Essay, I Shouldn't Have To Tell You, Niteblade, Pictures, Poetry, Published

Building a Reputation

Leave a comment

Pictures! Just cause. I took these at Jo’s work a couple weekends ago:

So, I need to write a blog entry this week, but I haven’t got the time. My solution? This is an essay I wrote for school. I’m going to share it in lieu of actually writing something fresh. I apologise, but it seems kind of appropriate because last week I edited a blog entry and handed it in as an essay for the same course LOL

Building a Reputation

So, you want to be a writer. I’ve got some bad news for you—getting published is easy, the tricky part to building a writing career is developing your reputation. Remember, you’re not just selling a story, you’re selling an idea about who you are. Each publication is a brick in the wall that will grow to become your brand and represent you as an author and the mortar between those bricks is your reputation.

Not only do you need to build a reputation with readers, but you will find that establishing one with editors will also affect your career. Every communication you have with an editor will flavor their impression of you. It’s important to set the tone of your future relationship in your very first email to a new editor. Make sure they know you aren’t doing anything as demeaning as submitting your work for consideration, rather you are offering them the use of it. Emphasize that you are doing this as a personal favor to them because your work is vastly superior to everything else they have published to date (even your mother thinks so, and she doesn’t usually read the genre you write in).

For example, it’s good to note that what is expected in professional correspondence is always changing. “Dear Mr. (or Ms.) Editor” may have been the traditional way to begin correspondence once upon a time but nowadays with the widespread use of email and texting, it is perfectly acceptable to start your email without a salutation. You may also skip the complimentary closing. Why bother with obsolete niceties? They take precious seconds out of your day.

If you do decide to include a salutation and address the editor by name, it doesn’t actually matter if you spell their name correctly, so long as they can figure out who you meant. Gender, also, doesn’t matter. If you address a letter to Mr. Doe and then discover they are actually Ms. Doe, at least you got the last name correct. In baseball batting .500 is fantastic. The same applies in publishing. Likewise, while it’s good to mention the name of the publication when you submit or query, if it has any unusual spellings, feel free to ignore them or, better yet point out the editor’s mistake in choosing to spell their magazine or publishing house the way they have.

You don’t need to bother making sure your work fits the genre of the publication you’re offering it to because it is so well-written any editor worth their salt will be happy to publish it regardless. If you happen to find an editor who isn’t willing to accept it because it “doesn’t fit their market” they obviously don’t know what they are talking about. Make sure you reply to their rejection letter and tell them so as emphatically as possible.

What’s more, don’t worry about following the editor’s guidelines for formatting submissions. You’ve formatted your story the way you have for a reason and they are called submission guidelines, which means they are more like suggestions than rules. On a related note, don’t worry about fixing typos or revising before you send your work in. That is the editor’s job. If you made it perfect before you sent it to them, what would they do to earn their pay cheques?

Finally, unless you want to be known as a pushover, once editing on your piece has begun it is vital you make sure the editor knows this is not an equal partnership. You are the boss. Make them fight for every comma they want to alter and absolutely refuse to budge on changing anything bigger than a single word or punctuation mark. It’s at this stage that phrases like “That’s my personal writing style” will serve you very well.

You can’t let editors mess around with your work or your style will be changed until it’s unrecognizable. Editors may say things like “This will make for a stronger story” or “But it’s nonsensical when it’s written this way” but don’t believe them. They aren’t trying to help you improve your work, they are dumbing it down and making it like everyone else’s.

You are not like everyone else. You are unique, special; like a snowflake. When you stick up for yourself, people, both readers and editors, will respect you. Don’t let yourself get pushed around and remember that no matter how many years of experience an editor has, when it comes to your work, you are the authority.

By following these tips you’re guaranteed to make an impression on the editors who work for you. That’s what you want, for people, editors and readers alike, to have an instant visceral reaction when they hear your name. That is what will help bind your work together and build a career, brick by brick, that will be beyond compare.

My grade, in case you are curious (and who wouldn’t be?) was 70% because my teacher couldn’t tell if I was being sincere in my advice or not. My original draft made mention about how editors talk to one another and compare notes, maybe I ought to have left that in to help clarify my position. Oh well. Next time I’ll make my tone a little more obviously sarcastic 😉

Also, in case you’re curious. Yes. Every example up there has happened to me when I’m wearing my Editor hat.

Lastly, in writing-related news, I have a couple zombie apocalypse poems up at Dark Chaos this week.

