naomi_jay: (wayward son)

I finally managed to book a week off work! Come on, 8th August. *waits*

I was just checking over my writing to-do list ahead of this and came to the following conclusions based on the last time I updated the do-to list:

 

Stuff! And things! )

So my hope for the week off is that I'll have cleared enough of the editing stuff to be able to just write and watch copious amounts of Come Dine With Me. I'm making a start on the critiquing this Sunday (we have to go to a wedding tomorrow. I know!), and I'm trying to avoid social engagements for the next couple of weeks anyway because frankly, I think I've seen enough people this summer already. Yay! Pure, unadulterated writing time is just a few weeks away!
naomi_jay: (ZP - Shuggoth)
I remembered the other stuff I wanted to blog about. It's actually not that interesting, but it involves making lists, which I like.

So Kyle is going to stay with his mum for a week soon. Not sure when yet, but early July as we have a wedding to go to in late July. I'm hoping if the timing works out, I can take that week off work and have some "me" time. I'm supposed to give two weeks' notice for holiday, so ideally Kyle needs to book his train tickets on Friday for the second week of July. Even if I can only get a long weekend, I'll take it. I need it.

I have a ton of writing commitments going on right now, and I need some extra time to get back on top of those. First priority is obviously Night Breed, which I have fallen behind on.

Immediate urgent stuff alongside Night Breed is:

Queered Fiction horoscopes (will do those tonight).

Wicked Witchery - the anthology is at the lower word count limit for publication now. I'm waiting for one more author who's doing some revisions on a story, but I'm thinking I'm going to put the end of June as the deadline for submissions. I'm going to take a break from editing any more SM anthologies until Night Breed is done.

Critiquing - I've got two pieces from writer friends I'm reading over and I'd like to get them wrapped up before much longer. Happily for me, they both seem to be fabulous thus far.

Other writing stuff that is not urgent is:

Snakeskin, a novella I've been playing with as a sequel to a novella called Snakebite that I submitted to Damnation Books a few weeks ago
(21st of May, as it happens, not that I'm anxiously counting off the days or anything). Snakebite clocked in at around 13k, so really short, but I liked it and I'm interested to see if someone else likes it, so I thought, why not submit it somewhere? So I did. I imagine Snakeskin will be around the same length, and if the first part gets picked up, I'd like to have the second part ready to submit straight away. I'm about 6k in at the moment.

Blood Romance - a longer novella set in the same world as THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE. It's really low down the priority list, but I do want to finish it and, at some stage (probably next year now), write a second novella featuring Morrow and Evanthe.

Blood and Bones - ideally I'd like to finish that off this year, but having assessed my schedule and thought about where I want to focus my writing efforts, I don't plan to publish it until February 2012, a year on from NIGHT AND CHAOS.

Halflife - I'm planning to pick this up as my next "big" project after Night Breed is done, and hopefully crack on with it during Anti-Nano this year (I'm doing Anti-Nano again, regardless of whether anyone else is).

Other writing stuff I haven't actually started yet but am planning to:

Caged - the second Vargulf book. This is almost definitely going to have to wait until 2012.

Another Ethan Banning novella - I have plans for Ethan. Possibly evil plans.

Two more Theo Kane short stories - PAINLESS is roughly 5k, I think I could manage two more stories that length this year.

Around all that, there will be edits for DARK HUNT (we're aiming for a late summer/early autumn 2011 release as far as I know). I will have to crush my desire to write Arkham Horror fanfiction until at least 2013.
naomi_jay: (ZP - Shuggoth)
So I've had a couple of advance reviews for WILD which I think I tweeted about but didn't blog about. Rabid Reads thinks it's "the start of a promising trilogy," and Book Goggles thinks it's "a joy to read" and "damn near pefect." That makes me feel pretty good! I don't have a release date scheduled yet, but it's looking more like June than May now, so I hope people will still be interested by then!

I've been thinking a lot about the second book in the trilogy, Caged, today. I haven't started writing it yet, but it's in my head, and I've got a nice clear idea of where Lizzie's going next. I'd love to be working on it right now, but I'm starting to overwhelm myself with projects again, and I really do want to finish Halflife this year, once Night Breed's first draft is done (hopefully by the end of August). I think if I manage to wrap up Halflife by the end of this year (which seems impossibly far away but really isn't), then in 2012 I'll start on Caged. I also think reader reactions to WILD will end up dictating my non-contracted stuff and what I focus on, but we'll see. I'm just going to let the currents drag me around for a while. I feel like I waste so much energy worrying about things beyond my control; maybe it's time to just go with the flow.

In other news, I probably mentioned somewhere that Serve in Heaven, Reign in Hell is closed to submissions. I'll be getting to work on the edits this weekend. There are some really wonderful stories in there, and I'm excited about seeing the final product. At the same time, I've seen a fair view submissions where it's clear the authors either A) don't understand basic rules of grammar and punctuation or B) don't understand what a short story is.

This baffles me, but maybe I'm a snob? I don't see why anyone would submit a story somewhere if the grammar and punctuation was wrong. You might not catch every mistake, but if you're at the level where you're considering publication, you should know that this is wrong:

"What happened." Asked Bob.

And this is right:

"What happened?" asked Bob.

(That's just a made up example, but it's also the most common mistake I saw in reading through submissions. People don't know how to punctuate dialogue!

The other aspect, that people don't understand what a short story is, is I guess more complex. I'm not talking about obvious things like word count, but more how a short story differs from novels and flash fiction. I want to write some more indepth posts about this, but I'm worried about coming across as a know-it-all twat. I don't know it all, but I spent my entire degree writing short stories to very strict rules, so I think I know enough.

So I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a few such posts?

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Dirty Little Whirlwind

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