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 (just the) "Prose and Poetry" Entries 400TH REJECTION CONTEST (2008 Submission Log Weeks 25-27) July 4, 2008 (scroll down for the contest) Submissions 530-544 No brain power for links, maybe I'll add 'em later. Weird Tales (9th) The Colbert Report (1st) Drawn & Quarterly (2nd) The Believer (1st-5th) Abberrant Dreams (1st) Writers of the Future (20th!) ChiZine (7th) Supergrrrl Adventure Comics (1st) Asheville Film Festival (1st) Light (5th-7th) Rejections 393-397 F&SF Haiku Contest (date not available) The Believer (8 days on three poems) Asimov's (15 days) Hold Request From Fantasy, 18 days. Here's hoping. Acceptance 74, Tentative Acceptance 75 Sale of "Dry Frugal with Death Rays" to Futurismic, 42 days. Tentative acceptance from Supergrrrl Adventure Comics (1 day) pending a rewrite. This is a new, nonpaying zine from Rachel Edidin and Jen Vaughn. Of Interest Yes, I entered the McCain greenscreen challenge thing. Don't know what I was thinking other than I needed to finish a project I could actually finish. A couple of bad PCS weeks, last month. Completely flaked on catching the F&SF issue announcing the winners of the haiku contest. Mine was an obvious joke anyway; glad it only had an audience of one. Wow, 20th sub to Writers of the Future. It's what I was hoping to submit the week I got in the accident, so I _think_ it's finally submission ready, six months later. Brain injury aside, this story had more technical challenges than anything I've ever written, and it's been brewing since April '05 when I pitched it to a friend as a comic. Guess my 400th rejection, win a prize! Hey, time sure flies. First (up to) THREE PEOPLE to correctly guess where my 400th rejection will come from wins:
Currently at Rejection #397. Current outstanding subs:
And, okay. If all of the above end up as acceptances, and my 400th sub has yet to even be submitted, I will be so happy that once I recover from the shock, I'll do my best to give everyone who enters a prize of some sort or another.
 SALE! - "Dry Frugal with Death Rays" to Futurismic July 3, 2008 "Dry Frugal" is an oddball science fiction story, about 6500 words. Think "The Office" meets Catch-22 meets Alex as a poor substitute for Vonnegut (so lower those expectations, cool?). Futurismic is a popular futurism blog which publishes science/tech articles and tidbits, plus monthly fiction of the near-future and/or gonzo-satirical variety. This was my third sub to them. I'll talk more about the story when it appears online, possibly as early as next month. But I'm extra proud, for two reasons. First, it's one of my rare successes with humor. Most of what I've been placing are barely-successful attempts at "more serious" things I have less interest in. But as I'm developing my "voice," stories like this one--which tries to touch on the human condition in sometimes light-hearted, sometimes dark-hearted ways--are the sweet spot. The more stories like this one I place, the better I feel that my published work is representing me properly, even at this early stage of my fumbling through the writing jungles. And then there's the length. A problem when sending my Clarion application back in January 2006 was how far back in my repertoire I had to go to find a story that was between "ten and twenty-five pages." I tended to write flash fiction (too short) and novelettes (too long). I was lucky what I found to send in even qualified as stories. I've been working on normal-length stories since, and I'd view a few of them as among my best work to date. This is the first of them to find a home. Besides my novelette "Outgoing," this is my longest story sale by half. Next longest, at 2800 words, was my most recent sale "Harp" a month or so ago. Here's hoping good news comes in threes. Or tens. Tens work, too.
WisCon 2008: Best Mistake Evar! May 31, 2008 So WisCon was probably a mistake, healthwise. I was beat even before my reading Friday night, and compromised my immune system so quickly and thoroughly that I caught a bug probably from the first hands I  The Clarion 2006 partial reunion. Photo courtesy of Vince, who has a larger version (and his own blog about WisCon) here  Alex does his, um, reading? as JoSelle looks on in horror.  Is Will testing the camera? Or is the camera testing Will?  This made me sad. And I don't think I made a fool of myself too often throughout the rest of the con, though I don't think I've ever felt so self-conscious as I debated with each interaction: do I bring up the brain injury and risk looking like a sympathy whore or do I let this person walk away assuming I'm just a flaky dumbass? Tried both. Wasn't happy with either. Gonna sign me up for next year and see what WisCon's like coherent. And it'd be nice to actually go to more panels, readings, and parties than I reluctantly miss out on. *Watched Recount. Brilliant performances, except for the cringeworthy Gore and Bush impersonators. Overall, allowed me to relive that unique visceral disheartenment of 2000. So... thanks, HBO!
SALE! - "Harp" to Cabinet des Fees May 24, 2008 Real quick: checked email from WisCon this morning with the happy news that Cabinet des Fées wants my story "Harp" for their 2009 volume, due out October or November of next year. They put out such a beautiful book. So pleased I get to be a part of it.
Reading at WisCon 5.23.08 May 16, 2008 I'll be attending and reading at WisCon, next Friday night at 11:45PM, with my Clarion bud Will Alexander, as well as authors-I-look-forward-to-meeting JoSelle Vanderhooft and Ben Burgis. Can't promise sparks, but let's not forget what happened last time Will and I got together. (Hint: our lovechild is now grown up and directing Punisher sequels). I didn't ask to be on any panels this time around on account of the PCS, but there's a number of firsts here for me:
Look forward to seeing a few old friends and many new ones. Old photo, but I'll bring it out again for lack of anything both shaved and recent:  I'll likely be wearing a bandana most days. And just in case there's more than one intentionally bald individual at WisCon, go ahead and assume that I am all of them. EDIT: The posted schedule says 11:45PM, not midnight, so there you go.
