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Late Summer Update & Links Round-up

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While the job market continues to be tough, it’s been a very productive summer for me creatively, and for that I’m grateful. Here are some of the things I’ve been up to — and my sincere gratitude to those who backed me in one endeavor or another.

Launchpad. Space Camp for writers! You can read my full write-up here. I’m still processing the experience (it was amazing), but a few new stories are definitely growing from it.

What Fates Impose. This anthology of fortune-telling tales that includes my story “Ain’t Much Different’n Rabbits” was fully funded! It’s a great TOC, and I’m proud to be a part of it. It’s not available for purchase just yet, but I’ll shout out here as soon as it is.

Broken Eye Books / By Faerie Light. Another anthology I’m part of, By Faerie Light, is one of the rewards for backers of Broken Eye Books’ 2013 Kickstarter campaign. By Faerie Light contains 18 dark tales about the fae, including my story “The Forest Also Remembers.” (Wow, another sweet TOC, too. I’m lucky!) Broken Eye Books has a lot of other great looking titles as part of their campaign, and there’s still lots of time to back them.

Clarion West Write-a-Thon / Novel Draft: Completed. It’s just one milestone in what promises to be a long project, but my initial draft of my rural fantasy novel is complete! This was my goal during the Clarion West Write-a-thon, and I finished the draft on the final weekend of this years’ workshop. Thanks to all who backed me this year! I’m giving the novel a little time to breathe before I jump back in. You can read more about that over at Inkpunks.

photo by Bryan
photo by Bryan

Everything Is Festival / “Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen.” On Monday night, Carol, Bryan, and I attended the opening night for the Everything Is Festival, a film festival celebrating found footage. While most of the mashups in the festival are short pieces, “Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen,” a film by Hungarian filmmaker György Pàlfi is a feature length film edited from something like 500 different movies! It’s a classic “Boy meets Girl” tale, and while the actors change with every cut, it’s a surprisingly robust and affecting narrative. Pàlfi never takes it too seriously, either, which is good since it embraces just about every romantic trope found in 100 years of cinema. Something to be said for universal stories, eh?

Everything Is Festival: “Final Cut – Ladies & Gentlemen” (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

Final Cut is an homage, and none of the clips or music were cleared by the filmmaker, so the festival circuit is likely to be the only place to see it for some time. (L.A. folks, I think there’s another screening this coming Monday.)

Sekrit Projects. These are in such embryonic stages of development it doesn’t seem quite right to talk about them yet. New short stories, some projects with a  visual component. Some collaborations. All irons in the fire, and who knows where they will lead — but  it’s good to have some time to explore various creative paths.

Hope all of you are having a good summer!

 

 

 

Word Count june 28

Sign of Progress? (Clarion West Write-a-Thon)

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A little end of the week update on the writing.  (!!!) Word Count june 28

About 10k this week. So far, so good! If I can only keep up the pace of the last couple of weeks, I should be done with the book in a month or so. 100,000 words is approximate, by the way. I have a feeling I’ll go over by at least 10-20k.

I’m feeling really great about the book’s momentum. It took me a long time to find the groove on this project. Not all of the words this week have been awesome ones, but I found my happy place where story and character are really happening now.

I think I needed to celebrate that 🙂

Winter-ish Updatery

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I guess winter is here, right? The Christmas lights are up, the leaves are falling from the trees, and the 90mph Santa Anas are setting the hills on fire…

You may have noticed my banner has changed (the first wave of some website changes to come). A new Ink Gorilla lurks in the banner, regarding visitors with a chary eye. The new banner is courtesy my amazing friend Galen Dara, who captured ole IG perfectly. Galen, he’s amazing. Thank you. Galen also drew another ape from a story of mine for her 30 Characters challenge, which I love. There are some other wonderful characters in her feed, so go check them out.

I’m still going full ahead on the novel, though some days it’s more like 1/4 impulse and the next day Warp 5. I’ve (mostly) grown used to the fact that this is the way that novels are made, or the way this novel is made, or that it’s the way I’m making this novel.

Anyway, the novel and I have come to an understanding of sorts. We try not to kill each other.

Finding the balance between long form writing and short-form writing is another skill I’m trying to learn. So far this mostly means I’ve just scribbled down notes and daydreamed short story ideas on my bike rides, but I’m about ready to put pen to paper as it were and crank a few out. Anyone have any pro tips on not losing momentum on the novel while I do that?

