Category Archives: Writing

I AM FREAKING PUBLISHED!!!!

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Check it out, dudes!!!! The August 2010 issue of Skive Magazine – the vampire issue! http://www.skivemagazine.com/ The story is titled “Luna,” and I’ll not really go into what it’s about, save that it’s obviously about fanged people.

I’ve been published before, but never for fiction. This is a first! Sweet! This is the beginning of my published fiction history!

A friend of mine commented on my announcement, and our friendship goes back a few years, with an initial shared interest in writing. She said we were discussing writing while she was in her old apartment, which she moved out of in 2006, “so it’s been a while.” I guess I’m seeing the payoff of persistence here, and it’s good to know that rather than sitting around and worrying about what the outcome might be, I just went ahead and wrote!

Okay, now I think I’ll celebrate by writing and submitting more stuff!

Salvo number three fired!

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It seems I’m building up a bit of a head of steam here. Today I managed to get another short story sent out to another publisher, Library of Horror Press! This is the third story I’ve sent out in three months, which makes it a record for me in the number of submissions I’ve submitted within one year. I realize that three per year isn’t exactly anything to write home about, but it is something to blog about. After all, it was only a few short years ago that I wasn’t even writing anything, and then I was writing and not submitting. Then there was writing and submitting one piece. Now we’re up to three pieces. Progress, kids, progress. That’s what we strive for here. Maybe one day I’ll be celebrating getting my 20th submission in six months. Or maybe a single novel? It’s impossible to say, but the facts remain that I’m doing more writing work now than I used to, and that’s nothing but good.

The latest submission is a piece I have sent out before, but I did some editing before I sent it out again. None of the changes were really large. I feel they tightened things up a bit, hopefully added a few bits for clarity, and overall made it a better read. The previous editor’s personal rejection told me that he really enjoyed the piece, but that he was short on space by the time I submitted it. I’m getting this one in over three weeks prior to the deadline, so maybe I’ve given myself a better chance of seeing it in print. One can hope.

The story I submitted early this July has not been responded to yet. I’m concerned, as it states on the site that acknowledgment of reception is usually given within 24 hours. I’m primarily concerned, because I’ve already identified another market for this same story, should it be rejected. I don’t want it to be stuck in limbo and only find out after this other deadline has passed that they somehow never got mine. As this second submission deadline closes in I may have to write and inquire. It’s too bad if they didn’t receive it, as I understand that they personally respond to ever single submission, and feedback from publishers is always nice. When you’re not getting paid, feedback is currency.

We shall see how all this pans out. In the meantime, I’ve come across another market I’d like to submit for, but this one has the caveat that the deadline is in three days, and I literally have to write the entire story from nothing in that time. I’m excited about the story idea, but not sure if I can make it happen. I think I’m going to give it a shot, though. It sounds like a fun story – creepy things in the depths of the ocean! Who can resist?!

Back in the game

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It’s been hard to keep up with posting pics, partly because I don’t seem to be turning out any notable pics lately, at least not ones that I find to be particularly moving or exciting from my own perspective. That, and, well, it’s just really hard to keep up! The effect that has had on the blog related to other postings is that I…haven’t posted. I’m trying to change that a little, and since I have news today, I’m not going to wait until I’ve gotten caught up on a month’s worth of photo postings to do it.

Yesterday was a pretty friggin’ awesome day in the world of personal accomplishments. For one, I FINALLY put the R90S up on Ebay after having posted some internet ads and gotten little interest. Ebay was kind of the final choice, and it’s a little scary having that thing up there and knowing that in seven days (hopefully) it will be sold. It’s been a big responsbility owning that bike, and it feels like a big responsibility selling it. I’ll be glad to let it go and move on to other pursuits, not to mention using the cash to pay some bills. That’ll feel good, freeing.

