Oh Well...

Found out "The End of Seconds" was rejected.  I sigh deeply...

The difference this time is that the editor told me why he was bouncing it.  The end didn't engage him enough.  Ah, that's...helpful...

I sigh deeply...

Two more still out...

Good Thing I'm Used To Rejection...

Okay, Asimov's didn't want "A God To Dance With".  Bummer.

There's still three stories out.  We'll see what happens with them.

Of course, this brings me one step closer to getting Campfire Stories, the epublishing project, back on track.

And again, I sigh deeply...

02/05/2012: "A Voice in the Darkness" Final Edit and Word Count

Did the final editing pass through "A Voice in the Darkness".  Cleared up a few lingering grammatical screw-ups, and moved a conversation from the end to earlier in the story, where it makes more sense.  I'm liking where the story is now.

The final word count for "A Voice in the Darkness" is 12,794 words.

Oh, and the stories of Mandalay Jones and Mira Frayne are not finished.

Inadvertantly Avoided A Problem & Motivational Quotes

I avoided a problem without even trying.

It had occurred to me that I might have a problem with the history of a few of my characters.  In my novel, Brynna and Georges have been married for one hundred nineteen years, which means they were married in 1893.  Georges has also mentioned that he waited eighty-six years to marry Brynna.  They met in 1807, so that all works out.

The problem comes from the fact that I mentioned that Georges and Scott fought in the American Civil War.  For the life of me I couldn't remember dates the Civil War started and ended.  A little quick research reminded me that the Civil War was fought from 1861 - 1865.  That fits nicely into the eighty-six year gap between the time Georges and Brynna met and the time they were married.  It allows plenty of time for Georges and Scott to travel to the United States, fight in the Civil War (both fought for the North) then travel back to Wales.

I wish all my problems were so easily avoided.


A few motivational quotes:

I write for the same reason I breath...because if I didn't, I would die.

- Isaac Asimov

…writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn’t take any talent or training.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

There is no way to stop.  Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary… because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

He once told me the difference, as he saw it, between an author and a writer.  “An author (he said) is what they put on your passport, because in Europe they think a writer is a newspaperman.  An author is somebody who gets his name on the spine of leather-bound volumes that are never read; a writer is someone who gets hemorrhoids from sitting on his ass all his life…writing.

- Harlan Ellison, All The Lies That Are My Life

 

Try not.  Do.  Or do not.  There is no try.

- Yoda, Star Wars Episode V:  The Empire Strikes Back