Five Links Friday 6/19/13

It's been a busy week as I went back to work and left the wife to fend for herself with the kids.

I missed out on a regular blog posting and have fallen a bit behind on the short story I'm working on, but there's never a better time than the present to get things back on track.

So with that said, here are five cool writing links for the weekend.

1. Need a quick idea for a thousand-word flash story?  Try this Plot Scenario Generator at Archetypewriting.com.

2. Liz Bureman at TheWriterPractice.com has a post looking at 5 Types of Anti-Heroes.

3. Here are some Unusual Tips to Become a Better Writer from Sandra Miller at Backwoodsauthor.com.

4. From Dailywritingtips.com, here are 5 Tips on How to Run a Writing Group.

5. And finally, if you're into sweet and awesome things (and who isn't?) the Kindle edition of Sandman #1 is available for FREE at Amazon.com right now. Sure beats the hundred bucks I paid for the print edition in the early 90's.

Five Links Friday 6/12/13

I'm back from a short break, but to give a quick update, I'm a proud dad again and everyone is doing well.  Life is good :)

Here are five links for the week:

1. Ten Time Management Tips That Work. If there is one thing I'll need to be able to do in the next few months, it's manage time more productively.  This article from Entrepreneur.com gives some good advice on how to do just that.

2. Ten Simple Tricks to Perk Up Your Writing by Steve Alcorn at Writer's Fun Zone.  This article may be a few months old, but has a lot of good (if basic) info.

3. Query Tips from Sara Negovetich. Who better to get agent query tips from than a literary agent?  Sara Nego is one and her blog has some good advice for anyone out there writing queries.

4. Overcoming writerly self-doubt. Here's a post from Ksenia Anske's blog. I don't really buy into that whole "self-doubt" thing, but she makes some good points in this post.

5. Are you tough enough?  Take this quiz from Success Magazine and see if you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Good stuff all around.  I should be back on a semi-regular posting schedule again, so check back when you can.

Five Links Friday 6/28/13

Here's 5 great links.  Have a great weekend.

1. 9 Things Every Writer Needs To Do Every Day. Scott Ginsberg has some advice for writers at openzine.com.  Can't say I disagree with any of them.

2. Building The Protagonist. More good advice from Writer's Fun Zone.

3. The Death of Self-Publishing. Here's a satiric look at the "death" of self-publishing from the Validation Publishing blog

4. 8 Books From The Last Decade That Made Me Excited About Sci-Fi. Jo Walton at Tor.com looks at some of the best SF over the last decade.

5. And finally, since I'm (literally) hours away from becoming a dad for the second time, here's a look at what it means to be a dad from Zen Habits:  A Secret to Dad Greatness

So that's it.  If I'm not posting much in the next few weeks, you can rest assured that its because I'm spending time with our brand-new baby girl.

So You Want to Write a Novel

Good stuff!

Five Links Friday 6/21/13

Almost didn't make it, but here are five good writing-related links to read over the weekend.

1. "Dining with the Devil" by Arthur Davis published online in the Spring 2013 issues of Allegory.  This is a fun short story that lives up to its title.

2. 10 Hidden Gifts of Rejection Letters.  Here's a great guest column at Writer's Digest looking at what you can gain from rejection letters.

3. Amazon Publishing Has First Million-Copy Hit; Will Authors, Agents Take Notice? Jeremy Greenfield at Forbes.com takes a look at Amazon Publishing.

4. Are we writing too much to be reading?  Laxmi Hariharan talks about all the time people spend (waste?) recording their every move on social media sites.

5. 5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know.  And to close things up, here's how to properly use those social media sites.

Five Links Friday 6/14/13

Here's five great links to get you through the weekend.

1. "A Day of Such Good Cheer" by Kim Farleigh. This is a quick, fun read from The Story Shack to brighten up your Friday afternoon.

2. 10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do: A Check-List for Self-Editing. When writing a novel, and especially when querying an agent, you've got to make sure your first chapter counts. Here's how, from Anne R. Allen's Blog

3. Ten Successful Tips For Independent Authors. from Richard Stephenson's blog. If you're considering self-publishing, then this article is a must-read.

4. 5 Reasons Why Your Blog Can’t Keep Readers. Ooh. I think we all have blogs and we all have trouble getting people to stick around. Rainy Kaye tells us why in this post.

5. Get Rich With: the “ChaCHING!” Instinct. If you're into personal finance, you should probably check out Mr. Money Mustache. In this post, he talks about the biggest "secret" tool people use to get rich: Delayed Gratification.

