Projects

What I'm Listening To: Metro Station - Shake It

What I'm Doing: Putzing around the internet before knuckling down and writing.

I think I've talked about this on Twitter, but I forget what I have and haven't kept up with on various places. (I know I'm quite behind on my LJ, for instance.) And I mentioned in on Facebook, definitely.

Anyway, I found Alexandra Sokoloff via The Blood-Red Pencil and she has some amazing articles on writing a book using screenplay tips. Now, granted, reading her all day ground my writing to a halt, but it also inspired a great deal of ideas for me. (Oh, I can do that HEERE, ah, I see where I've already done that, good, at least I'm not totally hopeless, etc.)

She mentioned that one of her books had won an award, called the Bram Stoker Award. I thought that was pretty nifty, but didn't really delve any deeper into it, until I saw someone else had won it (I forget who, now.) on Wikipedia, so I went and looked it up. The Bram Stoker award is given out by the HWA - Horror Writer's Association. I thought that was the neatest thing since sliced bread, and I immediately wondered how I could go about joining such an association. (Just because I'm not focusing solely on horror, doesn't mean I don't want to write it eventually. Besides, Dean Koontz was the president twenty years ago. That's a story in and of itself. "Yeah, so this writer's association I'm part of? It was presided over by Dean Koontz once upon a time.")

One of their requirements was that you have sold a short story of at least 500 words for at least 25$.

I said, "Oh."

Because I'd considered - briefly - writing short stories when I first began writing, but I had no idea what to do, or where to start, or anything, so I shunted it off to the back of my mind and began work on Eversong. Then I saw that, and it brought the idea of selling short stories back to the forefront, but I had absolutely no idea what to write about.

So I googled 'selling short stories' and read the various articles I found, and one of them was kind enough to offer links to places where you could sell short stories. The one I chose was Spinetingler Magazine, because they accept a wide-range of shorts, and the only other one that looked remotely interesting, their cut-off date for submissions is the 30th. XD

I'm a quick writer, but the way I've been going lately, not even I could have made that one. From no idea to complete with revisions in three days? *shakes head sadly*

And then I went on Twitter, and discovered Billy Mays had died. (The Oxi-clean/mighty putty guy) Ed Mcmahon, Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays in one week? I said, 'it reads like a laundry list of celebrity deaths' - and lo, there was my story idea. A serial killer targeting celebrities.

It evolved a bit, because it doesn't exactly take place in Hollywood, so 'celebrities' turned into 'models' and 'heiresses' (Take THAT, Ally!) - rich, beautiful women. And I won't give anything away; this is more of an instant gratification than my novels, so when it comes out, I'll direct everyone towards the magazine/ezine (not entirely sure if it's online or printed) where it's at, and if someone can't get at it, I'll possibly share. If you ask nicely. ♥ But not until it's out.

Eversong, as you all know, is complete to the first draft. Eden is giving me trouble (that 10k/15k a day that I had going sputtered and stalled out, and I'm having trouble getting it started again) and now I've got a mini project to work on, tentatively titled The Empress.

I also think that when the time comes to query Eden around, that selling short stories to magazines in the same vein as Eden, will look very, very good on my query. "Previous publication! Sold stories to magazines! I'm not totally useless/totally new!" Ditto, if I can find 'fantasy' mags to sell to (the one that cuts off on the 30th is looking for action!fantasy stories, but like I said; not even I can go from nothingzero to ready-to-sellsixty in three days).

This is also the time for an apology to Eric, who wandered over to my blog because I stumbled upon his, and discovered a massive post about bacon. DDDX My only excuse is to see my info *points to side bar* I did admit right up front that I was slightly crazy.