Goals and Such

I don't really like New Year's resolutions. I always figure if you want to do something, resolve to do it right there and then. Don't save up all your promises-of-things-you'll-do for one big day. That seems like a recipe for failure to me (though there can be success in failure, too). However, this arbitrary counting of time we call a year (OK, not entirely arbitrary, but how many people really think about what it is we base the length of a year on?) can be useful for stopping to take stock.

Last year, I didn't do as well as I hoped with my goals. I had planned to have a lot more writing done and available for people to read, but I got derailed pretty early on, and I'm not even sure why. I did manage to write (or finish) three novels (two shortish YAs and one somewhat longer adult novel), so really that's not so bad. And I drew some dragons, made some books, got a die-cutter and expanded my card-making repertoire.

But this year, I'm not going to focus on what I didn't get done last year. Well, I am, sort of, but not really. Actually, I'm going to work on some much older things in addition to trying to write more new things.

Old Things to Work On

(Note that I didn't say "Old Things to Finish." I hope to finish them, but if I don't, that's OK. At least I will have more done than I did before).

This Blog. I'm going to aim for a regular weekly post again this year. This is the first one. I won't give myself any soft of word count goal. Just one post a week, even if it's just a picture or a favourite quote.

My Comic. A million years ago, I started an urban fantasy comic -- a webcomic in the sense that I intended to first make it available on the web, though except for lettering, it's all drawn the old-fashioned way and ultimately I want it in print. I worked on it off and on over the years, a little here, a little there. It takes me a really really long time to draw.

Then, in 2004, just before I moved to Nova Scotia, I decided to re-draw everything I had already done to fix it. And I did. Every week a new page, and I even kept going after I finished re-drawing. I made it to the middle of issue 3 (around 50-something pages) and then, for reasons I no longer recall, I stopped. I even still had a few more pages planned out.

So now, ten years later, I'm going to have another go at it. I still love my characters, and it's still a story I want to get to the end of. But I'm not going to re-draw it again, even though it's old art and I might be able to draw it better (and looking back, I really shouldn't have bothered re-drawing it last time; I should have put the energy into making new pages). If I still have all my old files, and I can figure out WordPress well enough to make it do what I need, I might even have the first page up today. I'm going to start from the very beginning, one page a week to start, and while old pages are going up, I'll work on new ones. We'll see how far I get this time. I'd like to at least get to the end of the current storyline.

My Serials. I've have two serial novels on JukePop Serials, both of which have been neglected, due to the mysterious derailment of 2013. One of them -- the one I write as Calliope Strange -- is actually finished. I just haven't posted it all. For that one, I'll put up at least one chapter a week until it's done. The other one, Reindeer Girl, is not finished, but it will be. It was meant to be a way of finishing a book I started a while back, and a way to get me writing regularly. It can still be those things. Maybe I'll manage once a week, but if I can at least get going on it again, however slowly, I'll be pleased.

Other. I'm sure there are other old things I'll revisit through the year, but for now, these will do.

New Things Ahead

Dragons. This isn't entirely new, of course, as it's something I started working on on 2013, but this year I want to make it a major focus. A couple of days ago, I made a Scrivener file for it so I can start working on the text, and yesterday I had another stab at a dragon illustration that's been kicking my butt. I still didn't get it, but I got closer. This is my fun thing, the thing I'm making entirely for myself, but I'll share it, and maybe others will like it, too.

Fiction. There are always too many novels in my head, but this year I'd like to see if I can write one or two more Others novels (as Nic Silver). There are two more I know I need to write for sure. One is what happens to Evgeny while Su is in Germany, and the other is the continuation of Su's quest to find out what happened to her little sister. Also, I'd like to get working on the next Kentaurs novel, which I had intended to write over the summer. And eventually, though perhaps not this year, we'll have to find out what the heck is going to happen to Dubhghall and Maddy after the events of Dark Stranger.

Publishing. I need to get White Raven Press back on track, starting with a new website. I have a handful of novels and collections to get into print, and one to put up digital. Maybe two, but Deer Mouse is an experiment in submitting to a traditional publisher, so I'll have to wait till I hear back.

