The print edition comes out at the end of the month, but as I type this you can order the Kindle edition of Spells And Swashbucklers, the pirates-and-magic-themed collection of short stories from Dragon Moon Press and edited by Valerie Griswold-Ford, aka vg_ford here on LJ, from Amazon!

How do you get it, you ask?  Go here.

Happy reading!

During this long journey I have been on toward publication, a question has popped up over and over again, and I no longer have the ability to be polite in how it is answered.  I have been asked many times if I have ever thought of self-publishing something.  The answer, quite simply, is no.  And based on a story I read recently, it has become a resounding HELL NO.

This story originally appeared in the New York Times and a follow-up article was written, and if you don't want to click the link, I will briefly summarize it for you.  There is a growing trend now of children becoming published authors, and when I say "children becoming published authors," what I really mean is "their parents coughed up a chunk of change to have their literary efforts published by a vanity press."  The kids are, very understandably, quite excited by the whole process.  After all, how cool is it to be able to say you've had two novels published by age fourteen?  Who else can claim to do that?

Anybody.

That's the part that is willfully glossed over time and time again in the original story and the various follow-ups that I have tracked down.  It's not my intent to shit all over these kids, who have an excellent goal (be a writer) and probably honestly think that this is the right way to go about doing things.  The parents are the ones whose feet I would like to hold to the fire, so have a seat over there and watch as I sharpen my knives.

The train of thought that cropped up over and over again in the stories was the bright-eyed kids talking about how proud they were, and about how awesome it was to hold a copy of their book in their hands.  Nobody else seemed to have the heart to say anything to these kids about what they had done, so I will be the giant meanie and pop their balloon with the arrow of truth.  Ready?  Here it goes:

You didn't really accomplish anything.  You completed a business transaction.  And if the anecdotes in these stories is anything approaching the usual way this process works, you didn't even plunk down the money that you earned yourself to make this happen.  Your parents paid for it, and your glow of accomplishment and pride is completely out of whack with what has truly taken place.

Now, before you start up the bonfires and begin sharpening the pitchforks, allow me to explain a little more in-depth why I feel this way.  First of all, I am not saying for a moment that what these kids have done is bad.  I think the idea of more writers in this world is a great one, even if it does mean more competition for me in later years.  Everybody has to start somewhere, and the younger you get started, the more likely you are to be successful later on.

However, and I cannot stress this point enough, the beginning point is never the finish line.  To be a writer, it takes a lot of time and effort, not to mention more than a little frustration along the way.  You're supposed to get knocked down.  Your manuscripts are supposed to be torn apart by merciless red pens.  You're supposed to--

Oh, wait.  I forgot.  This is all stuff you're supposed to do if you want to be a good writer.  If you don't really give a shit about the quality of the stuff you produce and just want to be able to say you've written a novel, by all means, go ahead and charge forward.  But as for the title of being a published author and the kind of justifiable pride that comes with having hacked your way through the jungle to emerge on the other side with that manuscript in your hands, don't even think about trying to ride this train with that ticket.

Put another way: if my dad can sit down at the computer, type the word FUCK ninety thousand times and then enclose the resulting file with a check for a thousand dollars and receive published copies of his magnum opus, it really only adds up to a heaping case of jack squat.  If anybody you know can, with the appropriate amount of money, get in to see a show, the club loses a great deal of its exclusivity.  And if you don't think this can happen, you've never heard of Atlanta Nights.

In 2004, a group of science fiction and fantasy authors decided to put one of the biggest vanity houses, Publish America, to the test.  In the past, this publishing house had claimed they received up to seventy submissions a day and rejected the majority of them, claiming righteously that they were not a literary whore who would open up the legs of publication for anybody who had the cash to spend.  In addition, on the Publish America web site, there were numerous shots taken at authors in the field of science fiction and fantasy, essentially calling them the lowest of the low and advising that if you managed to engage one of these despicable bastards in conversation, your best bet was to run the other way as fast as you could.

I am not making this up.  I couldn't make this up, because nobody would believe that it happened, but it did.  Here's the description of the literary fuck-fest they came up with, from the appropriate Wikipedia page:

"The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical to each other (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter "written" by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase "PublishAmerica is a vanity press." Under Macdonald's direction, the finale revealed that all the previous events of the plot had been a dream, although the book continues for several more chapters."

Now that, my friends, is the mother of all troll-jobs.  On December 7th, 2004 (a date which will live in literary infamy), Atlanta Nights was accepted for publication by Publish America.  In January of 2005, the authors revealed their trick and the next day, after "further review," Publish America decided that Atlanta Nights failed to meet their standards and revoked the contract.

I think you get the idea.

Groucho Marx famously said, "I'd never belong to any club that would have me for a member."  The bottom line is that at its roots self-publication is a pure vanity move, and the few examples that can be cited of successful efforts in this field are vastly outweighed by hordes of cringe-worthy suckfests that regularly plague bookstores (on the rare occasions that a reputable bookseller can actually be convinced to stock the titles; generally, the easiest way to get a bookseller to stop talking to you is to bring up your self-published book and how much you'd like to see it on their shelves).

So there you go, my screed on self-publishing.

Oh, and Samantha... thanks for not judging me.  You're one in a million.

First update in a while... couldn't let this one go by.

Originally posted by denorios at Please take a seat in the shaming room...

