Category Archives: News

More Resolutions

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I posted a status to Facebook that people liked about some more 2013 Resolutions that occurred to me. I’m going to re-post that here.

More ressies:

  1. Write. For me. Write the stuff that makes me happy. The rest will follow.
  2. Take care of #1, because no one else has my back but me.
  3. Stop caring what other people think. Individuality has always been under attack in our cookie-cutter, white-picket fence nation. So I will embrace individuality and paint big, red anarchist A’s all over conventions and norms, because deep down we’re all individuals and society will never change that, no matter how much they try. As an artist, I am always and forever outside the tight lines they draw and serve to remind others how constricting it is inside the box. Give them the keys to free themselves. The keys are words.
  4. Keep breathing and keeping it real. Keeping it real is important. Breathing, even more so.

Also, I’m setting a new reading goal with Goodreads to try and read 50 books. I almost accomplished that last year. Here’s to reading! :D

A love of reading.

A love of reading.

The Best of Friday Flash 2 Launch Day and My ABC’s

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Launch day for Best of Friday Flash, Volume 2 is here.

This is the second anthology of works by authors that post and tweet links to their stories via the #FridayFlash hash-tag on Twitter. Friday Flash is an awesome Twitter community of writers who work together to help each other grow creatively. We read each others stories and comment on them. You don’t just get feedback on your stories through Friday Flash, though, you build relationships with other authors. And in this gig, you need to build relationships.

When I started posting stories on Friday Flash just a little over two years ago, I didn’t know a soul. Now, I have a ton of friends from FF on Twitter and many of us have also connected on Facebook, Goodreads, Google+, and even Linked-In. So, if you’re reading this and you are a new writer looking for a) a venue to get feedback on your work; and b) want to virtually meet some of the most kick-ass writers on the net, head over to Twitter and get started.  The Friday Flash web page has more information.

Now for the good stuff…the book! I just missed out on getting into the first volume of Best of Friday Flash, so when it came time for the second one to collect submissions, I had no doubt which story I wanted to send in to Jon and the gang.

The ABC’s of the Apocalypse was originally published in an anthology for Static Movement called Cosmic Catastrophes. I had sent the rough draft to my friend, writer and editor Jim Bronyaur, who sent it back with the words “I F**KING LOVE THIS!” written in black marker at the top. Now, Jim’s a horror guy. For him to say this about a science fiction piece of mine…well, I felt pretty damn good about it. So I sent it to Static, and they published it in Cosmic Catastrophes. After it was published, I posted it for the Friday Flash crowd. It was one of my best loved stories from Friday Flash and garnered the most positive comments of any Friday Flash story I ever posted.

The concept of the story is not a new one. I borrowed the style from a creepy fantasy story I read and liked by Tim Pratt, called Annabelle’s Alphabet. As for the theme, I was inspired by Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, except that Amy in ABC’s has the opposite problem that Charlie Gordon had.

I am happy that BOFF2 liked ABC’s and included it in this anthology alongside some of the best flash stories around.

To celebrate, I recorded an audio of myself reading The ABC’s of the Apocalypse. The audio is listed below, but you can also click here to both listen and read it yourself.

I will be getting an extra copy of BOFF2 delivered to me in a few days and will be giving it away during a contest soon.

Stay tuned for more information…and you can order a copy here, if you don’t want to wait for my lottery: Order BOFF2 .

Cover for NaNoWriMo WIP “Quellseek”

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I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year.

I’m insane, I know, what with intense classes and all the other stuff on my plate. It’s okay. I’m not as fanatical about winning as I was in 2010, which I did win…with a 50K plus novel that’s still unfinished.

I just want to get in the driver’s seat and start spinning down the road on this story. It’s been in my head for a good long while and it needs to come out.

I’ve been playing with pics and fonts and making a cover for it. That’s one of the fun parts of the NaNo experience (next to the writing and the camaraderie of 300 K plus other insane people in the world, of course). If you’re one of those insane people, feel free to buddy me on NaNo. We can encourage each other in our mutual craziness.

I’m putting up a synopsis of the story later in the week.

Meanwhile, I envision this young man on the cover as one of my POV characters, Rafael Errick, a Quell in hiding. I’m planning for Rafael to be one of my more intense characters. I picked a good image for him, I think…

Igniting Creative Spark: Going Outside the Comfort Zone

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Photo courtesy of Zachary Tomlinson.

Sometimes you have to do things that make you feel uncomfortable when you make decisions to take your writing to a different level.

For me this involved a recent foray into journalism.

