My Actually Haunted Ghost Story

October 19, 2017October 18, 2017 valmanwillLeave a comment

Ever since I started writing this horror short story, strange things have been happening to me.

The very first night that I even began outlining… something really creepy happened. A sound came over my baby monitor. A high-pitched trill that sounded like someone screaming. Dan and I just stared at each other like… whaaaaaaaaat is that?? It had never done anything like that before or anything since… I didn’t tell Dan that I was working on a ghost story at the time and tried to pretend like it wasn’t the creepiest thing ever.

After the baby monitor thing, I tried to listen to music when I worked on the story. But the music would inexplicably turn itself on and off.

Then, one night I had a vivid nightmare that I was lying on the floor of my apartment and couldn’t get up. This weirdly-lit guy was standing by the wall, grinning at me. He slowly came closer and closer to my face. I woke up gasping and thrashing my arms trying to push him away. Dan calmed me down. The next day the light had burnt out in the spot the man had “stood” in my nightmare.

creepy lighting

After I had written the story and revised it. I was cleaning a bottle for my son at the kitchen sink when I saw a man in a blue jacket walk across my backyard. Thinking it was my husband I dashed to the other window to wave hi… no one was there. And I know, because I frantically checked ALL of my windows and EVERY inch of my backyard.

I finally finished revising the darn story. Good. I exited completely out of Word. And I started to play around on the internet… when the thing RE-OPENED ITSELF onto my computer. I think I wrote a ghost story that in and of itself became haunted.

5prtl

So… anyone want to read it?

Ava, a true skeptic, has no problem cleaning and closing The Redd’s Theater by herself at night… even though it is said to be haunted by a magician who murdered his wife there. 5,000 words

If you are brave enough to challenge the haunted ghost story, you can fill out the application below and I will email it to you. (All I ask in return is that you tell me what you thought of it.) HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

New Writing Projects!

September 21, 2017January 13, 2018 valmanwill1 Comment

If you had told me this was how my new project announcement was going to go, I would’ve told you NO. That is NOT my plan. But you know what? When you’re a creative person, sometimes you don’t have a choice. And I know that sounds completely psychotic… and it totally is. But it’s almost like your own heart holds you hostage and you cannot freaking help yourself.

I finished writing the final episode of my TV show last month. It took a full year and a LOT of work. Really. A lot. FOR MONTHS I had been so excited to finally be able to move on to this other project (more on this in a sec). But the very day that I finished the show, my mind ran away with the idea… that “Identity Crisis” needs to be turned into a novel.

21317982_10154705537861536_1921867099450094080_n — See? A lot of work.

Almost 100% of my beta readers have asked me about making a novel out of it. And I mildly toyed with the idea. I knew if I did, it would have to be a TOTAL re-write. The completed series follows my life almost exactly, but for a book version I would prefer it to be cover to cover fictional. Mostly, because hey man… if I’m going to put in the work to write a dang novel, I’m going to put in the work to dang publish it, that’s what! And I ain’t about to publish an autobiography yet.

I was not able to turn off the creative faucet with this idea. I mean it was the kind of idea that keeps you up at night. So I caved and sat down to do a complete brain dump. And you know what happened? The entire outline erupted out onto the page.

That coupled with an outpouring of positive feedback from a Facebook post about the series… I was like, okay… This is what needs to be worked on right now.

So, with that unnecessarily long backstory out of the way!

ANNOUNCEMENT #1!

Yes. I will be re-writing Identity Crisis as a YA Contemporary novel! Woo hoo! The title of the novel will be “The Other Five Percent”. It’s about a girl who has her heart broken and rebels by trying to ruin her reputation in a predominantly conservative high school. (Sorta like “Freaks and Geeks” if it were set in suburban Utah…)

THE OTHER FIVE PERCENT

My plan for this book is to try for the traditional publishing route. Personally for me, that’s a dream that I want to see realized at some point in my life.

I’m also doing this book for NaNoWriMo, because I’m a crazy person.

