Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying

2/20: corner from one of my fave scenes in this draft #WIPSnips

2/19: subtle! #WIPSnips

2/16: hurt #WIPSnips

2/15: never #WIPSnips

2/13: serious #WIPSnips

2/12: defense! #WIPSnips

2/11: vibe ➡️ feeling #WIPSnips
CW for mentions of blood/sex

2/9 swapping select for choose! #WIPSnips

no airport but i do have fly #WIPSnips

2/6 - sixth 6️⃣ #WIPSnips

2/5 for except 🩵 #WIPSnips

#WIPSnips 😎

surprisingly i have no confident or its direct synonyms in my WIP but im sure “sure” is close enough #WIPSnips

surprisingly don’t have perish but die is pretty close 😩 #WIPSnips

zeal = passion 😎 #WIPSnips

academy -> school for today’s #WIPSnips

from my project, ICEBOX

Text reads: Introducing ICEBOX, an adult psychological horror/thriller COMPS + VIBES Ian Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen meet the unsettling, obsessive intimacy of Saltburn and a creeping, psychological dread reimaging of I Know What You Did Last Summer Featuring: Queer MC, Obsession, Unreliable Narration, Past That Has Teeth The image shows a collection of blue-tinged images, including one that says "get out of my fucking house", a tape-recorder that says "play me", and a newspaper article that cuts off a title that reads "mystery accident...teen fatality"

Text Reads: Club music pulsed in Luke’s bones. His face, normally gaunt and pale like a perfect porcelain doll, was splotchy and bloated from crying. He’d been here before after a fight with Kieran, when he ran away for once, something that was more of Kieran’s specialty. He hadn’t done anything; he’d only entered, felt the throbbing, dark music in his muscles until it beat away all the negative feelings. And normally Luke loved those feelings. Precious few that they were, he clawed onto them. Sometimes he even chased them. Initiated them. Kieran pulled it out of him and made him care like no one else did. Then the divorce finalized. Luke must’ve been possessed when he signed the papers. He was never really given a choice, only Kieran slapping them in front of him at any given opportunity while he searched for a new place to live. On the kitchen counter, narrowly avoiding Luke’s breakfast. On his car windshield, the bathroom mirror, shoved into the crack of the front door when Kieran decided to stay overnight at a coworker’s house. Nothing had been settled yet in terms of assets, but Kieran made it abundantly clear before Luke signed the papers: keep everything. Keep everything and let it haunt you, not me. And haunt Luke it did. The house was a graveyard. Headstones of everything he’d had taunted him to the point where nothing but the kitchen and the bedroom ceased to exist. Luke gathered all his favorite memorabilia of Kieran and shoved it into a hidden cubby in the living room, because he didn’t know how else to memorialize him. Kieran wasn’t dead, but once he moved out, Luke wondered if it would’ve been easier if he was. Kieran could’ve died loving him rather than lived just a few miles as the crow flies at his new place hating him. How did wedding vows of forever, and sickness and health and thick and thin turn into this slop?

Picture shows a playlist of songs, in this order: Buckle by Florence + The Machine Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call by The Bleachers Now That We Don't Talk by Taylor Swift The Alcott by The National, Taylor Swift Letter To An Old Poet by boygenius Choking Games by Nicole Dollanganger

IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS X EILEEN
Luke is forced to team up with his estranged ex-husband when someone, or something, unknown to them drudges up secrets of their sordid past that threatens to rip apart their lives.
ICEBOX is a WIP.
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ+
❓unreliable narrator
👁️ obsession
#questpit #W #H #A #T

Text reads: An agent's guide to THE GODBRINGER, a literary horror novel complete at 88k words. Image is of a drawn deer, laying horizontally on the ground.

