I am a day overdue to announce that the December 2024 issue of Defenestration is out, along with my poem therein, “Lament of a Fourth Grade Goth.”

I’m pleased to announce my poem “Lament of a Fourth Grade Goth” will be appearing in December issue of Defenestration. I will link to it in a post on 20 December, when it comes out.

The anthology has arrived. It is fun to have it in my hands. I am pleased.

You can buy it on Amazon if you want to, either in paperback or in ebook format. Ebooks are not so great for poetry, I think, because of the line breaks. But it’s on Kindle Unlimited, so at least you can look at it for free if you have that.

I like to buy books from local bookstores when possible, or from bookshop.org, but I’m not sure if you can buy this one anywhere but Amazon at the moment.

Thank you to the editor Maxwell I. Gold, the publisher Angela Yuriko Smith, and the judges L.E. Daniels, Sumiko Saulson, Pedro Iniguez, and Ngô Binh Anh Khoa. The cover art is by Lynne Hansen, and there is an intro by Marge Simon, so thank you to those people, as well.

Greetings. I have a couple of brief, kinda fun updates.

HWA Poetry Showcase XI cover art by Lynne Hansen

I was pretty excited to receive this image of the cover, because it feels like one step closer to publication. Because it is one step closer to publication.

Learning about dark poetry, and a burning haibun for Halloween (my guest post on the HWA Halloween Haunts blog)

What is this weird thing all about? you might wonder. If you would like to learn about a fun poetry form to experiment with, or you’re just curious, have a look at my post on the the Horror Writers Association Halloween Haunts blog to find out what it is, how I learned about it, and the mildly amusing thing my experiment yielded completely by accident.

Be it known I am now a professional.

So one thing I found out is I will be paid $35, not $30. I don’t know how you are with math but in case you are not good at it, first of all, it is not your fault; so much of education is designed and implemented terribly and I will never judge you for that. Second, that is nearly 17% higher than my prior expectation. I was already committed to spending under $30 for my modest celebration lunch, though, so I will use the extra amount to leave a better tip.

Another interesting thing is yesterday I started reading a book called Writing Poetry in the Dark. This title is not intended to be taken literally, although if I wanted to, I could write poetry in the literal dark, because I write on a Macbook. The book is about the craft of writing speculative poetry. The author of this book is Stephanie M. Wytovich, who will be one of three featured poets in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase Volume XI. In fact, her poem will be first in the anthology. (Mine will be sixth.)

Writing Poetry in the Dark contains essays from several different poets. Among them, I found two others who are contributors to Showcase XI: Christina Sng and Sara Tantlinger. If there are others that I missed, I apologize; it’s just that I haven’t gotten to your chapters yet.

I do recommend Writing Poetry in the Dark based on what I’ve read so far. It has a lot of fresh ideas.

My poem “Play It Backwards (for Bonus Content from the Devil)” was accepted by the Horror Writers Association for their Poetry Showcase XI. (I like me a long poem title. (I also like parentheticals.))

They pay $30 a poem, which means not only am I now legally a professional, I can even celebrate with a modestly priced lunch.

Since I will be published soon, I wanted to put up a site, so that in case someone were to read and like my poem, they would be able to find my authorly presence out in the world.

To those people: Hi, I’m Stacie Herrington. My debut horror novel is nearly finished-ish, and I’ve got another on the way. As of today, I am unagented and unpublished, although, of course, the unpublished part will change as soon as the HWA Poetry Showcase XI comes out. So, that’s neat.

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