Melissa R. Mendelson is a Poet and Horror, Science-Fiction and Dystopian Short Story Author.  Her stories have been published by Sirens Call Publications, Dark Helix Press, Altered Reality Magazine, Transmundane Press, Owl Canyon Press, and Wild Ink Publishing.  She also won second place in the WritersWeekly.com 24-Hour Short Story Contest. 

Her book of poetry, This Will Remain With Us was published in December 2022.

What inspired you to start writing?

I love movies and television shows.  I have watched so many of them since I was a kid, and I always wanted to write my own.  I would be so fascinated with worlds such as in Blade Runner, Dark City and Terminator, or ideas like with Powder, Flatliners and Fallen.  I want to introduce my own worlds, characters and ideas to people, and maybe, that’s what fuels me to write, especially in high school.  I didn’t want to write about my life.  I just wanted to find escape like how I escaped in all those movies and tv shows.

What inspired you to write this book?

When 2020 arrived, I was still dealing with gynecological issues.  Then, the pandemic happened.  I was designated as a Frontline Worker.  My father got really sick, and thank God, he’s better now.  It was A LOT.  I love writing, especially in my favorite genres of Horror, Dystopian and Science-Fiction, but I have become comfortable also writing Drama.  And I needed to write, and not just short stories.  I needed to write poetry.  I needed to write to survive everything that was happening around me, inside of me, and the website, Medium became a home for all that writing.  But looking back on everything that I wrote, I didn’t want it to just stay on Medium, so I was inspired to put the short stories together in a self-published collection and create a poetry collection that was published by Wild Ink Publishing.

What is one thing you really want readers to know about your book?

We all experienced the pandemic and 2020 in our own way, especially frontline workers, and maybe, my experience is not like theirs.  But I want readers to still connect with my words, my thoughts and feelings, and maybe they will find inspiration too.  Maybe, they will want to tell their story, whether it is a short story or poetry.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing habit or the process you took in writing this book?

I combed through Medium, pulling out any poem about being on the frontline.  I debated on the political ones, but I didn’t want this book to be politically driven, especially with such a divide in this country.  I wanted human connection, but there are some poems with political undertones.  When I had the poems picked out, I organized them by the date that they were written, and I felt that the last poem should be, This Is How We Remember Them.  We need to remember those that were on the frontline and how they risked their lives for us.

What piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

I allowed depression once to convince me to stop writing, and I lost a lot of time in doing that.  And I’m sorry that I had stopped writing.  I didn’t have a support structure or anyone in my corner to push me to keep writing.  Eventually, I returned to it on my own, but I will always regret not writing.  So, no matter how hard things are or how lost you feel, please don’t give up.  Don’t stop writing.