F is for Flash fiction. Flashfic is harder to write than you’d think. The idea behind it is, of course, to be quite short so you can read it in a flash. I find it a very good training tool in many ways. I’m wordy by nature. I write long, too long, if I’m not careful. Most flash fiction is under 1,500 words and some is significantly shorter than that. It challenges you to be very aware of your word choice and story structure.

I need this. Almost every one of my short stories ends up having too much story in them and they don’t work nearly as well as they should. By accepting flash fic challenges, it helps you hone your craft (and maybe drive you a little insane). I first started these challenges in fandom drabble communities (a drabble being only 100 words). I remember one friend asking me why I bothered. She didn’t like drabbles, she didn’t see the point in fiction so small. I explained the discipline behind it as the reason I did it. Truthfully though, I prefer longer fiction. I’m a novel reader. I struggle with reading anthologies because I’m not overly fond of shorter fiction.

That said, I appreciate the lessons it has to teach me as an author. There are tons of flash fic challenges out there. The Facebook community, Queer Sci-Fi does one yearly for the last four years. I took the challenge in year two and three (placing into the final anthology). I skipped the first year as I had just joined the community and was a bit shy. I did just send mine in for this year. It is a contest. Will I win? Who’s to say? That’d be sweet but I enjoy being part of the whole process so it’s okay if I don’t. Their contest is rather hard actually with 300 words being the top word count.

Lex Chase has a challenge she runs intermittently and I just came up with a steampunk for that. I’m proud of that little story. And for the followers of Chuck Wendig, they’re well aware he often runs flash fic challenges on his blog. I don’t’ find the time to write for his challenges nearly as much as I’d like (it’s often weekly. There are other weekly flash fic challenges out there but I don’t really have the time/discipline to do those). If you don’t follow Wendig’s blog , I do recommend it. Word of warning fuck is one of his favorite words (for those of you who are more gently turned than I.) He does very good inspirational posts in addition to the flash fic.

So to the authors out there who haven’t given flash fic a try, do. It’s a very different challenge in comparison to other forms of writing.

D is for The Darkest Midnight in December.

This novella featuring my 1930s demon hunters, the Soldiers of the Sun, Caleb, Agni, Temple & Li. Actually it started out as a short story about a krampus-like demon (the French version, Le Père Fouettard) running through the remains of a reclusive religious group outside of Pittsburgh, in Old Economy Village (now Ambridge) for a Christmas anthology.

Shockingly they didn’t want a Christmas story about a demon that eats little kids! 🙂 Instead I decided to fluff it up a bit with more story adding in a second demon, blood/lifeforce- sucking alps. Did I mention alps, in some of the literature, resemble butterflies. Yeah, blood sucking butterflies (One of my friends who’s no longer with us used them in a Mulder/Scully-esque story that stuck with me.)

I had paid a visit to Old Economy Village before writing this and felt like I needed to use it.

(House in Old Economy)

I love using places I’ve been in my stories. I had really wanted to write something more for Caleb and company and realized this would be just perfect for them. I’ve been attracted to stories with the monster of the week sort of theme for years. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still one of my favorites in that genre and the Soldiers of the Sun stories are my homage to those shows.

Even though I know this novella is a hard sell – I mean, come on historical urban fantasy? – but I love these characters and I love writing them. It does make me a little sad that their story doesn’t get around a bit more (and it’s not helped by the fact it’s listed as romance and it’s not a romance, so people end up disappointed). I love them for all their faults and hope there are a few out there who do as well.

Blurb The year is 1930, and something is hunting infants and young couples in Economy Village, PA. When a local priest begins to suspect a demon may be the culprit, the sheriff calls in a team of Soldiers from the Sun.

Caleb, Agni, Temple, and Li specialize in demon hunting, but they can’t rule out an old religious sect as the true culprit. Prejudice, distraught parents, and angry townspeople don’t make the team’s job any easier. And if something goes wrong, they’re on their own, because by the time their backup arrives, it will be too late.

You can find it for sale here.

Check out Layla’s newest cover!

Serpent’s Kiss Blurb

While searching for their missing sibling, Zaiden and his sister come across the last pure blooded seer of their kind. Unfortunately for them, Darian has no idea what he truly is and isn’t much interested in helping.

A bounty hunter by trade, who’s been all but banished from his family due to his visions, he’s a bit cynical about his ability to be of any use to them. Never-the-less, Zaiden brings him back to their home compound, where Darian discovers that very little is what it seems.

With plots unfolding all around them and discoveries about his own heritage leaving Darian reeling, he is left with the choice of whether to embrace who and what he is, or spend every moment with them a prisoner on the fringes of their society.

Add in a pesky little bond that only seems to grow the more time he and Zaiden spend together, and several factions looking to possess him and Darian is left wondering if his visions just might be the least of his troubles.

LAYLA DORINE lives among the sprawling prairies of Midwestern America, in a house with more cats than people. She loves hiking, fishing, swimming, martial arts, camping out, photography, cooking, and dabbling with several artistic mediums. In addition, she loves to travel and visit museums, historic, and haunted places.
Layla got hooked on writing as a child, starting with poetry and then branching out, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggle, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. She writes about artists, musicians, loners, drifters, dreamers, hippies, bikers, truckers, hunters and all the other folks that she’s met and fallen in love with over the years. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its aliens crash landing near a roadside bar. When she isn’t writing, or wandering somewhere outdoors, she can often be found curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.