My current Stories

  Amazingly enough all of a sudden I have three stories on deadlines. One for a well known contest, one for a special deal, and one for a smaller contest. The one for the first contest is done. I am hoping one of the others with that contest with critique it for me. Not so far though. But if no takers in the next couple of weeks I will just send it to an editor to check out punctuation, spelling and such. I will be done with it early for the deadline is at the end of March.

The special one is due to a kickstarter project I helped pay for a while back. They had a special writers reward. My choice of lectures on writing, quite  a few short stories by various pro writers, my choice of a number of books on writing and this special chance.

One of my biggest frustrations is getting rejections. In the last few years, I seem to not be able to get past a certain level of writing. I take online courses, read books, read hints by pro editors etc. I get no further. Some readers have nice things to say about my stories. I have had a couple of ongoing fans when I would place a couple of very short stories on Google+ but not editors. Except for one. I have taken courses by him and he did buy one story a few years back. You can still buy the anthology if you like good short stories. I say mine is the fourth best in the book out of, I think, 19.  Anyway, I have stated that no editor really likes my stories except for one and he isn't buying. Well he is, at least for a few who paid for that writer's reward. Well, for others too, pro writes and those who have taken a certain workshop, but I haven't been able to get to where he would maybe buy my stories. Now though he will look one of mine over at least.

I am, not nervous so much, but waiting for impending doom. To see if I have been correct that even he will like my writing enough to include in one of four anthologies. He gave us a choice of four categories or premises.  If I understand correctly he will read it and depending on if he thinks it will fit in one of three of those categories he will send it to another editor. It sounds like he will choose if it fits in the fourth category. No word if he might say why he rejected it, if he does. Also I have not seen how many writers donated for that Writer's reward. I am sure I am not the only one. But there might not be as many as usual for a market on that level. I don't know if the smaller number helps me in this case.

The last story is for a smaller contest as I said in the beginning. It is almost done. I need to finish it tomorrow for it is due the first part of March. Possibly the sixth. I will need to let it sit a week or so, revise it and send it to the same editor. That might give me one to two weeks to fix what she finds. I have sent stories to them before. Got one Honorable Mention which might still be up on their web site. This one, shakes head, I don't know. I like to think I am getting better at telling the best story I can but so far that is questionable.

Then back to two novels. One is at the editor's being checked over and I will be Indie publishing it whenever I get done with the corrections. I have a cover for it so I will just have to format it and publish it. It is a good Science Fiction adventure, action packed and suspenseful. We shall see how it does. I will spend a bit more money than usual advertising it. Which usually isn't much at all. The last two paid places I tried were failures. So we shall see as I said. I hope to have it online by the end of March.

A bit of venting on next published event

This is not asking advice just venting a little.

Hmmm, I have one book at an editors-she is probably a bit over a quarter of the way through. So when she does finish it, maybe in three to five weeks I will still have to go back over it. Most probably will take me hours, if I don't have to rewrite anything major. I have done this before so I know that I mean hours and hours of work. I have a cover for it already. It has been sitting around for over a year while I looked for a cover artist and an editor that didn't charge tons of money. So now even though it is finally in the process I still have to wait. and wait some more.

Then I have a second novel that is in almost the same situation. Except no editor yet, and the cover is being worked on even though almost done. But it has sat the same length of time and it is longer so it will take longer and cost more to edit and then to go over. Add hours to the hours and hours. Oh yes, I still need to decide on how I want to the chapters. Just leave the 40 some shorter ones or combine them. I wrote the book as a serial on another site which is why the chapters are like they are. It does need a little revising since I changed my mind some something and even though I think I went over the whole thing a couple times I need double check that. So it might have to wait half a year more before I can publish it. It might be my best novel yet. Or so I had thought when I revised it. And I have to wait and wait and wait some more.