Inklings things.

Some of my fellow writers have a few projects of note coming up (or already here), and it only seems appropriate to give them a plug here.

Ahimsa has a story entitled “Tuning In, Turning On, and Dropping Out at the Mountains of Madness” in the forthcoming Cthulhurotica anthology, which you can pre-order here.

Meanwhile, Garrett has just released Umbral Visions, which contains his novellas "The Key Ring" and "The Shadow."  It's available in print and electronic versions here, and you can also find it on Amazon.

Go check 'em out!

Part Fourteen: In which Nothing Continues to Happen.

So, still nothing to speak of on the writing front--I'm polishing a couple of stories before submitting, but that's about it--so I figured I'd do this meme (no, I don't know why they call it a meme; as far as I can tell, and assuming my French isn't failing me, it's just a fancy way to say "thing") about my reading habits.  I stole it from Brian Ruckley, who stole it in his turn; I tracked it back six or seven links looking for the original before I got bored, but I assume it started somewhere.  Much like the Family Guy episode where Peter and the boys go in search of the source of the world's dirty jokes....

Anyone who's seen my shelves could probably answer most of these questions for me, but here you go:

What is your favorite drink while reading?

Whatever I have, I guess.  I'm not too concerned about what I'm drinking while I read.  It might be a little weird if I was, I think, although given some of the answers that are coming, it might actually be weirder that I'm not concerned about it.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

In general, when I'm done reading a book you can't tell it's even been opened, so I'm going to go with horrifying. 

How do you keep your place while reading a book?  Bookmarks?  Dog-ears?  Laying the book flat open?

Bookmarks all the way.  See previous question for my feelings about dog-ears and laying books open.  I tend to use ticket stubs; right now I'm using my Arclight stubs from The Godfather and Coraline, and a Dodgers ticket. 

Fiction, nonfiction or both?

Both, of course, although my non-fiction tends to be pretty tightly focused on academic articles and monographs dealing with various aspects of the Frankish kingdoms, c. 750-900.  And things along those lines.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

Always to the end of a chapter if I can help it.  At the very least I have to read to the end of a page.  If I stop midstream I have to go back and reread a few sentences or a paragraph before to get back up to speed, and who has time for that?  I mean, really, what does that take, like fifteen, thirty seconds?

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if an author irritates you?

You can guess my answer to this one pretty easily by now.  Anyway, I'm not really the type of person to throw anything.  As far as books go, I basically like everything I read--I'm probably the world's worst critic--so it never really comes up.  If I don't think I'm going to like something, I don't even bother with it. 

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

Nope.  I always try to figure it out from context.  I might look it up eventually, but it goes back to the whole not stopping midstream thing.  Also, my dislike of theory people (Foucault, etc.) who I think purposely use big words and write obscurely just to make themselves sound smart.  At the same time, I love Neal Stephenson and Umberto Eco, who've stumped me on more than one occasion with their lexical--like how I threw "lexical" in there?--choices, but they're not pompous (at least, I don't get that from reading them; I can't claim personal knowledge of either), just great writers.  I guess that's the difference between fiction and theory.

What are you currently reading?

I'm just about finished with Neil Gaiman's collection Fragile Things (the man can tell a story; "A Study in Emerald" is great), getting into the meat of Neal Stephenson's Zodiac (catching up on the back catalog).  Graphically, I just started the first volume of Brian K. Vaughan's and Pia Guerra's Y:  The Last Man (not much to say about this one yet, but I haven't heard a negative word said about it).

What is the last book you bought?

Not received as a gift?  Hmm, probably The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers, which came out two years ago, if that tells you anything about when was the last time I actually bought a book.  The Avery Cates books are one of my favorite series going right now; good old fashioned cyberpunk awesomeness. My story "Obsolete" (which you can read for free here--plug, plug) is unintentionally very similar in style, which I guess explains why I like them.

Are you the type of person who reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

In general I'll have one novel (or anthology) and one graphic novel going at the same time.  If I'm reading anything nonfiction, that gets lumped in, too.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?

No I do not.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

It's all good.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Neuromancer and Snow Crash more than anything else.  Also Neil Gaiman. 

How do your organize your books?

