Dead Tree Submissions

Wait a sec, I think I hear our owl...

I'll have to check later. Just as I started this I thought I heard the call. Yes, spring is here, the daffodillies are sprung, the windows are open after dark.

What I started to say was that I've got the stories in envelopes, all inside postage (reply card and SASE) stamped and ready to go (SASE has new postage on it) for both stories rejected on Monday. So, not a quick as I usually am, but I'll try and get to the Post Office tomorrow and get them in the system. Just for the record I'm sending Daddy's Little Girl off to Cemetery Dance and Running of the Deer to Realms of Fantasy Magazine. This time I'm trying two markets than don't take e-subs. So we'll see how it goes.

The Ghost Hunters and Gatherers

As you all know, I like the show Ghost Hunters (that link is very media heavy, note to SciFi, not everybody has broadband). It's fun, when it's about the group and the investigation, when it's about the struggle between them it's less fun. I like how they (used) to not just accept that there was activity and attempted to explain the stories and their own experiences with normal, everyday, happenings. Yes, I'm very glad they stopped looking for orbs.

While they're applying scientific equipment (notice, I just say the equipment, see later for reason), they aren't really applying scientific methodology (except Occam's Razor when debunking). Some of the things they accept as proof I think there are other explanations. Such as it was very interesting that as they moved to digital voice recorders, many of their EVPs disappeared until they started using white noise generation. Note to guys, just like the brain will make attempt to do pattern recognition visually, it'll also do that for the other senses. So it could be for the old tape recorders, there was what's called tape bleed through, even with so called "blanks" (for professional tape recording there are ways to prep tape before making recordings).

"Science" does involve investigation of events and phenomenon, so that part is good (although, one partial night of investigation, without doing some base line testing, isn't all that good, but hey, it's volunteers). The guys do, however, make hypotheses but then they never develop experiments to test them (such as spirits will drain energy from batteries or even the air - cold spots - to manifest, I guess the spirit world doesn't believe in AC wall current). Some, I can design experiments (such as, if you think there's activity, place car batteries or deep-cycle batteries in the room, more energy to manifest). Do intensive study of those places that you get good evidence (evp, emp, more cameras, etc) and repeat the experiments. Show actual correlation between what you're measuring and actual activity.

Anyway, if the show is what they say it is, there have been some very cool moments over the years. I still enjoy watching it (although the GH International not so much). It's about the only show I really make room for (and even now I'm blogging, doing council stuff, and some writing things - reading and critiquing other people's stuff). Laptops are great. But I also look at it as good entertainment.

So, do they use "scientific tools," well, they've got cool stuff. "Scientific methods," well partially (but not consistently or fully). "Scientific method," not so much. It is much better than other "ghost hunting" shows, which are basic stories about people freaking themselves out.

Ode to Greeny

If I saw you on the street
I wouldn't recognize your face
But I certainly did
Like hanging around your place
Talking about medicine
Jobs, kids, life and gardening
Joking about the bad times
Woohoo-ing the good
Greeny is making some changes
Things I wanted to know and see
But she needs some time in her life
A vacation to just be.

We love you right back, Greeny. Enjoy your time off, or at least we hope it's fruitful. We understand that need, although for different reasons I'm guessing. Hope to see you back soon. Wishing you all the best.

Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling

Since I mentioned I was listening to early Floyd in the last post, and then blow it by quoting The Vogues, I needs make amends and restore my classic rock creds.

You say that hill is to steep to climb.
Yes, it's about the big "D" again.

You say you'd like to see me try.
Well, that's what talking about it on this blog is all about, now, 'taint it.

You pick the place and I'll choose the time, and I'll climb the hill in my own way.
Because, I gotta do it my way. I gotta write my own way.

And everyday is the right day... you look down, hear the sound of the faces in the crowd.
Ah, the smell of the crowd, the roar of the grease paint. Everyday should be the right day.

