WotF Results, August Summary

Well, in what very well might be my second to last quarter of eligibility, I got another honorable mention in Writers of the Future.  Go figure.  At least I’ll pro-out with a stack of certificates, right? Bright side and all that.

Ebook sales held steady for August despite people apparently thinking that summer would be the slow months.  I’m hoping they were right and that this fall is going to be even better.  And I’m really looking forward to the holidays when many more people will acquire e-readers.

Here’s the numbers:

Ebook sales: 105 (Note: Smashwords hasn’t updated since June for most of the places other than Apple, so I don’t know about some sales yet)

Paper sales: 3

Words written: 19, 904

Yeah. My word counts have died down horribly.  But that’s okay. I’ll make up for it this month.  There’s probably no way I’m going to hit 900,000 words this year, but I think I’ll hit 500,000 or so, which is more than half of goal. Clarion and my husband losing his job side-tracked me a lot.

I have another SF collection ready to go (just waiting on one rejection (or sale) ) and I’ll start the weekly chapters of Casimir Hypogean tomorrow so that my blog is totally neglected while I’m writing The Raven King.  Most of the plot for Raven King fell on my head while I was driving to Reno for Worldcon, so I feel confident that I can bust out the novel in good time.

 

WotF Q2 Results and Sundry

I got a Silver HM for Writers of the Future 2nd Quarter 2011.  My second Silver HM in a row.  Guess I need to step up my game somehow.  If only I could go to an intensive, 6 week workshop on writing SF/F fiction.  (Oh, wait….)

My SF novella is still free on Kindle for a limited time and over 3,000 people have downloaded it.  Want to be cool, too? You can Get it Here!

And my SF collection “The Spacer’s Blade& Other Stories”  was featured on Daily Cheap Reads.  Go here, check it out.

There. That’s all I got. Sorry.  Clarion has 2.5 weeks left, and then I’ll try to formulate some thoughts on it, etc.

Writers of the Future Q1 2011 Results

I got a Silver Honorable Mention for my story. My first Silver HM, so that’s something I suppose. I figured this story was HM level sort of thing, so it did better than I expected. My story for Q2 is, I think, going to be a Semi-finalist. I believe it is really good, but it might have a flaw that won’t work for the contest. We’ll see.

I have a couple more neo-pro interviews to post this week so the blog won’t be totally neglected while I finish this novel. I’ve been reading books on writing and reading tons of short stories lately. I have all sorts of plans, but I’m torn between what to do and what order to do it in. We’ll see. I might be posting a revised writing schedule for the year here soon.

Writers of the Future Results Q4 2010

I got my 4th Quarter results for WotF.  Another Honorable Mention.  Not surprised at all really.  I didn’t think this story was finalist material, though I like it a lot and think it’s a good story.  But it is a very dark, somewhat strange fantasy story.

My story for Q1 is probably not a winner either, but truthfully on that one, I have no idea.  It’s totally different from what I usually write, so we’ll see.  I’m currently working on my Q2 story and think it has a ton of potential.  I just have to finish this novel first, then I’ll get the story done and mailed.

So that’s that for Q4.  Time to find another market and send the story back out.

Writers of the Future Q3 Results

The first Honorable Mention list for 2010 Q3 has been posted here: http://www.writersofthefuture.com/node/636

My name is on it.  Got a very nice email notifying me (first time I’ve gotten an email for just an Honorable Mention).

It would be lying to say I’m not disappointed.  I really, really like the story I submitted for Q3 and think it’s one of the strongest I’ve written.  It’s also novelette length, which means there’s a shorter market list for it.  And near-future hard sci/fi, which makes that list even shorter.  But it is back out to another market now, so here’s hoping it fares better among the magazines than it did in the contest.

Good luck to anyone who hasn’t heard yet (or got the phone call), and best wishes and e-hugs to those of us now looking ahead to Q4.

WotF 2nd Quarter Results

Well, I didn’t get a phone call.

But I’m a semi-finalist. Wee! Step in the right direction.  (Too bad I’m 90% sure my Q3 entry will be disqualified based on inclusion of a song lyric. Oh well. )

So yeah, that was sorta a shock, considering I’d heard nothing at all from Joni or anything.  But hey, getting a critique from KD is pretty awesome and way way better than the straight reject I thought I was getting.

Now, to go write something more awesome than anything ever for Q4!

Writers of the Future Q1 2010

Honorable mention. Again.  About all there is to say about that.  I keep joking with people that I’m going to make it as a writer “the hard way”, ie never winning a contest, never getting into one of the big workshops.  Who knows, I might actually end up having to do that.  Hell, I’ve got contingency plans for if I’ve written 20-30 novels and they never sell to NY.  It could very well end up I do this whole damn thing the hardest way possible. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I’m not even close to that point yet.  This week I’m giving in to my brain’s desire to write five novels at the same time.  Well, the five that it will let me outline.  Sindra’s Storm is being back-burnered until it grows a cohesive form.  Take that, novel.  I’m hoping that as I get going on the various projects that one will take over.  But worse comes to worse, I’ll have five novels done in the next few months.  It’s not as much work as it sounds like.  I imagine three out of the five will be short novels, one possibly very short since I’m going to try writing it as a middle grade.  So even being written much at the same time, the finishing dates should stagger out nicely.

I also am going to try to work in more short story writing time.  I’m feeling incredibly poor, and as my father always said, poor is motivating.  The more work out to markets, the more likely I am to get a sale.  Never thought I’d empathize with Dickens.  Life is full of surprises.

Also, my blog seems to be doing weird things.  Catagories and links are apparently missing, but yet they show up in my admin pages.  Sigh.  Not going to worry about it right now.  Hopefully Word Press will get around to fixing whatever is broken.