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My writing blog |
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I don't have a muse, and never have. I'm afraid that if I did have one, she would be a small Chinese woman standing in the doorway, looking significantly at her watch every minute or so while I dug around in the sofa searching for enough loose change to pay for the chicken-fried rice. On the whole, I think I do better without her. |
| The novella is becoming a novel, at least in my mind. I keep planning it out, and I like the plot, but the length is daunting. I think I need to set a goal that I can meet, such as 1000 words a day. If I write more some days, so be it. If I write fewer, I can flagellate myself with a wet noodle. I also think that I need to stop thinking of it as a steampunk romance and think of it as steampunk with a strong love interest, since the international intrigue angle is taking on importance. Sigh! How do people do this? Current status: 58 items in 67 submissions. One new market attempted, The Smoking Poet. |
| I am not a huge fan of Twitter, seeing it as a massive time-sink, but I decided that I should develop some contacts and connections in the social media world outside WDC. With a bit of effort, it is pretty easy to get to know people and develop a following as well as develop a group of people to follow. I started on April 9th, ten days ago, and I now follow 297 people, have 135 followers, am on 10 lists and have tweeted 186 times. If you are interested in how I accomplished that in ten days, I'd be happy to share, but I doubt the experience is for everyone. It is still an enormous time-sink. Current status: 56 items in 66 submissions. Two new markets attempted, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and the Lame Goat Press: Flash! Anthology. |
You owe it to yourself to come read the new Beauty and the Beast Issue  . Even if you don't think of yourself as a fan of fairy tales, these deserve a closer look. Granted, my story Lucia's Wish is in there as a regular fairy tale, but there are fascinating speculative fiction stories, the poignant opening story, Finding Beauty, humor, wonder and more. Don't rush over though. Find the time to take a leisurely stroll through the enchanted conversation.Current status: 56 items in 65 submissions. Two new markets attempted, AGNI and Short Story America. and one market re-attempted, Glimmer Train Stories. |
| If that is the sort of thing you like, you can follow me on Twitter . I just started today, so there won't be much right away. Let me know if you would like me to follow you back. Current status: 61 items in 67 submissions. One new market attempted: Revenant Magazine. |
| I am trying to move into more fiction submissions and fewer poetry, but it is tough when one market takes four to six poems. I am up to about 30% fiction, 70% poems by number. With any luck, after the next few anthology submissions (end of April or perhaps middle of May), I will be at 40% fiction. Current status: 61 items in 67 submissions. Three new markets attempted: Redstone Science Fiction, The Ante Review and Thirteen Myna Birds. |
Incidentally, if you wind up buying this, could you let me know what you think? |
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| I set a goal before starting March NoWriMo that I would write 35,000 words. I got to 35,020. Phew! You could also call this the month of the anthologies. In all, I submitted to seven anthologies, Triangulation Anthology Series, Terminal Earth Anthology, Foetus Fatale: Fubar'd Noir, Zombidays: Festivities of the Flesheaters, The Way of the Wizard Anthology, Probing Uranus and the Bizarro Horror Anthology. I was rejected by the Triangulation Anthology Series and short-listed by Terminal Earth Anthology and the Foetus Fatale: Fubar'd Noir anthology lost all submissions and went on hold, so I am currently waiting on answers from five different anthologies. Current status: 60 items in 68 submissions. One new market attempted: Lightspeed Magazine. |
| You've written your spectacular story or powerful poetry and are ready to submit it to the world. You go to Duotrope or one of the other places that lists venues, and you find an e-zine that looks perfect. Perhaps you go to their webpage and admire the look, imagining your work published there. Everything seems perfect, so you submit, following their guidelines. Wait! You missed a crucial step. Go back to that website, and follow the links, read the stories, look for a blog. Make sure that something has been updated recently. If it is a quarterly journal, see when the last issue was put out. A certain amount of the time, you'll find dead links, nothing changed since early 2009 (or earlier), or other signs of a dead magazine. Welcome to the skeletal web. Like the Parthenon in Greece, these are magazines which may look good, but which are mere skeletons of their original purpose. People walk away without ever making it clear on the website. Perhaps they intend to return, but never make it. If you miss that step, your submission may wind up sitting in a mailbox that is never read. How long will you wait? I have started to learn. I saw Duotrope's page for Round . It looked good, seemed fine. (I have reported this to Duotrope, so the status may change at any moment) I went to the Round website , which looks clever and well constructed. Then, I tried to read stories from the latest issue (no date), and they were all broken. I followed links to the periodic features, and while not dead, none had been updated since 2008.Yet back on the Duotrope page, I noticed that there were two submissions, one for poetry that had been waiting 122 days, the other for fiction that had been waiting for 211 days. I wonder how much longer they'll wait, or what dreams have been dashed that could have sailed to different shores. |
| It would be exciting to be in a John Joseph Adams anthology, and I think my story is very good, but the competition is likely to be fierce, and reprints are included as well. Oh well, cross your fingers. Current status: 60 items in 68 submissions. One new market attempted: The Way of the Wizard Anthology. |
| Must be a sign of the times, but it is sad to submit to a magazine or e-zine, wait two or three months just to realize that they are now pushing up the daisies. Two of them this month, with one more that is suspicious. Perhaps we need to come up with a new term, the ex-zine. Anyway, that partly explains the reduced number of submissions and items submitted. I'd get back on the horse, but I am busy writing like crazy for March NoWriMo still. Over 20K words so far (my goal is 35K). Current status: 59 items in 67 submissions. Three new markets attempted, Five Points, Matrix and Probing Uranus (yes, that is the name: Sci-Fi humor anthology). |
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