Sunday Links: October 7, 2012 Edition

Well, I said it would be a busy week, and indeed it was.

It's also been a very good week. I met one of my goals for the month by getting a story into the Codex Halloween contest before the deadline. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't make time to do a second draft; I think the story has some major flaws as-is. But I wanted to be a part of the contest and I did achieve that.

I also had four stories release this week. I'm particularly pleased by the reactions to "Scraps" (at Daily Science Fiction, will be on the web next week) and "ReFormed" (at Buzzy Mag). I feel like those are among two of my best stories so far and the reaction to them has been in line with those feelings. I was a bit worried that they would show up and vanish without a trace. I'm very pleased that this didn't happen.

Sunday Links: August 19, 2012 Edition

It's almost back-to-school time here in Ohio. Our kids have one more week of break but my wife starts up her classes this coming week. A busy time and a reminder that I've been writing seriously for over a year now. In fact, in less than two weeks I'll hit the one year mark of writing every day. I've got something special planned to mark that occasion, so watch for an announcement in the next couple of weeks along those lines.

Also, around the end of August and beginning of September I'm going to take a short blogging hiatus for a week to ten days. I haven't worked out the timing exactly, but I'll publish dates for the hiatus both here and on my Write Every Day blog. I'll still be writing, but I'll be spending that time focused on my fiction. I also expect that I'll be doing a fair amount of work relating to the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology at that point in time since it will be the end of our submission period which presumably will mean a flood of submissions and also the need to have final discussions within the editorial team on which of the stories that have been held over for possible inclusion will make the cut.

Look for official hiatus dates to show up in my Sunday post a week from today.

Below are the links I've found relating to writing which I want to share with my readers. If you have come across any interesting links recently, I'd certainly be interested in knowing about those as well!

Sunday Links: August 12, 2012 Edition

The weeks feel like they're going by faster than ever. Here it is (late) Sunday night again. I've got links to share but first I want to remind everyone about the Kickstarter for Unidentified Funny Objects. As one of the Associate Editors, I've read most of the stories under consideration so far for the final Table of Contents. I think it's going to be a very fun anthology and I hope that people who are interested in humorous science fiction and fantasy will take a few moments to check out the Kickstarter and consider backing the project.

Here are this week's writing-related links:

"Audition Your Cast of Characters" (Julie Musil) - Julie talks about ways to understand the characters you are going to write about. One of the things that struck me as interesting in this piece was her differentiation between "stayers" and "changers." (Both have their place.)

"How to Succeed as a Writer" (David L. Day) - David jumps off from a blog post by Jeff VanderMeer and combines that with his own experience in the corporate world to build a set of principles for succeeding as a writer.

"All Work and No Play is No Fun and No Good" (Kristen Lamb) - Kristen talks about work ethic and balancing work with other activities.

Along with those links, here are the items I posted on my blog this week. It's been a busy week!

"Interview with Scott Bartlett: Author of Royal Flush" - Monday, I posted an interview with Scott Bartlett.

"'Ars Gratia Artis' is Live at Sorcerous Signals" - Wednesday, I linked to my most-recently published short story on the webzine Sorcerous Signals.

"Three Signs Your Writing Process Might Not Be Working" - Wednesday, I cross-posted this article from my "Write Every Day" blog about ways to identify if your approach to writing might not be working as well as it could.

"Short Story Sale: 'Other Kinds' to Nine" - Saturday, I announced a short story sale to the semi-pro ezine Nine.

"Pulpfest 2012 Day One" , "Pulpfest 2012 Day Two", "Pulpfest 2012 Day Three" -Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I wrote about my experiences at this year's Pulpfest convention.

Have a great week everyone!

Sunday Links and the Week in #storyeachnight/#poemeachnight: June 17th, 2012 Edition

And another week has come and gone. Where does the time go?

Here are the stories and (starting on Saturday June 9th) poems from this week. Putting this together, I realize it's gotten to be a fairly large block of text. I'll have to give some consideration to whether I keep creating this summary every Sunday. The most recent week or so of everyone's #storyeachnight and #poemeachnight tweets should usually be available to review on Twitter.

