Castle Horror YA

If you read my post about my Fever Dreams audio drama, you’ll know that I was friends with Lara Parker. I’m heartbroken by her passing and will miss her beautiful presence in the world.

Lara was responsible for my submission to Castle Horror. She had a story in one of their anthologies and thought I’d be a good fit.

Now, this was a couple of years after my lung transplant. In the beginning, I couldn’t read or write at all, I didn’t have the focus. I’d been writing for a year just trying to get my writing chops back after such a long hiatus.

But Lara was so supportive, and the call had gone out for stories for a Young Adult anthology, and I just happened to have a story I’d recently finished so…

My story, The Black Door, was a struggle to write. I wanted it to be about a girl dealing with her father’s suicide but I couldn’t quite figure out how to write it. I have various versions, had run one through my writer’s group, but it just wasn’t congealing.

Then one day, my husband told me about this interview with a woman who suffers from depression. She called it the Black Door. It was like a bazillion lightbulbs went off in my head. I now knew how to write (and title) the story.

When you’re a writer, you just don’t know where you’ll find inspiration. But when you’re struggling with a story problem, pay attention to the world. The answer just might be trying to find you.

So my thanks to Lara and Paul for helping me get my first short story sell after my transplant. It opened the world to me.