Back up to 13!

Back up to 13 submissions in the mail! Yay!

Had a few rejections (and a shortlisting! yay!) So back at it. Three submissions this morning;  only took about 90 minutes, with a break, so maybe an hour, total. Getting faster at this.

Pulling back the veil

A week and change left in the year.

So far I've read 15 novels (three re-reads), 11 novellas, at least one novellete (I tend not to look at the length of the long short stories I read, sadly; one nonfiction book, at least one graphic novel and one author's anthology. My TBR pile is three times that size and clawing for attention.

I'm currently working my way through several "best of" anthologies, may or may not finish those. I've tracked 99 published short stories read so far this year. (I'd better read at least one more!)

Been trying to focus on SF and Fantasy, and read some of the classics I missed, but I think next year I need to broaden my reading as well; I'm getting *too* focused on genre. I miss knowing what's being published elsewhere. I'd probably be happier if I could double this tally next year -- I mean, 29 book-length works (not counting the novelette) isn't bad; that's one every two weeks. Half again to roughly 40-45 works would mean more time reading, but I could do it.

What I'm not doing is spending quality time picking apart how the authors do what they do well; how they created a "real" world, empathy and character/reader connection --  or how, where and why their worlds broke for me. The critical aspect of the reading that would enable the reading to *consciously* make me a better writer, in other words.

I picked up a reading journal (and plan to alter some of the questions to make it more useful to me) am going back through a few of the books I read this year, to see if I can improve on this.

How do you probe a book (as you're reading it or once you've finished) to unveil how the author created its magic? Any questions you ask yourself or practices you keep that help?

A Non-Traditional NaNoWrimo

I didn't have the creative energy to draft a new novel this November, so no traditional NaNoWrimo for me. I was casting about for another idea when a colleague began waxing lyrical about her short story spreadsheet, which she credits with part of the reason for her selection for Odyssey this year.

"I've got one of those someplace," I thought.

It had last been updated in 2015.

Ouch.

 I've long had trouble getting short stories out to markets, and it's hard to send stuff out when you don't know what you have. So I spent the first week updating my inventory, and the remainder of the month cleaning up short stories for critique and sending rewritten pieces out to market.

My goal was to send out 30 shorts to paying markets. I fell considerably short of that, but I'm pretty happy anyway.

I was doing pretty well at first, but as rejections began to come back, and as my limited market research ground into "I should read a few of their stories and figure out what they buy" I discovered that the older stories in my inventory didn't hold up to my current level of writing skill. And my current level of skill wasn't quite good enough for some of my favorite markets. Maybe if I re-wrote that story again...

In other words, I slammed into both sides of The Gap as well as Imposter Syndrome. Which was useful information but still frustrating. Even though I knew that was happening, I couldn't make myself send a story I knew wasn't up to par, and I don't have useful market research on second- and third-tier markets.

That said, I submitted a dozen stories 14 times (I submitted two twice, thank you to editors with quick turnaround times!), and took an additional 15 shorts (most of them flash) to Wordos -- wait, and two more to my other crit group.

So I only hit half of my actual submission goal (which was to get 30 stories to editors, not just critiquers) but I did hit 31 stories with other people's eyes on them. That feels... okay? It certainly pushed the bounds of how many characters, plot lines and settings I could juggle in my head at once.

Since 2019 had been a thin year for me -- I'd only submitted shorts for publication 10 times before Nov. 1 -- I more than doubled my submissions in one month. I'm happy with that. And I now have a PILE of crits to work through.

Probably the best payoff of all was the one I hadn't seen coming: my revision speed ramped waaaaay up during November. Given how painful I find editing and revision, I'll call that a win-win.

Reading Practice: Solar War 1 and The Raven Tower

Trying to get back in the habit of recording what I'm learning from reading.

Currently reading The Raven Tower (Leckie) and Eve of Destruction | Solar War 1 (Aaron & Cooper). (Turns out there are a LOT of Eve of Destruction titles).

Reading these two side by side (I'm literally reading a chapter of each before I go to bed at night) might not be in the best service of either. But it has been excellent practice for highlighting pacing and mood. 

