No Mongoose in the Mimosa

I went on a short story writing binge in December. I published six short stories earlier this year, most of them in SFWA pro magazines. Currently, I have three more stories pending publication. I hope the ones I'm writing now can find a good home in 2013. I hadn't written any new short stories for a while, because I spent most of my time working on two novels: Rogue Knight and Tunnel at the End of the Dark . Most of my finished novels have been for young adults. I would not be uncomfortable with thirteen-year-olds reading any of these novels. If they were movies their ratings would likely be PG with just a suggestion of the low-end of PG13 . Even the curses tend to be mild and suitable for tender ears. Sometimes the subject matter is more mature, but probably not as explicit as an after 7:00 TV show. On the other hand, my novel-in-progress,  Rogue Knight, is at the upper end of young adult. If it were a movie, I would rate it a solid PG13 , with tendencies towards an R ....

Wobbling Star is free for Kindle October 12  and October 13 of 2012. I realize that this doesn't affect everyone, but I'm not sure why Amazon allows the following kind of nonsense. As an example, I just went to Kindle<Kindle eBooks<Fiction<Fantasy, and the first page is Showing 1 - 12 of 38,307 results.  That's a lot of titles to browse on any bookshelf. I've complained about the classification system before, particularly that Kindle Digital Publishing doesn't use the same classification system for books as Amazon.com. In response to this complaint, KDP said The categories in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account don't always match the Kindle store categories. Books published via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) can fall under two different types of categories - KDP uses BISAC codes to categorize books, while the Amazon website uses a broader classification. Therefore, when you add a category path in the KDP Bookshelf, it will automati...

Mistress of Vision  by R. D. Ferguson , the first book in my Young Adult  New Vision series, is up this morning (October 11, 2012) on Amazon.com . (Edited: this is a new cover designed by Pat R. Steiner) I like Kailin and her adventures. I hope readers do too. The sequel is tentatively titled, Vision Quest . I hope to start writing it early next year. For a variety of reasons, I'm experimenting with an initial for my first name on the cover of Mistress. . . . Although I've run no publicity, Junak Silverhand continues to sell at a steady rate. I don't know why. Must be the title because the cover isn't all that great. I've also noted that the number of hits on this blog have increased with the release of Junak. . . . Related? Friday, October 12, 2012 through Saturday, October 13, 2012, I'm running free copies of Wobbling Star on Amazon. Wobbling Star has been available exclusively on Amazon under the KDP Select program. I'm withdrawing Wobb...

Be sure to read my previous blog entitled Experiment in Publishing to find out how to become a pre-release reviewer for  The Tunnel at the End of the Dark,  Book 2 of my young adult Possible Magic series and the sequel to The Princess, the Knight, & the Knave . Free Short Story: A short story may never sell for a wide variety of reasons. Poor grammar or uninspiring sentences, poorly plotted, bad story telling, unappealing characters, doesn't fit the market, etc. I've sold stories that I thought were just okay to pro markets, and I've had pro markets and semi-pro markets repeatedly reject some of my favorite stories. Like most writers, it's difficult for me to be a good judge of my own work, but even trickier, sometimes you just have to be lucky enough to get a good story to the right editor at the right time. So you just plug away with the submission process and hope for a break. If you remember Brian's Song, you might know that Brian Piccolo was a ver...

Junak Silverhand has been out about a month, and the sales for the Kindle are good. I'm hoping readers might post reviews soon, and that I can get some publicity in time for Christmas. Junak Silverhand is the first volume in my Age of Magic / Age of Iron series. Although I've given away hundreds of promotional copies of Wobbling Star , I don't intend to run a similar promotion for Junak at this time. I plan to release my young adult novel Mistress of Vision soon. Everything is set except the cover art, and I'm still struggling over how simple a simple cover should be. Mistress of Vision is the first book in my young adult Science-Fantasy trilogy  New Vision . This first volume follows the adventures of a young girl named Kailin from ages eleven to thirteen. When she and her brother attempt to escape into the wilderness from their off-world captors, her brother is recaptured, and only Kailin's encounter with a shape-shifting alien named Henki saves he...

Writing is not a team sport. Like other sins, its practitioner often insists on lonely surroundings secure from distraction. Yet we write to be read, never sure what the reader will bring to the table, never sure how the words will trip from their tongue, never sure if the story actually works. So before we release a literary beast into the unsuspecting market wilderness, we impose upon our writer friends to be first readers and advise us--in other words to critique--but seldom do we ask our non-writer friends for such advice because they usually offer meaningless praise to make us feel good, but seldom give worthwhile suggestions to doctor a sick story. For background, a literary trope is a figure of speech or figurative language in which words assume a different sense than their literal meaning. Writers usually warn other writers that reusing old tropes is bad practice likely to be labeled as cliche, yet they often use critiquing tropes to identify problems in others' manuscri...

Now she's looking for a dog: My wife has been in accelerated travel mode since last Thanksgiving. We've been to Disney World, Dollywood, the Biltmore, California, and elsewhere. A week ago we got back from a twenty-six day cruise to the Caribbean and up the Eastern seaboard, down the St. Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal, followed by a train trip and three days in Ottawa, and I've been unproductive in writing any new project until now. . . . Finally, cranked our a new 5200 word short story called  Eavesdropping at the Keyhole to Forever which I will soon be marketing: editors beware. I like the story and hope to find it a good home. Current Projects: I'm working on a young adult novel called  Tunnel at the End of the Dark,  the sequel to The Princess, the Knight, & the Knave. So far about six chapters.  During those times I can't stand to look at Tunnel . . . , I hope to produce some more short stories and outline YA sequel novels for Mistress of Vision a...

Despite a creativity slump, I've been busy with edits and revisions. Yesterday, I finally got a new short story going: Listener . Meanwhile, I've been occupied with some experiments. Experiment 1. Enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award--known as ABNA to us "insiders." Goals: More experience with e-publishing, a chance to pick up some reviews from strangers, and publicity (I hope). I entered my 61,000 word YA scifi novel New Vision . The contest requires three parts to the entry: 1. The pitch or jacket teaser, 2. The first 5000 words excerpted from the novel, 3. the complete manuscript. I'd already rewritten the opening chapters numerous times, and I finally felt reasonably good about the first 5000 words. Nonetheless, I polished and edited the entire MS. That covered #2 and #3. But no matter how many times I redid the pitch, I never liked it. Finally I got something I thought I could live with and posted the pieces to the contest site.  Despite my attempts...