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A story a week? Maybe it’s time to look into Patreon

When I was in third grade, I used to make up stories from spelling lists. Granted, the stories made no sense; but it didn’t matter. It was a great way for me to learn how to spell and how to figure out the meanings for words, and to have fun doing it. I didn’t know it at the time, but that little game was preparing me for writing fiction.

Back when I was starting to write professionally, I used to do what I called “Happy Fun Freewrites”. It was similar to the morning pages concept Julia Cameron practices in her book The Artist’s Way, where you write three pages a day about anything. In my case, I found a writing prompt and then wrote about it for 15 minutes. They weren’t meant to be published, just something for my enjoyment, but every once in a while, one of them was reworked into an actual story. (My short story “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy” came out of a Happy Fun Freewrite. It was a way to practice craft techniques. It was a way to get my morning pages in. But then I became full-time at work, and the little time I had leftover for writing was directed towards the novel or major writing projects. So I ditched the Happy Fun Freewrites because I just didn’t have the time.

Now that my time is more open again, I don’t know what to do with myself. It feels a little scary knowing that I can basically write anything I want. So rather than being frozen on figuring out what to do next, I’m going back to my roots. I’m bringing back the daily Happy Fun Freewrites. I miss that element of play and joy and discovery. And, to be really honest, it’s been a long, long, looooong time since I wrote short fiction. When I was just focusing on the novel or the novelette, I would get story ideas, and I would write them down, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to dwell on them. And over time, those ideas grew less and less, although they didn’t vanish completely.

When I was doing a bunch of organization a couple of weeks ago, I came across all my old Happy Fun Freewrites, and was surprised at just how many I wrote. It was heartening, but also scary, because it showed me that I used to do it all the time. Do I have it in me to write those again? Can I write like that again?

I decided to do a trial run this week and do the writing exercises in Ursula K Le Guin’s book Steering the Craft. I kept the exercises short. 350 words. Easy peasy. what’s 350 words? A few paragraphs. Not even a full page. On the last exercise, I wrote 600 words. Mainly because I had become engrossed and wanted to see what happened next.

Ah. Now it’s coming back to me. The joy and fun of writing.

But you know what…I think I need to bring some more incentive to it. Something that will hold me accountable. So I’m going to look into doing a Patreon or some other income generation. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do forever. I just never had the mental space to look into it…until now. It will get me back into writing fiction on a daily basis. It will help me improve my craft. And finally, it will give you, my readers, a chance to get more stories from me.

(…which is something else I’m dealing with. People actually do want to pay to read my stuff. It’s thrilling and terrifying and well, that’s the whole job of being a writer, isn’t it? So that’s the real reason why I’m doing this. It will help me improve, which gets better stories to you, which gives me a little income so I can find ways to improve more…and so forth.)

I’m still working out details and gathering information on how I want to do this. For instance, I want to offer other things besides stories: writing tips, faith thoughts, etc. And I need to figure out what type of stories I want to offer and the frequency. If I did flash stories, I can definitely churn out something every week, a la Ray Bradbury’s challenge, but a longer story will take a little more time. And I still want to send out stories to markets, so there’s that to consider. For any of you writers out there who use Patreon, or another income generating service, advice would be appreciated!

And, of course, all of this will have to wait until I get the novel out on submission, which is my biggest priority right now. So let me work on getting that out in the next couple of weeks, and then…well, stay tuned to see what happens next!

Current Mood: relieved

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Next steps and a friendly writing PSA

It’s been almost three weeks since I have finished the final edit of Weeping of the Willows. Since then, I haven’t played as many video games I wanted, but I did go down to Indy to attend Mo*Con. And if you’ve been on my FB, you’ve been seeing other ways I’ve been celebrating.

I’m now sitting down and looking at what I need to do to send this novel out. One of the first things I realized was that aside from get my novel out now now NOW, I had no clue where to start, how to do it, when to do it, or what I would be doing while the novel was on submission.

What I needed was to become organized. I needed direction.

I needed a submission tracking system.

Before I went full-time, I used to keep track of all my short story submissions in Outlook. It had been super useful. But then my job became more intense and my short story output sank so low so that I was only able to work on the novel and the occasional short story and ~~novella~~ novelette. Those I were able to keep track through Gmail, Submission Grinder and Habitica.

