Remember, Remember, the month of November

OK, time for the November roundup...

• Mrs. Marsupial's Tea Party, written and submitted to the Cafe Doom contest in October, took the silver medal for good behavior at Cafe Doom...subbed it to Clarkesworld (rejected), and is now in-slush with Sybil's Garage.
• Started and completed Contract of Men, which now sits with GUD.
• Started and completed Filtered White Light, out with AGNI.
• Started and completed The Tucker Farm Incident for Dark Jesters (also pending).
• Knocked out about 20k of Mojave, doubted my storyline, and put it aside to simmer.
• Clearing (version 2.2) (does everyone version their stories, or just me?) accepted for the online edition of Abandoned Towers
• Inspired by the story started in Tucker Farm, started a new story-of-indeterminate-length called Seattle Pizza Company v. The State of Washington. I knocked out about 3100 words last night, which I think is my one-day record.

Given that I got one acceptance and some positive feedback for Mrs. M, I'm calling November a success.

In addition to working an insanely busy job in banking, raising a family, trying to keep my old house from falling over, having a year-round infatuation with Halloween special effects, and trying to break into writing, I also do some programming on the side, and just knocked out a massive project that has been dogging me for over a month--which frees up a little more time for the other things on the list, and takes the stress quotient down a bit.

It's 8:30am on the west coast, and is now time to concentrate on the job that pays the bills. Tonight, back to the Seattle Pizza Company.

...and the winner is...

Not me, but that's OK.

The winner of the Cafe Doom competition this year was an author named Jaelithe Ingold (not sure if she still uses that blog, only linkie I could find) for a great story called The Rules. It will be published by-and-by in Necrotic Tissue, be sure to check it out when it is released...

I was, however, fortunate enough to take second place in the competition--which, to me, is mind-blowing. There were some really great writers and fantastic stories this year (of the authors whose blogs I read regularly, I know Felicity, Cate, Rob, and Aaron had stories in) , and it is an honor to have not only had a few of them pick my story, Mrs. Marsupial's Tea Party, within their top three, but also to have Scott McCoy from Necrotic Tissue pick me in the top two. Just awesome. The third place winner was Monica O'Rourke's The Cellar, a good, creepy story as well (assuming I found the correct Monica O'Rourke's MySpace, she has a biblio as long as my leg).

The only bad news out of all this is that only the fastest horse gets published in Necrotic Tissue (although I now have $100 to spend at Shocklines, not to mention some mad props to cut-and-past into a Word doc and re-read when I need a little ego stroking!). So, to that end, I submitted Mrs. M. to Clarkesworld along with a cover letter telling Mr. Clarke that Mrs. M. is the best thing since sliced breadpeople, everybody already loves it, and the only thing left to complete the holy cycle is for him to buy it.

So, once again, to those who liked and voted for my story, Thank You; for those who read but didn't like it, thank you for reading it and for participating in the contest; congratulations to Jaelithe and Monica; and, lastly, thanks again to Ed and Scott and Matt for sponsoring it!

Grant me the serenity...

It's been a long week already...I had to sit on a conference call for a data center move Saturday night-Sunday morning for 8 hours and didn't get to bed until 6am, and I'm still paying for it. So, I'm calling it a night after a measly 500 words on Mojave (taking me to 14.5k). Tomorrow is a bank holiday, which means I can sleep in; we're going for a short hike on Frenchman Mountain (which is about two blocks away) in the AM, and then I can spend a few hours writing in the afternoon. My minimum goal per day is 1k words, but I really want to hit 16.5 by tomorrow night, and 20k by the time I go to bed Friday.

You all probably already knew this, but short stories are addictive, like tattoos. Once I settle in on my novel, I keep thinking about how fun it would be to nip off and knock out a couple of pages on a new short...come on, I think, It'll just take a few minutes. It'll be fun. Just click "New...". It's easy. Do it now.

Speaking of short stories, I really want the Cafe Doom contest to be over so I can stop obsessively checking the site for new votes. I think voting ends tomorrow, and by my count there are still about 10 or so authors who haven't voted, assuming each story is from a unique author. There are some really fun stories up there, I'm sure a lot of them will get sold after the contest ends.

October Roundup

Not a very eventful month for me, sadly...lots of words, not much submitted.

• I managed to get a screenplay off to Hotel Guignol, but I think that was actually in September, now that I think about it.
• Clearing was rejected by GUD, bounced by Clarksworld, but passed through the first gatekeeper at Abandoned Towers, where it currently sits.
• I submitted a piece to Cafe Doom for their annual Writer's Choice contest...I can't tell you the name of it, as voting continues for another week or so, but I will say that of the twelve current votes, it's "on the board", so to speak. That is very exciting...really, unbelievably cool. There are some great stories up there by some excellent writers, and the fact that I've gotten any votes from that crowd is beyond flattering, even if I don't end up in the final three. I have about ten more stories to read before I can vote.
  
• I knocked out 10k of Mojave, which will, hopefully, become a growed-up novel one day...but, I lost traction with the Halloween haunted house project (here are some pix, if you're interested...it also kept me off of Blogger for a week or so, hence my radio silence), Cafe Doom, and...
• A new quickie project that popped out of my keyboard half-formed. It is called The Contract of Men, is non-speculative, and very much inspired by the humbling style of McCarthy's The Road (which I'm about halfway through).

So, there's October...next on the docket: finish Contract of Men, keep grinding away on Mojave, and go hear Neil Gaiman speak at the library on Thursday. I did consider it, but I'm not WriMo'ing my NaNo this year...I'm scared of getting sidetracked off of Mojave again.