Eras End March 18, 2008 Speculations/The Rumor Mill 1995-2008 I was still in college, didn't know a thing but thought I knew everything when I started my Speculations subscription with the print issues. Told me of Clarion, among other things. The forum/community introduced me to some of my first writer-friends. I let my subscription to the magazine lapse a few years after they stopped publishing articles (leaving only the market reports) and the signal-to-noise ratio of the forum wasn't what it used to be, but this was my introduction to the world of science fiction writing. I was so lucky to have it as a guide. Any mistakes I failed to make, I owe to Kent Brewster & co. Thank you. Gary Gygax 1938-2008 If some of my first exposures to fantastic fiction hadn't been participatory--creating characters for Dungeons & Dragons adventures--I don't know that I ever would have thought to write the stuff. For a long time my biggest sale was an AD&D game supplement in Dragon Magazine. Why hasn't anyone ported the old Strategic Simulations (SSI?) games to the Palm platform? Seems ideal, and I doubt my PDA will crap out of me just before I save game like my Commodore 64 did all. the. time. Focus, Alex. I've held on to more D&D books than I will ever possibly use. Thank you. Arthur C Clarke 1917-2008 In high school, I got into science fiction through the short stories. There was Vonnegut. There was Bradbury. And there was Clarke. Thank you. Eras end.
Incremental Soldiering March 9, 2008 Obligatory head injury tag. My friend Steve turned me on to Jimmy Amadie, a jazz pianist with tendinitis and nerve damage so severe that he's "unable to play for more than five or six minutes at a time, on a piano whose keys are specially weighted to cushion his touch" (from a review of Amadie's Savoring Every Note). It'll take two years of working in these increments before he'll compose, record, and finish his album. With considerably less talent and with large concentrations of caffeine, I can manufacture (almost consistently) a similarly short period of relative lucidity/productivity each day, so I can steal back my productivity from the twin gods of STFU and Convalesce. This is how I've technically written something every day this year with unbelievably little to show for it. This is because the same rules apply as before the head injury: some writing days are (relative) winners, most aren't. It's just that now the writing windows are smaller and foggier. I'm never near my peak performance. And for the most part, words and thoughts still just won't do what I want them to do. Stupid words and thoughts. Would I be the first to write with colors? Not entirely convinced these last ten (!) weeks wouldn't have been just as well served had I purchased a video game console in December, but I have trouble seeing the difference between that and giving up. I owe too much of my sanity and identity to reading and writing. And if I understand correctly (and ha! that's unlikely these days), the athlete who fully rests after an injury comes back nowhere nearly as strong as the one who works at rehabilitation, pushes herself, and exercises those stubborn muscles. Which brings up the big assumption: that I'll come back from this. Except for those caffeine-grabbed moments (which hell can't be good for me in the long run), my ability to think clearly is worse even than it was last month. Now, that could be a perceptual issue; of course normal seems worse compared to the caffeine high. But even if I'm not getting worse, it's become pretty hard to believe I'm still getting better. Even assuming I could be good at something else... it's only because I've put nine years into it that I'm on cusp of being good at writing. My father died at 53 (and his father at 52), so that doesn't give me a lot of time to practice a second calling. On the other hand? If I'm ten years away from making headway on my next big pursuit? I should probably get started on that ASAP, huh?
"Contents" in The Rambler (out now) March 4, 2008  My flash fiction (non-genre) piece "Contents" appears in the March-April 2008 issue of the literary magazine The Rambler, and I've just seen the first copies at Weaver Street Market, the local food co-op. "Contents" appears on page 48, but, ironically enough, not in the issue's table of contents. Available in many independent bookshops, campus bookstores, and Barnes & Noble chains. Where to Buy.
ABNA: Pinocchio Punched in That Dirty Liar Nose of His February 20, 2008  As suspected, my little novelette that could did not make it to the finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award thing. But I'm quite pleased with how well it did. Instead of collecting digital dust on my hard drive for the last few months (setting it aside while I worked on other stuff, so I could come back to it fresh for revisions), it collected a quite generous Publishers Weekly review.And I think the good the PW review will do in my cover letter outweighs the negative of telling agents or editors that they aren't the first place I've sent a work. Besides, that damage is pretty much already done with the title of the work so easily available online (try "Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award" in Google; I'm like number 4, after Amazon, Penguin, and The New York Times. Had no idea my blog was that popular, though I don't suspect that search placement'll last as they gear up the publicity machine/the contest reaches its climax, and as I start shutting up about it). I knew that'd be a risk, and that's why it's the only unsold work (I think) I've ever named in my Submission Log. Congrats and good luck to the three finalists I kinda know: online friends Ruth Nestvold and Tom Pendergrass, and fellow Carrborian (Carrboro-ite? Carrborean?) Erica Eisdorfer. Of course I'm incredibly grateful to everyone thoughtful enough to give the excerpt a read and/or to write up comments (though I'm quite glad I erred on the side of minimal publicity this time and didn't beg friends and family for reviews or anything, thus saving most of my Annoying Publicity Tokens for another day/project). You'll hear about Pinocchio again, and more annoyingly, when I place it with a publisher. Hmm. Carrborean, definitely. Carr-BOAR-ee-uhn. It ain't no "Cimmeria, Land of Darkness and the Night," but Alexander the Carrborean coulda been one of Robert E Howard's unpublished tales, dontcha think?
