Writing Stuff
Got a lovely phone call last night from Ann Crispin. We chatted for almost an hour. She’s going to send me an electronic copy of her new novel, and she suggested I write a sound byte blurb for my current WIP so I can have something to rattle off to publishers on the fly, as a quick pitch. Gleep. Novel pitch. Going to spend some time today working on that. It’s so much harder to scrunch a project into a sentence or two than it is to write a multi-page synopsis.
Received:
– 8-day rejection from F&SF from JJA. “Nice writing here but . . . ” Dammit, I just can’t get past him, anymore! I miss those “alases” from GVG”
– My contrib. copy of the Revenant: A Horror Anthology chapbook with “Caesar’s Ghost” in it. My story’s in the esteemed “last” spot. Neato.
– Fan mail! Got an email from a reader about “The Storyteller’s Wife” in the current Realms. He called it a “marvelous gem of a story.” I love fan mail.
In less good, RoF news, I found out that Carina is resigning from her position as slush reader. That totally sucks. I understand why she’s doing it (and how). Her position was unpaid, and she recently got engaged, plus her singing career is taking off, so she really doesn’t have the time anymore for the huge time glut that slush reading is. But I’m so going to miss her. She was the best slush reader Realms has ever had, and I’m not just saying that because she passed so many of my stories on to Shawna.
When next you speak with Ms Crispin ask her if she’s still feuding with the infamous Eduardo Vega Yunque in AOL chat rooms.
Curious minds want to know.
Huh? Who? Wha? More information, plez.
Oh, she’ll know who it is–their feuds are well known throughout AOL chat land.
Ann may know, but I won’t. Who was this person?
And why would you want to?
Vega is a writer who doesn’t think too kindly of “genre” writers.
Isn’t it strange when you are commenting on the perceived quality of the rejection? (Sure he ran me over in his car, but it was my legs instead of my head like last time! It’s so encouraging!)
Please post, if you would, the process of “sound byte blurb” birthing. I’d be interested in how you approach that. What I think are my own best ideas sound rather absurd and trite when I attempt to compress them down to a sentence.
Good luck and good writing!
“Isn’t it strange when you are commenting on the perceived quality of the rejection? “
Rejectomancy, baby! Next I’ll be scrying my rejections using fountain pens filled with expired toner, yup.
“Please post, if you would, the process of “sound byte blurb” birthing.“
I shall! Especially since I’m sure it’ll be easier to blog about the experience than to actually do it. Urg.
An Crispin is a wonderful human being. I hope some day she gets some kind of material acknowledgement of all she does to help new writers–workshops, scam scouting, etc.
One of the first exercises in a novel class I take at Forward Motion, was to state your story idea in one sentence. Then we had to expand the one sentence to a blurb and work from there. Nice exercise.
I think it’s cool that you have fan mail. Thanks for allowing me to peek at your rise to literary greatness.