I have a story in The Neurodiversiverse, a science fiction anthology about alien encounters. Available for preorder on Kickstarter and all that good stuff. We've got a week left on the KS, which will be kicking the pay per word up for contributors IIRC.
Because it was an R&R on spec and I did not know if they would buy the rewrite.
However: my short story "A Meeting of the Branes" will appear in The Neurodiversiverse. There will be a Kickstarter but the book will exist regardless of success on same.
However: my short story "A Meeting of the Branes" will appear in The Neurodiversiverse. There will be a Kickstarter but the book will exist regardless of success on same.
The SFF author support service, The Submission Grinder, sends out a weekly email providing information about market changes, opportunities, and so on.
There was a promising CFS, which I looked up (which has provided me my now current favorite statement on AI subs), like ya do. I have a story sitting in my rolodex which is a perfect match for the CFS. (The possibility of this is part of why the CFS was promising.)
The anthology is currently bidding a flat rate for stories, though hoping a Kickstarter will let them bump up to a per-word. That flat rate, on the perfect-match story, works out to about $.02/word. (Two and a third, when I do the math.)
So now it's the calculation. Is the story strong enough to potentially sell to a higher-paying, higher-profile market? Is there a strong likelihood that the story's quirks will mean that it just keeps making the rounds of no-sales outside of a niche particularly aimed at those specific quirks? If it sells, it will get in front of a few curated eyes who might be specifically looking for That Kind Of Things, and maybe word of mouth will do something, but it will be otherwise obscure.
I think I'm leaning towards sending it, mind, but there is so much Vagueness Maths involved in making sure that's what I want to do....
There was a promising CFS, which I looked up (which has provided me my now current favorite statement on AI subs), like ya do. I have a story sitting in my rolodex which is a perfect match for the CFS. (The possibility of this is part of why the CFS was promising.)
The anthology is currently bidding a flat rate for stories, though hoping a Kickstarter will let them bump up to a per-word. That flat rate, on the perfect-match story, works out to about $.02/word. (Two and a third, when I do the math.)
So now it's the calculation. Is the story strong enough to potentially sell to a higher-paying, higher-profile market? Is there a strong likelihood that the story's quirks will mean that it just keeps making the rounds of no-sales outside of a niche particularly aimed at those specific quirks? If it sells, it will get in front of a few curated eyes who might be specifically looking for That Kind Of Things, and maybe word of mouth will do something, but it will be otherwise obscure.
I think I'm leaning towards sending it, mind, but there is so much Vagueness Maths involved in making sure that's what I want to do....
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The table of contents was just released for Bioluminescent.
I'm in it.
So are Starhawk and Neil Gaiman.
(Please consider this me gibbering gently in the corner.)
Kickstarter link is up for preorder/campaign notification.
I'm in it.
So are Starhawk and Neil Gaiman.
(Please consider this me gibbering gently in the corner.)
Kickstarter link is up for preorder/campaign notification.
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As an update to the cryptic nonpost immediately previous I note that my story "Seventh Page of the Heartwell Gazette" will be appearing in the second issue of Archive of the Odd.
This is not quite an epistolary story, but, y'know. Gesture at that, for format.
This is not quite an epistolary story, but, y'know. Gesture at that, for format.
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To add to yesterday's statistics post, as of today, three holds this year I think.
(Two of which later became rejections, but hey, the third I only got today, it has time.)
(Two of which later became rejections, but hey, the third I only got today, it has time.)
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When I made the clover icon because I was stalled/fallow I made a post saying my stats for the year to date were:
51 submissions / 1 acceptance / 5 personal rejections
This year my stats to current date (admittedly a week and a half or so later in the calendar but that doesn't make that much difference) are:
72 submissions / 1 acceptance / 10 personal rejections
The thing I'm working on at the moment is really clever and I need to figure out if it's unattainably clever....
51 submissions / 1 acceptance / 5 personal rejections
This year my stats to current date (admittedly a week and a half or so later in the calendar but that doesn't make that much difference) are:
72 submissions / 1 acceptance / 10 personal rejections
The thing I'm working on at the moment is really clever and I need to figure out if it's unattainably clever....
