So far so good

Beast and the Puppies (that'd make a great rock band title) are doing fine so far.  No signs of distress, bleeding, or otherwise going downhill.  Although Beast whines to get let out to play with the puppies, he's happy inside watching movies with me or napping while I work on writing.  I could use a nap about now myself.  I had a short night.  I'll have an even shorter night tonight, unless I'm willing to walk Beast in a robe and slippers.  The weather being what it is, I'm thinking no.  Or I could skip my bath, I guess.  You know, if these are the toughest choices I have to face all day, I'm good with that.

Everyone else, according to the weather folks, had a nice, calm day.  We still have quite a bit of wind.  When they said it was about 20mph in Washougal, I thought ha!  This is not 20mph.  It's way too fast for paragliding, never mind the gusts.  But it's not 60mph+ gusts.  It is quieter in town, or was when I went in today for a hot date and a hot caramel apple cider.  I think it's just our location on the hill, above most of the trees, unsheltered by the hills that surround downtown Washougal.  When they said it was 37 mph in Corbett, I thought yeah, that's about right.

But enough about the weather.  

I've got my latest short story on the verge of its climactic point, which hopefully means I'm close to the end.  I've gotten to the islands (again!) on Masks, and I'm taking a deliberate vacation from the manuscript so that I can come at it fresh.  The issue, as I've mentioned before, is that the beginning gets worked on and polished and beautiful while the middle, where I'm tired, gets adjusted sort of haphazardly and then left to stare at me with large, undernourished eyes.  I was going to start in the middle, but I realized a. I need a new, better map, and all the mappy stuff happens in the beginning (meaning I'd have to reread it again anyway because I can't make sense of my navigational notes anymore) and b. I got some really great feedback on the opening chapters and I wanted to make those larger cuts and adjustments before I got to the islands, in case there were any emotional changes (there weren't.)

With Cold Comfort Farm lying on the cutting room floor, I'm at a more marketable length, which is handy.  Yes, fantasy generally gets a little more room, but the shorter it is, the less likely that an agent will look at the word count and decide my gawd, this is going to be a bloated, purple monstrosity.  I would prefer that, if that is the opinion, that it come from reading the pages, not the cover page.

Official Announcement

Beneath Ceaseless Skies (probably no surprise for those of you who are reading between the lines) will be publishing "Thistles and Barley" by Kamila Z. Miller sometime in the future.  I'll let all y'all know when the issue comes out.  In the meantime, they have a new issue online.  

In the forums you'll find news about upcoming stories and their authors in the Official BCS News and Announcements: Submissions Status section.  It's a fun way to get a sneak peek at who you might see in print in the next few months.  Keep a lookout for your favorite authors.

This is not my beautiful house!

I've got Talking Heads on the brain.  

The downstairs has taken over my daily life, which is fine.  It's coming together nicely.  The boy has put the most work in, so his room is closest to being complete.  We ran into a hitch with one of the girl's shelving units--the holes weren't drilled correctly.  Right place, wrong size.  We'd just put together an identical unit the day before (but in a different color) so we knew we weren't just being creative with the destructions--er--instructions.  So I'm charging up the drill battery while I'm typing and will soon expand those holes so they're a snug fit to the dowels.  And yes, the dowels are the right size.  They fit correctly into the opposing holes.  It's all very aggravating, but of all the things that could have gone wrong, this is not a big deal.  And frankly, changing the size of the holes is far less intrusive than driving back to IKEA and getting a replacement, which may only lead to us bringing home another one with the same flaw.  It all relies on how long the person operating the drill for that batch was asleep at the wheel.

I'm staying busy enough that it makes it challenging to get anything unrelated to the downstairs done.  That includes things like dishes, laundry, vacuuming, basic hygiene (sorry INKers if I was extra stinky at the meeting!) and writing.  But I did get a little flash done, and it got a wow response when I read it, so I'm eager to smooth it out and send it on its way.  I'll send it to my favorite flash fiction site first, Flash Fiction Online.  I like the editor's style, and I like what he publishes, so I'm hoping eventually something I write will mesh with what he publishes and then huzzah! I'll have arrived in flash fictiondom.  Or something like that.