In news directly related to creativity, yesterday I made another story submission! Woohoo! Rock! *bows to self in admiration*
I was writing in my journal yesterday morning things like, “I really haven’t done anything creative related to sculpture or writing in at least two months, and this is the stuff I REALLY want to do! I need to do it!” Somehow that got me all revved up, and that afternoon I took a look at Duotrope’s Digest and realized that there was a deadline for a vampire anthology coming up in 1.5 days. Lucky me, I had just such a story in my files (Ah, the benefits of finishing things! Now I have files of completed stories!)

I checked the submission guidelines and realized that my story was going to need some serious editing if it was going to make the requirements. The word limit was 2,500, and mine was at 3,700. Ack – just a little on the high side! However, I was determined, plus I thought the story couldn’t hurt from some editing, and I wanted to see what would happen if I grabbed a machete and started hacking.

It took a while, but a few hours later I found myself sitting in front of my screen looking at the word counter which read 2,456 words. Sweet! I put together a quick email, added some probably unnecessary biographical info, and shot it off into the etherwebz. There’s no pay for this thing, even if it does get accepted, but at least it got me off my butt and got me writing/rewriting. Now I’ve sent in yet another submission for this year. I may be at a record of TWO whole stories submitted within a year. Woah! Yeah, I think I’ll try and shatter that record with an additional submission. I’ve found another that looks likely, and I think I’ll try my luck there. That one even pays. Payment for writing – what a concept! We’ll see. For now I’m happy to be back in the process. Good times.

Street poetry

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Man, we went out Saturday night to hear music and check out what a typical night in the French Quarter was like. The bands we heard were excellent, but one little thing that really knocked me out was out on the street there were three or four people sitting there with typewriters and they were writing poetry While-You-Wait! It was awesome! I wish I would have had time to talk to them. What a cool idea! Talk about putting yourself into the process.

Yeah, I guess I CAN do that!

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You know how we doubt ourselves sometimes? Wait – you don’t? Okay, well here’s how it goes:

1. Tom reads ad online for a reporter/photog wanted to cover car events at O’Reilly Raceway Park
2. Tom thinks, “Hmmm…that sounds pretty cool. I’ve done that before. I know how to do that!”
3. Tom thinks, “Oh, well, they probably need, like, you know, professionals to do the job. I – I’m probably not good enough for that. I don’t know. I haven’t done that in a really long time, not for money, anyway. Not, like, officially. I mean, I have, but, well, it’s been a while. I probably don’t, you know, really know if I can do it.”

That. Like that.

The photo above? That’s what I got when I ignored all the doubting stuff, got my resume together, and then went looking for decent clips to send. There are about a dozen magazines sitting there of stuff I did that is directly related to what the ad asked for! Yeah, right – can’t do the job??? As if!

I sent it off to them. We’ll see. It’s part time, but it would be fun, and it would be nice to be in print again. I’ll keep you informed as to the outcome.

Night Light and NaNo Novel

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This was the only picture I had energy left for after spending about two hours straight talking about my NaNo novel. The discussion was a lot more exciting than this picture, but not so exciting that you’d actually want to hear the details. I just got some feedback and ideas on what I might want to change for the rewrite. Ugh, I just backed up my commitment to the rewrite in that last sentence. Gah. GAH! Rewrite! AHHHH!

I should do this, though. I should rewrite it. I told myself I was going to, and, I don’t know, maybe it’s not such a bad story, you know? Maybe. That might not even matter, the good or lack of good in the whole thing. It might just be important that I go back and write the whole thing, you know? Might just be important to follow through, to get some practice at that, get some idea of what it’s like to do a rewrite, maybe confirm that I actually am into this whole thing. With all this metal stuff lately, it’s been hard to concentrate on other stuff, but that novel is out there now, out there on my hard drive, and I think I should give it some effort. It may not be awesome, but it’s not horrid, either.

Well, we can’t have that

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Ugly

Less ugly

Today’s pic o’ the day brings with it – an extra pic! Woohoo! You’re welcome.

I usually try to limit it to just one picture to force myself to learn to make decisions, but today’s post simply wasn’t going to go over so hot without having a “before” shot. And, um, actually, the “before” shot is really more of a “already started, but still ugly” shot.

