It's Fa-bu!

Hello all, I've got brilliant news. A groovy friend and CWC alum, has officially gotten a book deal! You can read about it over at Fleur's blog in today's post. It's so exciting that I'll be able to say, "I knew her when." Super congratulations to Fleur.

For those of you who don't know her, an important thing to know about Fleur is that she is one of the hardest working authors I've known. She has written, revised, and submitted like a fiend. I can't even begin to describe the amount of hard work she's put into her craft, and her good news just goes to show that hard work pays off.

Yay Fleur!

Ghost Story

Publication: Strange Horizons

Why I chose it: I really like the feel of the magazine. They've got a variety of genres, including cool art like Zach McCain's, and groovy fiction like "The Yew's Embrace," a fairy tale by Francesca Forrest.

Submission process: Very user-friendly. They have a submission form that automatically formats your submission to their preferences. Neat, huh?

Submitted: "Charlie's Ghost" a story about a haunted ranch.

Two for the Money

Publication: The Drabblecast

Why I chose it: Drabblecast publishes in audio format, which is fun. I like the editor/host's tone in the podcast I listened to, and the feature story was a zombie story. What's not to like?

Submission process: Very easy. Subs are taken in the body of your e-mail. No formatting, font, etc. requirements.

Submitted: "An Ocean Kind of Blue" a painterly ghost story of sorts.

In the Nick of Time

Last night I submitted my first piece, a poem titled "Postage." It wasn't my plan to submit poetry, but then I realized I had at least one or two poems gathering dust that I considered good enough to give a swipe with a duster and send off.

Anyhow, on to the vital stats:

Publication: The Shine Journal

Why I chose it: I liked the blurb in duotrope, and the tagline about all the authors who'd gotten their start through the journal. Also, when I looked at some of the pieces in the journal, I liked them. Like this triptych from Shannon Deep.

Submission process: Pretty easy. They have a submission form that's pretty straight-forward.

Submitted: "Postage" a poem about the post office.

Research

I'm going to submit something this month. That's step one of the process. Sometimes it's, "I'm going to submit X," that starts things out, but this go around, it's more of a time thing than a specific piece thing.

Step 2: Research. My favorite place to look for writing markets is www.duotrope.com which has an added bonus where you can make a free account and track your submissions right on the site. Cool, huh?

I'm working on step 2 right now, looking for markets that strike my fancy. I'm a lover of the technological age, so I'm limiting my search criteria to places that take online submissions. I mean, come on, it's 2011 already, who's still accepting snail-mail only subs? Get with the times, people!

Finally, A New Year's Resolution

I was talking to a gal at work the other day. Her son is 13 and he wants to be a writer. Cool, right? He writes and he even had a teacher a few years ago who read one of his stories and totally cheered him on. But, it seems her son is reluctant to show his writing to anyone. The only reason she gets to read any of his writing is because he picked her as a proofreader.

We got to talking about writing and writing groups and getting your stuff out there because that's what writers do. All the while I'm talking about her son and I realize I'm talking about me, too.

I've been published, but it's been a long while since I sent any submissions out. And here I was, being something of a hypocrite. Oops. This year, in the desire to not be a hypocrite, I'm making it my belated New Year's Resolution to submit at least one piece to at least one publication each month. For the blog, I'm going to track my submissions. I'm going to talk about what I'm submitting, where I'm submitting, what kind of responses I get (or don't get), and go through the whole process in a very transparent way. I'm looking forward to having the extra accountability to hold me to my resolution. I always work better when there's some pressure involved.

So, how about you? Have you made any resolutions? Are you blogging about them?

Needle and Thread is Published

The February edition of The Absent Willow Review is out and one of this month's stories is mine. Totally cool.

You can find it here.

The First Line

Spurred on by getting a story accepted, I've been cruising duotrope, researching more places to submit. I want to pass on one particular publication, because I think it'd be a fun adventure. It's called The First Line and it's rather reminiscent of WP Wednesdays. They provide a first line, you write a story to go with it, and the ones they like the best are published in the next issue.

Needle and Thread

There are few things that brighten one's day like getting a message that says,
"Dear Ali –

Thank you for submitting your story for our consideration. I am pleased to inform you that “Needle and Thread" has been accepted and will appear in the February 16, 2010 issue of The Absent Willow Review. Please continue submitting and thank you for sharing your work with us!"

