January 2024

Its 2024 and time for resolutions and fixing all the things you planned to fix but never will. I have two books I will publish this year. One is a novel I have to publish before I edit it again. You might assume there will be no mistakes when this is published, but you would be wrong. I edited some mistakes back in. Its a great story though, so you'll look past that. Same goes for the book of short stories and novellas. Not edited quite as much, but there are some fun ones in it. 

The novel is called Disappearing, and I wrote it for my daughter but you can read it too. It starts with a girl receiving a cheap magic set and she practices enough to make some of that magic real. Its got magic, mystery, horrible parents, and wonderful story about found friends. Not quite horror but with some horrors. This novel will have illustrations from the amazing artist, potter, best friend, wife and mother to my daughter, Jennifer Gammon. This will make an already great book even better.  

The book of stories is called Things Don't End Well, and you guessed it, sometimes things don't end well. It has some classic horror tales, magical realism, futuristic, not quite sci-fi, and stories that were fun to write. Does that mean they will be fun to read? Yes. Yes, it does. 

I will decide on a publish date and setup a way you can pre order these books as soon as I nail down some covers

I kicked off the month with an attempt to collect as many followers on Threads as I had on Twitter before Musk made a mess of things. Almost 2000 at a high point, so that's what I'll try for. 

If you are on it, heres where you can find me: https://www.threads.net/@shawnpatrickwhite 

Some books I read: 

The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel - I watched Station Eleven a year ago and picked this up recently, and loved it. The story, the setting, the narrative. I have the book but have not read it yet. This is one from the same writer and I figured I'd start with this one first. An interesting story with equally interesting characters. A great read.

The Dark Between the Trees - Fiona Barnett - I picked this up a while ago and read for a bit, put it down for a bit. Picked it up and put it down a few more times. The story is interesting enough, but there were other books that seemed a bit more interesting and pushed their way to the front of the reading line. Well, I finished it and it was a good read. Recommended if you enjoy reading stories about long, never ending walks in the woods. 

Some Books I'm reading:

Summer Cannibals: LGBTQ+ Vampire Horror - Finley Rose, Jessie Rose - One of the books I picked up during the Terrify your Tablet event. It's vampires in the south. Sweaty, junkie, type vampires who start off the book robbing a bank.

The Narrow Road Between Desires - Patrick Rothfuss - This one I started at Christmas on Christmas Eve. One of the books I received as a gift. I have read the two previous novels in the King Killer Chronicles, as well as the novella he wrote. I enjoyed all of them. This one, like the other novella, picks up with one of the side characters. So far I'm enjoying it and it's a nice reminder that we still have to wait for the third book in the series. 

Lone Woman - Victor LaValle - I'm just starting it but it looks great and I want to know what's in the trunk? 

I did not watch much this month spending more time relaxing with the family playing Lego Fortnite. I watched the Italian horror film, A Classic Horror Story, while I walked on the treadmill in the basement on some of the extremely cold days. That action itself is a horror story. 

I spent a few days in Las Vegas for a work conference. Getting there and back involved long travel days. I tried my first Impossible Whopper from Burger King, a place I had not been too since going vegetarian when I was twenty. It was good, asked them to skip the Mayo to keep it Vegan. While in Vegas I want to a vegan place called Chef Kenny's Vegan Dim Sum with my sister who was attending the same conference. The food was delicious, and they invited us to their first ever Vegan Disco Dance Party that was happening later that night. Not something we were going to attend but super cool it exists... Unless it was a trap and Chef Kenny's is not a vegan place after all.

I have another trip in a week and then I'm back for a bit. The goal following that is to get some writing in. I should have enough time for another story. 

That's January  

Here's a picture I took at a bird sanctuary where they used to treat tuberculosis. Digital Olympus Pen Camera with a manual 25mm lens for fun. 




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