Today I wrote a short story.
This has been a busy month, and indeed in the last two weeks I have submitted ten stories – but wait, I’m not that good.
The fact is, between August and September, I had to work on a couple of big projects that took up a lot of time. The little time left I used to relax, or to start working on a few shorts, that languished in various states of completion while I put much effort in the big ones.

By October the big projects were out of the way, and so I picked up the various half-finished things I had laying around, finished them and mailed to various editors. One already bounced back, but that’s part of the game.

Then, yesterday, two things happened.

• Thing one – a magazine I was looking at as a prospect new market turned out to be closed. I was planning on spending the last week of the month writing a short to try the waters, but now there was no longer the option. This also meant, one full free week.
• Thing two – it turned out my old series of horror stories set here in the hills where I live are enjoying an unexpected new interest from the public.
• And also – thing three – I know I had said I would no longer self-publish in Italian, but considering how many out there were happy of this decision, a comeback felt like the best way to flip them, as they say, the bird.

So, I prepared some teaser graphic for my socials, and then sat down and started writing, and six hours later I had the first 4000-words story in the second series of Gli Orrori della Valle Belbo.
The plan is, as usual, no plan at all – the series is uncharted, but I will try and follow the pattern of the previous series, and do six stories in six different subgenres of horror/dark fantasy.

These babies really write themselves – it’s so easy, channelling my frustration for the place I live in – and it was good to nail a story in one afternoon.
I could write the whole series in the week I had planned to spend writing a mystery…

But there’s a twist – it was a mistake.
The magazine is still open, and I have now six days to write and mail that mystery story.
I sort of like this crazy writing business…