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So I have been having a Massive Serotonin Shortage in this here brain this past week, not helped by getting a final-round rejection on the remaining story I had a hold on and basically having no sales this year and thus feeling a terrible burned-out wreck on a professional level. I have been feeling like whining about this in various writing locations and just have not had the spoons to complain about how much of a burned-out wreck I am.
BUT
I just signed and returned the contract to sell my story "Neptune's Due" to Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology, which is an antho I really really wanted to sell to, so I am extremely happy about this. Lunarpunk as described in the CFS is 100% my absolute jam, and since it's a newish microgenre or subgenre or whatever I'm just thrilled to get to say something in one of the first collective works of trying to do the thing.
I would also wish to note that this story would not exist without![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
neolithicsheep, whose greatness is such that he even inspires those who he maybe barely knows from Adam.
And I would like to thankbrooksmoses for titling the damn thing.
Now if that lower back rib on the right would stop fucking spasming.... (Ow.)
BUT
I just signed and returned the contract to sell my story "Neptune's Due" to Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology, which is an antho I really really wanted to sell to, so I am extremely happy about this. Lunarpunk as described in the CFS is 100% my absolute jam, and since it's a newish microgenre or subgenre or whatever I'm just thrilled to get to say something in one of the first collective works of trying to do the thing.
I would also wish to note that this story would not exist without
neolithicsheep, whose greatness is such that he even inspires those who he maybe barely knows from Adam.And I would like to thank
brooksmoses for titling the damn thing.Now if that lower back rib on the right would stop fucking spasming.... (Ow.)
One hold for a story I know is particularly difficult to place so I am extremely anxious.
One "please tell us when this story sells so we can celebrate with you" rejection.
Nervewracking forms of nice, I suppose. [gently twitching]
One "please tell us when this story sells so we can celebrate with you" rejection.
Nervewracking forms of nice, I suppose. [gently twitching]
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I have been banging my head uselessly against this story I want to finish by Thursday because I have like three CFS deadlines on Thursday and I'd like to write at least one thing?
I have been Very Stuck.
So tonight I decided what the hell I would write some Deliria character interstitial internal processing and maybe that would get the part of my brain that's hooked on that happy that I'd done it, in case that would unstick me.
I wrote two thousand words?
Not words I can do anything with, but hey, I wrote a thing, I can still write things. :P That's nice to know.
I have been Very Stuck.
So tonight I decided what the hell I would write some Deliria character interstitial internal processing and maybe that would get the part of my brain that's hooked on that happy that I'd done it, in case that would unstick me.
I wrote two thousand words?
Not words I can do anything with, but hey, I wrote a thing, I can still write things. :P That's nice to know.
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Two personal rejections in one day.
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There is nothing quite so simultaneously encouraging and discouraging as a rejection letter in which the editor makes it clear that a) they loved the story and b) they could not manage to wedge it into the book.
'Tis a time for near misses, I suppose; yesterday's form rejection was in the mode of "You made it to a later round and we stared at it a lot but sorry, no."
'Tis a time for near misses, I suppose; yesterday's form rejection was in the mode of "You made it to a later round and we stared at it a lot but sorry, no."
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jenett and I are discussing her current work in progress, and particularly the falconry-related metaphors intrinsic in her character Carillon's manner of interaction, as related to the fact that his House in posh boarding school was "Owl":Jenett: And yeah. So much falconry. (Ok, and I am just now realising that's part of why Carillon preferred to fly an owl, fuck, brain, you're not subtle, are you?)
Me: ... you didn't notice you'd done that before?'
Jenett: No? I was going for 'very large raptor'
Me: I laugh and laugh.
Me: I just. Carillon at all those falconry events with the nobs carrying a Giant Honking Owl just to thumb his nose at them forgetting he's not a Fox.
Me: Like, I thought that was the joke!
Jenett: I mean, it's not wrong! Just.
Me: I am laughing so fucking hard.
Me: I feel this is the unsung story of our editorial relationship.
Jenett: This is why I try to trust my brain to do the right thing, even if I don't have a clue why it's right? And yes, yes it is.
