I’m a little saddened to realize that, eleven days later, I still haven’t finished the short story for the anthology. I think I wrote on every day I originally planned, but I’ve been kind of nickel and diming it to death. I also ended up back tracking on it by several hundred words. I was trying to do too much with it, name dropping the hell out of it to help it fit into the setting. But in the end I decided to try and stick with my original source material. I’m not sure if it’s “good,” but I’m at least having fun with it. (Loving something that wasn’t good has burned me in the past.) The only day I could have written but didn’t was yesterday and today. So I think I’ve just been nibbling at the story when I just need to hold it down and club it to death.

In other news, I sent off the contract for another short. I was invited to submit to Wily Writers. I re-worked a piece that Crossed Genres hadn’t picked up for their Crime issue. It’s gone through a few drafts now and is much stronger for it. (If I ever find myself with more time to write, it’s a setting I’d like to explore further.) I’m not sure when it will appear on the site. My contract says, “Before 12/31/09.” So… some time in the next three months? Since there is an audio version of it that will go on the site as well, there’s probably some work that will need to go into it. So I don’t expect it up in the next few days. But hopefully soon-ish. My request was that the story go up free with the option for a donation. I want to get my name out there, but won’t turn down money if it comes my way.

With this has come some degree of work on my “writer profile.” I spent Monday frantically re-working bolthy.com as more of a “central resource of things I’m working on.” I had notions of having lots more content on there once upon a time, but that was before blogging really took off. Now it’s just kind of boggling that I would hand code out all of those pages. It seems… barbaric. So, now it’s just a junction to point people to other stuff. Yay for “work at marketing myself.”

Crossed Genres announced their due-in-January-published-in-March genre: Steampunk. It’s the first genre in a while that jazzed me. For a while I tried to submit something every month, and my submissions got more and more strained. So I decided I was just going to wait until I was genuinely inspired. I don’t have anything yet but I’m tempted by the genre. And, being due January, it will be a good post-NaNo project.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo. I’m doing it again this year. I am on there under “bolthy.” The girlfriend, unsurprisingly, is on there under “scarywhitegirl.” I’ve been sort of second guessing myself a bit on what I want to write. I had a sort of Veronica Mars style story I had in mind, and have been spending months doing research for it. But I haven’t been feeling very inspired by the plot elements I’ve had. I still want to do it, but don’t feel like the idea is quite ripe. Not helping this is that I’ve had lots of ideas for a sort of steampunk/mad-scientist sort of story. Going to the Lovecraft Film Festival this last weekend didn’t help with that. I’ve got this vivid setting in my head for this that is almost throbbing, and the plot is already laid out. All that is required is for it to… LIVE! As the mad scientist saying goes. It makes me feel kinda bad, since I’d been soliciting input from people for research material for the past several months. Well, I’ve still got a few weeks to decide. Blergh.

Ten Day Forecast!