Arthur C. Clarke has died, according to the Associated Press.

🙁

February was a short, busy month that ended with a bang.

I wrote and polished one new story and continued work on second.

I received one rejection and four submissions are out in the wild. A fifth story, conceived during dinner at last year’s CSSF workshop, isn’t far behind.

We picked up The Hard SF Renaissance edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer and The New Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

Eric Reynolds announced the Return to Luna short story contest, with the winners published in an anthology by Hadley Rille Books, whose previous anthologies Visual Journeys and Ruins Extraterrestrial have had stories recommended for a Nebula Award. Good company to be in. I’m already hard at work on my entry.

Since this was a leap year, I did something special on leap day. I won’t say just what yet but it’s safe to say I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.

I just took the latest meme spreading through my friends list this week and experienced deja vu:

I am: Philip José Farmer This prolific author brings surprising depths to he-man adventure tales, and broke science fiction’s prudery barrier.

This sounds familiar. I guess I really am Philip José Farmer.

February is now just half over and Mother Nature can’t seem to decide if it’s winter or spring. In the last few days there we have seen snow, rain and thunder. The area has been under flood warnings all day and most of the snow is now melted or replaced with a layer of ice.

Andrea and I have been digging through market lists and guidelines, figuring out what deadlines are looming and what anthologies or markets we’d like to submit to. Ralans and Duotrope are invaluable resources, to be sure. Following the blogs of authors/editors I like has also yielded some leads on upcoming anthologies although I feel like there’s still a secret handshake I have yet to discover.

In addition to the clockwork fable story for Shimmer due at the end of the month, I have a handful of stories in the edit pile that I’d like to get out the door and one WIP that I’d like to get finished. There may be a few anthologies with deadlines this quarter that I’ll be able to submit to and the Writers of the Future quarterly deadline is just 40 or so days away.

A new year brings another round of workshops to consider. Clarion applications are due by March 1st, if I decide to apply this year. With Neil Gaiman teaching in San Diego this year and Cory
Doctorow in Seattle, it’s a real temptation. There’s also the CSSF workshop that I completely enjoyed and would do again in a heartbeat. Otherwise I’m just going to keep plugging away and keep on submitting.

Here are a few upcoming deadlines for the month of Februrary:

• Shimmer’s Clockwork Jungle, a double-length, themed issue revolving around steampunk fables.
• Eclipse Two is an anthology of original Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Happy writing!

January has been a busy month. I haven’t blogged as much as I’d like. I’ve had two court dates for the divorce and now I’m putting together all of the paperwork and documentation I’ll need to move forward. Work has been crazy and stressful and never seems to end.

We went to see my Dad and brother a few weekends ago. Northern Wisconsin is not the warmest places to visit in January. The wind chills were forty below zero and neither dog wanted to stay outside longer than they needed to. I worry about my Dad a lot but he seems to be getting along quite well. He’s always busy helping someone or doing something. He added a wood burning heating system to his trailer last year and I was amazed at how well it works. My little brother is doing well, despite his recent and continued medical problems. It’s difficult and frustrating to see him in pain and knowing that there’s nothing that can be done to help but he’s still in good spirits.

It’s been a fairly mild winter so far. The temperatures themselves haven’t been bad but the wind has been killer. I’m looking forward to the spring and getting the yard cleaned up and maybe putting up a fence so the dogs can run freely. Dora, the border collie/blue heeler mix, seems much happier when she gets her exercise. She loves being outside and playing. The flatulent boxer, Perl, on the other hand, wishes we lived somewhere warmer — like the equator.

Otherwise we’ve been keeping busy at home. I dusted off a couple old tables I had sitting in the basement. Now I have a nice little workbench for working on models and miniatures and Andrea has a desk and computer to play games and write at. We’ve been taking turns at the cooking and doing fairly well at it.

I’m a little behind on the writing I wanted to get done but not badly. I’m working on my Steampunk fable entry for Shimmer and I have a new story almost ready for submission. We both have upcoming writing deadlines and story ideas running amok. Now we just need to iron out a consistent schedule for writing.

Occasionally we omit the truth, not out of malice but to protect ourselves or someone else. It doesn’t make it right, though. In our effort to protect we may do more harm than good. The truth, while painful to face, is preferable to the alternative. I would have preferred to find a way myself but a process server did the job instead. I would rather have had the opportunity to explain it myself and set the record straight but that choice was made for me. I can’t change the past but I can do one thing: no more omissions.

Things have a way of happening unexpectedly. I didn’t intend or seek to meet someone so much like myself but I did. The timing of it could have been better for the both of us but it is what it is. Andrea and I are happy together and that is what’s important. Some people might not accept that and that’s okay. A few will be angry and make assumptions without getting all the facts and we’ll have to live with that. We should strive to live our lives to the best of our abilities and the most important thing is being happy.

I finished the latest round of revisions to “Alien Gurgitator” tonight, weighing in at 1,630 words. The feedback from my beta readers (and you know who you are) was invaluable. Another few reads, a bit more polish and I think it’s ready to hit the slush piles.

This marks the first fully complete story written since the workshop last summer (where I got the idea for this story). It’s given me a nice sense of accomplishment. I spent the summer and fall working on revising the stories I workshopped. I felt like I was just spinning my wheels a bit, so I shelved them, broke out my notebook and started writing longhand. Boy did that work out well for me.

I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made writing-wise so far. I plan on showing my gratitude for what the fine folks at the CSSF Workshop (Jim, Chris, and Kij) have done for me by getting published in 2008.

With all of the personal upheaval in the past sixty days, I missed my monthly subscription to support the short fiction market. To make up for it, I’ve started off the new year with a fresh and shiny subscription to Locus, the industry rag for Science Fiction writers. I spent more than a few hours reading through back issues at the CSSF SF Workshop last summer and I’ve been meaning to subscribe ever since.

As a bonus, I ordered Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams (slush master extraordinary of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The anthology includes stories from notable authors such as Tobias S. Buckell, Cory Doctorow, James Van Pelt, Gene Wolfe, and Elizabeth Bear. What are you waiting for? Order your copy today!