Monday, November 24

Quick roundup: Rejections from both Flashquake and Ellora's Cave. I think I might dig out or write a few more flashfic for Flashquake (just scribbled a vampire scene for mininano), and I'm going to find another 2000 words for the selkie story to submit it to a Samhain collection. I don't know where I'm going to find 2000 words, but I have until March to find them, so it's not a big panic, anyway.

I wasn't surprised to get it back from EC, considering the belated spotting of errors in the cover letter, but their response does suggest they read the partial. I think. Either that, or it's a really placatory form letter.

We have reviewed your submission and while we found the writing good and story line very well done, we feel that this story is not right for us.

Ellora's Cave wishes you the best of luck with your future writing and in placing your manuscript elsewhere.


Yes, the constant rejections are a little wearing, a constant little chipping that gets slower closer to hurting (but I'm not letting it hurt yet), but I've not even been doing this for a year yet. If I still haven't had a success in five years time, then I'll let it get to me. Flashquake seems to have got to me more than most, because I was quite confident there, but they gave feedback (albiet brief), and I can have another shot with something else next time their submissions open. I expected to get the Selkie story back, and it was a very nice rejection, so I'm not so bothered; besides, I'm feeling pretty keen on Samhain (enough that I was beginning to wonder if I'd done the right thing by submitting to EC). We'll see how I feel if they reject.




The 'I <3 your blog' meme has left me with a general desire to rec some blogs, especially because since then I've added several more to my rss feed.

Useful Writing Blogs

The Swivet - Colleen Lindsay's blog, usually focussed on her experiences as an agent and news from within the industry.

BBC Writers Room - The BBC writing blog. It focuses mainly on scripts, but it's full of interesting links.

A Guide to Literary Agents - Does what it says on the tin. Good at answering questions.

Redline and Deadlines - the editors' blog for Ellora's Cave. Focus on the ePub industry, and personal experiences of their editors.

Writer Beware - An eye on all the scams and unprofessional activity in publishing.

Other Writer's Blogs
By which I mean my friends, since I'm sure everyone has Neil Gaiman and William Gibson bookmarked already. All of these people are in the process of getting published, though, so maybe in a couple of years time they'll fall into that 'obvious' category of Gaiman and Gibson.

A World of Writing - Jessica Meats

Spec Fic and Nonsense - K V Taylor

Into That World Inverted... - Sarah Rees Brennan (okay, so I'm more an fan than a friend, but her blog is so much fun to read).

Useful Prevarication Blogs

Photoshop Disasters - for all those photos with three fingers, or an extra hand, or a shadow that reveals the model's real figure.

Cake Wrecks - When professionally made cakes go bad!

Inkling Science Magazine - having finally updated for the first time in months. I was worried it was dead.

Monday, November 10

Competition and Submissions

No luck with the Aesthetica competition (who only just scraped the email through one their own much altered deadline). Shame, I was batting my eyes at that £500 prize! I have less work this month, which really means I ought to have more time to write, but I've got so used to writing in my notebook that I find myself avoiding typing things up. Luckily, days at home are quite boring, so I've got some done today, and I'm mini-nano-ing away on another short story.

I'm submitting Ruin and Exoticism to Clockwork Phoenix now. I'm alsogoing to look for somewhere for 'Another Summer's Day' and 'Unsent Letters', both of which went to Aesthetica, because it'd be good to start reaching outside of the ghost story genre again. I scribbled a little two page thing in the notebook the other day, on the basis that the kind of magazines that are always lying around at work usually have a single page story (and not always a very good one). It's something else to try, anyway.

I wonder if typing up old stories counts towards mini-nanowrimo?

Saturday, November 1

Site Redesign

New site update is live, since I promised it for yesterday (what was that I was saying about deadlines...). Aesthetica have sent an email out saying that they're taking another week to finish judging, which is my excuse for the day's delay ^_^