WD uses affiliate links.

We first connected with Mazey Eddings for her debut novel’s publication and featured her in our March/April 2022 Issue‘s Breaking In column. Now that her next publication hit shelves yesterday, we’re reconnecting with her for a quick Q&A.

What was the time frame for writing this latest book?

Time is such a blur, and publishing time is a different beast entirely, so I’m not 100 percent sure! I know the first hints of Well, Actually came to me in September 2022 as I was heading on tour for my sophomore novel Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake. I jotted down a bunch of ideas about this second chance romance that starts with a viral callout, and then didn’t touch it again for quite some time until it was sold on proposal in August 2023. Because publishing contracts are weird, and my situation was somewhat unique in having multi-book contracts I was navigating plus severe writer’s block on one that was due, Well, Actually was supposed to be my eighth published book and come out in 2026/27. But my main characters, Eva and Rylie, were so loud and rompy and irreverent, and I wouldn’t let me work on anything else, and I got the greenlight to bump their story up in the cue, and I turned in the initial draft in April 2024, and it is my sixth published book.

Has your perspective on the publication process changed since your debut was published?

So much. I think I’ve come more to terms with how little is in my control when it comes to publishing. I’ve spent the last five years since my debut got picked up by my publisher, pushing and grinding and saying yes to anything and everything that came my way and spending so much time strategizing and agonizing on what I could do to make a book “successful” or a “break-out.” The reality is there is nothing I alone can do to really change the trajectory of one of my books. All I can focus on is creating a story that I genuinely love and hoping that it finds the readers that will love it too. Being hungry and pushing and asking for things in publishing is good and important, but I’ve learned not to feel so much despair when that pushing doesn’t yield the results I would hope for.

What was the biggest surprise while getting this book ready for publication?

How much more excited readers seem for it! As I’ve mentioned, this is my sixth book, so none of this process is new to me, but early readers seem to be responding differently to Well, Actually compared to my past books. I have no idea why things seem to be different this time around, though!

What do you feel you did really well with this novel?

I honored my characters’ voices, particularly my heroine. Eva is an extremely prickly and irreverent female main character, and her sass and crass are a protection mechanism, but I knew while drafting that she would be deemed “unlikeable” by many readers. I decided early on that if Eva didn’t care how she was perceived, then I wouldn’t be the one to water her down! My characters feel very real to me—and Eva is a particularly precious one—and I had so much fun discovering what she would do next, and I like to think that by being true to her character, she’ll feel real to readers as well.

Anything you would have done differently?

With this book? Not at the moment. The more time and space I get from each novel, the more I realize what I could have changed or tried, but I also am a firm believer that once a book is done, it’s important to allow it to just be. I think of my books as little time capsules for where I was as an author at different stages. There are things I would change and edit down or fine-tune if I were writing past stories now with more words under my belt (fingers?), but who am I to edit the purple prose of 25-year-old me? She needed to be gratuitous and sweeping and play with words as she did. 

Would you like to share some advice for our readers?

I think this is advice I shared with WD readers in the past, but protect your joy of writing at all costs. This job is brutal, creating art is brutal, so it is imperative that you fiercely defend and safeguard the joy it brings you.

What’s next for you?

I’m not sure how much I can say at this point, so I’ll leave it at an angsty, sapphic romance dedicated to Stevie Knicks and inspired by her singing “Silver Springs” at Lindsey Buckingham live in 1997. It releases August 2026.

Where can our audience find you online?

Newsletter: Mazey.substack.com
Instagram: Instagram.com/mazeyeddings
Threads: Threads.com/@mazeyeddings

The post Breaking Out: Mazey Eddings appeared first on Writer's Digest.

We just had our annual conference, where I had the pleasure of running the debut author panel! It got me thinking about stage fright, and what kind of person has never experienced it.

For today’s prompt, write about someone who thrives on stage.

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

The post The Opposite of Stage Fright appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Prompt: Write a drabble—a short story of exactly 100 words—based on the photo prompt below. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line “Your Story 138.”

