Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

10/31/2009 - Saturday, Halloween!
* A detailed approach to self-editing, plus, um, scarf stuff! http://naturalartificial.blogspot.com/2009/10/scarf-weather-answers-part-eleven.html

10/29/2009 - Thursday
* Posted writing log.
* Penthius freewriting about the music genome.
* Submitted "Dining on a Dead Girl's Dime" to Vestal Review. Wondering if I should change the title to hint more strongly that this is an Orpheus & Eurydice retelling. Sort of. Because nobody, but nobody, figures that out on first reading. I'm...too subtle for my hat...too subtle for my hat...what do you think about that?

05/09/2009 - Saturday, no work
* Read WritersDigest newsletter.
* Submitted "Diplomatic Relations" to M-Brane SF Queer Anthology.
* Fought a lot with OpenOffice 3.x's crashiness and problems saving in RTF format. By "fought a lot," I mean that Phil was on another floor of the house and I traumatized him.

05/08/2009 - Friday, full work, some downtime
* Dealt with the hazards of multiple versions of a working draft: merged the updated first three chapters from my home version with the more-recently-edited-elsewhere thumb drive version, and changed the paragraph I'd saved in my email. Then synced that version on home computer and thumb drive.
* Decided to be patient a little longer and not query about the status of "Salvaging Scottwell" (they've been holding the RTF version for 3 months, but molasses moves a lot faster than the publishing industry).
* Joined http://www.mnartists.org and submitted "Dining on a Dead Girl's Dime" to the MNArtists' miniStories Flash Fiction Contest (thanks for the idea, inktea!).
* Began formatting "Diplomatic Relations" for a reprint submission. Stumbled up against AbiWord problems with headers.
* Read Writing-World, FundsforWriters, and FFWMarkets newsletters.
* Writing-World feature article, "Music to Write By" (http://www.writing-world.com/newsletter/2009/WW09-09.shtml). I use music to set the writing mood, but the idea of "anchoring" is a new and interesting one. Now I just need to figure out what my starting song should be.
* Posted writing log.
* penthius freewriting about Death's need for a gardener.
* Worked on making editing changes to Vicesteed ch. 17

03/15/2009 - Sunday
* MinnSpec meeting on developing your protagonist, then workshop that got Vicesteed chapters 23-24(partial) through. There was much discussion of The Necessity for Climbing a Wall.

03/14/2009 - Saturday the 14th, 1/2 work at NgithOwl
* Processed 2nd (?) acknowledgment of receipt for "Demons of Disease."
* Submitted "A Phoenix By Any Other Name" to Fusion Fragment, and discovered 2 dead markets in my market listings spreadsheet while figuring out where to submit it too.
* Thanks to a tip from Inktea, figured out I'd submit "Dining on a Dead Girl's Dime" to http://mnartists.org/article.do?rid=225909 next. Which is good, because I have *such* difficulty figuring out where to submit my literary stories. I write one of them and think, "Ugh. I committed literature again. So much more annoying to try and sell!" Added it to calendar and submission order spreadsheet.
* Updated market list from Duotrope.

03/13/2009 - Friday the 13th, full work at IDS (with some downtime)
* Critiqued final manuscript for Minnspec critique meeting.
* Read WritersMarket, FFWSmallMarkets, FundsforWriters newsletters.
* Began critique for Critters workshop.
* Via Nathan Bransford's post (http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-week-in-publishing_13.html), I discovered the wonderful Query Shark (http://queryshark.blogspot.com/) and promptly added it to my feeds.
( More writing logs. Haven't done this in a while. )

08/31/2008 - Sunday, no work
* Added in details for a custom 404 Google widget to my "update the website" plan
* penthius freewriting - a sneaky high potential idea about a match made in ???
* Wrote up a doozy of an entry for the "Bad Log Line" contest at http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,5a65158d-d3f2-4a8e-97df-319a6ab3a2bf.aspx. Go read the entries; they're pretty funny!
* Loaded up Chapter 16 of Vicesteed into the Critters queue, there to bubble to the top eventually.
* Processed Renard's Menagerie form rejection of "A Phoenix By Any Other Name"
* Submitted "Dining on a Dead Girl's Dime" to Doorways.
* Read FFWSmallMarkets, FundsforWriters newsletters

The full set of wedding photos

I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. The last week has been remarkably full. We had houseguests for the wedding, though neither they nor we actually spent much time in the house. It started with a great grilling groom's dinner, to kind of ease us into the festivities.