Guest Blogger, NaNoWriMo

The Benefits of WriMoing

1 Comment

I met Charlotte on Twitter. She and I decided to exchange blog posts about NaNoWriMo. Charlotte’s post is below, as you can see, she is a very enthusiastic Wrimo. My position is quite different, but you’ll have to check out her blog tomorrow to see what it is 😉

On the Benefits of WriMoing

 You may have heard about NaNoWriMo. The internet gets to buzzing about it around this time of year, and that strange, nonsensical word pops up everywhere.

If you haven’t, though, here’s a breakdown of the name. It stands for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. It’s a time when writers the world over chain themselves to their desks and frantically pound their way through the composition of fifty thousand words in thirty days. It starts on November 1st and ends on November 30th. In order to “win” (that is, to meet the target), one has to write an average of 1,666 words a day, every day for the whole month. Including weekends.

It can seem like a daunting proposition. How curious, then, that so many thousands of people volunteer for it every year and proceed to write those 1,666 words per day around their usual jobs, family commitments and social lives. Why in the world would one burden oneself so, it might be reasonable to ask?

The truth is, NaNoWriMo is a blast. Here’s why.

One of the most difficult things about writing is getting into the flow of it. It’s daunting, staring at a blank page and trying to decide how to begin. Every day this happens, because every day one loses much of the momentum one built up during the last writing session. Ordinary life gets in the way, and the mind must first discard such questions as what to make for dinner, and what time it’s necessary to leave in order to get to work/make it to that appointment/pick up the kids/etc. All this must be waded through before it is possible to get into the serious business of Making Stuff Up. Proper, absorbed focus can be an elusive beast.

But having deadlines – even self-imposed ones – can be an invaluable way of giving oneself a kick up the rear. Never mind the little issues and the worries: you have a target to aim for. Just write!

This is also effective because many writers suffer from a degree of perfectionism. It took me some time to develop the ability to finish writing projects, because I was always crippled with worries about how good my work was – or might be, if I ever got to the end. I didn’t want to write badly. Of course, the only way to learn to write well is to get through the bad stuff first. NaNoWriMo is purely about getting words down. The principle is: it doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you produce your fifty thousand words!

And it’s liberating to think that way. The exciting thing is, once one gives oneself licence to write crap if that’s what comes out, it’s possible to be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the work that emerges. Some if it will be poor; some of it, however, will be great. You never know what your mind can do once you let it go.

Given that I am so wholly in favour of NaNoWriMo, then, it’s perhaps odd that I’ve never yet “won” at it. Somehow I always miss the month of November; it’s never been convenient for me. It’s the middle of the first term of the educational year, so for a few years I was too busy at that time to do it. This year I’ll miss it again. That’s because I’ve been writing in the spirit of NaNoWriMo for the last two months anyway; come November I’ll be deep into the editing phase.

But I don’t think it matters when you do it. I’m sure it’s much more fun – and easier to complete the challenge – if you do so alongside many others all cheering each other on. But it’s quite possible to simply adopt the principles and apply them to private work. It’s surprisingly possible to write fifty thousand words in a month; you just have to be prepared to give it a serious try. It’s a challenge I recommend to anybody who likes to write, no matter what it is that you’re doing.

——————

Miss Charlotte E. English writes fantasy novels with a twist of mystery. Her first novel, Draykon, was published in September of 2011; her second (produced under the benign and helpful spirit of NaNoWriMo) is scheduled for December. She blogs at www.charlotteenglish.com.

Essay

Lunacy

Leave a comment

I used to write Monster Mythbusting columns for Dark Moon Digest. They changed formats a little while ago which meant my last column didn’t run. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so in the spirit of not just leaving it to collect dust on my hard drive I’m going to share it here. You’re excited, you know you are 😉

Monster Mythbusting: Lunacy

This issue of Dark Moon Digest features the winners of the paranormal romance contest so Stan suggested I might want to write about something that theme. Great idea, but I was stumped. I asked my Twitter followers about their favourite romantic monster. The winners were Beast from Beauty and the Beast, the Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein’s monster. I agree with those choices but no clear bustable myth presented itself to me when I considered them.

Then it occurred to me. I was writing this column for Dark Moon Digest. Moon. What could be more romantic than the full moon? You’ve seen in it dozens of movies and read it in even more stories and poems I bet. Lovers, hand in hand, watching the moon, kissing beneath the moon, or sharing a plate of spaghetti in its light. The moon also gets blamed for a lot of things, so much so that the Latin word for it, luna, is the root of the word lunacy. Insanity. The full moon makes werewolves transform, dogs bite and people lose control.

Or does it?

To the first charge I think the moon is required to plead guilty, but I’m going to look at the others in this column. Does the moon really affect behavior? Are hospitals and police stations busier? What about suicides or accidents, are there more of them on a full moon?

