Category: short stories

lightning rods are good

especially if you live in a tall house at the top of one of the only hills in the area, during a lightning storm.

this past sunday night, we had a pretty cracking storm cruise through overnight, filled with lightning flashes and that deep, grumbly, boulder-cracking thunder. woke me up at 3am* and lit the bedroom. cool to watch, being all snuggled and safe in bed.

turns out, the house got struck, blowing our Dog Watch hidden fence unit across the garage, and frying our garage door opener, my desktop computer, our television, an outlet and lights in the bathroom, our phone (and internet) and our cable TV line.

frustrating and confusing as this might have been, it was all completely counterbalanced by not having to have a conversation with the Fire Dept while they hosed down the ashes of our entire home.

our house is 100 years old with 4 lightning rods on the 2 roofs and those things certainly saved us; so much so that we didn’t even know about the bulk of the stuff until the next night, because we were busy enjoying our planned activities in the garden and working in the house on other stuff. never bothered to turn on the tv or computer or even pick up the phone.

needless to say, though, there hasn’t been much on the writing front. however, i’m reading a very cool book right now that has me feverishly jotting notes in prep of a story idea i hatched back during my Viable Paradise week, which is getting me very excited.

oh, and i finished the draft of another short this past weekend, currently titled “The Aesthetician”. i had many different stops and start on this one, but this finally came out.

so, yeah, lightning rods are good.

*impressive, given that i’ve slept through fire engines hosing down a housefire across the street

**leant to me by a future biochemistry scientist of some reknown (and my sister-in-law)

catching up

i’ve been bad at posting the last couple weeks, but i’ll blame end-of-semester grading and other work for that.

however, i have been writing and such:

  • RoE’s latest draft is being left to cool for a month or two*
  • i’ve just finished the third draft of a new short story that i can’t figure out a title for yet. the story is the result of a kick/challenge i was given in a conversation some weeks ago, for which i am deeply grateful, as it was a lot of fun. it’s currently out to beta readers**
  • i’m finding myself thinking more and more about the YA novel I’d outlined some months ago (currently called Darkstar, for lack of anything more interesting), so that might be next
  • or one of a couple other shorts that are kicking around
  • rejections have almost stopped, which means its time to reshuffle the deck and get my recent stories out to a new batch of markets

i’ve also been hemming and hawing over the purchase of the new ASUS EP121, and not just as a toy. it boggles my mind that the idea of a slim, pen-based tablet capable of viewing a full page of text has taken so long to appear. it seems like a sure-fire win for the education sector. i’m expecting to use it for essay grading to drastically descrease my time and, hopefully, increase the value to my students. yes, it’s more expensive than an iPad, etc., but it seems quite worth it for the much greater functionality.

did i just convince myself?

 

 

* actually, it was my brain that needed cooling over all the changes i’d made and have still to make

**want to be one? let me know.

the old story’s finished; long live the new story!

following more of Uncle Jim McDonald‘s endless sage advice from Viable Paradise, i moved directly to the final revision for a short story, Games People Play, after finishing “Another Night…”. GPP is one of my older stories (in its original form, anyway) that i kept picking away at over the years, but last year was when it really came together. this was both excellent and depressing:

  • excellent, because the story went from a neat concept to an emotionally powerful and real story (as i see it, anyway)
  • depressing, because of the precedent set for how long it takes me to properly finish a short story.*

in any case, the story really came together last year and i am quite proud of the result. unfortunately, it came together at just shy of 8000 words, putting it beyond the outer limit for most of the markets i think would be right. i submit it to the one it did fit, but got promptly rejected. no real surprise, but i was then stuck. i couldn’t see anywhere to cut anything out, so i put it on the back burner.

until yesterday. with half a year’s (further) distance, i was able to properly deppo it, and this evening i finished typing up the edits. nearly 800 words gone, and not only within the limits of the other markets, but stronger and tighter as a result, as usual.**

it will need another set of eyes to make sure there’s no repeat of the Fragile incident, but then it’s out there!

and tomorrow…?

* i was going to mention that it seems to take far longer for me to get a good grip on my short stories than it does on my longer pieces, but on reflection i realized it’s because i historically tried to ‘wing it’ for shorter pieces, rather than work through even a rudimentary outline.

