Livia Llewellyn News & Updates

Sale to "Unspeakable Horror"

2008-07-09T10:44:00.001-07:00

Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet
Originally uploaded by Livia Llewellyn.

My (slightly) erotic horror story "The Engine of Desire" will be published in Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet through Dark Scribe Press this fall. Dark Scribe also has an interesting blog, Anatomy of an Anthology, which will go into some of the details of how the book is coming together, as well as publication and publicity info and updates.

FYI, "Engine" is the first story where I finally was able to use the Harold Pinteresque technique of reversing the scenes (a la his play "Betrayal") - as the story unfolds, the reader realizes that they're viewing events in reverse chronological order. I think it very successfully adds a bit of bittersweet melancholy to the last paragraphs of the story, where the reader knows everything that is about to and will ever happen to the young female protagonist - and she knows nothing of what is to come. Well, I think it's successful, and so do the editors of the anthology. Hopefully, readers will think so, too.

Reprint sale to Apex Online

2008-07-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've been given the go-ahead to post the details of the third sale from two weeks ago: "Take Your Daughters to Work" (which was first published in Subterranean #6 last year) will be reprinted at Apex Online.

Tomorrow I'll post details of the first sale I made that week. Let's just say it'll be a doozy. Do people say "doozy" anymore? Probably not. Crap, I'm old :P

Third sale of the week

2008-06-29T18:05:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention last Thursday that I got a third sale - perhaps because I was so stunned to get three in five days. It's another reprint, but I can't post any more details until I get the ok from the publisher. I will say that it's a great market, and I'm very happy to get my foot in the door. Well, in this case, it's maybe a big toe. Good enough, though. :)

Second acceptance of this week!

2008-06-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

Got word today that "The Unattainable" (previously published in Cowboy Lover: Erotic Stories of the Wild West) will be reprinted in Maxim Jakubowski's Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 8, coming out in early 2009. There's already a listing up on Amazon, but I won't link to it until the cover is up there as well.

This is my first sale to a "best of" anthology, so it's kind of a big deal. Also, I really loved this story - I think it's one of my best (out of the very few I've written, lol), and I'm glad that more people will get a chance to read it.

Second sale of the year

2008-06-23T11:42:00.001-07:00

Go me! Unfortunately, I can give no details for at least a month or more, until the contracts are signed. I will say, however, that it's a great market with some incredible contributors, and I'm thrilled beyond belief to be in the ToC.

In other news, I'm still working on the novella "Wondyrechaun", which is finally shaping up after much flailing around on my part. Really, it was a sorry mess. But July 7th is when I have to send it off to readers and critiquers, and that deadline is very firm, so I have all of 13 days to finish it for once and all. After that, I'll work on a couple of short stories for anthologies and start slogging my way through a 20+ book research reading list for the novel-length version of "Wondydrechaun" (which will revert back to its original title of The Girls of the World, for agent submission purposes).

That's all that's happening in Livialand right now. :P Hopefully, what with Readercon, July will be more interesting, both writing and blogging-wise.

FINALLY! First sale (and publication) of 2008

2008-05-27T12:44:00.001-07:00

Cover for "Jack Haringa Must Die!"
Originally uploaded by Livia Llewellyn.

Well, I didn't think it'd take this long to post again, but things dried up a bit in the first half of '08. However, I finally have some forward motion in my so-called not-career: I have a short story in the just-published anthology Jack Haringa Must Die!, edited by Nicholas Kaufmann. It's a charity anthology, with proceeds from the sales going to support the Shirley Jackson Awards. If you follow the link, you'll find the background of the anthology, a full list of contributors, and links for buying it online.

I hope it doesn't take as long for my next sale. Ah, well. Such is the life of a not-career writer, eh? :P

Moving the blog to Livejournal

2008-01-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

After spending the weekend thinking about this, I've decided to stop using this as my primary writing blog, and to switch those posts over to my Livejournal. The reason for this is simple - there simply aren't enough people reading and commenting on this site to justify my putting any more time into it, especially when I already have a blog that has several hundred readers. This isn't about "justification", it's about conversation and discussion - something I hoped I'd have here, but just hasn't materialized. I think a large and active audience only works if you're a phenomenal blogger, and if you're publishing work that gets reviewed, and gets the kind of professional attention, accolades and honors that cause people to seek you out online. If you're a small-fry mid-talent like me, you tend to sink out of sight. I need Livejournal to connect to people, because, frankly, I'm tired of talking to myself. I've done that for four decades now, and I've had enough of it.