I normally adopt an “I’ll-leave-your-opinons-alone-if-you’ll-leave-mine-alone” stance when it comes to politics. I’m honestly very middle of the road. My philosophy is very much like Neil Gaiman’s: “If there was a party whose main platform was being nice to people, freedom of speech and supporting libraries I’d sign up for it.” I don’t get into virtual, all-caps-on, shouting matches on Twitter or Facebook over politics. I just don’t think that it does much good. I may occasionally repost a meme about teachers getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop or internet privacy or censorship. Those are my pet peeves, but I don’t do it very often.

But  when an opportunity of a lifetime emerges, a chance to also test myself as a writer…well some things are just too good to pass up.

I almost enrolled in journalism school ages ago…years before the major life change I made two years ago to go back to school at forty-something to get my Masters in English Literature. But life happened…I got a full-time job, got married, and didn’t do journalism school. So, recently, when the guys at The Sandbox news asked me to write some articles (book reviews were discussed at the time) I said I’d do it. Partly because my writing has been in an idle place and I’ve been looking for some way to rev it up a notch, but mainly because I always wanted to write for the school newspaper, and when I first started at SPC, they didn’t have one.

Then…an amazing thing happened. Just a few days later we received the news that President Barack Obama was coming to deliver a Grassroots speech at our campus in Seminole. And I was asked to go along with the other reporters and cover it. Me! See a president of the US give a speech! I was overwhelmed and more than just a little bit scared. I don’t do politics, remember.

After I calmed down, I reasoned that a chance like this doesn’t come along very often and it was not just an opportunity to see a US president make a live speech, it was also an chance for me to write a journalistic piece…write it to the best of my ability, all the while trying not to air my own political views. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a challenge…and there’s nothing I like more than a writing challenge. We writers need to challenge ourselves, and sometimes that means stepping outside of our comfort zone and writing about things we’d normally steer well away from.

So I wrote this…my very first experience with writing for the mass media. I hope you enjoy it: The President Visits Seminole, Emphasizes Education. 

Image courtesy of Maggie Susens Livingston.

September: Down the Home Stretch

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It’s September.

It’s that time when leaves begin to change color from green into vibrant oranges and reds (if, unlike me, you live somewhere where they do that).

It’s also a time for recollection. What have I accomplished the past eight months? How do I move down the home stretch for the remainder of the year?

Accomplishments:

Although writing has been slow during the past eight months, I’ve still been active. I had a story win some awards. Shiny New Pants, which won 1st place at Phi Theta Kappa’s Florida Regional Conference and took 2nd place in the Carolyn Parker English Awards (sponsored by of St. Petersburg College/Gibbs Campus) was recently published by the college’s online arts magazine Ember Skies. You can read it here.

The anthology Eighty Nine published by Literary Mixtapes received a wonderful review from a reader. The reviewer ranked my story Nowhere Land among her top favorites in the book. There’s no words for how great it makes a writer feel to have their work loved by a reader. It’s just….WOW! This is the second person this week to compliment a story of mine, and it’s giving me incentive to get my butt back to writing something…anything!

I have two stories coming to print soon: The Best of #FridayFlash, Volume 2, will be reprinting my science-fiction The ABCs of the Apocalypse, and I have a horror tale titled The Apprentice’s Mother appearing in the anthology Sunday Snaps coming out in October. 

On the academic front, I was nominated by my school for awards: Coca Cola All-Community College Academic and All-Florida Academic Teams. I got a pretty medal in Orlando for All-Florida, and it has led to me being recruited by some of the top schools in the nation. In addition to the Carolyn Parker English Award mentioned above, I also received the Steve Meier award and scholarship from the PTK chapter at my campus (ETA WHO? ETA NU!!) for my involvement and contribution to our Honors in Action project: Science Fiction as a Record of Culture and History. I was thrilled to to be the first recipient of this award, named in honor of our recently retired advisor.

If I have been thin on the writing front, I’ve made up for in editing/publishing. My online speculative fiction e-zine The Were-Traveler is still kicking and was recently added as a legit market on Duotropes. I’ve even had an author come forward and suggest an article for the next issue, which I love! Please, by all means, if you have an idea for something that may lie just a little outside the current theme, let me know. I may like the idea and say “Go for it!” as I have in this case.

Down the Stretch:

The editors of Ember Skies have asked me to write some articles for the college’s online newspaper, The Sandbox. I’m thrilled to be asked and I’m hoping to write a book review and/or some articles for them before the end of the year.

I’m planning to write and submit a short story to Phi Theta Kappa’s literary journal Nota Bene. That would be a nice feather in my collegiate writing cap.

I’m planning another project with my PTK teammates for Honors in Action, and I’m also chairperson this year for Native American Week on our campus so I’m going to be very busy planning events for that.