How much time do you have?  Fiction is alphabetical by author, then chronologically for each author.  Nonfiction is divided into primary and secondary sources, then by time period within each (i.e., Greek and Roman, Late Antique, Early Medieval, Late Medieval, Renaissance, 16th century, etc.).  Each time period gets organized alphabetically by author; anonymous sources go to the front of the line, organized by title.  Got it?  Good.


Probably things I shouldn't be admitting in public, but there it is.   

Some submission related items.

Now that things are winding down with the novel (to the extent that that's possible), some of the short story projects that had been shoved off to the side are starting to see the light of day again, which means I'm spending more time in the world of submissions these days.  I've discovered two things that I love, and one thing that really bugs me.

First, the love.  I love the Clarkesworld electronic submission system, and I love that they're letting other markets use it as well.  I just discovered that Asimov's has finally started accepting electronic submissions (now if only Analog and F&SF would get their acts together, for the love of god), and that they're using it.  It's so freakin' easy, and you can actually see what's happening to your story.  If I were making the rules, every market would be required to use it.

I also love the submissions tracker at Duotrope.  For those not in the know, Duotrope.com is a (probably the) major source to find markets for short fiction.  They have tools now that let you create custom market searches for each of your stories based on genre, style, length, pay rate, etc., then track to what markets you've submitted a given story, how long it's been/was out, and what the response was, among other things.  You can do all this stuff on your own, of course (and you really need to), but it's a lot less time consuming when everything is automated.  The thing that's really hooked me is the RSS feed to which you can subscribe for markets where you've got submissions pending.  Now I get a little notice in my Google Reader whenever one of the markets where I've submitted a story has a response reported on Duotrope, so I can see whether other people who submitted to the same place are being accepted or rejected, whether they received a personal or form rejection, and how long it took them to receive a response.

Which brings me to the bug.  In following the responses, I've seen stories receiving form rejections after six months, eight months, even a year.  Now, I know editors say that they're much too busy to send out personal rejections and comments on every story they read.  And that's fine, if you're sending out rejections two weeks or a month after receiving a submission; you didn't like my story, so I move on to the next one.  But after six months, or a year?  To me that just seems like a cop out.  It makes it feel like the story just sat somewhere for all that time, unread, until a slush reader finally picked it up and said, "Nope."  For all we know the story never even got read.  It's not exactly conducive to a writer's sense that they're making progress in their chosen field, especially when most markets are still refusing to accept simultaneous submissions.

It's unrealistic to expect editors to give a detailed critique of everything they read, and that's okay; that's not what they're for.  But if you're going to hold on to a story for an abnormally long time, the least you can do is let the writer know you've read and thought about their story.  Not too long ago, I received this note from an editor (after much less than six months, I should add):

"Thank you very much for submitting "Charlemagne's Magus" to us here at [redacted].  There's some nice historical detail in this piece but unfortunately it's not quite right for us at this time."

It's very brief, but still has enough information that I can tell the editor at least read the story.

Now, honestly, how long would an email like that take to write?  Five minutes?  I would imagine less, but let's be conservative.  Let's say you sent out ten rejections like that in a day.  That's an hour, give or take.  At that rate, you could easily reject two hundred stories in a month, without investing an inordinate amount of time.  That's a pretty good number, even for the biggest markets.

In any case, we ought to make a rule (again, assuming I'm making the rules):  editors should be required to write a personal response to any story they've kept for more than six months.  Seems to me like that's only fair to the writer, who took the time to write the story, and obviously chose to submit to you for a reason.

Anyway, that's enough of that.

P.S.  I love you editors!  You guys and gals are the bee's knees.  I'm just sayin'....

Part Twelve: In which Nothing Happens.

Yes, I know it's been nine months since my last post.

Yes, I know I've become That Guy.

Here's how it happened:  I had planned to post an update after receiving responses for a couple of stories I had submitted around the end of the year (I know, that still leaves a long gap between posts, but what are you going to do?).  Now it's June, and I'm still waiting for those responses, which could mean a few things.  Either I've made it past a lot of the editorial checkpoints, and the stories' chances of acceptance are now somewhere between Almost None and Slim (they're all at big 'zines), or the editors have completely forgotten about me.  Or they're just really, really slow.  Anyway, fingers crossed!

On the novel front, I'm working through my second (and hopefully final) revision of "The Commerce of Kings," which is what I'm pretty sure I'm going to call the thing.  Then it's time to start sending out queries and let the real fun begin.

So the news is there is no news.  More as it develops.

Until then, enjoy this lovely picture of Heidelberg, copyright me!

Woo Hoo!

Yay, there's actually something to write about!

So "Obsolete," my first published story, was just released in issue #8 of M-Brane SF. It's been a long time coming--I sold the story back at the beginning of February, which really isn't all that long in publishing time, but still feels long--and I'm really happy to see the finished product.

First things first: go over to M-Brane SF and pick up a copy of the magazine. Single issues cost $2, or you can get a year's subscription for $12. There are a lot of great stories, and since M-Brane is working to increase its visibility, it's a chance to support writers like me and give us a place to publish our short stories. Short fiction publishing is going down the crapper in a hurry--possibly more on that in a future post--so zines like M-Brane need all the help they can get. Go now!

I'd like to point out that the delay was entirely my doing, and not that of M-Brane editor Christopher Fletcher. If Chris had had his way, the story would have come out in April or May, but since I had entered a contest for unpublished writers literally two days before I got Chris's note that he wanted to take the story for M-Brane (one of the stipulations of which contest was that I couldn't have any works published before late July, when the magazine running the contest would have been published), I asked if it would be possible to hold off on publication of "Obsolete" until I heard the results, and Chris was gracious enough to push things back a few months. Needless to say, nothing came of the contest, and here we are.

I just reread the story when I received my copy of the magazine, and while there are probably a few things I'd do a little differently now, basically a year out from the last time I touched it, I really like this one. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's fun, and isn't that really what it's all about? The more I think about it, though, I'm not convinced that the story is finished; I mean, it's got an ending--it definitely resolves--but there's more to say, so it may be that one of these days you'll get to read the further adventures of Mr. Ellis. In fact, I'd say it's a fairly safe bet.

The biggest thing that sticks out to me now is the pop culture references. Being that the story is set thirty-or-so years in the future, it may seem odd to readers that all the cultural markers referenced by the characters come from the last ten to twenty years (meaning the '90s and '00s). I hope that people get that the characters think this way because there's a sort of pervasive nostalgia for the time before the war (read the story and you'll see what I'm talking about), but since I never made that point explicit, it may be that readers will just think I'm dumb, or lazy, or both. Hopefully, and I think it is, pretty clear that's what's going on; people who have read and commented on it so far seem to get it, so maybe I'm just worrying too much.

Well, there it is. If you're reading this post in the first place, then you've probably already read the story, but if not, I hope you have a chance to do so, and either way, I hope you liked/like it.

He wrote a six-word story.

Today Eric alerted the rest of us Inklings to this old Wired article that asked a bunch of prominent, mostly SF authors to write a six-word story, a la Hemingway's famous, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

After reading what some of my favorite authors came up with, I decided to take a stab at it myself. Here are a few that I came up with after some (admittedly brief) musing:

Cities vaporized, no survivors; terrorism suspected.

Stomach turning: first day of school.

Ribs showing; neighbors looking more delicious.

It started and ended too soon.

It's really kind of fun; give it a try for yourself!

Finally.

And now for the promised news: the first book of the historical fiction trilogy is done.

Well, the draft is done, anyway. I've still got to type everything I've written so far (I've got about 52,000 words--around 250 pages of 12-point courier new--typed, and am guessing I'll end up somewhere around 70,000). Then I have to revise the whole thing, which means fixing all the continuity problems where I changed my mind about how things were going to work midstream, adding in all the chapters and scenes I decided to add after I was already past the point where they fit into the narrative, trying to catch most of the typos, and generally attempting to make the whole thing sound like it was written by someone with at least a passing command of the English language. After that it goes out to the Inklings (and maybe a few lucky others) to critique. Once they've had their way with it, I can get down to some serious rewriting. Hopefully at this point I'll have something that's presentable. Then the real fun starts, with sending out query letters to agents, trying to convince someone that my book is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that they would be crazy not to try and convince some publisher to give me a large sum of money to publish it.... Oh, and at some point I need to decide on a title for the thing.

Let's just say I still have a lot of work to do.

It's going to be a long process, but I've been getting good feedback on the stuff people have seen so far, so hopefully it will pay off. And I'll also finally have a chance to finish and start submitting all the partially-written stories I've been sitting on while trying to get this thing done, which I'll do between finishing the initial typing and starting revisions.