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Halloween always brings out my creative side and keeps my Muse working overtime, but if you’re having trouble getting started on this All Hallows�� Eve, I’ve got a list of writing prompts to help you get started.

Your pumpkin starts talking to you after you carve it.
Tell the story of Halloween from the candy’s perspective.
You go to a Halloween Party where the punch is really a magic potion.
As I walked up the jack-o��-lantern lit path, I saw��
Tell a Halloween tale from the perspective of a jack-o��-lantern sitting on the porch.
Create an advertisement to sell a haunted house.
Create your own witch’s brew recipe.[image error]
At midnight on Halloween, the same thing happens every year��
Silver moonlight illuminates a familiar name on a tombstone��
Your bedroom closet is a gateway to another dimension.

I hope these Halloween writing prompts help you scare up some spooky stories!

Happy Halloween, Ghoulies!

��

XoXo,

Michelle C. Hillstrom �� Author

My new book was released on October 16, 2017.

[image error]Insomnia is a collection of poetry by author . It is at night when we lay in the dark, waiting to fall asleep, that our thoughts can drift off and begin thinking about the things we try to push away in the light of day. The dark thoughts and feelings. The experiences we don’t want to remember. The dark begets dark. Is Insomnia to blame for the thoughts that creep in at night or is the Insomnia a side effect of a dark mind? The poems within this anthology are late night insomniatic musings covering topics of relationships, love, pain, creativity, the Marine Corps, and life. Sexual assault, depression, and suicide are also frequent topics. Because of this we wish to inform possible readers to proceed with caution. believes that these are timely topics that unfortunately too many people, including herself, have been touched by. Michelle C. Hillstrom wrote these poems spanning a time period of seventeen years. Many were written in the middle of the night when her brain refused to quiet down and allow her to sleep �� thus the inspiration for the title. We hope you enjoy: Insomnia.

So far I’ve received one five star review.

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Releasing this book has been an emotional experience for me, because the poems are all very personal and they document very specific times in my life. I look at the poems and remember exactly what I was doing, thinking, feeling, and experiencing at the times that they were written. Every book that an author writes comes from their heart and soul, but this one in-particular makes me feel like the readers are staring directly into every dark corner�� into my very essence.

As usual I published my paperback through and the Kindle version through Amazon’s . I usually purchase my book covers from , but I felt like a simple cover made through CreateSpace’s cover creator would be fine for this book. In my opinion it does not need an elaborate cover and in fact I feel the dark and subdued cover is more fitting and expressive of the book’s tone.

I have lots of news and updates to share with you, but I’ll save them for more posts to come later this week.

XoXo,

Michelle C. Hillstrom

Write On!

[image error]Something exciting has just happened. A possible new opportunity to grow my writing career and reach more people with my novels.

I belong to a Facebook book club called ��,�� (a Female Marine Book Club), and one of the members posted asking if any of the other members were writers. (Hello! Yours truly!) Well, it turns out that she is friends with someone who works for and they are looking for new writers.

So, this morning I sent an email to this new contact. However, it turns out that she works for ��. India is not exactly my target audience, so I asked if they publish worldwide, and asked what genres they were currently interested in receiving submissions.

Hopefully this can open a lot of doors for me, or help me get in contact with someone who can help me open those doors.

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Keep your fingers crossed for me!

XoXo,

Michelle

I’ve seen this question posed in several writing groups lately by people who want to become writers, “How do you start writing?��[image error]

As if there is some top-secret magic trick that we writers have been holding out on the world.

The secret is…�� you just start writing. That’s it. If you want to write, you write.

If you have a story inside that you want to tell, if you have characters who want to be heard, if you have advice you want to share�� Write it down. Write what you see in your head. Write what you hear your characters say. Write what they do. Write what you want people to know.

[image error]And you don’t have to use any certain program or device to be a writer. Write in Word, Notepad, Scrivener, Google Docs�� Write on your laptop, your ancient desktop, your phone, your tablet, napkins while you’re out to dinner, or your old spiral notebook you still have saved from high school.