Speaking of great online magazines, check out Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  It's a visually beautiful online magazine, and this first issue features a story by my friend, writer extraordinaire and fellow Lucky Lab, David Levine.  Like Flash Fiction Online, there's a forum where you can discuss the stories, something I personally get a kick out of (when I have time!) because I can read about how other people perceived the story and compare notes as far as symbology and impact.

In the good news arena, I had a short story accepted for publication.  I may have mentioned this earlier, but I never get tired of writing it so tough.  I'll announce which story and where as soon as I'm cleared to do that, probably about the time I learn what issue I'll be in.  It's in a SFWA qualifying market, so I'm hoping if I'm dedicated about sending out stories and keep plugging away at the craft, I'll eventually become a SFWA member and maybe get a little more attention for my novels.  I very much enjoy writing short stories when I get a story idea that fits into a tight corner, but I love writing novels.  I want to write lots and lots of books and get paid for them so that I can keep writing lots and lots of books without having to worry about whether we'll have to do something else for retirement if our retirement fund goes poof.  I'm willing to work at other jobs, but I'd rather focus on the written word full time.

If there is such a thing as writing full time.  I'm starting to wonder.  The trouble with working at home is that you're working at home, and there are other things to do.  Fortunately there's not as much to do at home under normal circumstances.  Things will get back to normal soon.  Or else.

Just in time for Nanowrimo, I suspect.  I have so much going on at the tail end of November I have to get done before OryCon30, which means I need to write about 3000 words a day.  Shouldn't be an issue,  but if I get behind it'll be much, much harder to recover.  Big changes, big goals, big accomplishments.  It's been a wild year.

Don't forget your flashy friend

It's the beginning of the month, which means Flash Fiction Online has posted its latest issue.  Don't miss it!  It's free!  It's fast!  It's flashy!

Flash Review

I've been plugging Flash Fiction Online for a while now, so all y'all know to expect this.  It's the beginning of the month therefore Kami will jump behind the pulpit and shake her fist at all you sinners, especially the ones that don't read enough, and preach that you go forth and read some flash.  

This edition has a story that got under my skin.  I've enjoyed plenty of stories, including Jeff Soesbe's "Apologies All Around" and William Highsmith's "Copper Boss" and others I won't go on naming because everyone's going to have their own favorites.  But for whatever reason Elizabeth Creith's "Stone the Crows" spoke to me on a deep level.  I could analyze why, come up with a pretty quick answer, but that won't serve any purpose.  Instead I'd like to remind folks that if they don't read, they won't get a chance to connect with stories that will enrich their lives or confirm (or inform them about or change) their beliefs or bring them rare pleasure, the kind that makes you feel like you haven't smiled for a long time and suddenly you're lit up inside like a star.  I'd also like to remind writers, including myself, that communicating with the reader is ultimately what it's about, at least for me.  

If I was writing just for myself, I'd never try to publish a thing.  I'm not inclined to masturbate in public or heal myself through writing therapy, though it doesn't bother me if someone else wants to do that.  I'm trying to reach others by shaping my soul into words or into colors on paper and canvas.  Maybe someday I'll actually touch a wide audience.  That'll be an amazing day.

Kitteh update, and Storage

Animal update:  Everyone is doing great.  Kat (lately dubbed Kitten) has shown the most improvement.  She's fully recovered from her spay surgery, is active, very playful, her face has healed up, and she has a nice shiny coat.  Every morning she runs around the house like a mad thing and attacks anything that moves and sometimes even things that don't (but perhaps they're thinking about moving.)  When she meets (and attacks) a person she'll usually hang out for a few minutes with her signature inquiries.  Breet?  Meet!  Moot?  Mmm!  And if it's me I answer in kind.  She's been annoyed by my lack of making the bed properly, though.  As all right-thinking breets know, making the bed is very important and she needs to be there running around under the blankets to make sure it's done right.  I don't know what I'd do without her.

