I’m A Winner!

NaNoWriMo, WON for the third time in a row!

Submissions Contest with Iseult Murphy, WON by just a hair!

“I’m Keeping It Light” SOLD to Fifty Two Stitches!

And Christmas presents almost completely bought.  Rock on, I say! Rock on.

I’ll Go Down Swinging

Did I bite off more than I can chew?  Holiday festivities, Black Friday sales, 10,000 more words by Saturday night and a submissions contest?  Maaaaaaybe.  But maybe not.  Know this about me: if I go down, I’ll go down swinging.

Suffering on the writing front.  Switching from the novella to something different really threw a wrench in the works and ground down the gears of my brain.  I’m tasting metal shavings and smoke, but I’ll muddle through it.  Two rejections yesterday, zero successes, a wearing day and I seriously had my heart broken, but hey, that’s how it goes.  I expect it, it’s the holidays.

But something exciting came about!  I told my friend what I wanted in a laptop and he built me one according to my specifications, and then emailed it to me, for he is much savvier than I.  Last night I built my own according to what he suggested, and the sucker was $265 dollars off, PLUS free shipping!  She’s red and beautiful, and will be in my hands by Christmas.  Right now I’m thinking of naming her Cherry, but we’ll see what she’s like when she comes.  Suggestions, anyone?  Just think!  A laptop with all of the keys!  I’m overwhelmed, I feel faint.

Pieces Out: 35

Goal: 42 That’ll be ten submissions, thereby beating Iseult

Competition with Strangers

Iseult Murphy and I are in a competition: who will submit ten things first?  Well, maybe she will because I’m out of commission for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but I have that competitor’s spirit.  Winner gets bragging rights.

Go see her at http://www.iseultmurphy.com.  Go on…write her lots of email so that she’ll spend precious time answering them, thus assuring my victory!

With a Titanium Smile

Hey, Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow to all of you Americans out there.  And to everybody else who just wants to take a moment and be thankful for stuff.  Yeah, I knew it would do all of us good.  My mom used to make us go around the table and say something that we were thankful for.  We all hated it, but it’s what we remember about Thanksgiving, so it must have done some good.  I also remember getting a styrofoam packing peanut stuck in the motor of the fridge, and the whole thing died, and all of our holiday feast spoiled.  So.  Again, thank goodness for NaNoWriMo or I really wouldn’t have anything to look forward to during November.  Although readily available pumpkin pie is always a win.

I’m checking out the press that I’d like to submit RunStarGirl to, when it’s ready.  I had a few questions to ask, such as, “If I’m researching a press, what exactly am I looking for?”  Because I don’t know.  Because I want this to be fun and free, but I don’t want to go into it completely blind.  But now I am armed with a few answers, and here I go.  Do you see me?  Going.  To go look.  Because I have answers.

It’s still a bit daunting.

Anyway!  I had a piece come out yesterday on Tuesday Shorts.  It’s 61 words long, and it’s called “With a Titanium Smile.”  I hope that you enjoy it.

http://tuesdayshorts.com/index.html

 

Pieces out: 35

Goal: 40, plus 10,000 more words

YES!!!

I have finished RunStarGirl: A Novella of Murder and Whimsy!  It clocks in at about 40,000 words, so it is novella length.  I’m quite pleased with it, but won’t begin editing until December.  I can’t decide whether the remaining 10k words should attach to my demon story (which has been waiting patiently for a few months) or if I should write more short stories.  Because my submissions have slipped, curse it all!  Once you get behind, it’s quite difficult to catch up, so it’s easier to keep on top of it. I have a few new markets that I found inspiring, and it will be a pleasure to work on stories for those.

 

Pieces Out: 33

Goal: 40.  Stop rejecting me!  Let me get my feet under me, first. 

white blindness

My poem went up today at Barnwood International Poetry Magazine.   Come read it!  And mourn the loss of that beautiful shirt with me.  I disposed of it somewhere between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, and life has not been the same ever since.

http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_18/Yardley.html

So last night I attended my writer’s group, which is really amazing.  It’s so diverse, and you have people who have published a little, published a lot, or haven’t published at all.  It’s quite friendly and enjoyable.  I met some new friends and enjoyed old ones, and we learned about agents.  When to get an agent, when to fire an agent, how to find an agent, that sort of thing.  And afterwards we “networked”.  Well, okay, so other people networked.  I just sat with the people at my table and really enjoyed myself, talking about books and kids and things to look up online.  (“He-Man Sings”, people.  “Take On Me: The Literal Video”.  All of these pleasant things that are so distracting when I’m supposed to be writing.)  But I learn something new every day, I kid you not.  I learned that I need business cards, because my hand grew weary of writing down this site address and my email.  I learned about small presses and publishing a collection vs. a novel and how that works a little bit.  It’s like being in school, and I am so hungry for knowledge!  Well, of course I am.  You guys know me, you know how I am.  I’ll ask you questions until you curl into a little ball and die, and then I’ll crouch over you and ask you some more.  I can’t seem to help it.

