My grandmother regaled me with stories of William Faulkner, who lived on her street when she was a little girl. She also knew Eudora Welty from college and told me about the measures Eudora would go to just for some peace of mind or solitude in which to write. It’s enough to make me realise how good I have it when I want to slip into my office, and that I really have no excuses for slacking.
This is an industry of rejection and to be successful, an author needs to be able to never throw in the towel, no matter the hard road ahead of them.
Why is the flora on my family’s land suddenly so much thicker?
The sharp cry of a baby freezes me in my tracks. If someone abandoned a child, I have to make sure that it doesn’t die.
Wriggling on a bed of ferns is an infant girl. But the most unsettling thing is the birthmark on her cheek. It’s identical to my own.
The figure stepping into the clearing could pass for an old photograph of my mother as a young woman.
My eyes are reflected in her dagger. Her wings unfold as she croons, “Now the cycle begins again.”
Beth W. Patterson
“Looks aren’t everything” is sometimes the kindest thing a person feels he or she can say. Society deemed me deformed and inbred, horrified by my colour. I often walked through thunderstorms for company.
It took that special someone to desire me, but Yog-Sothoth was not the normal lover. I thought I would savour multitudinous mouths on my flesh and the sinewy strokes of limbs reaching everywhere. Sometimes being desired means instead being turned inside out and reassembled, chewed up, digested, spat out, transformed with the power to make the Old Ones flesh.
The children are growing. The hills are alive.
Beth W. Patterson
Beth W. Patterson was a full-time musician for over two decades before diving into the world of writing. She is the author of the books Mongrels and Misfits, and The Wild Harmonic, and a contributor to over thirty anthologies. Patterson has performed in nineteen countries and never sleeps.
“What’s wrong? Did your sense of humour dump you too?” I was too preoccupied with my skinned knees and bleeding palms to answer Jason. Portia, his ex for whom he’d left me, continued her annoying hyena laugh.
I slowly rose from the pavement to face him. “Not at all,” I said evenly, alarm bells going off in my mind: don’t do it!
My left arm burst from my sleeve in its true tentacle form, impaling Jason where the sun didn’t shine, wetly ripping and tearing, exiting from his mouth.
“I still think hand puppets are funny,” I replied. “Don’t you?”
Beth W. Patterson
Beth W. Patterson was a full-time musician for over two decades before diving into the world of writing. She is the author of the books Mongrels and Misfits, and The Wild Harmonic, and a contributing writer to twenty-four anthologies. Patterson has performed in eighteen countries and never sleeps.
There was no sound in space, but she felt the music of the spheres with her whole body.
The starship had been programmed with pre-recorded songs to break the tedium. But she pined for live music, even more than she missed green grass beneath her feet, a crisp breeze, or sunlight.
And now looking at this newly discovered solar system, she observed planets in orbit forming intervals and chords as they passed one another. She saw harmony in relativity and motion.
How to begin the song? It will be in the key of whatever world she chooses to land on.
Beth W. Patterson
Beth W. Patterson was a full-time musician for over two decades before diving into the world of writing, a process she describes as “fleeing the circus to join the zoo”. She is the author of the books Mongrels and Misfits, and The Wild Harmonic, and a contributing writer to twenty anthologies.
Patterson has performed in eighteen countries, expanding her perspective as she goes. Her playing appears on over a hundred and sixty albums, soundtracks, videos, commercials, and voice-overs (including seven solo albums of her own).
She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana with her husband Josh Paxton, jazz pianist extraordinaire.
It’s an anxiety dream come true. Curtis Baum, frontman for the up-and-coming rock band Frozen Wanda, is forced to be a rodeo clown for one night, sparring with a snarky shape-shifting bull.