My Pleasant Trip To Loserville

Well, I guess I had an off night. My story did not win the contest. On the plus side I got a very nice rejection letter, I know you’re asking yourself how can rejection be nice, and my answer is that you need to submit more stories cause eventually you’ll find a real stinker of an editor who tears you a new one for no apparent reason. My worst has been “Writing isn’t for everyone, maybe you should find a different hobby…”

This one talked about how great the story and the writing were, and told me again how I had made it into the final four. Then it went on to tell me that the content of the story might alienate a small portion of their expected readers. They wanted to be “pagan-positive” and my story had an evil witch in it. This was a unique reason for a rejection and I have nothing but nice things to say about the market.

On a completely different note here is a link to Patrick Rothfuss’ blog. It is a post about mother’s day and his mother who has passed away. The post really hit home with me and I thought I would share it. I lost my thirty years ago and my dad about eleven years ago. I didn’t realize so many people dreamed about their lost loved ones until I started to read the comments. LINKY LINK

Patrick Rothfuss Charity Drive

I thought I would mention this to all you published novelist. New York Times best selling author, Patrick Rothfuss, has started his annual “World Builders” charity drive for Heifer foundation, which provides long term solutions to end world hunger, by giving livestock which provide eggs and milk and teaching them new agricultural techniques.

He is asking for donations of signed novels which will be raffled off, all proceeds will go to charity. If you feel like donating here is the address to send your books:

Patrick Rothfuss

PO BOX 186

Stevens Point, WI 54481

He is doing blog posts about the books he is getting: Here

You can surf around his blog and find out more.

For people not interested in donating things, they are raffling off some pretty cool things and will be having some auctions later in the year. Not all prizes are book related for example they will auctioning off a signed Brett Farve jersey.

But, in my opinion the coolest prize is a golden ticket (he will be auctioning one off, and giving one away in the raffle) which gets you one favor from Patrick Rothfuss. Here is what he said about the golden ticket last year:

You want your name in book two? We can do that. You want me to read your book and give you some criticism? No problem. You want me to attend your local convention, perform your wedding ceremony, or just give you a nice backrub? Consider it done.

A few stipulations:

• The favor has to be legal. (More or less.)

• It has to be something I can actually do. (Duh)

• I can’t make anyone fall in love.

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.