** i don’t honestly know why, but it’s still amazing to me that i can write that many extra words and not notice it in previous revisions.

magnanimity: Fragile revision posted at Absent Willow Review

the incredibly understanding folks at The Absent Willow Review have allowed me to submit the updated version of Fragile, which has now been posted.

i can only offer my sincere thanks and gratitude to them for going out of their way to do this. i don’t know how common such gaffes by new authors like myself are, but i am deeply thankful for the leniency i’ve been shown.

of course, i’d still like to go crawl under a rock for any of this being necessary in the first place, but hey, what doesn’t actually kill you, right?

enough moaning; move on, already

no more wasting time bemoaning what i didn’t do; it’s time to get back to the actual doing.

to that end, i have passed the halfway mark of final revisions for Another Night… and i am getting steadily more excited about it. i was in a funk, but i have decided to stop giving in, and it’s coming along. it’s a snow-day here today, but the joy of telecommuting is that i can still work my other job.* however, when that is finished, i hope to get some more done on the revisions and see maybe another 20 pages done by the end of the day. perhaps a bit high-reaching, but we’ll see.

oh, and a bit of snow-shoeing while the flakes still fall. i keep not doing it, and i don’t want to miss another chance.

* which is good, because i like to be able to pay the bills and eat food.

humiliation: the best teacher evah

so, i am an ass.

following directly on the heels of the announcement that i just had a story published, i have learned that the version of that story that is published is rife with grammatical errors, and it is out there for all to see.

my fault.

completely, totally, 100% my fault.

moreover, i did not read through the story completely when it was posted this week to make sure that all was well, and so it fell to my parents to point the issue out.

yep. my parents.

to be fair, who else would be willing to tell you that your writing has genuine errors in it? it’s rather like the rare times when i attempt to dress myself without my wife to doublecheck that i’m not wearing stripes with plaids, sneakers with slacks, that sort of thing.

only, it’s worse than that. i pride myself on attention to detail when it comes to my writing*. how am i to be taken seriously if my published work is filled with incomplete sentences and awkward phrasings**?

it is deeply humiliating, and i did it to myself. well, i suppose that’s better than being humiliated by someone else. on the up-side, as someone said to me today, i will never let it happen again.

ah, learning experiences.

* less so, with fashion, obviously.

** okay, maybe not “filled with”, but definitely “peppered with”, or perhaps “lightly salted by”…

New story published! Fragile is at The Absent Willow Review

we spent the weekend on our semi-annual jaunt around MA and CT visiting family and friends, which was very nice, and we arrived home to find the notice in my email that the latest edition of The Absent Willow Review has been published, including my short story Fragile!

So, obviously, drop everything else you’re doing, click on over there, and give it and the other stories a read!

when you’re done, of course, come on back and let me know what you think.

running on empty – draft 1 – day 1 (finally!)

the outline has been done for a couple weeks, but other things have taken priority. i’ve kept at my 5 minutes a day, though, which i finally started using to force myself to start writing Running on Empty (the novel version). yes, other things have been going on, but i’ve learned that i can always make time if i really want to. so, i finally wanted to badly enough.

it started out on the backs of scrap pieces of paper, where i scribbled down one of the first scenes while in a bleary pre-sleep state but determined to delay no more. each night i pushed a little further, and each night the 5 minutes grew longer and longer, while my alertness increased. this wasn’t doing great things for my sleep, and this morning i finally made a complete first step. i spent a few hours above the garage gathering together these bits of paper and journal entries into a single place, and working from there. at the end of it, i had almost 4 pages of hand-written work.

and it felt great!

perfect? of course not. i don’t care. it’s good, i’m having fun again, and i can’t ask for more.

so, starting today, i’m back to 3 pages (hand-written) every day. no matter what. (okay, i might take christmas day off. sue me.)

it’s been 5 months since i finished Another Night at the End of the World, and it’s great to be back at it.

p.s. – i also processed the handful of rejections i’ve received over the past couple weeks, resubmitting several out to other markets. i need to keep on top of this better.

too long, as usual

in an attempt to get something new out into the slush piles, i turned to Games People Play, which was very nearly finished back in the summer. i printed it out and read it out to my wife on a drive last night* and we both thought it was in need of only a small handful of very minor tweaks, but otherwise ready to go. having just spent taken care of those tweaks**, i turned to the markets i had picked out for it, only to run headlong into the word limit, as usual.

7500 seems to be the upper limit in most arenas, with a preference for 5K or less. Games is, of course, just under 8000.

joy.

time to Deppo it.

well, tomorrow, anyway. tonight i need sleep***.

* to see comedian Bob Marley at a fundraiser. our first time seeing him. hilarious! must see more of him.

** plus the obligatory dozen or so other adjustments i feel compelled to make whenever i start revising anything.

*** yep, 8:30 and i’m sleepward-bound. ah, good times.