube self-made Book trailer with original song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0-U9c2Lwfo  

The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010) 

You Tube Book Trailer Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcRBvDI5G4Y

The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction) 

My Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http:// www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith

http://romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

E-mail me at rdgriff@htc.net  I love to hear from my readers. ***

Guest post on horror and its subgenres by Su Halfwerk

The Horror Genre and its Babies

by Su Halfwerk

Horror fiction generates a deliberate and imminent sense of foreboding that leaves little hope of a happy ending. It creates an eerie atmosphere caused by either otherworldly (demons and monsters) or natural elements (mental illness or mutations cranked up to the umpteenth power.) Readers' responses vary between emotional, physiological, and psychological; it all depends on how much they can take and how gory the story is.

The division of horror subgenres (babies) is a debatable topic people tend to argue about. I've drawn the examples below from my readings and books on my TBR pile. Let's have a look at these subgenres to gauge how deep is horror's reach and how dark is your little soul (depending on your preference, of course.) Shall we?

Soft horror is based mainly on dark mood and subtle hints at fear rather than shock and gore. Example: Haunted by James Herbert.

Dark fantasy is fantasy with a horrific touch that highlights good vs. evil. Example: Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

Supernatural or paranormal is about unreal monsters (zombies, ghosts, demons, giant insects, etc) who isolate normal humans and make them suffer or simply eat them. Example: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

Sci-fi horror is a concoction of science fiction and horror genres where the science fiction elements (space and time travel, biotechnological organisms, extraterrestrial beings, and automatons) are used to infuse the horror factor. Example: Infected by Scott Sigler.

Psychological is based solely on the characters' psychological fears. It might have gore and mutilation but mostly it is subtle until it is revealed that the view point character might've been raving mad. Example: Intricate Entanglement by Su Halfwerk. (Me *waves*)

Lovecraftian is also known as Cathulhu mythos. The basis of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction is that thousands of years ago, the world was populated by a race of immense powers that still reside, unseen, in the center of the earth or somewhere unknown to us. Example: The Book of Cthulhu anthology.

Gothic is written in literary fashion that involves the intrusion of the POV character's insanity. It might include specters, crypts, and hexes set in haunted and decaying mansions. The atmosphere is gloomy and coiled in a sense of doom. Example:  Works by Edgar Allan Poe like The Fall of the House of Usher.

Suspense/Thriller is mystery (whodunit) where the horror element isn't supernatural but involves real people (like serial killers and sociopaths) who generate the menace factor in these tales. Example: Die for Me by Karen Rose.

Satanic or Occult focuses on deals with the devil or demons. Examples: Hellbound by Su Halfwerk, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Zuphreen by Su Halfwerk :-).

Weird Fiction or bizzaro as a term was coined by Weird Tales magazine. A bizzaro novel might have a combination of supernatural and mythical stories that share a sense of unrealism and strangeness. Because of its uncanniness, this fiction can border on humorous. Example: Attic Clowns by Jeremy C. Shipp.

Holocaust involves mass destruction of life due to an epidemic outbreak, human slaughter—like the German Nazi Holocaust—, experiments gone awry, or monsters. Example: The Stand by Stephen King.

Erotic Horror is horror with explicit sexual content essential to the original story; take the sex out and the story will be incomplete and choppy. Typically, that sex is not gratifying. Example: Coven of Celsus - Elizabeth: an erotic horror by Randy V.

Splatterpunk is extreme horror with vividly described gory and violent actions. Examples:  Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror and Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror anthologies.

Cutting Edge's meaning as a subgenre differs from one person to another. For me, it takes place in modern settings and encompasses more than one of the previous genres in one place. Example: Purity by Douglas Clegg.

This is how I separate horror subgenres and pick my reading materials accordingly. In any case, horror should be entertaining (yes, it should. Really!) and it must have an intriguing plot. I hope you enjoyed this quick run through horror's subgenres.

So, what's your favorite subgenre? And what genres will you be trying out?

Lisa, thank you so much for the opportunity to share with your readers the darker side of fiction and its kiddies.