No attachments, please. Include your name and mailing address. Entries without a name or mailing address will be disqualified.

Unfortunately, we cannot respond to every entry we receive, due to volume. No confirmation emails will be sent out to confirm receipt of submission. But be assured, all submissions received before the entry deadline are considered carefully. Official Rules.

Entry Deadline: October 20, 2025.

The post Your Story #138 appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For today’s prompt, write about a day in the life of an illustrator.

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

The post The Illustrator appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For today’s prompt, write about someone stumbling across an abandoned truck.

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

The post The Abandoned Truck appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Prompt: Write the opening line to a story based on the photo prompt below. (One sentence only.) You can be poignant, funny, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line “Your Story 136.”

No attachments, please. Include your name and mailing address. Entries without a name or mailing address will be disqualified.

Unfortunately, we cannot respond to every entry we receive due to volume. No confirmation emails will be sent out to confirm receipt of submission. But be assured all submissions received before the entry deadline are considered carefully.

Entry Deadline: CLOSED.

Out of over 100 entries, WD editors chose the following 12 finalists. Vote for your favorite using the comments section at the bottom of the page.

1. The world was vastly brighter than I remembered, with hues of rich greens climbing upwards, turning into shades of yellow until mixing.

2. The bamboo swayed and swished as if breathing, releasing the all too familiar stench of raw sewage and decaying bodies.

3. The last thing Jen remembered was leaving her hotel room in Chicago, but she woke up with a pounding headache on the floor of a Japanese bamboo grove.

4. Why am I the only one who looks up and wonders what that blue thing is just beyond our Green Canopy?

5. Flat on his back, breath ragged from the fall, eyes fixed on the towering bamboo above, the angel listened to the silence of a world consumed in its own oblivion, too unready and unwilling to be saved.

6. With both wrists zip-tied to the unyielding bamboo, and with no way to signal the rescue plane roaring past overhead, Roger Mallory dropped his head to his bloodied chest and wept.

7. Here were enough trunks here to build the ark exactly as instructed, if only he had an axe and more time.

8. At least they’re safe, she thought, her vision fading as the last of her life seeped from the jagged bullet wound in her back into the cold, mossy floor of the bamboo grove.

9. Guiseppi picks up his chisel to carve the magic flute, the only thing that will free him from his debt.

10. If only they were needles, but no, it’s me, in a recovery from hell, surrounded by green spears.

11. “So, the shrink ray works,” my assistant says, glowering at me from behind her large, round glasses, as gigantic green stocks loom above us.

12. “Whoa, talk about false advertising!” Daniel exclaimed as he peered up at the obstructed sky, his grip tightening around the can of Weedbuster.

The post Your Story #136 appeared first on Writer's Digest.

They say you should never meet your heroes. But speaking with Stephen Graham Jones is a lot like speaking with your local theater nerd about the history of Broadway, except with a lot more goosebumps and nightmares. 

Known for his horror writing, Jones has won or been nominated for over 20 awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, British Fantasy Awards, and Locus Awards. He has published more than 30 books and hundreds of short stories, in genres ranging from horror to science fiction to absurdist. You can find his work in well-known publications like Clarkesworld and Nightmare Magazine. On top of his writing career, Graham Jones is also the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English and a Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado Boulder. But while some writers might let those accolades feed their egos, Jones is just like the rest of us—plagued with pre-publication anxiety. 

“I’m still in that stage where it could be a total flop and a failure and nobody’s going like it, you know?” he said, laughing, as we sat down to discuss his upcoming release, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. “Like, you and three other people have read it, so I’m scared. But you’re supposed to be scared, I think, too.” 

I assure you; he has nothing to be scared about. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a historical horror novel about a professor, Etsy, who, in the midst of a career crisis in 2012, is transcribing her great-great grandfather’s diary. Through entries from 1912, we learn that Arthur Beaucarne, a pastor, heard several confessionals by a Blackfeet man named Good Stab. These transcribed confessionals leave blood in their wake.  

