Sunday, February 7th, 2010
I just heard from my editor for “The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal” and it looks like the ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) are complete. That means publication isn’t too far off!
The project had been slated for publication last fall, so I’m tickled to see it finally coming together.
Apparently, there was too much information by authors for a single book, so the one volume has been split it into two:
- The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal: Spirits, Sprites and Spooks
- The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal: Undead, Cursed and Inhuman
I have a chapter in the second volume: Undead, Cursed and Inhuman. (I have to admit, I like that title much better than Spirits, Sprites and Spooks. I think it sounds “tougher.” I didn’t get a choice, of course, but I’m pleased.) And, judging from the TOC (table of contents), mine’s the last chapter in the book: “Critique Groups: One Spark to Better Writing.”
I’ll post cover art when I receive it.
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
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| Covers from Bad Ass Fairies and Bad Ass Fairies 2: Just Plain Bad, re-released by Mundania Press. |
I just learned that my story “Selk Skin Deep” has been accepted for the Bad Ass Fairies III anthology, subtitled, “In All Their Glory”.
I’m very excited!
Bad Ass Fairies 2 – Just Plain Bad won the 2009 Eppie Award. I’ll be in very good company as part of the third in the series.
Selkies are fairies from Irish and Scottish mythology, thought to have originated in northern Scottland in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Selkies are seals, living in the sea, but are able to shed their skin and become human.
The most common selkie tale is a romantic tragedy wherein a selkie female comes ashore and has her seal skin stolen. Unable to return to the sea, she marries and has children – usually with the man who stole her skin.
Years later, she finds her skin and dons it, returning to the sea and leaving her human family behind.
“Selk Skin Deep” is an alternate history that takes place during the Vietnam War, at which time President Kennedy first created the Navy SEALs program. In my story, Cade Owen is not only a SEAL, but a Selkie, who’s been assigned duty on the aircraft carrier USS Livingstone in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Friday, February 5th, 2010
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Rose of Sharon outside my office window.
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This is the “official” beginning of the Write Your @ss Off weekend. I hope to accomplish as much today as I did last Friday…although my time might be cut short.
The northeast (and probably elsewhere) is expecting a doozy of a snowstorm — perhaps more than two feet of snow in my area — and I may need to sign off and do some “because of the snow” things.
Because of that, I’m keeping my main list short, and my “if there’s time” list long. What I can’t accomplish today, I intend to get done this weekend. (If the weather guys are correct, I should have nothing better to do this weekend anyway–bring on the snow!)
Here are my plans:
- Write an initial blog post, outlining my plans (This is it, BTW, in case you’re wondering…)
- Write my daily minimum on my current WIP
- Write a duplicate amount on “something new” (I started this “something new” last Friday)
- Update my Facebook Fan Page
- Clean off the top of my desk…(Is this stretching it? I don’t care…cleaning up will promote more efficient writing…)
If there’s time left in the day, I will:
- Reply to my writer friends whose emails I still haven’t gotten to
- Update my Web page with a few minor things
- Organize my 2009 (Writing) Tax items
- Set up my 2010 (Writing) Tax Spreadsheets
- Read from one (finish one?!) of the writing books I bought this year
- Write a summarizing blog post
How does Write Your @ss Off work? This is from JES over at Running After My Hat.
Write some, sure. Nobody could object to that. But even if you never lay your fingers on your keyboard, never pick up your pen or handheld voice recorder, even then: can you set aside 7-1/2(ish) hours in a single block of 24 hours to think about, work on, research, accommodate, market, and/or otherwise honor the act and craft of writing? Your own writing, that is, and not someone else’s?
At last count, there were nearly 60 people joining in this weekend. Why don’t you join us, anonymously, or officially.
See my last post on WYAO for all the details. If you sign up officially, don’t forget to drop me a line.
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
So how did I do?
It was surprisingly difficult for me to devote nearly eight hours in a single day to “all things about writing” and not “just” writing.
I’ve done the Nano-thing, and the 3-Day Writing Contest and have spent as much as a week “on retreat” totally dedicated to “just writing.” Mixing it up by adding in the “business of things” as well as the day-dream/plot noodling tasks felt a bit…off.
For me, it feels like I didn’t get much accomplished.
And yet, if you look at my list…
- Write my daily minimum on my current WIP
- Write a duplicate daily minimum on something new
- submit three short stories to three different markets, 2 electronic, 1 snail-mail
- Sign and mail my new contracts with Damnation Books
- Reply to all my writer friends’ email that I’ve ignored for (a while)
- Update some minor things on my Web site
…I think I did pretty well.
