Archive for April, 2009
Much to do, much to do, so a quickish entry this morning.
Last night I began the process of signing away a good portion of my life to a mortgage. Eh. I suppose I should be somewhat freaked by signing on the the biggest debt I’ve ever had, but I’m looking it more like I’m signing a 30-year lease where, after the 30 years, we own a house free and clear. Many, many pages with many spots to initial and several to sign fully. It wasn’t the actual mortgage lending documents yet, but the sales agreements with the broker. Who knows, maybe when we’re at the bank and the pen is actually touching the final loan agreement–then the hand will start to shake. For now, though, it’s still not quite real.
I hope it all works out. I’m looking forward to having a decent working kitchen with a real working stove. While I’ve become an absolute expert in the art of alternative cooking methods, I can’t wait until I can actually cook a meal where I can cook all the components all at once. And bake items larger than a toaster oven. Bake cookies more then eight at a time. The new kitchen may appear small in these pics, but it’s larger than it looks and is more workable than my current setup. (The pictures really only show about half the space.) The fridge in my new kitchen is huge, with a larger freezer than what I currently have–with ice maker. And a dishwasher!
I feel like a caveman who’s discovering the Renaissance.
So yeah, I don’t mind going through with this. And right off this working kitchen is a nice enclosed back porch where I can sit each morning with a cup of coffee and look out over the back yard and contemplate mowing the grass.
Welcome to domesticity.
-=-=-=-=-=
We’ll skip over the work log today. Suffice to say I’ve got a full day ahead of me. Instead I’ll offer up today’s link which is: DoItYourself.com. Big surprise, huh? I wouldn’t call this the most detailed site for Do It Yourself home projects, but it has a lot of range and looks to me a good starting place for researching do-it-yourself projects at home. In keeping in line with the topic of our potential new home, I will have to finish the basement at some point–although parts of it are already done. At some point I’ll need to do some landscaping. There are tips on gardening, plumbing, painting. The whole gory mess.
Welcome to it.
Cheers!
Filed under: Home ownership, Writing | |No Comments
I’ve been a little coy about a Big Thing Margaret and I are embarking on. We’ve been openly house hunting, but we’ve been a little quiet on the most recent developments, partially out of fear of jinxing something. I think given the most recent developments, it might be okay to reveal a bit more.
After some negotiations and competition with other interested folks, Margaret and I have successfully bid on a house. Our first. It’s a nice little colonial in West Warwick with three bedrooms, 1 1/.2 baths, new appliances, two sun rooms (front and back), partially finished basement that walks out to the back yard, and some other neat features.
We never thought we’d end up in West Warwick, but it’s a nice neighborhood. Looks like we’d be able to work a dog in at some point. There are ambitious plans for a backyard paradise. The basement becomes my domain for the home office, which I’m more than fine with. I’m not looking forward to some of the work I’ll have to do to finish the basement, but I’ll at least start out with a level floor and power supplies. Plus, it’ll be a cat-free zone, so I won’t have the cats trying to make up their own filing system (i.e., everything goes to the floor).
The kitchen is real nice. I’ll have some real space to work with. The back sun room is right off the kitchen and it looks like a great place for a small table for spending the morning sipping coffee and reading the paper.
We’re very excited.
We still have a number of steps to go through before the closing. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Inspections. Moving arrangements.
My god…the moving arrangements. I’ve already started the Grand Purge. There’s talk of trying some yard sales, which would help defray the moving costs, but that’s a lot of work. We’ll see what happens over this week.
Expect quite a lot about this topic off and on over the next couple of months.
It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I can’t think of anything new to add to the old work log today. It’s pretty much the same as yesterday except even further along. Doris Day. Design Integration. Medical journal–which is heading to the printer today.
Speaking of magazines, I know the SFWA Bulletin made an appearance at the Nebulas, but I so far I haven’t been able to find any pictures online of the banquet. Usually I can spy copies of the magazine on the tables. This year saw fewer attendees than usual–blame the economy–so I guess I’m not too surprised not to see more Nebula galleries.
If anyone reading this was at the Nebs and happens to have a picture of the Bulletin at the banquet, please send me a copy.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Today’s link goes to the West Warwick Public Library. Why? Because it’s there? Because even though I don’t spend much time in libraries in Providence, I’m looking for signs of culture and community in my prospective new town and this seems like a good place to start.
