Tag: Submittable

Steal Away

Thursday morning and the week is almost over.

I withdrew a short story I had submitted to a magazine in September of 2022; thirteen months is more than enough time to decide whether or not you want a story or not, and if you haven’t gotten to it by now, well, how long do you need? There’s a serious conversation about short story publishing that needs to be had at some point–but I think that aspect of the business isn’t taken as seriously as “book” publishing, and there aren’t many people who primarily focus on the short form for the abuses of writers that occur in that small part of the business to really be brought to public attention because, let’s face it, nobody really cares. I know that one of the big name prestigious crime short story publishers always takes twelve to fourteen months to respond to submissions…and when you know that going in, that’s one thing. This market I’ve published in before and it’s never taken even a fraction of this long to get a response to a submission; it had been pending on Submittable since the day after I clicked “submit.” It may be right for another market I am looking at right now–and I had wanted to include it in my next short story collection as a republished story. Heavy heaving sigh.

Maybe someday I will do a blog post about the slog publishing short stories can often prove to be. I was in one anthology that sat on my story (and everyone else’s) for at least three years (more like four, if not five); finally released the book but never sent me a print copy (I did get the electronic one) and I never did get the really nice check they offered me to get me to write the story. There were rarely any updates, either–and certainly none since it finally saw “print.”

Sigh. The glamorous life of a writer is mostly spent tracking down payments and author copies, seriously. Well, maybe not mostly, but it takes up a lot more time and energy than a non-writer might think.

I slept really well last night, with Tug making his usual five a.m. supplication, and I’ve already discovered a quirk: if I give him food, he will squeak at me until I dump out his water bowl and refill it–every single time. He won’t even start eating until he hears the water running in the sink. Granted, I always change out the water every time I feed him–but it’s part of his routine and he won’t eat until he knows he’s getting fresh water to go with the food. I think he’s completely settled into our lives as our house cat, too. He certainly believes he’s Lord of the Manor, and when he’s full grown he’s going to be a terror–because even pint-sized as he is now, he can get up to places you wouldn’t think; he’s a climber, so any possibility of a Christmas tree again is completely gone; which is fine, really. I do love Christmas, but it’s really for kids, and the older I get the more I care about the time off than holiday joy and gifts and things like that.

I made groceries on the way home last night at the Carrollton Rouse’s, which is becoming my favorite Rouse’s; the ones on the CBD and on Tchoupitoulas are convenient, but the one on Carrollton has more selection; which means going there I can get everything in one stop, whereas at either of the others I need to go to another vendor to get the rest of the things I need, which is very frustrating; and so even the extra time it takes to get up there and back is actually made up by the times savings of only going to one store. I was also very tired when I got home–we’d had a rather busy day at the office–so I didn’t read or do anything much other than put the groceries away; Paul had a board meeting so he didn’t get home until late, either. I did work on my story “The Blues Before Dawn”, and made some decent headway on it; the question is whether I want to make it another “Sherlock-in-New-Orleans” story, which I kind of want to do; I think I’ll do that for a draft and then do a second where the detective isn’t Sherlock, but I like the idea of writing a Sherlock story from someone else’s perspective, as well. I really like the idea of writing a bunch of Sherlock short stories in 1916 New Orleans, with Storyville (cliché, I know) and the Italian immigrants in the Quarter and the little Chinatown district on either side of Canal and illicit queer bars servicing sailors and so forth; how fun is that? And of course the Opera House was still there in the Quarter too–and people still spoke French in New Orleans, or at least the bastardized Louisiana version of it. I think my goal for the weekend is to finish a draft of the story and do some more work on the second Valerie novel.

