In connection with some new approaches in 2010, Angel McCoy has put up submission guidelines for the Wily Writers site:
http://www.wilywriters.com/blog/?page_id=1234
I think the really awesome thing about this site is the audio recordings they offer for stories that appear there. That’s really hard to top. Not that I’m biased or anything. *ahem*
“Of Rain and Roses” by Jess Hartley
http://www.wilywriters.com/blog/?p=1212
Free to download, available in both text and audio format.
I’ve been meaning to write a post-NaNo reflection. This is not that post. Between the hectic schedule of NaNoWriMo and the hectic travel schedule we’ve had, I haven’t had much time to blog. But here’s a quick recap of where I’m at with my writing.
– With November 30th come and gone, I’m taking one-month a break from the novel. In a couple weeks I’ll get back on the horse, but I haven’t decided what I want to do. Finish the novel I was writing? Go back to one of my earlier unfinished novels? There’s also the possibility that I could write more shorts, though I’m a little leery of that. I spent last year churning out shorts for Crossed Genres, some good some not so good. In the end it killed my ability to work on the novel. Some of it was just “busy with other stuff.” Some of it was that I didn’t have as rigorous a writing regimen as I do now. We’ll see.
– I finished the first draft of a short story for their “Any Previous Genre” issue. I’d started out trying to write humor with a dash of folklore. It seems a bit more serious than intended, so it may be “folklore with a dash of humor.” More on this later.
– I’m also mulling around ideas for their “Eastern” issue. It’s dedicated to “Eastern cultures.” I have two ideas for stories, both with Buddhisty themes. One is a bit stronger in my head but is not as strictly Eastern as the other one. Not sure what I’ll do.
– Sometime next month, my short story “A Necessity of the Present” will be available at Wily Writers. It will be available in both text and audio format. Both are free, but there is a donation button.
– I sent off the revised contract to Seraphim Guard for the game I wrote for them several years ago. I think it will appear sometime next year, barring misfortune. (There’s a reason it hasn’t seen the light of day yet.)
Ummmm… I think that’s it.
My first short story Crossed Genres accepted from me, the sci-fi/fantasy mashup entitled “Golden Apples,” has reverted back to me. They have non-exclusive rights to it still for another year, but I’m otherwise free to shop it around.
The challenge is: I don’t know what to do with it. It’s short, 1632 words. It fit their criteria but is a little short for what I’ve seen other magazines request. It’s also not new and I can’t offer exclusive rights to anyone.
Is there a market for such things? Peanut gallery?
A friend of mine offered to have some of my writing read at at an open house for her artist-loft-community thing. I was gunshy about just doing a reading just yet since I’m, well, effectively nobody. And then it turned out I couldn’t make it there this weekend anyway.
But apparently there will be an interpretive reading of “A Tale of Two Bureaucracies” (which appeared in the April 2009 issue of Crossed Genres) on Sunday. I get nothing out of this aside from some free, if local, publicity. But if you want to check it out, I’m sure there will be other cool stuff there. Information about the open house can be found here:
In my pre-coffee haste this morning, I failed to mention that there are other authors worth noting involved in Cobalt City Christmas. While I don’t know much about Nicole Burns, I can at least dig up a few things about Angel Leigh McCoy (a prolific game designer, author and journalist) and Rosemary Jones (who is most recently known for her recent Forgotten Realms novels, but also has several non-fiction books under her belt).
So if Nate and I are not enough of a draw, Angel and Rosemary may very well be.
Here’s another project that I’d been involved with but was keeping under wraps:
My friend Nathan Crowder has developed his own comic book universe through a series of novels he has put out on Lulu. When he decided to put together an anthology of stories written by other writer friends, I jump on the opportunity. The story I turned out was absurdly fun to write.
The anthology is Cobalt City Christmas.
Diving into it is probably something like diving into a comic book series you aren’t familiar with. If you are interested in this but would like some context, my favorite book in this universe is Greetings from Buena Rosa.
A couple writer friends of mine did this, and I figured I’d follow suit. I dithered for a few weeks before deciding to post this. I generally hate tooting my own horn, so it was an effort to overcome my reluctance.
As originally posted by Angel Leigh McCoy:
“Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) vote for the Nebulas.
Members of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) vote for the Bram Stokers.
These awards are among the most coveted by writers because they’re awarded by their peers.
If the org’s members don’t know that you have a piece that is eligible, they’re less than likely to read it, much less nominate it or vote for it.”
So, in the interest of disclosure, I have two fantasy shorts that I think are eligible to be nominated. In the off chance, you know, that a card-carrying member of the SFWA happens to read one of my shorts and swoon with delight over it. I don’t think either of my eligible pieces count as “horror,” and they lean pretty heavy overall towards “fantasy” rather than “sci fi.”
“A Crazy Kind of Love,” my tale of inter-species star-crossed “romance,” appeared in the February 2009 issue of Crossed Genres and has been picked up to represent the Romance genre in the first anthology collection.
“A Tale of Two Bureaucracies,” my tongue-in-cheek tale contrasted a mortal government agency responsible for the protection of a sealed portal into Hell and an infernal government agency responsible for regulating attempts to break out. It appeared in the April 2009 issue of Crossed Genres.
As best I can tell, my story from the December 2008 issue is not eligible for nomination.
Oh, wait. I think it should be *ding*.
I technically hit 50K Saturday night. But we were in a cabin out in Neah Bay that did not have the free wi-fi it theoretically had. (We didn’t realize there was supposed to be Wi-Fi until we checked in, but were extra frustrated that we couldn’t seem to find this free wi-fi.) And apparently Verizon is the only cell carrier that works that far northwest in Washington. Which meant our snazzy iPhones were pretty useless in terms of telecommunications. =(
When we finally got on the internet again, holed up in a tiny coffee shop in Port Angeles, handling email was more a triage issue. I didn’t bother posting to LJ.
I have thoughts on what I learned this year, but I won’t post them just yet. I have a stack of stuff to wade through, like a recap of AmberCon Northwest over at <lj user="defconone">.
Currently at 35,588. By the end of today I should be at 40,000. Didn’t get as much writing done over the weekend. Feeling increasingly sort of unsure about whether I’m on the right path, which is making it harder to focus on writing. I’ve been getting closer to 1000 words a day than 2000. And I need a bit over 2000 a day to get through.
Part of my problem with plot has to do with me revising my outline last minute on 10/31 and not being entirely finished. So I had lots of good plot hooks early on that need more chapters later on that weren’t on the outline. I’ve also learned that my chapter summaries were a little too brief and narrow for what I needed for a full chapter. Blargh.
The other challenge? Part of my story involves a sort of comedy of errors involving people in love with someone that doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. (It’s less of a love triangle and more of a love Z.) And it takes place over the span of about 20 years. Which I guess can happen, but on a certain level feels like, “Really? Are they all that belligerently stupid?” So I’ve veered off of my original plan a bit. We’ll see how it goes.
