science fiction author
The novel has been pushed to the back burner for a moment as I am getting some stories up and ready for workshop application season. I have two that have been noodling around in my brain off and on for two and eleven years, respectively. Both were critiqued by my writing group and I have made significant revisions to them. I am very pleased with how they turned out and I am excited to loose…
At approximately 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday October 29, I completed the zero draft of my first novel, “The Survivors.” It is a galaxy spanning space opera that addresses unchecked power and control, species-ism, and features a man who is pushed beyond his self imposed limits to break the rules in order to confront an unknown alien attack. I started writing these characters in my seventh grade english class in 1984, and while I…
In the rush of the spring semester, I forgot to note that I recently (end of March) submitted my application to the odyssey workshop. I had a story out making rounds on the submission landscape but it was rejected a few times so I decided to polish it up a little and pull it off submission to use as my piece for the workshop. I also needed to get two letters of recommendation, which wasn’t…
This was my third FoF and it didn’t disappoint… again. I attended panels starting Friday afternoon well into the evening and the spend 12 hours both Saturday an Sunday (at least) frantically scribbling notes, listening, and learning. Probably my 3 favorite panels were the two that talked about the short fiction markets (Neil Clarke was in both, as was Scot Noel and David Steffen) and the one about how you need to consider the infrastructure…
I have been working on my application to Clarion West for the last 5-6 weeks. I had 4-5 stories I was considering for revision and inclusion in the application, and in the end I chose one that is shows a personal relationship between a man and an alien aboard a starship. The second one was conceived during a run in the rain in late December and it is a story written from the perspective of…
I totally forgot to update my NaNo status… I did it! I won! I wrote 50,450 words in 29 days (and then about 125 more on the 30th) and then have taken a bit of a break since then. My novel is up to about 70k words now, and I figure I have at least 30-40k left to get the first draft complete. I was ahead of schedule for the first week, but November was…
I just decided tonight that I will be doing NaNo this year. I spent 3-4 months last year plotting and prepping and doing the snowflake method and then I stalled out and wrote short fiction. But I really need to do this for myself, so I am committing to it publicly. I will spend October reviewing my notes and outlines, reordering chapters, and getting ready to write. Nov 1… here I come!
My goal was to write a short story every day in November. I wrote from Nov 1 to Nov 12, averaging approximately 1000 words a day. And then boom, that was it. I wrote three more times for a total of 15, so I wrote half the days, and I got a total word count of just over 19k words. I’m going to count that as a success. I didn’t write 15 short stories, but…
I have been meaning to do NaNo for 9 years and just have never given it a try. On Oct 31, in a fit, all of a sudden I decided to do it. Jump in with both feet. I didn’t have a novel ready to work on (I know I need to work on my plot before I am ready to start writing otherwise it will be a disaster) so i decided to try to…
I made a goal for myself for the coming 12 months and that is to submit at least 8-10 stories over the next year. I have a lot of stories that are close to being submittable, and I just need to focus on them and just get over my fear of submitting. So, when I heard about the Cast of Wonders flash contest (https://www.castofwonders.org) I just knew I had to do it. The word count…
