I am back in Seattle, parked in front of a fan and enjoying the balmy 65 degree weather. It’s a beautiful change in pace from Kansas, where they had a heat index of 110 on some of my final days there. It was just muggy and awful. I’m glad we’d gotten milder weather for most of the early part of my stay. I’d never even heard of a heat index prior to this. Seattle is a civilized place that has no such things.
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The workshop is, for all intents and purposes, over. Tonight is the awards banquet for the Campbell Conference, which then continues through the weekend.
It is the weekend, which the short story workshoppers have “off” and the novelists do not. I’m still playing catchup with reading and have to upload my short story revisions today. But otherwise it’s been a lazy day of doing laundry and looking for coffee. The local coffee stand is closed on the weekends and the cafeteria doesn’t open until 11 (“Brunch”).
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Sorry for the lack of updates. Between spotty internet and the constant game of catchup with reading stuff to critique and taking naps to beat down exhaustion. I’d been trying to only do blog updates at night, but that doesn’t work so well.
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I woke up bright and early with the aim of getting lots of stuff done today. I hung out in the lobby, working on my workshop notes, waiting for someone to go to breakfast with. I ended up waiting for quite a while. But finally there were signs of life and we went to check out the local cafeteria. They were a couple people from the novel workshop, since they actually met in the morning while us short story folks didn’t have to be anywhere till after lunch.
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I am in scenic Lawrence, Kansas, for the Science Fiction Writers Workshop put on by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. This is primarily a workshop for short stories. James Gunn leads the workshop. There is a concurrent workshop being run for SF novelists run by Kij Johnson. Because I’m not well versed in SF lore, I had not heard of either of these people. But as their Wikipedia articles illustrate, they’re kind of a big deal.
Because a few friends have been curious about the experience, I’m blogging about it. Today mostly consisted of just getting here.
First, pimping of others:
There’s a new story up at Wily Writers, “The Tunnel” by Matt Cowens.
A.M. Dellamonica, who taught my UCLA extension course, has been short-listed for the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. There’s also some other people on the list.
Crossed Genres has announced the winners of their flash fiction contest.
The location of the Seattle stop of Jennifer Brozek and Seanan McGuire’s “Murder and Mayhem” tour has changed. It is now as follows:
SEATTLE
July 10, 2010, 6pm+
Wayward Coffeehouse
8570 Greenwood Ave N
Seattle WA 98103
And, my own personal news is that I sent off two short stories off for consideration a couple days ago, for a total of three that are awaiting response. I have another one that is almost ready for prime time that is due in a couple weeks and I’m hoping to get another written and submitted by the end of the month. I’m pretty excited about this because I’m aggressively pursuing other markets beyond Crossed Genres and, even if they don’t get picked up, I’ll have a fleet of stories representing a lot of lessons learned over the last few years that I can shop around to other markets.
In getting ready to submit a short story, I reviewed the submission guidelines for the publication in question. They said they wanted it in Standard Manuscript Format, and at first I thought I knew what they meant when they said that. Especially since the link pointed to the SFWA Web site. In the short story writing class I took through UCLA Extension, we were asked to submit our story for the class in Standard Manuscript Format, and were directed to an article on the SFWA Web site by Vonda McIntyre on the subject. I’ve seen it linked to from other places and it’s one of the first things that comes up when you google “Standard Manuscript Format.”
Surely there would not be two articles on the SFWA site, or if there were they’d say the same thing right?
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A quick post to review where I am with my goals.
In a move that surprises no one, I am not one of the finalists for the PNWA Literary Contest. Though I did discover that Nathan Everett, known as Wayzgoose among the NaNoWriMo set, is a finalist! So rock on for him.
The news of the finalists is mainly of note to me because the notes from the judges are supposed to be back this week. I can then turn around and roll that feedback into the manuscript I’m working on. I may have to have a few beers before facing the criticisms, though.
In other news, Jennifer Brozek is going to be on her “Murder and Mayhem” tour with Seanan McGuire. Jennifer has a collection of short stories coming out, In a Gilded Light: 105 Tales of the Macabre while Ms. McGuire will be featuring her series, Sparrow Hill Road. I have a couple locations from an email she sent out if you want to check those out. There is probably also info to be found by examining Jennifer’s Web site
SEATTLE
July 10, 2010, 6:30pm
Third Place Books
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
SAN FRANCISCO
July 17, 2010, 3:00pm
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia St.
San Francisco CA 94110
There’s also new flash fiction up at Wily Writers. I encourage you to go check out “The Time-Share by Fred Warren.
