“Elephants Dance” has been published at Velvet Mafia. Adult content, but it turned out really well.

An yes, I know I need to get back to updating this!

It’s called “Winter Showers,” and it’s up on Ruthie’s Club, which is a pay site, but it is a gorgeous one. The artist who did the illustration to my story hit it spot on – the whole presentation is amazing. You can check out my Ruthie’s Club author page here,  but the story is by subscription only.

In my year-end review I mentioned a piece that I marked on Duotrope as an “assumed rejection.” Being the person I am, I don’t like loose ends, such as stories I don’t hear back on. Before this group I am about to talk about, I had only two long-time stories, and they were LONG – one was 562 days, and one was 374. I never heard back on the first one and the second I finally got a rejection. I also had one that went 205 days, but with that magazine it was expected – plus it was a mail submission and a mail rejection which always takes longer. Other than those all of my responses have been under 90 days, with the exception of six that were between 100-139 days, and two that were in the 180’s (and those two I was kept up to date on when to expect an answer by.) So all of those I didn’t stress over.

But this year I had 3 stories go out and go over 200 days. One, the longest, I emailed inquiring if it was still under consideration, and received a quick reply letting me know it was. So, even though it is still going a long time, I’m not worried about it, as I know it isn’t lost.

The other two however, have me a wee bit irked, only because I don’t like marking assumed rejections, even when I feel they must be. Both I emailed over a month ago to inquire about, and neither responded. One I hadn’t received a conformation email for submitting, so at 200 days I reluctantly marked it AR. The other one I did receive a conformation email, but no response to the inquiry email. Tomorrow that one will be at 200 days as well, and I will probably mark it as an AR, but it irks me more than a rejection does. (I’m used to those.)

So this year so far, I have submitted two pieces, and already received a rejection for one. Go new year!

Before I go into my year-end statistics overview, a happy announcement. I had two stories go live last month,

“Tumbleweeds and Highways” was published in Clean Sheets.

“Web of Death” was published in MicroHorror.

I also finished the month on 100 Words which you can read at Val Gryphin’s December Batch.

Go check them out and if you have any comments feel free to leave them for me.

Go! Shoo! Then you can come back and read my stats!

Now, where were we. Ah yes.

In the year 2008, (According to my lovely Duotrope) I had 74 new submissions to 57 different markets, on 17 different pieces, with 11 submissions still out for consideration.

Of those 63 completed submissions I had 48 rejections:

• * 1 assumed rejection
• * 7 personal rejections
• * 40 form rejections

I also:

• * had 1 rewrite request
• * withdrew 7 submissions

And, (the best part) I received 7 acceptances, of which 3 have gone to print.

Other interesting facts:

• * the shortest response time was 0 days
• * the longest one is still out at 216 days
• * the next is an assumed rejection at 200 days (yes, I had emailed to check on it.)
• * the longest actual rejection was 189 days
• * of the acceptances, I had one that was 0 days and one that was 127
• * the piece that went out the most went out 13 times so far (and still not accepted!)

Overall I consider it a very successful year. I met agents and learned more about the business at a writer’s conference, and developed an elevator pitch I was able to give to an agent I respected. I was also requested to send the first 100 pages of my novel, which, even though it was rejected, was a great experience. I completed both NaNoWriMo and a month of 100 Words. I did a hard revision on Moving on Nightfall and am 2/3rds of the way through my second novel.

Yes, overall, it very good writing year.

With WP 2.7 my theme works again!!!! YAY!!!!!!!

I iz happy heh. The new wordpress kicks ass, and the new upgrade feature built in will make future upgrades much easier.

Now that that is taken care of, I will try and get stuff posted here more often. I am still doing 100 Words, and I designed a new shirt for shirt.woot, which I will try to post tomorrow.

For now, here is my 100 Words entry for 12/25/08

Carefully she made her way down the stairs. They were getting harder to see, so even though she knew their shape by heart, she had to strain to make out any possible obstructions that might be in her way. Such as a wet, slippery leaf, a sock dropped by a neighbor coming back from doing laundry, or the stray cat that hung out on the steps. She liked the cat actually, she had been feeding it for about a year and a half. But now she always worried that she might trip over it as she made her way down.

Holidays and travel have got me a bit behind, but still doing bit by bit. I’m still working on 100 Words, although I missed a day twice so I don’t think it will post. That’s ok though, I am still writing one for every day, and writing almost every day because of it.

Haven’t worked on either novel, because of my schedule, but I haven’t been totally non-creative. Last week between my daughter and I we made ten different batches of cookies. Wouldn’t think all that cookie baking would be a lot of work, but it is. Plus it makes me move slower than normal lol.

I have been a Woot.com fanatic for years. Woot is a daily deal site where at midnight central time (I’m in eastern, d’oh!) they put up an item for sale for 24 hours for a great price. Now, not too long back, they started a spin-off site called shirt.woot.com (there is also sellout.woot.com, and wine.woot.com, but we’re not going to go into them.) Shirt.woot features a new t-shirt design every day of the week, and three of those designs are the top three vote getters in their weekly competition called a “Derby.” That’s where the designers post their concept ideas for t-shirts and the Woot community votes on which they like. And yes, if you are one of the lucky three top ones, you do get paid $$$ for your design.