Painting. Last year I bought some exciting new art supplies, and promptly had no time to play with them. So this year, that's what I'll do. Play. Learn some things. I have a selection of casein paints, and I've already prepped a whole pile of boards to paint on. Maybe something will come of it, or maybe I'll just have fun. Either is good.

Craft. My goals here are just to keep on making stuff, and make more of an effort to market and get work into stores. I hope to do more hand-papermaking, so likely I'll have more cards printed on my own paper, and probably more linocuts rather than polymer letterpress. But again, we'll see how it goes. Also, I plan to play around with more 3D sculptures using die-cut elements. My first batch of dragons came out well, and were well-received. Also, they were great fun to design.

Photography. Some of you may know I studied photography (as well as printmaking, design, and book arts) in art school. I haven't done a lot of photo recently, asked from snaps to sort of visually journal things I see. I have some ideas for projects tumbling around in my head, but I just upgraded my iPhone, and I got a set of Olloclip macro lenses for Christmas (I had their 3-in-1 macro/wide angle/fish eye for my old phone, and will probably pick up the one for my current phone eventually), so I think I'm going to focus on shooting iPhone pictures. No pressure on myself to make great pictures, just something fun. And if they start turning out well, maybe I'll get more serious.

More…

I'm sure there were more things I was going to say, but I've gone on way longer than I meant to, so I'll stop. Basically, I plan to have fun this year, and finish more things -- some old, some new. The only way I can fail is if I stop writing/drawing/crafting completely, and that's pretty unlikely.

Reindeer Girl Cover

If you're a Facebook friend or you follow me on Twitter, you'll have seen pretty much everything in this post, but I thought I'd bring all the work-in-progress shots for this book cover together in one place.

First, a bit of background. I've been working off and on to write a novel about a character called Maring Darkberry, who belongs to a culture called the Reindeer Herders (or just Herders)--a genetically mixed people who live on the barrens of my imaginary island/continent of Frisland (also the setting for many of my short stories, and for the Aeryn Daring stories I write as Calliope Strange).

The story started out as a short story called "White Foxes, Full Moon," but I soon realized there was a lot more to Maring's tale. But for some reason I never got farther than perhaps two-thirds finished.

So recently, I saw a call for submissions from a place called JukePop Serials which had an interesting business model. And I thought maybe by serializing the thing, so there were people waiting for the next chapter, I might actually finish it. And the editors at JukePop liked it. So now the title is Reindeer Girl, and it'll be serialized starting in September. And it needs a cover.

Maring

First I needed a reference for Maring. It didn't have to look like her, exactly, as long as the pose was right. So digging through a box of old pictures, I found this one of my beautiful mother with my sister and me (I'm the chubby one on the left) in her lap.

I did a sketch I was pleased with, changing her features to make her look less like my mom and more like the character in my story. Though in the story Maring has fair skin and blue eyes to go with her black hair, I wanted it to be clear from looking at her that not all her ancestry is European. Her people have intermarried all over the place, and they currently live quite close to a people they refer to as the Snow People (who are, of course, Inuit). So I wanted Maring to look like some of her recent ancestors were Inuit or perhaps Siberian or even Mongolian.

I could already tell that I probably hadn't really left enough room for the rest of the picture, but I was thinking about scanning the inked drawing and colouring digitally, so I went ahead and inked the drawing on the sketchbook paper, rather than transferring it to watercolour paper.

Text

 I spent a long time looking at type, and found what I thought was the perfect typeface for the title. It was Celtic, but rough-looking; calligraphic but loose. Unfortunately, none of the links on the designer's website worked. So I kept looking and eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was hand-letter, a la Walter Crane, or more recently, Charles Vess.

Of course, I then decided I also wanted to hand-colour, so I had to figure out a way to squeeze everything onto the page.

Background

I had in mind a particular photograph, taken on the barrens of the southern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, which just happened to have caribou in the shot (for the curious, caribou and reindeer are the same animal, Rangifer tarandus, the first usually used in North America and the second in Europe). Alas, there must be another box of my photographs still in storage at my mother's house in BC, because I couldn't find it. So instead I used this one, taken somewhere between Cape Ray and Gros Morne, Newfoundland.

