Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

From Their Cradle to Your Grave is now available on Amazon.com! This includes my reprinted short story, "The Perfect Costume." This horror anthology is all about tales of terrifying tots, toddlers through teenagers. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but doesn't that sound like a great gift for the new parents in your life?



Marc likes vampires. A lot. One Halloween, he thinks he's found them. That's when everything starts to go bad....

This Halloween her son was ten--almost eleven--years old. She planned to make sure that Marc had a truly wonderful Halloween before he was too old to fully enjoy it. Although all the other years he had made do with a costume bought second-hand from Salvation Army, or from the half-price rack at Wal-Mart, this year she wanted to make him the perfect costume. This year, he would have a perfect Halloween.

She was disappointed that Marc didn't want a Halloween party for his friends. She wasn't aware that he had no friends, that he sat in the classroom isolated from all the friendly conversation and joking that surrounded him, that during lunch he sat alone and read one of the vampire novels he had smuggled out of the library when his mother was looking the other way. She didn't approve of young children (as she thought of Marc) reading dark stories like that. When he was little, she read him only the sanitized Disney fairy tales.

Marc didn't like them. He didn't like any fairy tales until he discovered an old version of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales. He much preferred "Cinderella" when the evil stepsisters sawed off their toes and heels with a knife in an effort to fit into the glass slipper, when they were forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes at Cinderella's wedding. He laughed when he read "The Three Little Pigs" and found that the first two pigs didn't escape their substandard homes but got eaten by the big, bad wolf. He approved when the wolf got boiled to death by the last pig, instead of making friends with it. Although Marc thought "The Little Mermaid" was still a sissies' story, he liked it much better after he read the version where the mermaid felt like she was walking on sharp knives the whole time she was human, and where she died in the end. It felt right. His favorite fairy story of all was called "The Goosegirl," and he loved it because of its bloody, lyrical beauty.

Read more.

I am not being a good patient writermonkey. I am antsy. Soon, soon Writers of the Future will announce the results for the 2nd Quarter, the one I sent a story that's reallygood to (No, it is--I promise!).

::drums fingers::

And that end-of-the-world anthology that I did get accepted into, which has had pub. deadlines pushed around--last I heard we were supposed to approve and finish edits by the end of June. Which is coming up pretty fast now.

::drums fingers some more::

And the other anthology that I just found I out I made the first cut for, which, er, might make me a leetle more Christmas-morning-impatient than usual.

::drums fingers even more::

There's the publication (coughGUDcough) that promised a sub response by April 14th, but which is flooded (because yes, they are that awesome) and now has an undetermined response time.

And the anthology that said it would send responses sometime after the reading period ended (April 30th), but which has posted no status updates since.

::drums fingers so hard it sounds like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse::

Sigh.... Settling down. It's not like I don't have other things to worry about, and all of these should wait at least another month before I status query.

In fact, I have lots of other writingy things to worry about.

What am I wasting my time with this for? It's out of my hands at the moment, and that's kind of okay. I don't need anything else to juggle right now.

After today, all my not-previously-published, submission-ready stories are out in the world! This is the first time I've been able to say that in--ever? Longer than I can remember, at least.

Mind you, I have a huge stack of stories I should be sending out to sell as reprints, and another huge stack that need to be edited, but I'm focusing on the good here.

03/14/10, Sunday
* Processed Thaumatrope's acceptance of "They told the new base meteorologist" and submitted "The fairies enchanted us." Twitfic is fun. I should do this with the other 'zines as well, I thought. So then I researched the other spec-fic tweetzines and did just that.
* Submitted "Atop the Himalayas" to Outshine, "Gene therapy worked" to TweettheMeat, and "The Key to His Heart" (reprint) to Nanoism.
* Posted freewriting, writing log, Nanowri.
* Processed receipt acknowledgment of "The Radiator Burped" from Minnspec Anthology.
* Read Duotrope, PublishersLunch, WritersWeekly, FundsforWriters, FFWSmallMarkets, WritersMarket, and Writersdigest newsletters and updated market list from them.
* Michael Moorcock's rules for writing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/22/michael-moorcock-rules-for-writers
* (This is going in my writing challenges file.) The Lester Dent pulp plot outline: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html
* Palahniuk's tips for writers: http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/essays/chuck-palahniuk
* Submitted "The Perfect Costume" to Best New Vampire Tales.
* Submitted "Good Help is Hard to Find" to DF_Underground.
* Submitted "Passings" to GUD.

02/09/10, Tuesday, worked a full day, but with downtime.
* Finished writing Vespa's Letter to Platinadar, typed up during work downtime, and sent on its merry way.

02/08/10, Monday
* Finished writing "Ekaterina and the Firebird." Felt all accomplished because I'd hit the ending and all that--and then realized I had to go back to the beginning and fill in transitions and research [brackets]. Not done yet! Alas, alack!
* Began writing "Letter to Platinadar" on the bus.

02/07/10, Sunday
* Updated market list from link submitted.
* Processed payment for "Salvaging Scottwell" and "The Key to His Heart." Go go gadget spreadsheets!
* Read Writer's Digest, Publishers Lunch, WritersWeekly, WritersMarket, WritingWorld, FundsforWriters, WritersMarket, Duotrope, Ralan, and FFWSmallMarkets newsletters and updated markets from them.
* Flow: http://blog.writersdigest.com/mfaconfidential/On+Words+Flowing+And+Why+Its+Worth+It.aspx
* Submitted "The Perfect Costume" to Extreme Creatures Anthology for reprint.
* Submitted "Good Help is Hard to Find" to GUD.
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Arkham Tales--and whoa! realized it was my 108th story submission since I started using my own spreadsheet to track.
* Finished typing up what has been written longhand of "Ekaterina and the Fire Bird" (4,463 words)

02/06/10, Saturday, Phil's game all p.m., then friends birthday dinner.
* Posted writing log, freewriting, NanoWri
* Typed up almost all the rest of "Ekaterina."

"Police Bot" Writing Log

And I can't do the pretty progress bar because Zokutou is broken today. This makes Abra cranky. Abra likes pretty progress bars. Abra needs pretty progress bars. Give Abra pretty progress bars!

New words: 526
Total words: 8,112
Overused word: respect
Gratuitous car make: Chevrolet
Type of scene: The passing of time and growing of respect (see, there's that word again!), followed by a murder report.
Challenge(s): Transitions. They're icky.
Which strangely difficult to figure out how to write line is it anyways?The driver-side door was open, and a woman's body slumped half-in, half-out of the driver's seat.
Notes: Am I producing anything readable here? I don't know. Only one way to find out--soldier on!
Other writingy stuff:
* penthius freewriting - "Enslaved Warrior" - romance, a twist on the old "me warrior, you slavewoman, me be gentle" romances.
* Posted writing log from Tuesday.
* Mailed out first two chapters of Vicesteed to new critiquers.
* Created spreadsheet to track critiquing chapters of Vicesteed. Spreadsheets are essential organizing tools, folks!
* Read WritersWeekly.com newsletter.
* Updated Market List from Critters (http://www.critters.org) newsletter, adding James Patrick Baen Memorial Writing CONTEST - http://www.williamledbetter.com/contest.htm - for positive story of near-future space exploration.
* Updated markets for and then submitted "The Perfect Costume" to Aberrant Dreams (http://www.hd-image.com/submissions.htm).
* Read Writer's Digest newsletter.