Rewrite of my new River People story

2,300 words today. Better. I'm pulling apart the story that I submitted to Critical Mass and rebuilding it. Should require another 4,000 or so words.

Brutarian

Form rejection from Brutarian. This exhausts mosts of the top markets. Hrm, I need to figure out where this story goes next.

And on

1,244 words. Not enough, but I'm beat. I was up late last night for Critical Mass and then up early this morning to teach seminary. Reading for Critical Mass and going over the contract for the novel ended up crowding out my writing time yesterday, so I'll let myself have one slacker day to get back up to speed. More tomorrow.

Members of Critical Mass: Terry England

Terry England's book Rewind is still pretty easy to find online. He entered the manuscript in a contest back in the 90's, and although it didn't win said contest, it caught the eye of one of the judges and was eventually published. Then internal politics at the publisher resulted in Terry's second novel being dropped. This is not at all uncommon.

In the ten years since, Terry's been working at his craft and has been a regular at Critical Mass meetings since its foundation, six plus years ago. His short story, Out of the Cradle, appears in the DAW anthology, Far Frontiers. I have to say, this man on a roll is a phenomenon. One of the best short stories I've ever seen was a horror short he wrote that begins with a little girl falling down a well. That's not the really horrific part. While she's down there, wedged in a narrow space, she feels something tickling at her toes. The POV character is her slightly older brother, old enough to comprehend what's going on, but not old enough to do anything to help his sibling. I won't tell you how it ends because I still hope that some short story market out there sees the light and publishes this thing.

He's also got a superhero novel that's making the rounds to agents. This is a rather dark time in the field to be looking for an agent. Last night people shared stories of authors with a publishing contract in hand that couldn't land an agent. Anyway, he's enduring the form letter rejections, and I'm really hoping this doesn't go on long. Yes, there are a lot of superhero projects out there, but Terry's mind is something else, I have to say. (And his name looks real nice on a book spine.)

By day he works as the Books Editor of at the Santa Fe New Mexican. But that's not why I say nice things about him, honest. (He'd be honest about my work regardless ;-)

Massive criticism

Well, not really. The critgroup gave me very clear, consistent advice all around the circle. This Sora story will be getting a rewrite in the next few weeks.

Negotiating the contract

Drafted up an email today with requested changes for the contract with Covenant. As I went through the thing carefully, I really was impressed with how many opportunities to pull a fast one they passed up. This bodes well for working with them.

And on

989 words tonight. Not bad given that I had a full day of appointments and reading for Critical Mass.

The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum

So, I'm working in a somewhat random order through my Clarion West classmates. The thing about them is, not only are the all good writers, but every single one of them is published in at least one pro market. I don't know if that's a Clarion West first, but it's certainly rare, even for a workshop of that caliber. They'll each get a writeup in this blog eventually.

The Ant King by Benjamin Rosenbaum was published before we ever even started the workshop. Not sure why Ben thought he needed a workshop, but I'm not complaining. He was great to share a crit circle with and despite the fact that his first week story made the Nebula final ballot, he remains accessable and supportive to the likes of me.

Both he and Samantha Ling read my LDS romance novel and sent me crits. Ben even stayed on the phone with me for two hours going through page by page. Ben has a full time day job, two kids, and lives in Switzerland. I think he either has a couple clones of himself, a very realistic sounding AI that handles his phone calls, or has evolved past the need for sleep (though even if this were true, I'm still thinking he'd need clones and an AI).

I'm excited to see that his book, The Ant King and Other Stories, is slated for release. His entire biblio of published work can be found here. The moral of this story is, go to Clarion West. You never know what kind of uber-talented professional might answer your phone calls because you once cooked pasta with him at 4am on a Thursday while ranting about overuse of adverbs.

My dog

What does it say about me that I blog about my pets before even mentioning my husband or religion? It says that I am fiddling with Blogger, learning how to upload images, and this one was handy.

This, is Jakob, my Norwegian Elkhound. The name is, of course, pronounced "Ya-kob" because he is Norwegian. I have had elkhounds all of my life.

