I don’t think I did this last year, but if I did here’s another one, AuthorQuest’s Year in Review. The year started off good. The Dunesteef posted their production of “Playable Character”, and I liveblogged as I listened to my first published work. I also sold Fairy Kingdom and got that published. I got in some trouble with The Shine Journal, and then realized I did not have comments turned on. For three years. This led to my first spam comment. I also made an obligatory “about me” page, which every blogger should have at some point. Most of the beginning of the year, I worked on the first draft…
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News Weather Traffic
I’m not too far into Mermaid Story, but I’m working on it. Progress is slow but steady. I shall persevere. Getting feedback on Centaur Story. From glancing at the e-mails, seems like reviews are good, just needs some tightening up. Hopefully, the feedback will tell me what to tighten up. I think Black Hole Son query letter V4 is ready, and I can start submitting that again. It wasn’t getting any positive responses, so I put it under the gun again. Now I’ve got something that’s tighter, but has less plot. In other news, today, I was thinking how useless the radio is. Just play some goddamn music, quit your…
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Updates
The submissions seem to be in a slump lately. No one’s responding, magzaines have response times that are too long. Agents are not responding with rejections, they’re just ignoring me. I know my story is good, intriguing. What do I have to do to my query letter to make it right? How can this letter get such a positive reaction, and mine’s trash? Tipper and Al Gore are getting divorced. Really? After 40 years of marriage you can’t work out the differences you have? And it’s not like any event preceded this. Al Gore didn’t have an affair, and Tipper wasn’t strung out on heroin and JD (although in my…
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Update
I’m working on a story about centaurs. That is all.
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I’m Not Dead, I’m Getting Better
I’m not dead, I was just taking some days off, and then it was Easter. I’m a little over halfway through the first draft of Mermaid Story. Not much else to say besides that. I’m a little worried the emotionality of the story is falling flat, but maybe I’m too close to know. Or maybe I just know the story inside and out so well that the emotionality doesn’t affect me anymore. I haven’t gotten many responses back from short stories lately, although Duotrope says that they’re still under their estimate/expected response times. Trying to get back to reading too. All for now 🙂
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Status Update
Mermaid Story is going *swimmingly* (I wish I could say that’s the last time I’d be using that pun, but… I’d be lying). The words are coming fast, and the story is unfolding well. My only worry is that I’m overwriting. Also, at the pace I’m going, it’s going to be quite a while before I’m finished with the first draft. I’m too scared to look at my word count, so I’m not sure how much I’m pumping out per day. But it feels like I’m producing a lot. It feels like I’m getting stories accepted everywhere. Thicker Than Water (Vampire Family Story) is in Inwood Indiana, Fairy Kingdom is…
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Where Am I?
Okay, I’ll admit, my vacation wasn’t that long. Therapeutic, yes, but over. I finished three different video games (Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 1, Shadow of the Colossus) and started a fourth (Galerians). I ate Buffalo Chicken sandwiches, entire pizzas, McDonald’s, Subway, and finished a giant bottle of red wine. There’s nothing more indulgent than taking a big glass of wine down to the computer and drinking and playing Resident Evil. But no writing happened. But that’s good – it’s good to clear your mind for a while. Especially when you’re in idea generation mode. It can get frustrating when you try to think of how you’re going to get…
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Update
Things are going a little better with Mermaid Story. Last week, I had the “I can’t think of any ideas”, “this isn’t as good as what I wrote before”, “I’ll never be able to excel in this” blahs. Now I’m working through gluing together the plot outline, and some things are starting to shine. I just had to tell myself that the process of writing isn’t just waiting for ideas to come, its staring at blank page of paper and making them come. Make those ideas your bitches. And happily, I’ll be on vacation this weekend. Wait, let me amend that. My wife and one-year-old daughter will be on vacation…
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End of the Week Wrapup
Not a good week for writing. No responses about any of my submissions. My wife gets through about 5 pages of my book per week. My dragonslayer story on Critique Circle only has one response and it was stupid. But the guy had one in the queue, so I hit him back with a scathing review. It made me better. But I have nothing to write now, really. My next task was supposed to be to write the Kaiju Emails story, a Scalzi-esque list of emails from a Kaiju zookeeper, but I just feel like its crap. Its juvenile story-telling, like dragonslayer and White Mage story. I hate short stories.…
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Random Word of the Day: Patchouli
On the submission front: Fairy Kingdom was rejected from Flash Fiction Online. It took them until almost the max day to do it, so I was disappointed because I thought it might be accepted, since it was taking them so long. The next candidate after that was supposed to be “Postcards From…” but when I looked them up, their blog had been deleted. Then I looked up 365 Tomorrows, but then I discovered it was non-paying, so that got sent to the bottom of the stack. Next it will be going to Electric Spec. One thing I forgot to mention in the last update that, when I was shopping for…