1000 more words on that Chinese-flavored fairy tale I started. Fork stuck in. It’s done. Or at least the zero draft is. I’m going to have Matthew do a once over on it, and then use my MPC to bump it up to Critters next week. ‘Course that’s probably a questionable use of my MPC since as soon as I do the rewrite on that, I’ll officially be bottlenecked. I’ve already got a new submission at Cricket that (if all goes well) I won’t hear anything from for around three months. So I won’t be able to send this one out for months, plus the story after it in the queue is another juvenile audience oriented fairy tale. So that’s at least a six month log jam right there. Dammit. I wish there were more top-paying youngster-fiction markets.
Matthew had to go to a homeowner’s association meeting tonight, so it’s just me and Hobkin for a few hours. At first, I thought Hobkin was going to run amok and I’d have to go chasing him around the house. He gave every sign of being frisky as he lunged at Matthew’s shoes, stomped at both of us several times, and generally freaked out when the garage door opened, but apparently that was a lot of excitement for him. I picked him up when I sat down at the computer and he’s completely crashed out now. Yup. He’s a lap skunk.
Amokk Amokk Amokk!
Sorry.
Your wife is a very patient woman, isn’t she?
Check These Out…
Well, you might have already… You probably have, this being your market and all, but in case Ralan’s not your cup of tea.
Found these three under “Pro” at Ralan.com
Alchemy – not necessarily for kids, but takes “retold fairy tales”.
Just Weird Enough – 10 -14 year olds, takes things that are different.
Odyssey – for kids, mostly science realted, but takes retold legends in fiction – but only up to 1000 words.
Re: Check These Out…
Actually, I’m a big fan of Ralan.com. I consult it a couple times a week to see the updates.
And yah, I’m familiar with all of those markets, but for my children’s stories, I consider Alchemy and Just Weird Enough as second tier markets (and Alchemy isn’t a children’s market, but then again, neither was Leading Edge), and I always go over Odyssey’s word limit.
As far as I know, Cricket is the only market that pays top dollar and has a bigger (2000-word) limit so I find myself in the position of having a first tier for my children’s stories of only one market. Anything they reject I send along to various second tier places, but if something is in serious consideration at Cricket they take at least three months to reply. In the case of Shakko there was a re-write request at the 100-day mark, and then another 150 or so days after I sent in my rewrite before their final acceptance. I’m more than happy to wait that long for a “yea”, but that does leave me with an unfortunate bottleneck situation as I seem to be in a fairy/folktale kick, and I can crank a new one out in about a week. Urk.
I have been pondering…wondering how come most of these “writing critique” sites have the name like Critters, Crickets… is there a metaphor to this? There must be something about critters that evoke such idea. Please enlighten my mind.
(Glad you’re working hard on your writing. Go, girl…)
Actually, Cricket isn’t a writers group, it’s a magazine. Check out their website HERE. They’re a top-paying professional magazine aimed at a 9-14 year-old readership. I find I’ve been writing a lot of children’s stories recently.
Critters is a writing group, and their name derives from “critiquers” as in “people who critique.” And so it becomes “critters.”
How’s the language in the juvenile stories? Maybe you could submit them to an adult market.
I tend to think that my children’s stories are too “young” to go to adult markets, but I’m pretty confounded by what editors buy. I wrote “Second Daughter” for a 9-14 year-old market and sent it to Cricket. They passed on it (with a personal, page-long rejection), but I sold it to the second market I sent it to: Leading Edge, which I subbed to as sort of a holding market until I could figure out where else to send it. Leading Edge isn’t at all a juvenile-audience magazine so I was floored when they bought it. Urk.