Writing News, June 2001

michaeljasper.net

"Another Wrecked Web Site"

June 7, 2001

Something new and cool!

What I'm Reading:

Fantasy and Science Fiction -- July 2001 (almost done)

Today's latest news is that I have a newsgroup! Go check it out and say hi, if you dare...

That's about as productive as I got today. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe I just need to let myself take a break and not feel guilty about it.

But the little voice in the back of my head keeps asking "What've you done today? What've you done today? What've you done today?" (Sort of like in the "The Simpsons," when they take a trip -- "Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet???"). I guess I feel like a waste of space if I'm not advancing my "repertoire" in some way every day, even if it's just brainstorming story ideas, like I've been doing the past few days.

I think I know what I need to be working on, at least. I want to write my short story about the book of inner magic, and then go back to work on the Last of the Hand soon. Maybe I'll do some other stories, but I think what's been bugging me most is that I have this big project sitting there, unfinished. Everything else -- including the project with my friend Greg -- goes on the back burner.

Sheesh. Are you tired of the writerly angst yet???

I promise not to write in here again until I've written something new -- something fiction, not a journal entry! Later.
mjj

June 6, 2001

Reading and generating ideas...

What I'm Reading:

Fantasy and Science Fiction -- July 2001

Hey there. Still formulating ideas here in North Cackalacky. I think I'm onto something with the "Fourth Book of Magic" story idea, a story that tells the history of a minor, minor character in Last of the Hand. I feel the most excited about that one (followed by my ideas for stories about ... hmm... should I tell ya?? promise not to steal 'em, okay? ... well, there's the one about the "disillusionist," and the one about the "devil's workshop," and the one about the guy robbing a bank in Raleigh 40-50 years ago, which may turn into some sort of cool urban fantasy about the city where I now live... and those are just a few of my hare-brained idears...).

But lately I've been liking the one about the girl in 1890s Iowa who finds a book among her father's myriad possessions that opens a new doorway for her and turns her into a sort of unsavory character that Kelley (the heroine from the fantasy novel) has to battle to wrest the book away from her. Should be a cool story. But I've gotta do research -- bleah! Oh hell, I'll just make the stuff up.

I also sent off my publication info to SFWA for Active membership (I'm hoping they accept my contract w/ Asimov's as proof of my third pro sale). Hey, it's not writing, but writing-related! And as for that antho I was waiting to hear back on -- they've postponed until June 21st! Argh. Must be patient. Must be patient.

I'm also almost done reading the latest F&SF, which has been pretty good, but not great. Some stories that just didn't really stick with me. I liked the story by Ben Rosenbaum all right, but it was a bit thin. Loved the short-short "Prime Time!" But I thought "Tom Kelley's Ghost" was uneven at best, and I felt the author was withholding info from me -- not cool. The story by M. Shayne Bell was pretty good, and probably my favorite so far (haven't read the Gilman novella yet), though I thought it was a little bit heavy-handed about its politics. The weakest story was John Morressy's vignette about a marriage counselor who has to deal with the dish who ran away with the spoon, and Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (I've never been a big fan of humorous spec-fic).

I've also critted a story by fellow writer Ilsa, and read a draft of a possible collaborative piece by me friend Greg. Greg's story shows lots of potential -- it's surprisingly similar to Hand in a lot of good ways, and it could be our next book together. We'll see.

Right now I'm just sifting through all my options. It's been nice. Almost like a vacation. Speaking of which, I need to run off and surf for some sites in the mountains for Lizzie and me. Later!
mjj

June 5, 2001

Travel, ideas, and thoughts about writing...

Good afternoon. I hope you're doing well. I am, for the most part. I get to leave work early for a massage, so I have nothing to complain about, right?

Too much caffeine though. I'm feeling a bit jittery. That's what I get for sucking down two big mugs of the industrial strength stuff here at work.

