#WriteTuesday – Rejection and Preparing for Upcoming Panel Discussion!

So a few days ago I received word from Manawaker about the story I submitted for their Make Your Way anthology.  Unfortunately they decided to pass on the story as is; they said it has a good foundation, but needs some work to feel finished.  But I was invited to resubmit it if they’re still accepting submissions in the future after giving it some TLC.  Sadly I’m way too busy at the moment to edit it, but if they’re still accepting submissions in a few months, I’ll try to give it a go! 🙂

Speaking of being waaaay too busy, next weekend I was invited to take part in a panel discussion hosted by my local university!  I’ve never participated in a panel discussion before, so I’m really excited (but honestly a bit nervous about the whole thing).  After doing a bit of research, I started preparing what I’m going to say over the weekend (I’m going to have about 15 minutes to talk, then there will be a question and answer period after everyone has said their thing).  While it’s shaping up, I’ll probably be mainly working on preparing that all week now – wish me luck!

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#WriteTuesday – Not Much to Report

Happy Tuesday everyone! Sorry I missed posting last week – not that there was much to report. I did more work on the book editing contract, and watched a few of the Disney remakes with friends and family. Then I got sick over this weekend and spent a lot of time resting; I also watched a few movies on my own (which I very rarely do) because I was having a hard time concentrating. But I’m feeling better now, and should be getting back to editing this weekend!

I also went to a Giller bash last night with my mom and brother. I was super fun (thank goodness I was feeling up to attending!) and we’re planning to attend againg next year. 🙂

Oh, and I almost forgot – I submitted the Make Your Way story! I’ll let you know when I hear back from them (they said it may take a fair bit of time).

So how’s everything going for you? Have you had a good couple of weeks? Working on anything exciting? 🙂

#WriteTuesday

Just a really quick update today.  First, for the exciting stuff: one of the author interviews I did for TBPL Off the Shelf was published in a book!  It was the Interview with Amor Towles – it was published in Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3, which was edited by Harold Bloom.  Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3 is published by Bloom’s Literary Criticism, which is an imprint of Chelsea House Publishers and Infobase Learning.

Now for the less exciting stuff: I heard back from Mythic about “A Friend from the Deep” and they rejected it, too. 😦  Now that it’s been rejected again, I’m going to have to sit down with it and look it over.  I suspect I need to give it a good edit before sending it out once again.

So now that that’s out of the way, I also spent some time over the weekend play testing a friend’s game.  He made it with RPG Maker (and has been working on it a lot over the last while).  The game was super fun, and I got quite into it (and then it ended because it’s only a demo!) 😦  I’m quite excited to see how it develops. 🙂

After playing it though, I wanted to get back into working on some of my RPGs.  So I’m going to try to power through both my Sustainably North planning and the Make Your Way story so I can get back to one of my RPGs soon. 🙂

How’s your week been?  Anything new and exciting? 🙂

Heard Back from Asymmetry!

Just a quick note to say that I heard back from Asymmetry about “A Friend from the Deep.”  Unfortunately they rejected the story. 😦

So I went back to the Duotrope listings and discovered MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine.  I liked that they are looking for fantasy from more diverse settings than the typical medieval one, so I decided to try my luck with them.  Unfortunately their deadline for submissions was today, so I didn’t really have a lot of time for editing “A Friend from the Deep”.  But I did give it a once over (and made a few edits) before sending it their way.  So we’ll see what happens this time. 🙂

Heard Back from Zooscape!

Just a quick note to say that I heard back from Zooscape about “A Friend from the Deep.”  Unfortunately they rejected the story, but the editor said she enjoyed reading it – just that it wasn’t what they were looking for. So that is promising! 🙂

While cruising through the Duotrope listings, looking for another place to submit it, I came across Asymmetry, a website that publishes new stories every week.  I read a few of the stories there (notably “I Came From the Deep” and “In the Time of the Birds“) and loved them; after reading them, I decided to try submitting “A Friend from the Deep” to them.  We’ll see how it goes this time. 🙂

 

#WriteMonday – Short Story Submitted!

I did it!  I actually got that short story edited and submitted!

I had a really hard time sitting down to deal with it.  I kept putting off the editing.  Finally on Tuesday I sat down and started writing whatever was on my mind (it was a free write, much like I did years ago in a writing class).  By the time I was at the end of the page, I actually felt inspired and read over the story.  It was in okay shape and didn’t need too many edits.  So I worked on those when I could and finally finished on Friday.  I ended up calling it “A Friend from the Deep;” it’s set on Imezza and deals with a kraken (which is why its working title was the ever original “kraken story.”) I submitting “A Friend from the Deep” to Martian Migraine Press’s Monstrous Outlines: an Anthology of Camouflaged Horror Friday night.  I kind of doubt it will get accepted since that anthology specializes in horror and weird fiction and this piece is probably closer to fantasy (I could have sworn it said it accepted fantasy somewhere but I can’t find whatever I read now). Oh well, the worst that happens is they say no, right? I guess we’ll see what happens.

I need to make sure I remember to free write next time I have a hard time sitting down to work on a project like this!

On Friday I also followed up with my last submission (oh my gosh, that was a year ago!) I *think* the story has been published but I haven’t heard anything from the publisher.  I’ll give more details once I hear back from them. 🙂

So with all that happening on Friday, I had the rest of the weekend for whatever.  I took the rest of Friday night to look over (and clean up) my favourites list on Duotrope.  In doing that I found a few markets that sound pretty interesting; I decided to try writing something for the Make Your Way anthology. Make Your Way is looking for pieces that the audience will have to interact with in some way; I’ve written for projects like Holdfast in the past, so I’m hopeful that I can pull this off.  So I spent a bit of time later on Friday night coming up with a really simple RPG system for use with my story, with the rest of the weekend spent plotting things off and on.

