This week my story Seeded was published by Gallery of Curiosities. GoC is an audio market, which is a first for me. I love the reader they chose and am very pleased with the final product. This is one of my stranger stories but I think it reflects my sense of humor pretty well. It is the second of two stories in the episode.
You can click through below to reach the episode’s credit page and download.
Or listen directly here.
And a bonus Fraggle.
Not completely happy with Red, might take another stab at her sometime. But I’m awfully proud of Beaker up there.
Happy New Year, everybody! I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of 2017. Natural disasters and human disasters seemed to be the theme. Nevertheless we persisted; we made it to 2018! (except those who didn’t).
Before I get to my book statistics I’ll share a few writing highlights. I wrote at least three new stories and majorly revised several more.
Here is a screenshot of my submission stats from 2017.
I doubled my story submissions from 2016 and received nearly 6 times as many personal rejections. (Personal rejections are gold when you’re in the submission trenches.) This is a tangible reminder that I’m making progress.
My story Wandering Eye was published on the Lorelei Signal in January of last year. I recently sold another story that should be going live in the next few months. I’ll post a link here when it does.
Over the last year I’ve become a part of a critique group of local authors. We’ve been meeting once a month. The advice I’ve gotten from Marcia, Anika, Jennie, and Tim has been invaluable and my writing continues to improve. It’s also a great motivator to have something written in time for our meetings.
I’m still in touch with most of my classmates from Viable Paradise 2016 and connect with them nearly every day. It is an incredibly supportive community. They’ve been doing great over the last year too. Several have made pro sales, signed with agents, and attended incredible workshops. I’m thrilled and grateful for my little writing family.
I entered Podcastle’s Flash Fiction contest and made the top ten out of 200 stories. I think I ultimately placed 5th.
In June I attended 4th Street Fantasy, a very small local fantasy convention with such guests as Holly Black, Elizabeth Bear, John Chu, and Max Gladstone. It’s limited to only about 250 attendees and socializing is encouraged but not mandatory. Which suits me perfectly. It also attracts a lot of Viable Paradise graduates and ended up being a mini reunion for VP20, with 16 of our class of 24 in attendence.
In September I ran a meeting of MinSpec where we did Sherwood Smith’s 2-Page exercise. It was huge success and we’ll be doing it again this spring.
On to the books part of the Year in Books!
Every year since 2010 I’ve kept a running list of the books I’ve read over the course of the year. It functions sort of as a diary of my reading habits.
By the Numbers
Grand total: 103 books read
67 print
36 audiobooks
5 ebooks
52 comics and graphic novels (not including singles issues read month to month)
22 borrowed from the library
17 borrowed from friends
11 short story collections or novellas
Favorites!
Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones – Seanan McGuire
Room – Emma Donoghue
The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky – Terry Pratchett
O Human Star Volumes 1 and 2 – Blue Delliquanti
The Girl Who Drank the Moon – Kelly Barnhill
The Refrigerator Monologues – Catherynne M. Valente
Lots of favorites this year!
Favorite Author stats
Neil Gaiman 4
Gail Simone 3
David Mack 2
Charlie Jane Anders 1
Holly Black 2
Carrie Fisher 1
Seanan McGuire 2
Rainbow Rowell 1
John Scalzi 2
Terry Pratchett 2
George R.R. Martin 1
Marissa Meyer 1
Kelly Barnhill 1
Ursula Vernon 2
Catherynne M. Valente 1
Connie Willis 1
Nnedi Okorafor 2
So that was 2017 in books.
Here is the current state of of my to read shelves.
I hope that by next year the piles in front of the shelves will have been read. But that would mean I stopped adding to them and that is not as easy as it sounds.
A few other highlights from 2017.
I saw Hamilton in Chicago!
All the Hugo Award fiction categories were won by women!
Hidden Figures! Wonder Woman! Thor Ragnarok! The Last Jedi!
Brienne and Arya’s sparring match!
Black Panther and the Thirteenth Doctor to look forward to!
Extreme weirdness on tv in the form of Legion, American Gods, and Twin Peaks the Return.
The Big Sick! Ladybird! Master of None! The Good Place! Steven Universe!
The Women’s March! Trumpcare defeated! Roy Moore defeated! Resisters everywhere!
Spoiler alert: he does not stop drinking.
Oh Robert.
This one turned out much sadder than I anticipated. Also Ned Stark doesn’t do emojis.
I wrote a GOT parody.
SPOILER WARNING for Game of Thrones through season 7 finale. Please do not yell at me if you get spoiled.
Ready?
I could not resist.
Unfortunately, the format makes it impossible to edit any errors, but hey that’s texts for you.
There will be a part 2.
Lace Stormtroopers part 2.
Before I get to the second batch of lace troopers I wanted to share a picture of my niece wearing the storm trooper hat I made her.
This was one of the troopers from the first batch.
With the second batch I did things mostly the same way as laid out in the first post. The key differences were that the lace was not a stretch fabric, the template I used was larger, and I went with the updated helmet design from the Force Awakens.
I used this picture as my template. This design ended up being much less complex to recreate in fabric than the original.
First step was to cut out a basic helmet shape from the lace for the base. Then sewed a square of black fabric to the base. I used some black velvet I had in my scrap pile. Then on top of that, I sewed on three lace pieces that created the updated helmet look. Finally, I sewed on a visor and lens details using thin black knit. The result being these.
