Four by Four by Four · 11:18pm Apr 27th, 2018
I hadn't intended:
To do this, but once I realized it was happening, I decided to make an actual goal out of it. Could I get four original stories finished and submitted to four different markets by the end of the fourth month of the year? Details follow.
In the first place, I've kept April open for the past decade so I can hammer together the next Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel story to submit to the annual Sword & Sorceress anthology. The reading period for volume 33 started this past Monday, and I sent what I guess is the 13th story in the series for the editor's perusal during my lunch break this afternoon. Said editor, Elisabeth Waters, is really fast about responding, so she's already let me know that she's holding the story for further consideration. That means I'll get the final word on it after the submission deadline, May 13th.
But I've also been working since the middle of February on my entry for the "Next Generation" Writeoff that GaPJaxie, Cold in Gardez, and Titanium Dragon put together. I figured I'd at least get a story out of the process that I could submit somewhere, and at the end of February, I got an e-mail from another editor, Fred Patten, saying that he was reading for an anthology called Exploring New Places to be published this summer by Fur Planet Books. My "Next Generation" story just happened to fit that theme as well, so after I got 3rd place in the contest, I took the comments folks had left, gave the thing a good rewrite, and sent it in. The deadline there's not till May 31st, so I won't know its fate till after that.
Then in March, I noticed a mention of an anthology called Battling in All Her Finery that was looking for submissions. They wanted stuff that's "first person, 500-8,000 words in length, focuses on a woman leader, and contains a speculative element." So I took the story I wrote for the first "original fiction" Writeoff back in 2015, made the main character female, switched it all from 3rd person to 1st, gave it a thorough going over in light of the comments the story had gotten, and off it went. The deadline on that is April 30th, so I should hopefully hear by next week if they're gonna take it or not.
And finally, at the beginning of April while taking a break from the Cluny story, I visited the website of the Furry Writers Guild, something I only seem to remember exists about twice a year. Idly wandering though the site, I found a link on their Market's Page to Weasel Press, and I clicked on it to see if they only published stories about weasels or something.
Turns out they're interested in reflecting the sensibilities of the 1950s and '60s "Beat Writers" and had a submission call for "fiction chapbooks," which they define as stories from 15,000 to 20,000 words. Looking through my assorted bits and pieces to see if I had anything like that, I found myself rereading "Shades of Hades," the Flutterdash story I wrote last year. It was just over 18,000 words all told...
So just for fun, I did the same thing to it that I did to my first Pony novel, Half the Day is Night, when I turned it into Morning, Noon & Night four years ago: changed all the unicorns to humans; changed all the pegasi to talking hawks, crows, or eagles; changed all the earth ponies to talking dogs; and set the whole thing in the fantasy world of Andeer instead of Equestria. I kept the same character substitutions I'd used in the novel—Rainbow Dash is a hawk named Thermal Updraft, for instance, while Fluttershy is a hawk named Pinfeather—turned Discord into the Salamander Demon Prince Bathetic, and spackled in a buncha stuff that needed to be different for the story to work with the Pony serial numbers filed off.
These last two are pretty much long shots, sure, but you don't know till you try, right? And besides, I was able to pull up an Allen Ginsberg quote when the Weasel Press asked on the submission form what "Beat Writing" meant to me—in his poem "America," he says, "I refuse to give up my obsession." And the way I insist that all my stories have talking animals in them, well, that qualifies as obsessive, doesn't it?
More bulletins as events warrant.
Mike
And I almost forgot:
The original fic Writeoff this weekend! So much to do!
Mike
Arrrgh. And you reminded me! You fiend!
Wow, you’re one busy
beaverDog!You betcha!
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I'm having a sudden flashback to a scene from Ed Wood's "classic" film Plan 9 from Outer Space in which the alien commander reacts with hammily acted outrage at being called a fiend, but alas, my Google-jutsu isn't up to finding it...
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Anything to keep myself from wandering the streets dressed in a Frankenstein monster outfit...
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I really oughtta try writing something without talking animals in it sometime just to see if it's possible.
Mike
4849085 "I really oughtta try writing something without talking animals in it sometime just to see if it's possible. ..."
Now let's not go talking crazy talk.
Impressive! Hope you hear back positively on them, especially a long-shot--I find it feels especially nice when going out on a limb pays off!
Glad to hear you've been getting so much polished and finished! Best of luck on the submissions.
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Thanks!
I've got a pony story I'm working on, too, one that I thought I'd hafta label "M". But after reading "Her Royal Morning Coffee," georg, I think my story can get away with a "T", too. And yes, that is a hot beverage pun.
Mike
4854275 I've always thought we needed a little finer graduation on the rating system:
E - Everybody, down to toddlers. I've got a couple of these.
N - Normal people, kids, nothing you wouldn't hear in grade school, but there may be *ick* kissing.
T - Ok, really this needs to be rated Teen because a few parents would be upset at their grade-school kids reading it, but then again, they'd get upset at Tom Sawyer too, so...
H - Hotter than really Teen rated, but not really M rated because it doesn't show certain *ahem* things, but really nothing I want to submit to EqD because really, just because the author didn't show it, doesn't mean the reader is clueless to what that riding crop was used for.
M - Mature, or more properly, Immature and Dirty Minds.
I've got a couple of stories in the 'H' category with lots of hits and really too dirty for EqD or at least that's my excuse so I didn't submit them.
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Yeah:
Sethisto's instructions to us pre-readers stress pretty heavily the whole "family friendly" aspect of anything we pass along for posting. This one I'm working on now, for instance, I won't be submitting over there unless the third section turns out really differently from how I'm currently planning. It still could, too, which is why I haven't posted the first section even though it's been done for a week: I won't know the final rating till I get to the end.
Mike
4854304 Hey, these are family friendly. I mean the characters are *very* friendly, and fairly soon they're in a family way and.... Not helping, am I?