Filed under: Home ownership, Writing | |No Comments
The weather is getting warmer. Fish are rumored to be coming up the bay now and then. I’ve got a new tacklebox. Put one plus one plus one together and you get me getting into the start of fishing season. I went out for the first time last Saturday–not expecting to catch anything. I just needed to get into the swing of things. The cheap pole I bought for bait fishing turned out to be very cheap and I ended up just leaving it in the trash as I left the dock. And I’ve learned just how messy clam belly is. And it has a tendency to fly off the hook during casting. I think I’ll go back to clam tongue. And get a better pole for the bait fishing. Plus I need to set up the heavier pole for bait casting. Oh, and I now recall why it’s not a good idea to cast into the wind. And I’m starting to remember some of the tricks to knowing where the fish are.
It’s all a learning experience. I think this year I’m going to try some freshwater fishing. More learning. I’m still the world’s worst fisherman. Still, it’s relaxing and I like being out there in the morning. Hooking a fish or three is nice, but I have nearly as good a time as when I don’t. Plus the time on the dock give me time to think and reflect. And every now and then I’ll use the time to suss out a story idea.
So not a loss by any stretch.
-=-=-=-=-
I had a pretty productive day yesterday and am hoping to duplicate that today. No reason why I won’t. Everything is more or less on schedule. I work on the second half of the Design Integration book, then work on the graphics. Doris Day is nearly done as far as the text edits go. then I have new photos to put in and some re-wrapping. Oz Squad is even closer to being done. The revised edition of TumbleTap Presents: 2009 are being printed as I type and I should get a nice big box of those soon. The medical journal is just about ready to hit the printer. I’m waiting on some last minute ads, then that’s good to go. This month’s cover image, shown here, is “I Wonder” by Frank Robertson.
It’s all good.
the only thing I’m behind on is some writing, both fiction and nonfiction stuff. I think today I’m going to work on some posts for The Charge of the Write Brigade of which I’ll speak more of anon. I’m tempted to cover the topic of collaborations–not because I’ve done a lot of collaborative work, but I’ve been reading other people’s horror stories. Sometimes it works real well, but when it doesn’t–itcan be a disaster.
-=-=-=-=-
Today’s link takes you to a good page chock full of Shanties and Sea Songs lyrics. No musical notation, but loads of lyrics. The best feature is the listing of varying versions of most of the shanties. Like most folk music, there’s no one “correct” version, but rather countless variations. Give it a look and you’ll see what I mean.
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Publishing | Fishing, Sea Shanties|No Comments
An interesting weekend. Unfortunately I can’t tell you why. Well, I could, but the superstitious parts of us (as in Margaret and myself) feel it would be bad mojo. And of course the other reason is because there are still t’s to be dotted and i’s to be crossed. Until we’ve moved further in that direction, mum is still the word.
But it’s been no secret lately that we’ve been house hunting. So let your imagination run wild.
If you’re planning on buying a home, this is the time to do it. Home purchases are going up which means the prices are going to start going up as well. The banks still seem to be tough when it comes to doling out them loans, and I don’t blame them. Still, a lot of places we wanted to look at this week are no longer available. Things are moving fast…faster than we expected.
So let’s see what all happens.
On top of my usual work this week, I have some house-hunting-related stuff to do. Mostly photocopying paperwork and sending it to people and waiting for phonecalls and doing some investigating. It’s going to be an interesting couple of months.
-=-=-=-=-
On the work front, it’s going to be a bit busy as well. I’ve gone over my schedule for the week, though, and everything seems to fit in all right. No problems meeting deadlines and no danger of falling behind, which is good. I like the idea of getting paid, and I don’t get paid until the jobs get done.
This weekend I focused on TumbleTap work. Most of Rogue Satellite comics is done. I’m just waiting on the intro and some cover art. Oz Squad is nearly done being laid out. Nearly 400 pages of Frank Baum meets James Bond in comic goodness. I need to put in the headers and edit the anotations (yes, it’s completely anotated!). Plus this weekend I’ll have a table at Sarge’s Comics in New London for Free Comic Book Day. I won’t have any free books, but I’ll have some flyers, a thousand postcards, and other odds and ends. Next to me will be Chris Reilly of Rogue Satellite Comics and Strange Eggs.
Tomorrow, though, it’s back to other work. Doris Day. Design Integration. Some other loose ends. And prepping some upcoming projects. Back to the grind.
-=-=-=-=-
Today’s link leads to a yabba-dabba-doo kind of site: Webrock - The Flintstones and Hanna-Barbera Page. Flintsone FAQs, infos, episode lists, spin-offs, and links to other Hanna-Barbera shows.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Comics, Publishing, TumbleTap | |No Comments
This week’s mailbag includes a folded letter on church stationery. The letter will be burned after reading.