Five Links Friday 6/7/13

I'm going to try something new here. Every Friday I'll post five links to online short stories and blog posts I read during the week about writing and success.

So without further adieu, here's the debut of Five Links Friday.

1. "Nuclear Family" by Alex Shvartsman.  Here's a great piece of flash fiction published online in Kasma Science Fiction Magazine.  If you're not familiar with flash, this story is a perfect example of how to do it correctly.

2. "Uncle Bones" by Damien Broderick.  This was published in an issue of Asimov's Science Fiction a few years ago.  I just read it this week, but it was a fun story.  You can read the first few pages online and purchase the back-issue if you like what you see.

3. Printed Books Rule Like Never Before from Ksenia Anske's blog.  A good post looking at why print books will survive in world of electronic publishing.

4. Writers: Making a Living Off of Kindle? by Jeff Rivera at mediabistro.com.  This post is a couple of years old, but worth a look.

5.How I Finally Faced My Weight & Debt Problems by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.  Here's a good look at overcoming obstacles and just cleaning up your life.

A Dozen Short Lists: What to do?

So here's a question... Some of my favorite (or best?) short stories haven't yet been published. That's life, I know, and it's also how publishing works. My conundrum, however, is that some of these stories keep getting shortlist rejections, sometimes with feedback, from pro or at least semi-pro publications.

The question (after all that) is that I'm not sure if I should continue submitting to pro-payers and hope that eventually someone will pick it up, or submit to a lower paying, lower circulating publications with higher acceptance rates just to get them off my pending list. (Yes, I know that's making the bold assumption that every token-payer out there is just jumping at the chance to buy my stories.)

Anyhow, if you look at my current publication list, you'll see that I have no problems whatsoever submitting to smaller markets. My only concern comes with the stories that have come close to acceptance in pro-paying markets on several occasions. I kind of feel like if a story is good enough for a bunch of "almosts" at some of the more known markets, I'd hate to give up first rights to a publication with a much smaller audience.

On the other hand, nothing bad can ever come out of selling a short story. Every publication you can add to your author's bio increases your credibility and marketability in one way or another. And regardless of how small the publication is, someone is reading it. If you have a killer story in the magazine or anthology, at least a few people will share it. In a best case scenario, you might even help increase sales and get some name value in the small press world. Who knows?

Anyhow, I didn't really answer my original question here. What I normally do is search duotrope.com for markets that either pay token or higher (or royalties) and then if I think my story fits the publication, I'll send it without worrying about the final pay or circulation numbers.

Maybe in the end that is still the best method. Let me know what you think.

"In Memory of the Brightwell Family"

Check out my first attempt at flash fiction, a 475 word story entitled "In Memory of the Brightwell Family", published online at The Story Shack and illustrated by Sue Pownal.

Read online at The Story Shack

Trying fantasy for the first time

One genre I haven't ever really tried is fantasy. I've written a handful of stories taking place in modern times with fantasy elements ("urban fantasy" as the kids call it) but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is full-on Swords and Sorcery, Might and Magic, Dungeons and Dragons variety fantasy.

I found myself in between submissions and not wanting to work on anything I currently had sitting in the "in process" folder, so I hit duotrope and browsed through some anthologies to get an idea of something new to try.

I won't name names, but the one anthology that really caught my eye had this disclaimer: Must be fantasy. It also had another: Minimum 5,000 words.

A typical short story of mine is in the 3,000-4,000 word range, so 5,000 seemed a bit long for me, but I figured I'd give it a try. Why not? Horror was getting boring and the soft sci-fi could only get me so far before I needed to start incorporating a little more sci into the fi, and I haven't been in the mood for that lately.

So as I started working on the story I realized a couple of things. First off, fantasy isn't nearly as difficult or tiresome to write as I assumed it would be. The story I have in my head is working its way onto the virtual paper without any major problems.

There have been a couple of roadblocks though. First off, it's not easy coming up with character names. Every name I find just seems clichéd, forced, phony, or cheesy. I did find a pretty decent fantasy name generator here: http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/ to help me get through my own lack of creativity, however.

Another problem I've run into is that I find myself taking it for granted that everyone in the world has already read the first six books of the Dragonlance series and that the D&D set of rules are the accepted standard in fantasy writing. I'm assuming they're not, so I already know I need to put some extra effort into the setting.

Anyhow, I'm really enjoying trying something new and my goal for the month of May is to come up with something half-way decent and get it submitted to this anthology.

And to be honest, I'm actually looking forward to it.