The Sevenfold Spell Submitted!

Got some stuff done this weekend. I submitted The Sevenfold Spell to my first epub market today. Here's hoping! I also wrote out a complete outline for A Hollywood Miracle, which I didn't really intend to do when I sat at the computer, but now that I have it, I'm going to use it. I bought some colored post-its so I can use different colors for each storyline. That way I can merge all the storylines on some sort of board, and easily be able to pick out each storyline.

Plans for this evening include sitting down with my Neo and writing another scene in East of Yesterday. Right now, my efforts are floating between AHM and EOY, but I think after tonight I'll know which one I'll want to focus on.

I also had another short story idea, but it's still on simmer.

Wish me luck for The Sevenfold Spell!

Quiet but Productive Month

I've been slacking on my posting lately. Sorry!

Regarding my short stories: I've only missed one weekend submission so far. I thought I'd miss last weekend, but a rejection came in on Sunday and I was able to send it out again immediately.

I need to finish up "Riven" and send it to my first choice magazine this weekend. I'm hoping I'll be able to do that. We are planning a lazy weekend, and the miserable weather outside should help.

(You know you are a writer when you welcome rotten weather!)

Regarding novels: East of Yesterday continues to churn around in my mind. Now that Brad the Terrible is accompanying Mike and Ashley, the conflict has really picked up. I have a scene where he holds up a convenience store (entirely to Mike and Ashley's surprise) and flings a bunch of 20s in the air once they are on the road again. And the 20s become worthless the instant they start traveling back in time again, so they have been sitting in the car, forgotten.

Until they meet the gypsies.

Since this is primarily a road trip novel, I figure that gypsies will fit in nicely here. Especially since they're time traveling gypsies, and they have a lot of things for sale . . . from every era. And they take currency from any era too! Too bad Mike and Ash don't run into them until they're almost at their destination.

I've also decided that there will only be one love story . . . Mike's. I just can't make Ashley's work. Maybe she hasn't met the right guy yet. We'll have to see if he turns up as I write.

So Far, So Good

I had an inspiration and renamed my science fiction western from "Petroleum Sunset" to "Once Upon a Gas Tank". I think it is a much greater indication of the mood of the story! I just submitted it to another pro market, one I've never submitted to before.

I went through the whole thing and read it allowed while speaking with the kind of dialect that I was hoping to emulate in the story. I hope it helped. If I can't sell this one, I'm just going to post it on my website. It might be almost impossible to find someone to buy a story that is written in dialect. But I have a lot of markets to go before I give up.

A third story, "Riven", is being beta-read. I like this one very much and it's a fantasy, which is different for me. For some reason when I write short stories, I tend to write science fiction. And when I write novels, they're anything but.

My progress on everything is slow but sure. I can only expect to be able to write so fast because of demands on my time at home. But I'm happy with a little bit of progress. If I ever do manage to sell a novel, I'll have to re-prioritize a bunch of stuff, including Debuts & Reviews. In the meantime, once I get all these short stories polished as well as I'd like them, then I'll have nothing to do with them but submit them here and there. So far, two stories have graduated from my short story file on my iPod touch. Riven will be the third. Then I'll be playing with those stories that I never quite finished, but with concepts that I still think are promising.

Here's a question for you. When you are writing a scene that proves to be difficult, do you:

• a) scratch the scene. Obviously my muse is telling me something.
• b) work with it. Difficult scenes are worth the angst.
• c) something else?

Short Fiction Progress

I've made a lot of progress with my various short stories. They are all in one file that I keep synchronized between my Ipod Touch and my computer. The Ipod has turned out to be a good place to edit and revise, but it's not such a good way to draft. Not when you have to touch the shift key to get basic punctuation. So my Neo continues to be my preferred drafting tool.

I've polished up a story called "Riven" and I just asked one of my beta readers if she wants to read it. I've also worked a lot on The Sevenfold Spell, trying to get it polished up for epublishers. Plus, I've plucked out the old opening to Starcaster (the embassy mission scene, for those of you who have read it) and I'm going to try to make a short story out of it. One day. I don't have any ideas for it at this time. I'm a blank. So onward.

What I haven't made progress with is Forging a Legend

According to my goal, I'm supposed to submit to a market this weekend. So I'll try to find one of the semipro zines to send "Under Observation" to. My beta readers gave me very positive feedback for it, but I'm wondering if it ends too bleakly. I'll take another look at it and see if I can't shoot some hope in there at the end.