Sooner than wait for a break in the weather
It's getting close to Spring. People are riding bikes, and if you thinking I'm talking about the pedal kind, you don't know me at all. I need to make writing sales to afford a new motorcycle.

I'll gather my far flung thoughts together, speeding away on a wind to a new day.
Yeah, I was talking about writing. Hey, today I wrote a t-shirt slogan. I really need to get on Cafe Press and get my own shop going. A project for a weekend.

One of these days I'm gonna dance with the little piggies.
Politics have also been on my mind, but I don't want to think about them. Not at the moment. Major politics and local politics, and neither one is a good place for me.

If I had a good plan, I'd talk to you more often than I do.
Need to shake this last part of big "D" off.

Please don't put your wires in my brain.
So is that good enough to get my cred back.

You know I care what happens to you... And any fool knows a dog needs a home, a shelter from pigs on the wing.

Not Drinking Enough Water - Five O'clock World

This weekend was a little setback. On Sunday afternoon I was sure it was a relapse into big "D." However, after a little reflection, I think it was a stall on the progression coupled with a large dollop of little "d."

On the way home from work I was listening to early Pink Floyd and enjoying it, damnit.

However, today I kept up the pissedness from mid morning to mid-afternoon, so I know it's not the big "D." One of the symptoms of big "D" is that flattening of emotion. Sure I ran out of piss and vinegar in the late afternoon heading into early evening, hey, when you're an old guy that kind of thing is tiring.

Then I got the rest of the piss taken out of me with the dual rejections. The night thing funnerie is getting extended into next week. I've already got work scheduled into Thursday (which is typically my bad day anyway).

But, hey, my wife says she really liked the concept of my story. Ha! Vinegar stores being replenished. Time to start drinking water.

"In the shelter of the huns, every thing's okay..."

Good Cop, Bad Cop Kind of Day

Today sucked. I don't know what star went in retrograde, which God I forgot to appease, or that I didn't dance naked in my woods at the last New Moon, but something when sprong in the universe. Did my mass-market voodoo dolls go on sale today?

The day thing went wild. I like to work at a measured pace, not slow by any means, and I don't milk projects for time. And today the boss man made comments about me "letting things get backed up." Um, no, this is just the pace of work I had most of last year. It's been a nice lull since December.

The night gig also decided to reach out and swallow what little joy I had left in a morass of bureaucratic funnerie. I had about a week and a half of not having to fret about it, that's all gone now.

And then I come home to rejection-o-rama. Two rejections in one afternoon. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Still the bad news, Ann VanderMeer passed on Running of the Deer. She said it wasn't quite what she was looking for, fair cop (and what she said about the other stories I've sent).

And a rejection letter from Fantasy & Science Fiction about Daddy's Little Girl. Didn't quite grab him, alas. Okay, also fair cop. Didn't quite grab Gordon Van Gelder.

Which brings us to the Good Cop side. If you remember a few weeks back I was joyous about some news I got. Well, now I can spill. See, with paper submissions I send out a reply postcard that I designed myself. On it are a few checkboxes, my attempts at humor and maybe to get a little giggle out of the slush readers (check boxes that say things like, "We find this manuscript holds up well under the other 256 we received today, all manuscripts read in order received" or "perfectly fits the crack in the window sill, there was a breeze"). But this one came back with a personalized note that said, basically, I had made it out of the slush. I made it out of the slush at F&SF. Goal!

So I'm going to grab on to the fact that both my rejection letters were from the fiction editors at both markets (Ann VanderMeer and Gordon Van Gelder). Yeah, that's a good thing.

Story Bones

I'm listening to a podcast where the interviewer talks to writers all the time. And this interviewer (who is a popular name, at least if you listened to NPR for the past ten years) asks the question. That question. You know, the one about ideas.

And I'm thinking, heck, this interviewer is even an author himself. Then there's the people who go up to authors saying, "Hey, I've got this idea. You write it and we'll split the profits." What is this with not having ideas? I can't go to the bathroom without getting ideas. Are all of them story worthy? No. But still.

