Arrant Nonsense

Jouth has published a story starring my spaceship crew, "Meerkat Manners." It's not up on Amazon yet, but I will update when it is.

The intrepid crew of the Inquisitive Tamandua is hired by a mob of quarreling meerkats to move them to a new settlement. Unfortunately, immigration law isn't necessarily on their side--and neither is the new Fed-mandated AI installed in the ship.

Go check it out!

Also, Digital Horror is going to reprint "Daddy's Little Girl" in the near future. I love getting paid twice for the same story.

Outline #5 is in the can. The final piece dropped into place last night right after I crawled into bed and turned off the light. Fortunately, the Hubby is tolerant of the Writer Foible of having a Eureka! moment and needing to turn on the light to write it down. Because if you don't write it down, it never happened.

So now I need to figure out my 6th story for this Massive Project of Doom.

In other news, I heard back from the place where I sent Sold Soul--they're holding it for further consideration. So I had good news in my inbox. Also the Zombie story should be in print soon.

In other other news, I once did a fanvid of KKBB using Daniel Powter's "Bad Day." Youtube took it down for a copyright violation (I would argue that it's a transformative work, but, whatever). I really wish I knew how to embed it somewhere and have it play when someone clicked a link to it, but my web-fu is not that strong, alas. All this is backstory to say that the Boy knew of the video, but didn't know I'd made it. And now he thinks I'm kind of brilliant. Hee.

Also, well-known author Brad Thor retweeted a couple of articles I sent him, thus widening the audience for them.

I think that today is a good day. So, here, have an icon of RDJ looking sexy.

I'm actually not being sarcastic. Got a rejection last night for the Squonk story and immediately flipped it to Writers of the Future, since they haven't seen it yet, the deadline is the 30th, and there's no way I'm going to finish the steampunk werewolf western in time. It is stalled like a big stalled thing. Still waiting on word for Won His Soul. Gyah, this business.

In other news, I did receive the contract for the Zombie story in the mail and sent it back, signed, immediately, so. I believe the editor said that issue would be coming out next month.

And now, more Yellowstone pictures. This group will be the miscellaneous critters and a couple of other shots.

( Follow the cut to bison, chipmunks, grouse, coyote, and pronghorns... )

The Zombies! story is off to Writers of the Future.

Yay?

Now, seriously, I need casefic. Something funny and supernatural would be a bonus. This gave me a slight jumping-off point. Maybe. I can't really do a missing persons because then I'd just be rehashing that in the new!Ben&Janni story, but... something.

Gah. Can't brain. Zombies got it.

I've gone over the Zombies! story one last time, formatted it, printed it out, and created a cover page. Tomorrow, I shall ship it off to Writers of the Future.

That's a load off my mind.

Now I need to figure out what I'm going to write for next quarter...

I gave the new!improved Zombies! story to my Writing Buddy and the New Guy to tear into last weekend. New Guy pointed out that my timeline is shaky (why doesn't he just amputate her leg, since they're right there at the hospital, to prevent her becoming a zombie, since he's a medical examiner and all?), so I fixed that. And I don't describe people very well (at all), but honestly, I'm not sure I need to in this case.

My Writing Buddy wanted More. More at the end, and More of Billy Joe trying to talk my protag out of killing him. I fixed the end by moving some wording around in the last few paragraphs and breaking the 'graphs differently. It's way better now.

The thing with Billy Joe... I'm not actually sure what to do there. Perhaps I'll think about it in the shower.

SocloseIcantasteit.

Oh, and I have a title, because my Writing Buddy is awesome.

just asked about writing process. *snort*

Process? I'm supposed to have a "process"? Okay, here's what happened for the last short story:

1. Either (a) decide I hate everything I'm currently working on, or (b) run up against a contest deadline. Either of these circumstances require me to come up with something new, stat.

2. Poke the Plot Bunny Hutch to see what hops out. Catch the Bunny and scribble the first line that comes to mind--which in this case came from my list of first line prompts. The first line may not survive the last edit, but I'll worry about that later.

