Evie Week

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie was sick last week Tuesday and Wednesday and couldn’t go to daycare, which means I got to stay home with her both of those days in addition to my usual Friday. Then, Sara had a conference that ran until about noon on Saturday, so that was yet another daddy (half) day.  This means I had plenty of fodder for an Evie-centric blog post.

She’s been using pronouns a lot lately and saying “me” and “mine”. So she was telling me a long story, I did this and I did that, etc. and then when it was finished she confided to me in a conspiratorial whisper “I means Evie”.

For some reason, she has gotten it into her head that her first name is “chicken”. I mean, she answers to Evie and she knows her last name, but if you ask her directly something like, “Evie, what is your name?” she reliably says, “Chicken”. Just as a test, I just asked her again while I was writing this and she answered “chicken” as usual, repeatedly and with several witnesses.

She has always inexplicably liked spicy foods, so the other day she tried some of what we were eating for dinner and, finding she liked it, proceeded to yell, “More spicy!” So Sara gave her another big bite, but it must have been a little more spicy than she was prepared for because she got a surprised look on her face and said, “Blow on it my mouth!” We had to explain that it wasn’t the kind of hot you could blow on to cool it off, but she still insisted on having Sara blow into her mouth to “cool it”.

Finally, Aunt Rachael brought some delicious dirt cake and Evie really liked it. I think it was maybe a little too much sugar though because she was absolutely drunk on it. At one point she was leaning back in her chair, one leg up on the table, with her spoon twirling lazily in the air above her head saying, “Weeeeeeeeee!”

Useful Links for Publishing Speculative Fiction Short Stories

/ Shane / Leave a comment

As you can tell from the title, I am already going back on my promise about not putting links about publishing up on the web. However, the fact is that I use these links very frequently from multiple locations and part of the reason for this blog was a convenient place for me to keep links that I didn’t want to lose.  I will update this from time to time with new links, but I don’t guarantee anything. So, without further ado, in no particular order:

General Info

  • The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Association – Many, many good links about the business of publishing, specifically those links on this page.
  • Manuscript preparation
  • How to arrive at a publishing word count (which is different than what your computer says it is)
  • The Black Hole – response times for different markets.
  • Several articles that form Old Uncle Orson (Scott Card)’s writing class.
  • Clichéd plot devices, and also for horror.
  • Dean Wesley Smith‘s blog, which contains so, so many great tips on writing. He is also the originator of the Race score:
    • You get one point for every short story in the mail.
    • You get three points for every novel proposal or chapters and outline you have out. (Only three points per book, not per submission )
    • You get eight points for every full novel manuscript you have out to market.
    • Those destined to become known authors achieve a Race score of more than 10 (somewhere more in the neighborhood of 50 – 70)
  • You must immediately sign up for David Farland (a.k.a. Dave Wolverton)’s Daily Kick in the Pants email. Much the same type of stuff as what’s on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, I would be hard pressed to pick between them.
  • The forums at AbsoluteWrite – absolutely staggering in size. I challenge you to find any publishing question that has not been asked at least 3 times on there somewhere.
  • Miss Snark – this was really for novels and it is now defunct, but there is still a lot of good information about publishing there and also a lot of hooks and such, so you can get an idea about how fresh your concept is. Sort of replaced by Query Shark.
  • The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing a Book – Comprehensive (751 pages!), free, and humorous this has numerous tips and tricks both about writing, publishing and promoting yourself (of which I haven’t found a lot of other resources). I personally take some of it with a grain of salt, and it tends to get repetitive, but it’s still a worthwhile read.
  • Story length
    • <= 500 words – Flash Fiction
    • 500 – 1000 words – Short Short
    • 1000 – 15,000 words – Short Story
    • 17,500 – 25,000 words – Novella
    • 25,000 – 40,000 words – Novelette
    • >= 40,000 words – Novel
  • Heinlein’s Rules For Writing
    • 1. You must write.
    • 2. You must finish what you write.
    • 3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
    • 4. You must put the work on the market.
    • 5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Research

  • God Checker – Information on any god you could care to name

Finding Markets

Magazine / Anthology / Contest links

The Big Three

Contests

Magazines / Anthologies

GRRM is the man

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Somewhere roughly around 10 years ago, my friend Rody introduced me to a book named A Game of Thrones. I had never heard of the author George R.R. Martin, but I immediately fell in love with the book. Luckily for me, it was the first book in a series known as A Song of Ice and Fire (which is still on going by the way).

This series flat out blew my mind. It the the best fantasy epic I have ever read and I have recommended it to many people since then. It is hard to explain what makes it good exactly, but I will say this: do not become attached to any character, no matter how main they may seem. The world and characters (and there are many, many characters) are so completely fleshed out that you get a sense that things are happening to other characters and other parts of the world while your attention is regrettably focused on just one thing. The books are simply amazing.

After enjoying these books so much, I naturally sought out other works by the same author. This led me to discover that George R. R. Martin was the editor of the long running series Wild Cards. I had indeed read a few Wild Cards books years ago and positively loved them. Score another for Mr. Martin!