Now, of course you can do things to help yourself be more organized during the writing process before you even start writing like: , , and , but that isn’t what makes you a writer, and you don’t have to do that to start writing.

Just write. It’s that simple.

XoXo,

Michelle

I’ve been trying to focus on Marketing and making more book sales. For the next seven days “�� will be on sale for $2.99 marked down from $4.99.[image error]

I’ve been basically spamming every writing and reading group that I belong to on with the link, a tip I received from one of those “How to be a super awesome and rich self-published author�� type books.

[image error]I chose to put “A Kiss of Betrayal�� on sale because it is the most expensive book of the three. “�� and “�� are both price at $2.99 regularly. I am able to take $2.00 off of “A Kiss of Betrayal�� and still stay in the 70% royalties bracket. Also, I was hoping that potential customers would be encouraged to buy all three books from “�� or that past customers who had not purchased “A Kiss of Betrayal�� yet because it was listed at a higher cost would go ahead and buy it during the sale.

I haven’t received any sales on Amazon over the last couple weeks, prior to this marketing campaign, but I have been getting a fair number of pages read and I sold a few signed books that I had in my personal stock. I am hopeful that this campaign will provide me with at least a few sales.[image error]

The success of this marketing campaign is TBD. I will let check in and update you throughout the next seven days if there is any activity.

XoXo

Michelle

[image error]Today’s blog topic is why self-publishing may or may not be for you.

I personally chose to self-publish because the most important thing to me is getting my books into the hands of readers. I want to write and share my stories with the world. For me, being an author isn’t about the prestige of publishing through a traditional publisher it is all about creating new worlds, new characters, and new stories for readers to fall in love with, but for others it’s about creating the next great American Novel that will win prizes and prestige.

If you’re like me and just want to write and create and share with readers, self-publishing is for you. If you want to be able to say that you were chosen by a big time publisher and they believe in your great novel, then traditional publishing is obviously the better choice for you.

Also, as a self-published author, I do not have to take time from writing and interacting with readers to query agents and publishing companies. When you are trying to become a traditionally published author you can spend weeks, months, and years writing letters and sending submissions to publishing houses and agents, praying for the miracle of one person seeing potential in your book. Waiting for rejection or acceptance letters, sometimes not receiving any replies whatsoever. Or, you can go into self-publishing where getting your book published requires just a few clicks on a website.

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When you self-publish a novel you retain control of the novel. If you traditional publish there is the possibility that you won’t even recognize your novel by the time that the publishing company is done having you make changes to it. Change you character, change your beginning, middle, and end. Change the name of your character. Change their gender. Change the title. As a self-published author you make all of the decisions about your book, about cover art, about where it is published, and how you market.

[image error]Another aspect that you have control over is when and how often you publish. If you are under contract with a publishing house they determine your deadlines for chapters and books. They want you to work at their pace, not your own. The publishers will also decide if they want more books from you and how soon. As a self-published author you work with the deadlines that you set for yourself and you determine if and when you publish every book. If you want to publish one or one hundred it is up to you.

As a self-published author you CAN make more money. There are fewer people taking percentages of the profits. No agents. No publishers. Just you and the company that produces and sells your e-books or paperbacks.

With self-publishing you also have immediate access to your reports on sales via [image error]whichever company’s website you are selling on. This allows you to see how your marketing is affecting your sales. The websites that you sell through also allow you to play with pricing which both can immediately help or hurt sells and your profits. As a traditionally published author you do not control the pricing of your books.

I hope that you have found this post to be informative and helpful in your decision to self-publish or go the traditional publishing route.

XoXo

Michelle

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Today Writer’s Chapter met for our weekly meeting. Writer’s Chapter is just a small group of local writers who get together once a week to talk about writing, the writing business, and to work on our writing in a social environment. It gets us out and helps us [image error]to emerge from our dark, lonely writing caves. One of the dangers of being a writer is that you can become a hermit very easily. It’s also a great opportunity for us to bounce ideas of each other and talk about what has or hasn’t worked for us. We really learn a lot from each other. I, myself, just started going with any regular frequency, but I do really enjoy getting together with likeminded individuals. A lot of the regulars weren’t there today as they spent all last week at the West Texas A&M Writing Academy. They needed some down time. We did, however, have two fresh faces visit us �� two young writers who we all me at Lubbock-Con and invited to join us.

