Maybe Exciting News? Plus This and That

Ooh, I could burst. I might have news. Not as exciting as getting an agent or selling my novel, but almost as exciting! But I have to wait until it's official. Mmmrrrfff! That's the sound of me stifling myself! Argh!

Progress with my novel: over the weekend I reached a page that I had covered with red marks, said "ugh" and went off and read a novel instead. It was a very good novel; I just reviewed it at Fantasy Debut. Hopefully, it helped recharge my own writing energies.

I submitted "Petroleum Sunset" to an online market that wants near-term Earth-based SF. It almost seemed like "Petroleum Sunset" was written for such a market. I had a "duh" moment when I submitted it. It occurred to me that I should PROBABLY mention that the story is written in Deep South dialect so the editor doesn't toss it aside after reading the first sentence. Since the first sentence goes like this:

After the car got stolen, Pa just gave up on 'em altogether.

the fact that it is written in dialect MIGHT be an important detail for the editor to know.

(This post reminds me: I did a bunch of edits to the story in RTF mode before I emailed it. Must remember to save it as a DOC so I don't lose those edits.)

I heard from someone who loved my Word for the Novelist series and wants me to continue. Thanks, Rascal! Therefore, I will finally do part two of my Revisions post, then I have some other stuff planned. It seems that Word 2003, which I use, is still similar enough to Word 2007 so that it is still helpful. Which makes sense. The Document Map still works essentially the same as it did in Word 97, except it is a bit easier to control, thanks to Word Styles.

That's it for now! Now, maybe I can goof off a bit more before I must get back to that marked-up page. . . .