6/10 - Story: "Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard from CLARKESWORLD #69. Intricate story of culture and the lengths some choose to go to so they can feel like they belong. Poem: "I Know A Man" by Robert Creeley from THE VINTAGE BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY. A very short poem and sort of fascinating. Four terse verses, each of which short enough that they could be a tweet. Also includes word reductions such as "sd" for "said" and "yr" for "you're." This poem is ~ 50 years old, best as I can tell but if you showed it to me and told me someone had just tweeted it, I wouldn't have batted an eye. Utterly fascinating.
6/11 - Story: "Spring-Fingered Jack" by Susan Casper from 100 HAIR-RAISING LITTLE HORROR STORIES. A story of video-game violence which seems as if it must have been ahead of its time (1983), predicting future hyper-violent games. Poem: "Early Elegy: Smallpox" by Claudia Emerson from the June 2012 issue of POETRY MAGAZINE.
6/12 - Story: "Light in the Darkness" by Sir Andrew Caldecott from NOT EXACTLY GHOSTS. A nicely atmospheric tale of skepticism and curses in a foreign land. I'm looking forward to reading more of these stories by Sir Caldecott. Poem: "Onions" by William Matthews from VBOCAP. This is the type of poem that makes me feel like I don't understand poems. Some interesting imagery near the end around how onion smell lingers on the skin but overall I felt like I missed his point.
6/13 - Story: "The Magician of Words" by Ruth Nestvold from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. Wonderful poetic story with great imagery. Poem: "On the Ice Planet" by Julia Rios from NEW MYTHS Issue #19. Paints its setting & character well.
6/14 - Story: "Her Words Make It Go Away" by Michael Penkas from ONE BUCK HORROR Issue #5. Well written flash horror story. Poem: "The Physics of Age and Baseball" by Greg Beatty from STAR*LINE 34.4. Nicely done with astronomical effects of gravity used as metaphor for the effects of aging on an athlete's body. Plus -- baseball poetry!
6/15 - Story: "Heaven's Touch" by Jason Sanford from the 8/12 ASIMOV'S. A fantastic story, strong narrative voice and characters. A well-crafted and involving plot, too. One of the best stories I've read recently. Poem: "My House of the Future" by G. O. Clark, also from the 8/12 ASIMOV'S. Fun, whimsical verse about just what the title suggests.
6/16 - Story: "Chinvat" by Sunny Moraine from SHIMMER #14. A ruined Golden Gate bridge and the beings who visit it are key. Poem: "The Night Mirror" by John Hollander from VBOCAP. Vivid images in this poem -- glimpses of an unbalanced mind?

And now, the links:

Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: April 8, 2012 Edition

Not a lot of news in my personal writing world to speak of. I continue working steadily on new stories. I wrote a first draft of one story earlier this week that I need to take through a reshaping second draft before it goes out anywhere. In fact, even though I spent a day doing revising on several stories recently, I still have a fair amount of editing and revising work which I need to get down to doing. I haven't yet given myself credit for a day on my daily writing chain by doing 45 minutes of focused revisions (as discussed here) so I should probably try to do that. I think I've got a bit of a mental barrier to using that as my writing for the day since I've spent so many days in a row writing something new every day. I might just have to pick a day and say "This day I'll do 45 minutes of revising at this specific time and that will be my qualifying work for the day." We'll see how it goes.

I'm still very hit and miss on #storyeachnight though I really do want to get back to reading a new story basically every day. Looking back at the week, I see I was even worse at it than I realized. I'm going to try to get back to reading a story close to every day, but we'll see how it goes.

Here are this week's entries:

4/1 - None
4/2 - None
4/3 - None
4/4 - "After" by C. L. Holland from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION.
4/5 - None
4/6 - "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee from THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 2011. An interesting tale of fantastic weapons, how they came to be created, and their impact on universes.
4/7 - None

Yeah... Definitely not living up to the "each" part of that recently.

Here are this week's links:

Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: March 25, 2012 Edition

The last two days saw (among quite a few rejection emails) a pair of very exciting emails. The first, on Friday, was one from Nature indicating that they were interested in buying one of my stories for their "Futures" feature. This was exciting for any number of reasons, three of the chief ones being that this will easily be the largest readership any of my writing has ever been exposed to, it will be my first print publication in my return to writing, and it will be my first sale to a Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) qualifying market, making me eligible to join as an Associate member. Needless to say, I'm happy.

Saturday, I received an email from a semi-pro market indicating that they were interested in buying one of my stories as well. I've been asked to make some minor revisions, which I have agreed in principal to do and will be working on later today. This one is exciting to me because it's my first non-flash sale in my return to writing and it represents the sale of a story which I am particularly fond of -- it's easily my favorite of the stories I wrote towards the tail end of last summer. I'm not naming the market yet since the revisions still need to be made and accepted. I've no reason to expect this will pose difficulty, but since it would be awkward for both parties if it did pose difficulty, I'll wait to share any more details on this until the revisions are accepted and the contract signed.

It's certainly nice to have some good news to share here!

Here are the stories I read for #storyeachnight this week; I did get a nice string of four nights in a row, though it's been far from "each" night recently:

3/18 - None
3/19 - "Ride-Along" by Brendan Dubois from THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. I was a bit underwhelmed by this one. Lots of it felt too heavily telegraphed. Writing was good enough that it was still decent but I wasn't wowed.
3/20 - "Memories of My Mother" by Ken Liu from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. Well-told story of relativistic travel and one family. That said, I've read several relativistic travel stories recently & am not in a rush to read another. No fault of the author. (* My favorite of the week.)
3/21 - "I Am Nano" by Sean Monaghan from ASIM #52. A story of nanobots gaining sentience.
3/22 - "Who Killed Skippy?" by Paul D Brazill from NOIR NATION #1. Entertaining story about a family business & a dead kangaroo.
3/23 - None
3/24 - None

And now, here are this week's links: