EelKat On Writing

My work schedule is very flexible. It has to be, when you work a farm and run an animal shelter. You have to be *on call* to take care of the animals on a moments notice 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with zero vacations. It's not like having one or two house pets, not when there are around 200 animals under your care at any given time. It takes a lot of work, more hard labor than the average person has to deal with. You learn to work your writing career around other aspects of your life, and for me and my life, the animals come first and I write around their schedule.

As for my schedule itself? I do not write to a set "hours per day", nor do I write a set amount of "words per day", though I do have a mental goal to write over 1,000 words each day. In the early days 1,000 words a day was a big number, but now, it might as well be 100, because I have no trouble with 3,000 a day or more now. So maybe I should up my daily goal? In any case I try to write three times a day. Writing every thing all at once in one long stretch would probably bore me to pieces, because my attention span for any project will only last a few hours at best. I have to be constantly working on something new. It's part of the reason I work mostly with short stories and non-fiction articles, because if I can't finish the entire project in three hours or less, it'll get tossed aside.

What I do is, I write small segments or scenes from my book/story. Say a conversation between two characters. Or maybe the description of a room. Something like that. I find this easier, because I can see a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Not the beginning, middle, and end of the entire book. Not the beginning, middle and end of the entire chapter. Just the beginning, middle, and end of that one scene, which in most cases is 2 to 4 paragraphs long or about 600 - 800 words. Well, that takes me almost to my 1000 word goal right there.

My work schedule evolves around writing these segments. I make it my goal to write three of these segments each day. One in the morning as soon as I wake up, before I even get out of bed. One in the afternoon, when I get back in from taking my dog out for his daily walk. One in the evening, last thing just before going to bed. It takes about 15 - 30 minutes for me to write each segment. Or about 40 minutes to an hour and a half each day. In the end I end up with about 2,750 words written at the end of the day. My evening segment is usually the longest, because after every body (people and animals) have gone to bed, than I have several hours of absolute quite and that's when I do my best writing, which usually lasts from 10PM to 3AM. On days when I don't have a lot to do, I extend my morning and or afternoon writing segments, to as long as 3 hours each, meaning that some days I'm writing for as many as 11 hours a day, which explains the days that I write 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 words in a single day. In a single sitting, the most I ever wrote was 11,000 words, which means that if I pushed myself, I could write as much as 33,000 words per day. However, this is something I usually only do for the National Novel Writing Month contest in November, and the rest of the year I just write bout 4,000 to 7,500 words a day.

Anyways, When you take it and break it down into tiny chunks like this, it seems like you haven't written very much at all, when in fact you have gone well above and beyond your word count goal.

Both. It depends on my mood really. My fiction stuff falls into one of two categories: either it's a story for my Twighlight Manor universe, or it's a retelling of some folk lore or fairy tale. My non-fiction stuff is scattered widely, from essays about comic book characters to how-to guides for writers to autobiographical articles about events in my own life to my thoughts on God and religion to any other odd thing that pops into my head and asks me to write about it.

Oh my... do I have one? Nope, I have uhm... a hundred or so! LOL! I started my first one back in the 1970's, and I go though a couple a month. Mine vary from spiral bound notebooks, to clothbound books, to tiny 3x5 pocket sized notebooks, to huge 3" ring binders packed full of loose-leaf. I'm a rabid keeper of writing journals, because everything under the sun gives me ideas to write about so I keep track of my ideas as soon as I think of them. I never go any where with out one.

I'm not sure. I have several in my collection, but so far have only read two of them. One I liked quite a bit, though I can't say it actually helped me with plotting my stories, it was helpful in other ways, but oddly not for plotting! I wouldn't say any book for writers is actually harmful, because all have different things to teach us, and I always learn some thing new from every one I read. Much of the info in many of them, though will only apply to a handful of readers, but what one reader finds helpful, the next reader will have already known for years, so it depends not only on the info in the book, but also on the info the reader has already learned elsewhere as well.

A little bit of both, depending on my mood. Some days, I just feel like doing other things: sewing, embroidery, reading, etc. Days like that I just can't get in the mood to write no matter what I do. Most days, however, writing is like breathing, and I can't concentrate on anything else but writing. It's actually more of a controlling force, that takes over and burns and hurts if I do not start writing.

Both. I scatter back and forth, depending on my mood. Usually I write every spare second of the day, even while cooking and while eating. Pretty much any moment I'm not doing something with my right hand, I am writing.

I usually write in my strange illegible to anyone but myself, long hand. Yes, I did create my own *written language* and that is how I write. It is sort of phonetic English, but somewhat like a cross between short hand and italic writing, written very, very small and very, very fast, and only people who are used to seeing me write it are able to decipher my hand written pages. When I start writing like this, I write 10 or 12 sheets per hour (approx. 3,200 words). In pen and paper I am a speed writer. Oddly, I type at less than half that speed, rarely typing more than 1,200 words per hour. This is due partially to the fact that I did not learn how to type until I was in my late 20's, and I type one handed, with three fingers. It takes me days to type into my computer, words that took me under an hour to write.

I never know ahead of time what I am going to write. I simply write the words as they come to me. Usually I don't know what I've written until after I go back and read it.