Also, RunStarGirl is at 35k.  I made myself write a thousand words before I could do anything fun, and it paid off, because there is nothing on this earth worse than being bored.  If I remember correctly.  I’ve only been bored a few times, I think.

Pieces out: 35

Goal: Still finishing RunStarGirl!

52 Stitches

52 Stitches accepted “The Exquisite Beauty of Death” and I’m pleased about that. I feel like I have spoken to at least half of the writers in there, and that’s always a good thing.  Dawn and I were discussing how the writing world seems to be shrinking a little bit, and soon it’ll be too small to sustain us and we’ll all fall off.  I imagine us pinwheeling around space for eternity, just tiny pieces of contented flotsam.  We keep running into the same people over and over, and that’s really delightful.  It’s small town life again.

Speaking of the same things cropping up, this week I had three different people tell me to work on my editing and start looking at the bigger markets.  This surprised me.

“Pssh, I’ve said that for months,” Dawn said.

“I’ve been telling you that,” Luke said.  “You never listen to me.”

And I don’t, not really.  These are people that I love and they’re supposed to say things like that.  But people who really have no vested interest in you, that seems different.  I’m also pleased because a writer who broke in a while ago chose to give me some tips on what not to do, which apparently seems to be everything that I am currently doing.  I really appreciate that, because it’s helpful and generous, and a pleasant surprise. I absolutely love pleasant surprises.

Apparently I’m the one that feels like I’m not ready, that I couldn’t hold my own with the big boys.  Strange, when I thrive on a challenge.  And I suppose that’s how I’m going to have to look at it.  It’s very difficult for me to say, “Oh, I am so fabulous and the world simply must read all of my work!” Because I don’t believe that.  I’d love it, and I’m delighted with how many hits this site is receiving (thanks, Williams blog readers! It’s mostly you, and I’m so happy!) but I despise arrogance, I abhor it, and I don’t want to come across that way.  Which I sometimes do, I know.  Sarcasm is hard to read across the Internet.  And I tend to be just a teeny, tiny bit sarcastic.  A little.  Is all. 

But a challenge?  Ah, that I can handle.  You think I can’t handle the Big Dog rejections?  I’ll show you that I can handle that rejection.

 

Pieces out: 36

Goal: Finishing RunStarGirl: A Novella of Murder and Whimsy tonight.

This Is Why We Need Editors

My husband was reading a book yesterday, and suddenly burst out laughing. 

“What?  What?”  I demanded to know.  He showed me a passage, and it read:

“They swooped down, raped the windows, and put the children to the sword.”

 I then made the best squeaky glass sound that you have ever heard, and a fun time was had by all.

Pieces out: 39

Goal: 40

The Exquisite Beauty of Death

I was down at the Las Vegas DMV this morning, which was just a thrill, I tell you.  Actually, I love to go to the DMV because you see so many different people there, and it’s fascinating.  I really like people.  But this guy comes up, sits right by me, and starts the whole, “Mmm hmm, babygirl, what do you do?”

I said that I write.  I feel that I’m at the point where I can say that, and not have to justify it.  So.  “I write,” I said.

“Babygirl, you should write a book about me!  Let me tell you all about my life!”  And I thought, no, buddy.  I write things that I want to write.  I write to please myself, unless it’s something specifically for somebody else.  And as fascinating as he may be, I don’t want to write about him.

It makes me smile.  What a deliciously selfish realization, and I’ve earned the right to be selfish.

That said, I have been fighting to get my submissions back up to forty.  Why do I care?  It’s a matter of principal, maybe.  It’s something tangible that I can measure.  It also lights a fire under me and I need that, or else I’ll just slide, baby, slide.  I submitted a poem called “unsolicited” that I like, and a story titled “The Exquisite Beauty of Death”.  It’s a flash, and fairly charming, I think.  It isn’t as dark as the anthology is requesting, but I’ve found that most people tend to be quite receptive to humor and lightness.  We’re not as bleak as we claim to be, are we?  Well, just fancy that.

 

Pieces out: 37

Goal: 40

All Things Ray

This was the illustration for “Ray The Vampire” on Flash Fiction Online. (http://flashfictiononline.com/) Copyright 2008, R. W. Ware. The artist also replied graciously to my thank you note, and that always sits well with me.

The Editor made a Wordle, and this made me laugh. (http://www.wordle.net/) I am SO going to put this on a t-shirt! It might be my new running shirt now that “I Leave Bite Marks” bit the dust.

I have decided to take a break in querying for my Ray novel. Thanks mostly to the Twilight series, the market is so saturated with vampire novels that it’s suffocating. Hooray to these authors and their success, but it makes me want to sigh because I loved vampires before vampires were trendy, and now I’ll just have to wait until everybody is satiated of them, and then sick of them, and eventually enough time passes that I can reintroduce my novel and not have the instant reaction be, “Oh no, not another one.” Of course, mine isn’t your typical vampire novel, and it was written before I’d even heard of Twilight, but that doesn’t matter much. And besides, all authors say that anyway, ha.