Category Archives: LJ

Lightnin’ fast publishing

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Got an email from the editor of The Quiet Ward with a copy of the contract that will be snail mailing its way to me from the publisher for “The Reign of the Wintergod” as well an update on the publishing schedule. Cover art will be finalized this weekend, and the first edit is already at the typesetters.

The book is totally on track for coming out Horrorfind weekend. That’s in three weeks. Wow. Talk about hot presses!

Unexpected three-day weekend

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Think there’s a low pressure front moving through or something. Matthew woke me up this morning thrashing around in the throes of one of his migraines, and my head feels like someone’s compressing it in a vise. Although at least it’s not a super-sized, industrial vise, as these things go.

Matthew’s migraine meds are kicking in and he’s finally drifting off to sleep, but I’m not sure what analgesic to take that won’t do scary things combined with my Methotrexate, so I’m just having some coffee to let the caffeine do its brainy vascular goodness. And I’m taking a sick day.

In better news, either due to meditating on writing before bedtime, or not taking my clonazepam, or the synergistic effect of both, yesterday I finished my zero draft of the horror story I’ve been writing. 2000 more words, fork stuck in. Woo!

to william_mize for reminding me that my brain is a powerful instrument of which processes I am in control of, not the other way around.

Actually, I don’t think it’s quite at zero draft stage, but the story’s down from beginning to end, and I stamped the all important words “The End” on it. I’m going to do a few more passes over it before showing it to Matthew–after I figure out a way to get the vise constricting my head off–and then I’m tossing it up to Critters.org for the masses to pick apart. This one gets an advisory warning in front of it for gore. Surprisingly, when I’ve posted warnings like that before, it hasn’t decreased the number of crits I’ve gotten. I sometimes wonder if that sort of warning intrigues people rather than frightening them away.

Owie owie owie. My head hurts more than my arms do! But I wrote. Yep. I suffer for my art. Literally.

Stupid physiology.

Writing update: better.

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I tried doing william_mize‘s writing meditation suggestion last night to try to free up a little word count processing. It seems to have resulted in two very disparate outcomes.

1. I had a lot of really vivid, very celebrity-oriented erotic dreams. The first of which involved James Marsters as Spike–as in the guy who was getting all hot and sweaty with me was a blond vampire with amazing cheekbones and not an actor (with amazing cheekbones) playing a blond vampire. No complaints there! That was all dreamscapey goodness. But then it segued into a shower scene where Matthew and I were sharing a shower stall with Will Smith–a very tall, and dressed in black Spandex Will Smith. And that was a bit strange as while I like Will Smith as an actor, he doesn’t twang my hubba-hubba buttons. And he was showering in spandex, which struck even my dream self as being somewhat peculiar.

2. 1000 words on my new horror story. Woohoo! But I ground to a stop after that like a switch had gone off in my writing-processor. Usually I sort of coast to a stop and jot down a few notes as a pick-up place for my next writing session. This time I came slammed to a “no-more-words” place like I’d hit a wall going 60 mph. It was weird, but I consider 1K in a sitting pretty good progress these days, so I shrugged, saved, and powered down.

I also didn’t take my Clonazepam last night, even though my arms have been tingling and aching more of late. I think it’s making my brain too fuzzy and I wanted to give my system a day or two off it. So I’m not sure if it was the meditation, the absence of benzodiazepam in my system, or both that allowed me to crank out another four+ pages of manuscript, but I’m willing to experiment.

Writing update

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Words written: 200 Every single letter ripped screaming and kicking from my bleeding fingertips.

Why. Won’t. Words. Come? ARGH!

I think it’s time to invoke the caffeine gods to slap around my muse.

In better news, the editor of The Quiet Ward sent an email out to all the accepted contributors. The anthology is still on track for debuting at Horrorfind Weekend in August. He asked for a bio, and said the publisher will be sending out contracts right soon. Rah!

I was curious (and totally unable to produce word countage) so I did a little tally to see what my breakdown was in sales by genre category. It’s split right down the middle, err tri-section. One third of my sales are Science Fiction, one third Fantasy, and one third Horror, with a dangling Erotic Horror story to keep things interesting.

Neat.

Just Weird Enough – Dead

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Another pro-market bites it. And this one was a children’s lit market. Saw on Ralan.com that Just Weird Enough lost its funding before its first issue even got printed. Guess I can cross that one off my submit-to list.

Damn. There aren’t enough children’s lit markets out there. Now with both Just Weird Enough folding and Spellbound going on hiatus, the market possibilities have shrunk even more. Damn.

Firefly and writing progress

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Spent the day with dire_Epiphany, her hubby, and son, watching all the Firefly episodes that Fox aired in their proper order. dire_epiphany made food! Lasagna and fruit salad and salad. Yummy! And they brought ice tea and even plates and silverware! All we had to do was dig in. Wonderful food, excellent company, and great entertainment. What better way to spend a day?

And I really want to slap around the Fox execs. Not only for canceling the show, but for putting the ones they did deign to show out of order. Ffft. But there’s serious talk of a Firefly movie to wrap up all the loose ends. Crossed fingers and hoping that’ll come together.

On top of that, I managed to crank out 1K on a new horror piece. Got this one outlined out, so I know where I want to take it. My main problem is the huge squick factor it’s got. It’s so squicky I feel like I have to distance myself in order to write it. But I want to tell this story. It’s inspired by real life events that are so awful that I want to write about them in order to get out the anger and horror I felt when I heard about it.

In a nutshell: we got a letter from the HSUS asking for more money, as we often do, but this one documented the truly chilling story of a pet dog in Texas that had been kidnapped from his own yard and then had his eyes gouged out. The dog was dumped and managed to find his way back home where his family discovered him, blinded and barely alive, on their porch. They rushed him to a vet and it looks like he’ll live. But they still haven’t found the person who did it.

The only good that came out of this was that because of what happened, with the help of the HSUS, the family lobbied to make such acts of extreme animal cruelty and abuse a felony in Texas. It hadn’t been before.

Geek = Me

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I am such an uber geek. I got this total thrill when I saw that the editor of The Asylum‘s website has been updated with a list of stories he’s accepted for The Quiet Room already, and I’m on it.

Guess that’s why I fixate so much on getting published, the adrenalin thrill of seeing my name in print, even if it’s just a byline so far. Wooeee! It’s better than clonazepam.

Hmm. . . . except he spelled the title of my story wrong. It’s “The Reign of the Wintergod” with “Wintergod” being one word, not two. Ah well, an easy fix to make in the galley proof stage of development.

Edit: I’m going to be published alongside Kealan Patrick Burke, Don D’Ammassa, Jack Fisher, and Edo van Belkom. Meep!