"Eve" is a danger-laced Bourne-like thriller set in deep space, an explosively life-threatening (literally) blitz through several worlds. I'm halfway through, and every chapter the protag has been in so far, she's been in danger and has risked her life, from surrendering to repeatedly escaping.The authors show over and over again she's highly competent, skilled and tough as nails, willing to ask for help when she needs it, but only accepting it on her terms until other people's lives are at stake. And sometimes even then. It's a vastly complicated political world that I'm having difficulty keeping straight, but Aaron and Cooper are definitely keeping my interest.

 "Raven" is a moody, mysterious fantasy about a son denied his rightful "throne," by an uncle, and his refusal to believe his father -- for whom no funeral was held -- has fled, but the focus is on his mysterious aide, Eolo. Eolo's actions, as seen through the narrator's eyes, slowly build a picture of who Eolo -- competent, curious, smart and evasive. Raven is a slow grim build filled with foreshadowing and foreboding in an evocative world I want to know more about. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and I have enough of a shape to start making guesses about where the story is going. I'm missing descriptive flourishes I expect from fantasy, but I'm loving the mythology of this world, which is going to be crucial to solving the several mysteries baked into the narrative. Quiet but threatening events translate to a sense of a cold and brutal society that so far has required me to care more about the world than any one character -- because Eolo is a bit of a mystery, his boss is a small bit of a dick (less of a dick than some other characters, but that's not saying much) and the narrator is an unnamed god/goddess who talks only to Eolo. It's a lovely writerly challenge and Leckie is pulling it off masterfully.

The pacing of the two books could not be more different; and yet both have the those shifts in tempo, breather chapters, which are used for similar purposes--to fill in gaps, to explain, and to enrich the readers' understanding of how this world works. 

Eve's breather chapters come in the POV of a male hacker working from a safe room with his sweet cat. As the protag's hectic flight slows -- I stopped last night at the point where she's essentially arrested by her supporters (it's complicated) I expect his life is about to become MUCH more challenging. 

Raven's breathers are the god/goddess talking about how they came to be, came to understand their power, how they got tied up with and began to care about humans. Those are by necessity very quiet, nature-evocative snippet that I found thoroughly enjoyable.  Hopefully one of those asides will soon explain how they came to be where they are NOW, because that's the next story question that's burning a hole in my mind! 

Anyway. That's what I got from what I'm reading so far.

The agent hit a plot snag and rewrite quandary

Well, the agent who requested the full manuscript declined to offer representation.

She said my writing is strong and my characters leapt off the page (there's a compliment I need to staple to my forehead) but her love did not extend to the novel's plot.

I knew the plot was going to be a hard sell, but it's important to me so I'll keep querying. I've queried 26 agents now, which is barely scratching the surface (one of the reasons I was so excited to have a request for a full so soon). Only have eleven queries still out there in agents' inboxes, so I need to get busy querying again.

Also got a request to rewrite a short, which was exciting. But I am having a surprisingly difficult time re-envisioning the story. The character questions I've asked to fix the issues have revealed deeper cracks in the story logic that I expected.  A really nice challenge, but my brain is tripping on it right now.

Ah well. Onward.

Ireland! Worldon 2019!

TL:DR: We went to Ireland. I attended nearly 30 events at Worldcon in Dublin while my partner took in the museums and various sights, and then we visited the south of Ireland (glamping in a vardo and hiking through heather) and the West Coast (slept in an actual friggin' castle and did a lot of walking), ending up with visits to Bridget's Well and the Cliffs of INSANITY..er... the Cliffs of Mohr. It was amazing and cool and I'm still exhausted.

You can stop reading now. 

The rest, really LONG part of this is so I don't forget what happened or who I saw.

So I actually made a list of con goals this trip, because it was Worldcon and because I was basically attending alone. I made a pretty ambitious list of goals: 

1. Talk with one agent or editor; just chat, maybe even over a drink (BWAHAHAHAHAHA nope)
2. Pick up a signed something-or-other (uh, oops)
3. Attend one social thing, (YES!)
4.     one GOH thing,  (does going to two panels a GOH was on count?)
5.      one new and different thing (non-writing) (YES!)
6. Relax and have fun (YES!)
7. Meet someone new (YES!)
8. Meet up with someone (uh, never happened)
9. Go through the art show (YES!)
10. Make introvert time -- center and ground (YES!)
11. Find some gifts (uh... notsomuch)

So I didn't go to any of the specific Guest of Honor things (OMG the LINES. The LINES!) and made nothing that involved actually planning with another human being -- no agent or editor talk, no meeting up with anyone. But I did like 29 individual talks/panels/meetups/things over the course of the con, AND I took Sunday entirely off because I was burning out and not feeling well. 