Now that I’m in my new position at work, I bring my laptop with me for writing, which means I don’t need to work across scattered apps. I also have more time to dedicate towards writing, and I have the headspace to actually plan things. With the novel being done, I need a new record management program, something more robust to keep track of queries and deadlines, and also help me get back into practice of writing and submitting short stories, as well as help me to brainstorm the next large writing project I have.

So I’ve decided to resurrect Outlook. Truth be told, I’ve always had it on my laptop for work related things, but I hadn’t opened my personal PST file since 2014. Initial impressions:

I had a running list of over thirty short stories I had started but never finished. That startled me, because I don’t remember being that prolific in my writing. It’s a nice surprise, and it tells me that I can be that way again.
It was also nice to see that I kept notes on the revisions of the novel. Granted the notes go back to 2014, but still that’s five years that I have been working on the final draft of my novel. It’s nice to have a record of that history.
I’ve completely forgotten how much I changed Outlook to make it work for my needs. I made my own task forms, I created my own custom fields, I created my own views so that I can one click of a button, I could show which stories were being worked on, which stories I decided to trunk, which stories were rejected and needed to be sent out again, and which stories had been accepted. I was an Outlook wizard. Seeing that made me feel good….

…until Outlook saw that I had opened an old folder and rather than wait until I moved the old data to the new folder, it instead updated the folder and in doing so, wiped out all the tracking information and submission notes for every story that I’ve ever done, including the novel notes.

anime-freak-out-gif-8

Okay, so now here’s your friendly writing PSA reminding you that backups are more for just stories. If you use any project management or tracking software, be sure to back those up as well. So after I picked my beating heart off the floor, I turned off Outlook sync, went to my backup, restored the old files, moved them to the proper new folder, turned the sync back on, and now everything is backed up and fine again.

OH DEAR GOD FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY PLEASE BACK UP YOUR SOFTWARE I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH REALLY I MEAN IT BACK UP YOUR SOFTWARE BACK UP YOUR FRICKEN SOFTWARE GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So Outlook’s up and running, and according to my novel’s task list, the next step is for me to start researching and compiling a list of editors and agents. How will I do it?

Uhhhh…that would be the next post. Although suggestions would be appreciated (hint hint)

Current Mood: jubilant

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Willow Update: THE LAST ONE (unless it gets picked up)

t’s done.

The final revision of my novel is done.

I’m all done.

I started writing this in 1994. On April 28, 2019, I completed the final revision of the novel. During that time, I wrote, rewrote, tossed out, threw away the novel entirely. Started over. Revised. Finished. Threw it out again. Started over one last time, revised, went through hell, came back, and now it’s done. It came out to 140K, which is a little more than I wanted (I was shooting for 120K), but overall, I’m pleased with the word count.

Second book should be easier now, right? Right? Hello??

Part of me is freaking out and going oh-no-i’m-done-what-do-i-do-now and running around in circles. But the writer me, the short story me, the one who has sent out hundreds of submissions and racked up sales, is grabbing the panicking me and saying, “Stop. You already know the next step. It’s okay. Take a deep breath, do some celebrating, and then, do the thing.”

So I’m taking a week or so off to recuperate. Clean my house. Play some video games. And then there’s some things I need to do:

I still need to format my novel, which means compiling it from Scrivener into Word, then spell check and format it.
It’s finally, finally time for me to start researching agents.
I need to put together a list of said agents. I also have a couple of publishing houses I plan to submit to outright, but it’ll be good for me to look for an agent who can negotiate well.
I have to put my synopsis together, which will also include doing one for the whole series. And yes, Weeping of the Willows is the first book in a series (I was hoping a trilogy but I had to split this book in two in the initial draft, so at the least, it’s a 4-book series).
Then, the query letter.
And lastly, start submitting my book!

I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t know if it will get picked up by a publisher. I don’t know if I’ll run out of options and publish it myself. I don’t even know if I just shrug and say, “well, it was a good learning experience,” and I just never make it public.

But I can honestly say I wrote and finish a novel. That’s a huge thing to celebrate in itself. For all of you who had stuck with me this long, thanks!

In the meantime, I can finally, finally, start considering my next project. Stay tuned!

