@babarnett
Fantasy & horror writer. Musician. Occasional orchestra librarian. Odyssey Writing Workshop grad, critiquer & blog editor. Taos Toolbox 2024. SFWA/HWA/Codex member. Repped by Emily Keyes. She/her. https://babarnett.com
Man with a coffee mug sitting at a table with a sign that reads “Cozy horror is not a thing: change my mind.”
I have yet to see 1) a consistent definition of cozy horror or 2) examples that aren’t actually just straight-up horror of some flavor. Having a sense of humor doesn’t make the horror “cozy” IMO.
Haven’t done much other than pimp Odyssey blog posts on here lately. To sum up: Weird-ass short story written. New novel draft in progress. Rehearsals. Concerts. Tech-related headaches. Teaching prep. Too much snow. Too little reading for fun. Swearing incoherently at the news. Internal screaming.
Seeing people complain about 15 minutes of music in another language and I’m like (laughs in opera)
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with author & Your Personal Odyssey guest lecturer @henrylienauthor.bsky.social, who talks about nonlinear storytelling & the relationship between unreliable narrators and linearity odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/q...
I'm a writer. I should be able to articulate things clearly. But right now my thoughts on current events are mostly an incoherent string of cussing.
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: interview with graduate, author & Your Personal Odyssey instructor E. C. Ambrose, who talks about teaching YPO, shifting from pantsing to plotting, and how critiquing and teaching have helped her own writing.
i know we're all busy but i just overheard a plumber say "parlez-vous français ? non ? you motherfuckers don't even speak french, do you" to a pair of french bulldogs
I'm teaching an Odyssey Online class, and there are 10 days left to apply! No actual acting in front of anyone involved, just writing.
I’ve been interviewed about my upcoming Odyssey Online class, All the World’s a Page, over at WOW! Women on Writing! A short read if you’d like to learn more about the class or want to procrastinate on holiday-related drudgery.
Thanks to @sfwa.org for being so responsive to concerns around the Nebula Awards and LLM use. The Nebula should honor human creativity, as the revised rules now state. However, we also don't want to see writers tripped up on eligibility or hit by witch hunts over minor LLM usage like spell check. 1/
(finally looks up to see what’s happening in the world after recovering from Christmas concert hell week) 👀 (immediately looks down and thinks that horrible Christmas on Broadway medley wasn’t so bad in comparison)
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Excerpts from a Q&A with award-winning author, Odyssey grad & YPO guest lecturer @cornellwriter.bsky.social, who talks about her revision process and getting a character's voice across through body language odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/q...
Screaming…but with Christmas
A dry erase board with December written above a drawing of snowflakes and The Scream with a Santa hat
The project board has gotten a seasonal upgrade for the new month
You can find all the details here: www.odysseyworkshop.org/odyssey-onli...
Odyssey's 2026 online classes have been announced & I'm excited to be teaching one of them: All the World’s a Page: Adapting Acting Techniques to Strengthen Your Fiction. Because I am a theater geek & will gladly talk your ear off about how useful acting techniques can be when applied to writing.
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Part 2 of "Selling Your Shorts: Submission Considerations Amid a Changing Market" by graduate & author akatherineblack.bsky.social odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/g...
Close up of a brown horse leaning over a fence
A white miniature horse receiving scritches
Two women standing with a horse
Two women leading horses down a path
I PETTED ALL THE HORSIES
It’s publication day! I would appreciate it if you would have a read.
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Part 1 of "Selling Your Shorts: Submission Considerations Amid a Changing Market" by graduate & author @akatherineblack.bsky.social! Part 2 to follow next week. odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/g...
Aaaaw, who’s a cute little death sponge?
A dry erase board with “November” written at the top followed by a drawing of the figure from The Scream painting
Been experimenting with ways to use my dry erase board for tracking projects. I’m not sure how useful this current iteration is, but it does perfectly capture the vibes of my current to-do list.
I would totally go again!
A stuffed monkey posed next to a vampire hunting kit at the Vampa Museum
A stuffed monkey sitting in a Vincent Price skeleton chair at the Vampa Museum
A tarot card display at the Vampa Museum
A creepy clown display at the Vampa Museum
A vampire and paranormal museum only a little over an hour from my house yet it's amazingly taken me this long to get there.
This week’s awesome thing: it’s almost Halloween, so how about cool things about bats? m.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...
One. Though a friend helpfully pointed out that it really depends if you’re talking about a person driving 45mph in the left lane (one word) vs a bag for storing dicks (two words), as one so often needs
I was 8 and wanted my mom to come watch an adventure I'd concocted for my stuffed animals to act out. She was busy and told me to go write it down. And thus "King Tempt's Pets," in which a group of lost pets travel through a haunted forest to find their owner, became my first completed story.
Today in I Am A Serious Writer: just Googled to see if dickbag should be written as one word or two.
Plus bonus dance break at the Wawa, as one also does.