Not going to type up my notes. But to remind myself later I went to:

THURSDAY

Names: Form and Function in Worldbuilding and Conlags by Sara Uckelman of Durham U. She was awesome, I saw her at two other things, loved her talk.

Civilization & SF: Foundation, Dune and Hyperion. I could have argued over his choice of texts for this talk, long and strenuously, but meh.

Trust and the Future of Social Media. I was either too cynical or too unclear on the concept for this. Or they haven't actually built anything so he was talking about the problem they're trying to solve instead of any portion of any solution.

Those three talks were part of something new to me, which was ACADEMIC PAPERS as part of a con experience. Maybe that's a usual Worldcon thing? They certainly were well attended.

Illustrating in the Ordinary World, (Rob Carlos, Stephen Cass, and Oism (ushin) McCann. which was my art thing for the day.

This is where I say that the main venues involved in this con were... five? six? blocks apart. So I'd decided that on day one I'd mostly stay spend in the building where most of the academic/art talks were. And I got to see my first person from the PNW, Rob.

Horticulture in Extreme Environments. Helen Pennington, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ian McDonald (oh hey! a GOH!) and Teresa Storey. This was really depressing, actually, because they kept being derailed by climate change, but it did introduce me to a phrase that is apparently being used to address people's objection to introducing new plants, "botanical racism." I have mixed feels about this, as someone who loves native plants, but at the same time, native plants gotta move as climates change or native plants ain't gonna survive.

Science, Religion and the Art of Storytelling by Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. Brother Guy was recovering from pneumonia, was VERY happy to be at Worldcon, and told a lot of jokes. Sadly, jet lag was hitting hard at this point and my notes are mostly illegible.

I think I tried to go to the art show but it wasn't fully set up yet.

I gave up any evening programming to have dinner with my partner each night. Food was good. We ate at Banks (The Banks?) which was ornate, noisy, crowded, and served us utterly delicious food. A gentleman was playing the piano -- Beatles tunes, of all things -- and I had the best Irish coffee (yeah, yeah) for dessert. Teelings whiskey FTW. We'd started the morning, before the con, with a quick tour of Trinity College, but didn't have time to do the Book of Kells and the Old Library. We went back and did those later.

FRIDAY

Space Opera: Boldly Going where no genre has gone before! Rivers Solomon, Martha Wells, Bo Balder (NOT Bo Bolander) and Adam Whitehead. Interesting discussions; happily did not focus on Star anything. Possible reading for me: Lensmark and Skylark Series, the Expanse, Chareles Scheffield's Heritable, Phyllis Gottlieb, Ian Banks, Bujold. Also my favorite con ribbon.

Conlag meetup. I came away with some contact info that might be helpful. 

Reading by Charlie Jane Anders. No notes, but that was cool.

Escape Artists live recording: Premee Mohamed (who I adore on twitter), Alasdar Stuart, Aidan Doyle, Marguerite Kenner, Tina Connolly, Benjamin Kinney. This was what it said on the tin; they were recording an episode at the con, and we all were mostly quiet so they could do that! During the Q&A, someone asked what made good short stories for audio, and the answer was: clarity and pacing, clarity both conceptually and in prose, because people can't go back to figure something out. Shorter pieces work better because an even pace works best and it's hard for longer works to maintain an even pace.

The Future of Food: Scott Edelman, Dybuk (Susan Weiner) Klezmer, R.B. Watkinson: very pro-GMO (paraphrased "You've eaten a Ruby Grapefruit? those are grown from a radioactive mutation of a gene.") and with twists I wasn't expecting: "we think local is friendly but it is more energy efficient to grow and import Spanish tomatoes than U.K. tomatoes). 3-D printed food, insects. Also kinda depressing, which I should have expected.

R.F. Kuang's reading, from the Dragon Republic, which isn't out yet.