Going forward, I'll use this blog only to post announcements of sales and publications, and the comments function will be turned off. If I ever sell a novel and start to get what amounts to an actual career in writing, I'll also announce convention appearances, readings and publicity events. For those of you reading this blog through various feeds, you should be able to do the same with the Livejournal, and you won't miss anything. For those of you who'd rather just know about the sales and publications, this is the blog to read.

For those of you who did read and comment here, I do thank you.

At a loss

2008-01-10T05:40:00.000-08:00

I posted a few notes about "The Girls of the World" over on my old Livejournal the_numinous_1, under a cut. So far not a single person has clicked on the cut to read the post. No one's interested.

I've come to realize that I'm doing something horribly wrong with how I present my writing and myself online, and I don't know what it is. People don't take me seriously, and I need to fix that because yes, in this day and age, it does matter, it does affect my career. It may mean shutting one or all of the Livejournal blogs down, or shutting this blog down and sticking only with Livejournal. I just don't know. I have to think about this.

A serving of Ego, with a side of You Still Kind of Suck

2008-01-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

Laird Barron is one of my favorite writers, and one of best short story writers in the business (I'd say he and Caitlín R. Kiernan tie for first place). So when he says something nice about my writing, I stand up and take notice. Scroll to the end of this post, and you'll see it. FYI, he's one of the few people (only four) who's read my as-yet-unpublished novelette "Horses", which I consider to be my best writing to date. I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be published this year.

And while we're on the subject of ME, several readers on a Livejournal community called lastshortstory have some good things to say about "The Four Hundred Thousand: here and here.

However...

A few positive blog comments aside, professionals in the industry still aren't reading and officially reviewing my work - and it's not just because there are just too many thousands of stories to choose from. It's because I'm not good enough yet. I need to become better. That's all.

I've crossed several things off my January Goals list, but I'll post an update next Monday. What's been most difficult has been trying to balance writing time with reading time - I absolutely must read a specific stack of books before I start "The Girls of the World", and I'll admit I'm beginning to panic a bit. I don't like to do research then rush into a project. I'd rather let it sit in my brain for a while before I start using it. But in the real world, time is a luxury, not a right. So I guess I better STFU and get back to work, right? :)

January Goals

2008-01-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

1. Write short outline for novella "The Girls of the World"
2. Revise first chapter of The Ruins of Love (almost finished)
3. Revise and send out flash story "Crepusculum"
4. Revise and send out poem "Silver Night Train"
5. Finish erotic story "Our Lady of the Bleachers" for anthology (due Jan. 31) (in progress)
6. Write short steampunk fable - no title yet - for Shimmer
7. Write novelette "The Engine of Desire" for horror anthology (in progress)

Even though some of these projects have submission deadlines in February and March (or are open-ended), they all need to be finished by January 30th, so I can:

8. Start writing novella "The Girls of the World" on January 31

February will be dedicated completely to the novella, and I don't want any loose ends hanging over me while I work on it.

This isn't really that horrible of a list, as many of the items are already underway or near completion (I should have the chapter revision finished this evening). It's just a matter of having all my ducks in order, and not letting myself get distracted. I'll probably post an update to this list in two weeks - I won't be doing any kind of daily update, as I'm sure that would get tedious to read.

Upcoming!

2007-12-31T14:11:00.000-08:00

I sat down with my list of things to do, and I became so overwhelmed with the length of it, that my bones sort of jellied. After about an hour of staring at the spreadsheet, muttering "no way can I do this I cannot do this I'm going to fail fail fail", I snapped the fuck out of it, and decided that next year will NOT be made of fail. I just need a new approach.

So, on the first of every month, I'm going to post a list of things I have to get done by the end of the month. At the end of each month, I'll post what I accomplished, and what needs to be carried over to the next month (or crossed off altogether). I think breaking it down into monthly sections will make it seem much more manageable. I'm like a dog this way - I have to be tricked into doing something, otherwise I dig my claws into the floor and howl like a howling dog thing. :P

Tomorrow, the first Monthly Goals post of the year. Until then, I hope everyone has/is having a Happy New Year.