In writing news, I've sent off another story.  I tell you, e submissions sure make it (relatively) painless.  Right now I'm just trying to keep all my 'current' stories out there.  I'm still writing on the new story too.  There's a couple of older stories that have been haunting me and I'm thinking about rewriting one from scratch to see what happens and polishing the other.  

I know quite a few writers surrender older stories to dust heaps and I'm all for that, provided that they're confident that they're abandoning things that no one wants to see.  Stories that have already made the rounds are especially toss-worthy.  Don't clutter the slush piles with them, please.

I'm wild-guessing that I've written maybe a hundred short stories and most of those are on floppy disks, best left forgotten.  Some, like an old SF I wrote called The Emperor's Mistress, exist only in hard copy and if anything happened to that copy, it'd be gone forever.  Those were written on a contraption called a typewriter.  It's sort of like a keyboard but there's no monitor and you have to use a special kind of paint to fix mistakes.  I kid you not.  Anyway, there are a few of those older stories (The Emperor's Mistress is one of them, actually) that haunt me.  Divided is another.  That one killed two magazines.  (They both folded after acceptances.  One acceptance actually arrived a day before I got the letter that said oops, sorry, turns out we're closing up shop and can't print your story after all.  If only the first letter had a check enclosed ...)  

There's another funny story I've probably told before about Divided.  I got a glowing acceptance from an editor saying she missed her bus stop three times reading the story.  Now if that's not grabbing a reader, I don't know what is.  When I got the next letter in the mail I was sure it had a contract enclosed, but it was a regular legal envelope and pretty thin so it had me baffled.  Inside there was a letter from the senior editor.  He said he didn't know what his assistant editor was thinking.  He would not publish that story in the magazine, sorry about any grief it may have caused.  

Thinking back I know what killed it.  Length.  It was 13,000 words, essentially a novella.  The prose probably wasn't that great either, considering when I wrote it, but the story had all kinds of potential and if I'd written it even a little shorter, written it cleaner, it might have gotten past the senior editor.  If I'd written it a lot shorter, it might have been a real winner.  I couldn't have known that then.  I know that now.

Those old stories aren't wasted effort.  Some are steps on a ladder and never will achieve anything more for you.  Others, though, are more than just a step.  They're something special.

I will always be a pack rat when it comes to my early stuff.  Heck, my poor put-upon beloved husband has to deal with me keeping my old math exams.  In my defense, when you've put an hour and six pages into a single calculation and get it right, if it can't be framed it ought to at least have a place of honor in a file box.  Some of the other stuff I packrat isn't so defensible, hence the put-upon part.  Nonetheless, the concept is this--as cheap and compact as electronic storage is these days, and since it's almost impossible at the time of writing to tell if you've written crap or written something that will haunt you twenty years later, it might behoove you to hang on to it, just in case.  Not just in case you die and become famous, but because some seeds take longer to germinate than others.  I read (not sure if it's correct) that some seeds of domesticated roses take as long as ten years to germinate.  Think about that.  A rose breeder hand pollinates several flowers between two specific roses, encloses their heads in bags so that no other pollen reaches them from other roses to contaminate his breeding experiment, waits for them to develop over a winter, pulls off the dried hips, plants the seeds inside, and waits up to ten years to see if he has the next Double Delight.  (If you don't have this rose and you have room for roses, get it, grow it, love it.)  Sometimes roses, like other plants, form sports and some of our roses come from those, but growing from seeds created from controlled pollination is still the rose breeder's secret dream--to conspire with nature to create something never before seen, something to behold in awe.  

