1) There's a new "Excerpts" section on the website, and the first part of "At the Edge of Ellensburg" is posted there. The link is right here. I'm hoping to post a few more stories in the upcoming months, and maybe a chapter of my unpublished novel (a good chapter, not a crappy one).

2) After agonizing about it over the weekend, I decided to send my story to Ideomancer. If it's rejected, I have a few other markets, equally suitable, that I have in mind for it.

3) Next up is finishing the novella and the short story, and getting them ready for submission. I also plan on rewriting my one trunked story in existence (rather than posting it online), and sending that out by sometime in March.

Labels: excerpts

Just an fyi that in the next week, I'll have a new section on this website (thanks to Deena Warner!), where short stories and excerpts of longer fiction (both published and works-in-progress) will be posted. I'll be starting off with a bit of my novella "At the Edge of Ellensburg", in the hopes that if people read and like the first section (which is completely sex-free and safe for work, btw), they'll want to pick up the collection. I've been a bit lazy in promoting this book, although honestly - I'm never going to be reading sections of it at any genre conference! However, I do need to start practicing good marketing & self-promotion techniques. It's kind of like exercising or eating right. If you do a little at a time, eventually it'll become second nature.

In the meantime, I've been polishing a story I just recently pulled from a market (a dark fantasy that'd been out for over a year). I have a shortlist of markets to send it to, and one of them is an online pro-paying magazine (Ideomancer, to be specific). I've read pretty much every story in their archives, and yet I still don't seem to have a handle on what they're "about". I know what kind of story I'd send to Dark Wisdom, and what kind of story I'd send to Asimov's - but Ideomancer is still eluding me, and I don't know why. Therefore, I'm not sure if my story is the right fit for them, even though there's obviously something about it that makes me think "this might be an Ideomancer story". I've thought a lot about sending it: I absolutely loathe, LOATHE, writers who send stories to markets just "because", and not because they've put any thought into it. (Whenever someone says they're sending their story to F&SF even though they know it's not appropriate or good enough, but just to get the quick rejection slip, I literally LOSE MY FUCKING MIND....)

Anyway, I decided to do something strange and yet hopefully helpful: I created a private Livejournal, and put my story on it as a locked post - with the exact same formating and font that Ideomancer uses for its magazine. I'm letting it sit there for 24 hours, then I'm going to read it - online, and as a web document. Yes, I've printed the story out in double-spaced Courier font multiple times, and will probably do that one last time before I send it. But I think it's helpful for writers to see their work online as others might see it - it gives you an overall picture of whether or not your work can pass muster with the other stories, or if it's just [word deleted so this guy from Slovakia will stop googling my blog for one-handed fiction - hi! yes, I see you!] off on a blog. If, when I read it tomorrow, my reaction is "yes, this is an 'Ideomancer' story", then I'll know it should go there. If my reaction is "nice livejournal post", then I'll know I need to do a bit more research as to which market it's most appropriate for.

FYI, this isn't about which market is the best, it's about which market is the best match for the story. It's about serving the best interests of my story, in other words. "Jetsam" was perfect for Sybil's Garage, and no other market - a good match is, for me, more desirable than higher pay rates and "pro-only credits". My rationale is that, in the long run, the best matches of story-to-market will create a better (i.e. more well-respected) career, even if I make less money at the start.

Does any of this make sense? God, I hope so. If it doesn't, I'm blaming it on the Long Island beer I just drank. Beer from Long Island? Not so sure about that... maybe it wasn't the best match.

*burp*

Labels: free fiction, short story submissions

Another milestone, if a very small one: today I got the page proofs for the upcoming issue of Subterranean Magazine #6, with my story neatly inserted into it. It was sort of thrilling and nauseous all at once to see my name in the TOC. I printed out the entire ms, and flipped to my story. It's very small - I didn't realize how tiny it is compared to the ginormous stories by Elizabeth Bear and Caitlin R. Kiernan. Then again, I feel ok with having such a small story in the middle of such a huge issue. It seems right to start off with a modest size. I have plenty of time to work my way up to the big projects.

I'm going to be putting a non-explicit portion of "At the Edge of Ellensburg" onto this website, probably in the next couple of weeks. I need to have something up here that shows my writing, whether people like it or not. People like to read free fiction, and if I can at least offer a snippet of the novella, it might get them to buy the anthology. It's not just about sales, though - I need to show what kind of style I write in. It's important that people see that I write well, even if it's "not their thing" or they don't like the subject matter. At some point this year, I hope to put up a least one good story as well, just something that will show what my writing is like. I might post a trunked steampunk story - "The Girls of the World". It's one that I have no desire to resubmit to anyone, as I've already planned on rewriting the characters and setting into my novel "The Cemetery Queen". The story is good, although flawed - I think it'd be an interesting read.

I'm also in the process of setting up a new Livejournal where I'll eventually post what I'm calling "Antediluvian Juvenilia" - a selection of poetry from my college years, and a series of very weird dark fantasy stories/prose poems from 1995, only two years after I'd moved to New York City. The poetry is good, but not spectacular - but the stories and "ephemera" from 1995 have held up considerably well. I'm also going to serialize my erotic novellas there, as I have no desire to e-publish them, but can't find a traditional print publisher who'll touch them. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to keep the livejournal "friends-only", partially to keep underage kids from reading the erotica (as well as people from my workplace), and partially to keep some semblance of copyright. Also, while posting something on the internet does NOT constitute publication, there's still so much confusion over this that I think it's better to simply keep the fiction private, just in case I someday have the opportunity to legitimately print-publish any of the works in question. At any rate, I'll link to the journal when it's ready to go live - that should be sometime in February.

That's it for now. Back to reading about filthy 19th century Tacomans and writing lurid college sex scenes. Mine is the glamorous life, for sure.

Labels: erotica, free fiction

For some reason I kept thinking I'd just posted here a short time again. Ah well. This is what happens when you get old.

The novella is coming along slowly, but I'm enjoying writing it. Next week I'll post a paragraph or two (non-explicit, of course), when I have a better idea of what the good bits are. Right now, because it's all new, I of course get that fuzzy rose-tinted glow whenever I open up the Word file and start reading through the previous nights work. I give it until this weekend to get to the "OMG I wrote that crap?" stage.

I've also started a story for the "Holy Horrors" anthology. I generally don't seek out anthologies to submit to, unless I happen to already have a story idea that I think would be original enough to stand up to all the other submissions. I'd heard about this particular antho a while back, but it didn't strike me as anything interesting. But a couple of weeks ago, a conversation on livejournal gave me an idea that I thought would not only be original enough, but short enough (as in, under 5k words, instead of my usual 7-10k word length) for submission. So I'm about 600 words in on a story that combines a few unpleasant memories of being schooled in Lutheran churches with a specific horror setting that's always fascinated and scared the bejebus out of me. However, I may chuck those 600 words and start again - I have the idea and the characters and the plot, but I'm missing the right tone and style. The title is "Mysterious Tremendum" - I think that's a good indicator (for myself, at any rate) of where I need to go with the style, which would be little more ornate and poetic than usual. However, that means I need to keep it short. I want this at about 2500 words. Anything more than that, and it becomes a force-feeding instead of a story.

I'm also reading up on the history of Tacoma. Dayam. We were rough motherfuckers right from the start. For the record, I was born in Anchorage, Alaska, but my father has been a Tacoman from birth, as was his father and mother. Lots of Llewellyns in the cemeteries - no doubt just as cranky and potty-mouthed in the coffin as they were in real life. Not that I'm anything like that....

motherfucker!