And I'm sorry I've been so BORING lately! I'd say I have the winter doldrums, but I've been in a great mood. Will try to find a way to liven things up around here.

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?

On Writing Sexy Stuff

Most of my writing is pretty clean. But occasionally, sensual situations come up and depending on the mood of my novel, I go ahead and write them.

In Forging a Legend, things got pretty steamy, but I keep the sex scenes short. In A Spy and a Lady, the most sensual scene is a make-out scene on a rooftop. Which I tried to make more humorous than sensual. In future novel, when Tory actually gets married (in a scene long envisioned!), there will be no sex scene whatsoever. These novels are definitely have a "sweet" heat level. I have not run into any sex scenes yet in East of Yesterday, and I'm thinking it would be mildly sensual at most.

I have a brief sensual situation in my flash fiction, “Under Observation”. (That reminds me—must find another market!)

But my novella, The Sevenfold Spell, is turning out much more sensual than anything I’ve ever written. As some of you know, it’s a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story. However, it’s told from the point-of-view of a homely young woman who, along with her widowed mother, made her living by spinning before spinning wheels were banned. It opens with the confiscation of their spinning wheel. With the loss of their livelihood, they must live on her dowry, thus ruining her chance of marrying a certain homely young man, who cannot afford a wife without a dowry. He gets sent off to join a monastery, and she and her mother must fend for themselves. Woven into all this is the actual princess, the prince, the evil fairy and the good fairies.

As with Forging a Legend, I’m trying to keep the sex scenes short. I don’t like reading long, involved sex scenes, so I’m not going to write them either. I am going for short and powerful, without using any explicit language.

Here is a scene that shows the mood of the novella.

My infrequent confessions went something like this:

"I have not been chaste, as a maiden ought," I would say to the priest.

"With whom have you not been chaste?"

"A butcher. A baker. A candlestick maker. Plus those I've mentioned before."

"And are you sorry for this sin?"

"No, I can't say that I am."

"Then until you are, your soul will bear its burden."

The local bachelors talked about me, I know, they traded stories--but they always went happily to my bed.

To the aisle? Never.

I spoke of it to Harla, sometimes.

"I would make a good wife," I said.

"I've no doubt of that," she said.

"I'm ready to be faithful to a good man who would have me," I said. "I would devote myself to him and his children."

"You're thinking of Willard."

"Yes."

"Did you love him, then?"

"Love? I didn't think of it as love."

"We all thought you went mad for him."

"I did. I wanted his child."

She looked at me in shock. "Out of wedlock?"

"I couldn't have him, so I wanted a piece of him."

"You were mad."

"Maybe," I said.

"Either that, or you really did love him."

And I wondered about that. Why did I offer myself to him? Although to lie with him had been my own choice, it would have never been a choice I would have made had we been able to marry. I often thought of the child I had wanted so badly, of little Aurora who was never conceived. She would be coming on her menses about now, had she been born.

I was picky about men, in my own way. True, I did look for the men so often rejected by other women: the too thin, the too chubby, the too pocked, the too graying. But I also looked for shyness, for awkwardness, for the socially inept. Was I looking for another Willard? Perhaps. I never found one, but I did find some men who stayed with me for lengths of time that measures in months rather than weeks. One even stayed with me for over a year.

Only one was handsome.

The scene that follow surprised me. I thought I’d have at least one more sex scene, but it turned into a scene where my plain protagonist turns down the most handsome man of all. She walks away. With no regrets whatsoever. I figured that my character needs to grow, and while she turns to men to ease her loneliness in her past, at some point she must grow beyond this. And I didn’t even realize that the story needed this until I wrote that scene.

Don't you love it when you muse takes over?

Short Fiction E-Book Market

A writing mentor of mine has given me the gift of knowledge. And that knowledge is the fact that e-book publishers accept short fiction. I never knew this!

My sleeping beauty retelling, "The Sevenfold Spell," is long. I have always tried to keep it under 8000 words, because that is typically the maximum short story length, but in truth, it has tried very hard to be longer. It's also somewhat racy. Not really racy; just somewhat. I don't normally write racy stuff, but when the story insists on being racy, then I, as the mere writer, cannot fight it. It's racy in a rather sad and tragic way.

But the fact that it was racy limited my markets. Very few short fiction magazines will take short stories that aren't teen friendly.