I started with a blue wash, and quickly began to wish I'd taken the time to transfer the drawing to watercolour paper before inking.

Then I added green and yellow. You can see the paper getting more and more wrinkled with each colour I add.

Then some brown and grey, and a little red and purple.

Finally, I brightened up some of the colours and added a few details with pencil crayon.

Then I had to flatten the thing so I could get a good scan. I did this by thoroughly spritzing it with water from the back, until the paper relaxed and it lay flat. Then I put it between sheets of printmaking rag (I used some old proofs) and newsprint, and put it under a goodly amount of weight to dry. And the next day it was perfectly flat.

I had to scan it in two pieces, because it's too big for my scanner--thanks to Photoshop's "photomerge" function, putting the two pieces together was a snap.

And if anyone's interested, I've made it available as a print through Zazzle (if you order, make sure to let the preview load for the size you select--some sizes will cut off the top and bottom of the image). I may do my own prints at some point, on my very nice super-deluxe photo inkjet printer on digital photo rag paper. If enough people ask, that is.

2011: Achievements

Way back at the beginning of the year, I wrote a post boldly proclaiming my goals. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit any of them. But let's look back:

• I will write one new short story a month
• I will write fiction for at least an hour, 5 times a week.
• I will blog at least once a week, but aim for three times.

Yep, I failed on them all. Except "failed" is not really the right word. No, I didn't meet any of the three goals, but if you look at the intent behind all of those goals, it was primarily to get me writing regularly again. And at that, I was actually very successful. It just took a lot longer to get back in the habit than I had thought.

At the bottom of that same post, I also mentioned some immediate goals:

• put together a simple but eye-catching cover for short story #1: "Come-From-Away," either photo-based (it's set in St John's, NL) or something I drew.
• Get the story formatted properly for e-pub.
• Get myself registered on the appropriate sites and publish away.

Not only did I get that done, I did it over and over for 12 short stories, two mini-collections (one of two and one of three stories), three YA/middle-grade novels, and a collection of eleven stories. And that's only what I did under my own name. Under two pen names, I also got five serial novel chapters done, published, and published again in a magazine (well, three of them so far in the magazine), finished a novel, and wrote substantial parts of two novellas.

In another post a couple of weeks later, I added another goal to stop sending out the same short stories over and over and e-publish them instead, clearing the decks, so to speak, for new work. And that I did.

So I actually got a lot done this year, especially if you add in that I taught several letterpress and books arts extended studies courses, did a whole lot of letterpress printing and even (finally) got some of it into shops in Halifax and Mahone Bay, had some litho and intaglio prints in a group show in New York (okay, Brooklyn, but still), did a lot of freelance writing and little bit of freelance editing, and got considerably more comfortable using Adobe Illustrator.

There are still a few things I'd have liked to have accomplished, like getting the second issue of Fey into print form, and doing the same for the novels, but those are now at the top of my list for next year.

Writing Post Not On Wednesday Again: Finished, Sort Of

So this time I didn't write about writing on Wednesday because I didn't have much to report. I had a rather unproductive week, I'm afraid. But since then I've finished the longhand draft of "Brother Thomas's Angel."

Incidentally, I don't really recommend writing longhand. Some writers, like Neil Gaiman, for example, write a longhand draft first and then do initial edits as they transcribe that draft to a word-processed one. That's what I always used to do. Until I had to write some stuff under deadline and simply didn't have time to do it twice. And I discovered that I don't write any differently when I compose on the computer. But besides simply writing speed, there's also physical health to think of. I essentially have permanent tendonitis in my right wrist from many, many years of madly scribbling longhand. I've been writing since I could hold a pencil and make the shapes of letters, and it's hard on the bod. My wrist has a noticeable bulge on the top where the tendonitis has formed a ganglion. I could have surgery, but it doesn't bother me much most of the time. When I refrain from doing everything longhand. Typing has its own problems, of course, but they're generally not as bad, and are more easily preventable.

But anyway. A draft of my latest story is done and I'm working on transcribing it. I'm not really sure how long it is, but I'm almost at 2000 words, and I still have a long way to go. It may be a novella.