Stats for 2007

2007-12-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

Final Drafts Finished:

This Year:
1. "Disambiguation" (poem)
2. "Silver Night Train" (poem)
3. "The God of Suburbia" (poem)
4. "Crepusculum" (flash)
5. "Queen" (novelette)
6. "Horses" (novelette)
7. "Shang Hai" (novelette)
8. "Her Deepness" (novelette, completely rewritten from short story)

Last Year:
1. "Blackberry Sweet" (flash)
2. "Teslated Salishan Evergreen" (flash)
3. "Her Deepness" (short story)
4. "Take Your Daughters To Work" (short story)
5. "Summer of Love" (novelette)
6. "The Four Hundred Thousand" (novelette)
7. "The Unattainable" (novelette)
8. "The Ruins of Love" (novella)

It looks like I tend to write about 8 new things a year (I don't have stats for 2005, but I think it was around the same number, maybe lower - and I'm not counting the 50k words of the novel I wrote this year). Not bad, and I don't see any need to force myself to write a higher amount next year. Quality and fulfilling obligations to invites by editors/markets should be my concerns, not quantity. I'd rather write a couple of very good stories than twenty mediocre ones. The mediocre stories might sell just the same, but that's beside the point: there's too much mediocrity out there already. No need for me to contribute to it.

It also looks like I'm more comfortable with the novelette (7500-14,000 words) than short story (under 7500 words). This isn't much of a surprise, but it means I have to take into consideration that there will be less markets for me to submit them to. Many of the best markets have a 4000 word limit, and I just have to either accept that I won't be published in them, or force myself to write shorter stories. At this point, I don't think it's necessary to force anything. I'm happy with what I'm writing, and I'm selling it, so that's fine.

Submitted:

As usual, I don't keep track of submission figures, I just try to keep writing work that is submission-worthy, and keep sending them back out if they return. What's important is that this year I only wrote one story that I had to abandon because I got it wrong with the first draft ("Crepusculum") - and it was only a momentary trunking, as it's now in rewrites for a new market. This is a HUGE improvement in my level of skill at assessing/editing my work as I go. I should be submitting a higher number of stories next year - "Shang Hai", "Her Deepness", "Queen" and "Crepusculum" will all start going out in January, which will be the most stories I've ever had in submission at a single time.

Rejected:

Some. As I've said before, I don't keep track of rejections, except in terms of advice given to me by editors, and any requests to see more material in the future.

Sold:

This Year:
1. "Brimstone Orange" (as a reprint to PseudoPod)
2. "The Unattainable" (to Cowboy Lover: Erotic Stories of the Wild West)
3. "The Four Hundred Thousand" (to Subterranean Online, Fall 2007)

Previous Year:
1. "Teslated Salishan Evergreen" (A Field Guide to Surreal Biology)
2. "Take Your Daughter to Work" (Subterranean Magazine #6)
3. "Jetsam" (Sybil's Garage #4)

Three sales a year isn't bad. I don't write quickly, so I don't expect this figure to get higher next year. If I hit three again in 2008, that'll be great.

Published:

This Year:
1. "Take Your Daughter to Work" (in Subterranean Magazine #6)
2. "Jetsam" (in Sybil's Garage #4)
3. "The Unattainable" (Cowboy Lover: Erotic Stories of the Wild West)
4. "Brimstone Orange" (podcast on PseudoPod)
5. "The Four Hundred Thousand" (in Subterranean Online, Fall 2007)

Previous Year:
1. "At the Edge of Ellensburg" (novella, erotica)

I can't control this aspect of the business, so there's no real goal here. Things get moved in and out of publishing schedules all the time, so I can't say I want "X" things published next year. I hope that something of mine will be published next year - I just can't say what it will be, or how many times it'll happen. I just have to make sure I'm continuing to write and submit stories so that I will continue to be published.

Raymond Chandler's Law:

It takes writing a million words of shit before you become a professional writer - or so the saying goes. Supposedly attributed to Raymond Chandler - I've never been able to find the exact quote or positive proof that he said it. But I like it. I've come to interpret it as this: you should expect to write about a million words before you really find your voice, your "groove", and begin to write publishable fiction on a regular basis. I think for me this is an accurate assessment.