Yesterday and today I did some messing around with short stories. I organized my fifteen best speculative fiction stories (9 of which have been published, woo hoo!) into a collection of almost 300 pages, almost 86,000 words. These were all fnished stories, stuff I've written since '96. Not a bad mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

The funny thing is, most of the stories I've had published would probably be considered SF, but lately I've been much more interested in horror and fantasy, particularly urban/contemporary fantasy.

In related news, check out my fellow writer Derek's story, "A Piece of Bamboo," at my favorite spec-fic story site, Strange Horizons. He's written a great tale that spans centuries yet still contains very real human characters. Nice job, Derek!

Speaking of publications, I'm still waiting to hear about my story, "Black Angels." Today's supposed to be the day. I'm going nuts. I almost e-mailed the editor, but decided against it. I'll hear soon enough, and I've waited this long, what's another couple hours or days??? I've already got a place picked out if this story gets bounced. And I found a couple annoying little errors I'd like to fix as well. It's still a good story, one of my favorites.

It's nice to go back and read old stories. As I said earlier, I was compiling my best stories into one big file, so I got to look at "Natural Order" again, and got hooked into that one again. I really like that story and I still marvel at how I was able to p! ull that one out of my ass. I guess lack of sleep, lots of caffeine and MSG, and being surrounded by cool writers and imaginative folks -- not to mention all the funky Scientology karma floating around -- helped make it what it is. I definitely took myself to a higher level there.

Which reminds me of the date -- June 5th. Clarion time. It's hard to believe it was 5 years ago that I was there, hanging in good old Owen Hall with my fellow writers in captivity. Man. That was one of those life-altering experiences, a definite fork in the road of my life, and one which I'm only now really starting to appreciate. I started seeing myself as a real writer, seeing how damn hard it is, and liking it even more despite it. It also burned me out on writing for almost 2 years, and turned me off genre stuff for a bit longer. Now I'm ecstatic to be back where I feel I belong, knee-deep in gadgets, magic, spooks, and whiz-bang special effects. I am a geek at heart.

And that brings me back to writing again. In addition to nicely organizing my "finished" stories (though I have a feeling I'll have to update the file once the editors at Strange Horizons get ahold of "Explosions" and make more suggestions to fix that one up before publication, which always makes the story better), I've been jotting down ideas for new stories. I've got about 10 ideas, though nothing really jumped out at me until I thought of another idea this morning before work -- I could tell the story of a minor minor character in my fantasy novel who somehow acquires a book about Inner Magic over a century ago, and what that books does to her in the process, and what she does with her new knowledge as well. Could be fun...!

And lastly, I sort of had a revelation yesterday about traveling. I realized that I've been making excuses not to plan any trips with Elizabeth for the past year or so out of a sense of fear of travel expenses and a desire to not take any more time away from my writing than I have to. But then I started thinking ! about how stupid I was being -- I was just avoiding conflict, which I'm quite good at. Traveling is a great inspiration, and helps me appreciate the everyday things of my life even more. It's good to get thrust into a new situation, a new setting, and have to soak up all sorts of new sensory stimuli. So Elizabeth and I are gonna go... somewhere... for our 4th anniversary at the end of this month. I'm planning it for a change (usually Lizzie does), and I'm thinking it should be someplace in the mountains, someplace we've never been. The only stipulation is that we should stay at a B and B. I can live with that.

Okay then. I think I've covered all the misc. junk that's been running through my head lately. I'm outta here. Later.
mjj

June 3, 2001

My Not Writing News Entry...

This weekend I've probably been more social than I've been in a long time, and it's been good. I've been hermetic for too long.

Now, I realize that this is supposed to be a Writing News, but I don't have a lot to report on that front recently. I've given myself a reprieve from my self-imposed deadlines, and man, does it feel good. Maybe 'round the time my birthday rolls around (June 13th for those keeping score!), I'll feel more like writing/revising/editing/brainstorming. 'Til then I plan on enjoying life, getting to know my family and friends again -- including Elizabeth! -- and reading for pleasure.

