Flashes on the 4th

I’m sure everyone has plans for the 4th (well, us Americans anyway), but if you have the time, please swing by Flashes in the Dark to read my story “When the Dead Carry Us Away.” Some of you may recognize this as one of my two stories included in Shroud’s Northern Haunts anthology.

As for my 4th, I will be driving down to see my parents.  They live in the country and have a small little place on the river.  Imagine Deliverence only done National Lampoons style.

What a GREAT pick-me up

Work was absolutely painstaking yesterday.  Actually, that’s a bit of an overstatement.  For the most part, I like what I do.  It’s just that a BIG project got tossed at me around lunchtime yesterday.  I was up until after midnight finishing it.  And then the kids thought it was time to wake up at 5:30.

So groggily, I got up.  Got dressed.  Made a super-strong pot of coffee.  Took the 2 year old to Day Care and came back home with the 3 month old.  Normally, in that situation, I’d be zombie-like and drooling, tired, needing a nap as I stare at the computer.

But not this morning.  That’s because on the way to Day Care, the little red light on the top of my Blackberry was blinking, indicating that I had either a missed call or a new e-mail.  So I checked my e-mail.  It was the first response I’d had from an editor in over 3 weeks.  And I am still giddy over the response.

I am VERY excited to say that Library of Horror Press will be publishing my collection, Debris!

I know, it seems like a peculiar title.  But there truly is an assortment of different writing within.  Flash stories of 700 words and short stories of 8,800 words.  Horror stories, mild sci-fi stories and all areas in between.  There are even a few poems in there.  So yeah, it’s literary debris.

Most of the stories are previously published works from the past year and a half.  But there are some stories in there (2 in particular) that never found a home but garnered positive comments from publishers…comments that were usually followed by “but it needs to be about 4,000 words shorter”.

So yes, I am on Cloud 9 this morning.  I am actually thinking about hopping over to Cloud 10 soon because I am hungry and I hear they have some really great Chinese over there…

No write. All wrong.

Don’t you just love clever plays on words?

So I have done no writing in the past few days.  I did take about 10 minutes to finalize the script for Birdwatching from Mars Issue #2 but other than that, nothing.

Even my reading has been suffering.  Work has burned me out these last few weeks and my internal clock is trying to adjust to only 5 1/2 hours of sleep a night.  I have been stuck reading Bentley Little’s The Burning for about 3 weeks now.

Maybe I’ll do some writing today or tonight.  I think I finally know how the Oz story is going to end.  I also need to pick up the editing for Broken Skies and the re-release of Darklights.

Sorry folks, that’s all I’ve got.  Tell you what…due to the lackluster post today, I’ll share with you a poem I read recently that floored me.  It is from Mary Ruefle’s Indeed I Was Pleased With the World, titled “The Tenor of Your Yes”

***

If you were lonely

and you saw the earth

you’d think here is

the end of loneliness

and I have reached it by myself.

If you were sad

and you saw the kitchen

you’d think here is

the end of sadness

and they have prepared it for me.

Turner painted his own

sea monsters, but hired

someone else to do

“small animals.”

Apparently, he could do

a great sky, but not

rabbits.

Much like god at the end.

Coming Attractions

Music courtesy of A Tragic December…the now-dead dark ambient music project I had once upon a time.

The weekend cometh

…and while I fully intend to do some writing (particularly on the Oz story), I have learned to not even try to make goals for myself.  I am terrible at keeping them and I have no idea what the weekend will bring.

I can tell you what the week brought, though.

First, the artists for Birdwatching From Mars continue to impress me.  I think I’ll be able to post some new art on the blog next week.  The artwork is so phenomenal that I am really beginning to doubt the power of my story.  And speaking of the story, I plan on releasing some promo material soon; finally you all will have some sort of an idea what the comic will be about.  We are really pressing hard to get the word out about this and I think that is asking a lot when we haven’t yet revealed anything about the plot.

Also, early indication from one of the editors at the press that requested Debris are fairly good.  Apparently, they aspire to quick response times, so perhaps I’ll get an answer in the next few weeks (or, if one is very hopeful, the next few days).

And that’s about it.  I did find out that my poem “Lives Upon a Napkin” will be going up on Every Day Poets sometime at the end of July.  Also, my story “All the Little Secrets” is due up at The Edge of Propinquity mid-July.

Okay everyone…spend your weekends writing!  Make me feel bad when I make it back to these parts next week!

Wednesday through a black hole

The better part of my Wednesday was spent trying to cure my computer of what appeared to be a virus.  I am one of those dinosaurs that uses McAfee for virus protection and when I tried to scan for said virus, I was informed that McAfee was one of the programs it had infected and that, because it was calling in sick as a result, McAfee could not scan.

So, finally giving up FOR GOOD on McAfee, I uninstalled the program and am now using Avast, which I have heard good things about.

Wow.  Did I seriously just spend that long talking about computer woes?

Yes.  Yes I did.  And that is because there is nothing on the writing front to discuss.  Due to the computer malady, I got nothing done yesterday.  As June rolls to a close, I fear that my Oz story will go unfinished and that July will be spent in a frenzy to finish editing Darklights.

