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Friday, January 1, 2010

Still Here! Still Writing!

So I write a post on maintaining momentum, then I vanish for three weeks. Sorry! I've been sick, but I'm all better now. I started out the new year with cleaning off my desk.

My writing new years resolution: to sell a story. Any story. A novel or a short story -- I'm good with either. I need to sell something to the more respectable semipros so I can build up a bit of a bio. Currently, I try with the top four or five magazines and then I tend to fizzle. Gotta stop that.

To get ready, I'm going to pick out my most viable short stories and put them all in one file. I'm going to slap a table of contents on it and zap it to my nifty new Ipod touch. This way, I'll always have them with me and I'll be able to work on them anytime.

I'm also going to get my novella, The Sevenfold Spell, in front of the eyes of the ebook publishers. Currently Sanheim has an anthology going for fairy tales, but unfortunately, they are only for super-hot fairy tales. Spell has sex in it, but I woudn't call it anything close to erotica. I'm just not going to go there. I'm not sure if they want to look at fairy tales stories that aren't hot, but I'll try anyway. Corina Press is a new e-publisher imprint of Harlequin, and they are my first choice. Spell is ripe for a final polish, and then off it goes.

Forging a Legend also will be ready to submit in the next week or so. I have a few agents to try, who have not seen it before, plus one agent whose asked for it twice (never hurts to ask if she wants to see it again, especially since it's been almost two years since she's seen the last version).

Once it is submitted, I'll be working on East of Yesterday and my short stories. My goal? To submit a short story to a market once a weekend until I run out of markets. That will be the absolute minimum.

What are your goals this year?

9 comments:

  1. That's one of the things I'm looking forward to trying with my Sony Reader: uploading my own story to it and working on it on the go. I can't actually type things into the original document, but I can scribble down notes and edits with the stylus and then put them in my computer when I get home.

    This year my writing goal is to finish revising Hex and get it out to agents. My husband and I have agreed to cut back on our theater participation for a number of reasons, which as a bonus should give me more time to write. So I really have no excuse for not achieving that goal, now do I?

    Best wishes in writing and life in 2010!

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  2. My goal is to get an agent... and a publishing contract... but realistically the agent. I've got my YA Evernow out to half a dozen agents and I've gotten two requests for fulls on top of that. One of those passed but with supportive responses and the other I haven't heard from yet. This is it. This will be the year.

    I also want to continue furthering my blogging connections and keep meeting people and learning things through those meetings.

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  3. Obtaining an agent is a goal as well, but I also want to get serious about building that bio. It may be an illusion, but I think it's something I have more control over.

    Superwench I so empathize with you about the theater! Years ago I stopped playing the violin seriously because I thought I had a better shot of making a name for myself as a writer.

    I recently took it up again, but not seriously.

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  4. I am glad to hear that you are feeling better. Never fun to be sick for the holidays!

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  5. Best of luck with getting published. {SMILE}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  6. By the way, if you meant Samhain Press, check around. Some one of the more visible erotic e-presses has a non-erotic line under a different name. I think they might be the one, but I'm not sure. {Smile}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  7. Thanks, Lauren!

    Samhain (did I misspell it?) does publish non-erotica, but this particular anthology is supposed to be very racy. Mine gets pretty racy, but none of the sex scenes get explicit. So I'm not sure if it is racy enough, and I'm not sure if they'll take a fairy tale story outside their anthology.

    But I'll submit it anyway!

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  8. Goal 1: sign with an agent
    Goal 2: finish next book
    Goal 3: don't forget to read :)

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  9. I think it's spelled "Samhain;" that's the most common spelling of the holiday. {smile}

    It won't hurt to submit it. The worst that can happen is that they'll say no, and that doesn't put you behind where you'd be if you never submitted it. {Smile}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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