abracanabra | Entries tagged with radiator burped

Even if you can't afford to buy the Northern Lights anthology, you can still read it (at least if you're in Minnesota)--because it's at the library!

Check it out!

Something I wrote is at the library! That's like the big time, man! A little piece of me will live there, and sometimes it will visit other people, but it'll always go back. And at night, when everybody leaves and the books speak to each other in papery whispers, a leetle bit of my voice will be in there. This pleases my inner child, the one who spent endless hours practically living in the library, who schemed how she might be able to hide so that she could stay in the library overnight, and who planned to run away to the library (if she ever had to run away).

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.

Northern Lights is an anthology of local Minnesota spec-fic authors. The stories include are fantasy, science fiction, horror, and unclassifiable weird--and my story, "Radiator Burped," is among them. You can buy a copy here.

Excerpt:

"Tsang!" he began, opening the door. He stopped when he realized that he was looking at Michael. "Michael, sorry. I thought you were my housemate coming back. I still haven't met him. Excuse me, I was just taking a nap." He ran a hand through his rumpled hair.

"I had to work longer than expected," Michael explained as he tossed his coat onto the couch. "Forgive me? It's too late to go out, but I did pick up a nice bottle of burgundy. If you have some spaghetti and sauce, we could improvise." Michael smiled. "Next time I'll do better. Hey, those are some pretty fine pictures. You paint, right? Are they yours?"

Eric shuffled his feet. "Yeah."

Michael's smile vanished. "Do you have a pet snake?"

Eric blinked. "No. Why?"

"I thought for a second that I saw something scaly in the corner . . . my eyes must be tired from looking at legal contracts. Never mind." Despite his words, Michael squinted at the corner.

Buy Northern Lights

05/12/10, Wednesday
* Finished Critters critique and began MinnSpec one.
* Prepped Vicesteed ch. 31 for edits.
* Began making editing changes on Vicesteed ch. 30.
* Took down "Salvaging Scottwell" from Bookrix. I have learned a very valuable lesson, and that lesson is that I really don't have time to do a popularity-based writing contest properly. I just don't, and I shouldn't try.
* Worked on brainstorming "Remediation Town," the desertification-and-algal-bloom story. Not done yet. Need good reasons a bandit chief *wouldn't* want a town to prey on.
* Read Critters newsletter.

05/11/10, Tuesday, worked full-time and then had bridge night. But had a goodly amount of downtime at work.
* Finished redmarking Vicesteed ch. 30.
* Finished writing this Platinadar letter and typed it up. Just need to clean up my misc. notes and it's good to go.

05/10/10, Monday
* Processed Andromeda Inflight Magazine's form letter rejection of "Demons of Disease."
* Worked on redmarking Vicesteed ch. 30.

05/09/10, Sunday
* Attended CoyoteCon online panels.
* Read Duotrope, FFWSmallMarkets, and Ralan newsletters and updated markets from them.
* Told Critters about sale/pub of "The Radiator Burped" and "These Things Take Time."
* Revised the "to do once published/accepted" list.

05/087/10, Saturday
* Attended Coyote Con online panels.
* Read FundsforWriters and FFWSmallMarkets newsletters.
* Posted writing log, freewriting.
* Processed publishing contract for "The Radiator Burped" reprint in Northern Lights: A MinnSpec Anthology.
* Posted about publication of "A fob chain went under his vest, between ribs..." to Fb, LJ, Twitter,

05/02/10, Sunday
* Read FundsforWriters, WritersDigest, and Duotrope newsletters and updated market list from them.
* Processed reprint acceptance of "The Radiator Burped" for the MinnSpec anthology. Yay!
* Processed Strangetastic release of "They'll Seal Any Leak" (and all other submissions) and their new submission guidelines.
* Updated submission order for three stories but neglected to submit any.
* What characters need: http://www.firstnovelsclub.com/2010/04/workshop-whose-story-is-this-and-why.html

05/01/10, Saturday
* Telling signs: http://storyflip.blogspot.com/2010/04/re-write-wednesday-dont-tell-me-why.html

04/29/10, Thursday
* Posted writing log

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.

10/17/2009 - Saturday

* http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/reading-aloud/

10/16/2009 - Friday

* Got Aswiebe's Market List newsletter out.

10/15/2009 - Thursday

* Read the entire backlog of my writing newsletters: Critters, Writing-World, 4 Lunch Weekly, 4 WritersDigest, 2 WritersWeekly, 2 FundsforWriters, 2 FFWSmallMarkets, and Duotrope newsletters--and updated market list from them.

* This is an article I plan on rereading frequently as I write--4 Techniques to Fire Up Your Fiction: http://writersdigest.com/article/4-techniques-to-fire-up-your-fiction

* Finished updating and uploaded newest Aswiebe's Market List.