Fountain Pen meetup, with Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard. OMG this was so much fun! And they gave away ink, and I got mine home without spilling it all over my clothes!

Language is a virus from outer space: Hanne-Madeleine (Iro) Gates Paine, P.M. Freestone, Stanley Schmidt, Joseph Malik. Couple of people from the conlag group went to this one.  So this was a fascinating discussion about how different writers had used conlags in their work or good and ill. One note SS made: the IPA does not approximate the sounds of any animal on earth (well, other than humans). Watch Malik's book trailer. His operatically trained wife sings elvish.

Broad Universe Rapid Reading. E.C. Ambrose, Randee Dawn, Juliana Mills, Kathryn Sullivan, Rebecca Gomez Farrell, Elizabeth Crowens, Laurel Anne Hill. Kathryn gave out pens that are quite nice, I'm still using them.

We discovered that evening that one wants dinner reservations on a Friday night in Dublin, and we didn't have any. I was exhausted and embarassingly near tears by the time we ended up at tiny Pichet by complete happenstance and desperation and discovered it was  a wonderful, four-star Michelin-rated restaurant. I was utterly charmed from the time they seated us. Intro was  a fine-crumb bread much like a Sally Lunn but slightly sourdough, and saffron gin cocktail (saffron gin, elderflower, lemon juice and Proseco). And I'd never had île flottante (floating island) and his version was wonderful. 

SATURDAY

I walked a lot Saturday because I went back and forth between venues and holy carp could they use some HERALDRY lessons. Got to the first one quite a bit late.

Hyperbolic Crochet: Constance Hoffmann and Nicholas Jackson. Started off with a history of the math, which to be honest I didn't give a shit about, and moved to the actual crochet, which was at least in explanation, ridiculously simple. Just a steady, regular constant increase. Every 3, 5 or 10 stitches. Oh. Now I have to try it. Reading: The Owl Service by Alana Garner and Crocheting Adv with H Planes Diana Taimina. The Raksura Colony Tree, which I saw at the end of the con, was created with hyperbolic crochet forms.

I believe I took time to go through the art show at this point. I was surprised it was so small -- no larger than Orycon's art show, or Norwescon's, and very few folks going through it. Some very nice pieces, interesting holographic art I'd never seen before, and some wooden boxes I would have given anything to buy but didn't figure they'd survive the trip home.

Irish Folklore in YA: Patrick O'Gullin (The Call, don't read it alone), Susan Connolly (TV writer), Ruth F. Long, Sarah Rees Brennon (The Other Lands?). My god, these people had fun, and might have been my favorite panel of the con. I wanted to go to one with local folks on it, and I picked the right one, I think. The grim dark sense of humor and their effusive explanations of where it came from was exceptional. 

 "Do you believe in faerie?""Do I believe in electricity? In a table?" Story about throwing the family in the car without a word because a storm, crows and injury happened at the same time, and they're atheists. Discussion of how Ireland had moved a motorway at the cost of millions of Euros so as to not disturb a faerie rock. "Would you enter a faerie circle?" "(Hell yes. Have you seen the state of the world today?") NO! say the others, these are IRISH faeries! 

Things that annoy them:  

• male banshee. There's a SHE in Banshee for a reason.
• Summer and winter courts. That's an aristocratic British thing.
• faerie trades with kings/kingdoms... esp. with uniquely English overtones.
• Irish wisdom preserved in the pyramids (what?)

"You have one gimme so be careful what it is."

Things they loved: 

• Hand of Morrighan as seaweed strangling everyone 
• Iron Druid by Kevin Hearne
• Wormwood Gate Kathreryn Farmer?Bull
• Irelands Immortals Eddy Lenihand You Tube.. Meeting the Other Crowd
• Prefer the local stories to the big epics

References for getting it right:

• www.celt.dias.ie
• celtic studies, a schoolschildren's collection of Irish folktales
• Ashley Burns? Otherwold
• Lady Gregory's collection, Mary's Jone's Celtic Literary collection

Then I went to Fran Wilde's reading of Riverland, and heard that her Gem World triology is Elise Matheson's jewelry turned into a book.

Marie Brennan's reading, nice. (A Natural History of Dragons). 

Yoon Ha Lee's extremely crowded reading (I couldn't see at all) from a book that doesn't come out until 2021, sigh. 