Balcony Scream from Romeo and Julienned Brainstuff February 15, 2008 In my ongoing hunt for bitty projects I can actually work on while still dealing with my head injury (focus problems, mostly), I sent this little piece of reanimated iambic pentameter to Zombie Idol yesterday. Didn't make the cut, so here's the only other thing I can think of doing with it... Balcony Scream from Romeo and Julienned Brainstuff by Wild Bill Shakespeare and Alex Wilson (glorified typist) But crunch! What scent through yonder cranium wafts? It is fresh meat! And Juliet, the meatbox! Arise, ye mostly dead, and cleave the skull Whose cup o'erflows with that electric food Which sparks our own undeadly minds to move. O be not gentle with that pretty flesh Or vestal liver tempting freshly greens Away from grayer matters. Spit it out! We seek the brainstuff! O, the one true meat! O, all she's ever known must wet our teeth! She screams, her tongue insipid and distracting. (I'll yet bite, though tongue's a waste of gnashing.) FWIW, they're still looking for entries for "round two." Alls you do is insert a zombie into a good text and try and make it gooder.
ABNA: Love Theme from Pinocchio is Punching You (MP3) January 31, 2008
Am I the only person who thinks every book should have a theme song? I've almost changed my own mind after hearing the results of this one. Love Theme from Pinocchio is Punching You MP3. Other formats (Ogg Vorbis, AAC) here. (It so wants to be "You are the last dragon/you possess the power of the glow..." Let's not let the novelette get any further or else I'll be forced to create a music video.)Okay, last blog about Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for a while, likely until ABNA announces the next cut. Obligatory links to Pinocchio is Punching You (free excerpt at Amazon) and all my PIPY/ABNA journal entries.
ABNA: Publishers Weekly Reviews Pinocchio is Punching You January 24, 2008 "In this funny sendup of the classic fairy tale, Pinocchio, having been made a boy, wants one more thing: to be made a ninja. Pinocchio hangs out at the mall, where a bully convinces him that ninja mastery can be had-at a price. The story sharply outlines the oddity of pre-pubescent boys' fixations (ninjas, zombies, petty theft and bra straps), and its playful blend of realism and fantasy is just right. The author has a sharp ear for dialogue and for the unusual highways and byways that adolescent conversations take. It's a clever idea executed ably; lots of laugh-out-loud moments and off-beat humor pepper this fun, inventive romp." --Publishers Weekly Pinocchio is Punching You! Cool, I might be able to sell this. (The above review is based on the entire novelette, not just the posted excerpt.)
Three Things I Woulda Done Differently... January 23, 2008 ...had I known I'd still be recovering from this head injury a month later.
(There are times when I feel like I'm myself again, and I feel like my mind should be able to do everything it used to do... but I'm quickly proven wrong, and I think that's the most frustrating thing. Recovery is gradual, but it's happening. Most importantly: focus is starting to improve. I'm able to read up to a page at a time before--usually--needing to start over. And if I can write an entire story in under 300 words, I can often keep all the threads in my head at one time. So... outlining and writing up pitches, mostly. A journal entry like this one will now take me less than half an hour, and I'll catch more typos now. So watch out, world! Alex'll be back in the game before you ooooh look a shiny penny!)
ABNA: Carolina Semi-Finalists Unite! January 22, 2008 (Press Release by entrant Matt Musson. Thanks, Matt! And congrats to friend and fellow entrant Mike Jasper, whose novel The Wannoshay Cycle comes out today!)Several Carolina authors have been chosen among the contestants moving on to the semi-final round for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Amazon.com's first writing competition in search of the next great novel. Each semi-finalist has a dedicated web page for their submission on Amazon.com, where customers can now download a 5000 word excerpt of the entry to rate and review. The Carolina semi-finalists are: Mike Jasper of Wake Forest Alex Wilson of Carrboro Erica Eisdorfer of Carrboro Betty Cloer Wallace of Asheville Lockie Hunter of Asheville Douglas A. Sanburn of Asheville Matt Musson of Charlotte K.F. Jones of Charlotte Mai Christy Thao of Charlotte Lena Joy Rose of Matthews Nicole R. Dickson of Greensboro Lou Dischler of Spartanburg, SC Katherine Guckenberger of Charleston, SC Susan Sloate of Mt. Pleasant, SC These Carolina writers are hoping to survive to the next round when the 100 Top Semi-Finalists will be chosen from the regular semi-finalists. The top 100 will be selected by Penguin Publishing taking into consideration Publishers Weekly's ratings of the author’s works along with customer evalutions and ratings of their excerpts posted online. Additionally, customers who rate and review at least 25 semi-finalist excerpts will be entered in the ABNA Customer Review Contest for the chance to win an Amazon Kindle. The three Customer Review Contest winners will each receive an Amazon Kindle, a $2,000 Amazon gift certificate and a Hewlett-Packard. From these top 100 Semi-Finalists – 10 finalists will be selected by Penguin. Excerpts from the 10 finalists will be posted online and Amazon.Com customers will vote to select the Grand Prize winner who will receive a publishing contract and a $25,000 royalty advance.
Continue reading "ABNA: Carolina Semi-Finalists Unite!" Filed Under: ABNA, Journal, Peers & Peerless, Prose and Poetry Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award: Semifinalist January 18, 2008 My novelette Pinocchio is Punching You is a current semifinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which puts it in the top 17% or so, and in the running for the next step: Top 100, to be chosen about four weeks from now.You can read and review the first 5,000 words of Pinocchio, and your comments/rating (along with a to-be-posted, likely-weighted review from Publisher's Weekly!) will determine whether it makes it any further in the contest. ABNA is offering some reviewer incentives, and has posted general guidelines about "what makes a good review." To these I'll just add: Don't assume negative reviews are all from shills for other entrants who want their competition to look bad, nor that all positive reviews were written by members of the author's cult. Both will happen, neither are worth anybody's time. Let Amazon sort it out. Much obliged for any reading and/or reviewing you feel like doing, and I think these fine friends o'mine would be, too: Ruth Nestvold, Michael Jasper, Bradley P Beaulieu, Tom Pendergrass, and Laurel Amberdine (whose note on a forum tipped me off to the contest in the first place). 
