Category Archives: Blog

Finished the rewrite on the Science Fiction piece. Finally. Normally I like to do a rewrite as soon as I get all of the critiques in so the ideas and comments are fresh and percolating in my head. But this one I had to sit on for a while. I got so tired of looking at it I couldn’t bear the idea of cracking it open one more time.

But enough is enough. I finished my statistical analysis of peoples’ comments, jogging old thoughts on plans for my rewrite in the process, and then dove in.

The fork is more than stuck in; it’s jammed up to the hilt, quivering. I find myself wondering if I should have put in another flashback or more heavy-handed foreshadowing, even though I did flash and shadow in my rewrite, but I’m not going to second guess myself. I’m done with it. Done done done! And out it goes. Fwoosh.

Just in time too. My magic realismish piece comes up in the queue next week on Critters and I’m still wrangling with the Urban Fantasy. I’m glad I cleaned something off my plate.

On the Urban Fantasy front: 1000 more words. And some polishing. It’s falling into shape. I think. Rah.

I tipped over extremely early last night. Woke up before my alarm, but that still clocked me as getting nearly ten hours of sleep. This is ridiculous. I think my meds are going wonky on me again. I really should not need that much sleep, dammit.

And I still had to have two cups of java to get me going.

Maybe I’m doing a winter hibernation thing. Well, it would make some sense. Hobkin is definitely in eat-sleep-eat-sleep mode. And he’s got the chub to prove it. Unfortunately, so do I.

Perpetual New Year’s resolution: lose 10 lbs.

Writing stats:

Deleted 900 words on the Urban Fantasy in a fit of inspiration and pique. Replaced them with 1300 new and hopefully better ones.

Received the contracts from both Song of the Siren and Another Showcase. Now the big question, will I also receive the payment for both of those stories before the end of the year? If I do, I believe I’ll break even, financially speaking, on my writing this year. If I don’t, I’m in the red. But either way, I’ll be well into the black next year.

All the big paying markets seem to only pay on publication. Sigh.

After some preliminary figuring (preliminary because there’s still two and a half more weeks left of this year), it would seem that my postage costs for this year are coming in at around $170. That’s less than what it was last year, despite having more stories in circulation. I suspect I’m seeing a slight dip in expenses because I’ve been trying to seek out more markets that accept esubs as well as trying to minimize the number of overseas subs I’ve been sending via post. It also didn’t hurt that I sold four stories on their first trip to market this year, minimizing my postage output on those. Gotta love that.

Received a couple rejections: a 20-day form (I think it’s a form, I’ve never subbed to them before) from Pedestal and a 62-day “no, but send more” from Challenging Destiny. When I saw the Canadian postage on my SASE in the mailbox from CD, I got all excited and anxious, wondering if this was finally going to be On Spec either buying or turning down the story they’ve had since March. But it wasn’t. Pook.

That makes four rejections for December. And the RM leader is still, I believe, at fifteen.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. I hate Mondays. Just could not get into gear yesterday. Brain felt like it was coated in viscous ooze. The cold didn’t help matters, of course. I just wanted to pull the covers over my head when my alarm went off. Brrr.

Watched Branagh’s Henry V on Sunday. Yes, the man does Shakespeare good. Haven’t heard much from him these days. Wonder what project he’s working on now? It’s a true pity that he and Emma Thompson broke up. They had excellent chemistry.

Also watched True Lies. That is one of my all-time favorite spy-genre and Arnold movies. Much fun.

All writing efforts have sputtered to a painful pause until my brain can fully engage again. Managed to crank out another 800 words pre-Monday, though.

On an up note, Another Showcase, the fiction project being assembled by a co-Critter that accepted my story “An Interesting Week for Emmy” appears to be live. He’s got it up and running with a cover page, artwork, author’s page, and stories. There’s some formatting/HTML glitches I saw, but overall it looks pretty good. I think he’s still working on it as the publication date is supposed to be January 2004.

My first published-online full story. I still prefer hardcopy publication, but there are virtues to having more of an online presence.

Waiting for my check now . . . although I don’t know how he’s going to pay me. He’s a UK bloke. Initially there was talk of him issuing a check in sterling, but I suggested PayPal, and haven’t heard back from him. Need to call my bank and find out how much they charge for me to deposit foreign currency checks. Hmm.