I’d been following the site for a while, but been a little more serious about it for a few weeks. I have been following the derbies, and tempted to try them. Now, as I said before, I consider myself a writer first, and an artist second, but I have been trying to bump up my art. I kept wanting to try, but kept holding back because of a) slight intimidation, and b) the damn wrist. I can’t hold a pencil for long enough to do a detailed drawing fast right now. (They announce the theme on Thursday, and open for submissions from Friday to Thurs, but if your submission isn’t in the first two days it’s got a really hard hill to make it to the top.) But this week’s theme was neat (doing the design in one unbroken line, so I decided to give it a try. (Click if you are a Woot member and want to vote for me!)

it’s not what I would call perfect by any means, but I did it and that is what matters. I had done some concept sketches Friday, my daughter cut her foot last night and wiped out any chance I might have had to work on it yesterday after work, but today I did it. I sketched it in pencil, then drew it with my micron pens. Scanned it in and worked on it in paint shop pro. I’m ok with how it turned out actually.

It’s titled “It’s Not Lost” and the caption is (and yes it sucks, but I was brain dead by that time):

As the world advances, and we become physically synthetic, what will we retain of our humanity?

I have a new DigiPro tablet (that I got from Woot actually!) that I haven’t broken out and used yet, but I think I will shortly. I may not do shirt.woot every week, but it is along the same kind of exercises as NaNoWriMo - it forces me to do it, and not obsess too much over getting it “just right.”

Now tomorrow I must upgrade my site to Wordpress 2.7 *sigh*

Because the pipe under my kitchen sink – of which the u-joint was replaced a few weeks ago with a new plastic part rather than the metal joint it did have – just separated where the metal and plastic meet. As I was Drainoing the sink, I got sprayed with hot Draino-water.  And no, this is not something to inspire a short story. Gurrr

100 Words is going well. It is a very different writing set of muscles to use than for NaNo, but I am enjoying it. I’m looking at each one as being a short story or clip of 100 words, and I’m actually coming up with some decent stuff.

I’m posting the entry for 12/6/08, below, but I’m testing making it so the fiction won’t show on the RSS feed. So, you’ll have to click on the post title to come here and read it on the site. This may change , I’m experimenting with it right now. Let me know if you hate it.

100 Words

Supposedly he wrote the book, but in reality it was his computer. The writer would sit for hours at his desk, and pound out a few sentences that may or may not have made sense. Meanwhile he’d be getting drunk, beer by beer, until finally he’d stagger to bed.

The computer had fallen in love with the heroine of the novel, created back when the writer had been mostly sober. Night by night the computer wrote the story, and in the mornings, hung over and forgetful, the writer would read, and be pleased with, what he’d written the night before.

Since it’s not at the top anymore.

Will be in late tonight. I’m waiting to fix my template until WP 2.7 is released in a couple of days. Sucks becuase of all the work I put into it, but oh well, right? hehehe.

Did my 100 Words today.

the blogging must go on – particularly as I haven’t been blogging much over NaNo.

I am starting 100 words, and I think it will be a really good thing for me. While I am finishing my NaNo. heh. Here’s today’s.

100 Words

She thought that the sensation of the migraine was like someone taking tweezers, and slowly pulling out the veins in her head, one by one, like someone pulling out unneeded threads from an old sweater. If she lay very, very, still, she could almost hear each one as it snapped off, leaving her face without a scaffolding. She thought about how her face would look, slowly crumpling under the weight of her skin, without anything to keep it up, kind of like one of those dried apple face dolls that sat on the shelf behind her dead grandmother’s kitchen sink.

Upgrading to wordpress 2.6.5 broke my theme and some plugins So we are going with the default until I can design a new theme. Gurrrrrrrrrr.

As evidenced by the LOLCat up there heh.

I didn’t make it to my goal yet, but I did hit my 50k+ which is pretty damn good. I’ve been in Atlanta since the 22nd, so that substantially cut down on my writing time – plus the friend’s house I’m at had no wireless! A travesty! And all of the neighbors had their wireless locked up. So there were up 8 people sometimes (depending on who was there,) trying to use the home computer. Finally I gave in and for a thank you present I bought her a router and set up a network for her so that other people could use their laptops. I had to man.

So anyway, visiting cut down on my writing, but I still made 50k. I’m shooting for the rest of it (30k) by Dec 15-20th, depending on how busy we are at work.

I’m also doing the opposite of NaNo for the month of December – I’m doing 100 Words. Writing exactly 100 words, every day, for a month, starting tomorrow. Yeah I’m crazy. This is all about the discipline tho.

And the fact I am crazy.

More soon…

For some reason my header got messed with and brought down the site. Hummmmmm.

All is back now though. More later.

It dissapeared!

This is an interesting idea – 100 Words – write exactly 100 words a day for a month, and if you succeed than you get the whole batch posted. Think I shall, but AFTER NaNo!

Back to work.