Editor's Panel: Michale Rowley, Eleanor Teasdale, Ginjer Buchanan, David Thomas Moore, John R. Douglas. Stories of strange, painful and fun bits of the job, from getting the U.K. rights to The Martian to missing out on Game of Thrones to finding an author like Cassandra Khaw and John M. Ford.

Urban Fantasy from the Margins: another favorite. Nichole Givens Kurtz, Eliza Chan, Claire Light. Some about place, the kind of urban fantasy they prefer, and the feelings of belonging nowhere and in two (or more) worlds simultaneously. Reading suggestions were numerous, Rivers of London kept coming up, by Ben Aaronovitch, also Nalo Hopkins, Jewle Gomez, Maurice Broaddeus. Also for disability, Goosebury Falls (face blindness) Tanya Huff, Mishel Baker, Borderline.

Dinner Saturday night was at Sole (reservations this time) Fish pie was grand, and I found French coffee -- cognac is an exellent addition, thank you and good day. Got a night picture of the big harp bridge. Feet hurt but it was worth it.

SUNDAY

I took the day off from the con. Neither of us were feeling good and we were a little exhausted and I was burnt out. We visited the Book of Kells, or the pages that were open that day, and the Old Library with its harp and ancient tomes. Watched the Hugo Awards on my phone in our hotel room, which meant no lines and no people and no fancy clothes and no long walk back to the hotel. Missed the buzz and excitement and all, but ... it was good.

MONDAY

Bigotry is not allegorical: J.S. Fields, moderator (from OSU! I own two of her books!), Jacq Applebee, with whom I'd had a brief conversation two days previous and seemed to upset, and it's bugging me; Cadwell Turnbull, Liz Bourke. Excellent panel.

The Raksura Colony Tree celebration: I ran over to see what they'd created. Was very awesome. Neighboring art show was already half dismantled.

Creative Couples: Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman, Peter Morwood and Diane Duane (another GOH!), moderator Heide Goody. Funny, light and enjoyable panel.

Stuck my head in on the Spider Robinson concert.

Untranslated SFF:  Alexander Hong (moderator, who was held up somehow and so we ended up with a audience member pressed into service temporarily), Lionel Davoust, Haruka Mugihara, Wataru Ishigame. I really wish I could read or understand Japanese and now I want to read Terry Pratchett in French. There's some fiction getting translated among what I'll call the Pacific Rim countries without being translated into English. 

Scott Edelman reading, short story.

Nichole Givens Kurtz reading, from two shorts.

And then my con was over. We went out for dinner that night, I'm not sure where, because I was taking notes on the endpapers of my journal at that point. The next week was vacation, which involved more food, and a lovely glamping site in the south (Chez Shea, a vardo and a caravan, in the Beara Penisula, wonderful, caring people, they're on Air BnB) and Castle Ballynahinch, which is what it says on the tin, and wow was that a culture (and price) shift, and yet still birdsong at both places every morning, and we walked and ate and walked and ate and walked.

Google Maps was about a half-mile off on the location of Bridget's Well, it was further up the road by Murphy's Tavern (TINY parking area which is probably the pub's, tiny site with the most vertical cemetery above it I've ever seen. Do not drink that water). The Cliffs of Mohr were pretty amazing.

And then home and jetlag, and trying to get back into writing and queries and submissions again. Onward!

OMG. OMG. OMG. *ahem* Nothing to see here, just somewhat excited...

I *was* going to give a Worldcon wrapup here, but that's going to have to wait for the weekend because....

..... I GOT A REQUEST FOR A FULL MANUSCRIPT!

*deep breath*

*happy dance*

*dives back into the manuscript thinking of all the things I came up with during the last month that I should change and now don't have time to fix*

ieeeeee!

Dublin 2019

WORLDCON HERE WE COME!

Pitching on Twitter; #SFFpit for the win, and other thoughts

Took part in #SFFpit this July. It was a lot of fun, far more engaging that I expected. Got up at 5 a.m to send out my first pitch and start retweeting. All we did was read and poke at Twitter for the next three hours.

