I sold an SF novelette to GiGaNotoSaurus, it’ll be appearing in June.
I also got the cover for the second Lorian Archive book. The trilogy won’t be published for a little while longer (but should all be out this year, barring life catastrophe, knock on wood).
Have some shiny:
(Cover done by the awesome Tom Edwards)
November was a bit of a mess for my writing. I tried two different starts on the novella I was working on before deciding to switch to working on The Raven King. The bad news is that I didn’t finish anything. The good news is that I finally found a stride in this book and it will be done shortly and likely out in January as I’d hoped.
The novellas are percolating in my head and I think I’ll be ready to make a third run at them as soon as I finish this novel. That’s the benefit of working on multiple projects at once. When I get stuck, I can just switch to something else and work still gets done.
All right. Here are the numbers for November.
Short stories sold to magazines: 1
Words written: 39,078
Ebooks sold: 226
My husband has been compiling my ebook sales data into spreadsheets for me and making nifty graphs. I will have a giant data-filled post for the end of the year, hopefully with visual aids and stuff.
In happy news, I just published a Remy Pigeon short story. Ever have one of those characters who just storms into your head and won’t leave? That’s Remy for me. I have two novels planned with him to be written in the next year or so and I’ve already written three short stories about him. After many near misses with the magazines, I have decided to publish one of them myself. So here is the cover for Flashover, a paranormal mystery short story. I hope others will love Remy as much as I do.
Description: Creole gentleman Remy Pigeon has a gift, or a curse. He can touch objects and read the past from them.
He prefers to stay away from trouble, but when an attractive red-head with a serious problem and a supernatural secret wanders into his house on a hot summer day, Remy knows that trouble has just found him.
It isn’t live yet for Nook, but it is on Kindle or all formats are available via Smashwords HERE.
I also have discovered a very cool new way to organize my writing time. I think it deserves its own post, however, so I’ll work on that this week.
My NaNo rebel project is not going well. I’m stuck trying to figure out if this story needs to be told in 1st or in 3rd person. So I’ve switched back to the novel (the sequel to A Heart in Sun and Shadow). I’ve never written a sequel before. It’s tough writing one for a book that is published, too. I can’t change details that were set in the first novel, so I’m constantly having to recheck the older book for things. I think I might take a couple hours today and make a quickie world bible or at least a list with the relevant details. I wrote the first book before I’d really nailed down how I prefer to write novels and I have zero cohesive character notes or world notes at all (which is something I started doing AFTER I wrote this one). It’s odd to go back and look at a work that I did a couple years ago.
In other news, I sold another story to Daily SF. This is my tenth fiction sale in less than two years (first sale was in December of 2009). Five of those have been to Daily SF. I guess it is true, you just have to find an editor who loves what you write and then sell them as much as you can. I’m glad so many stories of mine have found a home with Daily SF. They are a great publication (delivered to your email! Go subscribe! /end plug).
Oh, and I crossed the 1,000 books sold mark for my e-books. Hopefully the next 1k doesn’t take quite as long, but it is definitely a mile-stone.
So that is what’s up with me. Now, where did I put that outline? Back to writing!
I am pleased to announce that I have sold a short story titled “Nevermind the Bollocks” to the new monthly anthology series Digital Science Fiction. The story should be out in their second installment, so sometime this summer I think. This is my fourth pro-rate sale and, counting reprints, my seventh overall sale in the two and a half years I’ve been doing this. I hope this is a sign that between the books I’ve been studying, the workshops I’ve been doing, and the writing practice itself, that I’m still growing and improving.
I also have finally posted a collection of fantasy short fiction, which is will be available soon on Kindle and Nook and is already through the new, streamlined Smashwords grinder.
Here’s the cover:
It includes eight of my fantasy stories. More information can be found by clicking on the picture or you can get it directly from Smashwords by going here.
As for writing, well, I’m doing better. The novel is literally one working session away from done. I’m dropping my better half off at the airport today and then I’ll have almost three full days to get work done with zero social distractions. My top priority is to finish the novel and then finish the story I owe for the Mirror Shards anthology. Then it’s on to outlining the sequel to A Heart in Sun & Shadow and getting some other short fiction done as a warm-up to Clarion.
Speaking of Clarion, I’m starting to get excited and nervous about it. As we get ever closer to the start date and things begin to get sorted out like travel plans and housing, it feels more and more like this isn’t something abstract. And hey, at this point I don’t think I got in on an administrative mistake, since no one has corrected it yet. My Kickstarter project has only five days left, but it is pretty close to getting funded (only a few hundred left!) so I’m hopeful that the money will come through. The outpouring of both financial and emotional support by my friends and my fellow writers has really touched me. I thank all of you and I’m going to work my ass off at Clarion to make sure I don’t waste this opportunity.
