R. Renee Branca

Today I feel accomplished. We got the website up and running (eleventhhourliterary.org). Over the last couple of weeks we’ve created our mission statement, budget, library MOU, ethics and malfeasance policy, open access policy, peer-review policy, author agreement, author guidelines and instructions, scope and aim–in short, the entire foundation of this project. And to top it off, I’ve applied for membership in the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. The only thing left to do is set up the Submittable, and start our media blast campaign. Tomorrow, we have a photo shoot in the university studio for the masthead.

All of that before we can read a single story.

I’ve been so wrapped up in this I’ve neglected my own writing, but this week I did manage to write a new draft. It’s for the ghost story anthology the DWS wants to release in time for Halloween 2025. The anthology is a challenge: Ghost stories are notoriously tricky to write (or at least to write well). There’s a reason they had their heyday in the late Victorian period. I don’t do much in genre anyway, and I’m not at all confident about sharing this particular story which (like everything I write these days) is based on something that really happened. It’s a rough first draft about an eerie thing, and I’m not looking forward to workshopping it.