On the print front, I submitted a few stories to magazines recently and got a couple rejections back (not unexpected ones). I'm still waiting to hear back about two stories.

And in ebooks, I haven't put anything else up yet, but I'm working on covers for a trio of short stories based on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale and for part one of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective (the serial novel based on my in-limbo comic The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring). The individual parts of Aeryn will probably get simple typographic covers and then when the whole novel goes up it'll have a more elaborate cover and will also be available in print from White Raven Press. And it'll be under a pseudonym. Not because I am trying to hide authorship, but because of the way it fits into a larger body of ongoing work that includes printmaking, metalwork, bookbinding and whatever else.

And I think that's it for fiction. For non-fiction, you can read my latest article for Mania, "Laputa, Atlantis and Floating Islands: Ancestors of Ghibli's Castle in the Sky," here.

Writing (Not) Wednesday (Anymore): Angel and ABNA

Not counting the last few days, since B is home and distracting (sorry, dear, but you are), I've been writing pretty regularly, pecking away at a new story based on an old idea titled "Brother Thomas's Angel." It was originally going to be an urban fantasy short story, but I'm not quite sure what it is now. Except not finished. It's turned out to be rather longer than I had expected, and I've been writing it longhand (not the best idea in the world, but I like writing in bed), so it's also taking longer than expected to finish. But it's getting there and it feels good to be getting close to done. It'll feel even better when I have a new, finished story in my hands.

And a bit of a surprise the other day. Just over a month ago, I entered my short YA (or maybe middle-grade?) novel The Secret Common-Wealth in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, in the YA category. I meant to go back and write a better pitch, but completely forgot about it, until a few days ago I got an email saying the 1000 entries from each category had been chosen to advance to round two and I should look at the official pdf and see if I'm on it. I entered A Madness of Kentaurs last year and didn't get past the first round, so I expected the same this year. Much to my surprise, my name was on the list. Round two is over in another month-ish and will be judged on an excerpt (round one was judged solely by the pitch). My plan is to forget I entered again. The contest is, of course, to Amazon's benefit because you enter my getting a Createspace account, and every participant gets a coupon for  free proof from Createspace, in case you might want to self-publish via POD. It's also to Penguin's benefit, because they can use the process to sort through some slush and find them something (or perhaps more than one something) good to publish. The "prize," besides the honour of winning, is a standard publishing contract with Penguin. Curiously, the summary of the standard contract made no mention at all of electronic rights, which are a big deal right now what with e-books becoming ever more popular.

And finally, speaking of e-publishing, I've got another short story up (or it will be very soon) at Smashwords and Kindle via White Raven Press. This time it's "Hollow Bones," and the cover looks like this:

That's one of my linocuts on the cover.

Writing Wednesday: More Goals, e-Publishing, Words

Hey look, it's my first Writing Wednesday post. If you come here to read about books or letterpress or craft or the birds in my backyard (which probably occupy most of the photos I've posted in the last year or so), go ahead and skip this entry. The next one, in a few days, will be all about crafty things (and maybe a bird or two).

First off, some announcements. Two of my short stories are now available as e-books for $0.99 each from White Raven Press. At the moment, they're only available via Smashwords, but eventually you'll be able to get them from Barnes & Noble and Amazon as well, and maybe iBookstore. There are a bunch of different file formats, so you can read them on just about anything, from Kindle to iPad to Nook to Kobo to your computer screen.

"Come-From-Away"  
Newfoundland is thick with fairies, if the old stories are to be believed. So what happens when a graduate student from away follows an old folklore text to a peculiar rock formation known as Puck's Chair? Will she return a poet or a madwoman? Originally published online in a little semi-pro zine called Fables in 2001 or 2002.

"Burnt Offerings"
 Frank Swann is a celebrated poet who only ever writes a single copy of each poem. He holds his audience enthralled as he reads it to them, and then he burns the original, destroying the poem forever. What compels him to destroy his work, and what would happen if he stopped? Originally published in Quantum Muse when it was a semi-pro market in 2001 or 2002, it's a sort of sequel to "Come-From-Away" in that it shares a character, but both are stand-alone stories.