And I have to go into the office tomorrow for my work-at-home day; which I may switch over to Monday; I’m not sure and I haven’t really decided yet, to be honest. I have to go in for a benefits meeting, and was thinking that maybe the thing to do would be to work in the office since I have to go there anyway; but….now I am thinking I should just go for the meeting and maybe work at home around it; I am not sure, and I suppose I will decide tomorrow morning when I get up–depending on when I get up, that is. Frankly, I am leaning towards just going in for the meeting and being done with it and coming back home. I like not having to get up on Friday mornings–even if I rarely sleep past seven as it is–but the lack of alarm going off is actually quite lovely.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a great one, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

I’ll Do It All Over Again

Well, it’s Thursday and my week at the office–a very shortened one–will be over this afternoon. Yesterday getting back to work was a challenge. I didn’t have a problem getting up in the morning–I didn’t sleep well the night before–but late in the afternoon I started feeling tired; the low energy from not eating real food is also a thing (I’ve literally lost nine pounds since last Thursday, and nine pounds in five days is not good. If I continue to lose weight at this rate, within two more weeks I’d be down to a weight I’ve not seen since the aughts… I do not recommend this diet to anyone), and I think I may go to bed a little earlier than usual tonight. We were busy at work yesterday and I also had to catch up all my work from the days I was out, but I managed to get it all done and it was indeed a lovely thing. I mailed some things at the post office, stopped and made groceries (more ice cream and yogurt), and then came home to a protein shake for dinner. Yay, more soft food.

I cannot wait to go to Five Guys when this is all over. And pizza. Mmmmm.

I slept well last night, certainly more deeply than the night before, so I feel better this morning. Tomorrow is the visit to the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine (more on this later), and I also have my hearing aids follow-up appointment. We’re going to be busy at the office today, and I have to stay later than I usually do, which will be interesting. I’ve got a to-do list I need to finish, and hopefully I won’t be so tired when I get home from the office tonight; I’m coming straight home after work for a rare change in the routine. I’m still way behind on the housework and I really need to start writing again; outside of the blog (which counts; I no longer pretend it doesn’t count as writing–which is what I always do when I am not writing fiction: “count the blog!”) and emails I’ve not really written much of anything since getting back from Bouchercon. SO much for all that inspiration I had from attending and being in the company of writers! But I think I will be able to get to work on some stories that need finishing this weekend, and some need revision and polishing. I also need to get back to work on Muscles, and writing those proposals that need writing. I don’t have to make a grocery run this weekend, and I am probably going to have to have some things delivered over the weekend, but that’s fine. I paid all the bills yesterday, too. So, it may not have seemed as productive as perhaps I would have preferred yesterday to be, but I did get some things done that needed to be done.

And it would be so lovely to get some more of these short stories done, you know, and out on submission? I only have one story out on sub, and it’s been almost a year since I sent it in to them. I don’t know why it’s taking so long, but that’s also publishing for you. While I do appreciate the convenience of using Submittable, at the same time it makes me wonder how it works on the other side. I was thinking last night, and have been ever since the Anthonys, about writing a post about editing anthologies. I have done over twenty of them at this point–there aren’t many people who can say they’ve done more in the genre, frankly, although they weren’t all crime; most were erotica, and I ain’t apologizing for that. I think only a few were actually crime and/or horror, which is kind of surprising. You’d think I’d have edited more crime anthologies than I have, but that is not the actual case. I think I’ve only done five crime anthologies–the three Bouchercon ones, and the queer noir ones I did with J. M. Redmann (Jean). I also want to do some more self-interviews; I have the questions from two of the other Anthony nominee panels I was on–best children’s/young adult. and the marvelous questions Leslie Karst came up with for the best humorous category–and I can use them to do self-interviews like I did with the queer crime panel John Copenhaver moderated for Outwrite back in August.