Went to see Henry IV part II at the Shakespeare Tavern last night. It was excellent, just excellent. The battle and plot bits were fairly uninspiring, but they always have been with that play. It’s like an editor took Bill aside: “It’s got great character development, but we really need an action scene in the middle.” But the Falstaff parts were fabulous; they pretty much stole the show. And I loved the stereotypical Jewish Mother a la Richard IV to Prince Hal in the death scene. Funny, touching, and poignant. Very well done. And again, I must give mad props to the Shakespeare Tavern for their excellent production.

Now I want to see Henry V. Maybe when Matthew wakes up we’ll break out the Branagh DVD.

And, now that I’ve made a good start on that Urban Fantasy piece, I suddenly have an urge to try my hand at steampunk. Hmm . . .

DEVIL/PAN
“the joker, worker, stabilizer”
You are gifted when it comes to protecting yourself
from judgements cast upon you by others. In
fact, you are not easily thrown by external
reality. You have the capacity to work and
play hard and to laugh at yourself. This is
the card of humour and sexuality (it is the
only card with genital symbols).
“Devil” spelled backwards is
“lived”, and it is very fitting. You
live with humour and have a stable foothold on
life. Of course, you do love setting the
occasional bit of mischief into play.

which major arcana of the thoth tarot deck are you? short, with pictures and detailed results
brought to you by Quizilla

Had an echo-cardiogram yesterday, which is an ultrasound to check out my heart. My rheumatologist is trying to determine the cause of my frequent bouts of shortness of breath. It was a novel experience, watching and listening to the ba-dump of my heart on the monitor. Also a bit painful as my left breast got squashed for a bit as the tech tried to get a clearer image through it.

1. I’m sure the techs wish the heart were smack dab in the middle of the chest instead of off to the left.
2. Men have it easy in so many ways.

Then we went for a brief bout of Christmas shopping before coming home to a lonesome Hobkin who was very glad to see us.

Saw a show on the Discovery channel that I just adored. It was on the platypus. Some scientists fitted a bunch of the (adorable) beasties with radio transmitters and followed them to their burrows and snaked some tiny night vision video cameras in to observe them.

Things I learned:

– The plural for platypus does not appear to be platypuses or platypi, but rather “platypus.”
– These animals have to be the most unlikely things on Earth. Not only do they have a duck’s bill and webbed feet, a beaver’s tail, and lay eggs. But they’re also venomous in that they’ve got a spur on their hind legs which is poisonous AND their tail appears to be prehensile. They showed footage of a female platypus using hers to haul up piles of leaves and sticks to line her burrow with.

An egg-laying mammal, with a bird’s beak, webbed feet, a prehensile beaver tail, and a poisonous spur. Doesn’t it seem like someone just decided to make an animal with whatever spare parts were lying around and the result was the platypus?

There’s a story there . . .

My muse returned! She whispered a fantastic story into my ear from start to finish: setting, main characters, plot, theme, climax, and resolution. I scribbled a detailed outline of it down before she could flit away and I’m 2000 words into it. It’s an Urban Fantasy, a dark and gritty one.

This one’s going to be a hard story to write, despite (or maybe because of) the outline. It’s always a little harder for me to write from an outline ’cause I know what’s going to happen next. But more, I feel like I’m stretching my technical skills to get this one down. I’m not sure why, but I’m plodding along in “engaged” mode rather than “flow.” The words are coming, and coming well, but I’m so fixated on the mechanical aspects–plot, character development, and pacing–that I can’t lose myself in the story. Humph. Well, whatever gets the words on the page, I guess.

My creative process continues to mystify me.

Winter has finally hit Atlanta. I was actually quite cold this morning, although my friends from back in the Midwest would probably point and laugh if they heard me saying that. But I’ve broken out the sweaters and arctic fleece, and am now tromping around the house in my Grinch slippers. Happily, unlike the ferrets who would rend and tear anything on our feet, Hobkin seems unimpressed and/or unexcited by fuzzy slippers and leaves them alone. He has also, if it’s possible, gotten softer and fluffier–and lazier. Winter is apparently a very important napping month for skunk-kind.

December is here. And, despite my dislike of anything cold and shivery, it’s my favorite month of the year. It’s got Christmas/Winter Solstice with Santa Claus and stockings-hung-by-the-fireplace and sugar cookies and presents and festive cards, and my birthday and New Year’s Eve all in the span of thirty-one little days.

Writing stats:
Pfft. No words. No writing. Not even any rewriting. Dammit.

Got a rejection from Crimewave. The editor said “We’d definitely like to see more of your stories though, so please keep trying” which takes some of the sting out. But a “no” is still a “no.”