Friends who want to read these but don't want to shell out the 99 cents let me know and I'll see if I can figure out the coupon system for Smashwords. If you want them in print, you'll have to wait until I have enough stories for a collection, at which point they'll be available in trade paper.

Also, I just got my printed copies of Fey: Drawing Borders chapter 1, and they look great. Two copies en route to the National Library as soon as I get them packed and get out of my hermitage to a post office. They're available from Indy Planet, and I hope chapter 2 will follow in a month or two (depending on how good my time management is). The whole story will eventually be available as a paperback, but first I have to finish writing and drawing it, something at which I am notoriously slow.

And now, a progress report. I've managed three straight days of an hour of writing, and on day three I did two hours. Then I missed yesterday. I don't know how many words that is, because I had a false start on the word processor and switched to longhand (the intention was to do it temporarily so I could more easily write in bed, but it sort of stuck). It looks like a lot of pages on "Brother Thomas's Angel," an old story idea I started over with. So far not a lot has happened--not even the discovery of Brother Thomas's body (his angel was discovered in the first sentence, fortunately), so it's looking like this is going to be a long one.

I also turned in my second "Creator Spotlight" for the anime/manga section of Mania. I'm not sure when that will go up. My second folklore/myth article will be finished by the end of today.

And finally, a few more goals and decisions. First off, I realized I've been sending the same stories out over and over again, and while I haven't actually exhausted every possible magazine and website that might pay for them, I think that might be contributing a little to me not writing much new. So, I addition to my writing at least 5 out of 7 days a week and producing at least one new story a month, I've decided I need to clear the deck. So as soon as the last couple stories come back with rejections (or, you never know, acceptances), I'll retire them all from print submissions, and have them come out via White Raven Press and e-books. Some of them, I think, I will release as chapbooks or artist's books because my dream has always been to make books--words, pictures and binding all.

Then I won't have any stories sitting around waiting for someone to magically publish them, and I'll have to write more. Some of them may be suitable for magazines, and some will go straight to e-books where they won't be required to fit a specific genre or mold.

And that ended up being a much longer post than I intended, so I'll stop. Next time: what's happening with Niko and letterpress printing and how are all those bookbinding projects coming along, anyway?

Teaching and Foxes and Other Things

So one of the things that's been occupying my time lately is teaching. I'm teaching a wood type letterpress class at the Dawson Printshop for NSCAD Extended Studies. We've had two out of the six weekly classes so far and I'm having fun. I hope my students are also having fun. I haven't had the presence of mind so far to remember my camera or even snap some photos with my phone, but one of my students and fellow Bookbinding Etsy Street Team member (and also fellow Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild member, I believe) Rhonda Miller has some posts about the class on her blog here and here.

If all goes well, I should be teaching an intro letterpress class (metal type, I think, though I don't know for sure yet) in the winter/spring semester). I'm hoping this is the start of a regular schedule of classes and workshops at the Dawson.

And speaking of the Dawson Printshop (and CBBAG), we'll have a table at Word on the Street in Halifax this Sunday, so if you're in the Spring Garden Road area, drop by and see us (and hope it doesn't rain). I think there will be a small tabletop press going with some of the cuts from the collection available to pint your own keepsake.

I've also made a little progress on my fox girl illustration (which I had hoped to have finished ages ago). I'm still getting used to colouring in Photoshop, as you can no doubt tell. The background is a placeholder again, until I figure out what I actually want to do with it (probably something fairly plain, as it's going to be on a long top-of-the-page banner on a website). The background image is a photograph by Brian Jefferey Beggerly of the Fushimi Inari Shrine (used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license), processed in Photoshop (yes, using a filter--how tacky).

And in other news, I finally got a rejection letter from Cricket magazine for a story I submitted a million years ago.

[BFG] Busy . . .

Been busy drawing and painting (see my main blog). Also watching a lot of anime again. Playing videogames (see work blog for that). Reading some. Sent out a few stories. Sent novel sample and synopsis to agent. Promise I'll write a proper post very soon.