This was a weekend of not only socializing, but teeny tiny babies. We went out to see my not-even-two-weeks-old niece Paige on Friday. Holy cow is this a cute little girl, and is she gonna be tall! She was halfway through her supper, but she didn't seem to mind laying on her new uncle's big belly and stretching out her long, slender legs on me.

We also went (belatedly) to a pig-pickin' at my friend Chris' house, in time to see his older 2 daughters getting ready for bed, and watched them with their 5-week-old Emily. Emily is smaller than Paige, which is wild. I still can't believe my buddy Chris is a father to all these girls. He and Jeanne are great parents, though.

All these delicate little babies make me nervous, though. They're so fragile!

I also chatted with my friend Greg yesterday, and played tennis with Elizabeth and Clarke in the afternoon. We also hung out with my family on Friday night, drinking beer and margaritas. What a weekend, and it's only Sunday morning.

So yeah, while I may not have been productive on the writing front, I was more than productive on the enjoying life front, which of course is much, much more important, anyway.
mjj

June 1, 2001

Okay, one more update...

Hello. Just thought I'd say howdy quick, even though I haven't done much writing lately. I did get two rejections yesterday, so there's some writing-related news!

I like getting rejections lately. I know that sounds weird, but in the past few months I've been getting more and more detailed rejections, many of which have contained great criticisms of my stories which I've considered and, in many cases, used to make the stories better. The folks at deathlings.com had some excellent comments for my story, "Mother of the Bride," a story that may be too over-the-top to be believable. It's more of a satire than a horror story, and I had fun writing it, though it's not really scary. Same with my other story, "Visions of Suburban Bliss," which has some great scenes (my favorite being the sweat lodge sitting on the cul-de-sac in Cary). I like stuff like that. Like the story I read in Fantasy and Science Fiction this morning, "Prime Time!" by Lawrence A. Connolly -- it has a totally loopy, but inventive premise (telemarketers can call people at any hour while at work, but the calls always reach potential customers at 6 p.m., "prime time" when everyone's eating supper. Great little story, short, with a nice kicker at the end.

Speaking of F&SF, I got a nice rejection from the editor there for "Last of the Hand." He's all full on novellas, which I figured, but he wrote a bit about the Lew Shiner story I liked in the issue last October. It's nice getting personalized notes from editors who are slam busy. I read the other day that Gardner had "processed" hundreds of stories in just one day this past week.

It's gotta be a hard, thankless job. I guess the good stories just leap out at you, and you have maybe 20-30 stories a week that are publishable, and you've got to choose from them. But reading from the slus! h pile... shudder. It'd be kind of fun, for like the first month. Then it'd be torture, at least for me. I imagine it's pretty easy getting the slush stories done -- you can tell by the end of page one if it's a clunker or not. I realize Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF probably didn't read all 90 pages of my novella, and I can't blame him for that. I'm realistic. But I'm glad I tried, and I'm glad I didn't get an "alas"!! Rejection just makes me more determined -- I'm gonna search for some novella markets today, if I have time.

I think I'm going to read more short fiction as soon as I'm done with the Charles de Lint book. It's been a while since I read some good stories. I have a crit to do for a writing friend, and maybe I can get my buddy Chris to give me his urban fantasy story at his pig pickin' tomorrow (he has his story saved on a laptop w/o a disk drive on it!). I figure if I can get a couple beers in him he'll print it out for me.

But I think I need to do some short stuff for a while. I'd like to get more stories in circulation, and at the same time I can mess with research for my novel ideas. Maybe do 3-4 in the next couple months -- I've got a bunch of ideas, and I've been feeling the urge to create. So I think getting caught up on all my back issues of Asimov's and F&SF, as well as stuff from the Sci Fiction website (I'm about all caught up on the Strange Horizons fiction) would be a good plan. Plus I've got an armload of Year's Best, both SF and Fantasy/Horror, sitting on my shelves all lonely and forgotten. Sounds like a plan, especially with the new Year's Bests coming out this summer. Those are the only books I plan on buying in the next year or so, along with Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is supposed to be awesome.

And I'm going to start with Campbell finalist James Cambias' first story, "A Diagram of Rapture," which I found at the F&SF website. Later.

