Summer’s End
It’s about time I end my summer “blog hiatus”, and what time better to do it with some thoughts on this year’s Hal-Con.
I decided to make the most of the writing options of my one day there by scheduling as much in as possible. I started things up with a meet-up with a few local writers (which was a fun time) and I followed that up with a Tanya Huff presentation on adapting novels to TV. I made friends with a playwright from California and chatted with an old friend while in line. Tanya had some great stories to share.
The next panel I attended was on women in media – some great questions for the panel and thought-provoking conversation. It convinced me to buy one of the books written by one of the panel members, Tim Hanley (cover at left).
I ended up skipping the next panel I was half interested in attending so I could have some snacks and play a couple of rounds of Munchkin Deluxe. Then it was off to a reading by Tamora Pierce.
The last presentation I attended that day was on writing style. While I agreed with much of the content, there were some minor issues. I’m not sure if the presenter had the credentials to offer themselves up as a “writing expert,” especially considering a lack of publishing experience and some of the technical issues with their slides. There was one notable typo, problems with punctuation in their dialogue examples, referring to something that was clearly a simile as a metaphor and repetition in some samples that wasn’t being used to reinforce a point. All that aside, the presentation was a good one overall and a few rounds with a good editor may help the presenter refine their technical skills.
Supper with a friend followed and then I ended the night by attending the Aurora Awards (congrats to all the nominees and winners.) As I waited for my drive with my daughter and her friend we tried out Chupacabra.
The only hiccups I ran into at the con was an obstacle while trying to pre-register, so that didn’t happen, and a lack of healthy gluten-free snacks/food available at the con. You had to go off site to get that, but it wasn’t terribly far.
My latest writing news will follow tomorrow and my October submission blitz is rapidly approaching. More soon!
Catch-Up in June
A post has been a long time in coming (sorry), but I have been well and truly busy. I’ve been working at setting a blog up for my pseudonym as well as prepping a couple of between blitz submissions, juggling proofing and marketing requests and participating in the voting process for one of my writer’s associations. It’s also gardening season, jugger season and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my daughter lately. So yeah – I’m busy.
That being said, the last few weeks have been pleasantly rife with story acceptances, payments, cover reveals and ToC announcements – so I have to play catch-up on those (or, at least the ones I’m allowed to talk about now.)
Compostela – Tesseracts 20 – containing my sci-fi short story “Better” is now available for pre-order here . Tesseracts is one of my “writer’s bucket list” achievements, so it’s a big deal for me. I’m sharing pages with some pretty impressive people.
Clockwork Canada, the Exile Editions steampunk anthology containing my short story “The Curlicue Seahorse” is on the ballot for the 2017 Aurora Awards, in the category of Best Related Work.
I have a new free read available too. My flash fiction, Pure Mime, has been published by Body Parts Magazine.
And you can also find me listed on two ToC announcements. The first is from Digital Fiction Publishing. My short story “Octavia” will be included in their all-female writer horror reprint anthology, “Killing It Softly 2” .
The second can be found on the blog for Mackenzie Publishing . Their “Two Eyes Open” horror anthology will include my period horror short, “Soul Cakes.” I’ve shared the lovely and intriguing cover above.
I’ll have more announcements coming soon as my last submission blitz proved to be quite successful. And I just finished a horror short for a themed anthology invite that I can’t discuss just yet. We’ll see how that goes.
I hope everybody’s year has been as exciting as mine has been so far. Now its off to work on some edits…
Word Blurb 