So that’s what is going on with me. Lots of work, not a whole lot of blogging, sorry. I’ll do my usual monthly round-up next Tuesday (e-book sales have been pretty good to me this month, yay).
It’s nice to have good news for once coming in multiples. Most of the neo-pro writing life is being told no in varying ways, over and over and over. It’s good to hear a yes on occasion. It’s even better in pairs *grin*
So. A couple sales to announce. First is a reprint sale of my story “No Spaceships Go” (originally appeared in Daily SF in Dec 2010). The wonderful people at Scape- The e-zine of YA speculative fiction loved it so much they want it even though they don’t normally do reprinted fiction. So soon it will be available there as well.
Second sale is an as-yet-untitled story for the anthology Mirror Shards: Exploring the Edges of Augmented Reality (Volume One) being edited by my writer friend Tom Carpenter at Black Moon Books. The anthology is open to submissions until July, so get on it if you have an augmented reality story idea.
And finally, another interview for my indie-publishing side (I’m like the Hybrid Author of Doom here I guess) is up on Indie Reads. You can find the interview here.
Whew. Now back to the grind.
Yeah, I know. But I sell sporadically enough that any sale is worth a giant announcement, damnit. Because it’s been almost 6 months since my last sale to a magazine, so I was starting to tell myself it had all been a fluke etc…
Anyway, I sold a flash fiction story titled “Love at the Corner of Time and Space” to Daily Science Fiction. Which marks my fourth short story sale to a magazine and my second pro-rate sale. W00t!
On another note, I’ve written 3 pieces of flash fiction in my adult life, and sold 2 out of the 3. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something…
Technically, I have a couple stories eligible for award nominations. I had a long debate with myself about even writing this post, but decided, hey, first year I’ve got things eligible, I should at least write a subtle “zomg sold stuffz!” post pointing this out.
So here goes…subtle. Yeah.
“Some Like it Hot” (AlienSkin Feb/March 2010 issue) is eligible as a short story.
“No Spaceships Go” (Daily Science Fiction, Dec. 17th, 2010) is also eligible as a short story.
So if you for some reason loved either of those and are in a position to do some nom-ing, there you go. That’s my list. (My third story published this year doesn’t, I think anyway, fall into the speculative fiction category enough to be relevant. However, if you feel like reading it and don’t mind dropping .99 on it, it is now available as an ebook with another short story here or for free on Contrary’s website here)
My story, “No Spaceships Go” is now up for free reading at Daily Science Fiction. Go and enjoy (and enjoy their growing library of other great stories spanning all the speculative fiction genres).
This week I’ll be pretty much no online. I’m doing a novel in a week challenge and am devoting 90% of my time to writing. But I’ll be back with the new year! Time to get some last minute work done.
My story “Insect Effect” is up in the Autumn issue of Contrary magazine, you can read it here.
I’m nearly done with my thriller novel, so things will be quiet for the next few days while I make a final push on it and hopefully find time to edit for my dyslexia before sending it out to first readers and for the workshop.
I’ll be back with a post or two whenever I finish. Until then… so long, Internets 
I’m deep in the middle of “oh god oh god we’re all gonna die (before I finish this novel)” land, so this will be a quick post.
First, I sold another story. My story “Insect Effect” will appear in the next issue of Contrary Magazine. Does that title sound familiar? It should, because I put it up on Kindle. See, I somehow mis-marked my submissions records and had the story listed as rejected. Totally my fault. Fortunately, the folks at Contrary were kind enough to overlook that (the story is down now, and won’t be available again except at the magazine until after the contracted date). But it sure has taught me a lesson in double checking everything before doing anything that might compromise a sale. Fortunately this time I don’t have to pay for my mistake and my story still gets published by an awesome ‘zine. (They have some very odd, surreal, and beautiful stories, I’m happy that my odd and surreal story gets to be among them).
Well, my Friday novel deadline is looming tall. Time to drink another monster, stab the short story plot demons in my head (seriously, my brain wants to go back to short fiction. It keeps trying to escape) and go right back to the novel. I’m almost through the swampy middle and into the home stretch. Writing a thriller has been different and more challenging than either of my other novels to date, but I think I’m learning a ton doing this, and hopefully will have a kick-ass book at the end. But first… I gotta get to the end.