****

About Su Halfwerk:

Su Halfwerk writes in the horror and paranormal romance genres. From a tender age, the written word left a strong impression on her, later on terrifying, blood-chilling books became the object of her interest. Su’s style in horror combines shuddery terror with elements of surprise; some would even call it an enigmatic twist. In the world of paranormal romance, she transforms the desire to scare into a quest to seduce and tantalize.

Books by Su Halfwerk:

• His to Possess (Finalist in 2011 EPIC Awards in the Paranormal Romance category)
• Zuphreen (Horror/Urban Fantasy)
• Intricate Entanglement (Horror/Thriller)
• Seeker Book 1 of Unsettled series (Paranormal Romance)
• Hellbound (Horror)

When not writing, Su is designing book trailers for herself and other authors.

You can find Su online here: Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Novel Prevue

Guest blogger - Sheila Lowe - Series versus Standalone Writing

A special treat for readers today. Sheila Lowe is here to talk about writing series versus writing standalone novels. She's done both. :)

Series v. Standalone

When I started writing my first mystery novel, I had no plans to make it a series. Having loved reading mysteries since childhood, I’d always wanted to write one. Still, it wasn’t until after my first two non-fiction books were published and I’d worked for thirty years as a handwriting analyst that I got the idea that became the novel. So I wrote Poison Pen, which won third place for Mystery in the 2000 Southwest Writers competition. I figured that meant I was all set to publish and sell a gazillion copies, but the truth was, I couldn’t find a publisher. They liked the premise, but they (rightly) said it wasn’t strong enough.

So, while sending out queries to agents and publishers (and doing countless rewrites of the book), I took a course with the amazing Elizabeth George and began plotting Written in Blood, the second Claudia Rose story. I had grown to know and like Claudia and her cohorts, and was happy to be spending time with her again, but I still didn’t think of it as a series until I started writing the third book, Dead Write (note the handwriting-themed titles!).

It took seven years to get Poison Pen into print, but once it was published by a small press, I was lucky enough to attract the attention of a major publishing house. They ordered the first four books and called them the Forensic Handwriting Mysteries. I thought, “Okay, now I’m really set!” Uh, not so fast...

I’ve heard it takes five or six books to get a series well established and my books have developed a nice following. Unfortunately, however, my editor — the one who really loved my series — left the publishing house after book three. The fourth and last contract book, the appropriately titled Last Writes, was published in 2010, but the new editor didn’t offer a contract for additional books. Boo hoo me.

But, not one to give up easily (remember, I worked for seven years at getting published), I’ve just sent my agent a new standalone. Lying in Bed is a psychological suspense/thriller about a young woman who wakes up on a train with total amnesia. Since I don’t want my readers to forget Claudia, however, she and some of the other characters have small parts in the book. Readers often e-mail me to ask when the next Claudia book (which is already being plotted in my head) will be out, so it’s my fervent hope that the series will find a new home.

Bottom line, I hadn’t intended to write a series, but I did. And now that I’ve had a taste of writing a standalone, I wouldn’t mind doing another. But Claudia Rose is where my heart is.

Thank you, Sheila, for sharing your experiences with series and standalone writing. Folks, you can see my review of Poison Pen here.

Bio notes:
Like her character Claudia Rose in the award-winning Forensic Handwriting Mysteries series, Sheila Lowe is a real-life handwriting analyst who testifies as an expert witness in court. She’s a frequent guest in the media and was invited by Lifetime Movie Network to provide information and analyses of criminals on their website as a tie-in for Jeffery Deaver’s The Devil’s Teardrop movie. Sheila holds a Master of Science in psychology and is the author of the internationally acclaimed The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis, Handwriting of the Famous & Infamous, and Sheila Lowe’s Handwriting Analyzer software.

Sheila can be reached via e-mail, Sheila@sheilalowe.com and through her website.

Guest blogger - Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Today is a special treat. Novelist Kathryn Meyer Griffith is sharing the story of how her novel Vampire Blood came to be. If you've ever been curious about a writer's process, here's a chance to take a peek behind the curtain. :)

The Story of Vampire Blood
Author’s Revised Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
A rerelease of my 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel out from Damnation Books on July 1, 2011.

