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The year started well. Xmas brought with it a wealth of inspiration and I produced a bunch of stories in January and February. This was followed by a couple acceptances and it looked like everything was going well. Then I don't know what happened. Throughout the whole summer I only produced one flash (the Shroud flash-fic one) and couldn't seem to finish anything. It was not so much writer's block, I mean, I was still having tons of ideas and I had no problem starting these stories out, but a page or two in I would lose all will to write the damn things. This was probably at least partly because of my overly intense summer (what with the tea shop opening and the double summer teaching schedule). But even after the summer finished my classes lessened and I stopped working so many hours on the tea shop, I still couldn't produce. What I think happened was somewhere along the line I got excessively critical of my work. Because I wasn't producing what I considered the perfect story or if a story wasn't going in that direction or if I felt a character wasn't developed enough I could absolutely not find the will to write it. Well, I'm glad to say this phase is over. While I do believe being citical of your own work is part of improving as a writer I also must say that there are limits. If you're not producing anything at all it's definitely time to change your frame of mind. So anyway I don't know where it was hiding, but my willpower is back. Just goes to show most funks are mostly a result of being in the wrong frame of mind. The last few days I've even been waking up earlier to get more writing in, submitted two new stories in the last couple days and *gasp* I'm even on a diet. One more thing I might add for you writers, being on a diet and going to bed starving makes you really look forward to breakfast which in turn can lead to much writing! Two birds with one stone!

(Okay this post went from sounding like an AA meeting to promoting anorexia I think I'm gonna stop now. )

Duotrope Delivers

  • Nov. 9th, 2009 at 1:39 PM

Apparently the Duotrope Gods were listening! Not even a day after mentioning how I'd like the more detailed pending results function, presto the function was up! That's awesome! I don't know if it was coincedence or what, but I'm very happy about it. They also have another new function where you can get RSS feeds for the markets you are interested in. That could be a big time saver.

In writing news, I'm pretty sure somewhere along the line I swallowed about a ton of writer kryptonite. Over the last few months I've written about a gazillion half stories. I just can't seem to finish anything. I hope this passes pretty soon, because it's seriously getting lame. I also hope those half stories don't sit collecting dust in my ideas folder forever, because that would be a serious waste and some of them are pretty decent I think. Anyway, I actually had an SF idea the other day and I don't get those very often, so I'm gonna go see if I can finish it off. Hope ya'll are having an easier time writing than me.

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Duotrope Wish List

  • Nov. 6th, 2009 at 1:20 PM

Let's face it, we all duotrope. You know, the first step is admitting to it. When I was in college I used to live with a roomate who would do hot knives first in the morning. I thought that was pretty amazing. I mean at 8 AM I barely had the strength to make myself toast. Anyway, all these years later I find myself in a similar situation. First thing I do when I wake up is turn on the computer check my email for acceptances (okay, okay, rejections, jeez!), then head over to duotrope to check what mags have been replying to slush, I then move on to my f-list, and at last a little Facebook to top it off. That's pretty sad I know, and I can't even begin to contemplate how much writing time I'm wasting doing all these things, but I don't think I'll be quitting anytime soon. I just noticed that duotrope added a new feature which lets you browse a list of other mags people submitted to for any given mag. Since I'm pretty familiar with most of the spec fic mags it's not very useful for me at this point, but I imagine it could be useful for beginners. I thought the adding of the date system and sorting by most recent was pretty key to duotrope (a feature they were missing for far too long). But anyway, let me get to the point. I've been a really well-behaved young lad this year (nevermind that whole money laundering nonsense), and what I'd really like to see on duotrope for xmas is a break down of the pending responses. You know they usually give an average but it's hard to tell if you've really been waiting so long compared to others. You could also see how many people are in the similar waiting range as you. Anyway, that's what's on this duotrope junky's xmas list.  How about all you other junkies? Are you all proud degenerates as am I? What's on your duotrope xmas wish list this year? And most important of all let's hope the duotrope Gods (aka web programmers) are kind.

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Happy Halloween!

  • Oct. 31st, 2009 at 7:50 PM



Happy halloween, all!  Remember not to lose your head.

..........

Nevermind I've been spending too much time on [info]jasonfischer 's blog. His puns are viral.

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Ugh, cold!