Writers can produce great work in a short amount of time, but some of that work, no matter how speedy they are, just takes time to reach its full potential.  When I wrote Divided, I simply did not have the skill to pull it off.  I also had no idea whether it was a keeper until experience in the business side of the writing world made me realize how exceptional the responses were to that story.  Now that we have a storage medium that is essentially bottomless, I see no reason not to keep everything.  Every blessed word.  In twenty years you'll realize that 80% or more is crap, but the rest, the rest is why we write at all.

To Short or not to Short, that's the Question

Of the four stories I've been focusing on, all four are out knocking on doors.  Makes me feel good, but also it reveals my shortcomings as a writer.  Now I've got quite a few short stories, but many of them are old.  I've grown as a writer since I've penned them.  One of the more promising older ones I wrote way back in 2002, and rewrote in 2005.  That's a long time to spend on a short story, even if most of that time was having it sit in a deep freezer.  I want to write more new stuff, but ...

I'm primarily a novelist.  My strength is in novel length.  When stories bud in my brain they're peonies, chrysanthemums, hydrangeas and thistles rather than hibiscus, clematis, jasmine and tulip blossoms.  I'm pleased as punch when I get a daffodil, blueberry or an orchid opening up in my brain, but they don't grow as well.  

That's no excuse, though.  Over time I hope to develop my short story growing skills, and the only way to do that is to write them.  They're a great art form.  Besides, every novelist knows that the skills you employ to write a short story will only help you in a novel length story.  Twists, vibrancy, characterization, plot, theme--all that stuff and more needs to perform at peak efficiency in a short length.  

It's a lot less painful and very educational to write a hundred short stories.  If you do, it doesn't automatically mean you'll become a great novelist.  Not everything learned in writing translates from one length to another or one form to another, as we've seen with tv shows that have big screen 'episodes' made, big screen movies that are turned into tv series, shorts that are expanded into novels but never have that novel feel, novels that are, in essence, a series of related short stories, shorts that should have been novels, etc.  But good storytelling is universal.  I don't think learning to write in short lengths better will harm my novel skills, and I think there's a whole lot to be gained.  Now I just have to set my priorities, so that each time I sit down at the computer, I don't waste a bunch of time thinking about what I should be doing.

Gee, just like right now ...

Great News

I got a real booster of an email this morning:

Sorry for the impersonal email, but it's much quicker to bcc everyone than to send a bunch of individual emails.

I just wanted you to know that your story is still under serious consideration for an upcoming issue of Flash Fiction Online. I don't want to make anyone too optimistic -- we'll only be able to accept about 25% of the people who are receiving this email -- but I wanted to make sure you knew that we hadn't forgotten about you or lost your story in the mail.

Regards,
Jake Freivald
Editor
Flash Fiction Online

I know I don't have a one in four chance of getting published.  This isn't gambling, after all.  It'll measure up to the other stories, or it won't.  

There's an additional artistic factor.  Many editors end up with conscious or unconscious themes to the stories they choose for a particular issue, even if it's 'I want all these stories to be completely different from each other.'  Every year that I coordinated the writer's workshop for OryCon, I had only one year where I had trouble grouping a story with another (I put the writers into pairs.)  For whatever reason I had one Mech Warrior story and no other robot story or military SF or franchise story, but I did have a pro author with experience in writing for Mech Warrior (what are the odds? heh) and so I made a quirky group with that pro and another pro that had deep experience in short stories.  The other submitting author had a short fantasy that was about the same writing level as the other submitting author in the group.    

The point is that fiction writers and their stories tend to come together in a serendipitous fashion, and serendipity may not be on my side this time.  Still, I'm happy and honored to have made it this far.  Publication with Flash Fiction Online would be a real feather in my cap.  By the way, if you don't read them, do.  I never have enough time to read, which makes Flash Fiction Online particularly wonderful.  

