Tag Archives: writing sale

Cheesecake and Beefcake

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Cheesecake cravings assuaged. glenn5 swung by on Tuesday to reprise our dinner/movie/pie nights, and he brought a key lime cheesecake. Mmm. I made Pad Thai, but didn’t quite get the proportions right–too many noodles and not enough kick to the sauce–but glenn5 very graciously said “yum” anyway.

We watched The Lavender Hill Mob and Tomorrow Never Dies, which makes me quite curious about the new James Bond. While it’s not possible for them to come up with a nummier Bond than Pierce Brosnan, I’m willing to give Daniel Craig a shot.

   


Writing Stuff

Having a bit of a clash with my inner “you suck” demons these last few days. I’ve been wondering if I’ve become a complacent writer, laurel-reclining as result of the string of sales I’ve had. Have I stopped challenging myself, taking risks, and experimenting outside my comfort zone? Am I writing to capitalize on what I’ve sold rather than trying my hand at more venturesome projects? And am I ever going to break into the “Big 3”??

Contrarily, am I over-thinking my technique, bogging down my prose and losing the story in the process? And then there’s my seeming inability to get to work on, much less finish, a novel.

Yes, I know, I know. Quit wallowing in angst and just put words on the page. Meep.

Received:
– 34-day sale of “The Goddess Queen’s Battlefield” to GrendelSong, my second to these fine folks. It’s slated for publication in their Autumn Equinox 2007 issue. The story was inspired by Suzanne Vega’s “The Queen & The Soldier,” a song that britzkrieg introduced me to. Thanks for the muse food, sweetie!

New Words/Editing:
– 600 on the collab. piece I’m doing with mtrimm1. *lob*
– 400: the start of the Swan Lake story that David Niven and Vincent Price want me to write. Spent some time last night/early this morning (as in 1AM early) researching all the myriad incarnations and interpretations of Swan Lake there have been, including the Mercedes Lackey retelling, The Black Swan.
– 300 on a new freelance gig. I’m going to take all of y’all’s advice and count those in my “words written”/Club 100 tally. Haven’t decided yet if they’ll have the same weight as fiction, but they ought to count.
– Poked and prodded a story I’ve been sitting on that wanted a time out plus final spit-polish before being shoved unto the breach. I like the story very much, but I’m having a hard time classifying it. In the end, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, chucked my “is this a good fit?” wafflings out the window, and sent it to Cicada. While I’m an advocate of the “don’t self-reject” school of submission, I still have this thing going on, particularly with the editors/markets that I’ve had repeat sales at, wherein I’m all anxious about disappointing them, so I find myself hesitating to take risks, submission-wise. Because, of course, seeing the same ole same ole from a writer never gets stale (*snort*).

Ah, rejectomancy at its finest. Or actually, would this be acceptomancy?

Writers are insane. If we didn’t start that way, the biz turns us into twitching, neurotic wrecks.

Club 100 For Writers
      9

500/day
      23

Cheese and Another Restless Night

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fosteronfilm‘s email circle–a society of which dude_the and dean13 are members of–has engaged in a long-ranging debate on the merits of various types of cheese lo these last few days, with topics ranging from Roquefort v. Gorgonzola to the politics of the cheese oligarchy to the best place to buy and consume cheese locally and abroad. I, an innocent bystander, have been agog at the heated and impassioned discourse, and the one time I tried to enter into the fray, I was quite roundly dismissed as being a mere cheese aficionado-wannabe. Fine, I sez. I’m going home and taking my brie with me. But I’m now craving cheesecake.

Had another restless night last night. Even disabled the motion detector–we’re going through a bit of windy weather, and the holly tree beside it has grown unruly such that its branches are close enough to trigger it if stirred by a strong breeze. This is a slightly different sort of insomnia than I’ve had before. While I seem to be able to get to sleep, I can’t manage to stay that way for more than an hour or two at a stretch. I’m wondering if this bout of sleep dysfunction might be due to the green/black tea blend I’ve been imbibing recently to boost the Adderall. Switching back to herbal as of today.

Eventually, I headed into the bedroom while Matthew was still working in the living room, hoping a more comfortable napping place would help, and then I got hit by the “it’s-dark-I’m-alone-can’t-sleep-clown’ll-eat-me” jitters. So I called Matthew in to keep me company, and he reassured me that no clowns or other baddies would dare set foot in our house because it’s guarded by fairy-types, courtesy our own fey beastie, Hobkin. (Who, while not big on the guard critter front himself, does put in a good word on our behalf.) He then went on to assure me that any boogles or goblins who came visiting would surely only be looking for a cookie, or perhaps a beer, so I needn’t fret. I was all safe and secure.