The answer is no.

National Geographic News quoted a psychologist from the University of Saskatchewan, Ivan Kelly, as saying, “My own opinion is that the case for full moon effects has not been made.”[1] Kelly is not speaking from a position of ignorance either. At the time of his quote, in 2004, he had published 15 papers on the subject and had reviewed over 50 others. One of those reviewed papers covered 200 stories.

My own, less impressive, research has led me to the same conclusion as Mr. Kelly. I read about the results of 75 different studies[2]. They looked for increased violence, crime, anxiety, depression, suicide, hospital admissions, accidents, drug overdose and animal bites. Only five percent of the results showed an increase in those behaviors. Five percent, and even those were contradicted by other studies.

For example, a 1978 study of 11,613 cases of aggravated assault over a 5-year period showed that the attacks happened more often around the full moon[3]. However, a 2010 study of 23,142 cases of the same crime over a 7-year period, showed no relationship between the assaults and the full moon[4].

Still, despite the lack of empirical data to back it up, the popular belief seems to be that the moon does affect people’s behavior. When I began working on this article every single person I spoke to about it, without exception, believed I would end up proving the case for lunacy, not busting it. Why is that? Why do we so fervently believe that the moon, if I may over-simplify, makes us crazy?

I think it’s largely a cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy. People believe the full moon effects behavior. That subconscious belief may cause them to act differently during a full moon without actually being aware of their full motivations. Even people who do not act differently during a full moon may help perpetuate the myth. Influenced by a belief in the effects of the full moon, people may have a bit of a selective memory. They remember odd things that happen on a full moon but not when they occur on other days. Then, as if that’s not a strong enough cycle to keep the myth going, every once in a while, someone will do a news report or story about behavior changes during the full moon. The article, fuelled by anecdotal “evidence” or one of the vastly out-numbered research studies showing a correlation between the moon and behavior, will reinforce the belief in its readers and the cycle starts again.

Wheee!

For my part, however, I’m calling this myth completely busted. Except in the case of lycanthropes, of course.


[1] “Full Moon Effect on Behavior Minimal, Studies Say,” Last accessed May 5, 2011. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1218_021218_moon.html

[2] “Neuroscience for Kids – The Full Moon,” Last accessed May 5, 2011. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/moon.html

[3] “Human aggression and the lunar synodic cycle,” Last accessed May 5, 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/641019?dopt=Abstract

[4] “Relationship between lunar phases and serious crimes of battery: a population-based study,” Last accessed May 5, 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19840597

Poetry, Published

Covery Goodness

4 Comments

I have a thing for covers.

C’mon, admit it — you do too.

Jim C. Hines is probably the luckiest author I know when it comes to getting great covers. Well, maybe he’s tied with Carrie Jones, hers are awesome as well.

I’ve had some covers I loved and some I was less fond of. Over the past week or so I’ve had my work included in two new publications, which means two new covers. I adore these two, so I thought I’d share them with you. I especially love them because they are so different from one another, but each publication contains one of my zombie poems.

Firstly we have Eclectic Flash. One of my poems, Cover Up, is included in the most recent issue of Eclectic Flash. Check out this cover:

Because they use a flash player to provide their free online issue I had to take a screenshot, which means the quality isn’t as good here as it is at the website. Not by a long shot. You should click on the picture to go to the website and see for yourself. I adore that cover, it’s so cute!

I also have a poem (titled White Noise) in a spiffy new zombie anthology:

I also love this cover. The cartooniness (if it’s not a word it should be) is pretty sweet 🙂

Two very different covers, but I like them both. What do you think? Also, do you have a favourite book cover of all time? Share the love, I wanna see it 🙂

Just Stuff

October 2xCreative

Leave a comment

October is freaky busy around here. There’s birthdays, anniversaries, family visits, Thanksgiving… it’s busy.

So of course I decided to sign up for the October 2xcreative project 🙂

Basically if you sign up you’re randomly paired with someone else who has signed up and you work on a creative undertaking together, then you share your results with the community.

There haven’t been a whole lot of sign-ups over there lately and I think it’s a great community so I’d like that to change. If you have a little bit of spare time this month why not pop over and sign up. You might just enjoy yourself, and besides, I need a partner and right now I’m the only person signed up 😉

Clicky here to go to the sign-up post 🙂

Uncategorized

Interwebz are Bad (for me) Mmk?

Leave a comment

Something is wrong with me.

I can’t get anything done these days (and by days I mean months). It’s really bothering me. I feel like I’m wasting my life and, as I bet you can imagine, that’s not a good feeling.