[BFG] Latest Submissions and Rejections

Writing-wise, I'm not getting a lot done lately. Other things, like print jobs and applying for actual regular work, have been taking up my time. But that's just an excuse. Mostly it's just that I need more time home by myself, which is when I get the most done. But the boy is still job hunting, and therefore not *at* a job, so I putter along with work writing and various other tasks.

Anyway. Here's the latest in submissions and rejections, by story title:

• "Cobblehore Knit" - submitted to and rejected by Clarkesworld; not sure where I'll send it next
  
• "Great Skerry" - rejected by Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show; haven't decided where to send it next; the problem with this story is that it probably needs "Hollow Bones" and possibly a story about what happened between to really mean anything to the reader
  
• "Hollow Bones" - submitted to Strange Horizons
  
• "The Promise of Roses" - rejected by Strange Horizons; I may send it to Fantasy magazine next, or wait for Cabinet des Fees' June 1 submission date
  
• "Sharper and More Fragrant" - submitted to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show
  
• "Spinning" - rejected by Realms of Fantasy; submitted to and rejected by Fantasy magazine, but with a rejection asking for more stories (yay!); haven't decided where to send it next

So that's it for now. Except obviously I need to finish that novel . . .

[BFG] Nothing to Report

I guess maybe I haven't been very geeky lately. Fringe and Doctor Who both have new episodes coming soon, though, and True Blood after that, so be prepared.

I've been playing Assassin's Creed when I can pry BillyZ away from his racing games long enough, and I really need to get started on Shadow of Destiny. Maybe this evening. Most of my reading has been non-fiction of the natural history sort, though I did just get some comics via BookMooch . . .

Um. Yeah. And I haven't got any more rejections for stories lately, though I have a number still out in the world. I have to get working on pitches/cover letters for my YA books so I can send those out.

Right now I should get started on an article on the PSP and Nintendo Game Boy. Last PSP article was a how-to on converting homebrew files to KXploit form, which you mostly don't need to do these days, but I want to be complete in my how-to homebrew series.

And that's about it for geekery from the BFG, herself.

[BFG] Reject

Got a rejection for "Hollow Bones" from Clarkesworld this morning. The next couple of places I plan to send it currently have other stories of mine, so I'll wait to send it out again.

In the meantime, I'm editing "Perilous Child" for submission to a themed anthology, and transcribing chapter 19 of White Foxes so I can move on to writing new chapters.

Oh, and I'm finally going to start on that review copy of Shadow of Destiny for PSP, so I can review it for work. My PS3 and/or controllers seem to be behaving sluggishly today, as BillyZee tries to play Assassin's Creed. He's been trying to escape some guards for half an hour, over and over and still getting killed. I hope this isn't a sign that the PS3 is about to crap out, because it's the 60 GB model with full backwards compatibility, and I won't be able to replace it.

Addendum: I also got a rejection slip in the mail from Fantasy & Science Fiction for "Cobbleshore Knit." Perhaps not surprisingly, they use the exact same form rejections they did back in the 90s when I was submitting. I think the next place I planned to send this story still has another one, so I'll hold off a bit before sending it out.

[BFG] Fantasy Submissions

In an effort to get myself back to working on fiction, which I neglected while in art school, I've started submitting again. I began by entering my YA novel A Madness of Kentaurs in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The first round was judged entirely on the pitch. I suck at writing pitches and didn't make it through. Obviously I need to work on writing pitches if I ever hope to get a novel published. You can read the the Kentaurs pitch in a previous post.

Then late last month, I dealt with the disappointment of not making it to round two in ABNA by sending out a bunch of stories. Here are the results so far, by story title:

• Caught on Thorns - submitted to Dark Discoveries via e-sub, haven't heard back
  
• Cobbleshore Knit - submitted to Fantasy & Science Fiction via mail, haven't heard back
  
• Daughters of the Sea King - submitted to Weird Tales via e-sub, haven't heard back
  
• Dragon's Egg - submitted to Silver Blade via e-sub, haven't heard back
  
• Fox Point Dragon - submitted to Cricket via mail, haven't heard back
  
• Great Skerry - submitted to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show via e-sub, haven't heard back
  
