Writing Update

xposted from here: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2010/09/08/writing-update-2/

So, the last update was a writerly type update, but it wasn’t really an update on what I’ve been working on, and more about the stuff that’s been going on around me. And truthfully, I’ve been stuck in the summer funk, waiting for all these publications where I have submissions out to to come back from vacation, read my stuff and tell me whether or not it suits them. So, I’ve been in sort of a holding pattern, trying to work on revising poetry and stories and parts of stories I’ve already written as well as working on things like memos, info papers, business proposals, proofreading and copy editing varying things and learning about stuff like Smashwords.com.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on some new stuff, though. Besides pulling out old poetry that I thought would just languish on my hard drive for eternity and seeing if I could revise it or rewrite (or just give up on it), I have been working on some new stories. So, for anyone who’s interested out there, here’s some of what I have been and will be working on – after I’ve proofread/copy edited a client’s screenplay and after I’ve put together the board and the handouts for the MMWC boot at the Weho Book Fair and after I’ve researched and come up with intelligent questions for the YA Fantasy panel at the WeHo Book Fair:

1) The scifi/space exploration story project. I’ve been letting it sit for a while. It’s grown over time since I first thought I “finished” it. I’ve gotten as far as I can on my own and it keeps getting kicked back, but my new critique reader, my sister, has gone over it with a fine tooth comb (bless her heart – she really helped me with a recent short story I currently have out on submission) to show me where I’ve gotten too close to the story, too verbose, too wandery and or not enough of one thing or another. I think by the time I truly “finish” this story it will be about 15,000 words or so (it’s at 12,000 words now)- smaller novella or novellette size (depending on which editor you’re submitting to) and we’ll see if it goes anywhere. I have enjoyed working on it.

2) Part 2 to the Canto Sybilla stories, a quartet (or even quintet) of novellas. Still working on this. I keep trying to get past a certain point, but though I know what’s supposed to happen, I can’t seem to make the story go there, it wants to wander, so I get frustrated and put it down to work on something else. I probably should just wander with it, see where it takes me and then edit it down later when it needs it. As Will, in writers group says, the first draft, we’re telling ourselves the story. The second draft, we’re telling the readers the story, cuz hopefully, we’ve figured it out by then. But I need to get it down and done. Really, it’s past time that Nicole and Donna and Julie and April all got to have their stories told.

3) Cynthia. That’s how I write it on my list when I’ve got it down on my Modus Operandi list for the day. Just-Cynthia. It’s not sure if it wants to be a short story or a novella. And it doesn’t know if it wants to be paranormal chicklit or straight chicklit with some action/adventure spy stuff written in. I like Cyn. I like writing her. I like some of the characters I have in her world. And I could see it being a longer story. We’ll see. Right now she’s at the end of a very long, very bad day, but she’s been there for a while. I’m wondering if I should write in a meteor or something just to blast her out of her seat and get her going.

4) The Kiko Stories. If you know me, you probably know about Kiko, one of my best friends in either the four- or two-legged world. If you know me, you also know that I love reading fantasy anthologies and some of my favorite anthologies have been edited by Andre Norton and/or Martin Greenberg, the CatFantastic series. One of my favorite fairy tales is The Bremen Town Musicians. And many of my favorite stories include The Wind in the Windows, The World According to Winnie the Pooh, Watership Down, and Tailchaser’s Song. You see the trend here? I love good animal stories. I try to write good animal stories. Sometimes it works.

Anyway, years ago, when Kiko first came to my roommate at the time and I (in 1994), she said that I needed to write a story about Kiko. And I laughed it off, but filed that suggestion away for later. They say that sometimes you need space between you and something in your life before you write about it properly. I think I might have that space, finally (Kiko passed away March, 6, 2007). About a month ago or so I found myself outlining a series of short stories based on Kiko. Still not sure if they will end up being YA/children’s stories or adult – but since they’ll be told from his point of view, it probably won’t matter. What will matter is whether I can find someone who likes them. And that could be anyone, or no one at all. Who knows. It could show up on a Lulu.com/Smashwords.com near you.

5) Finally, the Gramma project. Recently, my mom started going through old letters and bits of writing my gramma and grampa had left behind after they passed away. Mom’s been sharing them with the rest of the family, sometimes scanning them into the computer to share with us and sometimes just quoting bits of story. So, in our little family, Gramma has been much on our collective mind. We’ve been sharing favorite stories. And Gramma is the one who pretty much taught me (and all of us – my mom, my aunts, my sister and I) how to garden. My sister calls her the Garden Warrior. Nothing phased her. Dirt was just dirt. Weeds were just weeds. There’s nothing wrong with eating the berries or the herbs off the plant as you’re working out there with them. That’s what they’re there for, after all. “It’s okay! Take your shoes off, honey, and let me spray your feet with the water hose,” were the first words she said to me when I popped out of the car onto her lawn at the age of five, fresh out of the city. I don’t remember ever being barefoot on a lawn until she said that and taught me it was okay. Not to be fearful of bare feet on the moist grass.

