The living might be easy, but the writing . . . not so much. Perhaps because I am a writer of horror and mystery, I prefer a melancholy atmosphere—dreary weather and short, dark days—for holing up with my laptop to create twisty stories. When the pools open, the barbeques belch smoke and the drinks don…
Author: Rachel Dempsey
Rachel Dempsey has written and directed over a dozen plays for numerous acclaimed theater organizations such as Imagination Stage and ArtStream. Her prose has won contests such as The Colorado Gold Rush Literary Awards, the Denver Women’s Press Club Emerging Writers Contest and the Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition. Her short fiction appears in anthologies from Shacklebound Books, Brigids Gate Press, Timber Ghost Press and Twenty Bellows (Pushcart nominated, 2023). She holds a BFA in Drama and English from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a Master’s degree in Journalism from Georgetown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis in Denver where she currently lives with her husband and three daughters.
Story Hoarder
I grew up in a household of mild to moderate hoarding. My mom has multiple scents of liquid hand soap for every season (and I’m not just talking the four main ones; I mean like tulip season and Advent). My dad’s hoarding reached its peak—I hope—during the pandemic, when supply chain issues prompted him to…
New Kid on the Block . . . Again
Have you ever experienced such loneliness you resorted to befriending a ghost? I recently finished a short story about a girl who does just that after moving to a new high school. Granted most of us don’t have that option, but I’m hoping the story captures a feeling we’ve all known, one of being different,…
Embrace the Darkness
Five years ago, after only a few months of living in Colorado, I realized I’d been suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, probably since middle school. Growing up in North Dakota, I spent the long, dark, dangerously cold months of winter indoors reading. My asthma was much worse back then, which meant I couldn’t play outside…
How to Win Friends and Influencers
This the hardest blog post I’ve ever had to write. Not because I don’t have friends or anything. I have friends, okay? What I don’t have are two functioning hands with which to type. A bluebird day. My husband and I would usually ease into skiing with an intermediate run or two before tackling one…