Dear Reverend Blackfell,
The parish council, after days of discussion and debate, have decided to terminate your position at St. Sebastians. We feel that your actions of the past month do not best serve the parish and are, in fact, a threat to the community at large. To whit:
– Your “laying on hands” of the girls choir.
– Your loud, odiferous and unapologetic flatulence during services.
– The unsettling taste and color of the communion wafers of late.
– The disappearance of the church cat and the suspicious appearance of your new fur-lined gloves.
– The odd arrivals and departures of numerous black sedans in the dead of night.
– Eight missing corpses from the church cemetery.
– Irregularities in the rectory accounts.
– Reports of metallic-sounding screams coming from the church basement and your unauthorized changing of the locks to said basement.
– Reports of public drunkenness and urination in the church yard.
– Accusations of sexual misconduct from several townspeople.
– The circumstances surrounding the vandalism of the neighboring synagogue and certain tools discovered in the church alcove.
– Your increasing number of crude tattoos and piercings.
It is for these reasons and more that the parish council feels you are the not best shepherd for this quiet community. Rather than drag the regional parish council and law enforcement officials in on this matter, we request instead that you quietly take your leave with a minimum of fuss. You will find enclosed a suitably large bribe to leave our community and never return.
Sincerely yours,
The Parish Council of St. Sebastian’s Church
Unfortunately I can’t find anything on the envelope to indicate which St. Sebastians Church this refers to. I hope it’s not one near me. Next up is the now very familiar pressed rag paper with crimson ink which reads…
Dear Sirs,
We are thankful that Events did not spin out of control, but we are concerned over the general precariousness of the Situation overall. We feel that you giving the Signal prematurely might mean the end of us all. We implore you to stay your hand until we have conducted more thorough investigation.
(unsigned)
This is a little different from past messages. I hope everything is all right.
-=-=-=-=-=-
My schedule has been thrown off a little today. I managed to get a decent amount done before my meeting with my accountant, though. Despite rough starts, the whole day has been working out pretty well. The authors of the new edition of The Doris Day Companion liked my cover design. Several TumbleTap publications are moving along in exactly the direction they need to be. Revisions on the Design Integration book have been initiated.
In other news, we’re officially on the Great House Hunt. Our real estate agent is setting up some viewings on Sunday. Our paperwork is pretty much in order. This looks like it’s going to happen. Moving to a nice house is something I’m looking forward to. The transition is going to be a pain in the ass. One thing at a time.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Two links today. First up is the latest installment in Kristin Kathryn Rusch’s Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Vacations.
Second up is my weekly column at Forces of Geek which reviews Shut Up, You’re Fine: Poems For Very, Very Bad Children by Andrew Hudgins with drawings by Barry Moser.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Book review, Layouts, Letters, TumbleTap | house hunting|No Comments
I’m trying to decide how much patience I have for chronic whiners. It’s not really an issue I have to put up with on a daily basis much anymore, but Margaret knows someone via one of the various social network sites online (not facebook) who has never, at any time in the past year, had something positive to say, and rarely neutral.
All she ever does is complain. Complain about unfair this is or that is. About issues that have absolutely nothing to do with her or her realm of experience. But there’s a lot she does complain about that does as well. This person doesn’t seem to have ever heard of the concept of “you get what you give” and is thus filling the universe with some kind of negative energy, but the doesn’t want to be a part of that, so it’s bouncing it right back at her.
I worry that I’m being unfair. This could be a symptom of depression, but she expends an awful lot of energy complaining. Am I wrong to just chalk her up as a bit of a jerk? Clinical depression is a terrible thing and I’ve blogged about it in the past, having personally known a few people who took their own lives because they had trouble treating it. So I’m not trying to make light of a serious mental condition. But I’m no doctor. What if they’re just a jerk?
It’s a tough call. I know a lot of creative types in my line of work and depression is an issue that crops up from time to time and it’s good that it does. (See issues 180 and 181 of The SFWA Bulletin for a good two-part piece on writers and depression by Nancy Holder.)
