Severed Dreams...

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I've been really bad about posting updates here. I've gotten used to the quick and lazy style of Facebook updates, alas. LiveJournal takes more effort. So here, in no particular order, are some updates.

-I'm currently 3/4 of the way through stealthmuffin's next novel MS. It's definitely a worthy successor to the first two books in the series, and it's been an incredibly quick read. I think I'll be able to finish it tomorrow, at which point, I'll be able to clear my head and switch back over to my own stuff. I really want to get this revision of Chameleon off of my plate, as hopeless as I think it is to try to sell it. Getting rid of it will be a huge weight off of my shoulders. And if my agent likes it and starts shopping it around, it'll be nice to have a piece in circulation that I'm not particularly attached to (unlike Machine, which every major SF publisher has already turned down, save one). Then I'll finally be able to turn to something else. Probably shorts, I think. I could really use a nice short or two under my belt. Hell, I might even try to revise the derivative piece of crap I had the writing group look at a couple of months ago.

- Speaking of shorts, I got a lovely piece of fan mail from Janis Ian today about "Captive Girl." Holy fucking shit -- a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter sent me fan mail. And speaking of writing new shorts, it's time to finally write a story that tops "Captive Girl," because as much as I appreciate all the attention that it's gotten and is still continuing to get, I'd really like to not feel like a lyric from "How Do You Sleep?" -- you know, the one that goes: "The only thing you done was yesterday, And since you're gone you're just another day." I can hear Lennon croon that line in my ear every time I get a new bit of praise for that old story.

- I've finally seen photos of my performance from the show up in Haverhill a couple of weekends ago, and I need to work on my game face. I thought I was projecting that I was feeling confident and pleased with myself, but in every picture, my expression is completely blank. Well, it's a step up from projecting fear, I suppose.

- In upcoming performance news, Kate and I are dancing this upcoming Sunday at Raks Spooki in Arlington. The line-up really kicks ass. I'm still flabbergasted we'll be up there alongside all those other amazing dancers. Kate and I taped our rehearsal on Sunday, and we're both very happy with how the dance is looking, so while I'm nervous for Sunday, I'm not anxious, if that makes any sense. I must remember the lesson of the game face for Sunday! Yes, we're allowed to look blank and haunted in our first dance, but damn it, I am going to project enjoyment for the second one!

- And we're also beginning to choreograph our dance for the December Za-Beth show. My hope is to be done with the rough draft choreo by this Saturday. It'll do us some good to do speed choreography, followed by speed-learning. We've tended to take months on choreo in the past, and if we're going to get anywhere as dancers, we really need to speed that up.

I think that's it.

A popular high school English teacher has been suspended after assigning his 11th-grade students a short story about masturbation by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. Greg Van Voorhis, 30, issued copies of "Guts" — which details three increasingly catastrophic masturbation attempts by teenagers with props including a carrot, a candle, and the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool — to about about 100 students gearing up for the English Regents exam.

Many of the comments surrounding this news story seem to take it on faith that "Guts" is about masturbation and that of course kids masturbate, so what's the big deal? This is how you can tell who has read the story and who has not!

Of course, Guts is a story about masturbation in the same way American Psycho is about investment banking or Hogg is about the trucking industry. Yeah, the stuff's in there, but...

All that said, "Guts" is free online (see link), has been reprinted in a Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and a number of other places, so it's not like the story is otherwise locked away.

Plus, it's better than "A&P."

Drop on by The Story Station and check out one of my very favorite short stories -- "The Monster & Mrs. Blake."

I was one of those kids with monsters under her bed (they looked a lot like the little guys in Critters), so I empathize with Jeremy. I also wrote it while my best friend Casey was pregnant with her first child and craving apples for no apparent reason...

This was meant to be read aloud, so if you have the time -- and the children-- I encourage you to do so. And please...let me know what they think!

And yes, the rumors are true -- this story has been optioned by Bamfer Productions. I get to see a screenplay soon. Saying I'm a little excited about it is like saying there's a little sand on the beach.

Enjoy!

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/5+Tips+On+Maximizing+A+Writers+Conference.aspx

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,36c800b0-dfe2-4264-aa6c-81067217ac9e.aspx

• 13:22 Running silent mode. Trust me, I'm here...I'm just a lot of other places, too. #

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well, it went okay. I sold a decent amount of books. Mostly, however, I learned what to do next time I have a real book signing. And I may have one in the works for February, also in Kemah, but this time at a major book store.

I just got off the phone with a repeeper--er, reporter--from the Oakland Press.  They're doing a little story about the Peepshow!  The reporter interviewed me on the phone and they're sending a photographer around tomorrow to have a look at the peeps in progress.  Neat!

