Please help me welcome this Week's Guest Author Gabriella Balcom. (I apologize for the late post... I've some life stuff going on)
I live in Texas with my children, and my family includes three dogs and two cats that are real talkers. Our home is in the country, surrounded by trees, and I love listening to the animal and forest sounds each day. My background is in psychology and criminal justice, and I work full-time in a mental health field.
I write fantasy, horror/thriller, romance, science fiction, children’s stories, and more. Some of the things I enjoy are traveling, music, good shows, photography, history, genealogy, plants, and animals. I absolutely love great stories and forests, mountains, and back roads which might lead who knows where. My weaknesses are lasagna, garlic bread, tacos, cheese, and chocolate, but not necessarily in that order, and I adore Italian, Mexican, and Chinese food.
My mother taught me to read and write early, and I've done so my entire life. In fact, I can't remember a time I didn't have books and writing materials around me. When I was six, I won a writing award from a library for a childish yarn I'd written about animals that met, became friends, and moved in together. I began creating poems when I was thirteen, and a few were published when I was sixteen. However, I stopped writing for years while dealing with jobs, college, marriage, divorce, and raising my children. During that time period, I did a few work- and mental-health-related articles for publication, but wrote nothing else.
I started writing again in 2012, and it was like floodgates had opened inside me. Ideas poured into my mind, and they still do quite a bit. Some of what I wrote was cathartic, but the idea of writing as a career someday began to appeal to me, too. At the end of 2017, I joined a writing group on Facebook and saw an interesting submission call. Several ideas came to me, and I wrote “Bobby – You'd Never Guess” for the call, hired an editor for the first time in my life, and then submitted my story. It was accepted by Scout Media for “A Contract of Words,” and published in 2018.
Please check out my author page at: https://m.facebook.com/GabriellaBalcom.lonestarauthor
My stories, drabbles, and poems have been published or pend publication by several presses and publishers and include the following (books are listed, with story or poem names in parentheses):
Black Hare Press: Angels, Apocalypse, Area 51 (Stewie), Beyond, Dark Moments, Deep Underground series (The Return), Eerie Christmas (One Santa,Two Santas...), Hate, Jibbernocky (Magic), Love, Lust (Chad), Monsters, Oceans, Pride (Pride Goeth), Unravel, What If (The Red, Grey, Black, and White), Worlds, Year One
Blood Song Books: Curses and Cauldrons, Forest of Fear
Celestial Echo Press: Twofer Compendium (How Could You Leave Me)
Clarendon House Publications: Cadence (Bernard, Liquor's Slave), Fireburst (The Last Laugh), Gleam (The Cowboy), Glamour (A Little Help), Gold (Nun or Not?), Lantern (Jacqueline's Heart), Miracle (Mouses and Rats Cot Reel Cheep), Poetica (Teh-Mah), Rapture, Tempest (Damaged), Vortex (A New Life for Sara), Window (Kevin and the Unexpected Visitor).
I also won the opportunity to have a book published by Clarendon House when one of my stories was voted best in an anthology.
Dastaan World Magazine: Athena (Suzie's Wish), Her Only Desire, Justified, and more
Eerie River Publishing: Forgotten Ones
Fantasia Divinity Magazine and Publishing: Earth of Oblivion, Halloween's Fright and Autumn's Delight, Summer's Splash (Not Catching On), Waters of Destruction, Winds of Despair, Wishes of Illusion (The First Rabjinn)
Horror Tree: Unholy Trinity (Venostuthulu)
Inner Circle Writer's Group Magazine: Free's Tale, Love and Time, Mission Ryan, and more
Iron Faerie Publishing: Gods and Goddesses (People Are Not Always What They Seem)
Lulu.com: Share Your Scare (The Siamese)
Pixie Forest Publishing: Magical Reality (What I Miss the Most)
John F. Green, editor: Tales of the Southwest
Reanimated Writers Press: 100 Word Zombie Bites
Scout Media and Music: A Contract of Words (Bobby-You'd Never Guess)
Siren's Call Publications: Big Mouth
Soteira Press: Horror USA: California (Smoked), Horror USA: Texas (The Brat)
Stormy Island Publishing: Sea Glass Hearts
Suicide House Publishing: Scary Snippets Christmas Anthology, Scary Snippets Halloween Anthology (The Graveyard), Scary Snippets Valentine's Anthology (Yummy)
The World of Myth Magazine: Edwina, Gertrude, Mordred the Magnificent and Melina the Marvelous, The Boundary, The Missing Wallet, and several drabbles
Zombie Pirate Publishing: Flash Fiction Addiction (Younger by the Minute), Phuket Tattoo (Shadows of the Anasazi)
Other Books By Gabriella Balcom