We began our conversation by discussing the technicality behind this latest release. 

I would consider The Buffalo Hunter Hunter to be a story within a story within a story, but all three of those stories are told through first-person narration. Was it difficult to keep all of those voices distinct? 

I did have to keep all three of those voices, those narrators, distinct. I mean, they distinguish themselves a little bit just because they’re in different contexts and they have different histories, but that’s not quite enough, for me to do it, anyway. What I ended up having to do was give each of them different rules to follow that they didn’t know they were following. 

The outside narration, the frame—Etsy—she has access to anything she wants. She’s got semicolons. She could have footnotes if she wanted. It wouldn’t matter. She’s got everything. Arthur Beaucarne, he has those big old long dashes, and he’ll use however as a coordinating conjunction. And then when you get to the center of the nested narratives to Good Stab, he doesn’t have any dashes at all. And no semicolons, either. … I have somewhere a list of rules [that] each character will always default to using this when possible, and that when possible.  

And I wish I could say that that happened organically the first time through, but really, it just kind of expressed itself through their own voices. And then I had to codify it and go back through a few times and comb all the things that didn’t fit out of each character’s voice and sections. I made that little list of rules specifically for my editors and copy editors so they could help keep me on track. 

In 2011, you wrote an article for our blog in which you said, “If you keep having to dip into the story’s past to explain the present, then there’s a good chance your real story’s in the past, and you’re using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.” Did tackling the storylines in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter complicate that for you? 

I did say that in 2011. I’ve been saying it since, like, 2000. I still subscribe to that completely. I think a lot of stories and novels and novellas and stuff I read, the past is simply there as a slippery ramp you fall down to get to 1942 or whatever. And I think, Why don’t we just go to 1942 and tell the story from there? But yes, this story is probably showcasing my infatuation with Philip K. Dick and how he always nests his narratives inside like Russian nesting dolls, you know? The trick is there are causal implications between each layer of those nests. And I really, really love that kind of narrative. I don’t know if I call it a framework, but I just love that delivery method. 

So, yeah, I wanted to try it this time. I’ve done it once before in a novel called Ledfeather that came out in ’07 or ’08. It goes back and forth between 1884 and a century later. And that was me testing myself, how would I handle delivering the past? And turns out epistolary was the trick I used in that novel. … 

But this did complicate it. And I think the way that I handled it—in my head anyway, maybe on the page—is I made Etsy be that outside frame of the past. 1912 was, of course, the past … and then Good Stab’s story from 1833 up to 1884 is even the deeper past. I did end up saying that this story happens in the past. I don’t think it actually happens in Good Stab’s past. I think it happens in 1912 … But I did want to have stairsteps to get there. I felt like I would’ve been losing some context had I just dropped us into Beaucarne’s Sunday sermon.  

This is not the first time you’ve played with multiple points of view. Even though Mongrels has a first-person narrator, some parts of the book are told from a third-person perspective. At what point in your writing or drafting process do you decide to include these layered points of view? 

With Mongrels specifically, I wasn’t even writing the novel. I had two weeks off, so I thought I would write a bunch of stories right fast, and then I decided, What if I name the characters the same and put them in the same world, and it can be a novel? But what I found out with Mongrels was if the first-person chapters touched each other, then the reader instantly was triggered to ask, “How did we get from here to here?” I realized I had to pad it with these little third-person interstitials …  

As for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter … I had just taught a vampire graduate course. I just had vampires all in my head. And a couple weeks before the course was over, I started writing The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. I just couldn’t help it, ’cause I had so many fangs in my dreams and everything. So, I sat down to start it, and I thought, Well, here we go. We’re dropping back into some past. Then Etsy just kind of raised her hand and said, “Wait, wait, I gotta go first.” It wasn’t anything strategic, and I didn’t plan it out. It’s just that I couldn’t figure out how to get back 100 years or so without some sort of person to hold [the reader’s] hand back to there. Then the person who was best at holding their hand I thought might be a professor. And then I had to ask myself, “What kind of crisis is that professor in?” She’s in a tenure crisis, a career crisis.  

