~~ "She has so many aliases, you'd think she was a spy!" ~~

Saturday, March 08, 2014

Follow me to the party!

Every time I attend a workshop on the Oregon Coast, I have revelations. (Suddenly Florence + the Machine’s “No Light, No Light” is stuck in my head.) Things I need to do, to change, in order to get closer to my goals.

As Gru says in Despicable Me, “Light. Bulb.”

Sometimes they’re life changes, sometimes they’re little things, sometimes they’re things I’ve heard before and thought I understood, but apparently I wasn’t in the right place to internalize and truly get.

For example, splitting out my writing and production schedules. I’m a writer and I’m a publisher, and those things need to be separate. I’m a weird person who likes admin stuff like book design. But the writing has to come first, be the focus, before I can even think about playing with the production of that writing.

And another example, of a small thing: It takes time to post here and to the News section of my website. So why am I still maintaining a blog here?

Helloooo, cosmic two-by-four.

So, this post serves as a fond farewell to Blogspot, which has been a lovely home for many years. I imagine it’s on a ship and I'm standing on the pier, waving my white lace handkerchief at it. Bon voyage!


And I invite you all to sail with me (yes, I’ve totally mixed up that metaphor. Move on.) over to the News area of my website, where henceforth you will find my blog posts. Come on over and let’s party! Virtual champagne for everyone!

Monday, March 03, 2014

Three sales to Fiction River!

I'm utterly delighted to have sold three short stories to Fiction River at the annual Oregon Coast Writers Anthology Workshop!
"The Scent of Amber and Vanilla" will appear Pulse Pounders (thriller), edited by Kevin J. Anderson, in December 2104.
"Ignite the Night" will appear in Sparks (YA), edited by Rebecca Moesta, in August 2015.
"The Imperfect Otter Empire" will appear in Recycled Pulp (variety of genres), edited by John Helfers, in December 2015. John called my story "A kooky little palate cleanser."
These three stories join three others I sold previously to Fiction River:
"Living With the Past," Fantastic Detectives, Fiction River, August 2014
"Leave a Candle Burning," Fantasy Adrift, Fiction River, April 2014
"The Sound of My Own Voice," Hex in the City, Fiction River, 2013—available now!

February Stats and March Goals

February Stats

  • “Umberto Scolari and the Red Clay of Siena,” complete, 3000 words
  • “The Imperfect Otter Empire,” complete, 3200 words
  • “Music, When Soft Voices Die,” in progress, ?? words
  • “The Case of the Robber Bridegroom,” in progress (needs a redraft), 2391 words
  • completed Ebook Design workshop
  • one copyediting job
  • attended weeklong Anthology Workshop after reading ~240 short stories

Wordcount was appallingly bad, but given how much reading I had to do, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. At the end of each day, between the stories and the copyediting, I felt glutted with words, and I wasn’t even reading for pleasure (although many of the stories were fabulous). I’m really happy to be getting back to that. And back to writing. Which brings me to…

March Goals

Overall, I’d like to get to a solid 3K words/day, except on admin days (of which this is one of two this week, because I’m still not home), the two travel days home, and the one “day off” I’m giving myself (a movie plus a concert). On those days, I’d like to shoot for 1K. I need to get my wordcount production up, and it’s time to get that start.

As for projects…

Novels:

  • Ghosted: finish reading through, do some brainstorm, order the random scenes, and write 10-20K to patch it all together…and then get it out to the beta readers.
  • Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess—Sophie Mouette: review full manuscript, make any tweaks, and send to copyeditor
  • Luanna’s book (which needs a title, dammit)—the next Sophie Mouette book: brainstorming with Teresa in preparation for writing the book in April.

Short Stories:

  • redraft “The Case of the Robber Bridegroom”
  • finish “Music, When Soft Voices Die”
  • write story for Magical Motorcycles
  • finish Nikki story
  • write new fetish story
  • read The Valdemar Companion in preparation for writing short story

Publishing/Other:

  • continue to scheme two new projects I can’t talk about yet
  • two copyediting jobs
  • Lucky Bat Books work
  • rebrand covers (mostly done) and interiors and then republish all of my SFF stories
  • prep my mother’s book for copyediting
  • learn how to upload to iBooks
  • six-week online workshop on Writing With Depth