• Hollow Bones - submitted to Dreams of Decadence via esub, rejected; submitted to Clarkesworld via e-sub, haven't heard back
  
• King of Kings, Ruler of Camels - submitted to Cabinet des Fees via e-sub, rejected; haven't resubmitted yet
  
• The Promise of Roses - submitted to Strange Horizons via e-sub, haven't heard back yet
  
• Remembering to Fly - submitted to Fantasy via e-sub, rejected; haven't resubmitted yet
  
• Sealskin - sent to Interzone via mail, haven't heard back
  
• Sharper and More Fragrant - submitted to Clarkesworld via e-sub, rejected; submitted to Fantasy via e-sub, rejected; haven't resubmitted yet
  
• Spinning - submitted to Realms of Fantasy via mail, haven't heard back yet
  

So I'm working my way though the pros and semi-pros and will eventually start sending to the smaller no-pay zines when I run out of paying markets.

[BFG] Aw, Crap

Well, The Madness of Kentaurs didn't make the cut. Here's the pitch that didn't get me to the next round (and yeah, I know, it's not exactly a typical submission pitch--I followed some advice from previous entrants whose pitches did make it through last year):

It is the time of year when once wild things become wild again, still wild things become wilder, and civilized things shut their doors and pretend they had never been wild.

During the season of madness, the kentaurs of the Pelion foothills—those half-horse, half-human creatures that humans call “centaurs”—journey from their home villages to the sacred lands across the Acheron River. Horses find the kentaur herd irresistible and often run away from their human masters to join the herd. One day, Octavian, stable-boy and floor cleaner at the local inn, gets carried off by the innkeeper’s horse, and ends up trapped in the kentaur herd. He is placed under the charge of Ixion, a young kentaur shaman-in-training, who begins to teach him that kentaurs are not the barbaric, half-sentient beasts he had thought they were.

And then the dreams begin. Dreams in which ancient, cold things with too many teeth steal the boys’ tongues and threaten to steal their sanity. Now Octavian and Ixion both have to learn enough about the otherworld to make it though a grueling initiation ceremony across the Acheron, River of Woe. But first, Octavian has to gain acceptance from the kentaur herd.

The Madness of Kentaurs is a young-adult fantasy novel that explores the ideas of difference and belonging that all children face as they become adults.

Stories about who we are and where we came from become very different when told from different points of view, as I learned while studying for my degrees in archaeology and folklore. The concept of belonging is one I have explored in other writing, including a number of short stories published in semi-professional venues.


Yeah, that last paragraph really makes me cringe.

So, what now? Guess I'll work on the pitch a bit, write a cover letter, and send it to some publishers. All they can do is say no.

And I'll get back to work on the next one.

[BFG] Killing Time and Biting Nails

Today is the big day. Well, actually it's only a somewhat significant milestone on the way to the big day, but it seems really, really big right now.

So what the hell am I talking about? Today, February 25, is the day they announce who goes on to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The judging, for this portion, is based entirely on the "pitch." That's 300ish words of me saying why my novel is good. I'll post it later on, maybe, once I find out whether or not I made the cut.

I don't think I'm going to get very much done today.

50 Books and 2010 Goals

Some of you may remember a few years back when I picked up a challenge (I no longer recall who the originator of the challenge was, or where online I found it) to read 50 books in the year and blog about it. That first year, I was single and working entirely from home, and I ended up expanding the challenge to 50 fiction, 50 non-fiction, and 50 graphic novels, and still beating it easily.

So this year I've decided to change things (though I'm not single anymore, and often drive for more than an hour to get to the printshop, which will cut down on my free time). I'll still aim for reading 50 books (and maybe, if it goes well, for 50 fiction, non-fiction and comics). But this year, I'm going to try to bind 50 books.


While I don't count books I've already started in my reading 50 books challenge, I think I will include books started in my binding 50 books challenge, as incentive for me to finish the projects I've started and not finished over the past couple of years. So yeah, this year I aim to bind (at least) 50 books, and I'll blog them here.

