End of the Month Report: January 2011

Submissions: 7

Rejections: 4

Acceptances: 0

Published: 0

Stories out in the wild: 8

New stories completed: 4

Mood: Wondering whether I should continue with these reports...

It takes two to tangle

So I started the week with the great news that the print version of The Tangled Bank is coming out next month, saw the Disney movie Tangled yesterday, and in between wrote a post about entangled electrons inside bird brains. My pattern recognition system is picking up a trend here. And what does it all mean? Nothing, of course, but magical thinking is always looking for ways to take over one's thoughts.

And the movie? I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the not-at-all-subtle criticism of overprotective parents who transfer their own dark fears based on their own bad experiences of the life onto their children, who use psychological manipulations and emotional blackmail to the point where they're actually imprisoning their offspring and preventing them from exploring the world, who make all the decisions and thereby deny their kiddies of the opportunity to engage in the often painful process of making mistakes, who, simply put, be their motives good, selfish, based on martyrdom or a need for control, stop their kids from growing up. Rapunzel's tower - seriously symbolic. All this, and pretty flowers and twittering bluebirds too.

The characters? As far as I'm concerned, the sidekicks stole the show. Pascal the smart-assy chameleon with a touch of darkness in his little heart, and Maximus the sword-wielding, übermilitary, bloodhound x palace guard horse.

Now, enough with the procrastination. Back to work *cracks the whip* . There's a dark, political ghost story that needs another round of polishing so I can send it off tonight.

A True Artist

About 20 minutes ago, realising I had not checked for snail mail today, I popped out the front door to find a young girl with a red bag, and her father and small brother, gathered at the bottom of the garden around my letterbox. They were as surprised to see me as I was to find them there. Uh-oh, I thought, lecture or sermon? Well, shame on my suspicious mind because it turned out to be all about Art.

For the young girl, rendered shy by my unexpected audience participation, pulled an A4 sheet of paper from her bag, folded it and popped it into my letterbox. I duly opened my letterbox, still not sure what was going on, fished out the delivery and opened it up to find myself in possession of a piece of original art. Of course, I duly praised it. The father informed me that I was tonight's lucky recipient of the very last picture in the red bag. Their mission accomplished, the humble artist and her support team moved on.

So there we have it - art for the sake of art, pure and created in joy, delivered free of charge to common citizens, with no name, ego or any conditions attached. I think there's something in that for all of us.

Otherwise, I put in a good, solid day of writing, or rather, of dismantling and rewriting. I also got stuck into my copy of Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, which is due out in April. You might recall that I, and a few others, received copies at WorldCon along with a request to blog reviews. So I read the first part of it out in the backyard, sitting on my Xmas swing with a cup of peppermint tea, and all I can say at this stage is that once I pulled myself from the world she has created, I had an overwhelming urge to throw away all my keyboards and vow that I would never ever again utter the words 'I'm a writer'.

I've got me a hammer

Migrating birds navigate by sensing the Earth's magnetic field, and now it seems this talent might involve quantum entanglement, says New Scientist.

That the inside of a bird's head possibly protects quantum coherence better than any artificial system we've managed to come up with conjures some odd images and plants story-seeds, as does the article about scanning the brains of sleeping babies to track the development of white matter. So there, stuff for my notebooks and topics to dwell upon at a later date. I see a few brain stories in my future.

But right now, it's time to pick up my word-hammer and demolish the SF story I've been working on for what seems like an eternity. I woke up this morning with a possible solution to its knotty structure. I'm not happy with this solution as it involves getting rid of some much cherished paragraphs, but hey, it's not all about me. It's about the story.

Moonlight and Lawn Mowers

Catching up on this week's scandals about submission guidelines and discussions about using the term speculative fiction to cover SFF and Horror and possibly mainstream/literary fiction that spices up mundane stories with a touch of magic or genetic manipulation (that godsend the Lawn Mower Man is here again tidying up my jungle and entertaining the cats, so I'm allowed to fritter away uhhm, another half an hour on the internet, then it's back to work) I noticed that Moonlight Tuber #2 is now out. You can get it here.

My motives for passing on this news are entirely selfish. If MT becomes a respected and world famous, Hugo Award and possibly Oscar winning publication, it'll impress people when I brag that I was in issue #1 (A Sweet Story).

Also, the stories are good. And brave new genre publications that pay writers for their work should be supported and encouraged.

So here's the lineup of MT #2's fine contributors:

Forrest Aguirre
Liz Argall
Peter M. Ball
Jennifer Hollie Bowles
Will Ross
Stephanie Scarborough


Now, back to the gossip, uhhm, I mean the informing debates and intensely useful information.

When Polly came limping home again..