Nope, not at all. I'm more likely to be reading and reading the classics. Stuff written in the 1800's is my usual cup of tea. I read a lot of 50's and 60's sci-fi. I read more comic books than I do anything else. And of course non-fiction makes up about 70% of my reading list. I am usually bored out of my mind by books that are on the New York Times Bestseller list. It amazes me the dull crap that is on that list, time after time. I really hate mainstream fiction. Modern literary fiction doesn't hold my attention at all. If it isn't gothic (think Jane Eyre) than I won't read romance. The only new fantasy book that held my attention through to the end of the book, was Harry Potter. Fact is, I never was one to go with the flow. My theory is, that any dead fish can float with the flow, it takes a live fish to swim against the crowd and held up the waterfall. So, as a general rule, if every one else is reading it, you can be certain that I am not.

Addicted to it. I rewrite almost every thing I write, wither it needs rewriting or not.

You can, but it's a lot harder to do. Editing other people's work, the mistakes just jump off the page at you, but when you start editing your own work, it's easy to skip past nearly every single mistake. It requires having 2 or 3 different spell checkers on your computer, because each has words they miss. Running your work through each of them though, should get most every thing you missed, but still you have to manually check everything your self afterwards. Plus spell checkers are not going to notice a lot of mistakes like passive voice, run on sentences, that you typed he instead of she, or that in chapter one you said David was allergic to mushrooms but in chapter ten you had him eating mushroom pizza. You have to pick up on those kinds of mistakes yourself.

Depends on my schedule. Taking care of the animals (feeding, watering, opening gates, closeting gates, etc) takes me about 3 hours a day on an average day, but on days I clean the barn, it takes about 8 hours, and medical emergencies can take up the entire day and you wouldn't believe the way roosters can find to get hurt, and with hundreds of roosters running around, there's a lot of emergencies needing help. Running a farm is a full time job, running a farm as a rescue, is a full time job with lots of over time. Gardening takes up another few hours per day. Embroidering my Sesshomaru kimono takes about 3 hours a day. Than there's walking the dog, changing the cat litter (a chore in itself when you have 12 cats), cooking, eating, plus I need time to sleep, time to spend with family, time to read, time to sew, and than there are the days when I have to go shopping, go to one of the 5 libraries which I haunt, and run all sorts of odd errands. In the end, I don't have time to write during the day, so I usually do my writing from 9PM to 3AM, which ends up with me writing and average of 6 hours per day. And yes, that does mean I only get about 4 hours of sleep each night.

The most common questions I get asked about the Twighlight Manor series are:

Why is it so very violent?

You don't think you could write a little less graphic do you?

I know there needs to be a better understanding of mental health and animal rights, but do you have to use so much real-life details? Couldn't you tone it down a bit? I'm finding it hard to read.

Men are not all evil you know. They don't all treat women like cattle. They don't see young girls they way you say they do. Most men really are good you know. Can you portray a man as anything other than evil? Just once I'd like to see you write a man as kind and loving.

Why do you never write a happy ending? Why does everything you write end with heart break and death and pain and suffering? The best books have happily ever afters. Can't you just once write something with a happy ending?

My Writing Process: Why I Write What I Write

Why do I write all male characters as evil? Why are all my victims young girls? Why do animals rise up and practice Draize Eye tests on humans? Why do I get inside the heads of mental health patients and write the world of pain and confusion they see? Why are the gory detail so very accurate? Why do I never write a happy ending?

There is a simple and easy answer to all of this: I write what I know.

What do I know? I know that real life is hell. I've lived through hell. I have lived through things that the average person would never think about let alone have to live through. Life is hell, there are no happy ending. There are no happy endings in the real world. I write what I know. I can not write a happy ending because I have never seen one.

I can write graphic details of what someone looks like dissected, cut up, and body parts strewn all over the place, because when I was 14 years old my best friend was murdered, dissected, and pieces thrown all over the yard. I was the one who found him, and in spite of what had been done to him, he was still alive and did not die until nearly 48 hours later. I never left his side, even though his side was no longer there and his heart was beating on the outside of his chest. I can write details about such violent murders and the horrid deaths that follow, because I have seen it first hand. I write what I know: I know the horrors of violent murder and disturbing death.

People with mental health issues need understanding not sugar coated pills and push into the closest. I supposedly have Aspengers. My grandmother had autism. My grandfather was delusional (thought he was a prophet of god), schizophrenic and bi-polar. I have seen first hand what people with mental health issues have to go through just to survive. I know what I have to live with and how hard it is to live with the human race when the human race would rather medicate you than be your friend. I write about mental health issues and through the eyes of these people, because it is what I know and I write what I know.

Maybe it is just the men I grew up around, but I have a really hard time seeing men as anything other that evil. My grandfather, 2 of my uncles, a bishop, several men from my local church, and an ex-boyfriend (all LDS/Mormon priests by the way) all had one thing in common: to tell me that women served no other purpose in life than to do everything her husband commanded and have as many babies as possible. They also said such things as: Wives who get beaten deserved it. A woman should be seen and not heard. Women in the workplace are doing the work of Satan. Women are a dime a dozen. In the next life I'll have seven wives, just think, seven slaves to do my bidding. Women who cut their hair are whores. Women who wear pants are whores. Women who work out side the home are whores. Any girl over 16 and not yet married is doing the work of Satan. Women with no children are going to be cast into outer darkness for not doing what god commanded they do. Any girl over 18 who has not yet had a baby has something wrong with her. I don't know a single man who did not marry a girl half his age. I myself was *destined* to marry a 37 year old priest when I was 12. People wonder why I remain single at my age, but I can not say I've learned to trust men, and the men I've known personally, have never had anything good to say about females, plus I've never seen a real man treat women with anything other than violence and contempt. I've seen a lot of violence from men to their wives. One woman in our church comes to church each week with a different injury: once a broken jaw, twice a broken hand, several times a broken wrist, black eyes are common, once she was in a wheel chair with both legs broken. Her violent husband went on the become our bishop. Though he was the worst of the wife beaters in out church, he was not the only one, men said it was their right as a husband to put the females in their place. These are the type of men I grew up around and these are the type of men who grace the pages of my books, because these are the only type of men I have ever known, and I find it very difficult to write about things I do not know. Sure I've seen the good guys in books and movies, but they are not real. Real men are mean, and I write what I know, I write what happens around me, and I've yet to meet a man who treated women any different than the men in my stories treat their women.