Current Mood: giddy

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LaShawn’s ConFusion 2019 Schedule

As Monica Valentinelli announced on Twitter, yes, I’ll be attending ConFusion 2019 for the very first time! When I’m not wandering around in a daze taking everything in, you’ll find me on these panels:

Project Management Software In Publishing

Friday, 3:00pm Ontario

Taking a title from manuscript (or idea) to the finished product requires more than an editor who polishes and enhances the story. Distributing the correct information to various channels can become cumbersome when relying on classic spreadsheet styles. Project management tools are plentiful in the market from custom software to free online organizers. How can strategies in project management help create a smoother product?

Panelists: Pablo Defendini (M), Geralyn Lance, LaShawn M. Wanak, Chris Bell, Natalie Luhrs

Wakanda and The Political Power Of Alternate Presents

Saturday, 11:00am Ontario

While The Princess Bride and Black Panther both feature fictional countries, Black Panther uses its alternate history to challenge common narratives about colonialism, centering political commentary in its worldbuilding and plot. How can Science Fiction best use alternate history and alternate present to center and celebrate people whose real histories bear the scars of colonialism, genocide, and/or slavery? How can alternate histories that don't center on these themes avoid making light of, or reinforcing the inevitability of, these atrocities?

Panelists: David Anthony Durham (M), LaShawn M. Wanak

Reading

Saturday, 3pm Rotunda

Panelists: Cherie Priest, Cassandra Morgan, LaShawn M. Wanak

Current Mood: rejuvenated

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2018 Year in Review and Eligibility Works

2018 was a bizarre year for me.

In order to explain this year, I need to back up a bit to the year of 2016. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on that year that I couldn’t really talk about online. The only way I could cope with it was by writing. So I wrote. A whole lot.

One particularly bad day, I was checking the twitters when this thread from Rachael K Jones popped up on my feed. And then, she wrote this:

And if I woke up to find a @TboneJenkins story in every major pro zine tomorrow, I'd weep for fangirl joy
— Rachael K. Jones (@RachaelKJones) August 10, 2016

That tweet stayed with me through the craziness that followed: selling our house, buying a new one, day job insanity, the election of 45. And then 2017, where I continued my push to finish the novel and got back into publishing nonfiction. All the while, the dayjob got busier and busier, and I was coming home more and more exhausted, until in May 2018, I realized that that if I was going to write more, I needed to find another job. Either one that was less intense or less hours.

So I started looking. It took way longer than I thought, considering that I hadn’t really looked for a new job in ten years. But I’m happy to say starting in February 2019, I be starting a new admin position. Same place, still full-time, but I'll get two afternoons off to write while keeping my benefits.

It’s a start.

Oddly enough, in 2018, as I searched for a job that will allow me to write more, I got a surprising amount of fiction and non-fiction written and published. In April, my short story “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy” was published by Fireside Magazine. In July, my novelette “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good” was published by FIYAH magazine (this was originally the novella I wrote in 2016 before I cut it down to a more readable length). I also wrote a third short story that will be coming out soon, but that hasn’t been officially announced yet, so shhhh! But both the two stories mentioned above are eligible for awards, so read, enjoy, share, etc.

I also wrote a bunch of non-fiction articles, including an exploration of Nisi Shawl’s Filter House on Tor.com, a review of Janelle Monáe’s album Dirty Computer in Apex Magazine, and...heh hehe, another article that remains secret for now, but will be published sometime this year. And all of that while writing cover letters and filling out job applications and updating my resume.

Of course, with all the above, my editing input on the final draft of Willow tanked. As of today, I’ve only managed to complete 68% of the final edits. Which, actually, isn’t so bad, considering that I worked on it on top of all the other things I worked on last year but still. I laughed out loud when I saw the deadline I had originally set for myself, which was March 2018. Yeah, that sooooooo didn’t happen.

But it's now 2019. I got some time freed up. I don't have any writing projects pending for the next couple of months. Well, one, but it's a quick one. And, before 2019 ended, I fixed the last major chapter that needed serious fixing (chapter 27). So all the edits from this point on should technically go fast. I’m resetting the Willow Final Edit clock to March 2019. At 68%, I know I can do it. You can cheer me on at @tbonejenkins on Twitter. And then once I'm done, I can finally tackle the goals I had written for 2018.

Butt in chair, eyes on the prize. Let’s go.

Current Mood: giddy

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Story Notes: “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good” available at FIYAH

Should’ve posted this earlier this month, but yes! I got another short story out! “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good” has been published in FIYAH’s Music issue, which you can buy now! It also comes with a poppin’ Spotify Playlist and another gorgeous illustration!