If you are squeamish about blood and guts, this is the time to wander away and read someone else's LJ for the day.  Though this is only the preliminary discussion (the real deal will come after Friday's and Saturday's adventures)  some of you might be upset anyway.  So...(waving hands in a shooing motion) go.  Go.  ( Unpleasant realities follow... )

If blogs were people, what would yours be like?

 

Reading an entry on someone else’s blog is a bit like overhearing a one-sided conversation on a bus. The blogger isn’t talking to you – doesn’t even know you’re ‘listening’. Nevertheless, we form an opinion about that person based on what he/she says (and how it’s said).

 

From a self-promotional point of view, it’s important to be aware of the kind of person visitors ‘see’ when they read our journals, and to remember that every post we make may be the first and only entry someone reads. Of course, what we then do with that knowledge is up to us. 

 

So how can we tell how our blogs portray us to the outside world?

Take your last twenty posts and boil each entry down to its basic, one-word ingredients.

Those ingredients fall into three categories, the first of which is ‘Positive’:

 

Amusing

Articulate

Entertaining

Friendly

Funny

Informative

Recommendable

Thought-provoking

Useful

Upbeat

 

There are a few Negative ingredients.  In my opinion, fiction writers using their blogs for self-promotion should avoid these at all costs:

 

Aggressive

Arrogant

Boring

Bossy

Embarrassing

Offensive

Intolerant

Rant

Unfriendly

 

There is a third category, Neutral:

 

Advertisement

Self-advertisement

Personal

Update

Vent

 

If you write out the ingredients of your last twenty posts, you’ll get a pretty good idea of how your on-line readers see you.  If you’re happy with that, keep on doing what you’re doing, if not, then you’ll know what to change, but we’re not finished yet.

 

THE WRITER’S BALANCE - Beware the Neutral post

Earlier in this series, I talked a little about The Writer’s Balance – the ratio between self-publicity (letting people know where they can find you and their work) and self-promotion (making them give a dang).

 

Others may disagree, but in my opinion that should be one part self-publicity to ten parts self-promotion. In other words, if your goal is to use your blog to create an ‘online presence’ as they say, then self-advertisement posts – be they announcements; story clips; WIP reports etc, should be the exception, rather than the rule, and here’s why:

 

With the possible exception of ‘Advertisement’, the effect of a neutral post depends almost entirely upon the readers overall perception of the blogger. If your journal entries fall mostly into the neutral category, potential visitors won’t care enough about you to read them.

 

I hope this is useful. Next week, I want to talk about some simple, easy to remember, methods we can all use to increase our blog traffic, in the meantime, I'd appreciate your opinion:

 

Did I miss out any ingredients?

 

What ingredients would you recommend for a good self-promotional blog?   

• 17:46 Had a blast at the party! #
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Sharyn's blog post today contains what is already my favorite quote of the week.

On the other side of the coin, I don't think any teen seriously wants to see books where Winnie the Pooh gets it on.

I hate it when I'm just standing around at a bus stop on a lonesome highway and airplanes start to divebomb and strafe me before crashing into oil tankers.

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Apparently the Duotrope Gods were listening! Not even a day after mentioning how I'd like the more detailed pending results function, presto the function was up! That's awesome! I don't know if it was coincedence or what, but I'm very happy about it. They also have another new function where you can get RSS feeds for the markets you are interested in. That could be a big time saver.

In writing news, I'm pretty sure somewhere along the line I swallowed about a ton of writer kryptonite. Over the last few months I've written about a gazillion half stories. I just can't seem to finish anything. I hope this passes pretty soon, because it's seriously getting lame. I also hope those half stories don't sit collecting dust in my ideas folder forever, because that would be a serious waste and some of them are pretty decent I think. Anyway, I actually had an SF idea the other day and I don't get those very often, so I'm gonna go see if I can finish it off. Hope ya'll are having an easier time writing than me.

I can't believe my weekend is over already. Stupid time-sucking gremlins.

In the writerly coolness department, I was invited to contribute a post to Every Day Fiction's blog, Flash Fiction Chronicles. It looks like my post is scheduled for November 18, at which time it will be shamelessly promoted.

In the I-have-a-new-toy coolness department, I got a new cell phone last week and love it. Of course, I loathed my last phone, so tin cans with bits of string probably would have looked good in comparison. What I find entertaining about my cell phone use is how much it hammers home my grammar nerdom. 99% of the time, I still cannot bring myself to use text speak. And because it's way easier to text on this phone than my last one, I feel even more compelled to use proper capitalization and grammar. Viva la nerdom!

It's been an insanely busy Sunday, so as much as I'd like to sneak in some work on the novel revisions, I think I'm going to crawl into bed and see if I can will time to skip past Monday.