To me, that’s just how novels develop. It’s all like mechanical problems that you provide a solution for, but then those solutions bloom out and become the story.  

With your Indian Lake Trilogy, you were exploring the expectations around the slasher subgenre and then how easily those expectations can be subverted. What were you exploring with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter? 

You know, I told myself I would never write a vampire novel until I could do it the same way I did the werewolves in Mongrels, which is to say, until I could put a creature on the page with a biology and a culture that felt real to me. I had tried to write werewolf novels twice before Mongrels, and both of them failed because I was just looking at pretty werewolves. [Laughs] Basically, I didn’t have a story. So, I knew not to just look at pretty vampires with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, but also, I had to do a lot of swapping out of characteristics and traits to make the vampire something I could believe in.  

In a lot of vampire stories, the vampire will just up and fly across the town. And I’m like, “What in the world, is that Vampire Superman? I don’t understand this. How are they not beholden to gravity? How are they propelling themselves?” … There are a lot of things with the vampire that I think are story expediencies that have kind of accreted onto the vampire through so many [adaptations] of telling over the centuries … and then they become part of the code for vampires, and they don’t get interrogated quite enough, I don’t think.  

With The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, I wanted to interrogate all those. And what I want is for the vampire to keep on going. I don’t want it to fizzle out. I don’t want sparkly vampires to kill the vampire. [Laughs] For me to help the vampire thrive, I feel like it’s incumbent that I kind of burn off the fat, if that makes sense. So it can be a leaner … organism … I asked myself, “If somebody was infected with something that made them have to subsist on human blood, how would that function? And what are the ramifications?”  

You have tackled everything from short stories to novellas to full novels to graphic novels. When you sit down to write a story, do you have the length and format already in mind? Or do you figure that out once you’ve begun the project? 

You know, for a story, I generally have the length down. Like, an editor will call me and say, “I need something from you. I’m paying $.10/a word, up to 7,000 words. After that, you don’t get any money.” And I’m like, “Well, a 7,000-word story, then.” [Laughs] I can usually hit that, more or less.  

Flash fiction always stays flash fiction. Flash fiction never opens up to a story for me—so far, anyways. Only once have I had a novella open up to a novel, and that was Only Good Indians. Well, now I’m lying. I tried to write The Only Good Indians three times; the third time, I finally did it, but the first two also became novels—The Babysitter Lives and Killer on the Road. So, I screw up sometimes. I just misjudge the scope, you know? 

People always ask why I write and read so much horror when the real world is horrifying enough. Have people asked similar things about your work?  

Yeah, they do. I think that the response to the world being a dumpster fire is either to look deeper into the flames or to find a cute kitten to look at. Those are the two responses. [Laughs] Both are legitimate! Neither is better than the other. … But I think what gazing at the flames of the fire can do is when we engage horror media, whatever kind, we’re seeing characters struggling through a dark, violent, terrible, scary tunnel, the same way we are. The difference is those characters on screen, on the page … they get to the end. And that gives us here in the real world, in our own dark tunnels, hope that there is going to be an end to this horror story.  

I mean, there is a sense in which horror media is a funhouse mirror that distorts our current anxieties and fears and issues and all that stuff. … But really, I think the reason so many of us are watching, reading, engaging with horror lately is that it has an end. Stories have ends, whether they’re good or bad, and we want an end to this horror story we’re in. 

There seems to be this perpetuating idea that publishing is having a horror renaissance. Do you feel that that’s accurate? 

I do think that since probably Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom … the world has finally woken up and realized that we’re in dialogue with what’s happening. I think until then, people always thought, like, there’s a carnival, but we’re this far-out tent just doing blood gags for each other, putting on masks for each other and laughing and dancing around. But I think Get Out and Victor’s book both signaled to the world that, “Hey, we’re talking about things that matter.” And ever since then, horror has had a different velocity or momentum or something. It just feels more vital, I think. It’s got its finger on some sort of pulse for the moment. 