I'm excited.

Agent Investigation

This month for CWC, our mission is to do some investigation. Each of us will be researching some agents in our genre and coming in with a list and background info on each agent. The idea is to start getting some concrete ideas about the best agents for our work.

That, my friends, is my theme for this month. I'm going to be doing lots of research about where the Cass book would get the warmest reception, and I challenge you to do some digging for your own work. So, pick something - a story, a poem, your novel - and start looking around at which magazine/publisher/agent might be a good fit for your work. You've spent all this time writing brilliant things, now it's time to prepare for showing your baby off.

This is Nifty

Just want to let y'all know that they're doing something cool over at Edittorrent. If you post a couple of paragraphs of your work, they'll edit it. The idea is to show folks what professional line editing looks like. How cool is that?

Log Line Exercise

A couple of posts ago, I posted a link to a neat exercise to help work up a log line. Here are a couple of possbilities I've come up with for the Cass book by doing the worksheet:

• When the stubborn spell maker Cass McKade does Papa Legba a favor, she expects a favor back. Instead, she gets a monster-hunting ex-boyfriend who needs her help protecting a twelve-year-old girl from the same vampire that killed Cass's parents.
• Papa Legba owes Cass a favor, but he's got his own plans for repaying it. So, when her monster hunting ex-boyfriend shows up on the anniversary of her parents' deaths with a young girl in tow, Cass finds out that a nemesis from her past is up to his old tricks. In order to protect the girl, Cass has to face the vampire who killed her parents and finally come to terms with her past.
• Crafting spells and making deals with a voodoo spirit is nothing strange for Cass McKade, but admitting that she cares about someone is. When her monster hunting ex-boyfriend returns to town to ask Cass for help protecting a twelve-year-old girl, she will have to do all three in order to face down the girl's attacker and come to terms with the deaths of her own parents.

Wow, even with a "cheat sheet" it's still pretty tough. I'm not sure if I completely like any of them, but it's a start.

How about you? What have you got?

Last Hungry Eye Meeting This Semester, and We're Having a Par-Tee!

The final version of the magazine is off at the printers being printed. I've got my fingers twice crossed that they've fixed the misspelling of my name.

Today we had our last meeting for this issue, and it was mostly centered on the release party we're having next Thursday. We're claiming one of the student hangouts on campus as our own, offering some free food, and having people chosen for the magazine read. A couple of staff people will also be reading, including me. It'll be groovy.

I confess, I was initially considering not going to the party. In part due to having something else possibly planned for the day, but also in part to feeling bashful. My name's on the book as one of the two editors-in-chief, but the idea of claiming the title publicly... weird. But, hey, I'll get over it.

And Then It Was Over (Almost)

Everything is strangely in-synch this month. The semester is drawing to a close, and my students are getting ready to tackle their final portfolios; the Hungry Eye is nearly ready to pring; and I've got two SCWP anthologies being printed almost right on top of each other.

Today I check the SCWP e-mail account and find a message from the printer: "This is Fidlar Doubleday and we would like you to know that your books fortitle 'WRITE ON' shipped yesterday via UPS. The scheduled delivery of thebooks is April 18, 2008. If you would like to track your packages the number is..."

I'm excited all over again to see a book I've made (or at least compiled, edited, formatted, and made a cover for). In theory we'll have them by Friday. Yesterday someone asked me what I want to do after I graduate. I told her about my work on the anthologies and how I thought that type of work is fun. Now the trick is figuring out how to make a job out of it.

Going to the Presses

This week has been incredibly busy with all of my projects coming to a head at once - a new 8 pg. paper for Scottish Lit, grading comp. papers, and getting the most recent issue of the Hungry Eye ready to go to the printer.

The goal was to get the magazine to the printer by Wednesday, and thanks to everyone on staff pitching in, we made the goal. Also, during the flurry of activity, one gal especially stepped up so now I'm going to be joined as Head Editor by Juliana who did the bulk of the heavy lifting on physically assembling the issue.

The groovy part is that now that's done we can relax a bit and not have our regular meeting this week. Hoorah for a whole day of no commitments! We'll have the galleys next week, in theory, and then it's back to the printer and, all-in-all, we should have the issue printed and in our hands by the end of April/beginning of May.