(I can say however, that the men I've talked with online are a far cry from the men I've known in my daily life, and that does give me some hope that not all men are like the men I've known personally, and my newer stories have actually started to reflect on my interaction with men on forums. Some of the male characters in my stories have toned down quite a bit in the last year or so.)

I love animals. When no human would be my friend, animals were always there for me. I was very young when one of my uncles lost his two dogs and it was later found out that those two dogs, my friends, had gone to a pound which later sold them to Proctor and Gamble. Those dogs died at the hands of scientists and the Draize Eye test. I have hated Proctor and Gamble ever since, protested, and boycott them, and became the most outspoken local resident for animal rights. I write what I know and my animal rights protesting of Proctor and Gamble quickly became part of the Twighlight Manor series.

In short, I write what I know, and what you read in the Twighlight Manor stories is largely based on actual events from my own life retold through the eyes of some very odd vampire like alien characters.

People don't like what I write, because it is not pretty and it forces them to see the dark side of the world we live in. People want rainbows and sugar sprinkles, but all I give them are dead bodies and blood.

I do not write happy endings. I kill off main characters, women get the hard end of every deal, men are violent, and my villains always get away with their crimes because that's just the way real life is like it or not.

I think the above answer pretty much answers this question as well, don't you think? Basically, I get my ideas from life. Little things in life inspire me to write. When a hurricane sent a tree crashing through our house, a tree like wise crashed through the side of the Twighlight Manor. When our dog had puppies, one of the dogs owned by Zetasha Swanzen had puppies. Nearly every thing I write was based on some thing that happened in my life, or some thing that I saw happen around town, or some thing that happened to some one I know, and most often something that happened at church. The real world is filled with so many odd things, that it is hard to keep up with every thing I find to write about.

For example, in one story a small child gets hit by a car, the very wealthy doctor involved turned over a $20,000 settlement. The doctor's chauffer (who is the main character of that story btw) went on to become an obsessively safe driver . . . Overly obsessively, overbearingly slow, and safe driver with a phobia of small children. The story deals with how the accident affected the chauffer, who by the way, is Etiole's uncle (Etiole is my usual main character through out the series). The accident itself is not in the story, it is mentioned in passing in a flash back, with the story taking place some 30 years later after the accident, when he meets by the chance the now adult girl whom he had hit so many years ago. She never knows who he is, but he recognized her name. The story focuses on the mental turmoil and guilt this man has suffered through the last 30 years as a result of the accident.

Where did the idea for that story come from? I'll tell you. Once upon a time, I feel madly in love with a beautiful antique Cadillac. I created a character (the chauffer) so that I could write a story about that car. Rycliff Liore and his car went on to become pivotal, though minor, characters in many of my stories. I really wanted that car, really badly, but the doctor would never sell it, so I settled instead for writing stories with that car in them. Than came the day that the doctor who owned the car died, and his family put the car up for sale. I wanted so badly to buy the car, but was not able to come up with the money, however, I did go to look at the car, and upon seeing it up close, I noticed it had at some point sustained massive damage to the front fender. It had been repaired, but when you obsess over classic cars the way I do, not even the best repair jobs pass by my eye. The family told me that the car had been in an accident only a few weeks after the doctor had purchased the car.

A few days later, I mentioned to my family, my desire to buy the doctor's car, and I was told by my grandmother a story which I had never heard before. When her youngest daughter (my aunt) was 2 years old, she had chased a ball out into the street, and was struck by an on coming car: a brand new Cadillac owned by the town's doctor. Back in those days there was no ambulances, no 911, and the nearest hospital was hours away. Without thinking the doctor grabbed the girl put her in the car and drove like mad to the hospital. No one expected my aunt to live, the doctor paid the bills and opened a $20,000 fund account for the girl. Back than $20,000 was like a million dollars today. The money, sadly was stolen before she reached 18 years old, and back in those days, money stolen from a bank was gone forever unless the money itself was recovered, so she never saw any of it.

This story amazed me. I looked up local records, and low and behold, it turned out to be true; the car I had been using in my book, had a real life story that was better than anything I had ever written about it or the fictional chauffer I had created to drive it. But that got me to thinking: why did the doctor hold on to that car for the rest of his life. Most people, change cars every few years, they do not keep the same car 20, 30, or 40 years like that. I checked with his patients and found out that he had never driven any other car since the accident. This intrigued me, and so my chauffer one day in one story revealed the dark secret of his past and why he would drive nothing but this car, ever: many years ago there was a young girl chasing a ball . . . And thus my story of the chauffer's long held guilt was written.

I loved Nancy Drew, and even today The Three Investigators rank among my fave books I ever read.

