Author: Gillian Church

It’s here: Connection Lost and Other Dark Tales, a 3-story ebook bundle

Posted on by Gillian Church

 

If you follow me on Instagram, you may already know that I made the difficult decision to scale back the scope of this book. Instead of a longer collection released as an ebook and in paperback, it is now a three-story bundle that is available for ebook only.

It’s available now to buy on Amazon or to add to your Kindle Unlimited library. You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves if you’d like to save it for later!

This bundle contains the following short stories:

  • Connection Lost, the tale of a grieving mother and a memento she hides from her husband.
  • I’ll Poison Your Dreams, in which a bride receives a surprising wedding gift from her estranged sister.
  • Bergamot and Blood, which is the story of a woman’s husband returning to her after ten years.

These are my favorite stories of mine at this time, so I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

I also want to give a huge thank you and should out to Shannon Jordan, who edited these three stories. Her guidance and support truly helped shape them into the best I think they can be.

 

What about pre-orders?

Because the scope of this ebook is significantly smaller, I canceled the original pre-orders so that nobody automatically received an unpleasant surprise if they still expected five to six stories. If you pre-ordered, you will have to place a new order to receive this book. Your original pre-order should be canceled by Amazon.

Also, please note that the new ebook has a reduced price of US $0.99 to go along with the smaller scope.

 

What about a non-ebook?

I am planning to release a longer collection under another title (tentatively Minuscule Miseries) that will be available as a physical book as well as an ebook. It will include these three stories along with several others. I do not have further details or even a guess as to the release date yet, but I will provide more information when I have it.

If you want the earliest possible news on the matter, please consider following my Instagram stories or signing up for my newsletter.

 

 

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Posted on by Gillian Church

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem-solvers, and embellishers—these are our common ancestors. The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We are all the chosen few.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

A recent prompt asked for a “non-craft book that you would recommend to other writers”.

While Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing is not usually my thing, her book about creativity, 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜, made a huge impact on me. It is a kind, motherly kick in the ass to stop making excuses to put your creativity to use.

This isn’t just for writers, it is for literally anybody, because the premise is that we are all creative in some way and owe it to ourselves (and the universe, sort of) to use our creativity without holding back.

I read this after listening to a few episodes of her short-lived podcast “Magic Lessons” (which is incredible, listen to it – each episode is a one-on-one discussion with a creative person from dancers to writers to photographers to comedians who need a push). She is wholeheartedly encouraging and does not accept excuses such as “I’m not ready”, “nobody will like this”, “my ideas aren’t original”, etc.

Probably not the recommendation you would expect from this oft-surly horror writer, but give it a whirl!

 

Why I returned the Remarkable 2 tablet

Posted on by Gillian Church

 

I posted about the Remarkable 2 tablet in my stories, back whenI wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it.

Ultimately, I decided that it wasn’t for me, through no fault of the tablet’s. It solved what I thought was my core problem with writing longhand: being able to manipulate and rearrange lines of handwritten text. You can actually do that on the Remarkable 2, which is awesome!

Alas, it seems that I’ve learned to think best while typing. I type much faster than I write, and because I’m not thinking about how my writing looks (my handwriting ranges from Catholic school perfection to “who gave that rabid squirrel a pen?!”), the words are all that matter. The words don’t always flow when I’m typing, but they NEVER flow when I’m writing longhand.

The tablet is a total one-trick pony. There are no apps, the file formats are limited, you can’t read Kindle books on it.

You can write and you can sketch. You can write and sketch on blank pages, on PDFs, on both preset and custom templates, but you can only write and sketch. If you want an alternative to managing multiple notebooks, if you write by longhand most of the time, if you have US $300 to blow (plus the cost of a stylus), this could be a useful tool for you. The handwriting-to-text conversion really delighted me, and that could make life easier if you hand write your first drafts and don’t want to manually type the entire thing from scratch later.

TL;DR – it’s not you, Remarkable 2; it’s me.

Five traits of good writers

Posted on by Gillian Church


I’ve been participating in the June 2022 #writerfriendschallenge on Instagram, which has been a fun series of prompts about all things writerly. Today’s prompt was “What traits make good writers?” My response was too long for an Instagram caption, so I’ve expanded upon it here.

Please take my opinions with a grain of salt. I am a professional technical writer, but I am not a professional creative writer. I have no formal education or impressive accomplishments in the realm of fiction.

Continue reading for my list! Continue reading “Five traits of good writers” →

It’s back!

Posted on by Gillian Church

new website

A few months ago, I tried to improve my website. It seemed like a good idea at the time, since I’m publishing my short story collection this summer. However, I didn’t consider how rusty I am and how little time I actually have.  I managed to royally screw everything up in some extraordinary ways.

However, I’m pleased to report that after a lot of swearing (a lot) and exploring some options, I’ve finally got things mostly functional around here and a brand new look and feel. It’s far from perfect, but I’m happy with it and now I can go back to focusing on writing. 

And, oh, there is so much writing to do. So much. Can’t wait to share more about my projects.

If you do notice anything weird or broken here, please drop me a line. I cannot emphasize enough how rusty I am at this stuff.