Audely Bensen Writes

Hiking in Sedona, February 2023 This year was busy, and I know the culprit: out of the 52 weeks of the year, my husband and I spent 13 weekends in Chicago. When we moved 3 hours from our family and friends at the end of 2020, it was with the agreement that we'd visit home at least once every other month. In 2023 we doubled that...and as wonderful as it is to see loved ones, all the time on the road really takes it out of you. In addition to those trips home, I also went to Sedona and Mesa, Nashville, Indianapolis, Seattle and Portland, Milwaukee and Oxford, Wisconsin twice, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Starved Rock, and Carbondale. In total: 24 weekends away from home. Half of the year.  With all that travel, it's a miracle that I got any writing done at all.  2023 Writing goals:  👍 Begin querying The Seaming.  I send 95 queries for the Seaming between February and September 2023, and received 4 full requests and 3 partial requests. While none of those requests have tu...

I received a copy of Victor LaValle's Lone Women from the World Fantasy Convention's book bag. It looked really interesting, so I brought it home and picked it up as a palate cleanser between a few other chunky epic fantasies I've been slowly picking through. I was halfway finished when this year's Goodreads Choice Award finalists were announced.  That's how I learned that this is a horror novel.  I really think I need to recalibrate my understanding of horror, as I seem to be reading more and more of it lately. There wasn't anything in this book that scared me. LaValle used some elements of thriller structure to make this a page-turner, but I was never truly afraid for the characters the way I have been in some of the aforementioned fantasy epics.  The ending of this book was sweet and satisfying, and I spent a lot of the book pondering the title. While we have one main character, the title, Lone Women , implies that more than one woman are important to the th...

After seeing some early promo for C Pam Zhang's Land of Milk and Honey , I was thrilled to find it waiting on the library shelves. I was worried about picking this up, since one of my future novel ideas also involves a foodie in an apocalyptic setting. After reading the book, I'm glad to say that the premise is far enough away that I'm not worried about the overlap anymore. It reminded me a lot of the movie The Menu in tone.  I also learned that this book is not a potential comp for that novel idea: the prose in this book was so beautiful. It has been a long time since I've read a literary novel, and this book was a great refresher on what precise prose looks like. Not only is each individual word chosen with care, but each line builds, and attention is given to the placement of every paragraph. This book was a reminder of how far I still have to go in my writing skills. I can write a sensical sentence, a non-boring paragraph, a story with an arc that can make people f...