To date, I've written about 633,000 words - last year it was 545,000 words, so the increase is very, very small - I wrote 88,000 words in 2007. However: I've published 59,319 words - up by almost 100% from 28,499 published words as of last year. In other words, 9.36% of all the words I've written have been published - up from 5.2% last year. 9.36% is, in my opinion, a far more significant number than how many words I wrote. I'm being published more. That's what counts.

Tomorrow, I'll post my goals for 2008.

Books read this year

2007-12-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

1. Hammered by Elizabeth Bear
2. Scardown by Elizabeth Bear
3. Worldwired by Elizabeth Bear
4. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
5. Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine
6. Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman
7. Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
8. The Terror by Dan Simmons
9. Dead Souls by Michael Laimo
10. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 1 by Alan Moore
11. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2 by Alan Moore
12. The Store by Bentley Little
13. Bestiary by Robert Masello
14. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
15. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
16. The Well of Stars by Robert Reed
17. The Deep Dark by Gregg Olsen
18. Year Zero by Jeff Long
19. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
20. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
21. Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest
22. The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell
23. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
24. Lost Girls, Volumes 1-3 by Alan Moore
25. The Rosetta Complex by Richard Paul Russo
26. The New Lovecraft Circle, ed. by Robert Price
27. Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
28. The Blue Mirror by Kathy Koja
29. Ghost Dance by John Case
30. Titan II: A History of the Cold War Missile Program by David F. Stumpf
31. The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
32. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
33. Between Worlds (six SF novellas), ed. by Robert Silverberg
34. Ghosts and Grisly Things by Ramsey Campbell
35. Sleepwalk by Adrian Tomine
36. Salon Fantastique, ed. by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
37. The Ghosts of Partition Street by Robert Levy
38. The Night Class by Tom Piccirilli
39. L'Assommoir by Emile Zola
40. James Tiptree, Jr. by Julie Phillips
41. Grey by Jon Armstrong
42. Dark of the Night by John Saul
43. The Keeper by Sarah Langan
44. Shadow Coast by Phillip Pullman
45. A Brief History of Western Civilization by Thomas Greer
46. Alas, Babylon by Pat Logan
47. Firelands by Michael Jenson
48. Blindsight by Peter Watt
49. Next Season by Michael Blakemore
50. Elemental, ed. by Steven Savile & Alethea Kontis
51. Deeper by Jeff Long
52. The Missing by Sarah Langan
53. The Best of the Best, Volume 2 (novellas), ed. by Gardner Dozoiz
54. Wyrmhole by Jay Caselberg
55. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
56. The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell
57. Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick
58. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

I'm not quite finished with The Devil in the White City, but I put it on the list - I'll finish it over the weekend. I don't have much commentary on what I read. I read mostly for pleasure this year, which I think is kind of indicative of the year in general: in other words, I pissed away a lot of valuable time doing nothing to further my writing career. I don't have much commentary on that, either, except to say that the year was what it was. I refuse to apologize or take any part of it back. Who knows? Maybe I was laying the foundations for some phenomenal work that will spring out of me in the future. You never know, and you can never judge. Sometimes you just need to chill out and fuck off for a while. It's not really my place or anyone else's to say I wasted time. It's my life. Even if I don't know how to live it, some part of me deep inside knows how to live it. And this year, that part of me said: read, fuck off, and don't sweat it.

Next post will be a list of what I'll be reading next year. O sweet jebus, it's not going to be "fun", but it will be interesting! Ok, maybe it'll be a little fun. :)

Looking ahead

2007-12-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

People are starting to post lists of what they've written & published over the past year. I haven't had the urge to do that yet, mainly because I'm thinking of my schedule for 2008. Just a few days ago, I sat down with my trusty Excel spreadsheet, and plotted out what projects I wanted to write next year. I have a lot of half-finished stories, and I spread them out over the months, also giving myself chunks of time in case I needed to slip in a story for an anthology or the like. It was a solid, doable schedule, and I was quite proud of it.

Of course, yesterday I threw it all out the window. But that's not a bad thing. A publisher (not one of the behemoths, but a very high-quality market with pro rates) expressed interest in the Tacoma Steampunk novellas. I confessed that they hadn't been written, but that I could deliver them later in the year, and in the meantime I could finish my in-progress novella "The Girls of the World" and deliver it in March. They said yes (as in yes please send everything when it's ready, not yes we'll publish anything - just want that to be clear).