Between the first two items, I actually more than tripled my daily required output.
I wound up sending three stories to three electronic markets because the snail-mail market I’d been contemplating had gone digital. So, I spent less time on submissions than I thought I would.
Signing and mailing out the stuff to Damnation Books took a bit longer than I thought it would because I copied and filed the items right away. (A good thing, because this stuff tends to pile up on my desk.)
Sorry, friends! I still owe you some chatty messages. I promise I’ll get back to you soon. And well, dear Web site, the minor things will have to get fixed up catch-as-catch can.
Still, not a bad day’s work…and I’ve got the “official” Write Your @ss Off day (again, Friday) this week.
…and yet…I really wanted to write THOUSANDS of words on Friday. So, I’m a tad disappointed. If I’d noodled-out the plot of my new WIP prior to staring the WY@O, I probably could have whipped out thousands of words on that alone.
The silver lining: by multi-tasking, I was focused. I didn’t play a single game of solitaire all day. I should get a medal for that.
Did anyone else play along, unofficially? How’d you do? Anyone saving it up for this coming weekend and the official Write Your @ss Off? Let me know in the comments below.
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
 One of my favorite publishing-industry bloggers, Moonrat, of the famous Editorial Ass Blog, has proposed a “Write Your @ss” Off” day…sort of a way to start the new year off right.
This will be the second, not quite annual –perhaps more than annual– running of the event.
Would you like to participate?
The original idea stemmed from JES on his blog, Running After My Hat.
He himself stole it from the New York Writer’s Coalition who gathered together in NYC last year to do their write-a-thon in person.
(You can read JES’s post that started it all, here.)
JES proposed a “Write Your @ss Off” day last year because:
“The blogosphere — or maybe it’s just the corner I’ve been mostly visiting, the one with the writers and other assorted wordsmiths — seems to have been overtaken by despair recently. Or maybe it’s not despair, exactly. Maybe more like anomie, a sort of formless uncertainty about the whole enterprise of getting language onto paper or screen, into lyrics and scripts.
[...]
I think we could all use a shot in the arm.”
And so it was born, the great web Write Your @ss Off, (or Write-a-Thon, for those who don’t want to use the word @ss…)
Logistics for scheduling a single day to to accommodate the scads of us interested seemed daunting, so a weekend of Write Your @ss Off has been declared. (You need only choose a single day, and only 8 hours therein to participate.) The weekend in question is next: Friday through Monday, February 5 – 8.
In my infinite wisdom, I jumped the gun and asked to take off tomorrow from my day job. JES generously responded to my d’oh! comment over on Moonie’s blog, to let me know that tomorrow is okay, too. I’ve been told to “Go for it.”
And so I will. (Quite possibly, I will participate next week as well, since I already have that Friday off…)
The rules for Write Your @ss Off are simple and easy:
You must spend eight hours devoted to writing.
It’s possible, of course, that I’m am oversimplifying. JES makes it clear:
Write some, sure. Nobody could object to that. But even if you never lay your fingers on your keyboard, never pick up your pen or handheld voice recorder, even then: can you set aside 7-1/2(ish) hours in a single block of 24 hours to think about, work on, research, accommodate, market, and/or otherwise honor the act and craft of writing? Your own writing, that is, and not someone else’s?
Easy, right?
So, with those rules in mind, I’ve created my to-do list:
- Write my daily minimum word count on the current work in progress
- Write a duplicate amount of my daily minimum word count on something new
- Submit three short stories to three different markets, 2 electronic, 1 snail mail
- Sign and mail my new contract with Damnation Books
- Reply to all my writer friends’ email that I’ve ignored for the last (uh, several) week(s) or so
- Update my Web page (just some minor things)
If I have time, I’ll:
- Organize my 2009 (Writing) Tax Items
- Set up my 2010 (Writing) Tax Spreadsheets
- Read from one of the gazillion writing books I bought this year
- Write a summarizing blog post
I know it’s really ambitious…but I think if I focus, I can do a lot of these things… If you decide to play along, you don’t need to be nearly so organized. Pinky swear.
You can see all the participants in this really cool map that JES set up over at CommunityWalk. As I write, there are 58 pegs on the map!
Won’t you join us? If so, wonder on over to Moonrat’s blog and let us know in the comments. If you want, peg yourself on the map. I’d love to hear what you’ll be working on in the comments below!
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
…when it is 5:20 a.m. and I am the only driver on our lonely rural road, please don’t pull out in front of me, hazard lights blinking, and proceed to drive at 10 miles an hour less than the 30 m.p.h. speed limit. Don’t you realize this is how road rage begins?
