No Mongoose in the Mimosa

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...

Hire Education is now online in the Universe Annex section of the Grantville Gazette . The story grew out of an observation that a guy with a baseball bat might try to repossess your education, and then I got to wondering what might happen if education became a commodity that you could rent or hire for use. If someone fell behind on their payments, what would happen next? Also up is The Unicorn Dilemma in Issue 18 (March 2012) of NewMyths . The story is a slightly different take on a girl, a knight, a dragon and a unicorn. Words and Music is in the February 2 of Futures:Nature. The story is available online . The premise revolves around aliens who modify the meaning of their statements with pitch, far beyond any earth tonal languages. Communication problems? You bet. I also sent back the page proof last week, and so I expect that Perchance to Dream will be up at Futures:Nature  very soon. His Brother was an Only Child is still available at Daily Science Fiction ...

Leap Year Magic promotion: On Wednesday February 29, the Kindle version of The Princess, the Knight, & the Knave will be available at Amazon.com for free. Instead of $2.99 to download this 61,000 word (about 220 paperback pages) young adult fantasy novel, the price on Feb 29 will be $0.00 for one day only--and worth every cent. Yes, $0.00, that's almost as good as free. Put it on your calendar. Download a copy. Give as gifts to your friends. Give it to people you don't like: that'll show them. Here are some other sites that feature my short fiction for free reading: Words and Music His Brother was an Only Child Hire Education (Just Up for March Issue) The Unicorn Dilemma should be available in March at New Myths . Perchance to Bleam coming soon to Futures:Nature . or you can pony up  to buy one the following Kindle ezines: Heir Apparent Anthology  (read the reviews) June 2011 Daily Science Fiction OG's Speculative Fiction And finally, the Kindle v...

After I discovered how difficult it is to get anyone to read a novel manuscript from someone whose publishing credentials only included textbooks, I knew I had to get some experience in the following: 1. Writing a query letter with the ever dreaded pitch. 2. Writing a synopsis. 3. Fiction publishing credits. I decided that the best way to get some fiction credits was genre short stories, and that is what eventually led me to Baen's Universe Annex section of Baen's Bar. When I first joined Baen's Bar as DrCrispy in May of 2009, I wasn't sure exactly how it worked. It took me a while to find the rhythm, but basically here's what a member does now: 0. There is a Universe Slush forum and an associated Universe Slush Comment forum under Baen's Bar. 1. A barfly (member) reads stories posted on the Baen Universe Slush and offer critiques or comments if so inclined on the Universe Slush Comments forum. 2. A barfly may also submit his own stories for consider...

Critiques and feedback are invaluable for a writer. No matter how brilliant your prose, there's always at least one sentence that sounded great in your head, but is open to other interpretations when read. Such a sentence can drop the reader out of his trance, or worse, confuse the reader so badly that she simply quits reading. In my limited experience, such nitpicky items are not the primary cause of a failed story. Indeed, a good story line may transcend even marginal prose. You may have seen such stories written by very successful authors (and no, I won't offer my opinion of any names here). Usually, you tell your friends about such stories, "He's not a very good writer, but he spins one hell of a yarn." You can use software to proof your document and likely catch better than 60% of your grammatically bad sentences, but such software is no good at the paragraph level and useless for style considerations. IIRC, Stephen King suggested that the atomic structure ...

First, just a bit of an overview. Here's the organizing structure I plan to use in this blog. I'll use Episodes to provide some background on what I've tried while struggling to learn the rules of writing commercial speculative fiction. I'm not claiming that these will have been successful tries or that I learned the correct rules. Eventually, Episodes may include very recent events like yesterday. Here and there, I plan to punctuate Episodes with a Summary of rules or writing tips that I think (or once thought) make some sense, but I'll be under no illusion that these apply to everyone. Summaries may also include my take on writing jargon and philosophies. For example, a summary could include the SFWA Nebula award definition for the length of a short story as a story less than 7500 words. Or maybe that also would sneak into an Episode . See. It just did. Eventually, I will blog  Case Studies of stories I've written that have sold, along with m...

How far  am I along on the road to writing fame and fortune? This last year, 2011, was a good year. I had 8 speculative short stories accepted, 5 of them at professional rates, and the remaining 3 of them at semi-pro rates. By my count, once all the pro-rate stories are published, I'll be eligible to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA)--makes me feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of O z getting a chance to see the guy behind that curtain. I'll discuss the writing and marketing of each of the published stories in other episodes, and I'll discuss the other accepted stories in later posts when they are published. While I was still teaching college mathematics,  I had some publishing credentials in non-fiction: three mathematics textbooks with West (about 1995) and one with McMillan (about 1975). I knew I could write complete sentences and whole paragraphs. After all, my undergraduate major was not just in mathematics, my second major was En...