SALE! "Contents" to The Rambler January 11, 2008 "Contents" is a 500-word non-genre story based on a photograph published in a previous issue. It'll will run in the March/April 2008 "Your Stories" section of The Rambler. It's a tiny thing (the story), but The Rambler just might have the largest news stand circulation of any periodical I've appeared in to date. (Locally: Weaver Street Market, Internationalist Books, McIntyre's, the Regulator, and Quail Ridge Books, for starters. Nationally: many Barnes & Nobles and university bookstores) Followed only 4 rejections into the new year, which is a great start to 2008!
2007 Submission Log: Week 52! The Year is Dead! Long Live the Year! January 10, 2008 Submissions 469-475 Murky Depths (my 3rd and 4th subs there) SFReader.com Contest (2nd) Mineshaft (1-3rd) Writers of the Future (18th, yes, 18th) Rejection 334 Weird Tales (my 6th) Of Interest: I put out 148* submissions in 2007, a personal record but nothing to be admired. As I talked about here, it's been more an act of desperation than one of dedication. Glad to have gotten through it with what little progress I was able to make. Feels unreal to still be talking about 2007, when the whole year is (literally) fuzzy in my mind. I'm already into the first submissions, rejections and acceptance (I'll share tomorrow) of 2008, and I'm dizzy just writing what I've written so far for this entry (recovering slowly, but recovering; again, more later). I spent about three hours trying to focus on an interview questions yesterday for the Shimmer story and almost gave up. But then I thought: the first interviews I ever read were with 80s musicians coked out of their skulls; how unintelligible could I possibly be? Mineshaft's in Durham! How come nobody told me? Due to a clerical error on my part, my Writers of the Future entry count is up by two this quarter instead of one. The entry went MIA when I switched tracking methods a few years back, and I was all "this is my sixth or seventh" entry and I went ahead and marked it as a sixth. So my new tally.... Pending: 1 Nonplacers: 7 Honorable Quarterfinalists: 8 Semifinalists: 2 Finalists: 0 Superfinalists: 0 What's a superfinalist? How the hell should I know, with crappy numbers like these? In the interesting-to-nobody-else-but-me department, this does mean I've entered an average of twice per year for nine years. That's once a year at first, eventually upping to quarterly as my eligible days start to number. I have some hopes for 2008, the year my writing/submitting life turns ten (November) and my submission count will likely hit 500. Not a lot of hopes. But some. Don't ask me how long it took to write this. Gonna go lie down now. * Corrected from 147. Two lines in my tracking file got combined. I know nobody cares but me, but if it's worth tracking, it's worth tracking correctly.
OUTGOING at Fictionwise, Kindle, and AnthologyBuilder January 2, 2008  My sf/fantasy novelette "Outgoing" (Preview)--which originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2007--is suddenly available all over the place: Nebula Awards Website - (SFWA Members Only) "Outgoing" has been recommended for a Nebula Award! SFWA people can find the full text at the NAR site (or email me) through the end of the month. I believe it has until January 31 to gather enough recommendations from active members to make the preliminary ballot for next year. Fictionwise - Multiple  ebook formats for a variety of electronic readers (PDF, Palm, Sony eBook, etc.) for 99 cents.Amazon Kindle - DRMed sadly, but availabe on the Kindle "Whispernet" for 99 cents. (Please feel free to rate/review it if you read it in Asimov's.) AnthologyBuilder - Custom-assembled, print-on-demand anthologies starting at $14.95. Fill the book up with a variety of available texts, up to 350 pages total. ("Outgoing" takes up 54 pages). Yes, I intend to be a bit aggressive about making sure my previously published material is available. And I'm pretty excited about the AnthologyBuilder project, enough so that I supplied a few of the initial cover designs. Note to interested parties: wonderful-but-closed bookseller Clarkesworld Books has reopened its online store through January 12, but it looks like they've sold out of the Feb 2007 Asimov's (I might have purchased the last happy few). If anybody steps up to more-permanantly fill that CB void, I'd love to hear about it.
SALE - "Spoils of Springfield" to Shimmer December 21, 2007 It's a Christmas miracle! Very happy about this. Shimmer's one of my favorite SF publications these days, if this post (LJ mirror) didn't already make that clear (and, incidentally, they're running their own subscription drive through January 10).  No, Loki, we don't have to do something every time someone holds a subscription drive. 
That's right. Back to bed. "Spoils" is another pre-Clarion humor piece. With zombies. Or class warfare. Or my attempt to write a manga fight sequence as prose. Something. More about it later; I wanna save some stuff for the "reader bonus content" Shimmer runs for each issue.
Murky Depths #2 Now Available December 20, 2007  My story-poem "Church of Saturn" is in the current issue of Murky Depths, a quarterly stories-comics-poetry anthology from across the pond. "Church of Saturn" is a science fiction update of probably the oldest missionary joke in the world, told in the twelve-line structure of "Stock Car Relativity" from Inconsequential Art #1. The issue (MD #2) also includes work by writer-editors Jason Sizemore (of Apex) and Katherine Patterson (of AlienSkin), among other recognizable names. MD's ("Graphically Dark Speculative Fiction") art and text combo makes for a beautiful, glossy book (this in spite of the occassional 4+ fonts per page, heh) packed with stories. And shipping from Great Britain to North Carolina is surprisingly fast. Wish all British publications were this easy to order.
"Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" free at ChiZine October 9, 2007 My story "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" is up at ChiZine/Chiaroscuro. As a comedy piece, it should be a bit more amusing than the story behind it, below: I don't give a lot of thought to genre when I'm writing. Or if I do, it's more comedy vs drama rather than science fiction vs mystery vs non-genre or anything. There've been times I've written an entire story specifically for a market only to discover that, in the process of turning an idea into what I think is a workable story, I'd taken out the very element that would have made it appropriate for that particular market (no speculative element for an SF publication, no pirates for a pirate anthology). Even after years of writing and reading genre fiction, I spent the first half of Clarion failing to figure out the expectations of genre, and the second half failing to figure out my expectations of genre. I've never made it any further than the addage: good stories are good stories. So I've come to haphazardly put works into categories only after the fact, which probably contributes to my difficulty in placing my favorite work, and is probably why regular readers of non-genre fiction enjoyed "Outgoing" so much more than regular readers of science fiction or fantasy did (and why it's no great gamble to recommend "Shotting Dogs" to people who don't typically like horror; it's the horror fans who'll be wondering what the hell they're reading...). "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" was a ten-minute play I submitted in 2005 to the Actor's Theatre of Louisville's National Ten Minute Play competition, which I try to enter every year. It didn't place, but this summer I dug it up because a filmmaker friend was looking for pieces we could shoot in a weekend. I realized there were still things I liked about it. So I'd meant to send it to another short play competition, but misread a deadline as "postmarked by" instead of "received by" because I'm silly like that. At the same time, I was trying to come up with a story for James Van Pelt's Hardboiled Horror, a crime-horror crossgenre anthology. It occurred to me (two years after I wrote it, of course) that "Shooting Dogs" had elements of both crime and horror, but I'd never thought of it as anything other than a comedy. So I kept most of the dialogue, and filled in some gaps, completely Hemingwaying it at times with... "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." He stood. His eyeballs itched. "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." ...an example which thankfully didn't make it into the submitted draft. So I felt like a hack. But prose can take many forms, and some stories are all about the dialogue. Why try to make "Shooting Dogs" something that it's not? I finished the prose version of the story at the end of June, plenty of time before the anthology deadline, which meant plenty of time to sit on it, work on other things, and come back to it with fresh eyes (which might mean a completely different thing in horror than it does in writing in general; I'll have to be careful). But the ChiZine/Chiaroscuro short fiction contest closed in a few days, so I figured why not let it sit in their slush pile instead of on my hard drive? And I forgot about it, except to wince when the Michael Vick/dogfighting allegations were dominating the news in the months between the ChiZine deadline closing and the announcement of the winners. I thought: okay, there goes the chance in hell I had of placing in the contest, and I'll need to change the title (which is figurative--no dogs even appear in the story) before I send it out to Hardboiled. But I never got the chance. It won third place in the contest and became my second SFWA-qualifying sale. And, for what it's worth, I offered it up to Mr. Van Pelt as a reprint, but it wasn't a good fit for the anthology in the first place, alas. Ah well. I've got nothing to complain about, and clearly I've demonstrated that I'm not the best judge for where mys tuff belongs. Now of course, I'm wondering whether we can really film it on a weekend...
Trinoc*coN 2007 Schedule, What I Look Like Now August 1, 2007
I am soooo outclassed. (If this gets changed between now and Friday, I'll add an "Updated" to the header. Otherwise, look for last-minute tweaks near the registration desk. Visit the Trinoc-coN website for more info.) If you're in Raleigh, NC this weekend and would like to say hello, here's what I look like this morning, according to the self-timer on my camera:  But I might be wearing a hat this weekend. My hair is at that length where it'll stick straight up if I don't do anything, it'll look like a combover if I push it forward, and it requires a lot of "product" to keep back like this. (Though, looking at this pic, I should forget about figuring out what to do with hair now that I have it; I need to work on my smile.) Edit: Okay, yeah. It turns out I'm wearing the same sleeveless shirt that I wore in my intentionally bald photo from the first time I shaved my head in '04. It's comfy.
SALE/3rd Place Win in the 13th ChiZine Story Contest July 27, 2007 My story "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit"* will be published in ChiZine #34 later this year, having won 3rd place in the latest Chiaroscuro/Leisure Short Story Contest. Which means my second SFWA-qualifying sale arrives almost 14 months and over 150 submissions after my first one. Phew. It felt like even longer. (*For what it's worth, the title is quite abstract. No animals appear--much less are shot for any reason--in this piece.)
The SFWA Walk of Shame July 2, 2007 I debated joining the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America so early. With only one SFWA-eligible novelette sale, I could only join as a non-voting, non-nominating Associate member at this point. But I've been incorrectly confident for over a year now that my next two eligible sales were imminent, and those would allow me to become a full-fledge Active Member. So I figured I'd join in January and by the end of 2007 I'd renew as an Active after a hard-fought battle with the slushpile. But it wasn't to be! Yes, I joined. But my pro-rated membership was for only six months. All SFWA memberships are renewed mid-year. But that did not deter me; no, it did not. I signed up anyway! Because surely I could make two little SFWA-eligible sales in six whole months! I may not dedicate _all_ my writing time to genre stories, nor do I submit exclusively to SFWA-eligible markets, but what does that matter? I'm on the cusp of a career! But here we are, time to renew, and in order to do so I still have to check that Associate box. I feel like such a poseur. And I'm still wearing last night's clothes. But that's just how I roll.
Asimov's Alternate Cover January 5, 2007 My friend Ted Hobgood has found an alternate cover to the Febuary 2007 issue of Asimov's! Previous Hobgood gems immortalizing me can be found here and here. Thanks, man!
