Had a FABULOUS time at Norwescon. My fellow panelists were great, and it was terrific seeing everyone, including (but not restricted to): Alma Alexander, Michael Alexander and his lovely wife Sheila, K.C. Ball, Nathan Crowder, Janet Freeman Davis, Caren Gussoff, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Nick Mamatas, Mary Rosenblum, Michael Swanwick, Stephanie Weippart, whose surname I think I have misspelled, and Duane Wilkins. Particularly loved the Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading, which featured so much very good stuff that it was alarming.
Your prose needs a good editor. The below is your opening on a story posted at Clarkesworld:
I glance in the glass wall’s reflection. [Why give a plural possessive to an inanimate object? And, are you really glancing in the Wall’s reflection, or are you glancing at your own reflection?]
I glance at my reflection in the glass wall. It faces me twenty feet away as I walk up the stairs [;] marble slab steps, showing grainy pink underneath my red sneakers. My fingers clutch the [again] chrome railing. I’m feeling shaky, that internal quiver where your body announces that it may not be up to this.
What any competent writer needs is a good editor. Unfortunately, you will probably not get to where you want to go by publishing in semi-pro zines; they don’t have the resources to make your work better””tighter””more publishers friendly.
Fellow writers might help, but nothing takes the place of a good editor.
Good luck with your secondary career. Or, if you would like to take a flyer””I can be bought! A penny a word and then perhaps your work might be expanded into professional magazines. Content counts for about half of what an editor considers.
Best-
Mike
P.S. Comma after the word “that” is never a good idea, and placing two “that’s” in the same sentence is a no-no. That said, that’s a shame.
Hi Mike, good luck with the editing career! I’d suggest that if you really want to use the web to drum up business, you might want to rethink your approach, which comes off more like an attempt to troll than a genuine effort to be helpful and thus ends up looking less than professional. You might also want to acquaint yourself with the list of what’s considered pro and what’s not when dealing with SF writers – I’ve found the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site very helpful and I often point people new to the field at that site.: http://www.sfwa.org I hope that’s helpful!
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"The Wayward Wormhole, a new evolution of writing workshops has arrived. And I’m here for it! Geared more towards intermediate speculative fiction writers, the application process doesn’t ask about demographics like some other workshops and focuses entirely on your writing. The television free Spanish castle made for an idyllic and intimate setting while the whole experience leaned more in the direction of bootcamp slumber party. Our heavy and constant workload was offset by the family style meals together with our marvelous instructors. The Wayward Wormhole is not for the faint of heart but if you’re serious about supercharging your writing, then this is the place to do it."
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Cat Rambo Award Eligibility for 2019
It’s that time of year again when I urge my students and mentees not to be shy about spreading word of the great stuff they’ve done over the course of the year. I’ve blogged before about how important it is particularly for marginalized writers, and you can find my usual round-up of such posts here along with A.C. Wise’s here.
What did I publish over the course of the year? The thing I’m proudest of is my novelette, CARPE GLITTER, which just came out from Meerkat Press. It is available in both electronic and print form. If you’re reading for awards and need a copy, please let me know.
Other things I had published include:
A Merchant Has Maxims (novelette) UNFETTERED III, edited by Shawn Speakman
A Merchant had a journal since first learning to write. A Merchant without one felt that lack like a missing limb, something Essa kept reaching for and not finding. She already missed being able to flip through it at night, to figure out the results of different actions and what part each God had played, from small ones like Kepterto, who handled tailors, or Rilriliworhaomu, Trade God of Hypothetical Marital Alliances, to the larger ones like Enba and Anbo, Want and Supply.
Big Rural (short story), THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, edited by Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller
She gulped down the last of the water and stuck the bottle in her purse. The tomato red sun rolled on the horizon, sending long black shadows walking across the land, towards the enormous black square that was Phase One of the Sol Dominion power plant, glittering in the last of the sunlight. You could barely see the storage structures scattered among them like enormous alien flowers, many petalled and made of dark carbonized plastic with an oily undersheen of cobalt and purple.
Arms folded, she looked towards the town bordering that square to the east, where lights were flickering alive. She could name most of them. The gas station. The diner. The tiny grocery/hardware/drugstore locals just called “the store.” The two block strip that was Main Street, the grade school on one end, the high school on the other, but meeting in shared sports fields: baseball, soccer. Still no football stadium. The coal plant, unlit now.