  • Oct. 28th, 2009 at 6:12 PM

Got myself a pretty nasty cold, which is kind of ironic since I'm pretty sure I caught it while teaching a biology class on viruses and bacteria. Anyway, the good news I took the day off work today so I have more time to write. The bad news, my head feels like it's going to explode and if I do write, it probably will. Well, at least it's not H1N1 which has been going around the area (one of my private students had her class shut down for a week). Anyway, hope this goes away pretty soon.

In writing news, earlier in the week I got an encouraging rejection with what sounded like a pretty sincere invitation to send more. So once I get better I'm looking to put the finishing touches on a story that I started earlier in the week. I've also tried applying new techniques to my writing. I've been trying to make my narrative a little more complex, as well as further character development, so I hope that works in my favor.

And yeah, why has LJ been so quiet? Did I miss the Facebook exodus memo?

Subs Out

  • Oct. 9th, 2009 at 11:53 PM

Six subs out today, bringing me back up to 14.  I feel so umm... writerly today. Now all I need to do is write. This is all part of my plan. I've exhausted my aresenal of stories on anthologies and so now am forced to write new ones if I want to get into the slush of all those fab fiction mags that are open at the moment. I think one of the drawbacks of having so many stories going around is that you spend too much time worrying about them and sending them back out and not enough time finishing new ones. I think I need to give myself a goal. Let's call it 20 stories out by year's end.

Runner Up!

  • Oct. 8th, 2009 at 1:18 AM


Looks like I'm a runner-up in the Shroud Flash Fiction Contest (#7), sweet! Runner-ups also get published, so looks like my story "The Skin Off the Back of the Cheshire Cat" will be slipping into the beautiful fantabulous issue #7. Don't know if it's cool for me to post the cover up here yet so I'll put it up closer to the release date, but I do believe it is one of the best looking ones yet. What's even sweeter is that Shroud has distribution through Ingram and is available in numerous Barnes and Noble stores across the US. (Wonder if my sis will be able to pick one up in Anchorage?) Anyway, very cool indeed! Also there's a story by LJ buddy [info]joelasutherland. Always fun to share a TOC with friends.  [Unknown LJ tag]

Happy Moon Festival!!!

  • Oct. 3rd, 2009 at 1:13 PM


 
Happy Moon Festival everybody. Virtual moon cakes for everybody (and none of the funky weird sweet meat ones-- more of the funky delicious egg and red bean ones). I'll keep this short as it is the first Saturday I've had off work for longer than I can remember. I'm sure as heck gonna enjoy it. Later tonight, Taiwanese-style barbeque!!! What is Taiwanese style barbeque you ask? Well they barbeque on this tiny iddy-biddy barbeque on the ground and use charcoal (not gas), everybody sits on iddy biddy stools and eats massive amounts of meat and sea food. I know it sounds like Chinese torture what with the tiny chairs, but it's actually really good! I like the barbequed eel, believe it or not. That oughtta qualify me for some kind of horror-writer prize I think.

Going Postal

  • Oct. 1st, 2009 at 1:26 AM


Well, sent off my Writers of the Future submission in typical Pilon-style with a mad dash to the print shop followed by a mad dash to the post office. Luckily for me the city's main post office closes at 8:00 PM. How sweet is that? If I didn't live in Taiwan I probably wouldn't be a writer at all since I'd be missing all my deadlines (the half a day ahead thing doesn't hurt either).So my advice: ya'll should all move to Taiwan. We could have a Clarion-FAR--FAR-east or something like that.

Anyway, this submission to WOTF is one of my few science fiction stories, and I really like the concept, but I fear it might be a bit slow on the front end. I tried to trim it down a bit, so I hope the results came out okay. But if not, no fear, I have several more stories nearing completion. I have big goals for October. I'm looking to regain that drive I had last year, I remember having 16 or 17 stories out at one point. I'm getting lazy. LAZY! LAZY I tell you!

My sights are set on Tesseracts 14 and Clockwork Phoenix 3 next. Many new stories in the works. Things are looking good on the writing front! And yes I'll ignore the recent rejections 'cuz I'm a hopeless optimist at heart.

Congrats, Jason!

  • Sep. 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 PM


A big congrats to buddy [info]jasonfischer who has landed himself in 1st place for this quarter's WOTF contest! Right on, much deserved. And as for me, it has been too long since my last sub (one year). I should really bear down on that competition. My last was an honorable mention. Well I think a year's writing could improve on that. 7 days to polish a story send it off. I think I just might give it a try!

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Dumplings!!!