Outgoing in Asimov's Feb 07 - Out Now! January 4, 2007
NaNoWriMo Day 2 November 2, 2006 This is going to sound a bit weird, but I actually finished a draft of my novel yesterday at the 2K mark. See, this NaNoWriMo thing is a stretch enough for me as it is--writing this fast, choosing quantity over quality, etc... So the big thing I'm taking from my normal short fiction writing routine is my process of going from outline to final draft. It might be a mistake, but I know what I need to finish something I start. I begin with an outline. Then I start putting in story beats and sometimes even moments I might want in each section (this is fleshing out the outline). This would be like a negative second (-2nd) draft. I had something between outline and -2nd by Tuesday night. Then I'll put all that together and flesh it out a bit. Like I'm turning this into a treatment/summary. For a short story of 5-14,000 words, this draft (we'll call it negative first or -1st draft) would be between 500-1000 words. For a novel, this is apparently about 2K and that's what I finished yesterday. Now I'm working toward a Zeroth (0th) draft by the end of the month. I call it 0th draft, because even after outlines my stories usually don't really start taking shape until I start the revision process. My first draft takes a while, but I think it's worth it in the end. Will my zeroth draft get to 50,000 words? I don't know, but the first chapter, which I wrote today, comes to about 2K words. I anticipate about ten chapters. But my goal is to finish a real draft of a novel this month, which I will view as my 0th draft. "Winning NaNoWriMo" is nice where it overlaps with my goal, but I'm perfectly willing to throw out what doesn't work for me.
So Put That In Your Talent Pipe And Smoke It October 26, 2006 From BusinessWeek: A Boot Camp For Budding Virtuosos by Burt Helm The Meadowmount School of Music, with alums like Itzhak Perlman, proves that hard work can be more important than raw talent... ...The results were clear-cut, with little room for any sort of inscrutable God-given talent. The elite musicians had simply practiced far more than the others. "That's been replicated for all sorts of things -- chess players and athletes, dart players," says Ericsson. "The only striking difference between experts and amateurs is in this capability to deliberately practice." The group even determined the number of hours musicians must play to compete at the highest professional level -- about 10,000, the equivalent of practicing four hours a day, every day, for almost seven years.
October Gameplan October 7, 2006 (Last entry of the day. Promise.) I've got a surprisingly strong start to the last quarter of the year. At 294 submissions, I only need to send out two per month and I'll hit my 300th by December 31. For October, I have only a few deadlines I want to make: The National Ten-Minute Play Contest and a manga-proposal collaboration. Otherwise, the focus is on outlining and researching for my first novel. I've got a lot I still need to figure out (including whether this is the book I want to be working on right now) but if I can get to a good place by the end of the month, I plan to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, meaning I'm going to try to shoot through the first, crappy draft of this thing by November 30. A handful of less-epic goals, too: get ahead with Telltale, some rewrites and subs, and some work on Guidevines and Carrboro Hill, both of which I've been neglecting since I went to Clarion.
Clarion Epilogue: Revisionist His Story September 1, 2006 On a generous day, Swanwick might say the above title is a "nice try." So I'm doing an overhaulish revision on another one of my Clarion stories. It's one of the pieces Michael Swanwick had major issues with, and he was kind enough to do line edits on it anyway. Since my target market for the story is probably Analog, Swanwick's critique was proabably the single-most-valuable marked-up manuscript I would take home with me. So why I sent it home via UPS rather than tape it to my chest for the flight home is a mystery. Okay, it's because I'm hairy and because it would hurt and because today I'm prone to hyperbole, but still.
Continue reading "Clarion Epilogue: Revisionist His Story" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, Prose and Poetry Clarion Epilogue: The Business of Writing August 22, 2006 Update: I still have at least three more of these I want to write (Craft, Critiquing Process, People, plus the Final Photo Dump), and then I'll get started on the podcast. Feeling much better (though my cough still lingers enough that spoken word narration for Telltale is impossible), and my new writing seems to suck slightly less than it did over the last eight weeks, though it's a painful process to create anything. Soldiering through. Saying that I'm self-taught in anything is one of those backhanded brags. I'm certainly proud of the things I picked up on my own, and the cheapskate in me is almost proud that I could spend 100 hours in trial-and-error situations to avoid spending five dollars for instant access to the same knowledge.
But the more significant problems with being self-taught in anything are that (a) it might have taken me half a decade to figure out what I could have picked up in an afternoon lecture, and (b) there are always holes in my knowledge or skillset, sporadically marring what should be an expertise after so long a practice. And filling in those holes requires better listening skills than I've ever had.
Continue reading "Clarion Epilogue: The Business of Writing" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, Prose and Poetry Clarion Week 6: Always Bet on Black (in Mafia)! August 9, 2006 Long entry, but if you want to skip the boring parts there are more, higher-res Clarion Mafia photos here. The last Friday of Clarion was a pretty good day. I made some radical eating changes (giving up cough drops completely, giving up eating almost nothing but toast even though my stomach had trouble handling anything else, switching to bottled water exclusively for the last 36-hours) and by the afternoon I was feeling better than I had in weeks. More about health in a later entry, but the important thing is that in spite of health issues, I never missed a critique session and I read and critiqued every story at Clarion, even the ones I could have taken a free "pass" on. I don't have the sheet handy, but I believe that's 120 stories critiqued or 20 per week. 