The Class of 2012 community college graduates will be getting their Associates degrees on December 15th. I will be one of them.

I would like to get some formatting work done on my own anthology, a collection of my short stories titled Kill the Crow. I’ve been working on the cover art and trying to get some of the last of the new stories finished. I hope to start formatting it by the end of the year, at least for the Smashwords market.

Whew! All this and trying to remain a geeky college student. It’s going to be a challenge. Think I can do it?

Creating a Writing Plan

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I cherish the time off I have between college terms. I haven’t had a whole lot of time off lately: my last two terms only had a week and a week-and-a-half between them, so needless to say, I’m feeling a bit burned out.

I’m going to take this month I have off between now and the start of the fall term (which will be my final term at the community college before I transfer to my bachelor’s program…god knows where) to finish up a few writing projects and at long last get started on formatting my book of short stories for Smashwords and Kindle.

I’d like to see Kill the Crow come out early in 2013. I hope to round up some beta-readers  for it and try to find an decently priced editor (if I can) before the end of the year. If you are interested in beta-reading the book, please let me know.

I need to finish some stories for the book, too. I have three open stories that I’d like to fit into the anthology, including the title piece. I’m waiting for two stories to be published in other anthologies so they can be added, as well.

How to get things done if you’re a scatterbrain like me?

Well, one of my favorite ways of holding myself accountable for my actions is by making lists. I like lists. I look at a list and go “Oh, there’s that item I need to do.” I feel a sense of profound contentment, and a certain amount of evil pleasure when I check things off the list. Check. Murdered another one!

Another method of personal accountability for me is taking that list and going public with it.

Here is my writing plan for the next month:

  • Finish short story: Kill the Crow and the other stories that I need to get done for the book and for The Were-Traveler, etc.
  • Start the story I want to submit for consideration to Nota Bene, the fiction journal for Phi Theta Kappa. Right now I have an idea for this, but it’s speculative fiction, although it’s literary speculative fiction. Have to see where it goes, but I definitely want to submit something to this.
  • Finish outline for Waking Annastella. This is my “Sleeping Beauty in Space” science fiction story that I’ve been working on. I have the first chapter and part of the second written already.
  • Begin formatting Kill the Crow for Smashwords.
  • Blog something at least once a week!

This is probably as much as I dare to try and accomplish in a month, since I will also be putting a lot of my energy into applying to transfer colleges (writing college essays) and trying to acquire scholarships to see me through the pursuit of my bachelor’s degree.

Be on the lookout this summer for a lot of #amwriting and #wordmongering from me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to participate in a #FridayFlash!

Eighty Nine Book Trailer Released

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Woke up to wonderful news on the Eighty-Nine group page on Facebook this morning. Devin Watson posted the completed live-action book trailer for eMergent Publishing’s anthology “Eighty Nine,” a collection of speculative fiction stories based on events in the year 1989. My story “Nowhere Land” is published in the book.

Eighty Nine can be purchased on Amazon and is available for Kindle, too!

April Blogging Frenzy (It just ‘aint happening…)

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I started to get interested in the idea of participating in the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge for the month of April. I even started scribbling notes in my journal on things to blog about for specific days according to the alphabetical theme. I went as far as creating a spreadsheet for possible titles of said blog posts, because I dig making spreadsheets. I’m just weird like that.

Then my joints in my right wrist started hurting and popping and put paid to that idea. Stopped it stone dead before it had a chance.

I’ve got some kind of crappy tendonitis thing going on. It’s incredibly painful and it’s all I can just manage to keep working and do my school work. I’m icing it and doing anti-inflammatory drugs. We’ll see.

But sadly, I won’t be doing A-to-Z this year. :-(

I hate to waste good ideas, though, so I will continue to flesh them out and write a post whenever the pain allows me. Hopefully my hand get back to normal soon, because the thought of the pain not going away makes me very scared.

Breathing Fire…The Year So Far

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Just before New Year’s Day, I wrote a bold as brass blog post. I laid claim to the dragon year 2012 and made plans to burn, burn, burn, with a passion and fire like never before.

I have to say after three months, 2012 has not let me down.

It’s difficult being both a scholar and a writer. Sometimes I’m not sure where one part of my dual life ends and the other begins, as the two seem intricately interwoven and dependent upon each other to make me a whole being. To teach my passion for literature and writing, I work relentlessly toward a Master’s degree, perhaps even a PhD. I write on the side for pleasure and profit when I can, and I write as part of my school work.

