It's been quite a while since I consistently posted on this blog, a habit that I need to resume if only to maintain my sanity.
When I first started to write this screed my intent was to write a post per week as an exercise in writing something other than SF. I kept that promise for nearly three hundred posts before I fell off the wagon, so to speak. Personal reasons, depression on the sad state of lucrative (ha!) short fiction sales, and being busy, busy, busy with SFWA and family business. I won't bore you with details.
A lot has happened since the last post: I've sold six pieces that will appear in the next nine months ( I have no control over publication schedules) in anthologies and magazines. There's also my novel SHATTERED DREAMS coming out in May 2017, and hopefully a collection of previously published shorts sometime in 2017. As of this moment four short stories are sitting on editors' desks and another half dozen are in messy, somewhat finished short story drafts. Then there's the three almost completed novels that loom like patient, intimidating vultures waiting to steal even more time from my short fiction struggles.
I am back working on the picaresque novel I started writing in 1988 and have been haphazardly and periodically revising ever since. I will finish soon, I tell my muse as I work on revision number forty-something to get the word count back down from 150K words to a more reasonable length. Maybe in the process of editing I might be able to figure out what the final chapter of this monster should say. Until last week I thought the conclusion might require another 20-30K words, but with a clever rearrangement, brutal editing, and incorporating advice from my beta readers, I'm trying to fit it into a smaller compass.
But then, isn't that what writing is all about?
#SFWApro
When I first started to write this screed my intent was to write a post per week as an exercise in writing something other than SF. I kept that promise for nearly three hundred posts before I fell off the wagon, so to speak. Personal reasons, depression on the sad state of lucrative (ha!) short fiction sales, and being busy, busy, busy with SFWA and family business. I won't bore you with details.
A lot has happened since the last post: I've sold six pieces that will appear in the next nine months ( I have no control over publication schedules) in anthologies and magazines. There's also my novel SHATTERED DREAMS coming out in May 2017, and hopefully a collection of previously published shorts sometime in 2017. As of this moment four short stories are sitting on editors' desks and another half dozen are in messy, somewhat finished short story drafts. Then there's the three almost completed novels that loom like patient, intimidating vultures waiting to steal even more time from my short fiction struggles.
I am back working on the picaresque novel I started writing in 1988 and have been haphazardly and periodically revising ever since. I will finish soon, I tell my muse as I work on revision number forty-something to get the word count back down from 150K words to a more reasonable length. Maybe in the process of editing I might be able to figure out what the final chapter of this monster should say. Until last week I thought the conclusion might require another 20-30K words, but with a clever rearrangement, brutal editing, and incorporating advice from my beta readers, I'm trying to fit it into a smaller compass.
But then, isn't that what writing is all about?
#SFWApro
I'm looking forward to SHATTERED DREAMS and that collection next year, Bud. Always glad to see more material from you!
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