Continue reading "Clarion Week 6: Always Bet on Black (in Mafia)!" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, Pretty Pictures, Prose and Poetry Clarion Week 6: Kelly Link's The Cannon August 3, 2006
Kelly suggested a few of her pieces, and, time-wise, the only one I'd be able to read in its entirety was "The Cannon" from Magic for Beginners. I read it for the first time an hour or so before the reading, and, because the piece is structured as a series of questions and answers, I asked fellow thespian-turned-Clarionite Will Alexander to read the questions. (more after the jump)
Continue reading "Clarion Week 6: Kelly Link's The Cannon" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, News, Pretty Pictures, Prose and Poetry Clarion Week 6: Our Final Clarion Story August 2, 2006 When Clarion Director Liz Zernechel said five weeks ago how she and a fellow student did a collaboration when she was a Clarion student, I thought: well, bully for you, but it'll be a cold day in hell... and then I forgot all about it because Superman Returns was starting. Little did I know... Last week my suitemate Felice (as opposed to my sweetmate Jen) and I decided to give it a shot for a jointly final, Clarion Week 6 story. When it comes to habits, I can't imagine a more opposite set of writing partners:
So you can see why we thought this was a good idea. The only way we could be have more opposite writing habits would be if one of us never actually finished a story. But we both do, and both of our routines produce stories at about the same intervals (while we're in East Lansing, at least). It's obvious that we had a collaboration learning curve when our compromise on when-to-write was: morning, afternoon, and night. We came up with a piece with a very different scope from anything we've seen at Clarion so far (but within the SF tradition), and it's something well outside both of our comfort ranges. Yay for week 6 experimentation? Very fried, very tired, with a very early draft turned in right as the class started this morning. We have at least one scene each where the other person has barely skimmed it. Butit was a fun trip and we accomplished our main goal with the story: we're still friends. Or we will be after we've both taken some naps.
Clarion Week 3: Proof of Asimov's July 9, 2006 The galleys/proofs for my novelette "Outgoing" arrived yesterday (Jen forwarded them to me, along with some organic fruit leather). After a week of dissecting stories with Michael Swanwick, I was worried that I would use that recently acquired perspective to hate every word, that I would actually be embarassed at what I wrote about nine months ago (and revised more recently) even as it neared publication. I was very pleased to read it over again and find that overall I'm still happy with it. I had a few tiny changes ("replace poetry with poems," etc.). But I probably would have been okay if it went to press as is/was. And the most exciting news with the proof: on the top of every other page it says "February 2007." Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a publication date. Also got Telltale contributor payments figured out, statements sent. I went on a walk yesterday to find a local Kinko's-type place to print some related PDFs and get an extra photocopy of my proof, but all the locally owned shops were closed. So Kinko's it was. Also stopped at a local comic shop to pick up the Sergio Aragones issue of Solo. Not his best work, but still one of my favorite single issues of the year. I realized this weekend that I've now made a post every day since I got to Clarion. That was never my intention, even though I do get some processing benefit out of it. But I bring this up now because I'm not going to post just to post. If I miss a day it's not necessarily because I'm blog-slacking or overworked in other areas; it's just because I didn't think I had something particularly interesting to say just then. Oh and the general malaise I felt last Wednesday lasted about a day. I'm not loving my current story, but I'm not very down about it. Thanks, all, for asking, for caring. This week: Nancy Kress.
Clarion Week 2: My Second Clarion Story July 2, 2006 I think in the 24 hours or so between Michael Swanwick arriving (Saturday) and Chip Delany leaving (Sunday) that the average IQ on this side of campus rose to nigh-singularity levels. Finished polishing my second Clarion story, final tally at 3500 words. That's a length I've been trying to hit over the last four months and it's only now that I finally succeeded. And the story works, I think. But I won't know for sure until Tuesday or Wednesday (I turned it in around 3PM, but a lot of other students are planning on turning in stories tonight too, I think) and I still don't have enough perspective to know its merits, or whether I'll want to turn it into a novelette by the end of the year. But I do know this one's the opposite of my first: Serious instead of humorous, poignant (hopefully) instead of cute/clever. However... What I really want to go for is is a balance of both cuteness and depth in the same story, which I think was the strength of my Asimov's sale. Most of my other stories (including all that I've written since) swing the pendulum more widely into one camp or the other, to varying degrees of success. I'm not looking for the formula that will teach me how to write a story like that every time, but I would like to give it another shot and figure out whether that's as close to my actual "voice" as an SF writer as I'm going to get at this early stage of my career, or whether it was just the appropriate voice for that particular story. I think I've finished a story outline that has that kind of potential--but that also pushes me in a new direction--and, because my second story's now done at the beginning of Week 2, I have at least ten days to work it out and still have a story done for critique during Nancy Kress's Week 3. It's breathing space, but I'm a slow writer. There are no guarantees. Back to work.
Clarion Week 1: TGIFFFFFFF June 30, 2006 Really glad it's Friday. I know I'm not young anymore. I know sleep loss is cumulative. I've been going to bed usually between 1-2AM to get my critiques done, and then waking up 5-6AM to get my writing done before breakfast. I might have been okay, but this last night might have been the deal-breaker. I can't remember the last time I was so tired. On the bright side, my second story's done. I considered turning it in now (for a Monday critique I think), but I think I'm too tired to judge it properly. And I figure it would go to the back of the queue behind those who haven't turned in their first story yet anyway. Might as well take the time to reread it when I have more time. It's about 3,000 words, which is an odd wordcount for me. It's been about three years since I wrote anything longer than 1,500 words and shorter than 7,000. 3-6,000 words has been my target wordcount for stories over the last four months, and iit looks like I'm finally getting there. Either that or this story is missing a lot of important stuff. I'll figure it out this weekend. Either way, I know I won't be able to keep up this schedule. I'm digging the morning writing, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get faster with the critiques. It's just that the the stories are long and numerous (we've got a big classs) and i'm still such a slow reader. I'm not doing as much hanging out as the rest of the group seems to, but I don't think timewise I can afford much more. We'll see. Really hoping I don't read my story (as well as this journal post!) tomorrow and think: "Are these even sentences?"
