First, some pimping!

This month, Wily Writers has been providing flash fiction weekly instead of short fiction every other week. The great thing about Wily Writers is that (a) it’s free and (b) they provide MP3 readings of all their stories. This week’s story is, “Grand-Monster” by Sasha Janel McBrayer.

(And, you know, I have a story there too if you want to look for that. *ahem*)

In other news, I spent Saturday night at a reading at Third Place Books for Apex Publishing’s Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. Jennifer Brozek, the editor of the anthology, coordinated the five authors that read and did signings. I meant to post information about the reading earlier, but have been too busy with deadlines to poke at this blog. Especially since most of my update is, “Still working on it.” And I also haven’t read the anthology.

BUT! That said, the readings I heard were marvelous. I felt definitely out of my league among some of these people, and I play D&D with a couple of them. Really top notch stuff. The authors present were:

• Eric Scott de Bie, who I had the honor of hearing read at Norwescon earlier this year. I learned this weekend that he also comes from central California, and actually had to endure it through his teenage years. He’s also one of the people writing the novels for the Forgotten Realms these days.
• Nathan Crowder. Yeah, that guy.
• Rosemary Jones, who also has been writing for the Forgotten Realms these days.
• Alma Alexander. She was on a couple panels I attended at Norwescon, and her reading was magnificent. Ms. Brozek introduced the story by saying that she picked it for the anthology because it made her cry. She did not exaggerate. I got choked up from hearing just a portion of it.
• Shannon Page. I hadn’t heard of her before this night. But then, prior to this last winter I’d never heard of Jay Lake, who co-authors several stories with her. I guess I’m not hip to the cool new faces of SF/F. Or even some of the old ones. But I digress. Her reading was also good and holds a lot of promise.

(I feel I should add: Nate, Rosemary and Eric all had good readings as well. But I already knew they were going to be good. Alma Alexander and Shannon Page were unknown variables.)

Anyway, a quick update on the honeydew. New stuff is italicized, unless I screw up the HTML again.

6/14/2010: Submit my three stories for workshopping in Kansas. 100%. I did get feedback from a couple of people I sent stuff to. There was some good input, as well as some input that boiled down to, “If you take this route, you would need a drastic re-write.” But, I have them all uploaded to the shared folder.

I have several stories that are due at the end of this month, as listed below. Not only does two weeks seem like a tight turnaround for getting five short stories written, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that I will need to read stories from fellow workshoppers. There are 11 other people attending, which boils down to 33 short stories between now and early July. Yowza.

6/30/2010: Wily Writer’s “Song” issue. 5% Brainstormed with a friend, but haven’t written a damn word.

6/30/2010: Crossed Genres “Invasion” issue. 100% Sent off to Crossed Genres.

6/30/2010: Crossed Genres “Science in my Fiction” contest. 0% Less certain that I will submit for this. I have an idea for a story, but I might not have time to submit.

6/30/2010: Pill Hill Press’s Flesh & Bones: Rise of the Necromancers anthology. 0% Same as the CG contest, really. =(

6/30/2010: Finish first draft of novel. 80%. I’ve gotten the schedule for my workshop in Lawrence. I will probably spend a good chunk of time trying to be social with my fellow writers, but the actual workshop period is only three hours a day. Unless I’m out catting about the town and sleeping in till late morning, I should be able to work on this in the morning before digging in to critiques with the workshop.

7/1/2010: Hallow’s Eve Press Steampunk anthology. 5% Brainstormed some ideas with a friend.

7/4/2010: Read stories for Workshop. 0%

7/4/2010 – 7/18/2010: SF Writer’s Workshop and Campbell Conference

7/13/2010: Blood Bound Books’ Rock & Roll is Dead anthology. 95%.

7/22/2010 – 7/25/2010: PNWA Summer conference.

8/1/2010: Timid Pirate Press’s Cobalt City Timeslip anthology. 100%. Draft sent off to Nate.

8/15/2010: Character creation for the next game I’m running. This is not at all writing related, but it occurs to me that I should have this on my radar because it will be a distraction from writing.

9/20/2010: Horror Flash Fiction anthology.

9/24/2010 – 9/26/2010: Foolscap.

10/31/2010: Top Secret Project A

11/1/2010 – 11/30/2010: NaNoWriMo. (I need to do this, if only to shake off the dust and limber up, get back to writing for pleasure than writing for deadlines.)

11/4/2010 – 11/7/2010: Ambercon Northwest.

11/30/2010: Start looking for guidelines for the Norwescon Fairwood Writing Workshop.

11/30/2010: Contact RustyCon about becoming a panelist.

1/14/2011: RustyCon.

7/31/2011: Wicked East Press’s Once Bitten, Never Die anthology.

No Due Date:

– Submit “Thus Have I Heard” to Residential Aliens.

– Submit a story to Writers of the Future.

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