Last week we sang a mostly-Purcell Evensong at St. David's.  Tonight we sang the same music (well, most of it) at Good Shepherd.   I had a difficult drive in (fog and rain) to a place I didn't know, and whose signage, for visiting choristers, is nil.  It was raining when I got there (and I got wet, since I couldn't get Richard's umbrella to open, and had to wrap my rain jacket around my choir robes to keep them dry instead of me) and walked halfway around a building to find the door.   Not everyone showed up, but we filled the available choir seats and did a pretty good job.  The acoustics are very different and I had trouble both hearing what our section was doing, and hearing the other sections for balance.  

The drive home was a monster too, with drizzle, rain up to hard rain, and fog.   Was very glad to get home.  It's gorgeous music but I'd rather sing it in a place where I've rehearsed more than a half hour before. 

I must praise our bass Julius, though.   The usual bass soloist suddenly had to work (don't know what his other job is) and couldn't be there.  Julius is a HS senior with a busy schedule and a gorgeous bass voice.  David tells all of us to pay attention to other parts any time we're not singing, so Julius had been listening to the bass soloist in rehearsal.  So when David called him last night and asked if he could take over--he said yes.   And boy did he pull off the solos today...which are not simple, since it's Purcell.  (For those who know Purcell, the big one was "The Bell Anthem" or "Rejoice in the Lord Always.")

Check out Lark Neville's review!

http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/13372

RaceFail comes to horror as someone (a troll himself, most often) noted that a black person told him that horror seemed like a "white genre."

Some tidbits, as stuff there gets locked/deleted fairly often:

The Horror Drunx are female friendly because all HORROR DRUNX are created equal. I guess what I am trying to say is, things are changing for the better in horror nowadys compared to like ten years ago.


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I say down with that anime genre too. It's just such an Asian game, an Asian genre.

Also, if that person exists and that conversation really took place, I think you should be ashamed regardless of posing such an ignorant question designed to once again get an argument going here (what was one of your last posts? Oh that's right pedophilia).

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You claim to love this genre so much, why didn't you defend it when/if he said that? You posted here asking that question as if you yourself were unsure about it, so can you at least tell me if you think one country and one group should qualify to deem the entire genre racist were that true? Did YOU even think it over and how ignorant that statement is and to call him out on it?

That's like saying there aren't a lot of black chefs in Italian restaurants, then Italian food must be gay.

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Know what's unrealistic about black people in horror?

Them being in horror.

They have the common sense to get the fuck out of there when shit gets weird.

True story: Our barracks was haunted. Badly haunted. One night, during the Christmas season, the shit started again. The noises, the fog in the hallways, condensation on the walls, lights buzzing and flickering, weird noses coming from the ventilation, shit like that.

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Out of curiousity, what is the racial-equality genre?

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To be honest, I think your friend is a racist.

I can't see an editor picking up a manuscript and by reading it say this was written by a non white author. As to stories, personally I have had as protagonists; African Bushmen, Wakamba bowmen, Masai, and a New York Zombie master - just to name a few. I think it is not a difficult thing to find other races in our fiction.

It does get a bit tiring to here people are still getting so nitpicky on the subject of our differences.

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Well, first off, I don't think 10% of the population is gay. I'm gay, so I do have a horse in the race, so to speak. If you ask people to self-identify their sexual orientation, about 2% say they are homosexual. Of course, that is a bit underrepresented, so let's go with 5%. Now, I don't know the sexual orientation of most horror writers, but I do know the following are gay men:

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With that in mind, I say the following: I find it very hard to believe that a white publisher would read a story from either A) a black writer or B) a story/novel featuring a predominately black cast of characters, and say to themselves, "This shit will never sell. PASS."

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[BONUS LOL from the guy who wrote about Bushman and zombie masters!]:

Y'know I am reading all this and the question comes to mind, "Do we have to have equal statistics on Everything?" Think about it. There are cultural differences that may or may not affect the partisipation of a group in a particular activity. Because they don't, doesn't mean the activity is Racist; or that we should strive to artificially balance things.

Last night I attended a Belly Dancing event. Surprise! there were no male dancers. More than half the audience was female. Should we invite a troop of cross-dressers to every event to even things up?

PC can hit the point of ridiculous.

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Regarding some of what Wrath was saying, I've had some publishers who don't want to publish my stuff with gay main characters because they feel it limits their ability to sell to audiences that are uncomfortable with this. I don't consider this homophobic, it is just business.

...

Does it really matter if characters are black white or whatever? You can't *see* them anyway, so they can be whatever friggin' color you want; just adjust the knobs in your head.


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• 16:21 Having one of those "how many ways I can screw up today" days. #Ifailatlife #
• 18:17 Dear Science Fiction television writers: Please stop using the LOST alternate structure to further a soap opera agenda. #

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