It’s especially painful to me when you do this, because I know I’m barred from passing you over the double-yellow line which stripes this entire road–for miles.
In the future, please wait until I pass, and then feel free pull out of your driveway onto the clear and open tarmac.
Don’t add insult to injury by coming to a complete stop on the narrowest part of the road — the tree-lined area by the bridge that crosses the creek — where oncoming traffic is difficult to see on a clear day. Even at 5:30 a.m., with few cars on the road, I’m reluctant to go around you — despite the fact that after a moment of waiting, you’ve rolled down the window and are waving me by.
50 Miles Later…
…when you are going to miss your exit off the highway because you’re in the hammer lane and want to drive 90 miles an hour, (and cars on the road are as thick as buzzards on fresh roadkill)…
…please don’t careen across four lanes of traffic, causing multiple fender benders and jackknifed tractor trailer trucks. Yes, I know it could have been worse, and I wasn’t involved in those incidents, but surely you see the wisdom of easing over gently and playing the cloverleaf?
A few turns around the exit ramps would put you right where you want to be, and would only delay your commute by two minutes or so. Although, at the speed you drive, I’d bet it wouldn’t cost you more than a moment of time.
Giving a passing thought to your fellow journeymen on the road to the big city every morning will ensure a happy commute for all. Please consider it.
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
 Reviews
Occasionally, I write reviews for SFreader.com.
(It’s a fabulous place, by the way, packed with information and reviews for SF & F readers and writers. You should check it out.)
SFReader.com just posted my review for Jeremy Lent’s Requiem of the Human Soul.
I thought about dual-posting the review here, but decided against it. Instead, I urge you to go to SFReader.com and read the review….while you’re there, look at all the other stuff SFReader.com has to offer.
(Short Review: Fabulous. I couldn’t put it down. For the synopsis (rather long, due to the complex plot) and my full review you really need to go to SFReader.com.)
Have I said it enough times yet? Go read the review!
And, in case you missed it, my review for Kimberly Raye’s Just One Bite is also available on SFReader.com here. (Not my usual cup of tea…but I thoroughly enjoyed this one, too.)
Keep Your Fingers Crossed
I got an invitation to the Bad Ass Fairies 3 launch party today. That means that my story “Selk-Skin Deep” is under consideration to be published in that anthology. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Won’t you do the same?
The party will take place the Sunday evening of Balticon, which I’d already planned to attend. My schedule is going to be jam-packed…but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Friday, January 15th, 2010
 Yay! I’ve been invited back to Balticon this year. I’m so excited.
I had a lot of fun being on all the panels last year, and reading from Blood Soup in the “Rapid Fire Reading” with other women authors from Broad Universe. (You can read what I had to say about last year’s awesome convention, here and here and here and here…)
This year I’ve proposed to run a critique session, (both a “how to critique” and a “how to start a critique group” seminar — based on a chapter I wrote for the book “How to Write Paranormal” (forthcoming!) and my own experience with my face-to-face critique group.
(Hi, guys! I know you’re reading!)
I’ll keep my fingers crossed, waiting to hear back from the Balticon folks about whether they’d like to host such a seminar. In the meantime, if you have questions about critiquing, or how to start a critique group…fire away. I’ll be happy to answer.
On Another Note
I’ll also be reading with some Broads at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC later this year. The date hasn’t been set in stone, but it looks like either April or June. If you’re in the DC area, I’d love to meet you. I hope you’ll stop on by to hear us read!
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
 I’m reading this fabulous series of books called Daughters of the Moon by Lynne Ewing.
The series is a modern-day paranormal, taking place in Los Angeles, and chronicles the lives of five high-school aged girls: Vanessa, Serena, Jimena, Catty, and Tiana. Each of them has a special power, bestowed upon them as a “daughter of the moon.”
Young Adult is not usually my cup of tea, but I was looking for something different and the first book really caught my interest. The series is based on the Pandora myth, but each book includes some parts of Greek mythology.
I’ve always been a sucker for the Greek myths, so picking up the first book was a no-brainer for me.
(And yeah, I know I’m late coming to the table on this series, but I’ve already explained: YA is not my usual good-time read.)
But the writing just sucked me in.
And, now, a few short weeks later, I’m up to book 10. (That’s the great part about reaching a series late in the game: all the books are available at once. No waiting for the sequel!)
But I’m having a problem with this one, The Talisman. It’s about Penelope…not one of the original five girls, or even a peripheral character in any of the first nine books. It takes place in Athens, Greece in 431 B.C.
