I win! I won! I’m writing more

June was a busy month, huh?

Some real entertainment icons did their final curtain call in June; Ed McMahon on the twenty-third, Farah Fawcett on the twenty-fifth, Michael Jackson also on the twenty-fifth, and then Billy Mays on the twenty-eighth. The world will be a little different without them; it was great while it lasted. If you want to read up on these people, a good place to start is Wikipedia. 

I started writing a novel a few months ago and bailed on it after something like twenty-thousand words. The idea for it was just too much for me right now; I needed to put it away and come back to it. So much for Shadowglass, which was going to be a fantasy/horror/coming of age type of story. 

So then I started another story which might have gotten to novel size, but felt more like a novella. And I backed out of that one too. Strike two on Life Insurance. I changed the POV, like, four times. It just felt like I was trying to force it out of my head and I’m at my worst when that happens. That second novel would have been about an older woman with issues who enters a slow spiral into her own psychological depths. I think everyone would have died in that one. We’ll see…

I’ll get back to those two because they are stories that must be told. Well, at least I think so.

This month I actually got about twenty thousand words into another story that’s starting to get some traction. I’ve tentatively titled it Sinkholes because I needed a file name, but it’ll probably see the light of day under another name. I have a goal of thirty thousand words for July on this one and if I can keep that pace I’ll be at my best as far as output.

I won! I won! I took a short break from Sinkholes to write a short story that turned out to be a perfect fit for the contest presented by Editor Unleashed and Smashwords. They called the contest Flash Fiction 40 and they were looking for stuff under a thousand words. Forty winners will be anthologized (that’s a word, right?) in a collection to be assembled by Smashwords. My story, The Distraction, came in at 975 words and was chosen as one to be included in the anthology. Pretty cool, right? I’m happy.

But the big news there is the number one story called Fairy Tales. It is an eerie sort of story that says more than the words actually spell out. It’s a real memorable piece with as much depth as one can eek out of a thousand words. The author of that one took the grand prize of $500. The other thirty-nine will receive $25 and be presented in the ebook. This is quite an anthology and I believe it’ll be presented as a free product (I better be right about that or there’ll be a lynching). Keep looking for the anthology at https://www.smashwords.com/ and while your there check out John Rector’s novel The Grove at   https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2734 . I had read The Grove when it was released on Amazon.com as a Kindle novel, so I was surprised to see it at Smashwords as well. I reviewed it on Amazon and on Goodreads.com as a real good five star story. You can read my review of The Grove at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/57613624 . It was on Amazon for a buck and on Smashwords for “name your price”. This is John Rector’s breakout novel with another on the way soon. He’s using The Grove to get his name out there so people will be looking for more of his stuff. Works for me.

I have a couple of really cool stories out there that I haven’t heard back about yet. Regarding Persistence comes in at nearly 6000 words and I think that one is more marketable. But I have another, Post Traumatic Dress, which twists and turns and leaves you wondering what the hell happened because I lead the reader in one direction for a lot of it and then shoot the story off to a hard left to make everything that went before just some delusional-psychological coping mechanism (wow, long sentence alert). The real story comes out in the last couple of hundred words but you need the rest to get it. Even though I love the way that one turned out, it’s the kind of story that needs the reader’s attention; something that cannot be expected when it’s being peeled off a slush pile (unless it is the first read of the day).

I started my last post by stating up front that I had lost my job again. So an update is in order. The company that laid me off (with, like, thirty or forty others) had called to talk before the July fourth weekend. I’ll get another call after the weekend once management has a chance to get on the same page. Things seem to be picking up again in the wonderful world of printing, which is a good sign for the economy. I also have another iron in the fire that’s taking on a nice fiery red color and that’s all I’ll say on that bit for now. The one constant in my life lately is change and it’s keeping me bouncing on the balls of my feet like a boxer at the start of round two. Gotta keep moving, gotta keep looking around. Being one of the ten percent not working in this country gives an aura of being in the breakdown lane; but some days I feel exhilarated, breaking the limit in the high speed lane on a pair of Wile E. Coyote’s Acme Rocket Powered Rollerblades. And with that picture firmly planted in your head, I bid adieu till next post.

Tags: Editor Unleashed, Fairy Tales, flash fiction, links, novel, Post Traumatic Dress, Regarding Persistence, Shadowglass, short story, Sinkholes, Smashwords, The Distraction, The Grove, win, won, writing