matociquala

I got my mojo back today. Two 5.8s, two 5.7s (one new and mucho overhung), a 5.6 I am using to practice my footwork on, and a 5.5 on the slab, because my arms were too damned tired for anything else after the overhang.

Wednesday, if the mojo sticks, I am going to try my first route on what we refer to as the Sky Wall, which is mondo overhung for twenty-five feet and then has a five-foot vertical and then has a five-foot roof and then has another ten feet of vertical.

Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith that this will happen, but you never know until you try. It's an easy route with big juggy holds, but the physicality of the wall is brutal, for lo, I am a fat girl, and hauling about a hundred pounds more up the wall than my roomie does.

rachel_swirsky

There are markets that accept nearly every submission, or that always seem to end up on the bottom of the pile. I’m sure that good authors have published in these magazines, but in every instance that has turned up in the PodCastle slush, if a story comes in by authors who are still mentioning these magazines in their cover letters, the story will be worse than average slush — including stories that have never been printed anywhere.

I’ll note that I didn’t assemble this list of bad-sign markets from a priori assumptions. These aren’t markets that I came in with a bad impression of, or that I had even necessarily known much about. These are magazines whose names I began to remember because I saw a pattern in the slush.

It’s even worse when the cover letter comes in with credits from a large number of magazines that I’ve never heard of. At the beginning of our run, we had someone submit with a full resume of over one thousand publications, none of which I’d heard of before. These are, I assume, the fly-by-night for the love markets which publish for a month or two before dying, only to be replaced, hydra-like, by two more.

tim_pratt

Snow! It snowed in the hills last night. On the morning drive we saw lots of cars with non-trivial quantities of icy whiteness on their hoods and roofs, and there are white-dusted eaves on the houses, though it was all turning to slush by the time I got to work. Still, it finally feels a bit like winter. Time for red wine and spiced cider and chili.

I've signed up for Holidailies! I've been meaning to update more often, and making public declarations of intent sometimes serves to motivate me, so ideally I'll update every day from December 7 to January 6 (the latter date is still celebrated as Old Christmas in parts of the Appalachian mountains, as I learned when I went to college there. Any excuse for a party, I say).

My vacation is now over. I was off work from the day job starting on Thanksgiving, a period of time I used mostly as an excuse to get a ton of my writing work done. I've got this fun work-for-hire thing due in a few months, so I worked a lot on that, and also made some progress on a story that's due in February (it has a title, anyway, and an opening scene in which there are no events, so that may require a little tweaking). Plus some freelancing.

I was hoping to write 30,000 words during my ten days of actual vacation (working on Thanksgiving was not so much of an option, and I had a friend in town the following day), and I only managed a hair over 20,000, due to having a baby who woke up at 5 a.m. (or earlier) for a handful of days in a row. It's hard to be productive when you're brutally underslept. Fortunately his sleep schedule has settled back down now. And, hey, 20K ain't bad, really.

I also read Stephen King's Under the Dome (awesome, his best and most ambitious book in years), and two Ken Bruen crime novels. That guy continues to stomp a mudhole in my heart with every book.

Now it's back to work, which, in truth, I don't mind. Being at home every day with a very active toddler -- our pediatrician says he's a "spirited child" -- is more exhausting than the day job, honestly. I don't know how my wife does it every day. She's made of tougher stuff than I am.

cmpriest

Last night’s steampunk ball was a blast and a half. The venue was superb (a regional history museum packed with 19th century tech exhibits), the event was very well attended, and everyone (from the museum and bar staff to the attendees) was outstandingly pleasant.

At ten o’clock I got up to read, and I read for half an hour, which — on this particular occasion — was a bit tricky. The lights were fairly low, I had two adult beverages under my belt (so to speak), and due to a major case of vanity I was wearing my contacts (side effect: excessive farsightedness). But despite my intermittent coughing, squinting, and place-losing, everyone was polite and nobody threw anything at me. Win!

I didn’t take any pictures, mostly because I was too busy running around trying to see everything. Several people got pictures of me, though (often with Caitlin, who looked smokin’); so when and if those turn up, I’ll link them here.

Anyway. Many, many thanks to the folks at the exhibition, for inviting me and for having me at their wonderful evening.

I’m not going to overgeneralize and gush about All Steampunk Events Everywhere, for I can only speak from my own experience. But this having been said, all the steampunk events that I, personally, have attended have been warm, happy, playful affairs — wherein everybody seemed delighted to be present. Maybe it’s the general influence of 19th century “high tea” manners; maybe it’s the glee of an absinthe bar; maybe it’s the feeling of an emerging community finally beginning to gel … I don’t know. But so far, so good. I’m proud to be part of this scene, and I hope that I can contribute to its continued awesomeness in some small fashion.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

deannahoak

Wow, two posts in a day! I told you I was going to pick it up. :-)

I came across this post in praise of copyeditors while Twittering “copyediting” and had to share with you. I particularly love the author’s description of how authors feel when they get a copyedited manuscript back:

It was like getting dressed up and brushing one’s hair very carefully and thinking one looks quite respectable indeed, only to have one’s big-mouth best friend show up and say “You can’t go out like that—your skirt is tucked into your underwear and you smell like Chewbacca.” You feel relief that someone caught you in time. Adoration for their superior wisdom and objective eye. Lingering embarrassment, mingled with wounded pride, mingled with overwhelming gratitude.

Every once in a while copyeditors run into an author who gets offended at having these things pointed out, but it luckily doesn’t happen very often. :-)

Originally published at Deanna Hoak. Please leave any comments there.

drchuck1968

• 14:34 Why do people hate radio DJs?
• 16:56 #Dollhouse rocks my #socks

cmpriest

Been a busy day here, wherein I checked off the last of my Christmas list and shipped everything back east. Wow. All that fit into one sentence. Funny, it felt pretty epic at the time.

The only true point of hilarity came when I was inside [:: store redacted ::] purchasing [:: item redacted ::] from a clerk who had clearly been a bit bored for awhile — because he had a copy of The Stranger sitting open beside the cash register. I interrupted his reading, handed him my debit card and my ID, and he did an honest-to-God doubletake. He said, “That’s you, isn’t it?” and he pointed down at the paper … where in fact, the magazine was open to a notice regarding my event on Tuesday (7:00 p.m.) at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Sometimes it’s funny having such a distinctive name.

So let this holiday miracle of synchronicity serve as your reminder. Come on out Tuesday night! I’d love to see you there.

(And in other news, just one more hasty heads up for the Steampunk Exhibition Ball tomorrow night, then I swear to God I’ll shut up about it.)

Anyway, while we’re on the subject of stuff I did and places I’ll go, click here for the Culture Wars podcast — for I digitally stopped by yesterday morning and we talked steampunk, science fiction, apocalyptic prescriptions and more. And yes, of course we talked about Boneshaker too.

So that’s pretty much everything that’s new and shiny for now. I’ll probably be offline most of the weekend as I officially have editorial instructions in hand for two projects, and looming editorial instructions on a third. Never mind how I’m cleaning up Bloodshot (which has to go down by the 12th) in order to send it off to agent and editor. Ah, well. Happy holidays, all! Whichever ones you celebrate.