Ain’t that gorgeous?

If you’ve followed me on Twitter, you’ve heard about this one a lot. A few years ago, I stumbled onto the rockin’ blues gospel music of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, which I didn’t even know was a thing. That got me listening to more women who played guitars in the 1930s and 40s, and when I came across Memphis Minnie, I knew I had to get them into a story together. Also, I am so stoked that this was published a couple of months after Sister Rosetta Tharpe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Now if we can only get Minnie inducted...

I also wanted to write a story featuring my hometown, specifically, the south side of Chicago where I grew up. Fun fact--the real Sister Rosetta and Minnie actually did live in Chicago in different parts of their lives, but there’s no evidence that they’ve ever interacted. Seeing that most gospel musicians considered blues artists as heathens, I’m not surprised. On the flip side, Sister Rosetta came under a lot of fire for putting gospel hymns against “devil music”, so who knows.

The story give a couple of callouts to the history of the Chicago’s South Side: The Regal Theater, which was big for black entertainers in the 30s and 40s; the Ida Wells homes, a series of low-income housing mostly populated by blacks, and the Bronzeville and Bridgeport neighborhoods. And my favorite: Rita Moy, daughter of Frank Moy, mayor of Chinatown, who really did like to dress in men’s clothes. There’s even a picture of her!

Finally, I wrote this story because I wanted to show a relationship between two women of different beliefs. Sister Rosetta was an evangelist through and through, and she was also queer. Memphis Minnie, on the other hand, had a rough life: busking on Beale ave, doing a stint with Ringling Brothers Circus. Although Rosetta and Minnie never met in real life, it was fun imagining the sort of conversations they could have. You can read more about these women in their biographies: Shout Sister Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues. (Also for Minnie, there’s a description of her written by Langston Hughes)

And finally, listen to these women songs. I can repeat myself enough: they...are...AMAZING. Here, I’ll even get you started.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GcPlCeH2PU&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPGzKEhQUsw&w=560&h=315]

Current Mood: busy

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LaShawn’s WisCon 42 Schedule

WisCon 42 is coming up in a couple of weeks and I will be there! For those of you who are going, here's where you can find me.

Friday, 5:30pm: POC Dinner

It's our POC annual dinner! If you're a person of color and haven't gotten your ticket yet, sign up here. Even if you can't pay, please sign up for a ticket so we know how much food to order. I'm also coordinating volunteers for the dinner to help with setup or cleaning afterwards, so you want to help, let me know in the comment section of this post and I'll get in touch with you.

Saturday, 4:00pm: Steven Universe Sing-along
From "Giant Woman" to "It's Over, Isn't It," Steven Universe offers a variety of beautiful songs in different genres that we can all sing our hearts out to. Hopefully we'll be able to sing up to the latest song "A Distant Shore" and WE WON'T LIKE BE TALKING ABOUT THE NEXT EPISODE AFTER THAT BUT DANG THAT PUTS SOME OF THE SONGS IN A WHOLE DIFFERENT LIGHT NOW DON'T IT.

Anyway, I will be there.

Sunday, 1:00pm: Reading @ Michaelangelo's -- Smash the Patriarchy
Join me along with fellow readers Monica Valentinelli, David Levine and Naomi Kritzer as we read stories that will unsettle you, make you uncomfortable, force you to think and feel. Come for the stories. Leave with possibilities. I'll be reading my latest short story, "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy", that was published in Fireside Magazine last month.

Sunday, 2:30p: It Is Our Time: A People's Celebration, Exploration & Analysis Of Black Panther
In which I geek out with a bunch of other people about Black Panther.

Monday, 11:30am: Sign-Out
This year, I got a whole bunch of stationary I want to use up. So if you visit me at the Sign-Out, I will write out a quick flash story on whatever subject you like. It will only be at the most a paragraph, at the most, 100 words, but hey, free story from me !

Of course I'll also be around just to chat, so if you see me, feel free to say hi!

(Unless I'm peopled out...or working on the novel...in which case, a wave would do....)

Current Mood: bouncy

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Black Panther is our Lord of the Rings (SPOILERS AHOY)

Right. Right. I saw Black Panther on Friday, and I've been pretty much tongue-tied over it because OMIGOSH IT WAS AWESOME. Now that I I've had some time to process it, I want to talk about it. So SPOILERS!!!

