Sunday, June 14, 2009

Reading and Ideas

As regular visitors know, I read a lot. Today I managed to finish reading Issue 6 of Necrotic Tissue's back catalogue (loved Ms Sin's submission in there - the description of his nuts heading for higher ground made me smile and wonder if a little bit of hermaphrodite doesn't linger within her psych - but I digress), and I also finished the April Issue of New Bedlam.

If you haven't been over to read this little gem of an online zine, I encourage you to do so immediately. Honestly, it won't take you long and it's full of creepiness. And has filled me with all sorts of story ideas.

Regulars will also know that I'm currently targeting NT and NB as my next markets of choice. Yes, I will be submitting to other markets, but I'll also be penning new stories with these markets in mind. I've written a 100 worder for NT already - actually I wrote that over two weeks ago, and I have another story currently on the go, but have a horrible suspicion it's going to go over word length - and it could turn into a serial - did I mention the other day that my timelessness bubble had burst?

But I have four ideas for stories in or around New Bedlam. We'll see how that plays out. The July issue isn't far away, and the next reading period is July 1st to August 31st, so I can play with my ideas, see what comes out in July and refine my plan of attack.

As you can also see, I've moved on to read Vacation by Jeremy C Shipp. I was going to read Sheep and Wolves but discovered Vacation was written first so I figured I'd better do this in the right order.

I also had to go into work today to finish off some geek stuff in my 'day job', but while I waited for some other stuff to happen, I managed to write a bit more of my new (possible serial) story so it now stands at 1706 words. I've got maybe three more 'scenes' left to write so I could go close to getting out of it under 3000 words, hopefully under 2500 - but we'll see. If i can't tie this down into more of a serial format, then it will definitely race past 5000 - again!

Thank you to everyone for the nice comments on my Apex news. I'm still quietly doing the Snoopy Dance inside.

Dave, I began my new story at 2 o'clock last night and I've only just realised I didn't use FLASHWriter as I promised. I'll see if i can come up with something else and start using it immediately - old habits die hard.

So that's it from me for today. It's been quite productive without having to push myself. Life is good. I hope it's been just as good for you as well.

6 comments:

  1. I envy you, man. I've pretty much forgotten how to write short stories, and even when I could, I could never make them come in under 5000 words.

    Good luck with all your submissions, and congratulations on making the anthology.

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  2. Vee - do you read much in the way of short stories? There are plenty of good anthos around which can help you get back into the swing of shorts - if that's something you'd like to do, and many of the people on my blog links publish shorts around the 'Net in free to read zines. If you'd like to write them, you need to read them.

    You can join places like Café Doom and have a go at the flash contest which helps you get into writing really short stuff - it helped me write the piece which got accepted at 52 stitches.

    I only mention this because you say you envy me - which makes me think you'd like to write shorts and get stuck into the whole submission thing to magazines. Well, wishing won't make anything work - time to dive on in there.

    If I can help with anything to move you along, just let me know.

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  3. Or I really like to talk about balls. The world is full of possibilities ; )

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  4. I have no doubt you enjoy talking about them and probably being involved with many other things associated with them (as long as they're Ying's), but it is the totally empathy you depict through your writing which had me thinking you know more than you're letting on...

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  5. ; )

    I am a deep well of testicular compassion.

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  6. Thanks for the kind words on New Bedlam, BT! We are really enjoying putting it together. I was so amazed and flattered that not one of the invited authors declined.

    I look forward to your submission. mwahaha

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