My plan to celebrate Australia Day with countless hours of focused writing was somewhat shot by Polly going AWOL overnight. For the first time ever, she just wasn't on the porch waiting for me last night when I came home after the movies. I spent the morning trying not to think about car accidents and dog attacks, so the 4 hours I scrounged at the keyboard after checking the neighbourhood and looking under the house for a small, furry, black body were spent tinkering on short, light stories rather than flat out writing on bigger projects.

And lo, I was just on the verge of allowing myself to really worry, and was starting to plan the leaflet campaign and an animal shelter visit when, at about 7 pm while I was tying up tomatoes in the backyard, she came limping through the long grass. She hissed and snarled for about half an hour whenever I patted her even though she clearly wanted the physical contact, then finally settled down and proceeded to bitch about whatever it was that had happened to her, which was obviously an adventure of the darker sort.

So, it's good thing I've got a few more days off to make up lost ground.

Brutal Ballet

Wow! Yuck! OMG! Aaaah! Eeeek! Noooo!

Did she? Didn't she?

What about that mother? And did he really...

The Tangled Bank - print version

In a great start to the week, I got an email from Chris Lynch this morning announcing that there will, after all, be a print version of the anthology The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution, which includes my SF story Nullipara.

I'm so glad. It's such a big, beautiful book, with great stories and amazing artwork. Chris will be sending more news about the launch and how to get a copy of the print version over the next few weeks. Anyway, here's the blurb:

Christopher Lynch
Publisher/Editor
Tangled Bank Press
Website: http://thetangledbank.com/
Join us on Facebook and Twitter

The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution

What does evolution mean? Marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species, The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution is bursting with stories, poetry, and full-page artwork about the meaning of evolution. From science fiction and fantasy, to comedy and horror, to fairy tales and literary fiction, this anthology has a story for everyone.

An international lineup of more than 40 contributors includes Sean Williams, Brian Stableford, Patricia Russo, Carlos Hernandez, Jetse de Vries, Christopher Green, Bruce Boston, and Emily Ballou. Dark, whimsical, and shot through with wonder, The Tangled Bank explores the universe Charles Darwin revealed.

Available now as an e-book, and in print on 12th Feb 2011. To get your copy, visit http://thetangledbank.com.

Feeling brave

I've just sent off 3 stories to 3 pro publications...

Otherwise, I put in 6 hours at my desk today. Unfortunately, my muse took the afternoon off - I heard the door slam behind the dozy cow when she left at precisely 14.30. So I spent the rest of the afternoon editing and tinkering with almost done stories, and then obsessed over whether this story was good enough for that publication etc until I finally told myself to shut up, stop trying to second-guess editors and just do it.

Sometimes it gets very crowded at my keyboard.

Wet and Dry

It's been a rather wet and stormy around here in Central Victoria lately - our CBD flooded last week, trees came crashing down, the power was out, and for a while, my brother, who lives a couple of towns over, was stranded on an island- but it felt a tad me-tooish to mention it when the situation in Queensland was so bad.

Anyway, the local waterways have subsided back to their normal levels and mud has been scraped away and things are starting to dry out now, although it's still messy along the creeks with all the debris that got washed downstream and dumped here. Many towns further out, of course, are far far worse off than here - they're still underwater, and people haven't been able to go home yet.

Here are some before and back to normal pictures (this embankment is a 2 meter drop).

An extra creek:

The water rose over 2 meters to the reach the bridge:


And this was my view from a train platform last week. The "river" you see is the parking lot on the opposite side of the tracks to where I was standing.

Amazingly, I still got to the Arvo Job.

Here we go again...

Bang!

The 2011 Great Rejection Race is off and running.

Yay?

Pooped, but still chomping at the bit.

I wrote for a solid 8.5 hours today - and I mean I solid! It's like I've just rediscovered my body, and it's clamouring for some serious stretching and unkinking. I'm also very hungry (although I think I've eaten too many plums...) so I suppose I'd better stop and go take care of mundane stuff.

Still, I finished the ABE story (it still needs many, many edits), and sent a fresh new story out into the world (poor baby), so yay for me!

Wasting Money

Last night, whilst shopping on my way home from the Arvo Job, I had a hankering for juicy summer fruits and bought some peaches. I could have saved myself a few dollars, however, because today I picked these from the front yard:

The kitchen smells of freshly baked bread and ripe plums at the moment. Nice.

Writingwise, it's been a good week. I'm working well at home in the mornings, then hitting my self imposed minimum of 250 new words per train trip target on the way to the Arvo Job (Yes, all right, I confess - it's a New Year's resolution). I also, just this morning, finally filled in the missing section of the SF saga that I want to send to the Anywhere But Earth anthology, and I hope to finish it tomorrow so it can sit for a week before the final rounds of editing.