Clarion Week 1: My First Clarion Story June 27, 2006 Just finished and submitted my first Clarion story. I was close to the deadline, so I don't know whether the class will receive it today for critique for tomorrow, but I'm in no hurry. I just wanted so submit something quick so Samuel R Delany (he wants us to call him Chip, but it's Samuel R Delany!) doesn't choose one of my application stories for the class to critique. To prove what very different species my novelettes and flash fiction stories are (the only two prose lengths I've been able to write in the last three years): If I underestimate the final wordcount of my novelettes by 5,000 words or more, I overestimate the wordcount of flash fiction by half. What'd I say yesterday: 1,200 words? Yeah, it ended up at 650 words and it's still not as tight as it could be. I don't think it needs to be any longer. I'm tempted to talk about its weaknesses--the ones I know about--but for crying out loud: I just threw my classmates a softball at 650 words, which even I can read in a few minutes. How much easier do I need to make it? Heh. At least until I get the critiques, I'm going to assume that early morning writing works for me. Missed a phone call from Jen last night. Hope it's the exception, not the first of a pattern. internet went down again this morning a few minutes after I sent my story, so I'll post this later I guess. (came back up just before 8AM).
Clarion My Wayward Son 1 June 23, 2006
Featuring Clarion alumni Michael A. Burstein and Jason Erik Lundberg. Theme song available separately here. Links/shownotes after the jump.
Continue reading "Clarion My Wayward Son 1" Filed Under: Audio Projects, Clarion, Journal, News, Prose and Poetry Submission 273 May 31, 2006 My tenth fiction story to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And I just realized that five of those submissions were in the last six months. The other five were spread out over the previous seven years I've been sending my stuff out.
I Am Mike Resnick's Bitch May 25, 2006 So just before I found out how my game design will appear in the appendix to Mike Resnick's Starship: Pirate, I volunteered to do another narration for the podcast Escape Pod: Today's release of Resnick's Hugo-nominated "Down Memory Lane," free in MP3 format. My previous narration for EP ("Robots and Falling Hearts" by Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout) is also still available. Just after I finished it I figured out a way to drastically improve spoken word audio quality using my recording setup (this after 27 months of Telltale recordings, grr.). Sorry about that, but it's not something I can fix in post. Compare the audio samples from yesterday's "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (Henry David Thoreau) to the previous release: "Valley of the Spiders" (H G Wells) to hear the difference. I was pleased with the old standard of quality. I'm actually impressed by the new one. Live and learn.
Clarion Training Months 2&3 of 4 May 20, 2006 So these last two months didn't exactly go as planned. But at least coming off a rocky March (both personally and professionally), I was able to keep working through a longer-than-expected funk. So Clarion is now about a month away, and, yes, I was accepted. Now for the icky parts: my pre-Clarion goal progression of the last two months...
Continue reading "Clarion Training Months 2&3 of 4" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, Prose and Poetry Acceptance 63 - ASIMOV'S! May 12, 2006 Just sold my novelette "Outgoing" to Asimov's. This is my first SFWA-qualifying sale after seven and a half years of making a go of this. That phone call that surprised me yesterday was from Editor Sheila Williams asking for a few clarifications to my revision sent April 26th. I finished them up last night, and after a few more nerve-wracking tweaks over email today (boy, do I suck, but thankfully Ms Williams has a lot of patience), she said she'll take it. Interestingly enough, this does nothing to assuage my Clarion Intimidation.
Clarion Training Month 1 of 4 March 24, 2006 So here's my training log to help me feel more ready and worthy of going to the Clarion Writing Workshop this summer. If my sentences fail to make sense it's because I've been spending too much time on a computer to think straight. Another month before I'm likely to find out whether I'm accepted to Clarion. I note Orson Scott Card's Boot Camp for Writers is also in June and since I'm no longer running a marathon on the 11th, this would be a nice alternative if I don't get in. However, at the end of last year I applied to an eight-week online workshop taught by James Gunn, which filled up early (before they got my application), making me among first in line for the next one, starting on Monday. I think that'll be plenty of writing class for the year, even if I don't make Clarion. I did all right this first month. Addressed some concerns and validated others. I may have to adapt the "training program" for the James Gunn class, and I'll certainly have more flexibility if I don't get in, but I think these are all worthwhile goals no matter what happens in the next few months.
Continue reading "Clarion Training Month 1 of 4" Filed Under: Clarion, Journal, Prose and Poetry Clarion Training Schedule February 15, 2006 If I can train for a marathon, I can train for the Clarion Writer's Workshop, right? Okay I've got just over four months (if accepted) to get my writing habits in shape. I figure I've got three big changes I need to make between now and then to be truly effective as a writer away from home and, most importantly, to get the most out of this workshop.
February 16 - March 15
I also have an extensive reading list (this is the first year that I've already read stuff by all the author-teachers at a Clarion, but a few of the books and stories were a long time ago. Plus there are plenty of SF classics I'm embarassed to admit I haven't picked up yet), and I would like to get at least six weeks ahead with Telltale so there's no downtime there. And notes and such aren't the only part of our place that I need to unclutter. Phew. This is already looking harder than the marathon.
Guidevines Launch! February 9, 2006  'Tis launched.
Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro February 1, 2006
The Clarion Application January 28, 2006 The application for the Clarion writing workshop asks for two stories, representing what I feel are my best stor |
