Guest Post: Author Llyod Poast

My debut novelette, Blink, was the third story I began writing after embarking on my writing journey about five years ago, but it has seen many changes and taken me away on its own magical ride with many more twists and turns than I first envisioned.

My first two stories were written in first person, and after reading several magazine guidelines that preferred stories written in third person, I decided to get crazy and try a different tense. I had several ideas brewing and just needed the motivation to put them down on paper, and that motivation soon took the form of a speculative magazine called Sybil’s Garage.

I was always searching for hip magazines in the horror/fantasy genres to submit my stories to and one that always caught my attention was Sybil’s Garage. One day when I was checking their guidelines, I noticed that they were looking for more stories that were around 5,000 words. After seeing that I had about two months until their submission deadline, I finally decided to call on my muses.

I worked on it pretty intensely for a while, but needless to say, the deadline came and went without a final draft being anywhere near completion. A couple of months later, I decided to try and submit it to another market….Bewildering Stories. They accepted it, but said that it needed some work and gave me some time to make it better. About two months later, it was published, but it was still horribly overwritten and I soon requested that it be removed.

I continued to edit and improve the then approximately 4,500 word short story, making the occasional submission and receiving the eventual rejection, until taking a two year sabbatical from writing. When the urge to put pen to paper hit me last winter, the first story I wanted to finally complete was Blink. I was surprised by how much quicker the ideas flowed after the break, and I managed to finish it in about a month. After browsing the Duotrope Digest listings, I soon submitted it to indie publishers, Books to Go Now, and they accepted it within two days.

Originally titled Shortcut, Blink was to be a full blown horror story that combined many of my child hood fears and nightmares. I remember my childhood as this magical time where anything could happen and sometimes my brother, sister, and I would end up scaring ourselves, especially when we got together with our cousins. We loved to go ghost hunting and would search out anything that was remotely paranormal or magical in the woods around our house.

Perhaps because of these adventures or maybe just the result of a typical childhood imagination, I had many wild dreams back then and one of the most memorable was a very vivid and frightening encounter with a man in a suit and top hat. When I finally saw his face, it was that of a cat. The first few drafts of Blink actually had him as the villain. His name was Raylan and he never talked in the story. The only thing anyone heard from him was a scream, which was also born from the whimsy of childhood memories.

When I was around nine or ten, I would often hear a cry that sounded much too exotic to be from the woods behind our house, like a monkey or parrot, and I always wondered what it was. After all these years, I still don’t know, but I haven’t heard it in a long time. Another example of real life influencing Blink is the bear shadow that begins to solidify. When I was about seven years old, I was walking in the woods with my family and got a little ahead of everyone else. I reached a clearing and saw what looked like the shadow of a bear that was as tall as the trees. I was terrified and quickly ran back to my parents, but we were unable to find what I imagined was the giant bear.

There were other ideas that never survived the final draft, but over time, the story just seemed to transform from a horror story into a more lighthearted fantasy and I eventually replaced Raylan with the more charismatic, Amaisia Moon.

Although Blink evolved from horror to fantasy and from speculative magazine wannabe to kindle book, many of the original elements remained – the scream, the bear shadow, the magical woods, and the villain in the top hat. It’s been five years since I first had the idea for Blink, and the truth is that even writers are often surprised by the ending to the story behind the story.

You can find Author Llyod Poast on Goodreads and Blink on Amazon!