  • Sep. 17th, 2009 at 10:37 PM

I think I'm in ghost movie heaven over here in Taiwan. Luckily for me I have a wife who both loves ghost movies and has the patience to translate all those subtitles. That can be quite a job in fact. Especially for the Korean ones where they speak like ten million words per second. Anyway this time we rented "Dumplings" a Hong Kong movie from 2004. I hadn't seen this one though it came out a few years back. Full of lovely nastiness for you horror-lovers. Definitely not for the squeamish. I tend to twist at disgusting scenes (I think I've mentioned my aversion to medical stuff) and I felt a bit like a contortionist at some parts in this movie. Whatever you do, don't wait for the American version. I just saw the American version of "Shutter". Man, what a piece of garbage! I cringe to think what they might do to "Old Boy".  Anyway, I'll leave you with a lovely picture of the "Dumplings" cover. Glad they don't use the same ingredients over here in Taiwan... Or do they???


Life of Pi

  • Sep. 15th, 2009 at 11:39 PM

My private American school student is reading Life of Pi. How frickin' awesome is my job? So far over the summer  we've read the Road, Fahreheit 451, Wicked, and now Life of Pi. This is my second time reading the book, and it still kicks ass! It'll be totally cool to discuss it with my student, too. If I could get one of my short stories near that level of weird goodness, it would be accepted for sure. Anyone else a fan?

Writing and Teaching

  • Sep. 11th, 2009 at 1:07 PM

Not much to report in writing news except absolute silence. I've been slowly working myself up to write a short-story for JJA's Way of the Wizard Anthology. Funny thing is I have like three unfinished stories that could probably work there (work as in fit the theme not as in I think they'll be accepted). So now I gotta decide which one to finish first. I have one that's light fantasy, and two that are dark fantasy. I guess since the deadline is still quite a ways off I will try to finish all three. Also need to make a decision which stories will go to which anthos, this could be interesting since Tesseracts 14 is open to up to three subs and Clockwork Phoenix 3 is also accepting multiple subs. Now I wish I had spent the spring time churning out stories instead of doing that lousy puzzle that remains half-finished on the floor of my storage room.

In teaching news I'll be starting a 5-week class teaching senior high school math and science for the ACT test, which I gather is very similar to the SAT test. A little nervous since I haven't actually done senior high school math since, you know, senior high school. But I'm sure it'll all work out. Just a little trigonometry and pythogoreum theorum, no problem, right? Actually, I'm a little worried about the science section since it often involves a lot of reading. The students have a pretty tough time limit, and they are Chinese first language students...

Anyway, wish me luck.

Heinlein Centennial Results

  • Sep. 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 PM

Believe it or not the Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest Winners have been posted  at the Heinlein Society website. Congrats to all the winners! Alas, I'm not one of them. No big surprise there, I haven't really read all that much Heinlein to be truthful, and find my writing to be hardly in line with the golden age stuff, but thought I would give it a try nonetheless. I wasn't really all that concerned with the long wait either since I busied myself with other subs. Actually, I consider myself a winner here, too. I've really been wanting those stories back. I'm not to sure of the quality of them (after all they were written a year ago) but I know at least one of them has pretty strong potential and could be whipped into something decent for WOTF.

Nice!

Here's the link and congrats again to the winners:

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/contest.html

This is my second post today. That's an achievement in its own right. Told you I was back. ;-)

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The King is Back!

  • Sep. 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 PM

Well, I don't know about the king, haven't seen him, but I'm back at least. Summer is over and the students have gone back to school, which means my teaching hours will be greatly reduced (and by reduced I mean I won't be working like insane 12 hour days). So I guess I can return to being a writer, yay! Seems like the end of classes couldn't have come at a better time writing-wise. Seems like so many markets just opened up (a quick peak at the what's new? section in duotrope will confirm just how many). Anyway, I feel like a child in a candy shop. Where should I send my story next. Where? Where? And that's a great feeling, because a) it will allow me to get more stories out and b) make me write new ones (which is something that hasn't been happening half as much as I would have liked this year.) In particular I'm setting my sites on the following mags/anthologies that just reopened / are opening / I've been neglecting for far too long.

-  Tesseracts 14 (For Canadians only - after my short list last year I'm ready to give it a second (better) shot.
-  Chizine (just reopened)
-  Ideomancer (just reopened)
-  WOTF (It has been too long since I sent one their way)
-  Clockwork Phoenix (Not open yet, but I should start getting something ready for it)
-  Apex (They've been open for a while and I've been wanting to sub to them, but I've had little time to put together a dark sci-fi, though I have numerous ideas. I'm good at coming up with awesome dark sci-fi concepts and never wriiting them. I probably have like 5-10 just sitting in my ideas folder collecting dust... sigh.)
- Way of the Wizard (this will involve writing something from scratch, but I've always enjoyed where themed anthos take me.)