Today at WC I did something I’d never done before. I plotted my novel. I am what writer’s call a pantser. I don’t plan my stories. I just write them with a general idea of what I want to happen but no official plans. I like the creativity that it gives me. However, I am surrounded by plotters in the group and they [image error]have frequently urged me to plot, so I gave it a go today. I hope that it will help me stay focused and maybe write the novel faster.

If you are a writer, are you a pantser or a plotter? Tell me in the comments.

XoXo

Michelle

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[image error]I’ve been MIA for a while now. Blogging always seems to get pushed aside and pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. Wouldn’t it be nice if things just took care of themselves once in a while? Ya know�� like day jobs and bill payments?

But more than anything it has been my health that has been the constant battle which keeps me from working on writing and blogging. The fatigue that comes along with my makes it very difficult to focus and think clearly enough to write.

I have been getting some writing done though. Little bits and piece here and there. No [image error]major long epic marathon writing moments, but some of the WIPS are coming along. I’m trying to focus mostly on A Kiss of Betrayal: Wesley’s Story (Book Four of ) since I know that my fans are waiting for its release, but my Muse is as ADD as ever �� jumping from one story to the next.

At the end of May, I was a part of. I had a booth where I sold and signed books. I enjoyed it just as much as I did last year. It is always a joy to meet fans (old and new). I got to meet several budding writers as well and at least one is going to be joining us at Writer’s Chapter for our weekly meetings. This year I also ran a panel on “The [image error]Realities of Self-Publishing�� with fellow author . I had my father record the panel, but we have had some technical difficulties since then. I plan to upload the video if I ever get it worked out.

Another exciting thing that happened at Lubbock-Con is that a lady who works for Barnes & Noble offered to help me set up a book signing with them. So, more info on that to come.

I’ve also been asked to be on a podcast. I’m recording it on June 27, but I believe it isn’t going to be released until sometime in December. I will update when I know the date exactly, and provide a link to the podcast.

Something I’ve really been trying to focus on lately is the business side of being an author. As a self-published author, all of that falls to me. I do not have an agent or a publishing company behind me to take care of things like marketing. As someone who really just wanted to write books when I was getting started the business side wasn’t an aspect that I really thought about or worked very hard at, but if I want to be a successful author, then I definitely need to start working harder on it. [image error]So, I’ve been reading a lot of books about running online businesses and books that specifically talk about marketing and self-publishing success. I also have become a part of (or Author’s XP) where my books are available for readers to request copies to read and review. Getting reviews is absolutely essential to the success of authors. And for some reason it is so hard for me to get them! I have received a few reviews from the Author’s XP program so far, hoping to receive many more.

So this post has ended up being a bit of an information dump to catch all of you up on everything that I have been doing. I swear to write more frequently and update on the upcoming events.

Read and write on book worms and book writers!

XoXo

Michelle

[image error]Gothic Literature is a sub-genre of romanticism consisting of novels and short stories, which emerged between 1800 and 1850. Gothic Literature focuses on the grotesque, desolate, and mysterious usually including supernatural or horror motifs to show the evil inside of humans. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Joyce Carol Oates use settings, events, and characters to create their own American Gothic Tales.

Known as the Father of the American Gothic Tale, Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher�� is an excellent example of how the setting of a story creates a gothic theme by[image error] using the traditional components of the Gothic Genre. Gothic architecture played a large part in the influence of Gothic Literature and “The Fall of the House of Usher��, which takes place in a dark, gloomy family estate that is in a state of decay, stays true to this influence. The castle is isolated leaving the occupants alone contributing to the fear and madness that dwells within the occupants and their home as they, like their castle, are in a state of decay. From the very beginning of the story, when the narrator first comes up the House of Usher, the description of the home creates a gloomy setting. The narrator describes how the dilapidated house makes him feel upon his first impression:

“I looked upon the scene before me �� upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain �� upon the bleak walls �� upon the vacant eye-like windows �� upon a few rank sedges �� and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees �� with an utter depression of soul…�� (Poe 499).