What’s NaNoWriMo? Oh, National Novel Writing Month? Don’t worry, it’s just this little thing where you write a 50,000 word novel in a 30 FREAKING DAYS. This is my first time trying it out. I don’t even know what to expect, but it’s a good way to puke out the first draft of my book.

ANNOUNCEMENT #2!

I’m still not giving up on the project that I was planning on announcing today.

Here and there and in between (but don’t ask me when) I will also be working on a collection of horror stories that together I’m referring to as “The Doubting Shadow”.

THE DOUBTING SHADOW (2)

Six different women are forced to face their social insecurities by increasingly bizarre and eerie circumstances. Eventually, they come to realize that their greatest fears are only a shadow of something worse.

Although, I feel that the stories would do well in a collection together, I’ll most likely be breaking them up and selling them out individually. It’s just a lot easier to market that way. Maybe one day I’ll be able to put out “The Doubting Shadow”, but right now I want to focus on a novel that I can debut with.

No worries, you can still expect these weird little stories to trickle out over the next couple of years.

DS Alternate

Keep tuning in for more development on these projects! And you can always peruse my “projects page” if you feel like it.

6 Things I’ve Learned Writing About Myself

August 17, 2017August 17, 2017 valmanwillLeave a comment

I’m about to finish writing the final season of my TV show project, which will be an INCREDIBLE accomplishment. It has been a full year and 200,000+ words of what I hope to look back on and consider the beginning of my “writing career”. In honor of its closing I wanted to talk about what I’ve learned on this auto-biographical journey:

1. Things that I didn’t think we’re such a big deal turned out to be pivotal moments in my life.

Honestly, I had SO much self-discovery during this project. There were scenes that got me double thinking of why I had chosen that particular thing to write in. But overall, those little moments uncovered my flaws, my greatest strengths and some deeply ingrained fears. In re-reading episodes, I often put myself on the psychiatrist couch and just learned all about Val.

2. Things that were irritating at the time turned out to be the funniest things to write.

On the other hand, things that were SUCH A BIG DEAL in my teenage world turned out to be nothing. Writing my over-dramatic reactions had me laughing out loud a lot.

3. Writing someone else’s POV caused me to develop a deeper respect for them.

When I was FORCED to come up with reasons why person X did reaction Y it really made me appreciate that person in real life… even if those reasons were completely fabricated. This happened with nearly everyone I wrote about. The more scenes I constructed the more I realized that these guys are some DANG STRONG CHARACTERS. Being able to be that ghostly third-person presence, really helped me to change my perspective.

4. I am a little to a lot conceited…

It is really difficult not to twist things to make yourself seem really great… Soooo this is embarrassing… there are five different male characters who are in love with Elle. Oops. That doesn’t seem bad, but considering how few consistent characters there are… it comes off as A LOT. I think I did this because I was so flattered when anyone liked me that I wanted to write about all of them… all five. I’m sure when my children pick up these old manuscripts they’ll either cringe or roll their eyes.

5. Human memory is really unreliable

Pardon my symbols, but this is freaky as $^*%. I actually had accrued false memories over a ten year span. Memory is a joke. This one scene had me so freaked out, I was wrapping tin foil around my head and crying on the floor. This is how I remembered the memory: I was asked out on a date in the summer… But then I told a friend about it at school who came over after to help me do my hair… But then one of the guys on the date had brass knuckles in a FREAKING COAT POCKET. But guess what? It all took place during the summer after all. What the what!? How can you trust anything that has happened to you in your lifetime? Doesn’t that concept just CREEP YOU OUT?

6. I plan to keep writing.

I really have enjoyed every minute that I’ve poured into these pages and I have a lot more stories to tell. . .

In fact. . .

I will be announcing my next project in September!!!!

new project announcement

Be very excited.

If you can’t wait for my new mysterious project, then let me tell you where to accrue some good reading. Usborne Books is really cool. They have tons of amazing educational kids books. If you’re a mom or a teacher or a weird hybrid mix like me, this is a great resource for you:

J6433.myubam.com

And if you want to know more about my-life-turned-TV-show click HERE.