Not bad but it needed something extra. So I decided that these weren’t just any lace troopers, these were going to bloody handprint Finn style Lace troopers. And I just so happened to have bought a starter pack of embroidery floss from target for a different project, with a nice bold red thread. So I decided to embroider the handprint on to the lace.
One small problem. I didn’t know how to embroider. So several tries and Youtube and Pinterest searches later, I had accomplished this.
That is a chain stitch, which I now knew how to do. But that wasn’t good enough. The bloody fingerprints had to be solid red. So a brief tutorial on the satin stitch, several more tries, and at least two more trips to Target to buy multiples of the same starter kit, because I kept running out of the thread and needed the same thickness and shade of red. (Which incidentally meant I ended up with about seven times of all the other colors in the kit. And what I ended up doing with them is another post entirely.) But at the end of the day, I had these.
Two bloody-handed lace troopers and/or abstract roosters, ready to be applied to the item of my choice.
I chose throw pillows. I used a blanket stitch (also learned off of youtube) to sew them on. On my first attempt even with it pinned in place it bunched up went all crooked. So I tore up the stitches, ordered a set of embroidery hoops from Amazon, and two days later tried again with the hoops, with better results. Although one still ended up a little tilted.
And there you go!
Again, if anyone out there decides to create their own lace stormtroopers, or sith lords, or Mandalorians etc. please share the pictures.
I rediscovered this little story while cleaning up my writing folders on my hard drive. I wrote it probably about five years ago in response to a forum challenge to write a love story in under 1,000 words. I like it more than I remembered. Enjoy!
A Conventional Love Story
I knew nothing about her; not her name, not where she was from, or if she was seeing anyone. All I knew was that the woman of my dreams was dressed as Hogwarts, and she was getting away.
It was love at first sight when I spotted her on stage between a Dark Phoenix and an Optimus Prime. Hers was certainly not the sexiest costume in the lineup. That title belonged to a scantily clad interpretation of a Ghostbuster. Nor was hers the largest, that went to a team of five people dressed as the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro. Nevertheless, from the moment she stepped onto the stage to the moment she finished her allotted strut, the Quidditch pitch bobbing alluringly on her left hip, I could not take my eyes off of her.
Despite getting a standing ovation from the crowd, to which she gave an awkward curtsy, she did not place in the top five. While I thought the judges were crazy to exclude her, I was happy to see it. The sooner she was out of the contest, the sooner I could meet her. As the contestants were eliminated one by one, they filed off the stage and into the audience. The more impressive the costume, the more people swarmed to have their pictures taken with it. I dodged and weaved my way from the back of the room to the area next to the stage.
It took some time; the costume contest is one of the most popular events and the room was packed. Fortunately, I knew that with her bulky costume she could not move any faster than I could. I forced my way through a crowd of people I thought were waiting to be photographed with her, only to find a breakdancing Ewok in the middle. Irritating little showboaters!
“Where did Hogwarts go?” I shouted over the din.
“I think she was going for the Joss Whedon panel,” a partially transformed Bruce Banner replied.
“Which room?”
He shrugged. I hurried as quickly as I could out the door. Back out in the hall, I asked everyone I saw if they knew the room number for the Whedon panel, finally getting it from a guy handing out promotional wrestling magnets. It took another fifteen minutes to make it through the throng of conventioneers to the proper room. Just my luck, the door was closed.
“Sorry, it’s full,” the con staffer said, sounding harassed as twenty other people were hovering by the door.
“I don’t want to get in, I just want to know if you saw a girl dressed as a castle go inside.” The staffer looked at me like I was a loon, and turned to rebuff the next person trying to get by him.
“Damnit!” I sighed.
“I know,” groaned a girl in a Captain Hammer tee. “I got in line two hours ahead of time, and I still didn’t get in,” she griped.
Two hours? That meant my would-be paramour hadn’t gotten in either!
“Did you see a girl in a Hogwarts costume?” I asked the disgruntled Whedonite.
“Is that what she was supposed to be? I thought she was Castle Greyskull.”
“Which way did she go?”
“Out to the floor.”
I took off sprinting, or as close to it as I could get when every square foot of space was taken up with people swinging swag-bags. I found myself back on the main floor, a football field-sized labyrinth full of vendors selling all the sci-fi/fantasy/comic book/gaming paraphernalia you could imagine.
Frantically, I took the route that was flowing the smoothest at the moment, praying she’d done the same. Finally, I spotted her headpiece through the sea of bodies between us. I could clearly see the unmistakable silhouette of the astronomy tower, perched on her head, complete with an action figure of Professor Dumbledore dangling from it.
“Hey!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, desperate to be heard over the cacophony.
“Hey! You with the turrets!”
For a moment she paused. I saw the action figure swing around, as her head turned. I leapt forward, my heart beating in my chest, only to barrel straight into a vampire covered in body glitter.
“No,” I moaned, as my unfortunate collision partner tried to help me off the floor. It was too late, by the time I regained my feet, there was no sign of her. I trudged to where I had last spotted her. All I found was a crumpled piece of cellophane, that had been a part of the Black Lake. I folded it neatly into a square and put it in my wallet.
I searched the con for the next two days. I never saw her again. But I’m not giving up. I will be back next year, and I’ll be damned if I won’t be the most accurate Platform Nine and three-quarters you have ever seen.
And here is a selfie I took with the Hogwarts miniature at the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but I’m standing on an elevated ramp and the miniature is enormous, the room it’s kept in is about the size of a basketball court. I’ll admit, I may not have fallen in love when I saw it, but I definitely got chills.