And now my friend tells me that e-book publishers routinely publish novellas as short as 10,000 words. I checked around with some of them--like Samhain--and she is absolutely correct.

So I've been on a writing tear. My 7000-odd word short story is now over 10,000 words, and I thought of several great subplots that need to be in there, which should increase the word count by at least 5000 words. I thought of a great way to change the ending that made me throw my head back and laugh. Better yet, it enables me to bring the story full circle, which is always a plus.

I love it when I get to unleash the true story.

Scrub, Scrub, Polish, Polish

I forgot that I had not sent "Under Observation" to Analog, so I prepared a submission this morning. I made three editing passes through it:

• Pass 1 examined the whole thing for sneaky little phrases of telling instead of showing. I want as few words as possible. Every one must count.
• Pass 2 used an advanced Word feature called Search by Word Form. This allows me to do a search and replace for "to be" verbs. Some of them--like those in dialog--were necessary. But those outside of dialog is where more telling instead of showing might be hiding. Therefore, I scrutinized each one.
• I didn't do it this time, but another thing to search for are -ing words. Gerunds can infuse blandness into your story. I'll think of it next time, but I usually avoid gerunds, anyway.
• Pass 3 examined the document for words ending in "ly". A few adverbs snuck in there. I zapped them.

This was after I had printed it twice. For both printings, I had made a lot of red marks just trying to tighten it up. For some reason, I continue to see problems better in hardcopy than on the computer.

I have an old typewriter that someone gave me. I use it to type up addresses on my envelopes. Luckily, the carriage is wide enough for a 9 by 12 envelope. I kind of like typing on the typewriter, but not enough to give up my computer.

I don't read many of the larger short story magazines. I find the taste in certain magazines far outside mine. It seems to me that they're writing to win awards rather than attract readers. But I do like Analog. If you've never read them, give them a try!

The Sunday Night Post

My blogging here is getting to be a weekly thing.

I saw some buzz on Absolute Write that indicates my four-week-old full manuscript request may yet get a response. In the meantime, I have been less than enthusiastic about sending out my rewrite of Starcaster. I guess I still like the old way it was written. Which means I'm working on East of Yesterday while it's all so ambiguous in my head.

And I'm encountering more ambiguity there. I have a bunch of stuff in my notebook that I need to transcribe. But I've gotten hung up on a subplot and today, after writing a bunch of stuff, I started wondering if that subplot shouldn't just be cut out. It takes the novel in a different direction and gives it a very different tone. So I'll probably read a book tonight and go to bed early!

On the bright side, I've discovered something in my research that makes my plotting much easier. US-1 as it exists in Florida and Georgia has not changed routes since 1926. I haven't pinned down the year where the bulk of my story takes place, but 1926 is more than far back enough. Once I determined that the route has not changed, I was finally able to figure out where all the stops are on my characters' road trip. I have actually traveled up 95 as far as Waycross in the researching of this novel, and we are talking of going as far as Swainsboro. Who knows; we may take a long weekend and drive clear up to Columbia.

Driving along these old highways really helps. I got the idea of Ashley's close encounter with an alligator while on the road to Waycross. What I can't research in person, I will attempt to make up for by using Google Street View (a marvelous tool).

In the meantime (or have I said that already?), I am waiting on two short story submissions. I am now subbing to "semipro" markets (it doesn't take long to go through the pro markets), so I'm hoping to attract some interest there. I am currently submitting "Petroleum Sunset" and "Under Observation". I'd like to submit "The Sevenfold Spell" as well, which is my Sleeping Beauty retelling, but it's a bit racy and I'm having trouble finding markets that take racy stuff. I may run into this problem with "Under Observation" as well. It only has one tiny little racy part, but it's very powerful and I think the story would lose something if I take it out. I think Kristin would agree with me here.

Ordinarily, my writing is squeaky clean. I don't include sexual stuff unless the plot calls for it, so when it does, I include it for the impact. So it can get rather earthy.

And that's my weekly update! Maybe I'll surprise you sometime with a post mid-week.

New Short Story

I decided to write another short story because, to be blunt, I need some fiction sales. I went to my bookshelf and took out a book on American Indian mythology for some story fodder. This time, I didn't intend to cripple my efforts by writing in dialect, or by writing a racy story. You would think that raciness would help, but it hurts. 75% of markets won't take a story with racy content. And I went and made it integral to the plot.

