Other Writers Who Are Us

[Manuel Royal]

Thanks, Ed! I revised the story a little (no less gross, but smoother) and sent it out to another market. So we'll see.

Good weekend; made my first fiction sale, for a thousand-word short. A token amount, but still, it's the first time somebody's willing to pay money for publication rights to something I wrote. A writing milestone for me, so I drank a Dockweiler. (And anybody who can identify what that is gets a kewpie doll.)

[Goggles]

I"d finished a collection of short stories about a month ago. no wait that isn't right. I'd actually finished it back in late January and had spent two months after that attempting to pick through the different errors and such. After that I'd used my free createspace proof copy for 'winning' nanowrimo's yearly 'write 50 000 words of fiction in a month' contest. I've actually had that proof for awhile and ye fraking Gods I missed a metric cartload of errors. Did more corrections and i"m making a PDF version freely available for everyone to download (I'll post the link in another thread It'd just get lost here.)

Pretty sure there's still a truckload of problems with what's there, but I'm done editing the thing. At present I can't afford an editor, and I know my choice to go ahead anyway is probably not the best one. Still, if luck is with me I'll have an iphone/smartphone/kindle edition up for grabs via a friend's business, and even if that falls through there is still the PDF that will float around however long I can keep it floating around, and a hard copy that will be available via createspace.

Am I cheating? Given what Mr. Boyett has told of his own efforts between finishing Ariel and finding a publisher, in addition to several friends of mine who have also tried getting published (some even succeeding) I would have to say yes it probably is. However I still retain rights to my work, so I'm releasing the content under a creative commons non-commercial/attribute license. Who knows? Maybe somebody will notice it? If nothing else its been an experience and something I can keep on file for later.

I'm far from done though. There's another short story collection I'm working on finishing that started as a gathering of what I'd written for Steampunk Tales and has expanded a great deal, though unlike Blue Shadows this collection is entirely in one world as opposed to a simi-random collection. Then there's a fantasy novel I'm making a try at. Some days I think I surprise myself with my own cleverness. Others it all feels so cliche I can't stand it. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle and though possibly somewhat different the world presented there would only be considered average.

you know, the most frustrating part about all this isn't coming up with material, or even attempting to do cleanup work on what's there. It's trying to get useful feedback.

Edit:
Plus i owe a pair of stories for trades. One centering on a plain ordinary vanilla mortal meeting the Egyptian God Anubis, and the other somehow involving a starship. Not sure how I'm going to make that one original, but the vagueness of what the other person wants leaves me plenty of wiggle room!

Sadly all the rejection slips I've collected as of late have been electronic, which kinda bites since I'd wanted my own wall o rejectitude. It's just not the same to leave the electronic versions laying about.