So: my new schedule for 2008 will be to write a story for an anthology (not quite an invite, but I've been given the go-ahead to submit), and to write four novellas. I worked on my little Excel schedule chart this morning, and got everything spaced out properly, with time for research, writing, and edits/revisions before the delivery dates. On top of that, I'll still be working on The Ruins of Love - it's not abandoned, but will now proceed at a more leisurely pace, maybe a page a day or more until it's finished. Stories will be on the backburner as well, unless I get an anthology invite or decide there's a market/anthology I really, really want to write for.

I'm very excited. It's one thing to love what you write, but when people in the industry want to see what you write, and when there's the possibility that they will pay you (and pay you well) for your work, it makes it that much better. Yes, it's validating. And frankly, I can't imagine what will happen if the novella trilogy is accepted. Just that, it will be a very big deal, and possibly open up some new opportunities for me.

But: I'm getting ahead of myself. For the rest of December, I'm going to work on finishing at least one more story, and go over the outline and what little I've written for the new version of TGOTW. I'll probably post that "what I did in 2007" list closer to the end of December. For now, though: three weeks to go, and I still have a lot to do.

Flip it and reverse it

2007-12-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

"Nothing complicates our existence so much as that we so frequently believe in definitives, and thereby lose time being ashamed of a mistake instead of admitting it and simply starting our lives over."
--from The Road Into the Open by Arthur Schnitzler

So, this is where I ended up by November's end - and that's pretty much how it's going to stay throughout December. I decided that I need to spend this month doing more research, and just letting what I've written sit for a while, to give me distance and perspective. Deadlines are so important, it seems, for genre writers, but I can't allow myself to get all worked up over the fact that I thought I'd finish "Ruins" by the end of the year but I was wrong. Hey, I was wrong. No big deal. The words won't disappear, nor will my ideas. And if I decide that I need to scrap all of the words above, and start over again? Well, see the quote above. Besides, all good things take time. :)

I've also been giving some thought as to next year, and what I want to accomplish in terms of output. Part of this is because I have many stories that are half-written or so close to being finished, and I need to take care of them and get them out into submission. But I'm also thinking in terms of how much potential income they represent - income I'm denying myself because I've been a bit lazy, I'll admit, and haven't taken the time to finish what I started. As I was saying to someone a few days ago, I thought I'd escaped the "bad year after Clarion" curse that so many students have - but again, I was wrong. This has been a year of largely no output, with only two finished stories. However, both stories sold to pro markets. So: I need to step it up a bit next year.

And I realize that as a writer I'm supposed to talk about how much I live for the writing, and how that's all that matters, blah blah blah... Well, I don't believe that holds true for people who want to be professional writers. And I don't believe that wanting to make money off your art makes you "impure" or crass or greedy. I need the income, because it all goes back into the writing process. I need money for those Herbert Hunt books on Tacoma - so I can write my steampunk novellas. I need money for a 2009 trip down to Central and South America (and probably an additional one in 2010) - so I can start researching the first volume of the Archipelago Quartet (the quartet's world geology, geographies and various cultures are based on those that comprise the Pacific Ring of Fire, where I was born and raised). I need money to go to at least one convention next year so I can meet editors and writers who might help me find out about anthologies and markets I wouldn't hear about otherwise. All the money I make from writing goes back into writing. Circle of life - really!

I also firmly refuse to use the income from my day job to finance my writing. I did that for many years as an actor: buying costumes, taking expensive classes, handing over fistfuls of cash to any and everyone who might be able to help my career. All it did was screw up my credit and completely demoralize me - because people were obviously interested in my money, not in my talent, and they used me as a convenient cash machine. And I let them, because I wanted to act. Well, never again. Clarion was the exception - but I knew that going to Clarion would be a sound investment, one that I'd make my money back on, and I've been right. But other than Clarion, I have no intentions of destroying my 401k or my savings and credit in order to advance my writing career. It's suicide: I don't want to find myself destitute at 67, retired and without a penny to my name, unable to pay for medical bills or housing or even food. I've seen that happen to far too many writers, and it won't happen to me. I'm keeping my day job money for that day when I do retire, so that I can continue to write when I'm older, instead of holding down a bunch of miserable part-time jobs in retail so I can cover my rent and bills. If I want to spend money on writing-related things, I need to write stories that people will pay professional rates for, and do that on a fairly regular basis. So, yeah: next year will be a little different. A bit more intense, but better for me in the long run.