In 1990 or so, I’d just got done releasing my first three paperback novels with Leisure Books, a romantic historical (The Heart of the Rose 1985) and two romantic horror books (Evil Stalks the Night, 1984 and Blood Forge, 1989), and because I wasn’t making much money on them, was looking, as most so-called restless young authors were doing, to move up in the publishing industry.

So I wrote snail mail letters to three established authors of the day – Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Peter Straub – asking for a little advice and a little help. What do I do next? I want to be one of the big dogs running in the big races. I want to make the big bucks. Be famous like you. (Ha, ha. I was so naïve in those days!)

Well, Stephen King and Peter Straub never answered my letters, but one rainy fall night I got a phone call from Gerda Koontz (Dean Koontz’s wife) and she said Dean had gotten my letter and wanted me to have a name of a brand new agent who I should call or write to and say I was recommended by him. If I thought it strange that Dean Koontz himself wasn’t actually talking to me I was told by Gerda that he was a shy man and had had a particularly hard couple of months because of family problems (I think it had something to do with his father in a nursing home or something, but can’t exactly recall now) and he’d asked her to call me. She often did that for him, as well as helping him with the business side of his writing career. He (through her…and I got the impression that he was actually nearby telling her what to say the whole time) said I had to have an agent (I didn’t have one) and then he gave me the name of an ambitious one, Lori Perkins, just starting out and his advice on what I should do to advance as a writer.

I do remember being incredibly touched that he, a famous busy novelist that I admired – I loved his Twilight Eyes – would take the time to talk to me, even through his wife. They were both so sweet and we talked for nearly an hour all about writing, books, and everything.

I took their advice and contacted that agent and she agreed immediately to represent me on my fourth book, Vampire Blood, no doubt, because I said Dean Koontz had recommended her to me. Name dropper! But Vampire Blood was the reason I’d contacted those famous authors in the first place. I thought it was the best book I’d done so far and wanted it to go to (what I thought at the time) would be a better publisher than Leisure Books, which contracted and hog-tied their writers with a horrible 'potboiler' one-size-fits-all ten year contract with low advances and 4% royalties. Yes, I got a whole whopping 14 cents a book in those days, but, I must confess, they did print thousands of paperbacks each run and had a huge distribution area. I thought I could do a lot better. Anyway, Lori Perkins wanted me to send her the book and she did like it and eventually sold it, and then three others zip-zip-zip right after, to Zebra Books (now known more as Kensington Publishing) at 6% royalties and double the advances I was used to getting. They slapped a sexy blonde vampire with a low dress on the cover and a hazy theater behind her. Lovely colors. I thought it was an eye-catching cover. I was so happy. I thought I’d made it! Again, so naïve.

Vampire Blood. A little story about a family of vicious killing vampires who settle in a small Florida town called Summer Haven and end up buying and fixing up an old theater palace to run and pluck their victims from, and a divorced, down-on-her-luck ex-novelist and her hard luck father, who along with friends, help thwart them.

Now to how and why I wrote it.

My husband and I lived in this small Illinois town, Cahokia, at the time and there was the neatest little hole-in-the-wall theater in a nearby shopping center we used to go to all the time…run by a family of a sweet man, Terry, and his wife, Ann, and sometimes their three children, two teenage boys and a girl named Irene. Such a friendly, but odd couple. The run-down theater was their whole world it seemed. The kids helped take in the tickets, pop the popcorn, and sell the candy snacks.

Now, the minute Terry and Ann found out, in one of our earliest conversations, that I was a published novelist they were my greatest fans. Terry went right out and bought all three of my books and they all read them. Terry always thought they’d make great movies. Next time my husband and I went to the little theater, Terry and Ann greeted us like old friends, so delighted to see us, and refused to take a dime from us for anything. We got in free whenever we went from then on. Now, in those days my husband, my son, James, and I were pretty broke. I worked as a graphic designer at a big brokerage firm in downtown St. Louis (across the Poplar Bridge from our Illinois town) but my husband was in between jobs. We lived on a shoestring. Hard times. So I always was so tickled that we could get into the local movies for free. We went a lot, too, as we loved movies, especially science fiction and horror films.