I like novels for teens that don't talk down to them, though, and that is pretty hard to find. It's like the author is saying: "I'm an adult and you're not" I really hate it when books take that approach.

As a teen I read mostly the old classics though: Jane Eyre, Plato, Hamlet, stuff like that. At that point in my life I considered a lot of books for kids and teens to be *below* me, so I refused to read them. Oddly though, 20 years later, as an older and wiser adult, most of the books I now read are for an audience aged 8 - 16 years old. Funny how things happen that way.

Dr Seuss of course (still read him . . . Love Green Eggs and Ham). I read Treasure Island, Little House in the Big Woods, Charlotte's Web, The Secret Garden, Five Little Peppers, and the King James Bible when I was 9 years old, and wrote a 4 page report on each of them. By the time I was 15, I had read most of the books considered *classics*: Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol, all 7 volumes of the Little House books, Tom Sawyer, Hamlet, Island of Blue Dolphins, Pippi Longstocking, Salas Marner, Wind in the Willows, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, etc. etc. etc. I was also reading biographies of all the US presidents, famous scientists (George Washington Carver and Louis Pasture being my faves), revolutionary war heroes, etc.. Benjamin Franklin became my hero and idol, and so I started reading every thing he wrote and every thing every one wrote about him. I read one book a month, the first couple years, but by age 12, I was reading a book a week. Yes, I was a major nerd.

The actual act of writing. I love to just sit and write. It's so peaceful and relaxing; it's almost like meditation. I like the whole repetitive motion of it. It doesn't really matter to me what I write as long as I'm writing something. Writing is my release from stress, something which I am in bad need of I'm afraid.

I'm guessing that what you are referring to as a successful writer, is some one who has published a best selling novel that is bringing in a lot of cash. Am I right? I don't worry about success, fame, money, etc. I don't write for any of those reasons. Not one of them comes up as very high on my list of things to strive for.

I write because it is what I enjoy doing. I feel that success is being happy with your life and with who you are. I am happiest about my writing when people tell me that something I wrote touched their hearts. I am saddest when people tell me that they hated or was deeply disturbed by something I wrote (which is a rather common response, actually). I would like my words to inspire people to action, but I don't like it when my words inspire people to send me hate mail. I've gotten so much hate mail via email the past two years that I have stopped reading all emails which are not from people I know personally. My mental and emotional stability is such that I can not deal with hate mail at all.

You know what? I just do my own thing, and I don't let people saying I can't do this or that stop me from doing it. Who says you can't have talking cars, flying cats, and jogging toasters in your book? It's your book, write it your way.

Writing doesn't really have any finances.

Once you've got a computer, you are all set with that for 7 or 8 years.

Pens, I get 12 pack Crystal Bics at Wal-Mart for .99c. I have to buy a new pack about every other month.

Paper is .88c for 100 sheets. I go through about 5 per month.

Binders to hold papers in, are less than $2. I buy a new one about every 3 months.

Internet costs are monthly and vary depending on the service you use.

A printer costs $35, plus $25 a month for ink, and $4 for 500 sheets of paper.

Reference books I usually get used or take out from the library.

And other than that, there are no finances with writing.

Self-Publishing, well that's another matter. If you self publish, you have to buy your own ISBN's from the government and buy EANs, and register it with the Library of Congress, and all those other forms the government requires you fill out, all of which amounts to about $400 for each book you publish. If you are not an artist, you have to hire one to make you cover art, which could cost you anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on what the artist charges per hour and per painting. Than you have to pay the printer to print up the copies, which varies in cost from .20c to $20 per book, and depending on how many copies you print up, that could be anywhere from $2,000 to $200,000. If you use a print-on-demand printer, than you can escape the printing costs, though, and this is highly recommended for paperback books.

It varies. Some days, I'm really lazy and only write a hundred or so words. Some day I'm really productive and write as much as 20,000 words (down with multiple sittings through out the day and not stopping to eat or sleep, this is not a recommended course.). The most I ever wrote in one sitting was 11,000 and took about 6 hours to do. However, those are the two extreme ends of the line. On an average day, I usually write somewhere between 2,000 to 7,500 words per day.

I read it, but don't write it. I don't care for most modern poetry. I prefer the classics, or those written like the classics. For me, it depends on the poem... some I really REALLY love, and some I really, REALLY hate.

My 2 fave poems are The Pied Piper of Hamlin by Robert Browning and Annabel Lee by Edgar Alan Poe. I like poems that rhyme AND tell a story (plot, characters and all).

Random poems however, stuff that doesn't rhyme, stuff without a plot, stuff without characters, stuff that doesn't tell a story... poems like that I just can't stand at all.

When it comes to poetry, I want to meet the character, I want to know what they are doing and why they are doing it, and I want it to be done in rhyme.

Oh yeah, and than there's Dr Seuss. Huge fan. I love Dr Seuss.

I guess over all you could say I write fantasy, though it is fantasy with a heavy dose of

sci-fi and an awful lot of bloody horror, and just a touch of romance.

Dear friends, casual acquaintances, total strangers, and people who will deny they know me:

My name is Wendy C. Allen.

I am a writer.

I write fiction.

What is my genre? I really don't know. I do not stick to just one. It depends on my mood I

suppose.

Some of my work reads like horror. A lot of it in fact actually looks like horror, feels

like horror, and bleeds like horror. Haunted houses. A serial killer. Cannibals. Freaks.