10/14/2009 - Wednesday

* Read WritersWeekly, and Ralan newsletter and updated market list from them.

10/13/2009 - Tuesday

* Read WritersWeekly, Critters, Writing-World, FFWSmallMarkets, FundsforWriters, 2 Duotrope, and PublishersNews newsletters and updated market list from them.

10/08/2009 - Thursday

* Updated market list from LJ Specficmarkets.

10/07/2009 - Wednesday

* Posted writing log.

* Penthius freewriting (private), another one where two influences collided and a full-fledged idea leapt to mind.

* Pimped "The Radiator Burped" to the notification list through Critters. (Yes, I have a 14-item action list for when things get published.)

* Read Critters newsletter.

10/05/2009 - Monday

* Penthius freewriting about "Team Vampire" and backed up the last bit of entries into the document version.

* Posted "The Radiator Burped" blurb to LJ. Still need to see what if any communities there are that might welcome such postings, update profile/website to match, Twitter, etc.

10/04/2009 - Sunday

* Read Publisher's Lunch, WritingWorld, FFWSmallMarkets, and WritersDigest newsletters.

* Zen in the Art of a Kiss and a Dream: http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2009/09/04/ZenInTheArtOfAKissAndADream.aspx

"The Radiator Burped" is now out in the (FREE PDF!) Fall issue of Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine. I wrote this story after Phil challenged me, when I was whining about not writing, to write a story about "a fairy and a dragon." I was feeling contrary, and neither fairy nor dragon is exactly what you might expect from that phrase.

It was difficult finding just the right home for a half-horror/half-humorous modern fantasy story about a gay man's trouble finding a person to pay half the rent, so I'm quite pleased.

Excerpt:

Eric chewed on his pencil as he re-wrote his ad. GPM seeks N/S housemate(s) for spacious two-bedroom . . . but he didn't want a pair of newlyweds. If he wanted cooing doves, he could have gotten them from his second-to-last boyfriend, the pet store owner.

Uniquely decorated . . . because his third-to-last boyfriend had wanted to be an interior decorator and had thought that psychedelic flower wallpaper best expressed Eric's artistic personality. Add in Eric's practice of displaying his paintings in progress, and sometimes the apartment hosted kaleidoscopic clashes of color and style.

Fully furnished apt. with washer/dryer . . . though the dryer had a tendency to shrink laundry, especially expensive shirts, which was the final straw for his last boyfriend, and the reason Eric couldn't pay rent.

None of the respondents to his last ad had seemed quite right . . . in the head.

"Hi! This is Eric. Please leave a message after the beep."

Read more.

05/20/2009 - Wednesday, no downtime
* Processed "The Radiator Burped" acceptance through various spreadsheets.
* Finished 1 crit for Wiscon.

05/19/2009 - Tuesday, almost all downtime
* Read aloud through "The Radiator Burped" and made small changes to the final draft. Emailed final draft to editor. Signed publication contract and mailed it off.
* Posted writing logs.
* Added "The Radiator Burped" pub date to my writing calendar.
*

penthius freewriting inspired by a graffiti-painted subway.
* Started work on Wiscon crit.

And now I have to do the last two Wiscon crits in the next few hours at work. Then go home and pack, and then--I'm off. Yoicks*! Tallyho!

* Yes, I had to look up how to spell that properly. Because I am compulsive like that.

05/18/2009 - Monday, no downtime
*

penthius freewriting about apprentice vintages.
* Saved the last week's freewritings to the ideas file.
* Broadcast my "Yay! Acceptance!" about "The Radiator Burped" to various places for no reason other than glee. The useful time to make story announcements is at the "It's published--go forth and read and here's why you should want to" point, but I couldn't help myself. This is not my first story to get published, but I'm still giddy at getting the acceptance. I wonder if that ever changes?

05/15/2009 - Friday, a little downtime
* Processed Shock Totem's form letter rejection of "Miracle Material."
* Cleared out old anthologies/contests from Aswiebe's Market List.
* Wrote Aswiebe's Market List newsletter, posted link/content to LJ, website, Twitter, and Facebook.
* Finished crit for MinnSpec and read other "for crit" story.

05/14/2009 - Thursday, mostly downtime but I wasted it all.
* Read WritersDigest newsletter.
* Posted writing log.
* Penthius freewriting about Elvis.