Weather Worries

I was going to head off to work early this morning, but the rain was absolutely hammering down, so I put it off and wrote instead. Of course, it's hammering down again now, so I might as well have gone.

My concerns, however, are minor compared with the devastation up north in Queensland.

So here's a quick note about a fundraiser for the Queensland Flood Appeal - over at Fablecroft, you can purchase the special edition Ebook anthology After the Rain , with all proceeds going to the appeal.

Now, sorry, I must wade.

Rural Writing

The local paper is now drip-feeding us the results of their Summer Short Story Competition, which I didn’t enter, thinking my tales of aliens and monsters wouldn’t be even be in the vicinity of their alley, let alone up it. Last year’s results helped me form that opinion.

However, one should never assume. For lo and behold, the third runner-up in the junior section this year is a yarn about a man, a library, an old book, midnight chanting, a mirror, a demon and lots dead bodies.

It looks a lot like spec fic to me.

Chugging along

On the train: not so much. It's obviously going to be one of those weeks. Tonight, it was brake problems, travel at reduced speed, get off two stations from home because of safety concerns, wait for the next train, get on again and arrive home at midnight. Still, it was a chance to have a good chat with the regulars. I learnt about everyone's pets.

With writing: very much so. 3 new stories in 3 days, 2 of which I've finished to the first draft stage, the third one is one train trip away from being completed. Then they can sit for a fortnight, suffer a couple of edits, and head off to do the rounds. They're all 1k stories so I'm hoping they'll be a little easier to place than my longer tales.

Rainy Days and Mondays

I woke up to rainy morning, and the sound of ‘stay home and write, stay home and write, you know you want to, stay home and write’ drumming against the roof. I did not listen. Instead, I diligently waded out into the Real World, and so I thoroughly deserved what I got – train trouble, train trouble, train trouble all the way to Melbourne.

One should always listen to the rain, especially on a Monday.

Sunday Recipe

Take a nice, gloomy, rainy day, lots of peace and quiet and no domestic chores, add one brain that is still fresh and zesty from the Xmas holidays, stir in the excitement of starting a new project in the morning, spice it up with the satisfaction of making headway on an old project in the afternoon, then finally garnish with the act of bravely sending a couple of submissions out into the world and serve with a side dish of cute, purring cats.

And there you have it: a perfect Sunday.

It’s been a year since I started this blog, and the reason I’ve been hesitant about resuming my natterings after the holidays is that I was trying to work out whether or not to continue with it. When I started out, I was all fired up by the “avalanche” of acceptances I had received towards the end of 2009. I rather optimistically imagined I’d be doing lots of posts about acceptances and publications.

Alas, things slowed down, and despite sending out what seemed to be a gazillion submissions (okay, 59 to be exact), and despite almost getting into a few pro magazines and anthologies, I kept missing out by a whisker. I garnered many pleasant, supportive words and much praise, for which I am grateful, but it all boiled down to just four acceptances for the year.

Right now, I’m fine with that. I know these things go up and down, but in December, with my days utterly subsumed by the mad, mad rush at the Arvo Job, I had one of those ‘what’s the point, it’s not what you do, it’s who you know’ episodes. When you’re tired and unfulfilled, it’s easy to get snarky and give in to bitter thoughts.

So it was time to step back, do other things, like sit on my Xmas present swing in the backyard, enjoy a few sunsets, read, walk, hang out with people, regain my sense of perspective, remember why I write and wait for the joy to return.

Which it did. In spades. As it always does. I’m tapping away on my keyboards like a crazy person again muttering "Don't get bitter, get better."

But I still wasn’t sure whether this blog was ... I don’t know... necessary? I mean, four acceptances in a year do not make for much of a writer’s blog.

So I looked at the stats for the year (very different to the counter, so I’m wondering whether that’s worth keeping) and saw that yes, a reasonable number of people do drop by - hallo everyone - and yes, quite a few of those visitors even checked out where they can find my work. Not a lot compared with JK Rowling or George RR Martin, I’ll grant you, but enough to make me think it’s not a completely pointless exercise.

So, I shall give it another year.

Besides, I quite enjoy nattering about my writing and posting photos of cats and foals.

Royal Start

Okay, okay, here we go. I'll start slow and easy, get back into the blogging habit.

So: last night, we went to the movies. We saw this movie. It was good. There were lots of jokes about Aussies.

There. 2011 is off and running.

Happy 2011

So it's back to the Arvo Job and the Real World tomorrow, and back to blogging again. For now, I'll hold onto that holiday feeling for just a few more hours...