Posted by Nicky Drayden on May 15, 2011 in
Writer's Life Well, the good thing about failing miserably at Story a Day in May is that it makes writing a short story every week seem a lot more doable. Only a minuscule amount of new fiction was written last week. But the good news is that I’ve got several pretty decent story ideas to develop, plus a handful of stories written that I think are salable. One of them (about mobster plants) makes me laugh so hard, and is full of awful plant puns.
I really want to finish the stories I’ve started this month, some of which feel a lot longer than flash fiction. I might also try to outline a story idea a day for the rest of the month, since actually writing them seems a bit beyond me at this point. Kudos to everyone out there still excelling at Story a Day!
And despite failing just about every one of this year’s insane challenges, I think this has been one of the most productive years I’ve had short story wise! 17 stories completed for about 30,000 words. Not too shabby!
Tags: story a day
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Apr 25, 2011 in
Writer's Life April has brought a little more Awesomefantasticness, which includes two short fiction sales with details to follow soon. That will help offset the cost of having plumbers come out to fix the broken pipe in our front yard, which was in no way Awesomefantasticness. But April did bring a great Chicken and Waffles party, probably the best one we’ve hosted yet. My biking every day streak is still going strong, and I’m not as nervous about going up to 5 miles as I was going to 4–the latter being a 33% increase in distance, while the former will only be a 25% increase. So theoretically, increasing distance by a mile a month should only get easier as I go along. Theoretically, I said. I also attended the Fourth Annual Doggie Easter Egg Hunt at a friend’s house, which was fun as always. Dana even found an egg on her own. There weren’t many vegetarian options at her place, but her husband did grill some tasty chicken sausage which made caving into temptation soooo worth it.
Writing has been coming along. Slowly. (You can blame this partly on Portal 2, which is the best video game ever!) I did get a couple pieces entered in the Hint Fiction Contest, which has a $100 prize for stories written in 25 words or fewer. This year there’s the opportunity to submit via form instead of in the comments, which is great, though I think the best part of the contest is getting to read other people’s entries. My two stories are in the comments under NicoleMD if you’d like to read them. Deadline to enter is April 30th!
But alas, April must make way for May, which will bring with it a whole new set of crazy. I intend to participate in Story a Day in May which involves just what it says…writing a story each and every day in May. I attempted this last year, but quickly found out that my mind was an even stranger place than I’d originally thought, which is to say VERY WEIRD. So this year I’ve decided to tame those ideas a bit and use visual prompts found in this great retro Sci-fi art book my awesome coworker gave me. When looking at the illustrations, I’m going to try not to do the obvious explanations, so there should still be room for me to weird things up.
Well, gotta go get the house ready to host book club, Sci-fi edition! Just doing my part to convert the normals.
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Apr 14, 2011 in
Writer's Life 
Man, April is living up to its Awesomefantasticness so far, and I’ve been too overwhelmed to process it. Just taking it day by day. I got one short story acceptance from Allegory, a magazine I’ve been trying to crack for a while. (Another zombie story set in a Gap store of all places). I didn’t realize how many zombie tales I’d written, but despite many markets saying they’re tired of seeing zombie stories, I’m still doing a pretty good job of placing them.
I also finished reading my book club book. (ebook!) There’s a first time for everything, I guess! I picked out the book (The Sparrow) so I’m kind of nervous to hear what the rest of the group thinks about it. Plus I still need to finish critiquing my friend’s novel, and I have all but decided that I won’t have my novel ready in time for critique in May. Too much stuff going on!
I attended Paradise Lost writer’s retreat last weekend, and had a great time reconnecting with people from Viable Paradise, plus got to meet Jay Lake and Howard Waldrop. It was a totally cool experience. I liked the informal lecture sessions the most, I think. Jay was very accessible and overly gracious with his time. There was lots of good food involved, including fried eggplant sandwich and fries from Hyde Park Bar and Grill, humongous cupcake from Quack’s Bakery, delicious sweet potato fries and blackberry cobbler from Salt Lick, and a fabulous spread at the party that catered to my semi-vegetarian needs–including awesome bean dip, spinach dip, and homemade ice cream. Yum! There was a lot of indulgent eating to be had. The retreat ran smoothly, and I definitely look forward to returning.
Lastly, I’ve posted a couple of short story ebooks up to Smashwords, and I’m waiting for them to trickle through the various distribution channels before I make the official announcement. It’s been an interesting experiment so far, meaning I’ve yet to sell anything, which isn’t surprising since I haven’t marketed anything either. I just wanted to get a baseline of what I could expect. I listed two books, one for free and one for 99 cents. The free one has gotten 170 downloads so far, and the 99 cent one has had 8 partial (non-paid) downloads. Hopefully this will change once I start promoting it. I’ve got two more books lined up to go out in the summer, and I’ve probably got enough stories to do a zombie collection in the fall. These stories have mostly been published before, so really, there’s nothing to lose. I’ll report in in a couple weeks with more updates.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Just trying to stay Zen, and ride out the rest of the month!
Tags: book club, Paradise Lost, smashwords