When you came home again, even “the big rural” as the song called it, things were supposed to have changed. Here the only change was that black square. Between the town lights and the scattered but symmetrical lights surrounding the plant, a dark strip, perhaps a mile wide, stretched, unlit. As though town and plant had turned their backs on each other.
A Hand Extended, (short story), CITIES OF DUST, PLANES OF LIGHT, edited by Todd Sanders
The person closest to the mage was an Ettilite, all four arms folded. Despite stiffly formal body language, he was dressed simply for his race: plain brown tunic drawn over his humanoid torso’s purple skin, and matching trews and”¦were those boots? On shipboard you never needed such a thing, and coming down to Tarn had been a revelation to Niko in her flimsy ship-sandals. Imagine having to dress for a totally random circumstance called “weather”? It was absurd. She hated this place.
Niko gnawed at a cuticle, then caught herself and dropped her hand back into her lap. Stay calm and don’t expend energy. Save it for the Threefold Gauntlet.
How I Come to Be the Queen of Treacle, (short story), WONDERLAND, edited by Marie Keegan and Paul Kane
When we grimbled, how we grambled, children, down in those treacle mines, with a slow syrup slurry that clung to your boots, your hands, and every bit of skin, so you’d lick your lips, vicious-like, and taste gritty sugar and wonder what was happening up in the blue-sky world. And then we grimbled and we grambled more, and when we were weary walking, sleep stepping, we came up to the wasty world and tumbled into our blankets, and then in the morning before the sun came into the sky, we went back down and did it all again.
Broken all My Boughs and Brittle My Heart (short story), UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe
It was a lizard dropping on her face from the ceiling that woke Ambra in a panic. They ran back and forth all night, feasting on spiders and midges and the slower moths, but they were sticky-footed and rarely lost their grip. This one scampered away while she smacked herself in the face, much harder than she’d intended, so that she saw stars and bit her tongue, all at once.
Dawn, seeping gray, outlined the window, showing the shutter slats as faint lines of light. She nursed her tongue, which felt awkward and painful in her mouth, and swallowed blood as she swung herself up and out of bed, abandoning thought of sleep. Once she’d had a soldier’s knack of being able to sleep anywhere, anytime, but nowadays that skill was long gone and she was lucky to pluck a few uneasy hours from a night.
Cold stone struck her feet as she stood, and she fished around under the bed for the knitted socks that served her as slippers, disreputable and threadbare but warmer than being barefoot. The narrow chamber had only the single window; she moved to it and swung the shutters open, then leaned out on the wide stone sill.
In news about my writing classes, I’m pushing the start back a week in order to get a few more students signed up. For details, click on “Upcoming Classes” up above!
It’s that time of year again when I urge my students and mentees not to be shy about spreading word of the great stuff they’ve done over the course of the year. I’ve blogged before about how important it is particularly for marginalized writers, and you can find my usual round-up of such posts here along with A.C. Wise’s here.
3 Responses
Dear Cat,
Your prose needs a good editor. The below is your opening on a story posted at Clarkesworld:
I glance in the glass wall’s reflection. [Why give a plural possessive to an inanimate object? And, are you really glancing in the Wall’s reflection, or are you glancing at your own reflection?]
I glance at my reflection in the glass wall. It faces me twenty feet away as I walk up the stairs [;] marble slab steps, showing grainy pink underneath my red sneakers. My fingers clutch the [again] chrome railing. I’m feeling shaky, that internal quiver where your body announces that it may not be up to this.
What any competent writer needs is a good editor. Unfortunately, you will probably not get to where you want to go by publishing in semi-pro zines; they don’t have the resources to make your work better””tighter””more publishers friendly.
Fellow writers might help, but nothing takes the place of a good editor.
Good luck with your secondary career. Or, if you would like to take a flyer””I can be bought! A penny a word and then perhaps your work might be expanded into professional magazines. Content counts for about half of what an editor considers.
Best-
Mike
P.S. Comma after the word “that” is never a good idea, and placing two “that’s” in the same sentence is a no-no. That said, that’s a shame.
Hi Mike, good luck with the editing career! I’d suggest that if you really want to use the web to drum up business, you might want to rethink your approach, which comes off more like an attempt to troll than a genuine effort to be helpful and thus ends up looking less than professional. You might also want to acquaint yourself with the list of what’s considered pro and what’s not when dealing with SF writers – I’ve found the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site very helpful and I often point people new to the field at that site.: http://www.sfwa.org I hope that’s helpful!