And y’know? That did it. The willies went away, and I was able to get another couple hours of much-needed sleep. I love my husband.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– An email from Christopher Cevasco, the editor of Paradox, alerting me of the domain and email addy change of his ‘zine. I’ve had a story under consideration with him for almost five and a half months (167-days), so I took the opportunity to query about it. And, it seems I beat him to the draw. He informed me that he wants to publish “The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon” in the forthcoming June issue (#9), and the contract will be going out later this week.

*squee!* This is my second sale to Paradox, and I’m delighted to be able to make an encore appearance between those fine pages.

– 54-day “There’s a sense of maturity and authenticity in your portrayal of these imperfect people and tangled relationships, and the ending brought tears to my eyes . . . but” rejection from Strange Horizons with an invite to submit again. Sigh. Evoking tears just ain’t enough anymore, dangit.

“I know that I’m right, ‘cuz I hear it in the night”

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The other night while I slept, fosteronfilm watched a couple vintage horror movies: Diary of a Madman and Eye of the Devil–and I could swear Vincent Price was in both of them, although IMDB assures me it was David Niven in the latter. Snippets of dialogue filtered into my half-dreaming consciousness, and my submerged mind fused both films together. My sleep-self became convinced that Matthew was watching some sort ’60s re-imagining of “Swan Lake” that incorporated Guy de Maupassant’s invisible Horla monster. Being a fan of retold fairy tales, and the ballet was one of my favorites as a little girl, I tacked up a mental “make sure we ask Matthew about this movie later” post-it note because I might actually want to see this genius creation of Hollywood.

Of course, after I woke up, I proceeded to baffle my husband by demanding a synopsis (“Swan Lake? Wha?”), and then we went to work unraveling the knotted snarl of Eugie’s brain space.

It seems that Diary of a Madman is indeed a retelling of “Le Horla,” and there’s a character in it named Odette. (Odette is the heroine’s name in Swan Lake.) Eye of the Devil, apparently a film with a similar theme as the better-done The Wicker Man, has a character in it named Odile–the anti-heroine’s name in Swan Lake. Amusing fluke, but there were no swans and no lakes. Alas.

Now my mind is percolating with ideas for doing a retelling of Swan Lake. Vincent Price and David Niven have reached out beyond the grave and galvanized my idiot muse, who apparently has a predilection for ’60s-era schlock horror flicks.

“When you close your eyes and go to sleep
And it’s down to the sound of a heartbeat
I can hear the things that you’re dreaming about
When you open up your heart and the truth comes out”
–The Romantics, “Talking in Your Sleep”

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– Feedback from the client on my freelance work. They thought my research was “excellent and exactly what they are looking for.” Happy back-petting to commence.
– The next installment of the collaboration story I’m working on with mtrimm1. Ball’s in my court. Now where did I put my hockey stick?
– Word from the editor of Modern Magic that the anthology is now available. Yay! But also that I’d have to wait until the 10th to get my contrib. copy. They’ve only got the initial print-on-demand ones currently on hand–for filling orders through Ingram–while they wait for the traditional offset printed ones to get to them. I could’ve opted for one of the POD ones, but I’d rather wait to get one from the print run–whining, instant-gratification monster notwithstanding.
– 8-day reprint “sale” of my horror story*, “The Reign of the Wintergod” to the Maniac Press anthology Blood, Guts, & Psychopaths.

Note the quotes around “sale.” This is a royalty-paying, trade paperback, POD anthology. To date, my payout from sales to those sorts of publications has amounted to a big, fat zero.

The business model of such projects tends not to be conducive to writers getting money. The editors/publishers can typically “buy” as many stories as they want (although this one has a stated target of 20 in the GLs) without any risk, since they don’t have to pay the writers upfront. They also usually stipulate in the contract that you don’t get paid until your royalties hit a certain threshold . . . which becomes more and more unlikely the more authors there are since the amount is split between them. And being POD, there’s no incentive for the editors/publishers to promote their titles. And finally, (although this is more to do with small, start-up editors/publishers who then disappear or lose interest, and not the business model itself), royalty statements tend to stop coming (if they ever manifest) as time passes.**

Normally I don’t submit to these on principle, and I will never again surrender first publication rights to them, being a devout follower of Yog’s Law. But this story is one of the darkest and squickiest I’ve ever written. It was originally published in The Asylum 3: Tales from the Quiet Ward, another POD, royalty-“paying” anthology (from when I was less worldly and less cynical about the nature of POD anthologies, and actually labored under the starry-eyed belief I’d get some money from that “sale”), which has since been dropped by its publisher (Prime Books) and is therefore out of print. I’ve had little success at finding a paying reprint market for it; it is a pretty hardcore little piece. But I still think the story is a good one; it was a top-ten finisher in the 2003 Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll in the Best Horror Short Story category. So when I saw this open call for submissions, I figured, hey, if these guys accept it, at least it’ll be back in print, I’ll get another pretty trade paperback out of the deal, and, if that most unlikeliest of unlikelies happens and I actually see money, it’s cake.

