Acceptance and Contest Win: Dark Fuse & Vegas Valley Book Fest 2013

Well, it's been a productive past few months.

While I've been neck deep in the heavy rewrites and revisions of my current WIP (work in progress for all you not yet in the know), I've also been throwing my proverbial hat into the ring by submitting short stories all over the place.

1) My short story "The Resurrectionist" won 2nd place in the 2013 Vegas Valley Book Festival Flash Fiction contest. (I'll be reading my winning entry at the VVBF on Saturday Nov 2nd at noon in the small courtyard of the old 5th street schoolhouse in downtown Las Vegas)

2) My short story "Rainmaker" was just picked up by Dark Fuse for their Horror d'oeuvres flash fiction outlet. Fun stuff. Rainmaker was my entry in the Killercon 2013 Creative Fiction contest, judged by the peerless Ellen Datlow and Christopher Rice (a rising star to watch).

Both stories were written on the same day (within a few hours of one another) in two timed contests. The first contest allowed 90 minutes to write, edit and submit, the second only 20 minutes.

Most of you know that I have a super-duper writers group. The Illiterati.

Watch out, better hide your kids, hide your wife.

One of the best things about having a group in this solitary life of a writer is that you roll together. Any triumph for one is a triumph for all. Life is better when you travel as a pack.

In September the Illiterati as a group entered two short story contests in a row: The Killercon 2013 Creative Fiction contest and the 2013 Vegas Valley Book Festival Flash Fiction contest.

We won both.
(Congrats to Matt Czarnowski for his Illiterati-representing Killercon win!)

I credit as much to our own (growing) writing ability as I do to the sense of friendly competition of "outwriting" one another. I admire and enjoy the unique writing voice and style of each member of my group, and to go head-to-head with them is both an honor and a real challenge.

What are you waiting for? Find some like-minded writers and start yourself a writers group. You won't know what you're doing at first, but you'll learn.

The Universe of my WIP: or, a totally fabricated interview with James Lipton

Ok, so I found some questions from something called 30 days of writing. It might be an old meme, but I had fun answering the first question so I might just keep it up.


Besides my jilted blog needs content! Haha.

Let us pretend that I am being interviewed by James Lipton from the Actors Studio:



James Lipton will burn holes in you with his eyes.

 James Lipton: Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

This is tricky because like most writers it’s usually “What I’m working on now” since that is the most vibrant and fresh and compelling.

But I really really really love the universe I created for my fantasy series.

James Lipton: Fantasy? Why not a sweeping epic about Depression era farmers?

No... I don't think--

James Lipton: Can there be some Depression era farmers in your fantasy novel?

Well, there are farms I suppose...
But The first book in the first series is titled THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS and I’m doing some edits before looking for a potential agent. And I’ve written about half of book two just because I can.

James Litpon: That's a lot of work into something that hasn't been published yet. Did you just go crazy like my hairline?

More like your tie. When I just tallied it up for this blog, I’ve written almost a million words in this world, mostly myths and histories and a bunch of interconnected short stories.

Whenever I’m overwhelmed by my WIP, or I just want to be unfettered in creativity, I can always slip into the world and make magic. Sometimes it’s sweeping epic history, sometimes high mythmaking, but many times a character catches my imagination and draws out a close story, intimate and personal.

It’s a great feeling, going from the macro to the micro within such a wide scope of history.

James Lipton: Do you feel like you need to have an epic rap battle with Tolkien?

I can't rap in Old Norse yet, so he'd prolly win that one.


Stay tuned for more madcap interviews!

Turning the WIP into a Real Draft!

I did it!

For all of you wondering where I've been (yeah, all three of you) it's been an awesomely crazy end of the summer.

There was the coolness of WriteOnCon, as far as I know the only online writing conference. I met loads of interesting people there, even if a server glitch kept me off the site for part of the time! (That's part of life on the interweb, folks.)

And then a blitzkrieg business trip to Fort Collins, CO, land flowing with beer and more beer, where I got locked out of the pilot's quarters at 2am and had to sleep on a couch in a strange house full of 10 dogs. 10. I'm a cat person. One was one of those wooly mammoth sized great danes who kept coming up and whuffing in my face as if to say, "Dude, you are so in my spot."

But then came more awesome in the form of daughter #2, aka, the Ravager, aka Cinnabun. She's a cute little bundle of joy and sleeping and pooping and eating. Daughter #2, Lil'bun, loves being a sister. Besides lack of solid sleep, all things are well on the home front.

Last is the news you've been waiting for. (again, all three of you.)
I finished the rough draft of my sci-fi novel!

Yay! Now it's time for typing the second half into the computer (did I mention I write everything out LONGHAND?) and filling in any of the spotty parts. (makes it sound like my book has the measles)

The sad truth is that a large percentage of people who want to be writers NEVER finish a manuscript. (and then there are those who finish them but never go back and revise. It's the same as.)

What about you?

You always hear people say it, but I repeat it again: turn off the internal editor and just write.

Once you get to "The End" you should do nothing but write everything that you can think of. Go on the bunny trails, write the whole backstory of each character into the narrative. Go ahead, write.

So, as I adventure through making the first draft I'll share my adventures with you. (yes, I'm benevolent)

Now, time to turn off the computer and get back to typing!