News

mjj

	michaeljasper.net *"Another Wrecked Web Site"*
June 7, 2001 Something new and cool! What I'm Reading: Fantasy and Science Fiction -- July 2001 (almost done)	Today's latest news is that I have a newsgroup! Go check it out and say hi, if you dare... That's about as productive as I got today. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe I just need to let myself take a break and not feel guilty about it. But the little voice in the back of my head keeps asking "What've you done today? What've you done today? What've you done today?" (Sort of like in the "The Simpsons," when they take a trip -- "Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet???"). I guess I feel like a waste of space if I'm not advancing my "repertoire" in some way every day, even if it's just brainstorming story ideas, like I've been doing the past few days. I think I know what I need to be working on, at least. I want to write my short story about the book of inner magic, and then go back to work on the Last of the Hand soon. Maybe I'll do some other stories, but I think what's been bugging me most is that I have this big project sitting there, unfinished. Everything else -- including the project with my friend Greg -- goes on the back burner. Sheesh. Are you tired of the writerly angst yet??? I promise not to write in here again until I've written something new -- something fiction, not a journal entry! Later. mjj
June 6, 2001 Reading and generating ideas... What I'm Reading: Fantasy and Science Fiction -- July 2001	Hey there. Still formulating ideas here in North Cackalacky. I think I'm onto something with the "Fourth Book of Magic" story idea, a story that tells the history of a minor, minor character in Last of the Hand. I feel the most excited about that one (followed by my ideas for stories about ... hmm... should I tell ya?? promise not to steal 'em, okay? ... well, there's the one about the "disillusionist," and the one about the "devil's workshop," and the one about the guy robbing a bank in Raleigh 40-50 years ago, which may turn into some sort of cool urban fantasy about the city where I now live... and those are just a few of my hare-brained idears...). But lately I've been liking the one about the girl in 1890s Iowa who finds a book among her father's myriad possessions that opens a new doorway for her and turns her into a sort of unsavory character that Kelley (the heroine from the fantasy novel) has to battle to wrest the book away from her. Should be a cool story. But I've gotta do research -- bleah! Oh hell, I'll just make the stuff up. I also sent off my publication info to SFWA for Active membership (I'm hoping they accept my contract w/ Asimov's as proof of my third pro sale). Hey, it's not writing, but writing-related! And as for that antho I was waiting to hear back on -- they've postponed until June 21st! Argh. Must be patient. Must be patient. I'm also almost done reading the latest F&SF, which has been pretty good, but not great. Some stories that just didn't really stick with me. I liked the story by Ben Rosenbaum all right, but it was a bit thin. Loved the short-short "Prime Time!" But I thought "Tom Kelley's Ghost" was uneven at best, and I felt the author was withholding info from me -- not cool. The story by M. Shayne Bell was pretty good, and probably my favorite so far (haven't read the Gilman novella yet), though I thought it was a little bit heavy-handed about its politics. The weakest story was John Morressy's vignette about a marriage counselor who has to deal with the dish who ran away with the spoon, and Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (I've never been a big fan of humorous spec-fic). I've also critted a story by fellow writer Ilsa, and read a draft of a possible collaborative piece by me friend Greg. Greg's story shows lots of potential -- it's surprisingly similar to Hand in a lot of good ways, and it could be our next book together. We'll see. Right now I'm just sifting through all my options. It's been nice. Almost like a vacation. Speaking of which, I need to run off and surf for some sites in the mountains for Lizzie and me. Later! mjj