3. Zombies? Really? Crap, I hate zombies. *sigh* FINE.

4. Realize that I'm using Robert and Susan as first names. Anyone who knows me remotely will know instantly where that came from. No can do. Besides, first person will work a lot better with this. And present tense will be even BETTER. What's that? We haven't done first/present in original fiction yet? First time for everything. Change "Susan" to "Susie."

5. Get a horrible mental image for the last scene, because damned if I outline. No. Bad brain. I hate you. Stop that. Eh, what the hey, we'll write in in the little notebook and file it away for later. You never know.

6. Scribble. Scribble some more. Wait, stuck? STUCK? On SCIENCE? In a ZOMBIE STORY? Oh, for the love of...

7. Realize that the story might change drastically if the protag is female rather than male. NO. MAKE IT STOP. It doesn't matter, because no matter who it is, they have no resources. Keep the Dad. In retrospect, keeping the Dad turns out to be an excellent idea.

8. Noodle more ideas. Rant. Cry. Whine on LiveJournal. Which actually kicks something loose. Scribble some more.

9. Oh, hey, THERE's my theme. I hope it makes sense by the time I finish this.

10. Talk it over with my Writing Buddy. Nearly kiss him, because now I have an ending that actually works. Yay. All I have to do (cue hysterical laughter) is get there from here. I'm still massively stuck. Beginning to hate this thing. Where's a handy bridge when I need one?

11. Research. Why do the building names at the University of Texas at Austin give you absolutely no clue what they're actually used for? Create a new building from whole cloth, because I'm the writer and I can and this is Future!Fic.

12. Hey, wow, is that ALL the cerebrospinal fluid the human body has? Huh. Wonder how much of that you can lose before you die... Nevermind. I'll just take it ALL, and it won't matter. And that sends me skittering off in another, even more Evil, direction. Mwahaha. I don't hate it anymore, although my family is backing slowly away from me.

13. Oh, hey, and that turns on its tail and goes even MORE evil. *twirls imaginary mustache* My family's speed, in backing away, has increased.

14. THE END OMG FINALLY. Oh, yeah. Mine is an evil laugh. My id, let me show you it. My family has fled precipitously, and the cat is eying me with her tail poofed.

15. Edit? I have to edit it now? Well, yes, because it's too long. Let's try and get it under 7,000 words, shall we? Fine...

16. Let it lie fallow for most of two days. Still don't hate it on a re-read. This is good. Something bugs, though. Not sure what.

17. Whack words out left and right. Add some here, subtract some over there. Dude, that part goes nowhere. KILL IT. But I like it! Kill it anyway. Fine. Still something bugging.

18. Post it for the Usual Suspects. Bite nails, hope they don't hate it.

19. They don't hate it, and they have good suggestions. Incorporate them. Still something bugging, and they didn't catch it.

20. Realize what has been bugging me ALL ALONG about this thing. Passive voice! ARGH. An hour and a half later, that is fixed. Whew. That's better. Way better. HAH.

21. Give it to the Writing Buddy for one more pass. Once he's torn into it, I will edit it one last time, read it over for typos, format it, and ship it off to Writers of the Future.

You had to ask, didn't you? It's like making sausage. You really don't want to know.

And that's just for a short story...

I spent an hour and a half grinding out the passive construction in the Zombies! story. I'm back to being happy with it. It sucks less. I'm going to put it away until my Writing Buddy gets back to me on it next week, because otherwise I'll just drive myself nuts banging my head on it.

That being said, I can't not write, especially at a Con. So I'm going to open up the Chains story and see if I still like it.

I'm skipping Snippet Saturday today. You no can haz. :p

WHEN DID I START SUCKING AT THIS?

Okay, I realize that writing in first person, present tense, is a new thing for me in original fiction. But the rules are the same, dammit. Now I'm going through it and grinding out all the passive construction in the damn thing. I figured out I was doing in the final scene (which was by it was bugging the crap out of me), and so then I went back to the beginning and found out that I've pretty much done it throughout and it's horrible.

But at least I realized it before I sent it out right?

Of course, not before I printed out two copies of it this morning for writing-type people to look at.

GAH.

To under 7100 words.

Surely one more pass will do it. Right?

And then I can post it for the Usual Suspects to have a go at.

One more pass. *eyes bike malevolently*