So it seems this is my annual call for folks who worry that they may be suffering from clinical depression and other mood disorders, or know someone who might, to seek help. There are a lot of resources out there from your doctor to various books to websites such as The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
But if you’re just being a jerk…lighten up, willya? It could be worse.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This has been a relatively light week. Mostly cleanup work and editing. More of the same today. The big book of Design Integration is back on my desk as are come book covers that need work and some TumbleTap stuff that really needs to get to the printer. Not a terrible day, though. And the week looks like another one that’s going to hit on schedule although I’ve got another meeting with my accountant tomorrow. That’s not a bad thing, but during work hours Margaret has the car which means I take the bus. I don’t mind the bus. I’m a veteran of public transportation, but what would be a ten minute drive becomes a half-hour or more on two buses, then back again.
I comfort myself with the promise to treat myself to a nice bit of pastrami at this little cafe I know near the accountant’s office. And the weather will be pleasant.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Time suckers, that what they are. But I love them. I talk, of course, of my love of webcomics. A couple of days ago the link of the day was for the webcomic Least I Could Do of which I’m nearly finished getting through seven years of archives. Today I treat you to another webcomic link…likely one I’ve given before, but it’s one of my favorites: Questionable Content by J. Jacques, updated Monday-Friday. It’s set in the Northampton, MA region and features indie music types, destructive little robots, OCD, rednecks who write romance novels, and coffee. Coffee. Coffee. And a lot of characters who think they’re very hip. (or is that hep?)
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Writing | Depression|No Comments
It’s been a while since I’ve done any more of the “Rumor Has It” series. Here are some tidbits I guarantee you didn’t know before. They may be rumors, but why would I lie?
Ask yourself.
Rumor has it…JRR Tolkein based The Hobbit on the life of Venerable Bede, an 8th century Northumbrian monk who is probably best know for his An Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Like Frodo, Bede lived in a hollowed out hill and once traveled down a river in a barrel.
Rumor has it…Chinese-style mustard does not contain mustard seeds but is, rather, a mixture of aged cabbage, kully, horseradish, petton, and tanin. Its color comes from ground fish scales.
Rumor has it…In the entire history of the Catholic church there have only been three documented cases of possession. Two involved popes during the 7th century and the third involved a young man who attended The University of Notre Dame in 1985 who the church claims to have been possessed by a demon who was a supporter of the University of Miami football team.
Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was once hospitalized for eating three pounds of packing styrofoam. When asked, he said, “It may not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but at the time it was necessary. If those particular circumstances repeated, I’d happily do it again.”
Scientists have observed individual Tibetan throat singers, situated in very specific spots in the Himalayas, have a measurable effect on global weather patterns. They suggest the possibility that global warming may not be the result so much of carbon emissions as possibly the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
All my work seems to be on schedule at the moment. Much of it relies on various authors, editors, and publishers returning materials to me, but as I wait, I have a book on Doris Day to work on–the second edition of a version I worked on a couple of years ago–and apparently the only one of the several Doris Day books to come out in the past few years to be approved and authorized by Ms. Day.
Speaking of celebrity endorsements, I note that Lonnie Burr, author of Confessions of An Accidental Mouseketeer has been hitting the talk shows. Here’s his segment on one such show where he plugs his book. He and another past Mouseketeer, Doreen, were on Bill O’Reilly in February, but the book hadn’t quite yet come out by then.
Kind of cool seeing a book you’ve worked on his the TV airwaves.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Today’s link visits The Groovy Age of Horror, a blogspot site which describes itself thusly: “Formerly devoted to ’60s-’70s horror in paperbacks, fumetti, Groschenromane, comics, and movies, this blog is now devoted to all that and more!”
Fun browsing. What drew me were a number of posts about the one and only Doc Savage, but there’s a lot more to check out as well.
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Book layouts, Humor, Rumor | |No Comments
Some people get three-day weekends. Well, if those people work in Massachusetts and they get Patriots Day off. Pretty Maggie is one of them and I wish I had had the presence of mind years ago when she first encountered the holiday to try and convince her it was in celebration of the football team. Coming from the South where football is a religion, this might have worked for a short time, but maybe not. She’s much smarter than I am.
So she has a three day weekend, but I’m hitting the grindstone, being a good little freelancer and sticking to a schedule. Just the same, it’s a relatively light day and if things go well, mayhaps I’ll break later in the day and we’ll go bowling. Did a little Saturday and I did better than the last time, but it’s still pretty inconsistent on my part. Just means I need more practice. Last night I did my whole “playin’ choons” thing at Ward’s pub. ‘Twas a pretty good night although the fingers on my fretting hand are a little sore from over-practicing over the weekend. I’ve been trying to get down “Little Liza Jane” on the five-string banjo and “Swinging on the Gate” on the four-string. I made good progress, but I’m paying for it now.