Shall I explain? I shall. In the top photo in the foreground you can see what looks like a pretty ugly piece of wire. In the, um, aft-ground a wire that looks kinda shiny. That wasn’t like that minutes before I shot this. All the wires looked blackened and scarred up like the foremost one. I wish I’d thought to take a picture before I started cutting things off. Pity. At any rate, there were two main wires for the track that were haphazardly connected to each other with two U-shaped pieces. They were all horrible welds, and some of the pieces were nearly cut in half rather than being welded together. It was a mess, and I didn’t think it was even going to stick together for long.

With my recent success in welding, I decided I absolutly had to fix that aberration. I picked up the bolt cutters and proceeded to remove all manner of nastiness. Then I fabricated new pieces to go in place of the dead ones. It took a total of ten welds to get everything back together, and I’m happy to say that only two of those were less than decent. Unfortunately, you can actually see one of them here (that black dot on the connecting piece is a hole), but an 80% success rate for me is ridiculously high. In short, it was a good night, a very good night indeed. I hope this streak of goodness continues, then we’ll be able to look at photos of me building stuff instead of pictures of welded spots like these.

Did I mention I wanted a punch press yesterday? I’d like one, thanks. And the vertical mill also, still want that. A lot.

Did I also mention that I was looking up geometry on line and CAD stuff and that I looked up the course requirements for a machinist? Yep, losing my mind here, folks.

Tonight I’m also going to meet with someone from my NaNo group and we’re going to go over the edits and suggestions we had for each other after swappping novels. I do still write, you know, lest that be forgotten amidst this morasse of machinery obsessiveness.

TGIO NaNoWriMo!

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It may not look like a gala event, but spirits were high at the coffee shop where we held our TGIO party following the end of yet another fantastic November for NaNoWriMo. It’s largely a general bag session, although things change from year to year, and apparently sometimes it’s been a bit more formal or dinner-oriented. One thing that is a continuing tradition, regardless of venue, is the reading of Autosummarized Novels.

There’s this function on Microsoft Word called “Autosummary.” What the true purpose for this is I have no idea, but it makes for big fun when combined with a novel of many thousands of words. What you do is, you highlight all your text, then select the function, and you can trim down your 50K-word novel to a summary of most-occurred phrases or sentences of between five hundred lines and ten words. We usually go for about 100 or 200 words. We gather these up and read them out loud, and they all sound rather ridiculous and repetitive and completely nonsensical – which kind of sums up how a lot of us feel while we’re in the middle of writing a novel of 50 thousand words in the time frame of a single month!

The novel has landed!

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I have truly amazed me this year. Last year I wrote 76 thousand words in thirty days during NaNoWriMo. However, while the word count was fairly impressive and I was very pleased with that, the novel itself, the story, was not finished at said 76K. It took me another seven months to write just 16 thousand words and wrap the novel up at 92K. I was happy with the entire effort, and pleased that I was able to both meet the challenge of actually writing an honest-to-goodness novel-length story, not to mention the fact that I FINISHED it(!) (and we all know what a big fan I am of finishing things!!!), but it was a lengthy process, one which sucked up my creative writing energies for pretty much every other project that might have possibly come my way.

This year my goal was to not only write the 50 thousand words in 30 days, but to actually complete an entire novel, from “It was a dark and stormy night” to “and they all lived somewhat happily together ever after except when they had to decide who was going to pay for pizza or whose turn it was to take out the trash” by the end of the month.

I am extremely happy to say that, despite starting with nothing more than the idea of “this guy is looking for a job, and he meets this other guy” I slogged and scraped and sprinted my way through the month of November to wind up with an entire rough draft of a novel from first word to last by 9:22pm Eastern Time this evening. I even have an entire day left! Hah!

I am currently basking in the glow of accomplishment, celebrating by listening to some music and drinking a little water (yeah, I live big)…and wondering about The Next Big Challenge: turning this thing into a polished finished draft. Stay tuned, kids. It could get messy…or neater and more coherent, perhaps!