Last night was the first meeting for October for the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Support Group. We meet twice a month, taking turns reading out 1200-1500 words of our works in processed and getting feedback from each other. This really is a wonderful group of writers to hang out with. We are supportive, encouraging, polite, and honest in a feedback without the nastiness that sometime occurs in these sorts of informal settings. I count myself truly fortunate to have been with this bunch since the beginning.

In an earlier post I discussed how recent reversal had hampered my motivation in writing and that over coming that setback was taking more work than I had anticipated. The support and good will from my fellow writers at the group meeting is a boost to my flagging confidence and I hope that I am equally helpful to each of them.

Last night I read out my first attempt as flash fiction, a tiny story that comprised a grand total of 638 words. It was well received and I got some very fine critique on the piece. Just that, the honest feedback on what worked and what didn’t work helped put me back into the right frame of mind motivating me to put butt to chair and fingers to keyboard.

I have a short story in progress another ready to start and after then perhaps I’ll take on writing my first novel length horror project.

Speaking of horror novels I am currently, via an audio book, working my way through the original Dracula. There is one element in the novel, a tiny little detail that had slipped my mind, that I wish some of the film version had taken the time to capture. Early in the story Jonathan Harker, newly minted solicitor, in in a coach heading for a rendezvous at the Borgo Pass where another carriage will take him top the client, Count Dracula. The locals have tried to warn him off but business wait for no man and Harker will have nothing it. The driver of Harker’s coach whips his horses, pressing them for greater and greater speed and this element is often there in the cinematic version, playing to the locals’ terror of the Count and his true nature, but when the coach arrives at the pass is where the novel does something I love. When they arrive the coach’s drive looks around and announces that there is no carriage to meet Harker and he will not leave a man alone in the mountains and begins to insist that Harker must go on to the next destination. The driver has arrived an hour early in an attempt to make Harker miss the appointment, but then Dracula’s coach arrives with it’s driver noting that that coachman had attempted to make Harker miss this connection. Harker of course transfers to Dracula’s carriage and the story progresses. I love the fact that the locals had worked hard, very hard, at trying to save Harker from his impending fate. That in the novel they are more than terrified villagers but people will to take risks to save another person from the evils in those mountains. It would be nice to see that occasionally in the films.