[Crossposted from my author newsletter.
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Introducing Beneath the Rain Shadow (BTRS), a year-long collaboration between myself and horror author and podcaster Clay Vermulm!

Clay and I met about a year ago in the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup and have become friends sharing similar interests in dark, weird fiction.

BTRS will be an interesting quasi-live experiment you can become a spectator of.

Monthly, we’ll alternate assigning each other a short story challenge based on a “mystery basket” of prompts we pre-select, then unveil live on recording day. These prompts are meant to help us satisfy the theme and vision of this project’s culminating collection: Rain Shadows: A Collection of Horror Stories from the Pacific Northwest. 

You, the audience, will find this an opportunity to encounter our insider insights about the writing life and our ideas about what horror writing is and isn’t. You’ll get to observe the choices we make based on feedback and we’ll shine a spotlight on other real-time aspects of our audio-literary collaboration. We hope to make it entertaining as well.

This will be a recorded Substack/podcast venture uploaded on the first of every month to Clay’s horror podcast venture, Sinister Soup. There, you’ll be able to witness our chat about the challenge, observe the critique process, and even hear a sample of the working drafts we eventually write.

You should expect we’ll be mining all things PNW—settings, monsters, folklore, climate, insider jokes, and other colloquial details—to round out these stories.

What’s the point in doing this? Clay and I are both naturally inclined to teach and share what we do, shine a light on process (whether it’s easy or uncomfortable), and break down misnotions about the writing life.

This project also satisfies writerly ambitions we both share. Clay works full-time as a writer and thrives on projects with goals and deadlines. As a lifelong journalist, I’m equally driven by plans that revolve around assignments. The accountability factor is something we both find motivational.

And we’re writing buddies; while our stories and styles are different, our approaches, interests, strategies, and intentions mesh.

Honestly, I can’t wait! We just recorded our first episode today! It will drop on January 1, 2024; you can check back then at Sinister Soup and subscribe, if you like!