Not this time. I'm going for some drama here, but I also want the weird plot twists you come to expect when reading short stories. I'm definitely approaching this one with more of a business sense than any of my recent shorts. No sex. It's not even in first person.

I'm finding the Native American concepts of totemism and fetishism (not what you think) to be excellent story fodder. I'm not going to focus on any particular tribe--I don't have enough expertise for that. It will be a fictional, unnamed tribe. The hardest thing so far is the names. Do I make up my own names, or attempt to find Native American names? I haven't decided yet, but I'm using made-up names as placeholders.

I definitely do better with short stories if I have some sort of idea to glom off of. It's like I need a writing prompt. Recently, it's been fairy tales and gas prices. I'm also started plenty of stories that went nowhere after writing myself into a corner. That's probably my single biggest problem when it comes to short stories.

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. . . .

Cowboy Muscle Car Story

I've finally finished the science fiction story I blogged about last month, the one with the muscle cars. I'm very happy with it. It's about 5000 words. I don't know if I'll sell it, but I learned a few things that I think will help me write future short stories.

• Keep the subplots to a bare minimum. I have two plots in my story. One is an overarching theme about having to do without fossil fuels. The other is the story of two brothers. I really had to keep it from growing. I wanted to add an aunt in there who was carrying on with the leader of the gang. But to resolve that plot would have required another 2000 to 5000 words. The more plots, the more words. If you get much over 6000 words, the number of markets you can submit to start getting limited.
  
• Keep the number of characters to a minimum. The more people, the more words the story requires. The aunt would have been nice in a story that is just about 100% male, but her part in it would have just complicated matters.
• Give it some drama. I get so impatient with many short stories--stories by seasoned professionals who sell lots of fiction--because they have no plots. There might be an interesting situation, or a fascinating bit of technology or magic, but no problem to overcome. As a reader, I need a problem for the story to keep my interest.
• Cut, cut, cut. Everything that isn't absolutely necessary has to go. That's why I eliminated another character that I liked--a younger sister. This was the story of two brothers, so I didn't need the sister. So poor Betsy had to go.

On the Starcaster front, I decided to rewrite a lengthy scene from scratch. It had so many plot holes that you could have used it as a sieve. It was also one of the earliest scenes I wrote for this story. I think those two facts are related. The replacing scene (or scenes) will be about half that length, I think. And, it will integrate better into some plot-lines that I thought of later in the story.

But still, over 8000 words was hard to cut from an 85,000 word novel. That was 10 percent!

What's the biggest chunk you've ever cut?

Science Fiction Western Done!

After abandoning two storylines, I finished the first draft of my science fiction western. I didn't want it to turn into a bloodbath, like many westerns do, yet I wanted a fitting way for my boys to deal with the "gangers" as I call them in the story. I needed a storyline that:

• focused on the brothers, Ty and Joel.
• gave needed backstory through Grandpa's ramblings about the good old days.
• dealt with the gang in a non-violent way. I want to be able to submit this to family-friendly magazines, like Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

It needs considerable polish. Right now it's just over 4000 words.

Now I need to flush this voice out of my head and return to my Jane Austen voice for Starcaster. It may take a Jane Austen movie or two to do the trick.

Muscle Car Science Fiction Western

Here's an excerpt from my science fiction western. All misspellings and grammar irregularities are intentional. A few words of explanation--the boys sleep in a converted bus, and the Chevelle gang is a band of thugs and criminals.

* * *

But Joel just couldn't let go. That night, in the bus, he asked me a question that sent a sick feeling churning in my gut.

"What if we join the Chevelle gang, Ty?"

"We cain't join the Chevelle gang, Joel. You've seen what they do to folk."

"Yeah, but if one of us joins, maybe they'll leave the rest of us alone."

"That's a mighty high price to pay, Joel. Murderin' and lootin' folk just so your own folk stay safe. Do you really think you can do it?"

We argued about it for hours, but nothing I said mattered. The seed got planted in his head, somehow, and once it took root, it wouldn't let go. He was gone by the end of the week.

A month later, a car showed up in our barn, keys in the ignition, without a word of explanation.

"Guess that goes to show that crime does pay," Grandpa said.

Pa turned around and backhanded him--just like he'd have done with one of us boys.

#

It was a 1972 Grand Prix. It was silver, once. Pa wouldn't drive it, so it fell to me. I used it to take Ma back and forth to her treatments and for grocery runs. Life got back to normal--cept Joel wasn't there. It was like there was a big hole in the seat beside me. Clyde took his place, but it wasn't the same. There was only four years difference between Joel and me. Clyde--he was ten years younger.