Many kudos to Dan Koboldt  (http://dankoboldt.com/sffpit/) and Michael Mammay for taking so much time out of their writing lives to organize that event. Turns out I'd heard Koboldt speak at Norwescon and hadn't realized he was the organizer of this event.

I wasn't expecting a Twitter event to be so educational. First, there was the process of trying to summarize a 143,000-word book into 260 characters. Luckily, I'm on a writing retreat, so when my writing buddies and I heard about the contest -- two! days! in advance! the fantasy writer among us and I had 24 hours to draft 10 pitches, share them with each other, and rewrite them. That helped immensely, and was probably the only reason I got any likes at all. 

Pitches are HARD, y'all. 

We both got two "likes," meaning people wanted pages, but they were both from tiny startup publishers, so we're researching them before we get too excited about that. The validation was AWESOME, though. 

Reading other people's pitches and seeing which ones garnered agent attention was quite useful, and thought-provoking, as I'm just starting the process of querying. I sent out 13 queries yesterday, and will send another batch after a few people open at the beginning of next month. 

I'm not sure this book is ever going to trigger the immediate "oh, yes, I want this!" that some of the pitches had -- it's more a "how does a young girl figure out what she's good at" for women who tried to read Game of Thrones and balked at the violence and patriarchy. It's not a "chosen one" story, and it's more a "find thyself" than a "heroine" piece, although the protag definitely does heroic shit.

The manuscript started life as a NaNo novel and an annoyed-at-Hollywood attempt to write a space opera that would fail a *reverse* Bechtel test (two named male characters who talk to each other about something other than a woman). I let go of that during the revision, of course, but there are no male leads, only supporting characters. And it introduces a complicated, multi-world universe and a "good" versus evil background story that I see carrying through at least two more books (as yet largely unwritten). 

But back to #SFFpit --it was just cool to see the stories people were writing, and sad to see that several I wanted to read had no agent likes. Bah. As someone else said, the hard part of the day was wanting those pitches to be books I could buy right now!

REVISION, accomplished.

The novel is revised!

My novel critique group pushed me to hold to a deadline, and so the last three weeks of June -- and especially the last few days -- were revision-heavy. And it's Done!

Well, "done." I'm already building a list of things I forgot, or should do. But I'm setting it aside to wait for agent comments because Perfectionism may not be stoppable, but -- It Can Be Channeled. LOL.

I took a one-day Clarion workshop on revision from Fonda Lee this spring, and she also pointed out that one can't make a career out of revision. Finish the damn thing and start something new.

So, I'm starting on my agent research, reviewing the list I had several years ago and building a new spreadsheet of agents to query, which will begin the second week in July. Forward!

Goals, reviewed

 GOAL CHECK-IN at the end of February. 

-- Two weeks of travel and being sick has left me in a hole.

-- Purpose is not revised. I did a pass and I do have a chunk of the work done. But I hit a wall. I didn't get some of the feedback back, and I pushed the project aside until I finished a Writing the Other world building class that I correctly thought would give me another perspective on what I was doing. It did, but it also opened a caldera of self-doubt. 

--New deadline is March 15. I don't know if I'm going to make that -- BIG depressive slump -- but I'm not changing it yet because I'm already behind.

-- I have read at least 15 ss this month but haven't tracked them well; I need to pull together the list I've read. Hugo noms are due soon and I'd like to contribute to that. Last month I didn't read as much as I would have liked and I was really bad about tracking. Again.

-- My weakest skill RIGHT NOW is maintaining a working schedule and figuring out how to move forward when new information and/or mood shifts shake my existing plan. 

-- I decided against applying to either Clarion this year. Instead, I'm taking two Clarion West one-day classes; one on revision and one on making stories stand out, since I'm not selling my stories and since revision is a fucking nightmare and I hate it and Fonda Lee says that's where the magic happens. Well by ghoddess I hope she can SHOW ME WHERE.

-- Two (of aimed-for-13) stories currently on submission; third got an actual "we liked this and kicked it upstairs but decided against it for maybe these reasons" PERSONAL REJECTION on my favorite short, so maybe there is hope. If I remember it's the same feedback I got from elsewhere so maybe I should take that feedback and ask about resubmitting. 

-- Won't submit an unrevised manuscript, so that's on hold. 

-- Retreat this summer is verbally happening. Need to look at schedule and nail down dates.