Sometimes the two join and become one thing, like when I won the “Best Fiction Short Story” award at the Phi Theta Kappa Florida Regional Convention in Jacksonville a few weeks ago. Hearing my name and story called was like nothing I’ve ever felt. It was one of the most euphoric things I’ve ever experienced. I want more of it.

Also, on the scholarly side of things, I was nominated by my school for the All-USA Academic Team. I get to go to Orlando in a few weeks and accept a medallion and certificate that’s the reward for the years of hard work I’ve put in to become a top student. I didn’t make the All-USA final team, but the benefits of being named to an All-State team are being made clear to me. I was getting emails and letters from interested transfer schools before, but now there are an increasing number of schools wanting me to consider them for my baccalaureate degree. Good things, I think, will continue to happen to me as I inch ever closer to my dream of being a professor.

Now for the writing side of my life.

What writer on earth doesn’t want their stories to come to life on screen?

I was notified about a week ago that my short story Sophie Solitaire: Confessions of an End-Time Girl was chosen as one of ten stories in Literary Mix Tapes Nothing But Flowers anthology to be included in a movie project.

Finally, late last year I posted a previously published short story to the Friday Flash community, which I’ve been involved in for about two years now, although not as regularly as I’d like these days. I then submitted the story for possible inclusion in the second Friday Flash anthology: The Best of Friday Flash, Volume 2.

I just received an email from Jon Strother at Friday Flash this morning to let me know that my story, The ABC’s of the Apocalypse, will be included in BOFF2! I’m wildly excited about seeing this story in print again. It is one of the best stories I’ve written, and it received a lot of great comments when it was posted for Friday Flash.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to what the remainder of 2012 brings!

My award for PTK Florida Region Best Short Story, Fiction.

NaNoReMo: The Classics and the Frugal Reader

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It's National Novel Reading Month!

A Twitter writer friend, John Wiswell, had the awesome idea of reading classic books for NaNoRemo: National Novel Reading Month. A bunch of us have jumped on the wagon and are perusing lists of classic books and trying to decide what to read. We’re tweeting our progress with the hashtag #NaNoReMo.

What constitutes a classic? Here’s a list to help: Modern Library 100 Best Novels. Thanks to Danielle La Paglia for the link.

I’ve seen film adaptations of several of the eBooks I downloaded, but have never read the actual books. I’m determined to rectify that, since more often than not the book is better than the film. I’ve already started my NaNoReMo with Frankenstein. I may try to fit The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in as well, since some of the other participants are going to be reading it. Reading classic fiction can be hard, especially fiction that falls under the “literary” umbrella. Participant Tony Noland recommends two websites to help with reading a challenging book: How To Read a Difficult Book and Tough Tomes. Of course, if you’re not enjoying any book, don’t torture yourself. There’s nothing more agonizing than trying to plow through a book you’re not connecting with.

A great way to join us in NaNoReMo is through Amazon’s free eBook Kindle store. You don’t need a Kindle to download Kindle books. You can download the Kindle app to your PC, Mac or phone. I have Kindle on my iPhone 4. I have always had it and don’t really see the need to purchase a Kindle. My phone goes everywhere I go, so I can read anytime I like. Amazon has an iPhone app for its Kindle Store, too, so getting new titles is as easy as tapping the screen. I know free eBooks don’t have the best formatting, but they’re FREE! And when you’re a college student like I am, on a shoestring budget, FREE is GOOD. I can look past crappy formatting for now. But we all have different preferences when it comes to reading eBooks. If you have a hard time dealing with formatting issues, please see the section below on Project Gutenberg.

Amazon Kindle Store: Some of the classics I downloaded for FREE on Amazon’s Kindle Store:

  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
  • The Book of Dragons, by Edith Nesbit (started reading it before deciding on NaNoReMo)
  • The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
  • The Empty House and Other Stories, by Algernon Blackwood
  • Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells
  • A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
  • The Land That Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
  • The People of the Mist, by Henry Rider Haggard
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

Project Gutenberg: Another great site to get free eBooks for your Kindle app (as recommended by Sonia Lal) is Project Gutenberg, notable archive of public domain fiction. I visited the website last night and joyfully discovered that they have a mobile site…in beta testing, but I downloaded it to my phone desktop, anyway. It works sort of like Amazon’s Kindle Store. Sonia tells me PG’s formatting is better than the Amazon freebies, so that’s worth noting. I downloaded two books from there: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated), by Edwin A. Abbot and The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, just to test it and they do look great.

If you know any other websites that have free classic eBooks, please let me know in the comments section. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about the subject of frugal reading again soon.

With all of these choices for reading, there’s no reason you can’t join us for NaNoReMo.

C’mon, join the Classical Movement!