June 5, 2001 Travel, ideas, and thoughts about writing...	Good afternoon. I hope you're doing well. I am, for the most part. I get to leave work early for a massage, so I have nothing to complain about, right? Too much caffeine though. I'm feeling a bit jittery. That's what I get for sucking down two big mugs of the industrial strength stuff here at work. Yesterday and today I did some messing around with short stories. I organized my fifteen best speculative fiction stories (9 of which have been published, woo hoo!) into a collection of almost 300 pages, almost 86,000 words. These were all fnished stories, stuff I've written since '96. Not a bad mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The funny thing is, most of the stories I've had published would probably be considered SF, but lately I've been much more interested in horror and fantasy, particularly urban/contemporary fantasy. In related news, check out my fellow writer Derek's story, "A Piece of Bamboo," at my favorite spec-fic story site, Strange Horizons. He's written a great tale that spans centuries yet still contains very real human characters. Nice job, Derek! Speaking of publications, I'm still waiting to hear about my story, "Black Angels." Today's supposed to be the day. I'm going nuts. I almost e-mailed the editor, but decided against it. I'll hear soon enough, and I've waited this long, what's another couple hours or days??? I've already got a place picked out if this story gets bounced. And I found a couple annoying little errors I'd like to fix as well. It's still a good story, one of my favorites. It's nice to go back and read old stories. As I said earlier, I was compiling my best stories into one big file, so I got to look at "Natural Order" again, and got hooked into that one again. I really like that story and I still marvel at how I was able to p! ull that one out of my ass. I guess lack of sleep, lots of caffeine and MSG, and being surrounded by cool writers and imaginative folks -- not to mention all the funky Scientology karma floating around -- helped make it what it is. I definitely took myself to a higher level there. Which reminds me of the date -- June 5th. Clarion time. It's hard to believe it was 5 years ago that I was there, hanging in good old Owen Hall with my fellow writers in captivity. Man. That was one of those life-altering experiences, a definite fork in the road of my life, and one which I'm only now really starting to appreciate. I started seeing myself as a real writer, seeing how damn hard it is, and liking it even more despite it. It also burned me out on writing for almost 2 years, and turned me off genre stuff for a bit longer. Now I'm ecstatic to be back where I feel I belong, knee-deep in gadgets, magic, spooks, and whiz-bang special effects. I am a geek at heart. And that brings me back to writing again. In addition to nicely organizing my "finished" stories (though I have a feeling I'll have to update the file once the editors at Strange Horizons get ahold of "Explosions" and make more suggestions to fix that one up before publication, which always makes the story better), I've been jotting down ideas for new stories. I've got about 10 ideas, though nothing really jumped out at me until I thought of another idea this morning before work -- I could tell the story of a minor minor character in my fantasy novel who somehow acquires a book about Inner Magic over a century ago, and what that books does to her in the process, and what she does with her new knowledge as well. Could be fun...! And lastly, I sort of had a revelation yesterday about traveling. I realized that I've been making excuses not to plan any trips with Elizabeth for the past year or so out of a sense of fear of travel expenses and a desire to not take any more time away from my writing than I have to. But then I started thinking ! about how stupid I was being -- I was just avoiding conflict, which I'm quite good at. Traveling is a great inspiration, and helps me appreciate the everyday things of my life even more. It's good to get thrust into a new situation, a new setting, and have to soak up all sorts of new sensory stimuli. So Elizabeth and I are gonna go... somewhere... for our 4th anniversary at the end of this month. I'm planning it for a change (usually Lizzie does), and I'm thinking it should be someplace in the mountains, someplace we've never been. The only stipulation is that we should stay at a B and B. I can live with that. Okay then. I think I've covered all the misc. junk that's been running through my head lately. I'm outta here. Later. mjj
June 3, 2001 My Not Writing News Entry...	This weekend I've probably been more social than I've been in a long time, and it's been good. I've been hermetic for too long. Now, I realize that this is supposed to be a Writing News, but I don't have a lot to report on that front recently. I've given myself a reprieve from my self-imposed deadlines, and man, does it feel good. Maybe 'round the time my birthday rolls around (June 13th for those keeping score!), I'll feel more like writing/revising/editing/brainstorming. 