The subject of tonight's flailing about

And I didn't even throw up on his shoes when I told him I was a writer with two books out and his poem "Instructions" was one of the things hung up next to my writing computer.

Go me.

Looking on the business side

Ken had a headache this afternoon, so we threw on a silly movie (one I’d snagged from Netflix to watch in NY or on the flight home when we needed something mindless). I grabbed Afalwen so I could catch up on some online reading, since I really didn’t have to pay attention to the movie.

I’m lucky to know some damn amazing pro writers, and one of the things that makes them amazing is the way they pay it forward. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith’s are both essentially writing books, chapter-by-chapter, on their blogs, that are essential to understanding freelancing and a writer’s career.

• Kris is writing the Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide. She’s covering everything from things to consider when you’re thinking about quitting your day job, to settle schedules to how to keep your morale up, to handling jealousy (yours and others’), to negotiations, to…
• Dean has written a great series on motivation and goals for the new year, and is now busting myths about agents left, right, and center in a series called Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. The discussions in the comments are worth their weight in gold, with other pros such as Laura Anne Gilman chiming in.
• I don’t know Laura Anne personally, but her blog is also a wealth of information. She used to be an editor, and now she’s a full-time, prolific writer—so she’s able to look at things from both sides of the business.
• A blog I’m just getting into now is NINC (Novelists, Inc.). A whole bunch of pros chiming in on a regular basis…how can any writer pass up a wealth of information like that?
• I also like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for their take on what’s going on in publishing news.

So, those are my current reading suggestions for writers wanting to learn more about the business side of things. What are your go-to blogs and sites?

"Early" is relative

Ken and I had plans to get to bed “early” tonight (as in, early for us). Cue maniacal laughter here. Not so much. We’re still poking away at our respective computers… I’ve gotten a fair amount of e-mail accomplished, so it’s not like it’s been a waste.

I spent far too much time today at the urgicare center. We got there about 12:30 or 1, I think, and left at 3:30 p.m. Argh. The doctor was bamboozled about my ear. I have no real visible wax, although my eardrum looks dark. I’m now on antibiotics, prescription ear drops (in case of infection), and steroids. Wooh. Those are all basically precautions, because what probably happened is I’ve got massage oil in there, blocking my eardrum. My massage therapist spent about half an hour (of our two-hour, full-body session) on my neck and jaw, which is where a good month’s worth of stress had settled to lock everything up. (I had some massive headaches in NY.) Immediately after my massage—while she was still here, in fact, I was seized by the notion to clean out my ears…so I probably shoved some oil in there on a Q-tip. As a comedian once quipped, “Good going, MacGyver.”* Sigh.

On a positive note, my blood pressure was flat-out normal. It’s been high-normal in the past, which has concerned me, but even though my exercise lately has been, um, nonexistent, apparently I’m doing okay.

Um. So I did get a few hundred words done on a story (not the story that’s due the soonest, but the story I have a good idea on that’s also hands-down fun to write—and I really needed “fun” in the writing tonight).

We also had über-yummy leftover curry (over fresh Jasmine rice—I love the veg/rice steamer, thank you again Cat!), watered the cats, and curled up to watch some TV together.

And now Ken has wandered towards the bedroom, and I’m wandering after him! G’night!

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*Um. MacGyver is in Word’s spellcheck. WTF?

What do I do with this?!

Last night we made Pad Thai (from the Trader Joe’s boxed mix) and a very yummy chicken curry over Jasmine rice. Because we were also cooking for Morgana and Brian, I sautéed the shrimp for the Pad Thai separately, and put tofu directly in the Pad Thai for some texture.

Now, what do I do with 2/3 of a block of tofu? I’m not especially fond of it except when it’s mixed well into Asian dishes. We still have a lot of curry left and it’s pretty soupy, so should I just chunk up the tofu, fry it up, and toss it in? Or does anyone have some amazing tofu recipe* they could share?

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*Hah! I typed “receipt” first, because I really am stuck in the past.

NY photos

A few photos from New York here.

Backstory

The only easy Internet access I had in upstate NY was at the hospital, which blocked me from logging into Blogger. (I could read posts, but couldn't upload my own or comment on anyone else's.) I write my journal in Word and upload the posts (except for certain private ones), so the following are all of the posts I wrote and couldn't upload over the past month.