Mr. Freivald didn't have to send out the update, and I hope he didn't get a bunch of emails back (except quick thank yous, although even those might be considered clutter) pestering or abusing him.  You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at what people send to editors given the slightest excuse, which they take as some form of provocation.   Anyway, it was very nice of him to take the time.  The email certainly made my day.  Now, on to writing, and tiling, and cleaning, and all that.  I'm sure my work will be particularly flashy today.  

Pen, or Sword, Whatever Gets the Job Done, for Hire

First of all, a big Yay! and thank you to the Lucky Labs for the comments on "I Remember the War."  After some spiffing up, I hope to have that story shipped off to the best paying market I can find.  I am, when it comes down to marketing, terribly mercenary.  When I'm writing it's all about the craft and the magic of transmitting a world in my brain into someone else's brain, and the fact that I can't stop writing even if I wanted to.  Which I don't.  I don't think I could handle the aggravation of that much creative juice fermenting (aka rotting) in my subconscious.  It's worse than testosterone poisoning.  I just gotta get it out of me.

Now I'm all thinking about sexual tension and release.  

I'm back now.

When I'm not actively writing, though, I try to think like a professional.  The most altruistic I get about the story is that I'd very much like it to end up somewhere where folks can read and hopefully enjoy it.  I like making people happy and it's neat to think that something I wrote could affect someone in a positive way, or at least give them a fun ride.  But I'm not relying on my words to provide immortality or some such.  The words have enough work to do without having to lug my sorry butt around.  When the tale is told, it's time for business.  That's how writers  sustain themselves so that they can write the next story.  Starving artists, well, starve.  And they don't get read by very many people if they end up 'publishing' on their own blog.  If you think about it, no one wins if the sale doesn't happen.  Well, I guess no matter what my cats win, because I'll always provide a warm lap during writing time and I'll leave the keyboard to feed them if they demand to be fed, or I'll get them water, or I'll tickle a chin before flinging the fuzzy demon off the computer desk.  Then it's time to delete all the catpaw words.

But I digress.  A lot.

So thanks again, and not just to the Lucky Labs but also to INK and all my patient readers who do a very good job of not rolling their eyes when I tell them I've got something new and I'd like them to take a peek at it.  I don't always express my gratitude, but man oh man, I would not have gotten very far without the many, many hours people (some of them complete strangers) have devoted to improving my prose.  May you receive many happy returns.  

And now it's time for me to strap on my weapons and go earn me a paycheck in the grand ol' mercenary tradition.  Where did I leave that sword laying around?  Gotta be around here somewhere ...

Strangers Think They Know Me

I finally found a title for my latest short story, "Strangers Think They Know Me."  I read an article on the SFWA website about titles and titling and got enough out of it that it made my job easier.  Thank goodness, just in time to keep myself from going insane.  I have almost as much trouble with titles as I have with naming characters.  I've been trying to title this particular short for four days, longer than it took me to write the darned thing, I kid you not.

I know I haven't been writing enough because I keep having these very vivid dreams that lead to story ideas.  It's a self-solving problem, at least until my dream space starts getting cliche', at which point not only will I not be writing enough to keep from dreaming, but I'll be bored while I'm dreaming.  Bummer.

So far, though, my dreams have been a rich mine.  Since I don't need more ore while I'm writing heavily, this arrangement with my subconscious suits me really well.  

I've got more short stories in the back brain to work on, but first, I have to visit Masks and Signet as I've had some ideas with both of them.  I find it's best to exploit ideas while they're still fresh.  If I'm given too much time to mull about them or if I discuss them too much with others, I lose that matchstick flash of enthusiasm.  I can slog with the best of them on a first draft, since I know the next flash will be along momentarily, but during editing those moments of heat and light are much more rare and precious.  So away to Masks, or Signet.  Maybe I'll keep both docs open at the same time and see what happens where.  I think I've got enough fire for both of them at the same time.  So, does that make us a ménage á trois?

My apologies to folks googling for something sexier than writing.  Boy are you on the wrong site!