Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: March 4, 2012 Edition

It's Sunday again! Time for me to go back and look over the short stories I read as part of my #storyeachnight reading and also highlight some writing-related links that I found particularly useful from this past week. First, here are this week's stories along with my comments on them from my #storyeachnight tweets.

2/26 - "Last Cottage" by Christopher Merkner from BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. An interesting first person plural story of greed in a small town. (* My favorite of the week.)
2/27 - "Bus Ride to Mars" by Cat Rambo from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. I enjoyed reading it, lots of great details. If there was much plot, I missed it. That said, it's a credit to the story that I was unsure of the "point" and still liked the story.
2/28 - "The Procedure" by L. E. Elder from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. A singularity-ish story with one of last non-AllTechs facing her future. Maybe I've just read too many similar stories, but that one really didn't grab me.
2/29 - "Frumpy Little Beat Girl" by Peter Atkins from YEAR'S BEST DARK FANTASY AND HORROR 2011. A Robert Rankin/Douglas Adams-esque fantasy about a used bookseller co-opted into trying to save the world. Fun. I've really enjoyed this anthology, almost every story I've read from it so far has been excellent.
3/1 - "Top of the World" by Bill Crider from FAVORITE KILLS.
3/2 -  "Jack Webb's Star" by Lee Goldberg from FAVORITE KILLS. From a traffic ticket to theft and murder...
3/3 - "More Than a Scam" by Dave Zeltserman from 21 TALES. Most everyone gets more than they bargained for in it.

And now, here are this week's writing-related links that I found interesting and worth sharing...

"Adventures in Self-Publishing: Fear Not the Process" (J W Manus) - I thought that this was an interesting post about the blogger's reasons for and experience with exploring the self-publishing process with some short stories. (Though, I have to say, that while they described the sample covers shown as being "serviceable" I think that description was a bit on the generous side.) I thought that the advice to at least consider getting your feet wet in this arena is good. I'm planning to do that with a non-fiction project later this year, myself.

"On Not Quitting" (Brad R. Torgersen guest-posting at The Fictiorian Era) - Brad talks about his experience in writing over the last decade-plus culminating in a recent Nebula Award nomination. There's lots of discussion about not giving up as a writer if you truly have a desire to succeed. Brad's experience is encouraging, even if it may be towards the "best-case scenario" end of the spectrum.

"What Finding Nemo Can Teach Us About Story Action" (Kristen Lamb) - Five years ago, I probably could have recited every line of dialogue from this movie; one of our sons loved it that much. Kristen uses Nemo as a guide while walking us through how things get bad and then seem like they might get better but turn worse before seeming like they might get better again and so on...

"How To Think Like an Editor" (Jeanne Kisacky at Writer Unboxed) - I think one of the challenging things for writers, particularly new writers, is making an honest appraisal of when they should keep trying to improve a story and when it's time to send it out into the wild to find a home (or not). Jeanne provides some good suggestions to help you think more like an editor and less like the author of your story when trying to make that decision.

Finally, here's a recap of the posts from this week on my blog:

"March Goals for #writemotivation and 11 Questions from the Writer's Campaign" - Monday, I wrote about my goals for this month and also (finally) responded to a "answer questions about yourself" meme from the Writer's Campaign.

"A Minor God of Mischief is Live on Kazka Press" - My first of two Thursday posts announced that my short humorous fantasy story "A Minor God of Mischief" was up and available to be read for free on the Kazka Press website.

"Final February Goal Status" - My second Thursday post covered my February goal results relating to writing. On the whole, it was a decent month.

I've got a story that I started on recently that I'm very excited about. I'm hoping to get some more time in on it today, though we'll have to see. Life in general has been very hectic around here recently, but I've managed to keep plugging away slowly but steadily at writing. I hope that the upcoming week is good for us all!