Vampires. An insane asylum. Yep, on the surface it looks an awful lot like horror. Gothic

maybe?

But than there is the heart of the story. The romance. The lovers. The affairs. The

heartaches. It may look like horror but it leans heavy toward romance as well.

Of course lets not forget the star ships. The aliens. The laser weapons. The portal through

solid matter. The intergalactic space wars. The planet made of ice. Another planet made of

fire. The mad scientist bent on eternal life. The theme seems to just scream science fiction

and space opera.

But wait, I'm overlooking the faeries, namely the Phookas and Sireans, those mischievous

creatures from Fae. And the evil sorcerer bent on global intergalactic domination. The ice

dragon. The talking cats. A pink frog and his blue zebra. The mushroom forest. Eight foot

tall humanoid birds. And blue skinned creatures with formidable "magic" powers. It's

starting to sound like fantasy now.

What is my genre? I have no idea and quite frankly, I really don't care. I write the

Twighlight Manor series and it is a genre unto itself, I just follow its story to wherever

it may lead. Why should I pigeonhole it into a one size fits all genre?

The biggest complaint most people have, right off the bat is Etiole. Simply put, the world is not ready for a drag queen as a main character. And even if he wasn't a drag queen, no publisher will touch a book where the hero is also the owner of a 17th century whore house and his girls are all under 18. Than there is the fact that this guy is not even human, but a *vampire-like* creature who feeds of the life energy of young girls. Etiole is the main character throughout most of the series, and usually the cause of most of the complaints.

Than there's the alternate main character, father of Etiole, and the schizophrenic owner of The Twighlight Manor, Sir Roderic. This man has schizophrenia, a mental disorder that is frighteningly nothing like the way it is portrayed in the movies and a shear hellish nightmare to live with. Many of the stories in the series are written through his eyes. Very few people are able to cope with a person who suffers from schizophrenia, even fewer people know what clinical schizophrenia even is. No one wants to know the truth of this frightening disorder, they would much rather read about the Hollywood-ized version of it, as it is much more sugar coated. I don't believe in sugar coating things. People usually have a hard time reading very far into one of my stories about Roderic and his *haunted* house. Note here, that The Twighlight Manor is not in fact haunted. This is one of Roderic's delusions that went extreme and scared half the Humans into thinking the place was haunted.

And than of course there's EelKat herself. Talking black bobcat, Queen of Planet Diona, sent to Earth to write a report on what she found there, and what she found was Proctor & Gamble, slaughtering thousands of animals. Her report back home was not good, and an intergalactic outcry went out to take the Human law of *Do unto others* and turn it back on them, with EelKat leading the slaughter as animals rose up and took over the test labs, doing to Humans what Humans had done to them. These stories are considered *too graphic* to be readable.

The Twin Emperors Vielder and Melaca (Roderic's father), builders of the Twighlight Manor, and their collection of Human heads, causes complaint, as does their capture and enslavement of several Chinese families. The *wax museum* (taxidermed Humans) they built into the Manor, tends to be a complaint as well. These two are responsible for Humans being the main course meal served at the Manor as well.

The Lansquin, Blackbird, and the Red Dragon are the cause of the most extreme out rages over my Twighlight Manor series. The Lansquin being a religious leader gone power crazed, Blackbird his cannibal bodyguard, and the Red Dragon his fanatical serial killing follower. While the Red Dragon was mentioned off hand in several of the older stories, these three made their actual on scene debut, in the 1993 edition of Friends Are Forever. It was the addition of this bloody trio that caused most of the problems I had with the Twighlight Manor stories. These three are especially not liked by LDS/Mormon readers, largely due in part to them being based almost entirely on my life growing up in the LDS church, with the Lansquin being a little bit too much like a temple worker, for most LDS readers to digest. The Red Dragon takes Brigham Young, The Avenging Angels, Jack the Ripper, and the Dali Killer and rolls them into one person killing in the name of religion. Once these three come in, every one forgets all the other complaints they had. Any story with this trio in it, sends my readers into hysteric spasms, partially for the blatant protest of religious dogma and partially for the *medically correct* graphic details of their crimes.

I did once ask an editor about the possibility of my series going mass produced. He thought that for starters I would have a really hard time finding a publisher willing (or crazy enough) to even touch a series like this. Secondly, even if I could find a publisher, it would be highly unlikely that anyone would buy many copies, due partially to the gory graphic nature of the details and partially to the in depth look inside the dark side of some controversial issues. He warned me that on top of that, I would also have some serious problems with politically correct laws, plus he said I'd have to remove the Chinese slave labor, the underage girls, some of the religious outrage, everything that could be considered inspiring to terrorists, and most of the medically correct graphic details of the murder scenes; and even than, if the series ever did go into mass production, it would likely be banned faster than any other book in history.

Did I take the editor's advice and make changes to make my stories more *reader friendly*? Nope. Well my future stories be written in a more reader friendly manner? Are you kidding? LOL! No way!

I suppose the correct question would be, wither or not I have a mental illness. I think of illness as being ill, and I do not feel ill. I think mental illness is more correctly termed as an alternative personality, though I suppose most would say personality or mood disorder, some thing like that. Whatever. I think the most accurate thing to say is that I've had way too much stress in my life, and seen far to many violent deaths of my close friends and family. I wonder if it's possible I had a nervous breakdown at some point and just never knew it. I mean, imagine you were to get up one morning, go outside to your garden and find your best friend, laying there chopped up into about 30 pieces. Not many people have to live with that kind of a memory in their heads. That happened 20 years ago, and I still have nightmares. I just never really got over it. You don't ever expect to see something like that. But yes, me, being the way I am, affects every thing in my life, so of course it affects my writing. In fact, I think if I was what people called *normal* or *sane* I don't think I would be able to write at all.