Here's three story bones just from off the top of my head (because I've also not thrown out some bones in a long while and it's the name of the damned blog). Plus, it's close to International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day. So think of this as the Hanukkah version.

1) Guy walks into a bar, and it's a zombie bar. What would zombies drink? How would they pay? Is the bartender a zombie? What snacks would they serve? Is it a hip place because all these goths are into zombies and an honest zombie can't get a drink around here anymore.

2) Beowulf didn't defeat Grendel, but entered into a non-compete agreement with him. Beowulf would share his treasure with Grendel only if Grendel stopped eating
Hrothgar's men. So far, so good. Beowulf the Hero returns to England and defeats the dragon, which nets Grendel a huge sum of money. But now it's all run out. Grendel's hungry again. Would he have been civilized by now? How would he interact with the modern world that doesn't have Hero Halls to prey upon. Would Grendel do the Frankenstein (literary, not movie version) thing? Would he now be a thinking and reasoning monster in search of grace that would forever elude his grasp? And what if he just went back to old habits (hey, monster has got to eat, ya know), is there a way to have a modern hero quest? I mean, Grendel would make these wimpy vampires squeal for help. (Can you tell I really like this idea, especially the deal with Beowulf?)

3) Leprechauns are running Fort Knox (or, actually, the gold reserves 40 stories below New York City). Come on, that's cool. While they handle the world's gold reserves in good trust, they get a little possessive from time to time, which requires meetings with management. Hey, a leprechaun annual performance review. Oh, that's hilarious. "Well, McCready, your curly shoes just haven't been up to snuff these days. You jig dancing is a wee bit slow. Ya just aren't on the top of yer game now, are ya laddie." Good comic potential. "Da gold!"

And there you have it, three ideas in fifteen minutes. They may not all pan out, but I think they should. They all have the potential. Heck, #2 could be a novella or novelette length.

You Spin Me Right Around, Baby

Gen. David Petraeus and that wacky Ambassador Crocker did their dog and pony show. Both sides of the aisle showed their lack of understand and focus (really, stop grand standing already, do your frickin' jobs). But most especially, stop the flaming Sen. Graham, that kind of love for another man just makes us all question your hetrosexuality. And while your growing something stiff, try adding a spine to it.

And did we all learn the new phrases? Ethno-centric competition? WTF? Gen. Petraeus, please stop the madness and speak straight forward, every day Engrish, huh, can ya? Don't get me wrong, I actually like Petraeus, at least I did. His past two performances have been nothing but extended interviews for the Joint Command positions.

So, if the "Surge" is a success, can we disengage now? Well, no, I guess not. We've won Iraq at least three times now, how many more do we need? Is the President going for the full 6 place setting commemorative plate set? When can we get back to, I don't know, actually winning in Afghanistan?

How to Write a Novel

Tobias Buckell is giving his updated "How I Write a Novel" post over at his site. Tobias keeps on about this Scrivener software. I should try and give that software a run, although for the current novel I already have a lot in other pieces of software. Anyway, Tobias also have photos and screen shots. It's definitely worth checking out.

The Shakespeare Code

Watching the Met's presentation of "Romeo et Juliette" on PBS and it comes to me, yeah verily, that crafty olde bard of Avon hath left us lessons in codes a plenty.

First lesson that one should learn from "Romeo and Juliet," as well as from "Much Ado About Nothing" and even from "Twelfth Night" is when one puts one's trust in monks, friars, or priests, one ends up dead, pretending to be dead, or wanting to be dead. No good can come from consorting with the religious caste in Shakespeare's plays.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

Words, it's what's up

One of the things you'll hear writers blathering on and on about ad nauseum, is cutting out and removing redundancy. Other than that they talk about getting the words down.