Sorry for the rambling post. I think I put too much sugar in my coffee this morning. :P

Word Count Update

2007-11-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

.

Almost halfway there - although, like I said in my previous post, I plan on going much more slowly starting in December. Part of the reason is because of time constraints, but another reason is that I'm going to be going back over the first half and rearranging the chapters slightly. One of the things I did with my erotica, that ended up working quite well, was to divide the story not by chapters but sections: the eight sections of "The Unattainable" were based on the eight seconds a rider needs to mark out in a rodeo event; and sections of "At the Edge of Ellensburg" were based on various geological time periods of Eastern Washington. Instead of having "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc., I plan on labeling the novel chapters with certain astrological events as they relate to Earth. That's about as much as I'll say about it for now. Not to be coy or anything - once I see if it works, then I'll be more specific.

Since this is Thanksgiving, I'll say that I'm thankful for the apple brown betty in my oven and the cold beer next to my computer, and generally for the fact that I'm alive. I hope everyone else has a good holiday weekend.

Blah blah blah

2007-11-18T07:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, I promised I'd put up the first chapter last week - what can I say, life and writing got in the way. Also, I forgot how freakin' long it takes to format something in a Livejournal post. Really, it's a bother - but I want it to be readable, so I'm taking my time.

Something else I'm going to be taking my time with: starting in December, I'm cutting my daily word count goal down to 750. I'm doing this because I've been finding that every night as I approach 750 words or thereabouts, the quality of my prose plummets. I make my word count of 1000 words, but only because I'm writing paragraphs along the lines of:

"blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah beer beer beer blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah omg heroes is on must hurry up blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah is it time for bed yet blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah gah bleh blah"

And then the next night I have to erase or rewrite that last chunk of "prose", which is an enormous waste of time, as well as rather demoralizing. My day is very long, so I don't have a lot of time to write to begin with - it makes no sense to spend most of it working over crap I wrote only to hit a made-up word count. So, back to the smaller word count. Quality over quantity, right?

A solution to posting the first chapter

2007-11-09T11:24:00.001-08:00

Next week I'll put it up over at The_Numinous_1 - my old (and largely private) Livejournal that I now use as a repository for my trunked YA novel. I can make a public entry, put it under an lj-cut, and I'll just post a link back here, so anyone who reads this blog won't be inundated by a flood of words they don't want to read. And since very few people comment over at that journal, it won't feel weird if the response is silence.

You know: sometimes I think I put too much pressure on myself, and sometimes I think I put too many expectations on readers. :) That's a post for another time, though. It's Friday, it's been a long and somewhat hideous week, and I'm calling it a day. Besides, my contacts are so dry, I can't see whut i'm typonig anymlopre.

So very tired...

2007-11-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

Still recovering from a somewhat sobering experience on Sunday - a bout of carbon monoxide poisoning that's left me a bit shaky both physically and mentally, to say the least. I'm ok now, but it was pretty bad for a short while. I won't go into the details (and I'm not bringing this up over on Livejournal) - suffice to say that everything's going to be alright. One good thing about CM poisoning is if it's not too severe, you can snap out of it fairly quickly. Amazing what breathing oxygen does to improve the spirits. :/

Despite the problems, I still managed to get a fair amount of writing done. I'll post a word count in a day or so. Right now I'm debating whether or not to post the first chapter here. I don't want to clog up anyone's newsfeed or friendlist - I can't lj-cut on the feed - and I also don't want to bore people. I posted a small section on a private forum, and got some positive responses, but still... I always get a bit paranoid about posting stuff. I never seem to get a lot of responses. That worries me. Either my writing is so fantastic it's striking people speechless with joy, or... it's not. I suspect the latter. :P

October word count tally

2007-11-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

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Not bad for a month of writing, considering I don't have much time to write. As you can see, I've pushed the total word count up to 120,000, so I fell a bit short of my original goal of getting one third of the novel written - now it's one quarter, and I fell a bit short even of that. Oh well. Quality over quantity, right?