*I’ve noticed my horror output has flatlined since I stopped having a day job to go to. Huh. Funny coincidence that.
**Which reminds me that I haven’t received a royalty statement from Scrybe Press in over a year, although I’m supposed to get them semi-annually. Well, at least those chapbooks did earn me something initially. Sigh.

Researching, yo

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Researching. Researching. Researching. fosteronfilm had to drag me out of the library last night for dinner. There’s just so many papers and articles I need to read, and those spin me off into online ad hoc research. Don’t have time to eat, dammit.

I remember why I chose this area in college; I’m finding the subject matter utterly fascinating. Although I noticed that I’m not even bothering to go over the statistics sections of research papers; I just jump to the conclusion paragraphs. I have a feeling all those advanced stats classes are well and goodly flushed out of my system. Sigh.

   


Writing Stuff

basletum is interviewing me for his “Giving it Meaning” column at The Sword Review. Been pondering my answers between reading Dev. Psych. articles. I’m trying to convey my philosophy that having an insightful, relevant theme is what lifts a story from the realm of entertainment into that of art without sounding all highfalutin’ and ostentatious. The thing is, I do believe there’s nothing wrong with a story just being entertainment; a lot of mine are, and I make no apologies about it. But I think I’m coming across as pretentious. Maybe I just need to embrace my inner beatnik.

Received:
– Contract from GrendelSong for “Shim Chung the Lotus Queen.”
– Reprint sale of “Only Springtime When She’s Gone” to Apex Online. This’ll go up in May to accompany my “Featured Writer” interview. Yay!

Snow??

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Err, it’s snowing up here. That’s . . . unexpected, not to mention worrisome on a couple fronts: we’re taking fosteronfilm‘s dad in for some scheduled labwork today and I don’t like the idea of him being out in the cold and snow, and also we were planning on heading back to Georgia tonight. We can certainly handle some snow driving–fosteronfilm and I are both Midwestern-born and learned how to navigate snowy expanses–but I don’t like it.

Plus, it’s almost April. What’n heck is it doing snowing? Apparently I’ve forgotten some of the vagaries of the Midwestern climate.

   


Writing Stuff

Nothing on the new words front has happened for the last couple days, but I hadn’t expected it to.

Received:
– 15-day sale of “Shim Chung the Lotus Queen” to GrendelSong
– Status update from Aeon on a story I subbed there in December letting me know that they’re behind on their slush and catching up.
– A pair of Critters crits for “A Thread of Silk.”

DIL update: much relief and happiness

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Thank you to everyone who sent their support, thoughts, and well-wishes about fosteronfilm‘s dad. The news is all good. We arrived at the in-laws yesterday morning, checked in with my MIL, and then went to visit my DIL in the hospital.

He looked and sounded fantastic and was eating with appetite. The lung specialist dropped in, followed by the heart specialist, and we got the complete rundown about his condition and his prognosis, which is much better than originally thought.

He was indeed in critical condition when he came in last week, but they’re thinking that was due to an acute condition–most likely lingering effects from the infection from his earlier angiogram a couple months back–rather than a sudden worsening of his chronic heart/lung troubles. When they did an echo cardiogram of his aortic valve on Monday, it showed that what had been a critical blockage of the opening circumference on Thursdays had returned to its previous “severe” blockage–with “severe” being leaps and bounds better than critical. It’s still functioning at less than half normal, but it’s manageable and what he was at before Thursday.

It’s a degenerating condition, and they expect he’ll need to go in for the angioplasty procedure in a year or so–and it’s a variation of the standard angioplasty so needs to be done by specialist-specialists–where they’ll knock off the accumulated calcium around the valve. The procedure only has an effectiveness of about six months, due to the nature of the disease–the calcium accumulates again very rapidly–but it can be repeated. There’s 5-8% risk of stroke with the procedure due to danger of the dislodged calcium entering the bloodstream in addition to the other dangers with these sorts of procedures. But he’s holding steady now, on more meds to improve his breathing capacity, on oxygen round the clock, and they expect he should be able to maintain this level of functionality for a year, until they need to re-visit the angioplasty option.