Because I am my grammas granddaughter, when I had my own garden, I frequently snacked on say, the snowpeas, the mint and the cilantro whilst working in my own garden up in San Francisco. When I was in junior high, I ate the cherries I was picking when I earned money cherry picking one summer. In high school I snacked on the strawberries in the fields where I was picking strawberries. Everyone did. That is who I am and who I will always be (and I would consider myself a wimp if I didn’t continue to be that person). So, one day a little over a week ago, I’m out back where we have some herbs growing. And, again, because I am my Gramma’s granddaughter, in this same tradition, I’m tasting some of the herbs. We’ve got Greek oregano and Italian oregano. I wanted to compare them. Someone else was out there at the same time and I was really excited. They did taste different! I said, “here! Have a taste!” To my sheer amazement, he started wiping off the leaves and then, he didn’t even taste them, just smelled them. I said, “It’s okay, you know,” thinking he needed encouragement. Subconsciously taking on my gramma’s tone so he wouldn’t be afraid to try the herbs. But for him, it wasn’t the thing one does I guess. He wasn’t comfortable with that.

Two things hit me a) the huge cultural divide that existed in this one moment between this person and I in regards to gardening and b) how brave my gramma was. She taught me and everyone else in our family to be brave and have fun and not sweat the small stuff. She was much more genteel than I and probably would have smoothed over that awkward moment – I was just so shocked I couldn’t do much more than shrug it off, but it definitely felt awkward. It just felt so off for me. And the thing is, there’s nothing wrong with not being comfortable with eating something right off the branch or the vine, but I couldn’t believe the strong reaction I felt at someone else not being able to do that.

So, between this small (yet huge) thing in the back garden and our family remembering Gramma, I decided it was time to write a story about how brave my gramma was. It’s probably going to end up being a kids’ story, maybe, though right now I’m writing it from the adult’s point of view. We’ll see, that might change and I might change viewpoints so it’s from the kid’s point of view. It will definitely be of the scifi/fantasy realm because, well, it’s what I like to do. And I’m sure Gramma woulda been just as adept at the scifi/fantasy realm as she was at the mundane world. I mean, she does have three daughters, two granddaughters and one grandson who ALL enjoy scifi/fantasy (well, my mom has to be convinced, but if she let’s herself, she enjoys it – she is the one that got my sister and I in the habit of watching Star Trek when we were kids, and read the Narnia chronicles to us). This is the story that’s grabbing my imagination at the moment. I’m probably at the first 1/4-1/3 of this one.

I miss my gramma. Like I said: she was brave, good, kind, loving, and could can/pickle/preserve with the best of’em (but she always burnt the meat).

So, anyway, it’s after midnight now (Craig Ferguson is on) and I need to go to work in the morning, but this is my official writing update for anyone out there who cares.

Time for an update!

xposted from my blogetary here: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2010/09/03/time-for-an-update/

I was reading Leigh's blog and realized I haven't been doing regular updates like I used to. I've let Facebook take over my life with it's easy status updates where you just yell into the crowd brief shouts and wonder if anyone out there really cares. Well, I still wonder who out there really cares with blogs, but at least I get to ramble on a little longer. It's one of my greatest joys in life -- rambling. Must be why I enjoy writing so much.

So, yeah - NEWS -

First up, if you are someone in the scifi/fantasy writing community and you haven't subscribed to Locus Magazine, then now is the time to start, with their shiny new GORGEOUS steampunk issue.




Included in this issue are all sorts of interviews and essays, as well as a list of the World Fantasy Awards Finalists. I have a copy sitting on my desk right now and normally I like sharing them with people, but I'm not sharing this one. So I suggest you go out and get yourself a copy of this issue or subscribe. Now. TODAY. They're gonna run out of this one.

Speaking of interviews, if you happen to see the September issue of Aoife's Kiss, the you will also see that there is an interview of me in there (by Karen L. Newman), as well as a poem by me.



And while I normally like to have blog contests or give a way bunches of these things, I'm not very solvent at the moment, so that might not happen this time. So, unless you're immediate family, you're going to have to pick up an issue yourself. Which is very easy. GenreMall is very PayPal friendly and as subscription to Aoife's Kiss is virtually painless at $22/year ($26 with shipping). And they'd love to have you!

Then, next on the docket, I'll be going to see Rachel Vincent, Kelly Armstrong and Melissa Marr at Vroman's Bookstore on September 20. It will be part of their Smart Chick's Kick It tour. It's at 6 p.m, going to be held outside (lots of people attending, I think), so get there early!