We get incrementally closer to becoming homeowners. A lot depends on a phone call I’m expecting today, and then I visit my accountant later this week for some paperwork, then we hit the loan officer again for the official pre-approval. Once that happens, we tell our real estate agent that we’re kosher enough to make offers and we get to follow up on looking at some houses we’ve have our eye on this past month.
In an ideal world, we’d close by the end of May. Wish us luck. It really is time to get the hell out of Providence.
-=-=-=-=-
A light-ish day. Mostly editing and uploading final files to the printer. I’ll be attending Comic Book Day at Sarge’s Comics in New London, CT on May 2. Hopefully I’ll have some TumbleTap items on hand, but at the very least it’ll be a fun day to meet and greet and check out what’s what. I’ll be tagging along with the Strange Eggs pair, Chris Reilly and Steve Ahlquist.
-=-=-=-=-
Today’s link goes to one I think I’ve shared before, but as I’m currently enjoying the archives, I figured I’d share it again. Welcome to Least I Could Do, the webcomic. Made by the folks who give us Looking For Group, Messrs Sohmer and Desouza relate the comic misadventures of Rayne and his friends. It’s kind of like the TV show Friends only people actually have sex and are funny. Big warning though…it, at times, could be considered offensive to some. It kind of pushes the envelope when it comes to political incorrectness. Do not come crying to me if you don’t have a sense of humor. Otherwise, enjoy!
Cheers!
Filed under: Comics, Layouts, Music, Publishing, Webcomics | |No Comments
Today’s mail…well what can I say? You can’t make this stuff up.
The first letter arrived in a yellowed business envelope. There is the rusty profile of a paperclip along one edge, but the paperclip itself is long gone. Typed on creme-colored business stationary is this:
Dear Mr. Hughes,
Thank you for allowing us to review your manuscript, Modern Disasters. The entire acquisitions board enjoyed your fanciful reports on the fictional sinking of the Titanic, crash of the Hindenberg, and the Japanese attack on our forces stationed in the Hawaiian islands. We feel, however, that your chapter on what you call The Great Depression comes across as unrealistic and, if you’ll pardon the term, depressing. Likewise, your report on the horrific atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima smacks too much of pulpish science fiction.
Furthermore, we should point out to you, sir, that we are strictly a publisher of books of non-fiction. While you do an admirable job of presenting your stories as historical facts, we would still not be able to place it within our catalog. (The art department, however, is very impressed with your staged photographs and manufactured documents.)
Speaking for the acquisitions board, we found your work, for the most part, highly entertaining. We do consider ourselves a gang of roguish louts. We suspect, however, that the reading public in general may find this work of poor taste–particularly given the current state of national mourning over the loss of the Apollo 11 astronauts.
If we may be so bold, we suggest re-writing certain chapters (see enclosure) and submitting the manuscript in a year or two to one of our sister publishing houses–one specializing in fiction.
While we are sad to have to pass on this imaginative work, it simply is not for us. We wish you the best of luck, and thank you for providing us with a welcome distraction from our usual stodgy nonfiction submissions.
Yours sincerely,
(signed)
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.
Senior Editor
Bierce Publishing
Huh…so that’s what happened to the Lindbergh baby.
The next piece of mail arrived written in the usual crimson ink on the usual rag paper. It reads:
Dear Sirs,
We appreciate you replying to our last missive but we regret to inform you that once Events are Set in Motion, they cannot be so easily stopped. The firehouse has been eliminated. The scissors have been buried. The badger has been released. We cannot undo this.
We will, however, temporarily suspend activities until we receive your signal.
Please do not keep us waiting long.
(unsigned)
-=-=-=-=-=-
Is it Friday already? This week went by kind of quickly. I suppose that’s not a bad thing, although as a freelancer weekends don’t mean the same as they used to. Still, I tend to keep my weekends open unless I’m going through some major crunch time (like last weekend) so I guess it’s significant to me that it’s Friday.
Wheeeeee!
It’s actually a pretty busy day today. Book-wise I’m just doing some touch-up work to the Universal Studios Monster book so that can go to the printer on Monday. I’ve got materials for the 2nd edition of a Doris Day book arriving in the old Inbox, but I won’t be doing much with that until next week. I need to get cracking on a special insert for the SFWA Bulletin that will accompany the copies being delivered to the Nebula Awards Banquet in a couple of weeks, and I have a few TumbleTap projects that are being moved to the forefront. Then there are some personal writing projects that are getting attention today, and some personal business which, if it works out well, I’ll be reporting more on next week.
Fingers crossed. Wish is luck, people.