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So there was a scene where the Jabari tribe joins Black Panther as he fights to get his throne back from Killmonger. This is after M'Baku, the leader, tells T'Challa that he's on his own and that the Jabari will not ally themselves with him. Yeah, I knew immediately that he would be joining anway, because climatic action, yada yada yada...still awesome though.

Anyhoo, in that fight, we see W'kabi leap onto a war rhinoceros and charge towards Shuri...or T'Challa...I can't really remember. Someone was in danger..and W'kabi's lover, Okoye, sees this, leaps to put herself right in the rhino's charging path...

...and the rhino not only grinds to a halt, but then gives Okoye a loving lick. Because no way is it not going to gore its favorite human...

And at that moment, I thought...

This is our Lord of the Rings.

***

Remember when the Lord of the Rings came out? Specifically, the Return of the King? Remember the Haradrim? They were the robed figures done up in a Arabic style riding humongous war elephants...or oiliphants, as Samwise Gangee calls them. In the books, they're described as 'swarthy' and brown-skinned'. In the books as well as the movie, they are a threat, and a fighting force wielding spears and scimitars. They fight, they get their butts kicked, and that's about it. Unless you read the Simillarion, you don't know much about them, and even what's in that is pretty limited.

I never really saw the Haradrim as African--more Arabic--but still, the Haradrim was the closest to brown people with my description in fantasy literature. Add that up with portrayals of blacks by Lovecraft (blatantly racist), or C.S. Lewis (non-existent), and it felt that blacks can only be portrayed in fantasy as either savages, or an lone exceptional example, or simply non-existent. Implied. Invisible.

Until Black Panther.

This is what we've been waiting for. Yes, I know it's a superhero movie, but there is so much fantasy in this movie. From the herb where Black Panther gets his power, to the Ancestral Plain, to the fight scenes (omigosh did you see when Okoye threw her wig in a guy's face as a diversion tactic? DID YOU SEE THAT?! AND HER FIGHTING IN THAT RED DRESS OOOOOHHHHH) to M'baku's kingdom in the snowy mountains...M'Baku, who was called Man-Ape in the comics, but in this movie was turned from a caricature into a living, breathing leader with the freedom to make his own choices.

And that was the whole. dang. movie.

We weren't given cookie cutter enemies. These enemies could think and feel and love and cry. Tolkien had characters that could only be seen in black and white, good and evil. Probably the only sympathetic baddie was Gollum. But you'd never see an orc struggle with doing the right thing, because it had been raised to be nothing but evil. And that became prescribed for whoever helped Sauron out.

Black Panther, however, showed people, actual *black* people with different wants and needs on different sides, each doing things they thought were best. Even Killmonger to some extent. He did horrible things. He killed many people. He was awful, awful, AWFUL to women. (Where was his mother, anyway? What happened to her?). And yet, that scene when he goes to his own ancestral place, and confronts his father...dang....that was a *powerful* scene.

But this is getting away from me. All these brown skinned people, in a story of an own, but not as fodder, but as *real people*. That scene when the Jabari came to help Black Panther get his throne back, that was some Lord of the Rings shit right there. And it allowed all the warriors to fight for what they believe in, and in some cases, even choose not to fight. Because they had that right. Even the war rhino, instead of being some mindless creature, made the conscious choice not to kill, but to give its target a loving lick on the cheek. It was a beautiful, badass moment, and it made me tear up in happiness.

This is what I had wanted Lord of the Rings to be for those nameless Haradrim.

In my Uncanny Magazine essay, "Learning to Turn Your Lips Sideways", I wrote, "Black authors are learning how to turn their lips sideways. We are coming out of the woodwork and getting black blackity black all up in our stories and our fairy tales and our science fiction and our fantasy. We’re writing works that tell stories that have always been told, to show that Black Lives truly do Matter, that we are more than one-notes with just a single story. That we are deep and complex and diverse."

Black Panther is the epitome of that. And the best thing about it is that it appeals to SO MANY PEOPLE, not just black folk. Look at those box office records being smashed. This is unprecedented, and pretty much what we've been saying what would happen. Give people a great story, and they will watch it.

So yeah. This is a game changer. It's unprecedented. And yeah, I know. At some point I'll start criticizing it proper (did I mention how Killmonger really was awful to women?) but still YOOOO THIS IS OUR LORD OF THE RINGS WAKANDA FOREVAHHHHHH

(And I'm not just saying that because the only two white guys in it were also in Lord of the Rings. They were the Tolkein white guys. Get it? Get it? Aughhhh memes ruin everything....)