Finally, if you live in the LA area and like book fairs, then stop on by the West Hollywood Book Fair on Sun., Sept. 26.



There are MANY reasons this would be a good idea. For one, the Miracle Mile Writers Club will be there and we'd love to have you stop by and say hi (We'll be at E39 between the Guerrilla Readings Booth and the UCLA Extension Writers Program booths). There will be novelists, poets and other writers there for you to talk with and get to know. We have one poet who is scheduled to bring her opera (she wrote the libretto) to play while she's there from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. And we might even have SNACKS! For another, Leigh Purtill's dance company will be performing Alice in Wonderland!!!! Doesn't that just make you SQUEEEEE! It does me. I hope I get a chance to see them. And one more reason you might be interested in going (besides all the fantastic stuff going on) is that I will be moderating an author panel on YA Fantasy at the Scifi, Fantasy & Horror Pavilion from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. The authors I will be speaking with will be Frank Beddor of the Looking Glass Wars, Francesca Lia Block of the Weetsie Bat series and PJ Haarsma of the Softwire series (psst - this last website has a fun little video with Nathan Fillion).

So, lots to do here that I wanted to share with people "out there" wherever "out there" is. Hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and can pick up some of the awesome magazine issues or come by the MMWC booth, or even come see the Smart Chicks' tour!

The Crow King

xposted from here: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2010/08/24/the-crow-king/

A little over a year ago, The Crow King was published in Aoife's Kiss (Sept. 2009). Like other stories I haven't looked at for a while I can see all sorts of things wrong with it that I swear I'll fix if I ever republish them elsewhere, but this story is still close to my heart as the main character is based on my dad.

You can hear an excerpt of the story here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYcf6u6NcZY

You can buy a copy of the zine here: www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm where you go to Aoife's Kiss and then scroll down to the Sept. 2009 issue.

My Favorite Things

xposted from here: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2010/08/24/my-favorite-things/



A Christmas story for the heat of August. Here's a portion read for your pleasure and edification. It was my first published story and I sold it for $10 whole dollars. And no matter what I said on the video, it was published in December 2005. I said 2007, which is wrong.

Trivia point for anyone who is interested, I named the hero of the story after two childhood friends of mine, which seemed cool at the time, but might be considered pretty weird what with the nature of the story and all (adult romance). But, they're both gentlemen and the hero of the story is a gentleman, so it seemed appropriate at the time.

You can hear a portion of the story here.

You can purchase it on Amazon here.

Keeping Track of Yourself

xposted from here.

Like many writers, I obsessively track my submissions. For the past few years I have used an Excel spreadsheet and only recently discovered the submissions tracker on Duotrope Digest. Now I use both (Gee, obsess much?). While Duotrope is free and subsists on donations and therefore always on the brink of extinction, it offers some things that I haven’t been able to get my little Excel spreadsheet to do. For one, it can give you the percentage of acceptances and rejections (according to what’s been input into their system) for each publication you are considering submitting your piece to. Also, from the data it’s got on hand, it can tell you not only the outside amount of time that a publication tells you it will take to get back to you, but also the average (according to the data) of what the amount of time actually is.

In fact, by using the submissions tracker and including your data in their search engine, you are actually helping yourself and others keep better track of your submissions process. One of the cooler things it does is provide you with your acceptance percentage, which could be depressing, but can also be ultimately motivating. Or at least give you an idea of where you fall on the writers’ Bell Curve. :-P

Now, I know some people are of the “why would you want to keep track of that” school, but practically speaking, if you’re trying to do this writing thing as more than just as a hobby then you pretty much have to keep track. You don’t want to submit the same piece to the same place twice (most places don’t like that unless they specifically request changes and a resubmission). You don’t want to submit your piece simultaneously to several places when many of them don’t accept simultaneous submissions. Most places also don’t like multiple submissions (more than one submission at a time) unless it’s poetry. And then, you need to keep track of when it was submitted so if you get impatient (that would be me) you can mark on the calendar the appropriate time to send a query letter to ask about the status of your submission (querying before say 60 or 90 days can be seen as a bit of faux pas).

And then, on the off chance that your piece does get accepted some place (and after you’ve told all your friends, jumped up and down and shouted WhooHoo! to your cat or dog or kid), you need to notify any other publication where it might be out for submission to let them know it’s no longer available. Then you need to write down when it’s coming out because most of the time it will be several months after it’s accepted for publication before it sees the light of day. And THEN if this is a place that offers payment (with either free copies or money), chances are you will be paid a certain amount of time after publication. So you need know when to expect all that to pass.

And finally, even if all you received was $5 for that nifty poem, you need to record it and all of the above for the good people at the IRS, especially if you’re also recording expenses having to do with your writing.