I’m halfway through the book and I can’t figure out how it relates to the others. The mythology is the same, and the “evil” the girls are fighting is the same…but Athens 431 B.C. is about as far away from present day L.A. as you can get.
I’m afraid the “aha” moment of how this is all connected is going to be revealed very close to the end of the book, if not on the final few pages.
“Disappointing” doesn’t even cover the range of emotions I’m feeling about this book. It just doesn’t belong in the series. I could be wrong, but I have a hunch that anything revealed in the final few pages of this book could just have well taken place in the first few pages of the next.
It’s a neat story, but I’d have published it as a “related” book, or even just offered it for free on my Web site.
So that leads me to my questions: has anyone else read the series? Or have you read a similar series where one book takes a sharp turn away from the main story line? How did you feel? Did it make you stop reading the series? Would you take another chance with the author?
Hit me up in the comments. An inquiring mind wants to know.
Monday, January 4th, 2010
I made a mistake!
While updating my work-progress spreadsheet for 2010, I discovered in error in the “percentage of days written” column. In my post on 2010 Writing Goals, I mentioned that I’d failed to write more than 50% of the days in 2009.
Not so: it turns out that through the magic of cut and paste, I’d introduced a tiny error in my spreadsheet on those months that don’t have 31 days, consequently adding five more days to the calendar year.
I was dividing 370 days rather than 365. So…my actual days of writing last year were almost 53%.
With that in mind, it hardly seems fair to only shoot for a total of 57% days writing this year. What’s 4%? Not much to aspire to after last year’s results.
So…I’m upping the ante over my previous ante upping:
I’m shooting for 64% AND I’m increasing my word count goals by 50%. That should challenge me.
How about you? Have you changed your goals already?
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What I’m Reading PROJECT FILL IN THE BLANKS:
MOLL FLANDERS, Daniel DeFoe
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
OTHER:
Project Fill in the Blanks Red means "read" (past tense)
1. Native Son, Richard Wright
2. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
4. Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. 1984, George Orwell (4/2009)
8. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
9. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
10. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
11. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (Hugo)
12. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
13. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
14. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (4/2009)
16. House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
17. Persuasion, Jane Austen
18. Chocolate War, Robert Cormier
19. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
20. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
21. Underworld, Don DeLillo
22. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
23. Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
24. Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham
25. Bless the Beasts and Children, Glendon Swarthout
26. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd (4/2009)
27. While I Was Gone, Sue Miller
28. The Best Short Stories, O. Henry
29. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
30. The Radetsky March, Joseph Roth
31. Digging to America, Anne Tyler
32. Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
33. The Stupidest Angel, Christopher Moore
34. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
35. The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Nebula Nominee)
36. The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer
37. The Good Terrorist, Doris Lessing
38. Memoirs of a Good Daughter, Simone DeBeauvoir
39. Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
40. The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
41. Rainbow's End, Vernor Vinge (Hugo)
42. A Fable, William Faulkner (Pulitzer)
43. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (Pulitzer)
44. American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
45. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke (Hugo) (6/3/2009)
46. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
47. Tuesday with Morie, Mitch Albom
48. The Snow Queen, Joan D. Vinge (Hugo)
49. The Plague, Albert Camus
50. Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathaniel West
51. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
52. Charming Billy, Alice McDermott
53. Cauldron, Jack McDevitt (Nebula Nominee)
54. Farming the Bones, Edwidge Danticat
55. The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (Nebula)
56. Ulysses, James Joyce
57. Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima
58. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold (Nebula)
59. The Known World, Edward P. Jones
60. Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
61. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
62. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
63. My Antonia, Willa Cather
64. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
65. The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende
66. Herzog, Saul Bellow
67. The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever (Pulitzer)
68. The Boat, Nam Le
69. The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty (Pulitzer)
70. Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
71. Hounds of Baskerville, Arthur Conan Doyle (6/25/2009)
72. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
73. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
74. Possession, A.S. Byatt
75. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
76. Housekeeping, Marilyn Robinson
77. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
78. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami
79. Runaway, Alice Munro
80. In America, Susan Sontag
81. The Stories of John Cheever
82. God’s War, Christopher Tyerman
83. Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
84. A Model World, Michael Chabon
85. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
86. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos
87. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
88. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
89. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
90. The Book Borrower, Alice Mattison
91. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
92. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
93. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
94. Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
95. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
96. Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier
97. March, Geraldine Brooks
98. The Second Sex, Simone DeBeauvoir
99. Gilead, Marilyn Robinson
100. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Total: 05/100
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