Category Archives: update

It’s Beginning to Feel Like Fall

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For those of you who don’t live in Texas, let me explain what the title of this post means.

The daily high temperature will usually be in the nineties rather than triple digits.

Although things have been a bit cooler this last week because of some cold fronts and rain last weekend. This next week, we’re back int he nineties.

Classes are going well. I’ll be ruining some people’s day giving exams the first psrt of the week. Then I’ll be ruining my weekend grading next weekend.

On the writing front, I’ve maintained my streak (one hundred words per day, minimum) althaough some days I’ve barely hit the minimum. I’m writing a science fiction novelette right now that should be wrapped up sometime in the next week.

I’ve been listening to the audiobooks of Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner’s fleet of worlds series driving back and forth to work. I’ve completed the first two. Some of the second book retells some of the Beowulf Schaeffer stories from a different character’s point of view. I’ve read all of those, of course, more than once, but it’s been years. I”m rereading those in the evening to refresh my memory.

Niven has always been one of my favorite writers, one I will reread regularly. There aren’t many I wouls say that about.

Another is the Commonwealth stories of Alan Dean Foster, although I still have a few to catch up on. I’ve been listening to some of those on audiobook as well.

That’s about all for now. What’s up with ya’ll?

Clarification and Revision of my Review Policy

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I haven’t been reviewing any recent books or magzines lately.

There are several reasons for that. For starters, I’ve not had a lot of  time to read. It takes me far to long to finish a book because of, well, reasons. Add to that there hasn’t been a lot of newer stuff I want to read.

That being said, I’ve backed off on reviewing because I see it as something of a conflict of interest. I’m working on becoming a better writer. And while some of the top markets are not places I want to submit to because of their contract terms, there are still some I would be willing to submit to. I don’t want to alienate those editors. I also don’t want to appear to be building myself up by tearing another writer down.

That’s why I’ve only reviewed older works for the last couple of years.

This was the topic of at least one conversation last weekend at Robert E. Howard Days. Someone I won’t name (*waves at Jason*) has wanted me to review some of his anthologies for quite a while.

I’ve had a policy of not writing bad reviews (as a general rule).  So I’m going to make recommendations for things I like.

There may not be a lot of reviews, excuse me, recommendations, anytime soon. My reading time is still pretty tight.

But I’ll try to work some recommendations in. There are some independent writers whose work I enjoy that you may not be aware of.

Submission Accepted, Submission Withdrawn

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Two summers ago, I participated in a series of workshops for an anthology project. There were six anthologies, all with a different genre or theme and a different editor for each. One of them was a mystery anthology. All writers got personal feedback from the editors if their stories weren’t selected.

None of my stories were selected. Not a big surprise, but I got some useful feedback.

Fastforward to January of 2025. Igot off my butt and sent the mystery story to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. for those who might not be aware, AHMM has an abyssmal response time. The few stories I had submitted before had a response time of a year. Or longer.

Time marches on, I put the submission out of my mind, the ownership of AHMM changed, (as did the ownership of Ellery Queen, Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF. I’ve written about that here.) I focused on other projects.

There have been some complaints about the contract terms the new publisher has put into the contracts. I know some writers who no longer submit to any of these magazines because of some of the terms the publisher won’t negotiate on.

Then I got an email recently.

The story had been accepted. Contract attached. Publication date August.

Sixteen month response time.

I read the contract and withdrew the story.

This was the first time I’d seen one of the new contracts, although I had heard plenty about them from a few writer friends.

The word “irrevocable” was used frequently.  I would be signing away all rights, including audio, film, and media. There was no reversion clause.

Sorry, but I’m only interested in licensing first North American and/or English language serial rights. Not anything else. And certainly not in perpetuity.

It was a thrill to get a contract. On the other hand, I have to wonder if I would have gotten the acceptance if the contract terms hand’t changed. Have enough top writers stopped submitting to AHMM that they are buying from second-tier?

I don’t know. I’m not going to worry about it.

As for the story, I don’t recall that much about it. I’ll reread it and decide what I want to do with it.

But that’s what’s been going on with me lately.

Yes, I’m Still Here

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Just a quck note to say I’m still here and this blog hasn’t gone dormant.

Well, not completely.

I’ve been teaching summer school. right now I’m teaching an online physics coulrse and putting it together as I go. It’s been taking up most of my time. I have two weeks of class left, then I get a quick break before the fall semester starts. The rest of the time I’ve been working on writiing fiction. I’ll post a writing update after the first of August.

I’ll also post a report on Howard Days. It was a good one this year.

That’s all for now. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still around. Just dealing with responsibilities and adulting and other “fun” things.

Writing Update and Publication News

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I should have psoted  this at the first of the month, but the link to the current issue of Pulphouse hadn’t gone live.

I have a story in the current issue of Pulphouse. It’s a short little science fiction tale that I’m quite pleased with.

You can get an electronic copy at the Pulphouse Store by clicking the link. Print copies are also available.

On the writing front, I hit my goal of 2024 words per day on average in April with a little extra. I’m still a few days behind for the year, but I’m on target to meet and probably exceed that number for May. With luck, I’ll end the year ahead.

Issues With Comments?

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I got an email this morning from a reader, Deuce Richardson, who tried to comment twice on the Machen post.I’ve added his comment to that post and had no trouble with it.

This is the message he got:

Not Acceptable!
An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security.
I’ve never seen this message before. Has anyone else gotten this when they tried to post?

February Writing Update

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I’m doing a challenge to write 2024 words per day (on average) in 2024. I ended January a little bit ahead, but I finished February about four and a half days behind, with just over fifty thousand words written. This puts me behind for the year.

But there are still ten months left in the year, so I have plenty of time to catch up. As of yesterday, I was over a day ahead for the month of March.

Most of what I wrote were blog posts or the current work in progress, which is dark fantasy. I started it intending it to be a short story, but I soon realized it would be something longer, probably a novel. It turned out I was right on that point. It will be a novel. I was thinking it would come in somewhere between fifty thousand and sixty thousand words. I passed sixty-two thousand words last night. I have at least three major scenes left to write, so at this point, I’m expecting it to come in at over seventy thousand words.

Other than blog posts,  I’m going to keep plugging away at this one until it’s done.

Quick Writng Update: Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad

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So for the last eight days, I’ve had four short story deadlines. I made three out of four, including the last about half an hour ago.

The first was for a mystery sf workshop. So were the next two, although the setting had to be the same in both and different from the first. These were for a study along I was doing since I couldn’t attend the in-person session. I’d had some lead time on the first one since it had to be written before the workshop started. The other two I got during the workshop and had only two days on each one to finish. I didn’t  make the second one because I was driviing the day the prompt was given and spent half of the second day dealing with insurance and roofers. By the time I got to it, the day was nearly over, and I was falling asleep over the keyboard.

I also think this story would have ended up too long for the length requirement. I’ll finish it since I like the setup, and I got good feedback on the setting in the first story of this pair.

The fourth story is for a holiday project that will be published at the end of the year. I would love to be published in this project and the anthology that goes with it. We’ll have to see. I got started on it yesterday, and today I scrapped what I’d done. I’ll still go back and finish the story, but the fantasy element, which is one of the things the editor will be looking at, was weak. The story I wrote this afternoon is, I think, a much better fit for the project.

On the 2024 words per day in 2024, I’m about a day behind, alhtough I’ve made a lot of progress catching up today. There have been, and will continue to be, some days when I won’t be able to get much writing done due to having to be on the road. Some of those days I won’t get much notice on since they are job-related, and the nature of the travel is such that it happens when it happens.

Now, back to the keyboard.