In 1991, my best friend was brutally murdered, (the killer was caught the same day and executed by lethal injection shortly after; which I did actually protest, due to my being very much against the death penalty) . That is when I stopped talking. That is also when I started writing stories about serial killers. By 1993, the Twighlight Manor (a haunted house), rather than the VISION-D8 (an intergalactic star ship) had taken over as the main setting for my stories, and what was formally known as The Friends Are Forever Series, was re-written and re-released under the new title The Twighlight Manor series. My stories were no longer aliens and star ships fleeing from comet struck planets, but now took a darker turn and where filled to overflowing with death, murder, a freezer full of heads, cannibals, talking animals that rose up and slaughtered humans, and a house that ate people. The walls of my new books dripped blood.

This new bloody version of Friends Are Forever, was read by many members at my church (LDS/Mormon), who suddenly cried out in an uproar of complaints at the alarmingly detailed nature of the brutal murders in my book. The bishop received so many complaints from Sunday School teachers and church members alike, that he contacted The Pine Land Center Mental Health Institute, telling them that I was a dangerous schizophrenic (the first time I was accused of schizophrenia, btw). The counselor from Pine Land came to church one Sunday and pulled me out of class to meet with him and the bishop. Though the bishop requested they straight jacket me and lock me up claiming he thought me to be demon possessed, the counselor concluded that I was deeply stressed over my friend's recent murder and nothing more, that this was a normal response for someone who had been the person to find their best friend chopped up. This however was the last time I attended my meetings at church in any semblance of normality. I continued to attend church every week for the next 15 years, however, I was now shunned, and usually made to sit alone at the far side of the room. If I tried to sit with any one, they not only moved to a different seat, but they took the chairs and moved across the room. Eventually I was asked to sit in the hall instead. Today, there is hardly a person who knows me personally, who does not maintain the theory that I am schizophrenic, originally because of the incident with the counselor from Pine Land Center, though today they now accuse me based on my cloths and my obsessive writing habits. My friend who was murdered, would be the last friend I ever had, as no one since the day at church, will even speak to me, and thus my own silence grew out of the fact that I no longer had a living soul to speak with. Without anyone to talk to, my writing habits grew ever more manic, with some days seeing me write as many as 20,000 words per day, as every thought to pass through my head, was now written down on paper, rather than spoken. Everything. I started creating characters on paper, for the sole purpose of being able to have some one with whom to have a conversation with, and that is how I got started in writing these interviews with myself. With no one willing to talk to me, I had to divide myself in two and talk to myself instead, which I did on paper, with one version of me asking questions while the other version of me answered them. Every time I read a book or watched a movie, I would want to talk about it with some one, but having no one to talk to, I instead wrote up the conversation on paper with a character from my books, usually EelKat who was the original character I was writing about way back in 1978, and this is how, by 1997, I had become known as both Wendy C Allen and EelKat, two separate, yet the same individuals. Today there is not a thought that passes through my head that does not end up written down, simply because while the average person talks, I am not in the habit of talking any more and thus write down what I have to say instead. Basically, it's like watching TV: you have one channel that is the real world, and one that is only in my head, and the real world channel got so bad, depressing, lonely, and painful to live in, that I just turned it off completely and went looking for friends elsewhere. All of this came about as a direct result of the incident with the bishop and Pine Land Center.

(For those who don't know, Pine Land Center was one of the nation's last institutes for dangerously insane people. Pine Land Center only gets called in, if they think you are criminally insane, and too crazy to be kept at a normal style local mental health institute. You have to be pretty far gone to get locked up in Pine Land Center, and the fact that counselors from Pine Land came right into my Sunday School class and took me out, told people that I was not only crazy, but I was extremely dangerous as well. Due to this incident, I have never again been accepted at church, I've tried changing wards, but unless I move out of state, I can't find a ward that doesn't already know to shun me the moment I walk though the door. Pine Land shut down in 1995, several church members now accuse me of witchcraft and say I put a curse on it. I say they are crazier than me, if they really truly believe that. The really odd thing of all this is, that many members who today, shun me, were not members at the time of the Pine Land incident, and shun me, not knowing why they are shunning me, but do so, simply because others told them to. I find that kind of follow the church leader attitude alarmingly bizarre .)

Well, my 1993 edition of Friends are Forever, caused such a mass outrage locally, that it never went into mass production, and was instead locked away in a safe, after members burned nearly every copy of it. I believe my copy, of the now infamous 1993 revised version of Friends Are Forever The History of The Twighlight Manor Volume I, Third Edition, may be the only one to still exist. It stands as a testament to just how far off the deep end I can write, when driven by my wild, free wheeling emotions, as well as how far off the deep end people can go after reading a book. It amazes me, when I stop and think about it, and realize that what I wrote terrified those people so badly, that they actually became terrified of me, and thought that I should be institutionalized, based on the words I wrote in a book. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that I am able to write in such a way that I can touch people's innermost souls and move people to action. I fear that putting this book into mass production, will cause a far greater outcry on a much more massive level. I remember how those people, my so called friends, responded, and than think of what it would be like should strangers respond like that: THAT truly terrifies me.