Current Mood: working

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"There are no wrong answers" up at Podcastle

Remember the story I wrote for the What Fates Impose Anthology? "There are No Wrong Answers" is now up at Podcastle, read by the awesome Podcastle editors Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Jen R Albert.

I thought I had written up story notes for this, but for the most part, I gave the background to this story in the interview I had with with Jim C Hines back in 2013, during the promotion of the What Fates Impose anthology. I'll let most of that stand for itself but I do want to reiterate:

This was the first story I ever wrote from start to finish in 3 months.
This might not be the last time we see Madame D.
Yes Marty is real...

...huggably adorably real.

Go check out the story, and if you like it, go buy the anthology What Fates Impose . Lots of great stories in there and you can get it on Kindle for $1.99.

Plus, you'll make Marti very happy.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

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Writing Goals for 2018

Now that I got my 2017 Year in Review out of the way, I thought I'd take a crack at making writer goals for 2018. Do you know the last time I ever sat down to make writer goals? 2009. So let's get cracking...

Weeping of the Willows Novel: Finish final draft by March 31; Submit it by April 30
In case you didn't see my announcement on Twitter, I finished the 3^rd draft of my novel the last week of December. The 4^th draft will involve cleaning it up, making it look pretty, and moving it from Scrivener to Word.

Because I want this to be a polished draft, I would like to get this done as soon as possible. So after a brief rest, I'm going to tackle it exclusively over the next few weeks. Also, I'm going to do something I haven't done in a long time: I'm setting a hard deadline, because I want this baby to be done and out the door by the end of April. I'll announce my progress on Twitter to keep myself on track and for you all to encourage, cheerlead, poke with me a stick, etc.

Write seven short stories/poetry. Have 10 stories on submission
Once Willow is out the door, I want to tackle getting some short stories done. I already have one in progress, but I want to get more written and on submission.

Read more books!
Doing the Lightspeed book reviews has re-ignited my book reading. Most fabulous! I want to keep it going by taking the Goodreads 2018 book challenge. I know in doing the books reviews, I'll be reading at least 12 books, so 20 should be a good goal.

Get back into blogging more
This I've been meaning to do for a while. Facebook has grown less and less hospitable for writers. Going through previous posts made me realized how much I've missed blogging, and how I've neglected the Café in the Woods over the past few years. Now that I have free headspace again, it's time to revive the blog.

Right now, because of the last Willow revision, I just will be posting updates like this one. After Willow is submitted, I want to do an overhaul of the website. I also want to revisit some past posts I've done.

Reconnect with YOU
If there's one thing I've learned over the past few years is that I wouldn't be a writer today without my readers. A big THANK YOU to all of those who had stuck with me this far. Once I'm done with Willow, I would like to find a way to reconnect more with readers and fans. One thing I want to look more into is Patron or maybe do something similar to the Story Calendar I did a few years back. Remember that?

There's a lot more that I want to do, but this is a good start. See you when I start the last revision of Willow!

Current Mood: thankful

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2017 Eligibility Post and Writing Year in Review

It's that time once again for everyone to be posting the works they published in 2017 that are eligible for awards. And for the third year in a row, I don't really have that much published fictionwise.

Actually, no. I take that back. I'm looking at my bullet journal Writing Management Log (one of these days, I'll post on how I'm doing that. It's a todo in the journal!) and hey, whatdya know! I did have a fiction piece published in 2017. “The Summation of EvilCorp Subsidies HR Meeting Agenda Minutes, Compiled by Olivia Washington” was published by Fantastic Stories on January 2, 2017. This is the print version on the audio story I wrote for Podcastle, so I don't know if it qualifies for awards, but can't hurt to mention it.

The rest of my published works in 2017 were nonfiction. I had an essay in this year's WisCon Chronicles40 that was based off of my Tale of Two WisCons blog post. I also wrote an essay for Uncanny Magazine, "Learning to Turn Your Lips Sideways" in their May/June 2017 issue.

Then there are the book reviews. I did one for Time’s Oldest Daughter by Susan W. Lyons for the Fall 2017 issue of Cascadia Subduction Zone. And of course, this year I started writing a quarterly book review column for Lightspeed Magazine.

