Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

Circus of Brass and Bone Writing Log



New words: 437
Total words: 28,290
Overused word: money
Gratuitous reference: Sears catalog
Type of scene: Fiscally fun.
Challenge(s): Keeping up with the bits and pieces filtering into my brain.
Which line is it anyways?"Food?" the old man squawked. "How do I know what a potato's worth? How much 'change' do I give back for a chicken? Half an egg!?"
Researched: Sears catalog.
Notes: I love the thing that sometimes happens when writing, when you're just watching a movie in your brain and trying to describe it properly.
Other writingy stuff:
* Belatedly responded to acceptance of "The Perfect Costume" by Best New Vampire Tales. Bad email inbox, eating emails! Feel pretty bad about that.
* Processed "The Perfect Costume" acceptance and posted updates in various places.
* Did the publicity work for "The Radiator Burped" in Northern Lights. Important to do for every story!
* Recorded intro for the MinnSpec podcast.
* Processed Flash Me's release of "Gone Huntin'" (magazine on indefinite hiatus).
* Submitted "Alien/Whore/Mother" to the Baen's Universe Annex. Woot!
* Checked Escape Pod response times and 3+ months are not uncommon. Shouldn't query quite yet. ::drums fingers::
* Checked status of Dead Bells anthology, and it looks like there's an editing schedule, so that project is still in the works.

07/05/10, Monday, no work (4th of July observed!)
* Queried last 2 agents on my A-list for Vicesteed. Now I'm done with Vicesteed until I hear back from somebody, or at least for a couple of months--at which point it'll be time to query my next batch of preferred agents. Whew! Also, this feels so weird!
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Bizarro Magazine.
* Submitted "Gone Huntin'" to Flash Me Magazine.
* Submitted "Good Help Is Hard to Find" to Title Goes Here.
* Submitted "Look Back to Keep Her" to Flash Fiction Online.
* Submitted "Road of Dreams" to Neo-Opsis
* Read WritersMarket and Duotrope newsletters and updated market list from them.
* Nonstandard Structure: http://mrissa.livejournal.com/727223.html

Tried to see where I could send "Salvaging Scottwell" next--and blanched at the lack of options for an 11,000 word reprint. Yoiks. Well, I'll Escape Pod it even though it's longer than they usually take, but beyond that...hrm. It's a really good story (other people think so too!) but what to do with it? Small press publication as a novella? Is that too short? (Ideas, mmeriam?)

03/06/10, Sunday
* Read Ralan, WritersWeekly, Writing-World, Lunch Weekly, FFWSmallMarkets, FundsforWriters, Duotrope, and 2 WritersDigest newsletters and updated market list from them.
* An exercise for writing a query letter with voice: http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/2010/02/writing-query-letter-with-voice.html
* The Starter Guide to Twitter: http://tribalwriter.com/2010/02/22/a-writers-starter-guide-to-twitter-or-everything-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-when-i-first-started-using-twitter/
* Approaches to making a living as a writer: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/files/2010/02/Guillebeau_WD.pdf
* Processed the OG's form rejection of "They'll Fix Any Leak, Guaranteed!"
* Processed Apex's receipt acknowledgment for "The Miracle Material."
* Updated market list from updates sent in.
* Submitted "The Haunts of Hill Crossing" to Strange Horizons and processed receipt acknowledgment.
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Basement Stories.
* Submitted "They'll Fix Any Leak, Guaranteed!" to Strangetastic.
* Submitted "Gone Huntin'" to Flash Fiction Online and processed receipt acknowledgment.
* Much belatedly processed a crit of Vicesteed chs. 33-34.