So, yeah, keeping track of yourself can get pretty obsessive, but in the long run it’s what you need to do. And then next time you’re at a cocktail party or trying to explain to your parents how you spend your time (and possibly their money) all you need to do is bring out the spread sheet, log in to a site like Duotrope to show them your progress, or show them your list of publications that you might keep tucked in your wallet, like baby pictures, for just such occasions.

BTW – you can find my “baby pictures” on my website. For my fiction and poetry click here. Or for any other articles I’ve written, click here. ;-)

Laundry Day

xposted around, but originally here: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2010/08/16/laundry-day/

I don't love doing laundry or laundry day, but once you get into it,there is a Zen-ness to it, at least for me. I don't attain that Zen-ness when doing dishes or scrubbing the toilet, but I get it when doing laundry.

Laundry is a funny thing. People get very particular about their laundry where they won't be particular about anything else. The sorting- by color? by material type? by function? The cleaner - soap or detergent? without or without perfumes? Fabric softener or no? Laundry sheet in dryer or not? Or does one hang to dry instead? And then there's the folding. Does one just toss ones underwear and socks somewhere? Or is there a particular way to fold them? What about hanging clothes? How are they hung properly? Wire hangers? Plastic hangers? Wood? Padded? Which are hung and which are folded? And what about sheets and towels and blanket?

You don't really think about how you do laundry, but once you do,you realize how pretty particular you are about how you do your laundry as opposed to say how a roommate or friend or partner does their laundry. It becomes a ritual, but not a day long ritual (well,depending on the size of family you have).

And that's not really surprising. Laundry is easier these days, but we still think of it as something that takes up a large chunk of time.But about 100 years ago, laundry didn't take just an afternoon at the laundromat or an evening watching movies and switching things over in the laundry room or basement. It took all day and included washing and scrubbing and boiling and rinsing and hanging to dry, sometimes to freeze dry out in the snow even. I remember when I was a kid, - 40years ago - my gramma used lye soap and a wringer washing machine and that had made washing the clothes that much faster, but still was notas fast as the "new" agitator washers with regular laundry detergent.It was a big day when she got one of those.

So, it was really interesting, recently, when my mom found a crumbling piece of paper that was a "receet" (back then they called recipes "receipts") for doing laundry handed down from my great-great grandmother to my great-grandmother (my grampa's mother) we think. Mom decided to type it up and pass it out to the family so we'd get a kick as to what's changed between then and now.

To give it some perspective time-wise, my grampa was born in 1909(?) and he was the baby of the family and I think his oldest sister was probably 15 when he was born (?). So, this "receet" was probably originally written up between 1890-1895 by a woman who had been born in the 1830s - maybe?

Below is what I got from my mom:

Mom and/or Dad had two copies of this in their things. I think probably it was Dad.

It is a "Grandmother's Receet"...for washing clothes, given to "mymother as a bride ...Kent" (Kentucky?) The paper is dry and crumblingaway so I am copying it for posterity.

1. bild fire in back yard to het kettle of rain water.
2. set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert.
3. shave 1 hole cake lie sope in biling water.
4. sort things. Make 3 piles. 1 pile white. 1 pile cullord. 1 pile werk briches and rags.
5. stur flour in cold water to smooth, then thin down with biling water.
6. rub dirty spots on board. Scrub hard, then bile.
7. rub cullord but don't bile just rench and starch.
8. take white things out of kettle with broom stick handle then rench, blew and starch.
9. spread tee towels on grass.
10. hang old rags on fence.
11. pour rench water on flower bed.
12. scrub porch with hot sopy water. (One says "scrub privee seat and floor with sopy water caught from porch scrub".)
13. turn tubs upside down.
14. go put on cleen dress—smooth hair with side combs, brew cup of tee—set and rest a spell and count blessings.


Kind of offers up some perspective. Makes me think a lot about chopping wood and carrying water and reading more Brother Lawrence and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dwarf Stars Call for Submissions

xposted elsewhere:

Dwarf Stars is the Science Fiction Poetry Association's yearly edited anthology of short-short poetry. They are trying to find the best speculative short poetry of 10 lines or less published in 2009. “Speculative” is defined as “science fiction, fantasy, horror, mythic or any combination or variation of the above.” The deadline for nominations for 2009 poems is August 31, 2010.

This is what you can do to help.

1. Send us your 2009 short poems of 10 lines or less.
2. Send us recommendations of 2009 short poems of 10 lines or less that you've read and think are deserving along with publication information and the e-mail addresses of the poets, if you have them.
3. There is no limit to the number of poems you can send.
4. You do not need to be a member to send poems/recommendations.

Send these poems to at dwarfstars@sfpoetry.com. You do not need to be a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association to send poems/recommendations. Please include the words "Dwarf Stars Submission" in the title of the e-mail.