Carey Burns

I've had training as a helpdesk person where I work and the first thing we always have to ask a caller is "Did you reboot?"  If the caller hasn't, we then ask them to do it.  This Techno Magic usually fixes whatever issue they are having and then the caller thanks us and goes about their merry way.  The last couple weeks, I've been struggling with my writing, revising, and life (in general) and yesterday, I determined that I too, need a reboot.  My boss gave me the go-ahead and here I sit, in my pajamas after the best night of sleep in a long (very long) time.  Today, I'm rebooting myself:  no looming To-Do lists...no self-imposed word counts or editing.   I've got my iTunes on shuffle and not skipping any songs.  I'm even going to nap.  Heck, I might even read for fun.  If you have deadlines or a cram-packed schedule or just a lot of crap on your plate, take some time to reboot yourself.  If you take a full day, a week, or even a few minutes with

Okay, so recently I posted about being brave and now I'm really walking the walk.  I've schedule an author/artist event at a local book store for the end of March and I'll be contacting the local newspaper for an interview regarding the event.  I am now an official member of The Horror Writers Associaton (at the affiliate level).  I decided to query several small presses to see if they would be interested in publishing my collection "Hair Baby and Other Weird Tales."  If they are not, I'll be self-publishing that.  Now, I challenge you to do something that scares you.  Write a story.  Send that story out to publishers.  Sing in front of a group.  Teach a class.  Skydive.  We spend too much time worrying about what will happen IF we do something.  Sure, we might get rejected or sing off-key or students may tie you up and lock you in a closet or your parachute might not open.  But what if you get accepted or blow people away with your performance or the  s

I'm Carey Burns, I'm a writer, and I'm a mess.  I have four flashdrives for my writing.  Four.  With multiple versions of all of my stories on each of them.  That's a lot of stories.  So finding something I'm working on is a chore in itself.  This week, I'm on an organizational kick.  I'm wiping out old versions of stories and getting down to just two flashdrives:  one working and one backup.  I know, I know, there's some Cloud out there and other services that will gladly store my stuff, but I'm paranoid and don't embrace change easily.  I still have 3.5 inch floppies!  (that sounds wrong...)  Anyway, the point is, I'm making a huge effort to treat my stories better than I have been.  Next up is getting all of my handwritten scribbles in some sort of organized fashion.  That might take a while. In other writerly news, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and join the Horror Writers Association (HWA) as an affiliate.  Once my dues

Each year, one thing I put on my "To Do" list is to be braver.  If you would meet the me from 10 years ago and have her stand next to me, I think you'd see she was horribly shy and timid.  She would never dream of sending out any of her stories or talking to new people or *gasp* starting a blog to talk to people she didn't even know.  I'm pretty proud of how far I've come and how I've dealt with setbacks along my journey.  Each day I try so hard to be the girl I want to be and live the life I want to live.  Yesterday and today, I did some pretty brave things.  I participated in Neil Gaiman's #KeepMoving and tweeted some pretty personal things.  Things I think I've been trying really hard not to express.  One thing, I miss my dad quite a lot and cry more often than you can imagine.  I've been filling my last 4 months or so of my life with so much activity that I don't really have time to dwell and grieve.  But I'm getting tired and wor