13:33 +++(There's not enough pluses.) "The Radiator Burped" has been accepted by Strange, Weird, & Wonderful Magazine! Fall pub. date.
15:49 + No more extra work project stealing my downtime for the next month! (Though also no downtime today.)
18:58 MN photo folk: The Strib is having a contest for a great fishing photo: ping.fm/d953Y

05/10/2009 - Sunday, no work
* Posted writing log.
*

penthius freewriting about marketing temporary death.
* Saved freewritings from this week to the master document. I used to save after every one, but of late, I've been doing these during downtime at work, so I need to save them en masse.
* Updated market list from Duotrope.
* Submitted "The Radiator Burped" to Strange, Weird, and Wonderful--I'm a little confused about their submission periods as they say they have a submission period that starts in July, but the note at the top says they're taking submissions for Fall and Winter issues (I'm aiming for Fall.). Confusion abounds, but I submitted anyway.
* Submitted "Charity From a Thief" to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, a pretty badass new market.
* Worked on editing Vicesteed ch. 17.
* Submitted "Road of Dreams" to Withersin.
* Queried Escape Clause Anthology about the status of "The Haunts of Hill Crossing." I read that they were expecting to send out all responses by 04/10/2009, but I haven't heard anything yet.

04/30/2009 - full work, but there were a couple of beautiful hours of downtime.
* Posted writing log.
*

penthius freewriting about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/30zodiac.html?ref=us
* Updated market list from my Gmail to-do labels.
* Updated submission order for "Charity From a Thief," "The Radiator Burped," "Road of Dreams," "A Phoenix By Any Other Name," and "The Miracle Material" and picked where they're going to next--not necessarily the market that pays the most, but the new market that pays well and is what I think is a really good fit. Given the choice between an older magazine and a newer one, I sub to the newer one on the theory that their slush pile is smaller.
* Processed Dead Bait Anthology's very nice form letter rejection of "Miracle Material." Le sigh.
* Read Critters newsletter and various mid-week ad mailings from my writing newsletter people.
* Submitted "The Miracle Material" to Shock Totem after much wailing and gnashing of teeth over OpenOffice's difficulties with, it seems, the very notion of the .RTF format. (More on that later--the quick answer is "AbiWord.")

What on earth did writers with day jobs do before there were decent-sized thumb drives?

04/27/2009 - Monday, full work
* Nothing--I think. My schedule right now is, "Work full time, come home and make dinner, do physical therapy exercises, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat." I really, really need to figure out how to wedge writing/editing/submitting stories time in there. Oh, wait! I read Poets & Writers on the bus ride to work. So that counts for a little.

04/26/2009 - Sunday, no work, but party cleanup and setting up a new computer, which kinda interfered with my work flow.
* Set up Google Profile. Yes, this counts as writing work, because a significant portion of that is getting your name out. Also added the profile info to my "places to update info" file--a crucial thing to have once you get a certain number of social networks/bios circulating.
* Made editing changes to Vicesteed ch. 15.
* Printed and filed 3 Critters critique of Vicesteed chapters 24-25.

04/25/2009 - Saturday, no work, but did host Phil's birthday non-party from noon on.
*

penthius freewriting (though you can't see it because it's one of those very rare "the idea is all" stories, inspired by one of the sets of guidelines I read. So unfortunately it also comes with a deadline.
* Read WritersWeekly, 2 Duotrope, 2 FundsforWriters, Critters, FFWSmallMarkets newsletters.
* Updated Aswiebe's Market List from the above newsletters.
* Thanked 2 critters for their crits of Vicesteed.
* Processed The Opinion Guy's form rejection of "The Radiator Burped."
* Processed Fusion Fragment's form rejection of "A Phoenix By Any Other Name."writing log.
* Posted writing log.

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. )

As part of the compromise Phil and I have, which means I'm occasionally allowed to see other coffee shops, I got to choose where we went yesterday. Based on some recommendations, I chose Urban Bean. I liked it. The tea and chocolate croissant I had were tasty. The back room was very light and airy, with a huge picture window and a beautiful urban cityscape cutout mural. They had a lot of electrical outlets. Even when it was seated to almost-full capacity, it didn't feel crowded. I liked the ambient electronic music. It had a quiet, almost library-like atmosphere.

Drawbacks: There was no padding on the chairs/bench, the tables were a little small for 2, and the quiet made one a little self-conscious about talking to friends. Phil's drawback list was silly: it was "too clean" (!) and lacking in hummus.

Conclusion: It was nice and I'd definitely go back there, but it isn't necessarily the best place to go to hang out with friends on Saturdays. It would be a great place to study. On the other hand, it's on a direct bus line from our house, so it's definitely someplace I might go on my own to work if I'm feeling cabin fever.

Between sickness and lack of work (except for a transcription project I did at home), I hadn't been out of the house except for martial arts classes for a couple of weeks, so it was so nice to go out and see someplace new and hang out with

discoflamingo,

cvalenti, and

bitwise.

