July 2006
Hello again,
Wow, what a month. On the day job side of things, I took a few weeks of "vacation" to plan my new business and plan my creative writing career. I think it will all work out very well, since writing and editing technical scientific stuff will make it easier to write non-technical science articles which will make it easier to write science fiction. I've got lots of leads and have already gotten the ball rolling.
On the fiction side of things, double-wow. I had an agent request a partial (1st three chapters). She has a blog and only takes 5% (on average) of queries, so I made a pretty high cut. Ultimately she decided that ACM wasn't quite right for her, but hey, I know it will have an odd readership (i.e. people like me). I also pitched to a senior editor at Tor during Writers Weekend this month. She requested a full manuscript! Go me!
But mainly the good news was Writers Weekend. I had an absolute blast! I met tons of other weird writer people and had some great conversations. I have a bunch of new friends now, and we're all striving for the big prize together. Well, most of us are. A bunch of published writers attended as well, so I got lots of good tips. I even met someone who knew someone at Privateer Press, and he was kind enough to give me a name over there. He and the other people on the Writing in Shared Worlds panel gave me some great advice on getting into the game-tie-in writing world. Full steam ahead on that.
My new writing plan: write more novels and get them out there circulating faster. That is the main take home message from Writers Weekend. That, and everyone loves the crazy scientist wig. Also, romance writers like dirty jokes.
I'm going to stop fiddling with ACM and just send it out, send it out, send it out. I'm going to edit Viral Coat starting today. I'm going to take my many SF ideas and start writing them up as short stories and I'm going to send them out. If any look promising, I'll put them in the make-into-novel folder. I'm going to write my new SF novel: Entanglement. I'm going to pitch my non-fiction book.
The new mantra: Write it, get it out, move on. Say it with me people.
I read a lot last month, but not any novels that I'd recommend. Or maybe I did. I'm about to move and they are packed up, so I can't remember. I'm currently reading lots of science magazines to analyze that market. Ditto for SF short stories. Ditto for Privateer Press game info and short fiction.
Later, --Todd