Guest Post with Kendare Blake, Author of Anna Dressed In Blood

In Which I get Serious

(For like five minutes and then I go back to being a dingus)

By

Kendare Blake

“The hard thing isn’t becoming a writer. It’s staying a writer.”

Look at that quote. Read that quote. Repeatedly. I know I did, back when I was hip deep in the “becoming” part. I can’t remember who said it, but I remember that it was a writer I admired, Harlan Ellison, maybe, and that for a time, it floated around a circle of writers that I really looked up to, as they lamented the business that is “Staying a Writer.”

I don’t mind telling you: I called BS. The hard part isn’t “becoming”? I wanted to shout. Really? All this writing and soul-searching, and revising and submitting and being politely or less politely rejected…this isn’t the hard part? Because if that’s true, then what. The. Frick.

I told myself then that I would never forget what it took to “become”, if ever I was lucky enough to see publication. I wouldn’t forget the nail-biting and the self-loathing and the fleeting triumph of finishing a project just to see it dashed against the rocks as not-quite-good-enough-not-what-we’re-looking-for.

And I haven’t. The sheaf of unpublished literary stories on my hard drive remind me. The spreadsheet tracking all the agencies and magazines I submitted to remind me. But here I am. Out of the becoming, and into the staying, and I find…that the staying isn’t easy either. Looking back at one of my old journal entries I told myself that if I had a book published I wouldn’t whine or moan no matter what happened. I’d only be grateful. And now I get to call BS on myself.

That’s not to say I’m not grateful. Of course I am. It’s magical and wonderful and blah blah blah to the moon and back. But there’s struggle and strife and drama of Southern Belle proportions (vespers, I think they call it vespers) in my future, and that’s just the human condition. Because I know now what those writers meant. It’s hard at every turn. At every stage. But it’s also fan-fricking-tastic at every turn and every stage.

If I were to give advice (and I hate to give advice, what the heck do I know) it would be that if you are travelling a similar worn road, SAVOR every triumph. But don’t forget to glance back once in a while, to remember what it took you to get there.

And returning to dingus mode in 5…4…3…

ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD BY KENDRA BLAKE

(August 30th 2011)

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

Author Bio: Kendare Blake is an import from South Korea who was raised in the United States by caucasian parents. You know, that old chestnut. She received a Bachelor's degree in Business from Ithaca College and a Master's degree in Writing from Middlesex University in London. She brakes for animals, the largest of which was a deer, which sadly didn't make it, and the smallest of which was a mouse, which did, but it took forever. Amongst her likes are Greek Mythology, rare red meat and veganism. She also enjoys girls who can think with the boys like Ayn Rand, and boys who scare the morality into people, like Bret Easton Ellis.Official Website