Brittany Maresh

writer

Dear World,
I have three younger sisters and they’re all really very pretty.
One of them has this amazing curly hair, and another has the most toned body ever–she’s an athlete and in amazing shape and has these wide light brown eyes. The last looks a lot like our mother. They all take after my mom, if I’m honest.
My mom was the pretty PTA mom that is on half a dozen committees and makes her husband the envy of all the other men in the room, when I was growing up, and my sisters all inherited some permutation of that gene.
I’ve always felt that all I got was her bad eye sight, instead. Being told that I’m awkward or write horrible monster crap has kind of been my thing for the past twenty years or so. Being pretty was theirs.
Just now, I’m not buying that, though.
I’m going on an adventure to Michigan on May 12, and just now I think the world is amazing, and I feel really cool for being part of it. And if I got my awesomeness gene anywhere, it’s from my mom. She’s pretty much amazing.
Some time in there I theoretically might get to FEED A GIRAFFE! Which is way more exciting than anything else I an even comprehend right now.
I had always kind of thought of them as being a lot smaller than Wikipedia tells me they are. I was judging my idea of how big things in Africa are off of Indian elephants, which, come to find out, are tiny compared to African elephants. I sort of thought Zebras were Shetland Pony size, lions were snow leopard size, and that really made Giraffes Clydesdale size, except skinny, so smaller than that, even. In my head, it worked. African trees, I thought, were really sort of small.
I can’t wait to see it. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s going to be like, not really. I can’t wait to share the adventure details, and to let you know how very wrong I was.
And to write about it.
Because while I’m a horror writer, most of the time, and I’m not any of my three pretty little sisters, I’m still a writer.
And sharing the amazing parts of life is just as important as sharing the parts that make me uncomfortable or provoke my muses into gray-scaled disaster. It’s all part of that human condition thing.

Sincerely and Delightfully Yours,

Brittany Maresh

Tomorrow, I’m going to be another year older. A good time, I think, to consider what progress I have (or haven’t) made this year:

• I wrote a book so unlike me that it made others laugh just at the mention of it. It was probably the best book I’ve ever written, or at least it will be once I’m done editing.  It makes me happy, too, just thinking about it, and I think it will appeal at least to my writing groups.
• I wrote a great NaNo novel, albeit a messy one, and one that is much more my style–it was horror, dark, and had no romance–as well as some not so great Nano novels. What can I say, 50,000 words just isn’t a challenge.
• I’ve helped edit several novels, from people all over the scale–published authors, new writers, and so on. I’ve attended writing conferences and writing meetings, some virtual, others not.
• I picked up Twitter, Facebook, and Mafiawars.
• This year I joined Absolute Write, and I think it’s a fantastic resource.  I also keep poking at joining Melissa Marr’s fansite, but I’m easily intimidated so we’ll see if I ever get over it and just jump in.
• I moved upstairs so my sister and her fiancee could move in while my soon-to-be-brother-in-law went through chemotherapy–he’s been declared cancer-free and we had a party to celebrate this weekend.  His hair’s growing back, too, though right now it’s still thin fuzz, and they’re getting married in July.
• One of my best friends is also getting married in July.
• I made some amazing new friends–Heather, Shauna, and Christina definitely require mentioning.
• Bridget and I are working on a shared novel.  I’m having a lot of fun with it, even if it does include some romance.
• Did I mention that novel that floors me, but perplexes everyone who knows me?  It really is a shocker.

I’m that girl who had unicorn wallpaper in middle school, and didn’t realize the idea of dragons was beyond ridiculous until… well, I still haven’t realized it, yet. Nonetheless, I don’t typically write that kind of fantasy. I kind of stick towards the darker end of things. You know, horror and the likes?

Well, today I’ve written two chapters in a new book–yes, another one. What do you expect me to do between books, learn to knit?

This new book (Untitled Princess) is a lot younger sort of style than what I’ve been doing, and a lot more up beat, in a lot of ways. It’s a big change from my NaNo book, to be sure.

The playlist for this is way peppier than I’ve ever liked, but it works, and I’m enjoying it. It has a lot more female vocalists.

We’ll see how it turns out, but right now, I’m shockingly in to it.

-Brittany Maresh