No, seriously. My parents had one when I was born and they are on their third. Jakob is my first. I love this breed; they're very people oriented and mellow. They shed like crazy and have no respect for conservation of mass, but I'm used to that.

In the foreground of this photo you will notice the remains of a chew toy shaped like a postal worker. What, you ask, is this doing in the home of a couple of devout, law abiding Latter-day Saints? Well, I did look for one that was more appropriate, but no one stocked any shaped like nineteen year old boys in white shirts with nametags.

Strange Horizons

Personalized rejection from Strange Horizons today. I highly recommend this online 'zine; I love the stories they publish.

And on

Revamped the first chapters of this second romance novel. I'm finally getting fix on my male lead, and that's essential. These characters make several mistakes right off the bat so my challenge has been making them likeable and sympathetic. Also means that I threw out 90 pages. Quite typical for me. They weren't good enough.

The critgroup

I'm in a critique group called Critical Mass. There are about a dozen or so of us and people drop in and out as their lives and careers change. This month I know we'll see S.M. Stirling, Jan Stirling, Daniel Abraham, Walter Jon Williams, and Terry England (and me.) Other regulars include Melinda Snodgrass, Ian Tregillis, and Ty Franck.

In order to prepare for critgroup, I have to read everything people have submitted this month. The subs were out a week in advance, but did I use the holidays to read? No. Fortunately I'll be able to devote all of tomorrow and Wednesday to reading and preparing critiques.

At meetings we all give feedback on each person's piece with the hopes of helping him or her to improve it. In order to join the group, one must be a graduate of Clarion, Clarion West, or Odyssey, or have sold a story to a pro market. The group also needs to have space available. In order to be allowed to attend each meeting, you must have submitted a story that month, or submitted a story the last month that you attended.

I believe I was the first unpublished member admitted under the Clarion rule.

The Dirty Goat and Realms of Fantasy

Form rejection today from The Dirty Goat and a personalized rejection from Realms of Fantasy. This is the first personalized rejection I've gotten from Realms, so that makes today a good day, rejections-wise. Now I just need to find another market for this horror piece that's been on the merry-go-round for the last 9 months or so.

And on

2,700 words. Not too bad, given I started at 9pm.

Figuring out the contract

Even though I'm an attorney, I don't know all that much about publishing contracts. Therefore, when I got mine from Covenant, I immediately asked for help from friends. The standard small press publishing contracts I've seen are usually unconscionable. A real nasty one came signed by a client came across my desk when I was working at a firm. Typically they want all rights, exclusive use of your name, the right to edit and even rewrite without permission from you, etc. Given that, Covenant's didn't look bad at all.

Daniel Abraham met with me for lunch today and read the thing over. His verdict: it looks like a small press contract from a small press that isn't run by bloodsucking evil people who prey on wannabes. We talked specific terms and, armed with his information and a copy of one of his contracts with Tor, I shall see if I can get this thing into a form that both the publisher and I are happy with.

Samantha Ling found my site? Eeeeew!

I use the term "ew" in a writing context with permission from Samantha Ling, who trademarked said term in said context in 2001, while we were at Clarion West. Ling (both Sam and Ling are first names, like many Asian Americans, she has two; at Clarion we combined them into "Samorling") used the term "ew" in crit sessions in order to give an emotional, visceral reaction to gritty or gory writing. To whit: "And when that guy cut himself open, eeeeeew!"

Then she wrote a story about aliens sucking fat out of humans and nearly everyone in the circle opened their crit with, "Sam(orling)! Ew!"

If you surf over to her site, you'll see that she keeps a blog. She also has her biblio. Her first sale was to Asimov's and received an honerable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2006: 19th Annual Collection. Isn't she disgusting?

American Short Fiction

Today I got a rejection from American Short Fiction, which means it was a pretty light day. I don't post rejections in order to be pathetic or to make a play for sympathy. And, let's be clear, it is never to criticize the markets that reject me. With this site I'd like to give as accurate a picture as I can of one person's writing career. Rejections, often by the truckload, are part of the package.

And on

Another vacation day with the family home, so another day that I'll be jotting down 250 words then heading for bed.