I would like to get my hands on the entire set (and it is vast, about 20 books, many of them out of print) but I have been holding off on it because I don’t have the time to read them all at the moment.

At some point I picked up A Song for Lya and it didn’t disappoint. Every story in the bunch was good, and the titular story was especially awsome. It only spurred me on all the more.

So next, I mentioned in passing that managed to get my hands on the audio book format of Dreamsongs volumnes I and II, a retrospective on Martin’s career.

I cannot gush about these books enough. If nothing else cemented R.R. Martin as a master of his craft, this certainly puts him over the top. I don’t even know which was better, the many stories contained within or the fascinating pieces about his writing career. Now, keep in mind these are some HEFTY books, something like a total of 1,500 pages or, to put it another way, about 4.6 pounds. Even the audio books are large, somewhere around 32 hours. And I haven’t even gotten to Dreamsongs volume 3 yet! They are roughly chronological, so volume I covers his very early career including things from when he was a kid or while he was in college, mostly shorter stories and sci-fi. Volume II is later and includes some of the longer works and things like a couple of excerpts from Tuf Voyaging (which was originally individual short stories anyway). All genres of his career are represented from sci-fi to fantasy to horror. Absolutely get ahold of this book(s), you will not be disappointed.

In particular, I will call your attention to a story named Sandkings, which is one of the collected stories in the book. What a story, my goodness.  Soooo good! But I knew right away that I had heard it before, or in this case seen it. There was a revival of the show Outer Limits that I used to enjoy and it was kicked off with a special double episode which was so good that I have never forgotten it. Guess what, the episode was entitled “The Sandkings” and it was a retelling of this very story. So score #3 for Mr. Martin, yet another thing I thoroughly enjoyed and did not know was by him! I found the story better than the T.V. version, but I can completely understand where they were coming from with the edits. They actually did a really good job with the adaptation. I highly recommend finding this story in particular. I have seen it on the web, but I won’t link to it here because I’m not sure it is authorized.

If I have any knocks on G.R.R. it was that I didn’t really enjoy The Armageddon Rag. Apparently, I was not the only one. To be fair I wasn’t really the target audience, since it is about the music culture of the ’60s and what had happened to it by the ’80s. Not really my generation. Another common complaint is that the Song of Ice and Fire books have been taking longer and longer to come out, sometimes years after the original release date. George has addressed this quite thoroughly on his blog and he makes some good points. I agree it is annoying, because I can’t really remember what happened in some of the older books anymore, but as far as I am concerned as long as they are of the quality of the earlier books, nobody has any right to complain.

One note on his blog, the title is “Not a Blog” and he more or less means that. It is mostly talk about merchandising and occasionally about the Giants. Don’t expect what he had for dinner posts.

So, in summary, George R.R. Martin? Awesome. Two thumbs up. I endorse any of his writing and I highly recommend any fan of speculative fiction give him a try. Maybe, like me, you already have and enjoyed it, though you didn’t know it at the time!

Good work Grand Rapids

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Well everybody, we all have a new reason to be fat. I give you the 5th/3rd burger:

For those of you not in the know, the Grand Rapids minor league baseball team The Whitecaps, plays in 5th/3rd Park, named after the bank. So this would be something you would consume while watching a baseball game obviously.

I will give you the important statistics here.

  • The burger contains a delicious “five one-third pound hamburger patties on top of that. (Get it, 5/3 pounds of beef for the Fifth Third Burger?)”
  • Other ingredients include cheese, chili, salsa, nacho cheese, fritos, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream.
  • The burger totals in at more than 4,800 calories 
  • Other scary stats include “nearly 300 grams of fat, 744 milligrams of cholesterol and more than 10,000 milligrams of sodium.”

And all we got are some lousy Tin Caps…although I guess it is kind of hard to make a 5,000 calorie apple.

Z is for Zombie, that’s good enough for me

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Bad Uncle Nathan has promised for a long time to turn Evie into an evil genius so I assume we can be expecting a set of Young Mad Scientist Alphabet Blocks from ThinkGeek.

The full block list is as follows, and I think you will agree that it covers all the bases your future Evil Genius needs to know to help her grow.

A – Appendages
B – Bioengineering
C – Caffeine
D – Dirigible
E – Experiment
F – Freeze ray
G – Goggles
H – Henchmen
I – Invention		 J – Jargon
K – Potassium
L – Laser
M – Maniacal
N – Nanotechnology
O – Organs
P – Peasants (with Pitchforks)
Q – Quantum physics
R – Robot		 S – Self-experimentation
T – Tentacles
U – Underground Lair
V – Virus
W – Wrench
X – X-Ray
Y – You, the Mad Scientist of Tomorrow
Z – Zombies

And if that isn’t enough of a learning experience for your little one, you can also get a nice plush pirate which will help teach skills like shoe tying, snaps, buttons, etc. I assume you can also practice eye patch application and sword buckling, so your little one will truely be prepared to face the day.

Here’s hoping Evie can be the first to cross mad genius and pirate!

(Pirate link courtesy Meg)