February Already?

Crap, I was just getting used to January. Now it's gone.

Last month held more writing than submitting for me, and definitely more rejecting than accepting.

Wrote a big chunk of D1 of Mojave, which currently sits in the experienced critical hands of Mari Adkins.

I took a week off of Mojave to knock out a couple of short stories and polish one that was rejected; by ten minutes before midnight last night (in between voyeur sessions of peering out the window watching my neighbor get dragged away for drunk driving by six patrol cars chock full-o Vegas' finest), I submitted a new story, Oilrag, and a redux of Filtered White Light, both to different semi-pro literary mags. My second new story may never see the light of day, unless I work it over for a flash market...just no ending for it yet. Tonight, back on Mojave after dinner.

50 Books in 2009: I finished the audiobook for American Gods, started Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, decided I was too impatient for Faulkner this month (I am commited to trying again, but I feel like my reading time is so limited right now that if I have to put that much work into understanding a book, I need to devote one big block of time to it), and put it aside to read Straub's Ghost Story, which I am enjoying very much.

And I'm 0 and 1 for the year, with five in the field.

Slashdot, the geek temple of the world, has an article today on the death of Realms of Fantasy, and Fantasy and Science Fiction moving from monthly to quarterly. I don't recall if either announcement is new information, but, keeping mind that Slashdot has millions of readers, many (or most) of whom are intellegent and literate and enjoy various forms of genre fiction: if you sub to scifi or fantasy markets, it may be of use to browse through the 183 comments to see if there is anything in that little impromptu focus group for you. Keep in mind, it is Slashdot, and, as such, the comments are a handful of insightful comments surrounded by offtopic musings and troll shit.

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.

Life is what happens when you're busy with other stuff

I sat down last weekend to work on my full-length Mojave, on which I have not yet broken 20k (that's pretty much why I didn't do NaNo this year...between work and life, I knew it wasn't going to happen)...it was the end of a crap day capping off a crap week and, being a moody sort of person, I threw my big project aside to do something a little more edgy to vent some steam. The end result was a story I just finished tonight called Filtered White Light; I am obviously trying to shake off having read McCarthy's The Road this month, and this story reflects that: stark, dimly lit, short sentences, and, although there is some dialogue, not a goddamn quotation mark in the whole story. Risky to try and sell something formatted like that, but it seemed to work for the flow...but, I guess I'll find out if I'm overstepping my current state of development based on if anyone wants to read it. My bigger fear is if the story itself was too subtle, but I guess I'll find that out, too.

It was, at least, an interesting exercise to see how the story flow changed with minimal punctuation (I added and removed and re-added and re-removed the quotations about six times)...you really have to try harder to make it friendly on the eyes, but if you strip it down enough to make the dialogue stand out , the starkness of the format kind of weaves itself into the story, and that kind of takes it all in a certain direction.

I have one story (Mojave) in the hopper and five in the field. At least one I should be hearing back on soon, I hope. I passed the first round and was told I should hear "in a month or so", and today is like 6 1/2 weeks, which I guess is still within that range.

Am I justified in being hesitant/nervous about pinging an editor for a status? Is that considered...rude? or pushy?