Friday, 25 December 2009

Merry LAXmas! United Airline’s gift to me was seats in Economy Plus. Legroom, baybee, and no seatmates (the planes weren’t very full)!

I hate to shop, but when it goes right and I get everything I want without a lot of time or hassle, I can indeed be left with a smug feeling. On Wednesday I procured

• inexpensive socks at TJ Maxx (pack of 3 regular and pack of 3 knee socks, since I am after all going somewhere cold): $15
• reindeer antlers at Borders for Christmas travel, half off: $5
• purpley/burgundy wool coat at thrift shop: $10

The only downside is that I’m just taking a small carry-on suitcase (plus my computer bag), which means I have to lug the bulky coat separately. Meh. Thankfully I have only one layover.

I was so tired last night, I made my sandwiches wrong. I put the roast beef on the bread with the cheddar and stoneground mustard, and the turkey on the bread with the Swiss, mayo, and horseradish…

Saturday, 2 January 2009

Since I have a rotten stinking cold, I’m not going to the hospital to visit my dad (he has a minor infection somewhere that they’re trying to track down and vanquish). Since I have a rotten stinking cold, I’m also not feeling quite up to creating new fiction. So this afternoon I spent a few hours updating spreadsheets and making lists of things to do:

• stories to submit or resubmit. Before I left, I did a follow-up on most of the stories that have been languishing. I’ve already received one “eek, please re-send and we’ll look at it ASAP” and one rejection.
• nonfiction proposals to write up. I feel like I have enough brainpower to sketch out nonfiction proposals, so I’m working on these.
• the ubiquitous “Other” category. This includes everything from following up on missing contracts, to printing any online stories for the notebook I have for them, to making a list of sold stories I can submit to online and audio markets.

Friday, 8 January 2010

Wooh! TOC for Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia! (Click on the link for more info about the stories.) It’s scheduled for an October 2010 release!

Jude-Marie Green, “Hula Hoop”
Robert Borski, “Invasion, 1955”
Neil Coghlan, “Storm on Fifth Avenue”
K.M. Praschak, “Rain Goddess: The Dust Bowl, 1930s”
Lyn C. A. Gardner, “The Mustache”
Bruce Boston, “beat people”
Leonard Richardson, “The Day Alan Turing Came Out”
Brian Rosenberger, “These United States of Frankenstein: Meltdown”
Jennifer Rachel Baumer, “New and Improved”
Amanda C. Davis, “Sparks between Our Teeth”
Cliff Winnig, “R101 Is Burning”
Todd Wheeler, “Dreams like Snowflakes”
Karen A. Romanko, “Zeb”
Cat Rambo, “Ticktock Girl”
Lon Prater, “All That Remains Is the Middle”
Don D’Ammassa, “Slipstream Fiction”
G. O. Clark, “Putting off the Past”
Marge Simon, “The Fix”
Nancy Ellis Taylor, “The Last Time I Was in Vienna”
C.D. Covington, “U8: Alexanderplatz (1989)”
Dayle A. Dermatis, “The Devil Went down to the Sunset Strip”
Paul Abbamondi, “Art Deco and the Infestation of New America”
Ann K. Schwader, “The Darkness Whispers”
Brenta Blevins, “Mercury 13--And Beyond”
David D. Levine, “Nucleon”

~ ~ ~

This is truly annoying. I can view my journal on Blogspot, but I can’t log into it. Also, I can’t access my website at all. I have work to do. I’m pretty sure it’s the hospital’s system, so I’m going to have to go to the library (where (a) my computer’s wireless is creakingly slow and (b) they may block the same sites) or find somewhere else. Grr, argh!

Sunday, 10 January 2010

Things I Miss Right Now: my cats, PG Tipps (I ran out) my chiropractor, my massage therapist, my bed (only twins here).

Things I Missed About Winter: the sound of snow crunching beneath my feet, the way the really cold air takes my breath away the first time I step outside, catching snowflakes on my tongue (which I did in the pizza/sub shop parking lot one night), sledding.

