deepfishy

First physical rejection slip! Somehow much more (im)personal than email. Now I shall break out my haruspician scalpels and take it apart comma by comma, for surely the true reason for my tragic rejection must be buried somewhere in this form letter...

(Kidding, kidding. I'm already getting the story ready for the next market on the list.)
~

First things first, my story Still Living is up at Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com). First issue of the year, woo!


If the past week is anything to go by, this year will be wearying yet full of delight. I spent New Year's in Melbourne, catching up with family and friends and subtly working my influence on my baby niece. (and if her first word is "book", remember that I am in no way to blame)

I haven't set any specific year's goals yet, but I have made a few promises to myself in the form of purchases over the previous year.

A new translation of Gilgamesh, and a pulp/noir anthology: a commitment to edit and send out the rest of my Clarion stories. It's all very well to write a first draft, but the polish is where things happen.

A glorious gallimaufry of beads: to continue learning beading and knotwork, started last year.

Sundry DVDs: apart from the obvious, perhaps a first foray into fanfic. There's nothing like having primary source material to hand.

Cecil Helman's The Body of Frankenstein's Monster: to maintain my interest in a critical/cultural studies exploration of werewolves. Helman was one of the texts I used in my thesis, but I never had his whole collection of essays.

Maybe 2008 will be the year I get my act together ;).

Sooo..."tomorrow" didn't quite happen for Moonrise. It's about halfway, depending on how in-depth the next bit becomes. Good words, not stuff I'll have to toss out in revision. Nevertheless, you may commencify with the taunting (OH WAIT jasoni ALREADY DID).

Highlights of last night include: spending a ridiculous fifteen minutes figuring out what carpenters did on the frontier (other than doubling as undertakers, I mean); writing sufficiently move-the-plot-forward dialogue for a character who doesn't do expository; going outside at 3.30am to watch the Geminids. I lost count of the number of shooting stars I saw, which was pretty cool :).

Props to arwink, jasoni, and lauragoodin for awesome Gauntlet progress!

Moonrise - section one of five complete. Revenants and shovel blades and burials, oh my! (not nearly as Romero as it sounds)

Well *that* screws up my plot timing. >:|

Note to self: research rise-times for a new moon before building a story around inaccurate meteorological data. Before.

Time to go tinker with the plot...

Yan, Firstborn Story-Out-Into-The-World: second rejection (a form letter, but they had an alright turnaround - about a month). Will need some reformatting for the next market on The List. Still don't want to re-read it.

Tan, Tether, Mether: some need more polishing than others, but they too should soon be on their way into the wildwoods. Hopefully they find Badger, and not the weasels.


And while I'm on the subject of stories, I really enjoyed Rosamund Hodge's Textual Variants, the latest piece of fiction at Strange Horizons (free online magazine of speculative fiction - i.e. fantasy/science fiction/horror/slipstream. Updates weekly). I know it's not fanfic, but I'm reccing it anyway. It's not that long. Go read it!
~

Okay, so, making a solemn vow for my blogaversary? Not quite the "tomorrow" promised (that was six days ago). But a public declaration was obviously good for something, because I finally finished the edit yesterday, and sent it off tonight.

(ohgod)

There comes a time during the edit when I'm sick of the story. My judgement's shot from too much time scrutinising sentence structure and considering possible punctuation, every piece of dialogue sounds like either purple prose or a telegram, and I just wish the damned thing was out the door. Only not, because this paragraph over here makes no sense now that the introduction's changed, and this description is too general, and the last line really, really sucks.

To say nothing of the title.

But when I'm finished, I've (hopefully) got a story I can be proud of. I don't think I'll be reading this one again for a few years, but I'm happy with it. It's out the metaphorical door. It's submitted. It's gone.

(ohgodohgodohgod)
I'm fine.