I was a little surprised by the positive response to my post about conference homophobia endured and how things have gotten better since the bad old days when I first started going to the mainstream mystery events. I generally don’t bother with paying much attention to response to blog posts, in all honesty; I try not to think about people reading it because I worry that will trigger anxiety and make me think about what I can and cannot say because of worries about giving offense (I never really want to offend anyone accidentally; I do not care about homophobes, misogynists, and racists being offended by my blog because that’s a bonus for writing it. But one core tenet of my life is to never hurt anyone’s feelings through carelessness; I know what that feels like and frankly, carelessness is worse than deliberate offense, I think, because the person puts no thought into being careless, which means you’re not even worth thinking about or your feelings simply are irrelevant; I prefer planned hatefulness because as least thought and effort went into it, if that makes any sense at all. It does in my fevered brain). But it did get a rousing response. Why was it time to write it now? I’d been considering writing that post for a long time. It’s been sitting in my drafts since Pride Month, which was when I wanted to post it, to strike another blow against homophobia and homophobes, but got sidetracked by all the boycott bullshit. Then I was going to post it before Bouchercon–the morning of the trip actually, but couldn’t get it finished before i had to leave the house. Being at Bouchercon–and being around my Queer Crime Writers–made it seem even more important than it was before I left because I do not want my Queer Crime Writers to ever be made to feel the way I felt when I encountered the homophobia at Bouchercon. I do feel very protective and paternal of the group, which I know is infantilizing them; they are adults who’ve faced it before and will face it again, but I want to spare them the ignominy of being belittled and demeaned by colleagues and bigoted programmers. That was what I meant by my presence making a difference at these things over the years–if I was the lightning rod that drew the homophobia out so it made things easier for this new generation of queer writers, I can actually live with that. If some good comes out of my hard times for other people, that’s something I can get on board with, really. I’ve never considered myself a ground breaker; while I think I’ve accomplished some terrific things with my writing over the years, I don’t think future generations will be studying my work for insights into the time in which I lived and what it meant to be queer in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. You never know, but I think it’s highly unlikely.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again soon.

Tennessee

Wednesday and halfway through another week. I am almost finished with the revision of Chapter Three, and am hoping to power through it and Chapter Four today, with a side helping of Chapter Five and Six tomorrow; at this rate–should it persist–I will finish the revision in about three weeks.

I suspect, however, that will not turn out to be the case.

Look!  A squirrel!

Not having to be at the office early today feels really strange; like I should be there already and I am somehow loafing around this morning. I only have a partial day tomorrow, so I am going to try to get the weekend errands done before heading into the office tomorrow so this weekend I can simply focusing on writing and editing and revising.

It sounds good in theory, at any rate. In a worst case scenario, I am hoping to finish reading Circe this weekend at the very least. And maybe even work a little bit on “Never Kiss a Stranger,” which is turning into a novella. Which is fine; it’s too much story for a short story and not enough story for a novel; so I guess I am going to just somehow manage to turn it into a novella and sell it myself on Amazon, which I of course did with “Quiet Desperation.” I got rejected from a major market yesterday, which I was expecting, and I have to say–some of the major markets have the most kind form rejection letters.  I like to think that the kinder rejection form letter means my story was actually seriously read and considered before they decided against it; that helps lessen the sting. Since it was done through Submittable, they easily could have simply let the rejected label let me know, but they had the decency to email me as well; which I greatly appreciated.

A rejection used to always send me into a tizzy or downward spiral; but I also am very well aware that I am not the greatest short story writer out there–and there are a lot of terrific short story writers out there–and I am not really sure what I need to learn/experience/know to take me to a higher level as a short story writer. I am pretty much flying blind with them, to be honest; and sometimes I do manage to get it right. I know my subject matter can be a bit disconcerting; the story that was rejected was about someone raised in a cult who escaped from it and has built a life for himself outside of it…only to have paranoia set in when he thinks he recognizes someone from the cult at the grocery store. I think it’s a good story and I did a good job with it; but trying to find a market for it with a gay main character…well, you never can be completely sure that didn’t play a part in it being rejected, to be honest.

You see, there’s the thing when you’re a writer from a marginalized group, the thing the straight cisgender white writers never quite get when we talk about own voices and diversity; we never are sure if our work just wasn’t good enough for the particular market (or publisher) and we need to work harder, or if the marginalized voice/character automatically disqualifies the work. And for the record, that doesn’t even mean bigotry on the part of anyone reading the work to decide whether to publish it or not. Inherent bias can be so systemic and subconscious that perfectly lovely people who don’t think they have a bias at all actually do but are completely unaware of it; which is why the conversation always makes them uncomfortable.

All marginalized voices are asking is that our work be judged on its merits and values. This business is hard and crazy enough without having to always have that awful voice whispering in the back of your mind it’s because you wrote about a gay man/Latina woman/black man/transwoman.

All due respect, straight white cisgender writers don’t have those concerns. (Although it can be very strongly argued that straight white cisgender women also are in that same boat.)

And now, back to the spice mines.

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