I also spent a little bit of time trying to research tools to help me make this.  I’m a fan of Articy Draft but do not currently have my own copy (I was able to use it for a project I worked on in the past; the license was provided by the company I was working with).  Twine shows some promise, but it’s the type of thing I’ll use if I ever decide to publish this story on the web rather than in a book.  So I ended up defaulting to using my physical white board to plan this out.  Well, until I discovered The GameBook Authoring Tool, which I downloaded and tried out.  I think it’s exactly what I need to link everything together as I go.  So between my white board, my trusty notebook, and The GameBook Authoring Tool, I think I’m good to go for this project!

What’s Happening…

*sigh* Every time I think I’m doing a good job keeping up on this blog, something seems to happen and I disappear again.

This time it’s Sasha.  She’s not doing very well.  She’s been living at my parents’ place for almost seventeen years (she just turned 17 last week! But we got her once she was a few months old so she hasn’t lived there quite that long).

Sasha and Me

Many years ago, my mom and I had a talk about where Sasha would live once I moved out.  We agreed that she would stay with them; she was probably around 10 already and had lived her whole life in their house.  So when I moved out I was able to adopt Merlin while Sasha stayed in her home.

We’ve long been joking that Sasha will live to be like 30.  She loves her people, but hates almost anyone who comes to visit the house (she actually will go to the door when visitors are leaving to make sure they go!)  She’s also pretty set in her ways and has no problems letting you know when you’re annoying her.  So of course she’d be the perfect candidate to make it to some ridiculous age.

Unfortunately that isn’t looking very likely now.  She stopped eating about a week ago.  My parents brought her to the vet (which is never a fun experience – apparently when the vet took Sasha into the back room to take some of her blood, you could hear her out front!)  We know that something is wrong with her liver but we’re not sure what; because of her age, everyone agreed not to put her through any invasive tests.  So now my parents have been doing their best to feed her and keep her comfortable.  Realistically though, it doesn’t look like she has long left.

So of course a lot of things are kind of on hold.  I’ve been going to their place as often as I can to visit with Sasha (while being sure not to neglect Merlin).

In terms of writing, I haven’t been doing a whole lot lately.  Unrelated to Sasha, I decided not to submit that story I was working on back in June; I’d asked over Facebook whether or not they would accept a shorter submissions.  I was willing to try making my story a bit longer, but they never replied to me, so I felt it wasn’t worth submitting to them.  I’ve got another market in mind to try submitting the story to though, so I will continue to work on it.  And thankfully the submission date is several months away so I’ve got some time in light of what’s happening.

On a positive note, I have been keeping up with Sustainably North.  My plan for the month completely fell apart because I’ve been reading a bunch of nonfiction books that I really wanted to talk about on there.  I considered starting to post twice a week, but right now I’m still just doing one.  Earlier in the month I was a bit ahead and felt like I had a lot I wanted to talk about, so two posts would be possible.  But I’m back to being just a week ahead right now (I just wrote the post for next week this afternoon); I’m going to keep it at one post a week for at least another month and then decide from there.

Read 25 Books + Editing Pass Complete!

So earlier in the week, I got sick.  It sucked, because while I was feeling completely like crap, I didn’t feel like working on that short story I’ve got on the go (even though I had just a few paragraphs left to go on that editing pass!)

But what I did end up doing was reading.  Quite a bit, actually.  As of today, I finished one book and read two more, including Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, which I read in about 24 hours (thanks in large part to starting it while waiting to see a doctor yesterday).  The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs actually ended up being book 25 in my reading challenge!  So yes, as of earlier today, I accomplished one of my goals for the year – I read 25 books!  At least some good came of being sick. 🙂

In all seriousness though, I am feeling a bit better today.  I’m now on antibiotics, which I think is the main reason for that.  I’ve eaten a bit more today without feeling super nauseous (thanks to being nauseous, I barely ate anything over the last two days).  I’ve spent the evening making soup (it seriously has ended up an entire evening affair – I started at about 6pm, and it finally finished at almost midnight! Oh well, at least I now have soup). And over the last few hours of soup making, I sat down to finish this editing pass on my short story. 🙂

So with my story shaping up, I went to go and check the Duotrope listing I’m planning on submitting it to.  The listing closes in about a week and a half, so I’ve still got plenty of time to work on it.  Unfortunately, I just realized the listing wants short stories of 3500- 5000 words in length.  And their website says they are looking for horror (the Duotrope listing says horror, sci fi, and fantasy).  This story is currently quite a bit shorter than 3500 words (it’s now 2440, which is over 1000 words longer than the first draft, so it’s moving in the right direction), and is not at all a horror.  I just sent them a message over Facebook asking about the genre and whether they are open to accepting shorter submissions (someone else asked about the shorter submissions on their website, but they didn’t answer).  And of course after I asked my questions I found that they say they are open to all forms of speculative fiction.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get this story to 3500 words or not.  But that’s a problem for another day.  For tonight I’m just happy to be done this editing pass! And whether it gets submitted anywhere or not, at the very least it will hopefully be one of the two polished short stories I wanted to write this year. 🙂

Short Story Submitted!

I submitted the short story I was working on last week today!  😀

It took me a bit longer to edit than I had thought. More than anything, I had a hard time finding the time to actually sit down and edit (I was exhausted all week for reasons unknown). But thankfully I managed to sit down, edit it, and submit it today.

The market I submitted it to says they try to respond within one month of receiving a submission.  So I’ll report back once I hear something. 🙂