I tried not to think too hard about what Joel had done to earn himself a car for his famly.

* * *

Warning! Any reminisces about pre 1975-era muscle cars will result in that car being absorbed into the story. I have room for a few more cars.

The Antidote for Rejection

I'm convinced that the antidote for a rejection or brutal critique feedback is to write a short story.

I had this idea for a science fiction setting. I didn't have a plot, just a sort of situation based on something we all have to deal with these days--the price of gas. But I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I just knew I wanted it to be a short story.

Then, the idea came to me. It's a western. To be precise, it's a western revenge story. And like most science fiction, it takes place in the future.

So I started writing it . . . in dialect. I know--dialect is a hard sell. I tried to stop myself. I wrote out the first paragraph in a nice, sane third person. Then, I wrote out the paragraph again in dialect reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn, albeit with more readable spelling. And I kept writing . . . and writing . . . and writing. 2000 words went by. I still ain't done.

Oops! The dialect keeps leaking out.

I figured that if Lisa Shearin can get away with having a modern sounding Medieval elf, and if Naomi Novik can get away with having a Napoleonic Air Force composed of dragons, maybe I can get away with down-home cowboys 200 years in the future.

My protagonist is a hot-tempered 18 year old boy, hence the above picture of Billy the Kid. I've never written from such a point of view in my life. I hope I can pull it off.

And in honor of an old fix-er-upper muscle car that my husband used to have, a 1967 Chevelle is part of it.

I might even make it candy-apple red, just because it looks so danged good in this picture. (And no, my husband's Chevelle never looked this good.)

Huh? you might ask? A 1960s muscle car in a western revenge story? That takes place in the future?

As you can probably tell, it's been a lot of fun. If nothing else, it should stand out from the stack of submissions that day due to its sheer strangeness.

* * *

I'm going to try to get another "MS Word For the Novelist" article out before the end of the weekend.

Ye Old Weekly Post

I didn't mean for my posts to dwindle down to once a week, but somehow they have lately. I've had a busy week with some possible future excitement. I also took two days off to spend the last part of my daughter's spring break at home.

I had a flash of inspiration for one of my fairy tale stories and wrote it down in my little notebook. It will have a very different mood from "Spin;" I envision it as a spoof on Cinderella. Other than some heavy revising, I haven't written much and I haven't come up with anything new.

Writing goals for the week? I'll try to get a draft done of the Cinderella spoof, which is called "Switch." I'll also work on my new ending for Starcaster, which has been on hold.

Goals, anyone?

Another "Abandoned" Work

I've finished tinkering with my short story, "Spin." I feel wrung out. I lanced open my soul and bled some of it into this work. In it, I attempt to answer a deep and profound question:

What happened to all those poor women who had their spinning wheels taken away from them at the beginning of the Sleeping Beauty story?

Yeah, really deep, huh? I tried to mix humor with angst here, and gave it a bittersweet ending.

I have always had trouble with short stories. I would think of situations, not plots. My characters were always shallow and they petered off into nowhere and nothing. I only bothered to send out a few and I never even had so much as a "we'd like to see more of your work" type of reply (although JJA said I had "nice writing" a couple of times). I was not very aggressive in sending them out. I knew something was wrong with them.

With this story, something feels different. I got as into it as I have any of my novels. I have five different drafts of it, numbered and each quite different although they are the same basic story. I almost sent it off last week, but I had to add a scene which I think made it much more powerful, so a lot of it had to be retooled.

It's in an envelope here beside me, all ready to send to my top-choice market. I don't talk about rejections here, so the next time I mention it will be either when I sell it, or if I give up and I decide to post it here for all the world to see.

Wish me luck in getting it in front of the right editor!

More on Openings

I finally got through my opening of Starcaster and have been going back through the whole thing, tweaking the plot and taking notes. I wanted the opening to be 2000 words, but it ended up being over 3000. I will definitely work on it again, but for now I need to press on and get the second (third?) draft done.

I'm also fighting a hankering to create something new again. I threw myself a bone last month by writing "Spin," but I think I need another bone. "Spin" is a twist on Sleeping Beauty; now I'm working on a twist on Snow White. It's turning out to be surprisingly action-packed; much more so than "Spin." It may even get sexy.