There are many others, too, but these are the ones popping into my head at the moment (feel free to chime in in the comments section on anything I've overlooked). Anyway, wish me luck. I think I'm gonna need it, since none of these are easy markets. I guess I'll be making up for the summer over the last few months of the year. Still aiming for that 5 acceptance year although the prospect is starting to look pretty grim (but then it was a pretty rough year all around wasn't it?) I believe I will be blogging more, too. I've been trying to drop comments here and there, but have been totally neglecting my own blog... So hoping to make a post at least once a week.

In Non-World Con News

  • Aug. 10th, 2009 at 12:20 PM

Taiwan got hammered by a pretty nasty typhoon over the weekend. While all is well with me flooding has required the city to clean out there water system which means no water for four days!!! My God! Well, on a positive note I've heard that many writers produced their favorite work after not having bathed for several days. Of course they were also in drunken stupors, but you know with no drinking water that could be arranged! All I can say is I'm glad I wasn't out in the county.

 

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Yay Aliette!

  • Aug. 5th, 2009 at 2:33 AM

[info]aliettedb  just got a three book deal with Angry Robot. Yay!
Totally deserved, as I'm sure anyone who's read her Aztec tales will agree.
Congrats, Aliette!

Now let us all follow quickly in her footsteps!

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My First Ever Review

  • Jul. 11th, 2009 at 12:50 AM

I just stumbled onto my first ever mention in a review this morning over at http://www.horrornews.net for my dark humor story "How to Make a Brain Soufflé" published in Necrotic Tissue #7 and man was it a good one! Mr. Anton Cancre really really made my day!
Here's what he had to say:

Moving on to those larger stories, we certainly have some interesting stuff here. I've made my stance on the glut of Zombie fiction clear often enough before, but it seems like every time I say that, then I find myself facing down something like the absurd beauty of “How to Make a Brain Souffle” by Justin Pilon, a simple recipe that oozes wit and malevolent joy like pus.

He also said some nice things about friend [info]catephoenix 's piece "The Scratch of an Old Record." You can check out th whole review by clicking on book reviews on the left of their page and clicking on Necrotic Tissue #7. And special thanks to Cate for posting about the review on your blog and special special thanks to Mr. R.Scott McCoy for taking a chance on this piece. Looking forward to get another one out to Necrotic Tissue, if only I had more time! More time! (If I repeat it like a mantra. Poof! I'm sure the time will appear).

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My first submission blunder

  • Jul. 9th, 2009 at 6:15 PM

I guess my attention to detail must be off, because I usually am pretty thorough at checking the submission guidelines, but I just sent a .doc to Shimmer. Whoops! They only take .rtf. They sent me a polite email asking me to resubmit in .rtf. Hope they won't hold it against me. What kind of submission blunders have you made? I still live in terror of sending a previously rejected story to a mag. And of course there is the issue of forgetting to attach all together. Haven't done that one yet, but I do it to my friends all the time, so I figure it's only a matter of time. For those of you editing, do these things usually tick you off?

Moving to the 36 Hour Day

  • Jul. 7th, 2009 at 8:47 PM


I've become a workaholic. The first step is admitting it, my dear f-list. It all started with the tea shop and now.... and now.... *sob* sob* sob*.  I just picked up another excellent teaching gig at a local high school teaching Computer Science. Add to that a few new one-to-one classes (one of which I'm teaching "Fahrenheit 451" and another where I'm teaching "Wicked", sweet!). And then just this weekend my ex-computer company boss asked me to do some documentation and support for their international market. 

Holy cow! That makes me a teacher / tea shop owner / computer scientist / writer. I'm definitely not complaining though, better to have too much work than no work. I just hope I have a few minutes to write and.... well, you know, sleep.

In other great news I just received my contributor copy of Necrotic Tissue with my humor piece "How to Make a Brain Souffle". I think making a brain souffle is pretty much an essential to everyday life, so you definitely might want to pick up a copy *wink* *wink*.

(Okay I'll cut out the self-promotion).
From what I've read so far it's looking like a great issue.
Also work from talented writer buddies [info]catephoenix  and Horace James.

    

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