Next month - er, this month, I mean - will be a bit more challenging. November is a very busy month at work, and we have a sales conference during the last week, which includes various dinners and evening events. All of them are work-related, so that means that last week after Thanksgiving is a write-off for writing. Oh, the irony! However, I tend to stay home over the holidays, so I plan on having several writing marathons to make up for it. I'm hoping to get to at least 55-60k words written by the time December rolls around.

Novel writing aside, I've been thinking of what I want to do next year. I have a few stories I'd like to finish for very specific markets: ParaSpheres 2, which will close to submissions at the end of March, and a pro-rate queer horror anthology called "Shadows from the Closet". I'd like to write a novella for (hopefully) Subterranean Magazine, and I have to think about what novel I want to start on after "Ruins" is finished. I have an idea for another stand-alone (also horror), but I'm not sure... I know it seems odd to be thinking of what I want to write next year, but I tend to flounder if I don't have specific projects ahead of me. These are the projects that excite me the most, so it makes me feel good to know that they're waiting for me. It's like a carrot in front of the horse. Or a nice little bar at the end of a rainy street - a much more apt metaphor for a writer, don't you think? :)

SFWA Membership Conundrum

2007-10-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of years I've been peeking at the membership page every now and then, checking my publications, sighing heavily and clicking away. I suspect many do that...

At any rate, I finally received (yes, a bit late in the year) a copy of my contract for "The Four Hundred Thousand", and on a whim I checked the membership page again. I was pleasantly shocked to see that Subterranean has finally been added to the list of qualifying short fiction venues for membership. This also means that I've gone from having no qualifying sales to two - for "400k" and "Take Your Daughters to Work".

So now I'm wondering if I should start the application process for an associate membership (well, I'll start it at the end of the year, when I have Christmas money), or if I should hold out for that one qualifying professional sale that'll make me an Active. I have to say I'm leaning towards waiting for that last sale, rather than plunging right in as an Associate. I honestly don't know if it will make that much difference in how people treat me (I'm thinking of the forums, not face-to-face), but then again, it might.

If anyone who reads this blog has any thoughts/advice, please let me know. I'm open to any and all suggestions at this point. Well, almost all suggestions. :P

Not a good week

2007-10-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

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I did something stupid the past couple of days. I started reading a massive amount of journals and blogs by both professional and neopro writers. I try to stay away from most writers/writing-related blogs, because all it does is depress me deeply, but every now and then I get caught up in some kind of masochistic feedback loop, and I can't stop reading them until I'm so depressed that it's all I can do to keep from erasing every single file on my hard drive. Because: I invariably start comparing myself to these bright and shiny young things, and I fall so short of the mark, it's laughable. I feel like there's this huge party going on, with dancing and glitter and everyone writing brilliant things and falling in love with each others words, and with each other as well; and I'm stuck in the locked room next door, alone with my stack of crappy manuscripts, listening to everyone laughing as I desperately try to figure out why I can't figure out how to get in the next room.

In other news, the revision of my mundane-sf story has left it too long for the Interzone issue, so it'll have to find another home. Great. Just fucking great.

Same as before

2007-10-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

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I'll spend this weekend same as the last - light on the noveling, heavy on synopsis (part two), and continuing to wrestle something publishable out of my mundane-sf story. It's very, very important that I finish the story, almost moreso than the novel. I know that sounds insane, but I tend to abandon story projects at the last minute, blow off submission deadlines with the idea that it doesn't matter, it wasn't like an invite or anything... That's just a very bad way of thinking about stories, and I need to work on correcting it. I don't need to sell as many stories as Jay Lake - but when I commit to a market and an idea, I need to commit all the way.