You go, Vanessa

I won't be doing a lot of this, talking about things other than my writing and writer friends, that is, but I suppose this ties in. I decided to buy Heroes & Thieves after watching the first thirty seconds of this video. You may need to go look at her video for 1,000 Miles to get the joke.

I like piano rock, so I'd always liked Vanessa. When she lost her record deal, I thought that might be the last I ever saw of her. Now, though, she's back. With a vengeance. Her voice is stronger, she seems a lot more confident on screen, and it is possible to listen to this album for 6 hours straight and not get tired of it. I know this for a fact. Stephen and I played it nonstop all the way up to and all the way back from MileHi Con this year. I still felt like listening to it when I got home, only to find that Stephen had ninjaed the CD. (Stephen is one of my former seminary students who has adopted us.)

Vanessa, you've won yourself a couple of life long fans here.

Invite to Ad Astra

I just got the email invite to Ad Astra. This is where Julie Czerneda launched her Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science anthology earlier this year. My story, Polar Shift, is the second story in that antho; I wrote it as Emily Mah. Her launch was the most successful one I've ever seen. We signed books for an hour and the con sold out of copies by the end of the weekend.

Me, I was still getting used to having booksellers ask me to write in their merchandise. I don't know that I'll ever get used to taking a pen to the half title page of a published book.

We probably won't be able to make it all the way back to Toronto next year. I'll think about it and count pennies. It's tempting.

It goes on

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm not going to be able to write much today, given how late it is. I now go to get 250 words down before I go to bed. I don't feel good at the end of a day unless I've written something. And no, this blog doesn't count.

The Little Tailor by Stephanie Burgis

Stephanie Burgis was one of my classmates at Clarion West, back in 2001. Everyone that year was wickedly talented, but my own, personal, subjective favorite, prose-wise, is Stephanie. That enough adjectives there? I can come up with a favorite line for any of my classmates, and I no doubt will as I continue to blog.

Anyhow, her story, The Little Tailor, that she wrote while at Clarion West, is now up.

The grind

Well, didn't get as much writing done as I wanted to today. I did a chapter and a half in my next romance novel. That's moving too slow, for me. I need to to be doing at least 2,000 words a day to have time to get all the tweaks and rewrites and feedback from my writers group. On a good day I'm doing 6,000-8,000. I need to be steaming along at that rate because I keep very little of what I write the first time around, yet I find I need all those words to get to know my characters and their situations. It's the most inefficient way to write that I've ever seen, but it's what works for me.

Tonight was the deadline for Critical Mass. That's my aforementioned writers group. I subbed a story set in the same universe as "The River People". It's 7k and rougher than I'd like, but oh well. I was in Peru for a week and a half this month. I suppose I should cut myself some slack.

More cat waxing

All right, I just realized that if I took my bio and press links down, I'd have more to blog about. I'm not someone who plans to blog excessively. I've asked several friends to come shoot me if they catch me typing volumes of verbiage here, ranting on and on about politics or my favorite ice cream or whatever. I just want to post little updates about my writing and announce the publication of works by me or my friends.

Now, though, I can also post the occasional fact about me, and all of those facts will be available under the "Bio" label for this blog. Nifty.

Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Jane Lindskold, and Terry England reviews on Shelfari

Hrm... that title may be longer than this post. Anyhow, I just posted reviews for books by Connie, Walter, Jane, and Terry on Shelfari. Please note, my reviews are biased. I love these people. Each of them has given so generously of their time and expertise to a little neophyte like me that you won't ever find me tearing them up in public.

In private, Walter, Terry and I are in a writer's group. We tear each other up with reckless abandon there.

Cat is waxed... I think?

All right, so I think I've got a bio and my biblios and press links up. Maybe. I'm so bad at this kind of thing that it may be a total mess. But... anyway, need to go write. So far today I've only done writing related activity and no actual writing. Or, to use the writer term, I've been waxing the cat.

The pages don't match each other at all. If I behave myself, they'll be that way for a while. If I don't, they'll all match by the time you read this post and this book will be no closer to completion.

New website design

Okay, I'm slowly coming into the 21st century. This site has been completely redesigned, so you'll find a lot of content missing for the next week or so. I'm working on getting it all together. Thanks for checking up on me ;-)