-=-=-=-=-=-
A couple of links today. First, here’s the latest link to Kathryn Kristine Rusch’s continuing project: The Freelancer’s Survival Guide. This week’s topic is Illness. How do you, as a freelancer, cope with your work schedule and being sick? It’s a fair thing to consider. Speaking for myself, it depends on my Inbox. If I have a light day, yeah… I’ll sleep in for a day. If I have a heavy schedule, I dose myself up until I can function, somewhat, and bite the bullet. I don’t get paid sick days. I need to keep working. Ms. Rusch addresses this quite well.
The second link is to this week’s column at ForcesofGeek.com. This week I review Michael Jasper’s A Gathering of Doorways.
Filed under: Blogosphere, Book review, Layouts, Letters, Reviews | |No Comments
Yesterday I talked a little about writers groups and it’s still a subject I’m mulling over in my head. Local inquiries and searches on craigslist haven’t really revealed anything, which kind of surprises me in a burg as literary as Providence. I imagine most of the groups, if they exist at all, are on college campuses which don’t advertise or circulate with folks off-campus. That’s fine, though. I belonged to a pretty decent writers group back in college, but I don’t think I’d get into a group exactly like that now.
I’m not saying they were a bad people or bad writers. Quite the contrary. Some were quite talented and I’ve always thought it a crime that certain members of that little group hadn’t gone on to write more–or at least seek publication. Therein lay the rub, I think. The members of the group hadn’t really put publication high on their list of goals and I think that hurt them. I don’t know what I was thinking of doing with my writing, but it would be over ten years before I’d submit anything for publication. I remember one telling incident in which I wrote a story with a very strong “literary” flavor, i.e., it was unconventional and stream-of-consciousness. This was very well received. I next wrote a horror story in a more conventional manner. This was roundly panned with people bitterly disappointed in me. It pretty much killed any genre writing I’d wanted to do for years to come, even though I was an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mysteries.
Eventually I grew up a little and got over myself and over the attitude that, I suspect, infiltrate a lot of writers groups–like that one in Warwick I tried a few years ago. Being a genre writer with commercial ambitions was selling out The Craft.
And there seemed to be an avoidance of seeking publication. I shudder to think of the number of really good poems I’ve read that no one else will ever see.
Thank god for the internet, eh? Introduced me to writers who wrote the stuff I like to write and read. People to whom commercial writing was a craft worthy of respect. Finding a community of writers online who were like me, with similar interests and goals helped me move beyond scribbling in notebooks to submitting work for publication and getting paid for it. Stories, poetry, even nonfiction.
That’s why I’m looking for a group that’s genre friendly and a group that has a set agenda for encouraging submitting work for publication. I’ve seen some online sites. I still have it in my head to find an offline group, and if I can’t find one–I’ll make one.
Do I need a group to keep writing? No. But I’m noting a lot of my contemporaries getting a lot out of their groups, and I think I might give it a go again myself.
-=-=-=-=-
It’s been a very productive week thus far. I’ve been knocking out covers to go with the book layouts that I’ve also been knocking out. Likewise magazine layouts. Here’s the cover to a fun short book of verse entitled Growing Up With Monsters: My Times at Universal Studios in Rhymes! by Carla Laemmle and Daniel Kinske, with foreword by Ray Bradbury and illustrations by Jack Davis and Hermann Mejia. This is a fascinating little piece and Carla Laemmle, whose story this is, relates, in verse, her experiences playing minor roles in many Universal Studios horror movies like Dracula (in which she provides the first spoken line of the film) and The Phantom of the Opera.
Today I’m adding a short article to the medical journal, working on the cover for Character Kings, editing some TumbleTap publications, prepping some photos, and looking for paperwork necessary for a meeting later on this week.
-=-=-=-=-
The Shirley Jackson Award, presented yearly at Readercon in July has posted its nominations list. It seems to me an odd name for an award. Her most famous story, “The Lottery” features someone getting stoned to death for “winning.” Is this something we want to encourage? Apparently, though, I’m fixating too much on the short story. This was the same woman who gave us The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In the Castle. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of the nominations for Best Anthology is Bound For Evil edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press) in which my story “Pact Anthology” appears. It has some stiff competition and I think it’s a long shot, but it’s nice to see it nominated just the same.
Today’s link takes you to the website where you can read more about the award and see the full ballot. (Thanks to Scott Edelman and John D. Harvey for the link.)
Cheers!
Filed under: Book layouts, Writing | Writers Group|No Comments
« Previous Entries||