And that's just the published stuff. Writing wise, I pushed hard in finishing the revision of my Weeping of the Willows novel. As of today, I am revising the very last chapter. I'm hoping to finish it at this end of this month. I still have several stories out on submission, including the novella I completed in 2016. I also wrote a new short story, "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy" which, much to my delight, was picked up by Fireside Fiction magazine to be published sometime in 2018.

So yeah. 2017 was startlingly, surprisingly productive.

As for 2018, I'm going to make that a separate post. The past few years have been pretty rough (see my 2016, 2015 and 2014 Review posts), but finally, I feel like I have enough headspace that I can sit down and plan writing goals, something I haven't done in a long, long time.

But first, gotta finish this draft of Willow. See you on the other side of that.

Current Mood: busy

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Upcoming story in Fireside Fiction

Fireside Fiction just posted the list of stories they bought from their September submission period. Guess who's on it? MEEEEE! "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy" will be appearing soon on their website. Details forthcoming, click the link below to see the lineup of stories and authors.

https://firesidefiction.com/september2017-submissions-results

Current Mood: good

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Book Review in latest issue of CSZ

The latest issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone is out and I got a book review in there! I reviewed "Time’s Oldest Daughter" by Susan W. Lyons, a retelling of the Creation Story from Sin's point of view. You can buy the issue at their website--PDF is $3, print copy for $5. There's also book reviews from fine people such as Arley Song and Maria Velazquez, poetry from Rose Lemberg, Sonya Taafe and Nancy Kress, and an essay by L. Timmel Duchamp.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: The Foreign Exchange "Call it Home"

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Afrofuturism and Black Panther

Last week, Twitter sort of exploded (because it's always exploding one way or another) thanks to Nnedi Okorafor's tweets regarding Afrofuturism. I'm...not...real...sure on how I feel about it. Confusion mostly, because I really don't know enough to add much to the conversation. What I can do is list some of the responses.

Mikki Kendall's got a thread here.

K. Tempest Bradford's has another thread here.

Troy Wiggins got a blog post on it here.

One thing stood out in my mind: Nnedi kept saying we need to talk about this due to the Black Panther movie coming out. I didn't get it until I read Troy's previous post "Critical Conversations: Marvel's Black Panther" which began to put it into perspective for me. I wonder if this isn't so much who is gets to define Afrofuturism, but how can black american writers honor our roots in our creative work without it descending into cultural appropriation. Which, yeah, that's a way, way bigger cultural conversation that needs to happen between Black Americans, Africans, and Blacks of the Diaspora.

I'll keep updating this, mostly for my own reading, but if anyone has anything to add, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Current Mood: hopeful

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Willow Word Count...10 years later....

Last night, Scrivener informed me that I had passed the 150K overall word count on Willow. Which made me wonder what the original word count was in the 1st draft. I did some digging and came across this blog post that I did a little over 10 years ago, when I had finished the first draft.

First Draft Total:

Word Count: 462,257
Chapter Count: 79 and a prologue

Third Draft Total (pending)

Word Count: 151,179 (as of today)
Chapter Count: 44 (firm)

Wowwwwww. That's a pretty dramatic cut. A lot of that was tossing out a bunch of extra storylines, dropping a lot of supporting characters arcs (some will get pushed to the next book if it happens), and simplifying a bunch of things. It's taken me ten years to figure out it. I have to say though, this 3rd draft of Willow is the easiest draft to handle yet. I can actually work with it--I think writing the novella helped me with that. And I now can see the completion of this book looming close. I want to try shooting towards completing it by the end of this year, but we'll see. ^_^

This also makes me want to go back and reread all the older posts I did back when I did more blogging. Man, my writing process has changed soooo much. I've been meaning to go back to more blogging anyway.

Current Mood: okay

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Willow Update

Last night I finished revisions on Chapter 42 of Willow, which means that I have 2 more chapters to revise...

...except...

...Chapter 42 was the penultimate chapter, and in getting it to where I want, I have come to the realization that the set up for it needs to be written in a earlier chapter. So now I need to go back and rewrite that chapter.

Which means, actually, I still have 3 chapters left to revise.

Well, I guess it could be worse? At least it's not the entire middle section I have to rewrite?

Guess I better get to work.