Looking back at my other answers here, I'm seeing a trend in my answers, and it looks like my mood affects my writing quite a bit. Well, that's easy to expect I guess, as I have been asked more than once if I was ever diagnosed as bi-polar. Nope, I wasn't, but that's only because I don't go to doctors. The going theory held by most people whom have meet me face to face is that either I'm schizophrenic or I have Aspengers, or maybe both.

Bi-polar, schizophrenic, Aspengers, who knows, who cares; either way, I'm a very high strung person driven by wild mood swings, and that affects my writing quite a bit.

The biggest problem with my writing style however, is the fact that I simply sit down and start writing. Literally. No matter where I am, or what I am doing, I simply sit down and start writing. This is such a huge problem, that you almost never see me go out in public unaccompanied by another adult. This is also why I do not live alone, why I do not drive a car, and why I can not hold a *regular* day job. I sit down where ever I am, when ever the mood strikes and just start writing. If you ever see a comic book character sitting cross legged on the floor in the middle of the milk aisle at Wal-Mart, writing away, well, that's me. I actually can not walk in places where I will have to cross the street or a parking lot, unless I have some one with me to guide me across the road, because I frequently, just stop to write right there in the cross walk. It's a problem I have, and a really bad one that has caused me to be nearly hit by a car on countless occasions, because my mind no longer see things around me. I once sat down and started writing, and didn't stop for 48 hours . . . Did not eat, did not sleep, I completely lost track of time. I was totally taken by surprise when I realized the 2 whole calendar days had passed before I noticed it, because to me, it seemed like no more than 20 minutes had passed. The odd thing about this, though, is I only started doing this less than ten years ago, and this seemed to have happened shortly after a month with 4 deaths: first my horse, than my grandmother, than my dog Blackie, and than my other dog Muffin. All four of them died with in 3 weeks of each other. Stress, seems to be the triggering factor that shuts off my brain and causes me to not see or hear anything or any one around me and makes me simply start writing in an uncontrolled and unstoppable manner.

This *shutting off* and writing is the same reason why I rarely speak to people, because fact is, I rarely see them. I see the streets, I see the buildings, if there is a car made prior to 1975, I see that car and that car only and not the other cars speeding by. They simply become totally invisible to me. I do talk to people if I notice they are there. The trick is to get me to notice that you are there. Like I said, it's like watching TV, and I have to switch from one channel to the other in order to notice you there. If I shut off the world in my head, I can see people around me and talk to them fine, the problem is, switching my mind out of the world I write about and into the real world where people around me live. It's not easy. I know when I stopped talking. I can tell you the exact date: August 21, 1991, the day my best friend was murdered. I know when I started turning off the real world too: after the things that happened at church with the bishop and Pine Land Center. The real world simply became more than I was able to handle on my own and I had no friends or family to turn to.

This also explains my cloths. You see, I dress no different than the characters of my books, and to me this is perfectly normal, as it is the way all of them dress. I don't notice that real people are dressed different than me, because I don't very often see the real people around me, and it is not until some one comes up to me and asks me why I'm dressed like I am, that I am brought back from one world to the next, and see that, yes, in this world, I am dressed quite a bit different from other people. Of course, my cloths, started when I was just 4 years old, and I was wearing my Wonder Woman underoos under my Cinderella dresses . . . I always did dress like a comic book hero gone princess. No one paid any attention to it though, until after I was about 22 years old, and people started questioning why I didn't wear *normal* cloths, but the fact is, for me they are normal, because I have never worn any thing else.

Does having a mental illness effect my writing? Most certainly. It effects every thing in my life. But than again, as I have never been diagnosed as having a mental illness, there in lays the question: why do people think I have a mental illness?

As you can see when people say they think I have schizophrenia, or Aspengers, they are not saying so in jest, to be funny. They are very serious, and often very frightened of me when they say it. In nearly 40 years, I have yet to have a friendship last more than 6 months, because most people, once they get to know me, are completely terrified of me. At first they meet me and think I'm in costume and acting in character, and they think of it as some sort of role playing game, but once it dawns on them, that this is no act, this is no game, that my mind is what my mind is, and that I am like this 24-7-365, I never hear from them again. If I do hear from them again, it is only to ask if I have considered medication to make me *normal* yet. My question is, Why would I want to be *normal*? What incentive is there? None that I can see.

By that you mean, encourage people to write like I do? Mentor people who want to write in a very grassroots, in your face, not afraid to speak you mind and tell it like it is, fashion? Is that what you mean?

I would always encourage every one to follow their heart, and do what is best for them, and stand up for what they believe in. If that means becoming a writer, than so be it. But I would also warn them, that sometimes standing for what you believe in means standing alone, and standing alone while others are trying like hell to pull you down. You got to have a strong back and a hard skin if you want to follow my lead. My books have caused people to try to straight jacket me and lock me away in an asylum. My books have resulted in paint balls shot at our family's car and the windows of our home. I've had pictures of guns left on my front door. I had the town manger (another member of our church btw) rise up and try to throw us off our land. I have had to live on the streets in a tent built out of a tarp and some cinder block. All because people really, really, REALLY hated the things I wrote. If you are going to take a stand, and then write a book about it, than you sure as hell better be ready to keep right on standing no matter what people throw at you, because once you write your book, there is no looking back and no backing down. People will come at you, and they will come at you hard. I may not agree with what you write in you book, but you can sure as hell count on my to be the first in line to fight for your right to say it, and I will never tell you not to write it. Only Nazis burn books. Only Nazis try to take away you right to freedom of press. The is America, but believe me, you'll never know the price of freedom until you try to write some thing that is considered controversial.