(My current state of writing weird is originally posted to the tweeters but is, as I said there, "Tonight in “every story’s different”, apparently making progress on this short requires that I loop loud One Direction through my headphones like I’m a tumblr rps-writing teenager in 2014.")
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2021
Submissions: 110
Acceptances: 2
Rejections, form: 85
Rejections, personal: 18
2022
Submissions: 3
because I wanna start the year off right.
Submissions: 110
Acceptances: 2
Rejections, form: 85
Rejections, personal: 18
2022
Submissions: 3
because I wanna start the year off right.
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Today's episode of Escape Pod has "A Dragon In Two Parts", which I just described elsewhere as transhumanist wish-fulfillment scifi for furries, trans people, and disabled people.
That's four publications this year, I think: three stories and one poem.
That's four publications this year, I think: three stories and one poem.
My story "A Dragon in Two Parts" will be released as the 30 December episode of Escape Pod.
This is a nice little science fiction story about mind/body dualism, chronic pain, radical authenticity, and transformation, I guess. Optimistic, even!
This is a nice little science fiction story about mind/body dualism, chronic pain, radical authenticity, and transformation, I guess. Optimistic, even!
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My nano project is the Kemetic 101 I've been saying I was gonna write for over a decade, which is differently brainstretchy than fiction and in many ways easier to keep nano pace for. (A lot of it is 'let me regurgitate things I have been studying for many years, here, blat, there they are.')
But anyway I wrote a thing and came away with "this is a genuinely new thought I haven't had before" and I'm going to put it here so that I keep it.
The Egyptians were very much nervous about extraordinary events. Even festival celebrations were routinized, with those things that differed from the regular daily ritual kept fairly minimal, and the core of the practice being "we do the regular daily ritual and then add these specific bits". Things that were out of the routine were places that the chaotic and dangerous might seep in.
So I'm writing about rituals for major life events and a thing strikes me (this is not the new thought; this is ritual 101): the thing about ritual is that it leaves one not-alone, there are the other participants, there is the idea that this ritual is something that has been done before, will be done again, it is brought into the ordinary and routinized, even while remaining a potentially-unique personal event. (And how unlike a lot of cultural expectations this is, that ritual sets things apart and sacralizes them by separating them from the routine.)
The new thought part is: any action taken as a unique, personalized individual is high-risk.
(And I ponder that one of the things that has made me better able to do lots of story submissions is that I have both routinized and de-personalized them in many ways; I have a stock cover letter, I have stock this, I have stock that, the events may be individual and unique but it is just part of the perpetual cycle of them. It is no longer something that feels high-risk to me as an individual.)
But anyway I wrote a thing and came away with "this is a genuinely new thought I haven't had before" and I'm going to put it here so that I keep it.
The Egyptians were very much nervous about extraordinary events. Even festival celebrations were routinized, with those things that differed from the regular daily ritual kept fairly minimal, and the core of the practice being "we do the regular daily ritual and then add these specific bits". Things that were out of the routine were places that the chaotic and dangerous might seep in.
So I'm writing about rituals for major life events and a thing strikes me (this is not the new thought; this is ritual 101): the thing about ritual is that it leaves one not-alone, there are the other participants, there is the idea that this ritual is something that has been done before, will be done again, it is brought into the ordinary and routinized, even while remaining a potentially-unique personal event. (And how unlike a lot of cultural expectations this is, that ritual sets things apart and sacralizes them by separating them from the routine.)
The new thought part is: any action taken as a unique, personalized individual is high-risk.
(And I ponder that one of the things that has made me better able to do lots of story submissions is that I have both routinized and de-personalized them in many ways; I have a stock cover letter, I have stock this, I have stock that, the events may be individual and unique but it is just part of the perpetual cycle of them. It is no longer something that feels high-risk to me as an individual.)
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from a major SFF magazine said they liked my style but that specific story didn't work for them and as rejections go that's rather pleasant.
I am going to take them at their word and make them a priority target, heh.
I am going to take them at their word and make them a priority target, heh.
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Real boy status: certified. My SFWA membership has been approved.
Something I've been sort of wanting to achieve with my life since rasfc.
Something I've been sort of wanting to achieve with my life since rasfc.
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