I almost burst into tears (again) of relief when I heard the news. (I’ve been fairly useless this whole trip.) I’m so, so happy at this turnabout.

Matthew and I brought DIL home yesterday, and we all had a nice dinner together and called it an early night. Matthew’s brother swung by to get updated and caught up, and plans to come over again tonight. Matthew and I are running some chores for the in-folks today–grocery shopping and a trip to the hardware store–and we’re cooking dinner. Trying to make sure that his mom, who is intent upon bustling about and doing the attentive hostess thing, doesn’t, and instead takes it easy. And, of course, striving to ensure his DIL is comfy and doesn’t overexert himself.

I feel like the monster-beastie that’s been sitting on my chest for the last week has finally gotten off. A million hurrays.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– one no, one still pending, and one “this seems like more of a Weird Tales story so I passed it along to them” from Sean Wallace of Fantasy Magazine at 38-, 80-, and 79 days respectively.
– Contract from Jason Sizemore for “Nothing of Me” for Aegri Somnia.
– 48-day audio reprint SALE+contract of “The Storyteller’s Wife” to MechMuse. On a serendipitous note, I burned to CD the MP3s of issue #1 of MechMuse for the drive to Illinois and listened to over half the stories in the car, so now I’ve had a chance to hear what sort of publication it is. And lemme say that I am very impressed. The actors they hire are excellent, and the stories I’ve heard have been top notch, especially the two by David Barr Kirtley (who also happens to be a fellow Phobos Winner). The editor informs me that “Storyteller’s Wife” will be in the May ’06 issue alongside a story by Kevin J. Anderson. Sweet.

Adderall and Chinese communique

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I think I’m well and truly addicted to Adderall. I’ve skipped my last couple “weekend holidays” because I didn’t want to risk the drop in writing productivity. The resultant ramping up of tolerance has me fretting. I actually popped an extra 10mg the other day to keep me going when the 20mg wasn’t doing the trick.

(I needs me my speed.)

But I am well aware that that road can only lead to a bad place. Ergo, I’m taking today off as an overdue break to give my system a chance to detox. I suspect there will be much caffeine. Or would that defeat the purpose? Urg.

(I wants me my speed.)

I wrote before I was on Adderall; I can still do it, dammit.

   


Writing Stuff

Received a letter from my folks–my stepdad thanking me for the birthday card we sent him, and to let us know that their apartment flooded and they’re staying with his younger son until they can move into a new apartment. They also suggested that I send them some of my previously published works and they’d see if they could find a Chinese publisher to both translate and publish it, maybe as a collection or something. I have no idea how the publishing industry works in China, but that would indeed be cool.

Received:
– A note, along with contract, from Greek ‘zine Ennea (9) that “Fade to Black” appeared in issue #292 in February. Sweet.
– My contrib. copy of Sages and Swords in which I fulfill a longtime ambition: sharing a ToC with Tanith Lee. I’d squee, except I’m too logy. The anthology’s a very nice production, glossy and redolent with that “new book” smell, although I think the title font is a little utilitarian (I blame dude_the that I even noticed). Of note, it seems the title of my story was changed from “The Wizard of Eternal Watch and the Keeper of Forever” to just “The Wizard of Eternal Watch” which I’m okay with–it was, after all, a pretty unwieldy title–although I would have liked to have been notified of this alteration in advance.
– 7-day email from Jason Sizemore of Apex Digest that he liked my story, “Nothing of Me,” and wants it for the Aegri Somnia anthology. Woot!

And as a reminder, only two more days until Jason’s birthday. They still need sixteen new subscribers or renewals to make their challenge. Subscribe, pleeease?

New Words:
200 on “A Thread of Silk”
Not one of my more productive days . . .

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
5,597 / 7,500
(74.6%)

Club 100 For Writers
      6

The Punisher and sale to DAW anthology

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Weird night. I fell asleep early on the couch and woke up around midnight. Hobkin was curled at my hip so I booted my laptop to do some work downstairs. fosteronfilm turned on The Punisher, a movie I was somewhat curious about when it hit the theaters but didn’t end up going to.

I’m a wimp when it comes to scary movies, but I consider myself pretty tough-skinned and jaded with regard to action/adventure flicks, so I didn’t expect to have any difficulty with The Punisher. Apparently, IMDB classifies it as Crime/Drama/Thriller, but I don’t always understand or agree with IMDB’s classifications. Plus, the movie’s based on a comic book. Action/adventure/crime/drama/thriller or whatever, one scene squicked me out so totally and absolutely that I shrilled at fosteronfilm “turn it off! turn it off!” astonishing both him and me.