Anyway, I’m going to shut up for now.  Yesterday’s journey through the black hole of computer crap set me slightly behind in work.  So off I go….

Easy steps to become a nervous wreck

So, I achieved none of the goals I set for the weekend in my previous post. The family and I ended up going out of town for the weekend to see family and go to a wedding.

I will, however, forgive myself because the weekend proved quite nice. I received an e-mail on Saturday…a request to see the full manuscript for my short story and poem collection (would that be a miscellany?), Debris.

So that has been sent off and that makes 2 full manuscripts I have off in limbo-land.  (The other full I have out, for those of you new to the blog, is my novel, The Bleeding Room).

So yes.  Hi.  My name is Barry and I’m a nervous wreck.

Friday? Already?

This week flew by.  Tons of work and looming anthology deadlines will do that to you, I suppose.

My goals for the weekend are to finish my Oz story, tentatively titled “Aluminum Hearts” and finally knock out the final edits for Broken Skies.  Also, in the interim, I currently have queries out for Broken Skies and my collection Debris.  My submissions have been lagging lately.  I think I only have seven pieces out right now and I typically try to keep at least a dozen in limbo at all times.

Also, there’s a new post up over at Blood Routes (after about a month’s absence).

Anyway, I woke up this morning stressed about work and Broken Skies.  Here is what I’ve been listening to to sort of calm the nerves a bit.

Adjusting and maladjusted

These last two weeks have been pretty hectic for me.  I am trying to figure out how to balance my work, writing and keep an eye on our now-11 week old son.  Needless to say, the writing has taken a back seat.

In the last week, I have managed to stretch my Oz story out to 2,500 words and it’s looking to be a 4,000 worder or so.  I hope to wrap it up by the end of the week.

I have also managed to write rough drafts of the final 2 chapters of Broken Skies which inches me even closer to finally finishing it.  I’ve also edited about 80 whole pages of Darklights but, in the flurry of everything that has been these past 2 weeks, have no real recollection of doing so.

I am also working out a few poems for a poetry anthology I was invited to contribute to.  I’ve mentioned this project before, but the editor wants it to remain top secret for now.  Which makes being involved in it pretty cool, obviously.

Speaking of poetry, I received word yesterday that my poem “Autopsy” has made it to the shortlist at A Cappella Zoo.  I should get a final response by the end of the month.

Also, be sure to check out my latest work-related rants in my latest guest-post over at Freelance Writerville.

Now I’m back to work.  I’ll blog again when I have time to resurface.

Another round in the endless self-publishing debate

I will be truthful.  I am still not sure how I feel about this whole self publishing argument.  I agree with both sides and I always assumed that the day would come when self-publishing would simply be an accepted medium for fiction.  I have given this more thought than usual as of late for reasons that I will get into a bit later on in this post.  But for now, here are my own thoughts on both sides of the self-publishing coin.

A few weeks ago, a poetry editor tweeted a pretty funny comment…a comment that was both humorous and truthful: The words “poetry” and “self published”, when used together, make me cringe. And this leads to the most obvious con to the self publishing argument.  Anyone can do it.  The mother who thinks her 8 year old’s poems are so cute and insightful that other mothers will want to read them.  She types the kids poems up, posts them up on LuLu and BAM, an 8 year old has a book of collected poems published.  The goth kid that is a little into Marilyn Manson (a trip to the mall this weekend proved to me that these do still exist) writes a few verses about the blackness that is his soul and how every emotion he feels is an endless chasm of torment and death.  Go online, take about 15 minutes to walk through the necessary steps, and BOOM, he’s a published author.

Yikes.

On the other hand, what about those very unique stories that the bigger publishing houses and agents have turned their noses up at and the smaller houses didn’t want to take the gamble on?  If it weren’t for self publishing, I feel that quite a few good books would have never seen the light of day.   Some basic Google research will give you some pretty impressive numbers.

I also understand that to be a “self-published” author, there is a degree of “shamness” attached to you and your book.  Authors that have been published by traditional means see you as an inferior.  In most circuits and stores, self-published books are scoffed at and not taken seriously (unless the author can get a power-boosted marketing campaign behind the book and even then, the chances are slim).

So, really, I just don’t see how one can make such a decision about self- publishing.  I would love to see an experiment where a well established author self publishes a book under a pseudonym just to see what happens.

Anyway, I have been thinking hard about this for the past few weeks for a particular reason. I have compiled a collection of my work and have been shopping it around for a while.  It’s been very hard to get anyone interested and the rejection letters seem to have the same reasoning…it’s just too diverse.

The collection, aptly titled Debris, has a bit of everything.  Mainstream short stories, short stories of 9,000 words, flash pieces of 350 words and poetry (some only 10 lines, others 3 pages).  Also, while 75% of the work is horror, the rest is simply mainstream fiction.  So it’s been very hard to sell this concept to any genre publisher.

So that’s where I started think of self-publishing.  And while I still haven’t’ made a decision, it’s something I give more and more thought to each day.

So what are your opinions?  Self-publishing: good or bad.  And would you even consider purchasing a collection like this if it were self-published?