Would I mentor some one? Not likely. I've not had many good experiences with humans and I no longer put myself in a position where I'm going to have to deal with them. I still write stuff that make people hate me, but I no longer go out in public more than a couple of days a month. You get enough paint balls shot at you, and you'd stop going out in public too. Mentoring people to write like me, maybe, at some point in the future, yeah, but not right now.

I have discovered that the only way I am able to deal with people is in a retail situation. I've been a sales representative for 14 years now, and these costumers come in and they see me as nothing more than a sales girl doing my job. People are very non-judgmental of sales people. They have a predetermined idea about what a sales girl is, long before they come into the store, and that is how they see you. These people have no idea who I am, and they don't care who I am either. They are there to buy something, and I am just a name on a tag who is helping them to buy whatever it is they want to buy. That for me is a breath of fresh air. So many people have judged me in my life, always giving me ultimatums, always telling me to obey or else, always telling me I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity, it's just nice to be able to be around people who don't look at me and see the evil sinner woman who wrote that awful book of the devil. In the store, people see me, the sales associate, they don't see me the writer, and they treat me very, very differently as a result, and I find that very, very weird; refreshing, but weird.

Writers write. You would be amazed at how often people over look this fact. Writers write. They don't sit at a desk staring at blank paper all day, or lounge around coffee shops chatting with friends or sleeping in, or surfing the net in their underwear. They actually sit down and write words. People always have this mental image of writers as millionaires who do nothing all day. Fact is the average fiction writer gets paid $15,000 a year and works a day job to pay the bills and feed the family. A lot of new writers make less than $5,000 a year. A well paid writer is a writer making $30,000 a year. You want to be the millionaire writer like Stephen King? Than sell the movie rights to your book, because that's the secret to becoming a millionaire writer: not writing books, but signing movie contracts. My advice to every one looking to become a writer is this: do a reality check. Ask yourself, can you live on a $5,000 a year income for the first 3 or 4 years? Can you discipline yourself to write for 5 or 6 hours a day, every day, year after year? Is all you got, your one great novel, or can you write a new one every three months for the rest of your life? Are you willing to give up time with family and friends, just so that you have enough hours per day to write? Can you work on a deadline and meet that deadline with enough days to spare to write a complete rewrite? Are you able to handle an extremely high stress career? If you can't answer yes to every one of those questions that you should not be trying to become a writer.

Newbies dream about writing. Newbies like to research data. Newbies like to design book covers. Newbies like to tell people they are going to be a writer soon. But newbies never seem to get much writing done. Newbies write one 100 word poem a month and think they are a writer. Newbies do everything under the sun, except write, because they are looking at writing as a hobby, something to do for fun, rather than seeing writing for what it really is: as job, a career, an income.

This surprises some people, but writers write 5 or 6 hours or more each and every day. Writers write at a rate of 2,000 or 3,000 words per hour. Writing is long hours and hard work. Writing is a lot of hard work, and because you are self employed there is no boss to tell you what to do and when to do it, so you have to be your own boss and set a strict work schedule for yourself. It doesn't have to be a 9 - 5 work schedule, and it could even be a 3 hour day 2 days a week work schedule, if you want, but you must have some sort of a schedule.

Write EVERY DAY!

Write every day, even if you don't feel like it.

Every writer has a day when they wake up a say: "I don't feel like writing today." But you know what, if you are a career writer; a writer who writes as a career, you can't do that.

Why?

Well, how many times have you woken up and wished you didn't have to go to work/school? But did you call your boss/teacher and tell him: "I'm sleeping in today, sorry, I'll come to work/school tomorrow." No, you didn't, because you'd have been fired/expelled. You got up and you went to work/school anyways, because that's what you have to do, like it or not.

Writing is the same thing. Writing is a career. You get paid to write. Writing pays the bills and puts food on the table. You don't write, you don't get paid, you don't get paid, you don't eat. You can not take a day off from work, even when you work at home as a writer.

Write every day, even if you REALLY don't feel like it.

Now maybe you are the kind of person who would call your boss and say you was sick even when you were not. If you are, than eventually it well catch up with you and you will lose your job. You miss one day, and than you miss another, and it catches up with you quick and you lose your job as a writer, because a writer who isn't writing is not a writer at all!

Do not give in to your feelings. Push them aside and write anyways. You'll be glad you did

If you are a writer, remember that writers actually write. You know, words. Little black things on paper. You write to make money. To make money, you must sell your words. You can't sell what you haven't written yet. You don't write, you don't publish. You don't publish, you don't get paid. You don't get paid, you don't eat.

In short: just write, and than write some more, and after that, write a little bit more. The more you write the better you become. There's no better way to become a better writer, than just sitting your ass down and writing.

The content of this lens was created by Wendy C. Allen compiled in part from posts on Star Log Pink, Star Log White, EK's Writing Blog, EK's CosPlay & Sewing Blog, Xavier's Nest, and EK's Business Blog, the official blogs of author and artist Wendy C. Allen, a.k.a. EelKat. Reprinted here on Squidoo with permission.

EK's Star Log and it's sister sites Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 2004-2008.

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