Bradley P. Beaulieu

Better late than never?

Last year at GenCon, Cathy Johnson, known to some as CathyBoy, gave each of the Writers Symposium writers a water color portrait. I really love how mine turned out. The rest of them are really cool, too. My favorite is probably Pat Rothfuss, the garden gnome. Thanks, Cathy!

I have a story, “Good Morning Heartache,” which is set to appear in Spells of the City (formerly known as City Fantastic). I like the name change. I think Spells of the City has a bit more flair to it. Anyway, I received the galleys about a week ago and ran through the story one more time to check for minor errors. I’ve noticed a trend of mine, lately. I work really hard to make sure the openings of my stories are “grabby”, but in doing so I often fall out of my natural story tone and pacing. The result? I can’t say that they’re bad openings, but they’re rougher than the rest of my prose, because I’m out of my comfort zone. I think this is perfectly fine. I’m pushing myself to write differently, and in the end, I think I’ll be a better writer for it. I just have to pay special attention to those openings to make sure they flow while still hooking the reader.

The other thing I noticed was that the story itself held up really well. I wrote it pretty quickly, but I like how it turned out, especially considering I was writing from the POV of a black woman living in Harlem.