Publishing On Smashwords

I just published one of my older short stories, Knock On Wood, on Smashwords. You can grab it here for $0.99,

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28573

I think...

I've been reading Dean Wesley Smith's blog of late and finally decided, based on the fact that he had pubb'd several short stories at Smashwords at $0.99 each, that it was time I dipped my foot in the water as well. Maybe, if I get a few hits, it'll hep me plant my lazy butt in the seat of the chair once again and finally finish a few dozen things that have been lingering for far too long.

I have several additional short stories coming out soon. A some of you know, there's The Light Of An Oncoming Train which will first see the light (pardon the pun) of day over at Bewildering Stories on November 8th. Ninety days after that the story's mine again and I'll be pubb'ing it at Smashwords as well - for $0.99 as well (so consider the pub at BWS your chance to read the story for free). In the meantime, however, I'll be publishing After Action Report and Any Minute Now and maybe a couple more stories at Smashwords.

With any luck at all, shortly after NaNoWriMo, I'll be publishing Third Pulse, a novel (superhero genre), with Smashwords (and quite possibly my FOTS (Fire On The Suns) novel as well if I can get off my lazy duff and finish the last 25k words of the first book)

I may or may not be publishing Hatchings through Smashwords, but I might do this via PubIt if a certain publisher does not answer my multiple queries within a week to 10 days or so. Certainly I will if I don't hear from him by Christmas (when your website promises 2-4 weeks for a review of a partial and then 4-6 weeks for a second review by other editors and you've waited months for any kind of response other than "We're reading it this week" (back in June when the partial was submitted in April) it seems to me I've exercised considerable patience).

Anyway, go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28573 and buy the story. I could use the ego-boo (not to mention a couple of bucks to buy a beer with and give me some incentive to keep on writing).

The Light Of An Oncoming Train

I learned today that my story of the above title is due to be published in issue#407 of Bewildering Stories (an exposure only market so don't get all excited) which should be out around Nov. 8th.

Yea, me!

This is the Quentin Dallas Introductory story and was described by one critiquer over at Absolute Write as one of the best non-vampire vampire stories she'd ever read.

New Look For An Old(er) Blog (continued)

Oops!

I seem to have lost the blog roll from AW. I'll retrieve that probably sometime tomorrow.

Drat!

New Look For An Old(er) Blog

Seeing as how I completely screwed up the HTML of the old blog format for The Rumor Mill yesterday and couldn't figure out how to fix it, I decided to update the blog with a fairly simple template design rather than go back and try to retrieve everything except the stuff I didn't want.

I think it looks a little cleaner anyway.

Let me know what you think.

NaNoWriMo Countdown

It's only 29 days until the begining of National Novel Writing Month. I've already started laying in some supplies (I've learned to love those little black & white semi-hardcover notebooks you can buy at Wal-Mart for $0.77 each - i've been using them as my daily logbooks for almost 10 months now) and I'm starting to rework the outlines for my stalled projects "Gated" and "Third Pulse". I'm pretty sure I'm going to be working on "Gated" again this year as that's one of my novel ideas that really, in my opinion, has the kind of legs to really grab a publisher and an audience.

I've started using this nifty little iPad ap called iCard Sort that allows you to set up, arrange, and edit stacks of index cards. You can group the cards by specific order, rearrange the order, shuffle them around, and there are a few more bells & whistles in the program that I haven't discovered yet.

The best part is that the ap is practically made for index card outlining and it's dirt simple to figure out and use. I'm basically following Alexandra Sokolof's method fir index card outlining since the method described by James D. MacDonald just hasn't worked out for me. I'm much more of an informal formulaic kind of writer (or is that infernal?) and Uncle Jim's method of numbering, etc., all those cards is just too formal a formula for me. My first outline for a book was a series of chapter numbers followed by a 2-3 sentence description of what was supposed to happen in that chapter. I still outline that way (though, when I was running RPGs I used to use a more complex map method for plotting adventures which still works for those who lie to draw maps - I do, and did, but the method might be a little too tedious for some).

Managed to get into a conversation the other day with Mark Ellis (no relation) on Absolute Write. It turns out he's quite the author himself under both his own name and the James Axler pen name. Based on what he said I purchased and downloaded the Outlanders series book "Oblivion Stone" and that's on my current "being read" list.

Now, off to craft a few more scenes fir Gated and maybe start work on tbe future scenes for Third Pulse.

Keep your fingers crossed.