( What we've been running around like crazy people and doing. )

Reservations for Chino Latino might be useful, even on a Monday night, though we were able to get seating. The mix of Asian and South American food is very appealing, and most of what we tried was delicious. This would not be as good a restaurant to go to alone, but with about four people so you can share a big plate and two little ones, it's a great choice. The big plate was as much larger than we expected as the small plate was smaller. The carne asada a la moreliana, a platter of slow-cooked beef barbacoa and chipotle spiked chicken tinga served with black beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, chile de arbol salsa and fresh corn tortillas, was delicious. I find that the "here's some platters of deliciousness, and here's some small tortillas" dishes usually are. The dumplings were a bit cold and nothing special, though Phil liked them. The jerk chicken skewers with spicy mango relish were very good, but there were only two large skewers in an order. The black bean soup tasted a lot like the regular black beans. I'd definitely go back with a group that's willing to share food.

My mom requested an Indian restaurant, and I'd recently read interesting reviews of Dancing Ganesha, so we went there for the lunch buffet. The food was very good and flavorful and a deal at $10 for the buffet, but the restaurant did have a few shortfalls. The service was--what service? The food was not labeled, so there was no way to tell what was what or even what was vegetarian. The gulab jamun tasted a bit odd, as if the buffet used ones that were canned instead of fresh. They don't offer plain sweet lassi, only mango lassi. And you'd have to go up to the bar to order it, because--see above comment about the service. The good still outweighed the bad, however! The food was very well flavored--the chicken Tandoori was some of the best I've eaten in America, tender and flavorful instead of dried out and bland. There were many dishes on offer, complete with a full array of sauces and chutneys, although they were short on deserts. Complimentary dosas arrived at our table. There was a wide-screen television above the bar playing Bollywood movies. Last but not least, it's far enough from the heart of downtown (Harmon and 11th) that although it was full, it wasn't packed.

We saw We Live Like This, a Fringe Fest dance show which alternates and finally mixes tap dance with modern dance. Great fun and it showcased some impressive skills. In some of the larger ensemble pieces, we could tell the dancers weren't as skilled, but the smaller groups were fantastic. The different dance styles are a bit jarring at first, and then they become a nice alternating break, and then they work together (with a wink at the audience) in an entertaining way, better than I would have thought they could.

Oh! And in there I wrote a short story for a contest, got people to critique it (sorry for the hard sell--I get a little dissociated from correct social protocol when I'm in story thrall), edited it, and submitted it. I think it's pretty good, even if I did commit literature again.

Edited to add some details, because I had to stop my post partway through to allow the sysadmin to update the software I would use if I were actually working right now.

I successfully wrote a short story yesterday, despite all the wedding prep and bachelorette craziness. Mind you, it's very short, about 500 words, as is required by the terms of the contest (http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2008/07/26/weird-tales-writing-contest/). It's sort of a murder mystery and sort of an accepting loss story, and I tried to work in some Orpheus & Eurydice references, but I don't know how well that worked. It turned out I committed literature. Again.* Would anybody be willing to critique this? The kicker is that I need the comments back this Sunday.

A dead girl invited Mathias to dinner. He got her message in a crowded bar when he checked his email as he waited for his band's set to come up. "Happy Birthday! You have an e-card from Erin!" The beer he'd been holding slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor. He opened the email.

* This is a bad thing. Makes it much more difficult to sell. And if it doesn't get published through this contest, I'll probably throw in some sci-fi trimmings just to make it genre publishable.