Text reads: PITCH In the rotting, isolated town of Teneral, gun-toting 18-year-old Sadie Elderton yearns for freedom beyond the confines of her community’s rigid religious traditions. After an encounter with an elusive shadow and a disturbing vision in the swamp, Sadie believes herself marked by her God, chosen to become the prophesied Godbringer. With the annual Festival week approaching, it’s her last chance to prove her worth to God and the People, despite the heretical reputation that precedes her. By summer’s end, she’ll be forced into a marriage arranged by her father and a life of domestic servitude. While the People remain intent on reminding Sadie of her sins and shortcomings, she finds solace in Oliver, her secret lover and the only person in Teneral who believes she is meant for something more. But when God’s voice seems to fall silent, Sadie’s faith begins to rot into desperation. All that remains is the scratching in her skull, demanding proof and whispering promises of divinity. As Festival week drags to a close, Sadie is torn between doubt and devotion. When she uncovers ugly truths hidden from her by both her family and the town, she must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her destiny—and whether becoming the Godbringer is worth the human sacrifices it demands.

Text reads: TROPES female rage forbidden love b-story twisted family dynamics cult fanaticism religious trauma southern gothic atmosphere

Text reads: COMPS Ania's Ahlborn's Brother Stephen King's Carrie Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects A24's Film Midsommar A24's Film Pearl Ethel Cain's album The Preacher's Daughter AUDIENCE For fans of speculative, psychological horror with a literary bend, that enjoy exploring the dangers of religious extremism and feminist themes.

CARRIE X SHARP OBJECTS

In the deep Louisiana bayou, Sadie participates in increasingly gruesome Festival tasks in an attempt to achieve Godhood before she's forced into an arranged marriage.
THE GODBRINGER is currently on query
🐍unlikable FMC
🗡️ cults
🐗 soft MMC
#questpit #agentsguide #Q #A #H #LF

second person perspective is one of my favorites, happy i can post it with today’s #WIPSnips ! 💕 from my current wip, ICEBOX

first #WIPSnips but going with building instead of formation!

Current work in progress whilst waiting to hear back from agents and publishers about my finished manuscript. Introducing: Project ICEBOX … because there’s some scenes in a morgue and I dunno what else to call it at this stage #writing #writersky

listening to my coworkers who both beta-read my novel debate the likability of the main character and the themes underneath the horror is, in fact, what makes the struggle of writing and the pain of rejections worth it

Your father is always drunk. The stench of it rolls off him when he gets home after being gone overnight, thick on his breath, clinging to his unkempt facial hair. Usually he sports vomit down the front of his clothes. How many shirts has your mother bagged after one of his benders and left by the road alongside your garbage bins? The heaviness of your father's footsteps shakes the house and you miss when the tennis ball bounces back to you. It rolls into the dark space underneath you bed, where you keep the dead bugs you've scooped out of the office lamp, and toys you used to play with when you were younger.

And Valeska had heard tales of what awaited those who prayed to no deity. A gray sea of nothingness, a vast wasteland of neither pain nor joy. Auster told her when she was a small girl that this plane between life and afterlife was the glue holding the two together, filled with souls with nowhere else to go. The ones disparaged by their Gods, or those who devoted themselves to nothing and thought death would never come knocking for them. This purgatory, Auster said, was composed of mold and rot and teeth and hair.

Luke hung upside down for what felt like an eternity. His eyes were open, staring at the parking lot over top a chain link fence, and the sunlight reflecting off the metal. People were screaming. Some girl's leg was pressed against his, her ankle very close to looping over his own like she was subconsciously seeking comfort. He wiggled his foot, pulling it away from her own and crossing his ankles.

Kieran reached into his pocket, rain-slick fingers trembling. "Fuck. Would it kill you turn the heat on?" he mumbled, fighting to free his phone. When it finally slipped into his palm, he unlocked it and pulled up a photo. He thrust it towards Luke. On the screen was a picture of Kieran's car, sagging hideously in the parking lot of his apartment building. All the tires but one were completely flattened.

some writing excerpts from various projects i’m zero drafting & editing this novel writing month 🌟

#writing #thrillerwriting #horrorwriting #novelwritingmonth

the lab, lately

#microbiology

Writing is funny because both my biggest brightest dream and stomach churning dread is having people read my book.