And as for 2010 goals, I don't usually make actual New Year's Resolutions, but I do like to start the year with some general goals. This year, besides the 50 books thing, my goals are:

• take White Raven Ink seriously as a business, including registering the name, working on marketing, developing product, getting the website finsihed, etc
  
• finish, or at least get a bunch more done, Fey: Drawing Borders
  
• seriously get back into writing fiction (and maybe even finish White Foxes, Full Moon), including submitting stories and further exploring the possibilities of POD, and writing The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring as an illustrated serial novel
  
• work on illustration, including furthering my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator--one of the projects I'll be doing is full-colour Photoshop illos for Aeryn
  
• work on organizing and cataloging my backlog of photographs
  
• get a portfolio together for Viewpoint Gallery and apply for membership
  
• apply for at least one show
  
• become more active online (one selected sites) in order to network and market my work
  
• make some time to play video games for fun (and not just for work)

Well, I think that's enough for now. Like I said, they're fairly general goals, but that makes them more feasible. 2009 was a pretty good year for me professionally (plus I bought a house!); I'd like 2010 to be even better.


Photos: Top - Copper Manuscript of the Hill People of Frisland. Copper-covered coptic stitch book with Japanese paper pages, hand-done calligraphy and illustrations. Photo and art by Niko.

Bottom - Sneak-preview back cover of an in-progress POD book project (and possible gallery show) called Taxonomy gastronomica (Silvester). Photos and design by Niko.

Comic Book Madness

Well, so far I've managed to spend most of the weekend fiddling around with comics, doing a bit of scanning, some organizing of my Webcomics Nation site, and lots of button, banner and logo making.


Also, as you may have guessed from the "a bit of scanning" comment above, I now have a working scanner. Futureshop had that scanner I've been wanting marked down--about $100 less than the original price, which makes it almost $200 less than the new price. And I had a FS gift card (thanks, Dad!). So I splurged. And now I can get to work on some photo projects as well as comics (and explain that weird grocery list I posted way back when). It's very exciting. I haven't actually scanned any photos yet, but I'll start soon. I need to have an application for the grad show in by mid-February, so I need to get at least that one image finished by then (that is to say, scanned and cleaned up and looking fabulous).

What I have been doing with the scanner is making some images for my new comic series, which will debut on Webcomics Nation tomorrow!! My aim is to do weekly updates, but I don't have a big store of completed pages like I do for Fey, so I don't know how long I can keep that up. The drawings are smaller than Fey drawings, though, and I seem to be able to do a two-page spread in about the same time as it would take me to do a single page of Fey, so there may be hope for the weekly schedule.

So yeah, look for it tomorrow.



(Typefaces in both logos are from the fabulous Scriptorium. (Except the text that says "Fey"--that's all me.) Yes, I even paid for them.)

Counting Foxes

I only just now finished word processing chapter 16 of White Foxes, Full Moon (or whatever it's going to end up being called). It now stands at 47, 425 words, plus chapter 17 and the beginning of chapter 18 in longhand. Perhaps I'll get more done tomorrow. We'll see.

I also did something I meant to do ages ago and sent a nice letter and chapter one of The Coming of the Fairies (the YA novel formerly known as Taken, 1941) to a literary agent. I don't expect this particular agent is even accepting new clients, but I figured I might as well begin at the top and work my way down. Whatever transpires, I will report it here.

And in a little less than two weeks, the new school semester begins. Damn, but this summer has gone by so fast! As usual, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. I will try to get a few more small projects finished in the next couple weeks, plus working away at my print book projects and at getting my little printing press up and running (much cleaning of cast iron with steel wool shall ensue).

Here's what my school week will look like as of the second week of September:

• Monday 13:00 to 15:00 AHIS3200 History of Photography
• Tuesday & Friday 13:00 to 17:30 PRTM3106 Intermediate Lithography
• Wednesday 13:00 to 17:00 PHOT2500 Lighting Workshop

I'll have Thursdays free, and I'm hoping to add Relief Printmaking to Tuesday nights (18:00 to 22:00), but it's currently full with a long waiting list. I'll still be working at the VRC, and I hope to get my hours in Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings (well, maybe not Tuesday if I end up getting into Relief). It leaves me Wednesday mornings for either working on About stuff at home, or continuing to help organize in the printshop. That depends on a variety of things.