Workity workity

I came home to (or with, since most were via e-mail) a slew of story rejections—I guess editors were cleaning out their In Boxes. Several of them were so close, which is good (close is better than not at all) and bad (ack! not close enough!). In two cases, I’ve been invited to resubmit the same story later: one because it’s a holiday-themed story and they’d rather not sit on it until August when they start planning their holiday issue, and the other because it came so close to this anthology that they’d be happy to consider it if they do another antho in the series.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose, but now I have a pile of stories to get back in the mail! I’m spending a little time this morning printing the e-mails for the hard copy files, moving them (and the submission e-mails) into the Rejections folder in my e-mail, and so forth.

And yes, I did get Very Good Things, too, such as

• a “this is being passed up to the editor” e-mail
• comp copies of Best Lesbian Romance 2010 (containing the reprint of “Queens Up,” my wild west story)
• a request for a bio for another reprint story (one of my Battletech stories, but I don’t know which one yet)
• the cover of Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, which will include my story “The Devil Went Down to the Sunset Strip.” Isn’t it pretty?!

Thanks to…

• Sheri for calling me from the concert in Anaheim during “A Criminal Mind”
• Nanci, Lenny, and Monk for recording the same song and texting me simian hugs and banana love
• Fran for calling me the next night for an unidentified song, then again during “A Criminal Mind” and then leaving the phone on for six songs
• Tani for sending PG Tipps (I immediately threw out the swill I was drinking and made a proper cup of tea)
• Susan for coming to the viewing and also bringing me PG Tipps
• everyone, absolutely everyone, for their e-mails and blog and Facebook comments of condolence and support. I’m sorry I can’t thank you all individually right now.
• Don for picking up my sister and niece at the airport
• Morgana, Melanie, and Deborah for keeping the cats fed, watered, scritchied, and loved
• Anyone I might, in my somewhat sleepless state, have forgotten at this moment

Love you all…

My dad

Walter George Dermatis, LTC (Ret)

February 27, 1929 - January 14, 2010

New story!

Ack! Almost forgot to remind everyone that my story "Santa Claus is Comin'" is up at Circlet Press today!

Fairy Tale Lust

Wow...it's beautiful!

And check out this magical TOC:

Foreword by Angela Knight
Introduction: Once Upon a Time…
The Obedient Wife by Delilah Devlin
How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back by Andrea Dale
Ducking by Craig Sorensen
Three Times by Justine Elyot
Ellie and the Shoemaker by Louisa Harte
The Pub Owner’s Daughter by Alegra Verde
Sleep Tight by Janine Ashbless
Her Hair is a Net, Woven by Shanna Germain
Mind Your Peas and Qs by Allison Wonderland
In the Dark Woods by Kristina Wright
Gildi and the Unwieldy, Ineffectual Committee of Bears by Jeremy Edwards
Frosted Glass by Aurelia T. Evans
Gingerbread Man by Carol Hassler
All In a Day’s Work by Saskia Walker
Big Bad Wolf (An Excerpt) by Alana Noël Voth
The Kiss by Michelle Augello-Page
The Return by Charlotte Stein
The Stone Room by A.D.R. Forte

I'm humbled to be in this group of authors and I can't wait to read all the stories!

Merry

Blessed Solstice

Wishing everyone warmth, peace, and health on this longest night of the year. I am so grateful the light is returning..

The most wonderful…

…you thought I was going to say “most wonderful time of the year,” but I sing that song at Halloween. Christmas is a close second, but it’s still not where I was going.

Nope. The most wonderful husband in the world, and I have him.

I’ve gone back and forth about how much I want to say here. As I said in October, my dad’s cancer is terminal. Since then, the local medical community has essentially failed my mother as she’s tried to keep him comfortable and safe at home. He went back in the hospital with the beginnings of pneumonia, had a dose of chemo (to ease his pain), and is now back home. But there’s still not enough help and support while he’s there.

Ken left early this morning for upstate NY, for no other reason than to take care of my father and my overwhelmed mother. We’d been back and forth about who was going to go when—we knew we were going back over or near the holidays, and that one of my sisters would be there between Xmas and New Year’s. We thought we’d tag team, maybe with me going out first, or both of us and me staying longer. In the end, it worked best for him to go out now, and me to fly out Xmas Day (I’m getting in about an hour after my sister does, and he can pick us both us). He was going to fly back when she did, but we had to use every scrap of frequent flier miles we had to swing this, so we’re both flying home a week later. That’s three weeks for him, two for me. We left for the airport at 5:30 a.m. and he arrived at 11 p.m.—18 hours later.