( More photos and writing logs. )

03/04/2009 - Wednesday, no work
Deleted from Chapter 12

751 / 5,593
(13.4%)

Old chapter wordcount: 5,593
New chapter wordcount: 4,842
Vicesteed Draft 1 wordcount: 207,877
Vicesteed Draft 2 current wordcount: 186,901
Which deleted scene is it anyway?

The choice of costumes had been presented to her, but her initial suggestions were rejected by her father as inappropriate. Admittedly, perhaps the notion of herself as a mechanical golem or a marionette was not suitable for a costume ball ostensibly devoted to pure entertainment. Rosemary had restrained herself from suggesting that she dress up as livestock or dry goods, given that she would be on the marriage mart, as she had heard her father say bluntly to Hannah.

Before her father had expired from exasperation, Rosemary had remembered the leaflets and suggested the idea of a sylph of the sea of space. The swirls of color against the black of space would serve as notice both that she had been bereaved and that she was recently out of mourning. Her mother's ropes of pearls would mimic the spirals of the galaxies, and costume jewelry would complete the desired effect. Of course, her simple costuming ideas had been rejected as being far too plain, but the idea of the costume had been accepted.

It held a wry appeal for her. She pictured herself as a maiden bound forever to the void, finding consolation only in the wreckage of ships that were lost.

Reason for deleting: Unnecessary recap of unnecessary interaction, and it didn't fit in the plot flow. I may move some of the description to a later point, if needed.
Notes: This chapter was pretty good, as reflected by the low percentage of cut material.
Critiquers being unintentionally funny:
* About a person's posture: "perhaps reinforcing the prone position by comparing the fingers to the brass buckle of a trunk?" (There were no trunks in the scene, either, so I'm entirely confused.)
* A suggestion to replace "the touch of silk": "the feathery abrasiveness of silk."
* A guess at the theme of the story: "This seems to be a save the humans from the robot/clones sort of story." (I can see how they might think that from one chapter taken out of context, but this is hilarious.)
* A hope that the main character's desires "will come to fruitarian."
( Other writingy stuff. )

It's been a good week for my stories. (This is funny, because I've been too sick and at-work to do anything with them.)

1. Baen's Universe, a pro-level publication, has pulled "Salvaging Scottwell" out of the slush pile and will be bumping it up for the Editor-in-Chief to look at. Now commences the biting of nails and crossing of fingers.

2. The Edge of Propinquity has moved "The Radiator Burped" past the first round of cuts. Now, all this probably means is that they've decided it fits the theme and isn't actively badly written, but I do so want my difficult child to find a home.

Squeesqueesqueesqueesqueesqueesqueesqueesqueesqueesquee!!!!!!!!

Ahem.

Setting that aside, because there's nothing I can do to influence the outcome (other than actually sending the rtf version in, which I plan on doing tomorrow, when I'm less tired and less likely to miss something).

Vicesteed. Now is really when I should be submitting Vicesteed, because steampunk's popularity is rocketing up and people are looking for good steampunk books, which I think I will have after I finish the editing. So I need to get that done, and right quickly, too. Having it done by Wiscon, or at least by 4th Street Fantasy, seems like a good plan. Then I will be able to gush at people about it, while batting my eyes in my best talented-and-professional-writer manner.

( The numbers on that goal )

01/22/2009 - Thursday, no work
* Posted writing log.
* Penthius freewriting--about getting laid off. Economy on my mind much?
* Submitted "These Things Take Time" to Triangulations: Dark Glass.
* Submitted "Warmth in the Cold Time" to Horror Garage.
* Submitted "The Radiator Burped" to The Edge of Propinquity.
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Polluto Magazine.

01/23/2009 - Friday, no work, but was shanghaied by a funk.
* Processed "submission received" emails.

01/24/2009 - Saturday, full+ work
* Read Writer's Digest, WritersWeekly newsletters
- Detailed guide to AP style: http://www.usu.edu/journalism/faculty/sweeney/resources/ap.htm

Also, I need other "writing" user icons.

Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

Being the journal of an all-too-human writer, reader, and eater of deliciousness

Inner Child Happy Dance

Writing Log: Lots of "Other Manuscripts" stuff

"The Radiator Burped" now out in Northern Lights

Writing Logs: Assorted

Writing Log: Processing....

Writing Log: Submissions Sunday

Writing Logs: Market Listy

Writing Logs: Tidbits

"The Radiator Burped" Published

Writing Log: Not much.

Writing Logs: Acceptancy Goodness

Points of Interest: Good Things

Writing Log: Submissions

Writing Log: Submit (also a synonym for "give up")

Writing Log: Only On The Weekends

Writing Logs, Cumulative

Writing Log & Urban Bean Coffee Shop

Writing Log: Vicesteed Chapter 12

Raising Hopes--and Goals.

Writing Log: And Then There Was Day Job

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