2023: The F*ck Was That?
When I say this year was a lot… This year was A LOT. The first seven months were incredibly stressful, which I think will reflect in things like word counts once we get to them. So, what the fuck happened this year? Let’s break it down: January – 12,043 words This is my peak depression month. I do not make life decisions in January and February. But January 2023 was worse than usual, because my spouse was in a car accident that totaled his car. The good news is that he was completely unharmed. The Kia Soul did everything right and protected him when he was t-boned. But, we were suddenly a single car household after each having our own cars for over a decade. We were also a single-income household at the time. After taking most of December off from writing the book, I’d picked back up and made…
2023 Awards Eligibility
It’s that time of year. The holidays are upon us, and the publishing world begins its wind down into the New Year. With that comes a slew of Awards Eligibility posts – writers, editors, and publishers sharing their 2023 publications eligible for the various awards ceremonies in 2024. I’ll be honest. I don’t fully understand SFFH awards, how nominations work, or how a work is or isn’t eligible. I think the only true requirement for eligibility is that the piece be published within the given year. Which means I have four eligible pieces: The Stories “In the Librarian’s Garden” (F, 4,781) – Issue 6 of Tree and Stone Magazine (Feb./Mar. 2023), ed. by Kevin M. Casin “The Lament of Kivu Lacus” (SF, 4,180) – Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays (Apr. 2023) ed. by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest, pub. by…
On Querying
I figured it was time to shut up about this post and actually write it. Before we hoark down this meat and potatoes, allow me a few disclaimers/caveats: This is not your usual querying advice blog post. I’m here in the trenches with you. I have no tips and tricks for success, because I have yet to succeed in signing with an agent. That’ll be a different post someday. I’m not going to tell you how to write a query letter – there is an abundance of resources available online, all of them more legitmate than anything I might suggest. A quick google search will set you on the path. What I will tell you about is my experience querying in this odd post-pandemic, over-saturated landscape. Because it’s a different game than it was even in 2019, and a lot of the authors talking about signing and debuting got their…
On Writing Communities
When we think of writers, what do we picture? For many of us we see a cluttered desk in a home office, papers strewn every which way while a person sits staring at a computer screen with a permanent frown. The coffee on the desk has long gone cold, and this book isn’t writing itself. If you’re in my age bracket, you might actually just picture Johnny Depp from Secret Window. (Side Note: If I had a lakeside cabin with a cleaning service that I could run away to, I don’t think I’d be murdering anybody. That’s a sweet set up, mon frere.) The point is, when we think of the writing life, we picture a life of solitude, torment, and frequently alcoholism. I largely blame this on Ernest Hemingway, but I’m liable to blame just about any literary complaint on “Papa,” which is a topic for another post. Truthfully,…
On Office Space (No, Not the Movie)
Let’s talk about office spaces. Home offices, in particular. I talked a bit about this on my various social media accounts, but I’ve thought about it more and figured I ought to put it all down in one place. For a lot of us, the pandemic made it painfully clear that our work-from-home setups were not ideal. We were not prepared. I felt that way and I was admittedly more prepared than most thanks to my writing habit. I had a desk and a laptop and all the equipment needed to run a Zoom call. And all of that was even in a room dedicated to the purpose. With a door and everything! My office is one of our two spare bedrooms (we have a three bedroom house and no children, so we both get offices!) and in the early days of homeownership, I had the brilliant idea to convert…
#WilWrite22
In some ways, it still feels like I’m processing the conference. It’s blurry, a mishmash of faces and conversations – most organic, some crafted during certain events. There’s a pocket in my backpack full of business cards and scribbled names and email addresses. All folks I want to keep in touch with. I have a lot of emails to write… The conference kicked off (unofficially) Thursday night with a Writer’s Fair, that was open and free to the public (w/proof of vaccination and masks). It was an extremely casual look at local writing organizations (Wordcrafters in Eugene, SFWA, Astoria Writers Guild, etc.,) with a little social hour complete with a full-service bar and appetizers. We also celebrated the release of The Timberline Review, and heard some WONDERFUL readers! I wore my best “Summer Speculative” look and got to meet my critique partners Nan C Ballard and Laura Cranehill IN PERSON!…
Goals Summary 2022 – Wk #31
I’m off to a slow start this morning. I’m back home after an amazing weekend at the Willamette Writers Conference, and though I’m happy, my brain is, well, mush. So let’s take a bleary look at last week’s goals and see if I can come up with something to shoot for this week. Last Week Prep elevator pitches for Something Sulfurous and Victoria Prep additional Something Sulfurous pitches for #DVpit Draft packing list/pack for #WilWrite22 Enjoy #WilWrite22 How’d I Do? Prep elevator pitches for Something Sulfurous and Victoria Prep additional Something Sulfurous pitches for #DVpit Yes and No. I didn’t really prep formal pitches/elevator pitches for Something Sulfurous or Victoria. I talked about them more organically with fellow writers than I expected, which I’ll talk more about in my Conference Wrap Up post later this week. However, I did participate in #DVpit and did get an agent like on one of them, which I’ll talk more about later in this…
The Marathon
Sunday, I woke to an acceptance email for one of my oldest stories. It’s been on submission since 2018. It went out 32 times. THIRTY-TWO! Let’s look a little closer at those stats. First Submission Date: 4/21/2018. Total Submissions: 32 Form Rejections: 24 Personal Rejections: 4 Withdrawals/Never Responded: 3 Acceptances: 1 Final Submission Date: 7/21/2022. That’s over FOUR YEARS of submitting. Of sending out this story over and over and over, often waiting months between responses, only to hear time and again some iteration of “this one’s not for us.” And as the months turned to years, the doubt crept in: Maybe this story needs trunked. What if I run out of markets to send it to? Maybe it’s bad timing? It got good responses early on, but has been form rejected more and more lately so maybe editors’ tastes are changing? Maybe I should give up? I told myself…
What is a Literary Agent & Why I Want One
Good morning, Bloggarts. It occurred to me that some of my readers might not know what a literary agent is, why a writer would want/need one, and what the querying process looks like. Since I’ve jumped feet first into this stage of my writing career, let’s talk about it! What is a Literary Agent? A literary agent is someone who represents authors and their work to the editors at publishing houses. Publishing is a giant business with only four major players (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Hachette, and HarperCollins). Each of these big companies have smaller “imprints” which typically focus on particular genres of work. And at all of these imprints are Acquiring Editors. People who read manuscripts to find books they want the imprint to buy and publish. But, very rarely will an acquiring editor look at an “unsolicited” manuscript. Meaning, a manuscript that isn’t sent to them by a…
Mental Meanderings
Good morning, Blogland. We woke up early today so we could get our AC unit fixed (again), and now I’m sitting in my office sipping iced coffee trying to make sense of the putty in my brain. This is a good thing! This summer break has been very different than I’d hoped (so far). A lot less adventure and a lot more lounging, but it’s been good for my creative muscle. I’m reading widely, getting into a twitter routine that isn’t completely soul-sucking, and writing whatever clamors to be written. I’ve also been experimenting with poetry, basically since the pandemic started. Back in the summer of 2020 poetry was the only writing I could do. The words came in a trickle, and the best I could do by them was to arrange them in interesting little lines. Currently, I have folders of poetry organized by year (2020, 2021, 2022) for a…