Clash of the Geeks

Just wanted to let everyone know about the Clash of the Geeks anthology. Here is the blurb from the website:

Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi and Subterranean Press are proud to announce the publication of Clash of the Geeks, a special and fantastical electronic chapbook featuring stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, New York Times bestseller Patrick Rothfuss, Norton Award winner and Hugo Best Novel nominee Catherynne M. Valente, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Rachel Swirsky and others, for the benefit of the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America. The chapbook is free to download, but voluntary payment is strongly encouraged, via Paypal or by tax-deductible donation forms, both linked to later in this entry. All proceeds from this chapbook will go to the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America. Please enjoy the stories, link your friends to this page — and give!

Here is a link where you can download the book for free, or make a donation to the Lupus Foundation.

Linky-poo

As someone with a mild form of Lupus this is a charity that is very personal to me, and I encourage everyone to donate or at least read some of the stories. I mean how often do you get to read about a unicorn-pegasus-kitten aka Unigaten, Kigarn, Pegicten...hmmm I'll work on the names a bit. Anyway it's pretty cool.

Creative Bloggers Award

So Emma Kathryn nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award over at her always entertaining blog Beware the Vampire Bunnies. It was very nice of her and I have to say a big thank you to her.

The way the award works is that I must give 6 funky lies and 1 weird truth, or 6 weird truths and 1 funky lie and it's up to you guys to figure it out. The second part is that I have to nominate five more people so in no particular order the nominees are:

D. Nathan Hilliard- A Dark and Stormy Blog

William Wood- Write Brane

Martin T. Ingham- Three Cents Worth

Harper Hull- This Is Hanging Rock

CB Calsing- Writer CB Calsing’s Blog

If you get the chance check out thier blogs, they are a great way to kill time when you should be writing or working.

Now for my part it is up to you guys to figure out the truth and the lies:

1. I have a steel plate in my jaw

2. On my 20th birthday I rolled my car while only going 15mph

3. I have broken my little toe (on my right foot) twenty-five times

4. My wife and I managed a bar in upstate New York for about a year

5. I collect ancient roman coins

6. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Applied History (Museum Studies)

Done stalking

In my last post I said I was stalking Duotrope's, watching one market like and eagle. Well, I heard back from them, it was a rejection but it kind of made me more excited than some of my acceptances.

It was a professional paying market that usually sends form rejections but I got a personal rejection. The rejection said the editor liked my story and gave few very specific helpful hints, and said that story had some problems with pacing. It also went on to state that I came very close to being accepted and the editor asked that I please consider sending them a story in the future.

It was actually kind of cool.

Half way there...

The weather is starting to change here, fall in Nebraska is always such an interesting time. The leaves are changing, and there is a chill in the air. It gets down into the 30s and 40s at night and during the day it warms up into the 70s and 80s. You can feel the change coming, I bet sometime within the next month we will have the first snow.

I have always loved fall, I hate being hot and once winter arrives it will get too cold to leave the house but for a few months the weather will be perfect. Of course I don't spend much time out in the weather, because fall is my favorite time to write.

I have never been able to figure out why the ideas seem to flow so smoothly around this time of year, but I love it and take advantage of it. Last year I wrote the end of of one novel and an entirely new novel between the months of September and December.

Fall is also a time for looking back, and as I stalked Doutrope's today (I have a story in at a pro paying market that has been waiting for 53 days, and when I click the new link on Doutrope's I see that they are sending out a bunch of 15-25 day rejections, I am hoping this is a good sign) I looked back at my writing career via the online database.

In three months I will have been writing for two years. In that time I have written 45 short stories and 3 novels. I have subbed these stories and novels 239 times and, including reprints, I have had 39 acceptances. I still have 12 stories and all three novels subbed out right now. I have put about 500,000 words to paper. I wonder how many words a day I have been writing on average?

Hmmm... That sounds like a project for next time I am super bored and have a hankerin' to do some math. (More than likely never)

But my point is that I had no idea I had written so many stories or that I had sent them to so many places. I just focus on the current project and forget about the rest. I have heard that you aren't ready to write a really good novel until you have written 1 million words, well it looks like I am half way there.

A Few Updates

The Pill Hill Press shoot-out is over, I ended up with a score of 29.57 which put me in second place to William Wood who had a score of 29.94. I was very excited to come in second place with such a great group of writers.

It was a confidence boost I needed, I have gotten seven short story rejections in the past week. ~sigh~

But I started using the pyramid form of sending stories out. It is where you send your stories to the highest paying markets first and then send them in to smaller markets afterward. It sounds like common sense, but before I was just sending my stories to what ever publication caught my eye rather than worry about payment.

I decided that I really want to be a member of SFWA, it is my new goal with short fiction. I really didn't expect a pro paying market to nab up one of my stories, but it would have been nice.

As I wait for the next inevitable round of rejections I started working on Godswar again. I figured out where I went wrong, and had to cut nearly 20,000 words to get back to the point where I took the wrong path, but I am writing steadily again and have gotten almost 8,000 words written in the last two weeks, a far cry from the 2,000 words I got done in the entire month of June and July.

I know where the novel is going and I have clear path set in my mind. The words are just flowing, I love that feeling.

I think the problem that I could only write once a week, and I wasn't going back to review what I had already done. So I would just read the chapter before and say "hmmm, looks like its a chase scene, and then start writing. Well, that one chase scene lasted for the entire 20,000 words I cut. It was very...um...exciting...yeah thats what I'll call it.

I started writing brief synopsis of my novel as I go. After I finish each chapter I write the synopsis of the chapter. Should make it easier when its time to edit anyway, and then if I take a break from the novel I can know what is going on.

Another Reprint

My story from Pill Hill Press' Fourhorsemen anthology has been reprinted online at Static Movement. It is a story of a family torn apart by civil war in a fantasy world. I know that sounds very dramatic but don't worry the entire thing takes place on a battle field, so there is a lot of action.

Read It Here!

Story Online

Hey all, I just had my story from Pandora's Nightmare reprinted online at Mirror Dance. So if you didn't get a chance to read it, why not check it out?

The story is called,Epimetheus' Palace. This story is about Pandora and a couple of soldiers who must return to Epimetheus' Palace years later to close Pandora's Box.

Read It Here