John Satisfy: Can you please tell us a little about yourself and what kinds of works you write?
LB Shaw: I am an artist, continually exploring different ways of expressing creativity through writing and sculpting. I grew up in the south in a very religious home and consequently spent a great deal of my childhood wanting to rebel against everything. But that little voice inside my head kept me on the straight and narrow which prevented me from screwing up too much. Unfortunately, that same little voice served as a ruse at times, tricking me into believing I'm not who I think I am, and I'm not capable of succeeding. I think most of us can identify with that voice. I'm learning to embrace and encourage that inner child who has been buried for so long, reprogramming her to believe in herself and no longer deny all that she is and all that she can be.Though I've been journaling since I was five years old and writing little stories here and there, I began writing fiction with the intention to self-publish about a year ago. My first was a two-part, erotic romantic suspense series called Trust In Me. My third book, Little Sinner, was inspired by a wee little priest fetish of mine and has elements of BDSM. It's certainly not a story that will cater to everyone's tastes, but it was a lot of fun to write and served as somewhat of a mental masturbation for me. I currently have two books I'm working on, though one of them, Becoming Stone, is on a slow simmer. It's a dark romance with elements of domination and submission and has been difficult to write because the characters are so "angsty", but I'll get it finished someday, someway. The other, which is the one I'm actively working on, is a time-travel romance novella scheduled to be published this spring.
Over the past month, I've noticed a shift in what I feel pulled to write. Subsequently, I've discovered a passion for flash fiction. For those who don't know, flash fiction can be thought of as a story of extreme brevity and is typically anywhere from 300-3000 words. I like to use pictures as visual prompts, as I'm a highly visual person. If you visit my blog, you will see some of my current flash fiction pieces with the pictures attached to the posts. I like to incorporate elements of romance or love in these pieces, but some of them are quite painful as well. I'm not sure exactly where my writing will take me from here, but I feel excited about the possibilities. I've always been drawn to the dark and macabre, so it's not surprising that I would ultimately explore this in my writing.
JS: Sounds like you're really busy with quite a few different irons in the fire at once. Does that make it difficult for you to keep focus? Is that part of why you are finding flash fiction so rewarding, you finish one piece quickly and can then move on to the next?