But speaking of short stories, my story “The Parting Glass” debuted yesterday at Lightspeed Magazine (if you follow me on Twitter & Facebook & Google+, you no doubt noticed!). The story won’t go live on the website until December 20, but you can order the ebook now if you just can’t wait (I couldn’t). I’m pleased to share the TOC with Vylar Kaftan, Pat Cadigan, and some guy named Arthur C. Clarke. I’m sure Mr. Clarke is as thrilled as I am. (There’s also a nifty non-fic piece by astrophysicist Alan Smale on doomsday asteroids pummeling the earth–one of my favorite subjects–that wraps up the issue. Alan, if I’d known you were a fellow asteroid freak, I might’ve gone fanboy on you at HallCon in Reno…)

I’ve also got a profile of Chris Miller, the director of DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots at Lightspeed’s sister publication, Fantasy Magazine, this month too! It goes live on the site December 5th, but the ebook is available now.

And to relax after reading all of that, my new Booze Nerd post at The Functional Nerds should be just the thing. I detail “The Widow’s Kiss,” a rich, autumn-y drink that’s the perfect compliment to a warm fire on those chilly nights.

Speaking of booze, this weekend, I’m taking a class in how to make your own cocktail bitters. As I type these words, I’m bouncing up and down in my chair–I’m so stoked. As I understand it, you get to gather your own herbs and so forth from the gardens on-site, and then you make your own unique blend of bitters that you can take home! (Special thanks to my lovely wife, Hungry Passport, for scoping that out!)

For this, and all of the good things that have come my way this fall, I am unreasonably excited.

And also very grateful.

 

 

Many Updates, One Blog

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As usual, my blog has languished in the face of other writing. I send so many daily updates through Twitter and Facebook that I forget to post news here!

I do have several things I wanted to share, however.

First of all, the 2011 Clarion West writers workshop is now underway. It’s quite an anniversary for me, being a grad of last year’s class. I can’t believe how quickly the year has gone by, and how much has happened with my writing career since then.

Congratulations to this year’s class, I wish you all the best of luck. But to further support their endeavors, and those of future classes, I’m participating in this year’s Clarion West Write-a-thon. This 6-week fundraiser runs simultaneously with the workshop and is vital to keeping the workshop going. Head on over to the sponsor page and if you don’t want to sponsor me, there are over 140 writers signed up this year!

As a little incentive, I’m offering prizes to anyone who signs up to sponsor me. I thank you for the support, and I know Clarion West does, too.

Speaking of those incentives, the noveling is chugging along, though admittedly though not at “full steam ahead” like I’d hoped. I’m about 7,000 words in at this point, and I’ve been doing some major rethinking on character and plot already. That may sound bad, but quite frankly, it’s necessary and I can only imagine the book will be better for it in the long run. At some point, I’ll post about the experience so far. Stay tuned.

I’ve been doing a bit of nonfiction writing lately, too. My profile of Kung Fu Panda 2 director Jennifer Yuh Nelson is live at Fantasy Magazine. There’s also a great deal of good fiction over there this month, so you owe it to yourself to check it out.

In other writing news, I’m just about done with revisions on a couple of shorts that I hope to send out to market soon. Of course, I’ve had my share of rejections this month, but as they say, “a writer’s life for me.” Can’t get me down.

 

 

[Novel] And so it begins…

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I’ve been making a lot of noise lately about that novel I want to write. Today, June 1st, is put up or shut up day.

I’ve got most of an outline. I have tons of backstory for plot and character. I even have a few synopses of varying lengths written. I’ve done a lot of initial research, but I expect I’ll be doing more as I go. In any case, I’m probably as ready as I’ll ever be–so I might as well start.

Partially as a result of all my conversations about novelling at World Horror Convention, but also because I feel like it’s finally time to start the damn thing, I decided to make my first novel a “summer project.” Given my summer schedule and the big day jobbe deadline looming, it’s probably more realistic to call this my “summer-fall” project, however.

So I’ve given myself a deadline of December 1st to finish the first draft. 183 days. That’s about 500-1000 words per day and should get me in the neighborhood of 80k-100k words by the time Yuletide rolls around. I’m sure some days I’ll do more. Some days I’ll do less. And I also will probably take at least one day off per week.

But it’s a game plan, and a schedule I think I can reasonably manage.

What’s the book about? Well, I don’t want to say too much about it just yet other than that it’s a sort of fantasy/horror dieselpunk. As envisioned, it’s for adults, though I have had some friends suggest it could be YA if I wanted to go that way. We’ll see. It’s not the novel I thought would be my first, but this story has taken hold of me and will not let go. I guess that’s a good sign, right?

Since this is the first time I’ve tackled a book (okay, I completed Nanowrimo once, but that was so seat-of-the-pants), I wondered if any of you folks had some advice? What should I worry about? What should I not worry about? I’m excited about the prospect of bumbling around in the dark, but would also be grateful if someone would lend me a candle…

I will no doubt be posting about my progress here as I go, but for now–here goes!