Below is another excerpt. FYI, the protagonist's name is Sylvia, but her nickname is Silver, and it's what she goes by for a number of reasons - one which is made clear in the first few paragraphs of the novel. I know it sounds very sooper-precious violet-eyed Mary Sueish, but I chose the name for a reason. There are certain medical and bonding properties - as well as mythological/religious ones - to the metal that I think accurately reflect the female protagonist. When silver is used as a weapon, it's for a specific reason. :)

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Against the opposite wall, rows of armoires leaned like oversized tombstones. I made my way around tables and throne-like chairs to the largest, a beast of coiled columns and leering satyrs thrusting out of ropes of ivy and leaves. I touched one pointed face, running my fingers over chin, grin and horns--and whipped it back, rubbing my hand against my shorts. For one wild second I'd had the impression that the little face was nuzzling my fingertip, pressing up against my skin. Backing away, I walked down the length of the building, past row after row of vanities, to the steps leading to the third floor. My reflection moved with me in each mirror I passed, and in all the other mirrors scattered over the floor. As I turned my head, some of them turned more slowly, others quicker.

"Keep your shit together," I whispered. Some of them whispered with me. Others did not. I stared down the end of the row to the stairs, ignoring them all. A small legion of Silver's followed, all meeting at the end of the row, converging into a single, unnerved woman. I grasped the splintered handrail, and stared up. More sunlight, and the glint of polished mahogany under a high-beamed ceiling. Again, I climbed the stair in slow motion, as though crawling up into earth. Dust filled my nose and lungs, settled over my face like flakes of pyroclastic snow. I reached the top, and peered over the landing, mouth open in awe.

Back on track (sort of)

2007-10-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

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This weekend I fleshed out the first third of the novel with a very detailed outline, and much to my relief, it didn't suck. That is to say, I can now confirm that I have a pretty solid novel on my hands - or will have, when it's finished. I managed to de-emphasize the erotica and flesh out (heh) the supernatural elements and (more important) the developing relationship between the two protagonists. In doing so, however, I'm beginning to see that the end result will not have enough sex to be considered a traditional erotic novel (like Michael Hemmingson's fiction), and it won't have enough gore/spooky stuff to be considered a traditional horror novel (like the novels pubbed by Leisure). What I'll have is a literary horror novel, probably something that would sell better if it's marketed as mainstream fiction with a "touch" of horror - more along the lines of The Society of S or The Historian.

I'll return to regular writing this week, then once again reserve the weekend for outlining part two of what will be three sections total, and on editing my one remaining short story "assignment" for the year, for the mundane-SF issue of Interzone. The story is due by October 31, so I have plenty of time. It's just difficult for me to switch back and forth between projects. Honestly, I have no idea how other writers do this - especially since it seems to take me as much time and mental/emotional effort to write a story as a novel. Make me wonder how my writing would fare if I had enough money to pursue it full-time, with no day job. Something tells me my output wouldn't be that much more prodigious. Shit, who am I kidding? I'd just watch more TV, and wear my pajamas a LOT more. :D

Time for a proper outline

2007-10-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

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This weekend I won't be writing anything except a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline of the novel, as I'm now at the point where I'm just sort of floating along without any direction. I don't want to get halfway through the ms only to realize that I have to go back and insert some new thread or character that's integral to the main plot. Granted, that may happen anyway, but at least a proper outline should give me a better idea of what I need each chapter to do, how each chapter should push the narrative forward. So the wordcount above will be static for several days, but no biggie. I can make it up later. Better to write well, than write quickly. :)

One thing that's come out of my ms so far is rather surprising: I've written a couple of explicit erotic scenes, which I hadn't intended to do. I don't know if I'll keep them for the final draft, but if I do, then that means I can't pitch this novel as horror anymore, but as erotica. Horror readers may tolerate a fair amount of sex in their novels, but erotica is usually explicit beyond what is considered "tolerable" for literary and genre fiction. Once the first draft is finished, I'll have to decide whether the erotic scenes make the novel better as a whole, or if they should be cut. The bad part about marketing the novel as erotica is that I can think of only one agent in the business who represents erotica writers, and she's already rejected my writing (rejection by way of simply never responding to the manuscript her associate passed on to her, after said associate rejected me - it's been over a year, and she hasn't responded to my polite query, so I assume it was tossed in the trash).

It also means that in addition to being agentless, the ms will also have only a couple of legitimate print publishers that I can send it to. (No, I will never have any novel of mine e-published.) Understand, I don't have a problem with writing an erotica novel - much of my fiction has a lot of sex in it, and my erotica tends to be a bit dark and fantastical, so there's potential for reader crossover as I move from one genre to another. But it'll just make it harder for the novel to find a home. Which kind of sucks. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. I should probably stop thinking about it and just keep writing the damn thing. :/