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A bunch of awesome.
So I promised yesterday–after a somewhat overly introspective and slightly self-indulgent moping session of a post–that I’d outline some of the cool stuff that’s going on right now! That time is now. Behold, the bullet list! Awesome #1 – I am going to be speaking at the end of February at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania along with Ken Denmead, my editor at Wired’s GeekDad blog. What are we talking about? Well, geeky literature and geeky publication! Pretty rad, if I may say so. Awesome #2 – The following month I will in Boston for PAX East. Additionally, since apparently I have high charisma, as well, I’ll be speaking…
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… and then some stuff happened.
I’ve been trying to write a post in what feels like forever, but it hasn’t happened. Well, now it’s happening. The last week kinda sucked, with our cat nearly dying. We were quite surprised when she didn’t (I thank all the lovely kitty mojo love from Twitter). It’s likely she’s had a stroke, and she’s recovering well. We’re keeping an eye on her and doing our best to keep her comfortable. Minerva, the kitty, is really the most amazing cat I’ve ever known, and she was our first “child”. We answered an ad in the paper seven years ago for a “free black and white cat” expecting the usual tuxedo…
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One more time, with feeling!
In many ways, 2009 taught me about all the myriad things I don’t have control over. It’s been humbling, to say the least, to learn so much about this industry. It’s been a little embarrassing to admit just how much I didn’t know, walking in to 2009. What I didn’t have in business savvy and general know-how, however, I made up for with perseverance in the writing department, something I have absolute control over. My mantra for 2009 was, certainly, Just Keep Writing. And write I did. A whole damn lot. So, 2010 is already starting off with a lot of loose ends. But I’m still writing. This weekend saw…
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Writer Resolutions and Echoes of Other Years
The best part about having a blog is that it allows me to go back in time and laugh at myself. I used to do this with diaries in my youth, snatching up old (never completed) journals and then annotating with derisive commentary throughout. Most often, the marginalia was scathing, along the lines of “how could you ever love x” or “you silly, stupid git.” While, thankfully, I grew out of that stage, blogging has served to chronicle my own personal writing journey over the last couple of years, first at The Aldersgate Cycle and now here at Writing Across Worlds. What hasn’t changed, however, are the cringe-inducing posts from yesteryear.…
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Getting Through The Writing Drought
By virtue of the holiday season, I have been doing little else but crochet and cook these last few days, leading to a whopping 0 progress in fiction. I’m starting to get twitchy. It’s not that I don’t love the holidays, my family, tradition, all those things. It’s not that taking a break might, in fact, be a pretty good idea; it is more than that. I need a break, but I’m not willing to let it go without a good share of bitching and moaning. Since the youngest of ages, wandering around the playground clutching notebooks scrawled with imaginary worlds and adventures, I have sought out fiction as therapy.…
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Metrics, Mind-tricks, and Mayhem
This week I: Killed 30K in The Ward of the Rose Wrote 7K in The Ward of the Rose Decided I’m awesome and it’ll be no time before this career gets off the ground, then Decided that I’m not good with that much bravado; then Decided I pretty much suck, I’m doing it all wrong, and my stuff will never see the light of day, then… Decided, in light of what’s going on, I’m allowed a moment of crazy Fell in love with characters I hadn’t seen in a while Wanted to strangle some of the characters I hadn’t seen in a while Felt very grateful for having recorded the draft of The…
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Thoughts on Booklife Part I: The Pillars of Private Booklife
I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff VanderMeer last week and talk books, fiction, and inspiration. He also brought copies of Booklife and Finch. I haven’t yet jumped into Finch, but man, I’ve got to say, Booklife is the book I wish I had two years ago. I am envious of all the writers out there who have access to this book now, because they have so much essential information in one place. They won’t have to make as many stupid mistakes as I have, nor feel as aimless, floundering around trying to figure out what to do once the book is finished (or even begun, in some cases). No, I don’t mean to imply that Booklife is magic.…
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Steampunk Tales #4 is out – with “The Brass Pedestal”
Ahoy there, mates! Steampunk Tales, the penny dreadful for your iPhone, just launched its 4th issue. And within its digital pages, you will find a copy of my short story, “The Brass Pedestal”. It’s about family, metal corsets, clockwork earwigs, and how love can be a barrier to revenge. I had a great deal of fun with this particular story, as it has a hint of weird west to it, and features my favorite town name ever: Replication. Thanks to the folks at Steampunk Tales for including me in issue #4, too! Hoping to see much more of this type of publishing in the future.
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Updates in a Nutshell: Publishing, Reading, and Writing
Well, enough has been going on in the last few weeks that I thought it might be helpful to make a fancy wee bullet list for organization’s sake! First up is a reading that I’ll be doing on December 10th with Jeff VanderMeer and Mur Lafferty at Chapel Hill Comics (which is both thrilling and awe-inspiring, since I get to read, um, my stuff next to their stuff!). Jeff was kind enough to invite me along. Following the readings will be a freeform storytelling session where we’ll work together on a story all live and junk! Makes me glad for all those years of improv and, also, quite thankful for…
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Thoughts from a #dumbwriter
For every thing I learn about publishing, writing, and editing, there are about a dozen others that I’ve yet to figure out. No, I’m not an imbecile. (Though I sometimes walk into walls, I owe it mostly to my roving imagination and general lack of coordination.) I’m just a #dumbwriter. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing my best to get a full, bird’s eye view of Writing and How to Get Published in This Day and Age, but there are still instances where I just miss entire chunks of the geography. Those black holes on my map are where the #dumbwriter lives. Sometimes, it’s because I can be,…
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Dear self-important new writers: STOP. You’re making us all look bad.
<rant> I wasn’t going to write about this, because frankly, I’m a new writer and I doubt there’s anything I really say that will be enlightening on the subject. Except I started thinking about how pissed off I am when I read excerpts of the pertinent emails and conversations. It’s not the professional writers’ responses that bother me so much, but the tone and self-importance of the new writers that makes me ill. Yeah, some of the established writers’ responses to Josh Olsen’s original piece have been a little, um, tough to read. But not every writer is going to turn n00bs away if they adhere to a code of…
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“Be patient, keep writing” and other things I tell myself.
Last night I finished chapter 20 of Peter of Windbourne, and am now approaching the part in the book in which a series of Very Bad Things happen. The draft is sitting at 101,122 words at this moment, with hopefully no more than five or six chapters remaining (generally my chapters hover between 4-5K). It’s a blind rewrite, as I’ve mentioned, so I’m giving myself some extra wiggle room. I know it’ll be edited down a bit next. I’ve got until November to get it done, because I’ve promised to do NaNoWriMo again this year. This chapter has been particularly difficult, mostly due to the influx of freelance work that’s…