I don’t want to go into a long self-pitying ramble, or play the self-diagnosis/analysis thing here. Those things won’t help me and will only bore you. There is a strong possibility there are a few labels we could plop onto me if I were to talk with a psychologist and I bet they would even be treatable, but there’s another strong possibility. I think the internet is bad for me.

I realise how ridiculous that sounds coming from someone who runs an e-zine, but it’s true.

When I am unplugged I feel focused, centered, relaxed and I get things done.

My samples are somewhat biased by the fact I’m normally only unplugged when I’m on vacation, so I’m going to (unscientifically) test my new ‘The internet is bad for me’ hypothesis over the next few months. I can’t unplug completely (work and wow make sure of that) but I am going to dramaticaly limit my internet access. Seriously.

The network is going to be configured to be down all day but for an hour (except on my raid day). One hour a day of being online*. One hour. Saying it I feel a mixture of dread and excitement.

I’m going to have one hour to check social networking websites, research, look up markets, surf, Flickr, read Niteblade submissions, you name it. Email is something I’ll be able to download and read offline, and compose replies to send when I go online, so that shouldn’t be a problem. However, only having an hour of browser time is going to require a lot of prioritizing on my part. It’s going to be challenging but I think it will largely sort itself out without too much concious thought from me.

Best of all, maybe I’ll be able to focus and actually get stuff written, revised, done. Focus is good — keep your fingers crossed this will help give it back to me.

I’ll let you know how this goes.

As a reward for reading this far, here are some pictures I took yesterday when I went to the U of A campus on a photo safari:

*The network will be on in the evenings but cutting access to an hour during working hours is pretty dramatic. That’s 6 or 7 hours less internet a day.

Flash, Just Stuff, Writing

Funneh

Leave a comment

I’m working on my zombie chapbook today (mostly trying to figure out what to include). That involves a lot of looking at file names and going ‘What the hell is that?’ and then opening them to find out. It’s a bit frustrating but it is helping me clean out folders a bit. Tossing things into the ‘Trunk’ directory when their time has come and reminding me of a piece or two that really just need a little attention to be something I could be proud to submit.

It also resulted in my re-discovering this drabble. I remember writing it back when I first learned what a drabble was (in 2007!) and it was actually my second drabble ever. It falls into a third category ‘Cute, but not really worth revising’. It is worth sharing here though, I think, because it made me smile, hopefully you’ll have the same reaction.

A Long Day

Jack cursed himself for the third time and stomped angrily around the clearing.

If he returned to the ship his crew would know what a fool he’d been and wouldn’t respect him anymore. He should have brought one of them with him to help, they could they have carried the darned chest instead of he, and done the digging too.

Swearing once more Jack dropped to his knees and began to dig in the soft sand; it was going to be a long day.

“What kind of barnacle sucking, bilge-brained pirate goes to bury treasure without a shovel?!” he screamed.

On a related note, there’s nothing that’s humbling in quite the same way as reading some of your old work, is there? It’s inspiring though, to look bad and see how much I’ve improved in the past 4 years because it makes me excited to see how I’ll be writing in 2015 🙂

*posts before she can no longer resist the urge to start editing*

😉

Books, Guest Blogger, Niteblade

Guest Blogger: Jon Pinnock

5 Comments

Are you kidding me? Take a look at that cover right there. How freaking amazing is that? I love it. Seriously. And I know, I know, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but dude! Also, I know Jon and happen to think he’s a pretty awesome guy and a skilled writer, so, ya know, that helps…

Right. I should start at the beginning, I suppose, instead of just sort of gushing randomly.

There’s this guy, right? Named Jonathan Pinnock and he submitted a story to Niteblade. It was a great story and I happily accepted it. I enjoyed working with him and followed him on Twitter. I have since gotten to know him better and consider him a friend.

His novel, Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens was recently released and though I haven’t yet read it (It’s sold out on Amazon.ca at the moment) I am seriously looking forward to it.

When I learned he was doing a blog tour, I invited him to make a stop here. I think Jonathan is my first ever guest blogger on this blog, and what did he chose for his topic? Um, in part, me. O_o

Give it a read and then please check out the links at the bottom, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

 

~*~

Hello everyone. I’m supposed to be here to say a bit to publicise something I’ve written, but I really think I ought to say a bit about Rhonda instead. Because Rhonda is one of a very special bunch of people that keep writers like me going: small press editors.

In case you don’t know, Rhonda edits a Horror and Fantasy magazine called Niteblade. It’s a reasonably challenging publication to get into: according to Duotrope, only 7.5% of submissions get accepted (and you can bet the real figure is considerably lower than that). So for an aspiring writer, to get accepted by Rhonda is pretty encouraging.

