The last week has felt a little nuts. Here’s assorted updates and notes.
Covered in bees!
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Tag Archives: pimping
I’ve got my writing pants on.
By which I mean: I have pants on. Since my tattoo appointment on Friday, I’ve been hard pressed to have anything touch the back of my leg.
Anyhoo, I’ve got today off and I’m at the Wayward hoping to get some writing done. But first, a blog post!
This is me, busy as a bee.
Slowly chugging away on my short story. I had this realization that I had my plot arc well mapped out, but my protagonist did not have a whole lot of soul. Currently at 2,892 words. Think I might have another couple thousand before I’m done. It’s a bit different from my other stuff, so I’m feeling less confident. Plus there’s all that, “Agh, I’ve learned this stuff but I don’t know how to apply it well! Instead I’m just freaking out about it!”
Haven’t touched my excerpt/synopsis for A Sunless Garden. Need to do that soon. I keep telling myself, “I’ll do it when I’m done with the short I’m working on.” I think I’m within spitting distance of done with the short, though. I just find it fascinating how much more time it takes to write parts of a short story than it does an equivalent word count in NaNoWriMo. =P
Feeling kinda anxious about my last submission to Crossed Genres. They received a record high number of submissions. I’m feeling kinda anxious about whether or not it will get accepted. Heck, since they now have slush readers, I’m not sure if I even made it past the slush readers. Ah, the suspense.
I’ve made a Twitter account for myself. I also made a Page for myself on Facebook. And now this blog feeds into Facebook, which then feeds into Twitter. It’s like a massive circle. Massive.
Wily Writers is looking for submissions
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*
New story up at Wily Writers
“Of Rain and Roses” by Jess Hartley
http://www.wilywriters.com/blog/?p=1212
Free to download, available in both text and audio format.
A reading of my stuff!
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:
http://cooperjournal.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/coopers-open-house-december-5th-6th/
Pimpage: Addendum 1
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.
Cobalt City Christmas
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.
Award Season
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.