Current Mood: ditzy

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New Essay up at Uncanny Magazine: "Learning to Turn Your Lips Sideways"

I was doing some maintenance on my website, updating a few things, and I realized that I never mentioned here on my blog my essay that was published at the TWO-TIME HUGO AWARD WINNING Uncanny Magazine. It was published in their May/June 2017 issue...and things were a little crazy so while I mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter, I hadn't really gotten around to my blog and then dayjob stuff blew up and then other things happened and...

So HEY GUESS WHAT! I have an essay up at Uncanny Magazine called "Learning to Turn Your Lips Sideways". I like to think of it as an unofficial response to the Fireside Fiction report that was released a couple of months afterward the Uncanny issue.Yeah...let's go with that. Enjoy!

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New Book Review Column up at Lightspeed!

It's been a super, duper SUPER DUPER busy time for me, but just wanted to say that my August book review column is now up at Lightspeed. This month, I’ll explore the nature of caretakers in The Sum of Us anthology, take a trip back to The River Bankin a sequel to The Wind in the Willows, and get turned into an emotional wreck by N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky.

Current Mood: good

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wiscon

WisCon 41 Schedule

This weekend is WisCon and as usual, I'll be there. I'm keeping my schedule super light this year for reasons, but here's where you can officially find me:

Friday, May 26, Caucus Room 4:00 - 5:15p
Love Love Peace Peace: What Makes a Fun Story?
As opposed to beautifully-crafted stories that tell powerful tales are funtime stories that we tell to amuse ourselves. We don't always talk about them because they are "low-brow," and we're afraid we'll be seen as less intelligent somehow. But while fun stories that make people laugh and give readers a joyride might not seem relevant, they are still important. Let's talk critically about what makes a story "fun" while considering the perspective of the marginalized for whom these stories are often laid with landmines of microaggressions and stereotypes.

Sunday, May 28, Conference Room 4 10:00-11:15a
Reading Group: Personal Demons
What haunts us, what scares us, what makes us tick. Works that deal with metaphorical and actual demons. I'll be reading from my yet to be published novella "Memphis Minnie and Sister Rosetta Tharpe Sing the Stumps Down Good".

Either Saturday or Sunday at some point
Spontaneous Programming: Gaming for Janet Elle Plato
I am putting together a short DnD game to honor the memory of Janet Elle Plato, who attended WisCon numerous times and died last summer. If you gamed with her or knew her at some level, connect with me either through social media or at WisCon. I'll post final details on the Spontaneous Programming board in the lobby.

Yes! I'll be at the POC Dinner on Friday night. Outside of that, you can catch me either in the lobby, the ConSuite or the parties. There may be times though that I'll need to introvert, so I'll disappear for a bit. Again, if you want to hang, message me on FB or Twitter. I should be around.

Current Mood: mellow

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Mother's Day

Last Tuesday, Daniel turned 13. He's officially a teenager now. We had a bunch of his friends over for a sleepover this weekend, and aside from them shattering our basement bathroom glass shower door into tiny pieces, everyone had a fun time (no injury, thank God, but yeah, it freaked out the kid who did it, whose official excuse was "We were playing hide and seek, I just went in there to hide and It just broke on me!". Yeahhhh.)

Mother's Day has always been a bit weird for me, particularly over the past few years. I was going to post something yesterday on FB, but got overwhelmed by all the posts either rejoicing in Mother's day or dealing with the pain with Mother's day. I'm a mom of one son, and have had several miscarriages, the last one back in December 2014. So I've been dealing with the pain of that for a while.

But I am still a mom. Because as a mother of an only, I sometimes feel like I don't fit in the whole motherhood thing. We don't have the chaos that larger families have (broken shower door aside); our kid for the most part is relatively easy to maintain, and he's getting to the point where he doesn't require so much hand-holding. But I am still a mother--just in a different time of life. And 13 years ago, Daniel was indeed born on Mother's Day, which was a sweet surprise.

So yesterday, I let the hubby and boy pamper me, which meant they made me breakfast (hasbrowns, omelettes) and dinner. We listened to Phil Keaggy and Sunday's Child, because that was the CD I was playing on repeat during labor (and yes, funny twist, Daniel was indeed born on a Sunday). We went to the Arboretum, where I finally got to level 5 on Pokemon Go. Then we went home and watched Wolf Children, which a gorgeous, heartbreaking anime movie about motherhood. Oh, and I called my mom and grandma to wish them Happy Mother's day.

All in all, pretty chill day. We'll get to sweeping up the shower door glass at some point, I guess, but it's been super nice out.