Back in 2008, when I was struggling to make my mark on the world, I had stuff published in a number of small press magazines, including Niteblade (with a rather odd bodyswap story called “An Unsuitable Replacement” if I remember correctly). I think a clocked up somewhere between 30 and 40 hits that year, and each publication felt like another step along the very long and twisting road towards becoming a writer.

The editors of magazines like Niteblade aren’t in it for the money. It really is a labour of love. Again, according to Duotrope, rejections are sent out an average of 18.5 days after receipt and acceptances an average of 23.5 days. If you stop to consider the amount of consistent effort required to keep up that quality of turnaround (and also imagine what some of the rejected pieces must actually be like), you realise why so many of these magazines fold. But some of them, like Niteblade, keep going, publishing stuff from the likes of you and me.

So here I am, with my first novel in the shops. It’s called “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”, it’s a comic sci-fi sequel to “Pride and Prejudice” and it’s very funny if I say so myself (but I’m kind of biased, I suppose). If you want to read more about how it came to be written and published (by Proxima, an imprint of the extremely respectable Salt Publishing), please do take a look at some of the other posts on this blog tour (check out www.jonathanpinnock.com for more details). For now, I’d just like to salute the heroes of the small presses and thank all the folk out there like Rhonda who keep on doing it for the love. I wouldn’t have got to this point without you guys.

Important stuff about the book: the website for it is at www.mrsdarcyvsthealiens.com and it’s available in all the usual online places (including, amazingly, the Jane Austen Centre Online Giftshop, where they have some signed copies). If you’re in the UK, it’s still on promotion in WHSmith, so you can actually buy it in a high street store. How about that?

~*~

Thank you so much for stopping by Jonathan, and best of luck with Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens and all your future projects 🙂

 

Just Stuff, Niteblade, Personal, Pictures

Miss Me?

1 Comment

Wow. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Did you miss me?

I unplugged and went here for vacation:


(in case that slideshow isn’t working for you, check out the pictures here)

It was lovely. I was unplugged, unstressed… relaxed. I learned a few things about myself and recharged my batteries and came home.

Then I promptly got sick.

Okay, so there was a little time in between the return and the sickness, but it wasn’t long, and I’m just now getting better… and re-recharging my batteries LOL

Such is life, right?

In between my last blog and now we also put out another issue of Niteblade:

It’s a fabulous issue. I say that a lot, and I’m never lying LOL This one is great and if you like fantasy and horror stories or poems (and if you don’t why are you reading my blog anyway?) it’s totally worth a visit. Just click the picture, it will take you there.

Right now I’m trying to catch up on my essay-writing course for school and I’m starting to brainstorm some ideas for this year’s NaNo novel (I’m thinking it may be a western O_o. I know, right?). In the next couple days I’m hoping to begin working on the layout for my zombie poetry chapbook and maybe some *gasp* edits.

And I sold a poem to the new Zombiefied! anthology

Also, I have a super schmexy new pen I need to take pictures of to share with you.

Oh! And I have some friends who will be doing guest posts here too.

The point I’m trying to make is, I’m back.

And I missed you.

Just Stuff, Niteblade, Shadows

Recharging

4 Comments

I feel like I need to recharge.

That’s the short version.

I don’t really want to go into the long version, not because it’s private or anything, but because, well, it’s long and requires the use of phrases I usually disdain. Phrases like ‘spiritual batteries’ and ‘technological burnout’.

The point is, I’m going offline for a while. My plan is to unplug for ten days starting on Tuesday. That means I won’t be checking or answering email (my own or Niteblade’s) or social networking sites. I won’t be playing World of Warcraft, or checking Niteblade submissions (though the slush readers may).

I’m going to unplug. Spend some time with my family. Visit a beach. Take some photographs. Maybe write, maybe not.

I’ll be back around the middle of August with new energy and a fresh outlook. I’ll be ready to roll up my sleeves for the Niteblade September issue as well as our upcoming special edition. To polish up my new sekkrit projekt, move forward on the story I’m writing with Danica and layout my zombie poetry collection. Maybe, maybe I’ll even be ready to start transcribing Shadows and doing it’s final revision before seeking representation for it. Maybe. But I’ve plenty of schoolwork to keep me busy if Shadows needs to mellow a bit longer 😉

Before I go I’m trying to get an empty inbox on at least one of my accounts — wish me luck. I really and truly need it.

Oh, and try to miss me. At least a little bit.

I write, I edit and I take a lot of naps.

Malcare WordPress Security