In On Writing the inestimable Stephen King relates a story of James Joyce. Here a friend finds Joyce sprawled across his desk in utter despair about "the work." When the friend asks how many words Joyce got that day, James replies, "Seven."

"Seven?" says the friend. "But James . . . that's good, at least for you!"

"Yes," Joyce said, finally looking up. "I suppose it is . . . but I don't know what order they go in!"

Well, I usually get more than seven at a time, but the other day I just got three. And that's when the fun began. The words were, "donuts," "no," and "more." Also, with the words, I didn't get any punctuation. So I'm at even more at a loss. Let's say we put them in one order, but then try and insert punctuation and see what we get.

• "No more donuts."


• "No more... donuts?"


• "No, more donuts!"

Now, that's just adding punctuation, and we get three distinctly different sentences which go with completely different stories (or parts of stories).

Next we can adjust the order.

• "Donuts no more."


• "More donuts, no?"


• "More, 'No donuts.'"

I can see I'm going to need a bigger eraser.

Here, There, and Somewhere Else

Sorry for the absence. It wasn't intended. Life sort of reached out and throttled everything else. The bad part is that it was busy without much satisfaction or at least completion. In fact I'm farther in the hole than I was last week at this time.

The signs of spring are here. Ants have shown up in the house, which means it's time to spray (one of the few times my wife lets me use harsh chemicals). Ants are the downside to having so many trees so close to the house. If we have the money this summer, we may remove some of those trees. The ones that I can do are as good as gone, but there are a few that are too close for my comfort. Also, the daffodillies have sprouted up. I know some others of you have seen them come and go, ours aren't open yet. There's plenty of pick'em up sticks in the back forty. There's also a few trees that will need the chainsaw taken to them.

This summer things need to be done. Chores I've successfully procrastinated on the past few ears will no longer be denied.

It's also been awhile since I've talked about the big "D." I'm still not out of the woods, but it's much better now. I haven't talked about it because it's now ignorable. Yes, that's a male trait. I'm trying to be better. It's also a male symptom of depression (we ignore it). So when I say it's now ignorable, I'm not really ignoring it, but breaking the cycle no longer requires constant attention or vigilance. Sure, the gremlin voices are still there telling me that I'm just plain stupid, but the reflexive response of telling them where they can go is back. They'll soon learn they can't get a rise (or actually a dip in energy and mental ability) out of me so easily. This is the area that gets most men in trouble, I think. At this point, even though I know I'm still in the big "D" it doesn't feel like I am. So it's easy to dismiss as "I'm a little blue" or even ignore it completely. The difference, though, is the time you spend here. By my calculations I've been in big "D" now for about three months, give or take. On the way down, this area is one that most guys just "put it out of their minds" (the mental equivalent of "walking it off"), so most of us don't notice it when it's still hanging around after a few weeks.

So as I'm doing stuff and thinking about what to write I've come up with this. Here's a rough comparison of what a difference big "D" can make.

Last year at this time I was working 16 hours of overtime on a regular basis, the Village stuff was a little busy with a new employee and changing to spring, and I had gone to another new conference and did pretty good there. This year I'm finally back up to 8 hours of overtime, the village stuff is about twice of last year, I went to the same conference and was in my own opinion, "just there."

Here's the big difference between the two and shows the effects of big "D" (and because this is a writers blog, damnit, it's about the writing), last year by this time I had finished two short stories and was working on my third, and was having the vague notions of what the novel needed to be about and writing some scenes out. This year, I have no new short stories completed, two are in the works (one from November, the other just recent), and the novel progresses at a rate that would make a glacial pace seem a bit hasty.

Sure, the pressure from the Village job is exponentially higher than last year, and I'm doing more freelance stuff (part of what I need to get off my duff for), but still. That's a big change. And winter is my normally productive writer period. I'm hoping that with this new story coming, and other writing things happening, that this is the sign that the damn is cracking and we're about to see little Dutch boys running for their lives soon.