I do sometimes hesitate to say that horror is having a renaissance, or it’s a current fad, but the only reason for that is self-protection. It’s because fads go away, renaissances [blow] over, you know? I’d much rather horror just continue to be part of the conversation. However, my concern is that horror, we’ve gotten so much of our identity from the solidarity of being outsiders with each other. And so now that we’re in the big tent, now that we’re not outsiders, I wonder how that’s going to change the fabric of horror. 

It’ll be interesting to see. It’s one of those waiting games. 

Yeah. I totally agree. I’m excited, too. Because if horror had stayed the same, then it would die. Things can’t stay the same. They’ve got to keep adapting.  

I know quite a few people who would be upset if I invited them over to watch a monster movie and then put on John Carpenter’s Halloween. So, I want to ask you: Do you consider slashers to be monsters? 

I do. I’m teaching a monster lecture course in the spring here to, like, 250 sophomores. One of the monsters we process through is going to be the Jason Voorhees of the world, the Michael Myers of the world. My definition of monster is that which we have to use unconventional weapons to dispense with, like silver bullets or daylight and or headshots with the slasher, the unconventional weapon that gets used against it. [The slasher’s] silver bullet, its Achilles’ heel is the final girl, you know? … I think Jason Voorhees is as much a monster as Godzilla is. 

In your opinion, what makes a good monster? 

They have some sort of Achilles’ heel. That there’s something we can use our clever monkey brains to figure out and weaponize against them such that we can put them down. Because realistically, how can we ever stop Jason Voorhees or a werewolf? We’ve got to melt down our grandmother’s silver to shoot that werewolf. That kind of stuff. I love that. I think monsters need to be bulletproof, basically. That’s kind of part of the unconventional weapons.  

And monsters can’t be negotiated with. That’s really important as well. If you can ever come to a treaty table under a white tent and say to the monster, “You’ve been doing this a while, and this is really causing us some grief. Let’s see, if we give you this and this, can you stop doing that?” That’s not going to be a fun story. [Laughs] 

This issue of WD is all about pushing boundaries. Who are some authors you admire for how they push boundaries in their work? 

Oh, man. I like the way Jeff VanderMeer is always pushing the boundaries of both delivery and reality. Nicholson Baker, I like the weird stuff he does. … Paul Tremblay is pushing boundaries with form in a lot of his books. He’s always doing stuff in the margins, or he’ll pit two or three narratives against each other in his story, such that you kind of lose the thread of truth or trust.  

I love to read writers who are tinkering like that, because like with music, garage bands are what keep music vital. It’s not The Rolling Stones, you know, it’s not the monster bands. It’s the ones who are coming up with new sounds in the privacy of their garage. And we need people doing that. 

How do you think you push boundaries? 

I like to experiment—you know, actually maybe experiment’s the wrong verb. Brian Evenson, when people try to label him an experimental writer, he’s like, “I’m not experimenting, I’m innovating.” Because he’s not just pouring random test tubes into other test tubes and waiting to see what happens. He needs to get from here to there, and he comes up with a new way to get from here to there. And innovation is wonderful. I think random experimentation doesn’t always feel authentic or doesn’t come from an authentic place.  

But myself, if I am contributing anything in that regard, it’s that I only write novels that I think are bad ideas. Like, any novel I ever have that I think, Oh, I can do that, then I don’t write that novel. That is just super boring to me. I can’t imagine writing a novel that I think is going to work. I only want to write novels that are broken at the level of conception, that feel like bad ideas, because then I have to become a better writer and get extremely lucky to make it work. And when I get extremely lucky, and I somehow become a better writer, I feel like I went somewhere. I did something. … I like to write myself into a corner over and over, such that I have to become a better writer to get out. 