One night, I was watching Terry and Ann and their joy in running that little theater, with the kids bustling around doing their jobs, and I got the idea for Vampire Blood. Just like that! Use them and the theater as a backdrop for a vampire novel. Hey, wouldn’t it be neat, I off-handedly mentioned to Terry one night, if I wrote a book about a family of vampires that was trying to pass as a real human family, the man and woman wanting so badly to fit in and lead a normal life for a while, renovating and then running a theater together…but the kids are wild and, as kids always do, make trouble for them in the town…killing people? Terry loved the idea and I asked him if it’d be all right to use him and his family as a template for the vampires. He was thrilled to be part of anything to do with my books and said yes. So…I wrote this book about them (sort of), the theater (making it much grander than it was, of course), a small town terrorized by cruel, powerful vampires who can change into wolves at will...and a saddened lonely woman, her brother, and her ex-husband (who she still loves and ultimately ends up with again after he saves her life) who finds herself again, but loses a lot, as well, fighting these vampires. Vampires she doesn’t believe in at first.

I was very happy with the book when it was done and dedicated it to Terry and Ann when it came out in 1991. Terry and Ann were thrilled, too.

So Vampire Blood came out and did very well for me, second only to my Zebra 1993 Witches. As the years went by it went out of print and when, twenty years later, Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13th and 14th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks – and I said a resounding yes!

So…here it is…Vampire Blood…twenty years later, alive again and better, I believe, than the original because my writing then was done on an electric typewriter, with gobs of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. And in those days, editors told an author what to change and then the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. Who knew what those sneaky editors were slipping in inbetween and before the final book was in an author’s greedy little hands. Hey, and I was working full time, raising a son, living a life and caring for my big extended family in one way or another, too. Busy, exciting, loving, happy and sad times.

For this new version, Damnation Book’s cover artist Dawné Dominique made me an astonishingly intriguing cover of a lovely vampire (Irene the youngest vampire who turns out to be the most brutal and ancient in the end)…but, thank goodness, without the low sexy top. And my DB editor, April Duncan, helped me make it a better novel.

A lot has happened to me and my family in these twenty years, as well. Both my parents, and my beloved maternal grandmother, the storyteller of her generation, have since passed away. Many people we used to know have. Old boyfriends, old friends and relatives. I miss them all! I no longer have that agent; she went on to bigger advances and bigger writers. I lost my good job at the brokerage firm, bumped around in lesser jobs for years, always writing in my spare time, and now, at long last, write full time while my husband works way too hard in a machine shop to support us.

Rewriting the book brought back so many good memories…and tears over those no longer here. The theater closed sixteen years ago, the owner believing it’d served its purpose and used up its time. Terry and Ann, heartbroken, were never the same. They had other jobs, none they truly cared about. Ann is still with us, but Terry died a few years ago, I heard from someone. We lost contact once they stopped running the theater and we moved from Cahokia to a nicer town miles away.

But I’ll never forget those early days and the stories that came with them. Days of high hopes and far distance future dreams…some of which have come true and some which haven’t. I’ve never made the big bucks, never gotten truly famous, but now, at long last and to my great delight, all twelve of my older books, from Leisure, Zebra, and The Wild Rose Press are being rewritten and reissued from Damnation Books and Eternal Press between June 2010 and July 2012. Better than ever after I’d rewritten them. I have plans to write more books and short stories, too, when they’re done. Most importantly, I’m living a good life with a husband I adore and brothers and sisters I love. Writing the stories I was born to write and happy I am. I have my memories. All in all, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.

So, all you writers out there…never give up and never stop writing!

Thank you!

***

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books, see below, (and two new ones) are being brought out again between June 2010 and July 2012 from DAMNATION BOOKS www.damnationbooks.com and ETERNAL PRESS www.eternalpress.biz again in print – and all in e-books for the first time ever! Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486 .

***

List of published novels and short stories:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure,1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure,1985)
Blood Forge (Leisure,1989; Damnation Books, February 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books, July 2011)
The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books, October 2010)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books, April 2011)
The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
Damnation Books, February 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books, October 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007 / out again from Eternal Press in August 2011)
Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008 / out again from Eternal Press in September 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008 / out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)
"Don't Look Back" (2008 / out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
"In This House" (2008 / out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (2010)
The Woman in Crimson (2010

Guest blogger Stephen Brayton talks about editing

A Few Editing Notes
by guest blogger Stephen Brayton

Have you ever seen the drawing of a pyramid of triangles in which you're supposed to count the number of triangles there are in the picture? Some people count the obvious smaller individual triangles, but miss the fact that the way the picture is drawn, there are bigger triangles throughout.

