79 Honorable Mention

Well, it’s official. “Plato’s Cave” received an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future Contest. To be honest I’m a bit disappointed. I hoped that story was going to do better. Oh well, Honorable Mention is better than nothing, and now I’ll be able to send it around to some other magazines.

Still no word from the Heinlein Society Contest. They don’t seem to have an active forum, and their website hasn’t been updated since July. To be honest, the story I sent them wasn’t as strong as “Plato’s Cave”,  but you never know. Maybe they’ll love it and publish it

Other than that, I just completed a solid draft of a new story that I’ve sent to a few people for peer review. It’s one of those stories that either works brilliantly or not at all. It’ll be interesting to see how people react to it.

78 What the Hell?!?!?

So it’s 4th of July and I’m watching Blazing Saddles on TV Land and they edited out the famous Fart scene! Have we become that prude a nation we are mortified by a little flatulence? First off, farts are funny. Second of all, why bleep them out?!?! I can understand that some are offended by excessive language or (gasp) nudity, but farts? Really?  Oh well, at least there’s this .

77 The Booger Bandit Strikes Again

Taking the advice of one of my coworkers, who suggested I try taking a lighter tone with the next story, I wrote and just sent out my latest short story, Misery Loves Company. I, as usual, sent it out to Fantasy and Science Fiction first, as their website says they don’t get enough humor or sci-fi. One nice thing about them is that they reject stories very quickly. Their turn-around time is about a week. It’s a funny thing how relative the things we look forward to are. I mean, I’m excited about the fact that this magazine will reject me quickly so I can send it out to other magazines to be rejected as well. You’d think I’d be excited about the prospect of getting it published, but instead my expectations are fulfilled if I get a timely, polite rejection note

In other news, the story Golden Visions bought, Good Intentions, is online. Click here if you want to see it.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with the writing, but some of you might remember that I started a production company called Noir Films, LLC. It lasted about two years and produced one two minute animation which I had hoped would drum up support for future productions. Unfortunately, that never happened, and the video is just hanging out on YouTube all unwatched and unloved. So here it is in all it’s nerdy glory. I hope you like it

76 Lots of random stuff

CelebrityBarFight.com is online! It’s taken a lot of hard work, and there are still some minor things that need to be tweaked, but all in all it’s up, running, and working great. I’m really glad to see it come out so well.

What else…well, I guess not that much really. The title, in retrospect, is a bit misleading. Sorry. I’ll try and do something more blog-worthy between now and the next post.

75 Sold a Story!

One of my stories, “Good Intentions” has been sold to the July online edition of Golden Visions Magazine. I’m glad to have found a home for it, as I’m particularly fond of that one

I spent the holiday (memorial day) weekend working on a new one with a comedic slant. The last few have been pretty dark, and it was suggested to me that perhaps I should write something a bit lighter to cleanse the pallet. I’m always worried about writing comedy because while I know what I find funny, I never know if someone else will be amused as well. We’ll see about this one. I’ve got a solid draft done and will start showing it around in a few days.

74 Is it just me or did the Sopranos get boring after a while?

I know I’m watching this like three years after everyone else probably did, but I generally like to get things on DVD and watch them all the way through. Anyway, I’ve been watching the show a lot the past couple of months and all of a sudden I found myself bored. The same sort of thing happened with Battlestar Galactica and it caught me off guard there too. You’ve got a show that is compelling because of it’s hyper-realistic drama and the intense level of conflict in each episode. After a while though, the writers have come up with new things for the characters to get mad about, or risk losing the show’s dramatic edge. It’s not a solvable problem, though.

If you create a show whose plot is driving by hyper-realistic conflicts between believable characters, you have to accept the fact that at some point, there will be a time in these people’s lives when things are okay. Life is a series of peaks and valleys, and a show that is compelling because of it’s realism, loses the very thing that makes it compelling when it fails to depict these people’s lives in a believable fashion. What can you do though? Drama is all about conflict, and when there is no conflict, realistic or no, it’s boring to watch. So, what do you end up doing? You introduce characters and kill them off, you have your main characters get upset about things that are out of character for them to be mad about.

The only show I’ve seen that solved this problem was Babylon 5, but in all fairness, that was more of a nerd soap opera than anything else. Further, that show was pre-written. All the major plot twists were figured out ahead of time so there was a natural arc for the dramatic conflicts.

…Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about the suspension of disbelief :-p

73 The Wind and the Lion

To Theodore Roosevelt - you are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours. - Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates.

 

God I love that movie. If you haven’t seen it (The Wind and the Lion by John Milius) go check it out. Well worth it

 

Things have been going well as of late. My latest story has gotten rejected with lightning speed by the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Oh well, their loss. I’m shopping it around along with a few others to various places. I’m finding that the group of people that publishes regularly in these magazines is fairly small, and I’d love to know what the ratio is of writers who regularly send stuff in to these publications vs the number of writers who get published with some frequency. Just one of those things I’ll never know but still wonder about.

 

70 In the Bag

Got another short story finished. I feel really good about this one and damn if it doesn’t feel good to get this one out of me. It’s been rolling around in my head for couple of months, but work and other things kept me occupied so I really couldn’t hammer it out until now. I just sent it out to a few early readers to see what they think. Not two seconds after I sent the email, I was already finding little problems here and there with the ms :-p

I’ve also been doing critiques online with critters.org; reading other people’s stuff and sending my stuff in to be reviewed. I’ve been getting a lot of constructive feedback. It’s good to have a bunch of strangers who also write take a look at your work. They’ll see things in your writing that your friends and family won’t.

A bit random, but here’s something I saw and found funny:

67 I’m OK You’re OK

Sorry for not updating in a while. I’ve been writing (more on that in a bit) and breaking up with my girlfriend. I won’t go into how or why, but it has been keeping me rather occupied as of late. You know that song by the Police, Message in a Bottle? It’s funny, I’ve heard that song about a million times but I don’t think I’d ever really heard it until know. I told my pals and family what had been going on and all of a sudden

 Walked out this morning, dont believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems Im not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home

The picture above came from Nikki (who rocks in every conceivable way). It’s funny too that I was just listening to Message in a Bottle when she sent this to me, given the lost-at-sea theme of the pic.

Anyway, long story short, things are going pretty well for me all in all. I’ve got a few short stories out and about to various magazines. I’m working on a new one, and generally keeping myself out of trouble.

65 Short Story Update

yaay!

The third sci-fi short story, Right and Wrong is done and on it’s way to Analog. We’ll see if they like it or not. Good Intentions has now been rejected by Analog, Necrology, and Apex. Given that it’s only about 1,700 words, I’m wondering if that may be part of the problem. It seems like a lot of these magazines want stories that are at least 2,000 words or more. Beyond that, I’m still editing and playing with Snakes on a Plane. I’m looking to enter it in the 2008 Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest, so I want it to be perfect.

So I’m still working hard to get these stories written and published. Many thanks to those of you who have been reading and offering criticism to these stories

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