So yeah, I found it so disturbing I couldn’t watch it all the way through. That doesn’t happen very often. Normally I know if I won’t be able to handle a movie, but this one tossed me a big ole curve. Didn’t get back to sleep until around 5AM, and I had bad dreams to boot.

However, despite the questionable night, I’m having a great day, thanks to dsnight!

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
dsnight liked “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” and wants it for Heroes in Training! Squee! I’ve got a bookshelf full of DAW titles, many of which I read and fell in love with when I was just a wee fangirl. I’m thrilled giddy to have one of my stories in a DAW anthology! Squee SQUEE SQUEE!

Published:
“Kaawwa, Naagan, and the Queen’s Diamond Necklace” is now up at Dragonfly Spirit. In addition to the cover art featuring my tale, Lauren Francis did another absolutely charming illustration for it.

Pausing for a quick update

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dude_the flew back to Illinois yesterday. fosteronfilm and I are settling back into our normal, daily routines. Actually, “routine” for me is more like frantically trying to catch up on all the things that piled up between Utah and the Superbowl. *gurgle*

I also managed to wrench my back. Probably “wrench” is the wrong word. It’s more like I put too much strain on it over a prolonged period of time and now it refuses to bend without sending jagged pain through me. I need a new human suit; this one doesn’t work right anymore.

   


Writing Stuff

Emailed a query to Here & Now since I still haven’t received either my contrib. copies of issue 7 or payment.

Spent most of the morning doing Tangent work, publishing reviews and answering correspondences. I think I’m mostly caught up on that front now. Although there’s still the strange email submission I received that appears to be (and I’m being charitable here) some sort of disjointed, narrative-free flash fiction or perhaps a rambling stream-of-consciousness note from someone suffering from dementia. Huh. Informing someone with an obviously poorly considered marketing strategy that Tangent is not a fiction publication is rather low on the list of items that need my attention.

Next up, The Town Drunk work. Once more into the breach! *limp*

Received:
– 1-day “exceptionally well written story that, unfortunately, is not for us” from Baen’s Universe with a “We definitely would like to hear from you again.” You betcha they’re going to be hearing from me again!
– 56-day SALE of “Fade to Black” to Greek-language ‘zine Ennea. Amusingly, this story hasn’t been published in English yet, so its first publication will be in a language I can’t read.

Superbowl XL, Veronica Mars, Story Sale to Oceans of the Mind

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Was that not a fantastic Superbowl game?? Granted, we were rooting for the Steelers–an arbitrary decision mostly based upon uniform colors (although I believe dude_the is a fan). There were two memorable plays–the 75 yard run to touchdown, and the fallback pass touchdown (that’s probably not what it’s called)–which had me jumping up and down and cheering, a 200% increase in memorable plays than in previous years. The bottle of Mike’s Hard Lime I had may or may have assisted on the jumping/cheering front.

dude_the introduced (and addicted) us to Veronica Mars. He brought the season 1 DVD boxed set with him, and we spent most of Thursday and Friday, and several chunks of Saturday, watching them all. It’s an excellent mystery series, with Buffy-esque writing (and even a few cameo appearances by Alyson Hannigan). Word on the street is that Joss Whedon is a fan of the show, and I can definitely see why. Although I think the DVD set is the way to go. The story arc is pronounced and I probably would have gotten annoyed if I’d had to see it unravel on a one episode per week time frame. Ergo, fosteronfilm and I aren’t going to start watching season 2, which is currently airing. I don’t want to jump into the season 2 story mid-season and I’d much rather wait for it to come out in a boxed DVD set and see it in another Veronica Mars viewing marathon.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– 31-day sale of “The Few, the Proud, the Leech Corps” to Oceans of the Mind for their “Tribute to the Pulps” Spring 2006 issue. This is the story that I’ve let languish with Dreams of Decadence for four years. Long story short: subbed it Jan 2002–>five months later, queries result in note from editor saying she was “quite likely to buy it”–>unanswered queries over the next 1.5 years meet silence–>a desperate post on the SFF.net DNA newsgroup Jan. 2004 results in a reply from Warren Lapine saying that the D of D editor had my tale in her “buy” pile–>two more years pass w/no formal acceptance letter, contract, or other communication despite several queries–>Jan ’06, Eugie gives up and starts sending it out again.

Obviously, I should have gotten it recirculating sooner since it sold very quickly. As obviously, Dreams of Decadence is no longer a viable market anymore and hasn’t been for at least four years.

– Edits of “Souls of Living Wood” from Fantasist Enterprises to okay for their Modern Magic anthology. The changes were tiny and cosmetic. I approved them and got a note back from the editor that my check is in process now. Coolness.