[image error]The interior of the home does nothing to improve the mood or gloomy setting. The narrator claims that it is a place of sorrow. From the dark draperies and long windows, to the less than comfortable furniture, the atmosphere of The House of Usher was bleak. The spooky sounds of crackling and ripping against the coffin, the grating sound of the iron door that leads to the vault where Lady Madeline is buried add to the Gothic setting in “The Fall of the House of Usher�� as Lady Madeline tries to escape from being buried alive.

Events in “The Birthmark,�� by Nathaniel Hawthorne create the romantic gothic theme of an obsessive man and woman who are in love. Aylmer becomes obsessed with a birthmark that he perceives to be the one flaw upon his wife’s beauty; in turn, this causes his wife to become obsessed with it as well, though she had believed it to be a blessing from a fairy. Rather than live with the obvious disgust of her husband she decides to allow him to remove it through the use of one of his science experiments. While in his laboratory Aylmer created illusions with lights that were ghost-like: “Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world.�� (Hawthorne 634-635). Shortly after the spiritual light show, Alymer creates a rose [image error]for Georgiana. He asks her to pluck the flower, but when she does so, the flower turns black. This event shows that somehow the innocence and life of Georgiana has been tarnished. In the end of the story Aylmer, driven by his obsession with ridding his wife of this birthmark, ends up killing Georgiana with the potion he gives her. By the end of the story, Georgiana declares ‘”Danger? There is but one danger–that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!�� cried Georgiana. “Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!”�� (Hawthorne 639). For she would now rather die than live with the thing that her husband hates, and in turn has caused her to hate as well.

In Joyce Carol Oates�� “Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been?�� Connie is a fifteen-year-old girl, who is our protagonist. She is a young, romantic heroine who wishes to appear older than fifteen years old. Connie does not attend church, which leaves her soul vulnerable to the temptations of the demonic Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend is the protagonist and represents a demonic, even devilish figure. Arnold’s shoes do not fit and twist in turn in strange ways, suggesting that his feet might actually be his devilish hooves. His transparent skin and crazy hair add to his grotesque appearance that does not quite mesh with his actions as he tries to appear younger, and even lies about his age. Connie begins to notice these things but it comes too late. “She recognized all this and also the singsong way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did not come together.��(Oates). Adding to the theory that Arnold Friend is a demonic entity, he is skilled in psychological terror as he harasses the young Connie, who is alone is her secluded house.[image error]

“Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it—the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house.�� (Oates).

Arnold uses this skill of terror to lure the innocent, femme fatale, Connie out of her home.

Setting, events, and characters are all aspects used to create American Gothic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Joyce Carol Oates. Each author uses these aspects of writing in their own style. Edgar Allan Poe creates the typical spooky environment with a desolate castle; Nathaniel Hawthorne combines the lovers and hints of supernatural to give us a lesson in the dangers of striving for perfection and messing with things that we do not understand. Joyce Carol Oates uses the more modern form of Gothic Literature showing that humans and modern day crime is just as horrific as creepy old castles.

��Works Cited

McMichael, George, and James S. Leonard, eds. Concise Anthology of American Literature.

���������������������� 7th edition. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2011. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Birthmark.�� McMichael and Leonard 630-641.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.�� McMichael and Leonard 512-519.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?�� USF Celestial

Timepiece: The Joyce Carol Oates Homepage. Web. 10 March 2012.

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“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.�� There is no other commandment greater than these.�� Mark 12:31

Dear Neighbor,

I love you. We are commanded to love our neighbor. This commandment has no limitations. I love you no matter your race. No matter your gender. No matter your religion, your political beliefs, your social status, your tax bracket, your morals. Regardless of your color, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, marital status, disability, religious or political affiliation, age or sexual orientation. You could say I am an equal opportunity lover. Even if we disagree about many things, even if I don’t like you some of the time. I love you because you are human and you are as God made you. I love my homeless neighbors, my addicted neighbors, my Muslim neighbors, my Atheist neighbors, my criminal neighbors, my homosexual neighbors, my black, white, brown, red, purple��

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