Meahwhile, for SCWP, I'm in various stages of coordinating the publication of two anthologies. One of which should be ready to ship by the 14th. So, in the end, I'll have three anthologies I've helped make all coming out within a month of each other. Crazy.

I/We, He/She: Seafaring Songs and Identity

Last night I got back my most recent paper for Scottish Lit. I'm super proud of the paper's title, which is why it's also the title of this post. It's got a ring to it.

Papers for this class are proving fun. I'm delving into songs and discovering neat things about them. This last paper was all about the way identity is used in sea songs and some groovy things emerged once I started making connections. It was fun.

However, that's not why I mention the paper. The reason I mention it is because of the note my professor jotted at the top of the first page. The last part of the note: "I hope you'll continue this investigation and possibly come up with something publishable." I had to do a double-take. Publish a school paper? What?

Well, duh. Academic journals are filled with essays and papers just like what I've been producing and somebody's got to write those. The subject of academic publishing has come up a couple times in graduate school, but it's always been distant to me. Essays are things I write in order to pass a class. While some are more fun than others, I'm not so invested in them as my fiction. Once they get a grade, they've fulfilled their purpose.

Now I've got a grain of genuine consideration for academic publishing. My paper would need more work, more research, etc. but the idea might have a shot. Hrm... Could one of my essays actually earn me a publishing credit?

SI 2007 Anthology Cover

In the next day or two I'm sending off the latest SCWP Summer Institute anthology to the publishers. This is the second one I've worked on and I'm really pleased with the way the cover turned out. Since I'm learning all of this from scratch, it's been a particularly interesting experience. This go 'round I played around more with the photo editing software and I'm more pleased with the manipulation for the cover.


One thing I'm also happy with about the two issues is consistency. Both are built out of two photos (one for the background, one for the focal) which came from various spots on-campus (the backgrounds from iron sculptures, the focal images from art on the campus buildings).

By way of comparison, here's what the last one looked like:

We're Covered

Andy, Jo, and I trekked over to the art/music building yesterday to have another consultation for the H. Eye cover. The abstract cover got redone in two color schemes and it took us about three minutes to decide on one of those versions as our pick. Viola! We have a cover for next year (this year's was already decided last year).

Within maybe a week or so we'll have our new and improved website available for the public eye. I'm excited. It's all feeling so official and professional right now.

Also in H. Eye news: We've been talking about starting a workshopping group through the magazine and our tentative launch date is going to be next month. I'm hoping we can get this workable and pull in enough interest to build a good group.

When Acronyms Attack: SCWP ISBNs For the SI & WM Anthologies

I don't typically put SCWP stuff up on this blog, but today I just can't help myself.

I'm working through my second and third anthologies for the writing project (one from the summer institute, one from the writing marathon). During the first one, the question of ISBNs came up and we opted to skip it. However, we also decided they would be good for subsequent anthologies.

A couple of days ago I filled out the electronic form. Then they e-mailed us a batch of numbers that are all our own. Neat, huh? We're all official now.

Next Year's H. Eye Cover

Today Andy, Jo, and I went on an expedition to the Arts and Music building to look at possible Hungry Eye cover designs. Since the H. Eye is a university mag., the idea is to do as much in-house as possible. Ergo, the cover gets designed by university art students. Pretty neat, eh?

After our H. Eye meeting (we've got a tentative order laid out and we're beginning to contact authors - hoorah for progress) we hiked across campus and looked at maybe two dozen or more samples that one of the art classes had prepared for us. A lot of good stuff. We narrowed our choices down to two. Jo and Andy are more partial to one, I'm more partial to the other (we'll see how it works out, but I think I have a pretty good argument for choosing the one I like). Then we briefly spoke to the artists of each about some design modifications - i.e. could we see the title in another font? type of stuff.

It was pretty cool, I must say. My favorite cover has an abstract design on the front and it's currently in red, gray, and black. The artist is going to modify the colors to go with a more earthy palette, and we'll have another look. If it were just me, I'd take it right now as is, but it's not just my call, so we'll see.

On a side note: the artist who created my favorite cover is also a football player. How do you like that juxtaposition?