I think editing is similar. There are so many areas of editing, you may not be aware of where they show up and what you are doing when you do it. Let's look at a few instances.

You've made the decision to write a story. Boom! You've just done your first edit. You've made a choice in your life. You've edited your life and you will keep doing so every minute you take to develop that story. You edit when you create characters, giving them personalities. You edit when you create an outline (for those who do and those who don't still make decisions to move the story in a certain direction), deciding a timeline and the sequence of events.

Editing is not just done after you've completed the story, or when some publisher's editors splash it with colors highlighting the mistakes and suggested changes. Writers are editors and they have to be.

I love writers' critique groups and have been involved in three throughout the years. Each has had good and bad points in structure and operation but one of the problems I've seen in all of them is in regards to the writers themselves. A person brings Chapter One of a brand new story to the group for reading. The others listen then give their opinion on the strengths and weaknesses in the story. The person takes the story home and does a rewrite, brings it back to the group, hears more critique, then takes it home and does a rewrite…and the cycle continues. After a few rounds, someone will almost certainly suggest the person moves onto Chapter Two. Unfortunately, he/she cannot get past trying to perfect One. The story never gets written and either the person gives up or tries another story, falling into the same pattern.

Writers have to learn to work through each chapter until the story is completed. Sure, listen to the critiques, save the notes, keep in mind the suggestions, but keep writing something new until you've reached the end of the story. Then go back and rewrite.

Writers also have to know the rules. Grammar, punctuation, and of course spelling. Do not rely on spell check. You may not catch all of the mistakes (and believe me, you won't), but you want to present to the publisher/agent the best product you can create.

One of the fun ways to frustrate yourself is something my publisher and editors have agreed upon doing with each story we receive. When you think you've gone as far as you can with your self editing, go through and highlight every 'was', 'were', and 'that'. Then, go back through and eliminate all but the most necessary usages.

I've met authors who re-read scores of times and others who can whip out a decent product after only a few rewrites. There is no rule. You find what works for you. I wrote longhand and my first edit came when I transferred the pages to the computer. Then I'd print out the entire manuscript, grab a pen and a notebook and read through it marking corrections and scribbling changes for specific areas. I think it's where I learned a lot of my editing skills.

In early 2010, while waiting around for my story Night Shadows to run through the editing process, I exchanged emails with the senior editor and, to make a long story short, within about six weeks or so, I was hired as an editor. Now this surprised me, because I've had no official training, didn't take any college courses. I must have done very well on the 'test' story to satisfy the powers that be. Anyway, since that time, I have learned so much and I can pass on my knowledge to other authors.

I loathe working through the edits on my books. I've gone through several rounds of corrections and changes with Night Shadows, each one more excruciating than the last. Long hours until my brain goes fuzzy, but I'm learning. Editing others' material can be a horrendous job especially if the manuscript hasn't been polished by the author. However, it is a learning experience, because once you've read others' mistakes, you catch yourself making similar ones in your own projects.

And that's part of what makes writing so gosh darn fun.


Stephen Brayton has written stories for many years, but started seriously while working at a radio station in Kewanee, Illinois. After he moved to Oskaloosa, Iowa, he started attending a writers' group in Des Moines.

So much knowledge about writing and critique came out of that group and the others he's enjoyed.

He attended his first conference in 2007, Love Is Murder, in Chicago. Mike Manno introduced him to 'pitches' and they discussed writing and history and law while sharing the drive.

In 2009, while attending the Killer Nashville conference, Stephen was fortunate enough to meet Mary Welk of Echelon Press. Subsequent to the conference, Stephen submitted two novels to Echelon and in October, they BOTH were accepted for e-publication in 2011.

He's a reader; a writer; an instructor; a graphic designer; a lover of books, movies, wine, women, music, fine food, good humor, sunny summer days spent hiking or fishing; and he's a catnip drug dealer to his fifteen pound cat, Thomas.

He's the author of Night Shadows