'Til then I plan on enjoying life, getting to know my family and friends again -- including Elizabeth! -- and reading for pleasure. This was a weekend of not only socializing, but teeny tiny babies. We went out to see my not-even-two-weeks-old niece Paige on Friday. Holy cow is this a cute little girl, and is she gonna be tall! She was halfway through her supper, but she didn't seem to mind laying on her new uncle's big belly and stretching out her long, slender legs on me. We also went (belatedly) to a pig-pickin' at my friend Chris' house, in time to see his older 2 daughters getting ready for bed, and watched them with their 5-week-old Emily. Emily is smaller than Paige, which is wild. I still can't believe my buddy Chris is a father to all these girls. He and Jeanne are great parents, though. All these delicate little babies make me nervous, though. They're so fragile! I also chatted with my friend Greg yesterday, and played tennis with Elizabeth and Clarke in the afternoon. We also hung out with my family on Friday night, drinking beer and margaritas. What a weekend, and it's only Sunday morning. So yeah, while I may not have been productive on the writing front, I was more than productive on the enjoying life front, which of course is much, much more important, anyway. mjj
June 1, 2001 Okay, one more update...	Hello. Just thought I'd say howdy quick, even though I haven't done much writing lately. I did get two rejections yesterday, so there's some writing-related news! I like getting rejections lately. I know that sounds weird, but in the past few months I've been getting more and more detailed rejections, many of which have contained great criticisms of my stories which I've considered and, in many cases, used to make the stories better. The folks at deathlings.com had some excellent comments for my story, "Mother of the Bride," a story that may be too over-the-top to be believable. It's more of a satire than a horror story, and I had fun writing it, though it's not really scary. Same with my other story, "Visions of Suburban Bliss," which has some great scenes (my favorite being the sweat lodge sitting on the cul-de-sac in Cary). I like stuff like that. Like the story I read in Fantasy and Science Fiction this morning, "Prime Time!" by Lawrence A. Connolly -- it has a totally loopy, but inventive premise (telemarketers can call people at any hour while at work, but the calls always reach potential customers at 6 p.m., "prime time" when everyone's eating supper. Great little story, short, with a nice kicker at the end. Speaking of F&SF, I got a nice rejection from the editor there for "Last of the Hand." He's all full on novellas, which I figured, but he wrote a bit about the Lew Shiner story I liked in the issue last October. It's nice getting personalized notes from editors who are slam busy. I read the other day that Gardner had "processed" hundreds of stories in just one day this past week. It's gotta be a hard, thankless job. I guess the good stories just leap out at you, and you have maybe 20-30 stories a week that are publishable, and you've got to choose from them. But reading from the slus! h pile... shudder. It'd be kind of fun, for like the first month. Then it'd be torture, at least for me. I imagine it's pretty easy getting the slush stories done -- you can tell by the end of page one if it's a clunker or not. I realize Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF probably didn't read all 90 pages of my novella, and I can't blame him for that. I'm realistic. But I'm glad I tried, and I'm glad I didn't get an "alas"!! Rejection just makes me more determined -- I'm gonna search for some novella markets today, if I have time. I think I'm going to read more short fiction as soon as I'm done with the Charles de Lint book. It's been a while since I read some good stories. I have a crit to do for a writing friend, and maybe I can get my buddy Chris to give me his urban fantasy story at his pig pickin' tomorrow (he has his story saved on a laptop w/o a disk drive on it!). I figure if I can get a couple beers in him he'll print it out for me. But I think I need to do some short stuff for a while. I'd like to get more stories in circulation, and at the same time I can mess with research for my novel ideas. Maybe do 3-4 in the next couple months -- I've got a bunch of ideas, and I've been feeling the urge to create. So I think getting caught up on all my back issues of Asimov's and F&SF, as well as stuff from the Sci Fiction website (I'm about all caught up on the Strange Horizons fiction) would be a good plan. Plus I've got an armload of Year's Best, both SF and Fantasy/Horror, sitting on my shelves all lonely and forgotten. Sounds like a plan, especially with the new Year's Bests coming out this summer. Those are the only books I plan on buying in the next year or so, along with Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is supposed to be awesome. And I'm going to start with Campbell finalist James Cambias' first story, "A Diagram of Rapture," which I found at the F&SF website. Later.
News	mjj