We would be remiss not to discuss that you are a distinguished professor. Do you feel that your approach to writing has changed at all since you began teaching writing? 

I signed on as a visiting assistant professor in 1999. My first novel came out in 2000. So, it’s really hard for me to disentangle those two. I feel like my professor career and my career as a novelist were birthed at the same moment.  

But I do think that being a professor helps me a whole lot with being a writer, because every day, like here in an hour and a half, I’m going to teach a workshop, and I’ll be telling the students things, techniques, precepts. What I’m trying to do is instill in them a sense of narrative ethics, basically. I want them to care about story in a new way, in a good way, in a responsible way. I hear myself telling them those things, and then, later on in the afternoon, I’ll be writing, and I’m like, “Oh man, I told them this. I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to adhere to that myself. I’ve got to set a good model.” I can’t just say it. I’ve got to live it.  

And so, saying these things to all these generations of students that I’ve been doing for 25 years now, it’s kept me on the straight and narrow. I mean, I’ve written stories about working the window at a drive-through urinal. I’ve written about giant time-traveling caterpillars. But to me, that’s all the straight and narrow in that I’m adhering really strictly to a sense of narrative ethics to something that I think actually matters.  

You know, content never matters, but how you care about the story and care about the story’s impact on the world, I think that that matters a lot. 

What words of advice do you have for our readers? 

I would say everyone has their chosen genre they like to write in—I’m a horror writer. I think of all the genres as different five-acre fields spread along a creek. They all have fences around them, sometimes really tall fences. But I think it’s really important to, when nobody’s looking, step across the fence into romance or into space opera or into paleoanthropology or into botany. There are endless fields to step in, endless bookshelves, and I walk around those wonderful fields. And then when the sun goes down, I come back to my own fence, I step over it, I get back into horror, and I stand there. What’s happened when I’ve been swishing through those other fields is that burrs have stuck to my pants legs. And then they fall off in the horror field, and their seeds, they grow up into strange plants. That’s how we keep a genre vital: We transpose different DNA into it, strange alien DNA. And I think that’s the most important [thing]. That’s a way to keep your genre active instead of just using your genre. 

The post The WD Interview: Stephen Graham Jones appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For today’s prompt, write about a defining moment in a hunter’s life. Is it bagging the biggest or most challenging prey? Is it a spiritual event that causes them to stop hunting? Don’t be afraid to follow the story into unexpected territory!

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

The post A Defining Moment appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For today’s prompt, write a story centered on a bunch of balloons.

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

The post Balloon Bunch appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Want to see your name on this list? Keep checking our competitions page for upcoming competitions.

1. “Naive Beauty” by Judith Chibante

2. “Aftermath” by Shakiba Hashemi

3. “Death Rattle” by Leslie Frisbee

4. “muse” by Cecily Markham

5. “I am a woman now of many years” by Cecily Markham 

6. “Fungi Sonnet” by Ren Miller

7. “Austerlitz” by Ann Vincent Vila

8. “Genealogy” by Ralph La Rosa

9. “City of Ashland” by Gayle Hellinger

10. “Good Shirts” by Deig Sullivan

11. “On the Job Training” by Cynthia Webb

12. “A Point of Origin” by Lauren Tess

13. “Florida, 1947” by Thomas Dukes 

14. “EMMANUELLE” by Robert Ember

15. “DREAMS” by Elizabeth Sauce

16. “Death, of a Goldfish” by Karen C. Stone

17. “Sonnet to October” by Laurie B Holding

18. “Tears of the Unheard” by Kasia Natalia Badger

19. “Eucharist” by Richard Stimac

20. “Clair Obscure” by D. A. Dorwart

21. “song” by Michael Miller

22. “You” by Grace Adams 

23. “A Box Filled with Broken Crayons Speaks” by Tamiko Nesbitt

24. “DAYS OF PALE TEA” by Katherine Atwell Herbert

25. “What Earth Said” by Cara Whalen

The post Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards appeared first on Writer's Digest.