To take care of my parents.

Yeah. He’s awesome. Awesomest. Don’t you dare argue with me about this.

~ ~ ~

Oh, and his talk went smashingly. He so rocks.

Wherever you go, there you are

I have a gmail account that I don’t use much except to set up Google Alerts for my various pseudonyms. This is largely to catch pirate sites that are illegally publishing my work, but it also occasionally catches reviews I’ve missed or a mention on someone’s blog. Today, I clicked through to find that the reference to me (as Dayle A. Dermatis) was in a description of The Trouble With Heroes on a library website. I have no idea where the Brazoria County Library System is (although Brazoria is a pretty cool name for a county), but I’m utterly chuffed by the fact that they’re carrying The Trouble With Heroes!

Best best best!

Wowsa! The inestimable Violet Blue just released her “Best Sex Books 2009” list, and I have stories in three of the anthologies!

(Note: The above link is to SF Gate, the online version of The San Francisco Chronicle, so it’s safe for work in terms of no nudity, etc.. But this is still a list of fiction and nonfiction about sex.)

1. Playing With Fire: Taboo Erotica

2. Sweetest Kiss: Ravishing Vampire Erotica

4. Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories

And a big "rock on!" shout out to the fabulous editors who saw fit to buy my stories: Alison Tyler, DL King, and Rachel Kramer Bussel!

Sheer cussedness

Today, despite my emotional/psychological state, I managed to (a) finish and mail the requested short story I started yesterday and (b) wrote and mailed a very short (500 words) story for a contest. Granted, these things took me nearly all day to write, but the bottom line is that I was stubborn and finished the bastards.

Tomorrow I’m going to focus on submissions (one or two stories that need to go back out, as well as some novel subs), minor tweaking of an older story, and the gazillion other things on my plate. (Yes, I know I owe you an e-mail. And you, too. And you…)

Meanwhile, from an earlier entry I never got around to posting:

Sale! Fantasy story “The Devil Went Down to the Sunset Strip” to the anthology Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia. I haven't sold a lot of spec fic stories recently so this is especially exciting! The story’s about a hair metal groupie who saves her favorite band.

[They] were four talented guys. (They really were. I wasn’t just some starry-eyed groupie; I knew decent music and I knew stage presence.) Talented, yes, and awfully pretty, all of them.

And every last one of them was dumber than a post.

Hee.

Meanwhile, check out Circlet Press’s annual erotic advent! Every day, they’re posting a new short erotic SFF story—but the catch is each story is up for one day only (posted at about 1 a.m. Eastern).

My own story will be up on Christmas Eve, but I encourage you all to check them out every day! A great way to start or end your day this month. :-)

Baby steps

Ken's IBR talk

4:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 12th, 2009

BMW Motorcycles of Ventura County
830 Tourmaline Drive
Newbury Park CA 91320

The Iron Butt Association is a loose-knit group of riders dedicated to safe long-distance motorcycling. Entry into the club is obtained by documenting long-distance riding challenges, such as 1,000 miles in under 24 hours. Every two years the IBA hosts their premier event, the Iron Butt Rally. Billed as "11,000 miles in 11 days," this Rally tests the mettle of selected riders by sending them all across the US and Canada on a giant two-wheeled scavenger hunt. In fact, more people have gone into space than have completed an Iron Butt Rally.

Ken Meese has been riding ever since he snuck his parents' 125cc bike out of the garage as a teenager. He has logged several hundred thousand miles on BMWs and has ridden in Asia, Europe, and North America. Ken has ridden numerous Long Distance Rallies and Iron Butt certificate rides that have covered nearly every US state and most Canadian Provinces. 2009 was his first Iron Butt Rally, but definitely not his last.

This evening will be full of road tales, travails, and triumphs as Ken shares his experiences of competing in the ultimate motorcycle endurance Rally. In addition, Ken's Rally-prepped bike will be on hand so you can see just what it takes to survive on a BMW for 11 days and 11,000 miles.

For your reading pleasure

Check out Mansfield Park and Mummies by my friend Vera Nazarian!