I've had a love affair with video games from a very early age; I was the first kid on my block to give away the secret of being able to deal two shots at once on the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders (hold down the reset button as you power the game up, then release), and we've done a lazy, happy dance ever since.  My tastes have changed over the years, but there is almost always some electronic diversion which can happily claim an hour or so of my attention at a time.

These days my two favorite genres are the first-person shooter and the sports simulation.  Here's my thoughts on 2011's release Duke Nukem Forever, from a qualified expert.


( Honesty Hurts... )

I'm not going to lie to you; I'm very happy to be seeing 2011 in my rear view mirror.  There were some good things about the year, but overall, I feel like it was an exercise in slamming my head a doorframe repeatedly, followed up by a luxurious bath.  Moments of good stuff, but a lot of painful slogging was required to get to them.

Keeping this in mind, I have three resolutions for 2012 that I intend to keep.

1)  Play more music.  The last time I set fingers upon my fretboard was May of 2010, when my wife and I were enjoying some vacation time up at Lake Tahoe.  Since then, bupkus.  If for no other reason I need to play more music so I can justify the expenditures I have made in the equipment department.  Also, I am a happier person when I am creating and playing music; even if one outlet is blocked, running low or for whatever reason the pressure in the pipes is inhibiting artistic flow, I can always turn to the other.  Therefore, I am setting my goal at playing at least two hours a week to start with, and going onward and upward from there.

2)  Being the best referee I can be.  I really want to do well in this area, and my goal currently is to referee in the home opener, which is the first week or March.  After that, I want to roster with the other zebras for every derby bout that comes along  2011 was the year where I learned how to play while hurt; 2012 is going to be where I rise to the top of my personal mountain and start owning the track.  I enjoy the endorphin rush that roller derby brings me, I love the people I have met, and I'm very glad that it's in my life.  It's one of the few consistent bright spots of 2011.

3)  Submit like I'm storming the Bastille.  Although I didn't get any novels into the traditional publication pipeline, I was able to keep the rate of submission running at an all-time high last year.  To date, I have racked up 30 rejections for Salvation, and 25 for Lottery Odds.  Egad.  While progress continues on the homebrew shepherding of The Phoenix Initiative toward several formats (a graphic novel version is now being threatened, which I find very intriguing), by no means is this going to interfere in my regular rank-and-file submitting via the traditional outlets.  Given the publishing industry's miniscule odds and dependence occasionally on nothing more than blind chance, I need to keep as many torpedoes in the water as possible.  "Death Tide" should see publication in May of 2012 and The Phoenix Initiative is an ongoing process, so if I could land one more iron into the fire over this year, that would give me three successes and would be absolutely outstanding.

I'm also going to try to update this blog more than once a month.  I'm going to try to do weekly entries and keep y'all appraised on what is going on in my life, and hopefully have a few interesting tales to tell along the way.  There may also be a new serial novel for 2012 (partially because as a consequence of the ongoing shepherding, I will be locking up The Phoenix Initiative-related entries), so there's also that to look forward to as well.

What about you?  What's new for you in the new year?

Been a while since my last update.  I seem to say that a lot.  Oh well... here's what's going on in my life.

1)  Spells & Swashbucklers.  It's official; I have the pole position in this upcoming anthology, and I am pretty damned excited.  Going first in a collection is a position of honor, and I think it's pretty awesome that my first published effort in thirteen years gets to bat leadoff.  I will keep you all appraised of where and when you can buy this anthology, and it's my sincere hope that you enjoy the living hell out of it.

2)  Roller derby.  I passed the initiation period, so I am officially a member of the Sac City Rollers league.  I'd be lying if I said that it was easy, and I now know why it is that so many girls who make the team after tryouts end up dropping out somewhere along the way.  Lady Jade and I are still in it to win it, and I got to pick my derby name.  Once again, I am Zombiegoat.  What a shock, huh?  I also picked a skate number, which for referees isn't necessary but in every organized sport I have ever played, I've had a jersey number so it would have felt very unnatural to make the team and not have a number on my back.  Therefore, I am Zombiegoat the Referee, #213 in your programs and #1 in your hearts.

3)  The War At Home.  Our in-laws are closer to moving out than ever before.  This is not a subject I have posted on previously, but it has been a very long time in coming.  When they are gone, there will be an EPIC POST, and by "epic," I mean, "horribly mean-spirited and hugely overdue."

4)  Writing and submitting.  I haven't done a tremendous amount of writing lately, but I've learned over the year that this is perfectly okay.  My efforts on the submission front have continued unabated, and as of this writing I have racked up 25 rejections on Lottery Odds and 30 turn-downs on Salvation.

Let that total sink in for a few seconds.

55 rejections on two novels.

I'm shutting down for the rest of the year, but that's only because traditionally, the last half of December is a very poor time to submit.  Most of the literati are going on vacation at that time, and it's not a particularly great idea to be email #101 in an inbox of 317 new messages when they come back from break.  Rest assured, when the new year dawns I will be back in my gunners' seat once more.  You cannot break me; my will is iron.

I'm going to try to update a little more often, but I guarantee nothing.  However, even if I'm not updating, I am still reading your posts.

From my glass of wine to whatever you are drinking, happy holidays.  It's been a fuck of an interesting year.

Review time in the old corral.  Bear with me, folks.  I promise it's all going somewhere.

I've been fortunate enough over the years to have completed many novels; seventeen, to be exact.  Some of them have turned out better than others, to be sure, but I have good memories associated with all of them.  When I'm working straight through on a project it generally takes anywhere from three to six months to get it in the bag.  There are exceptions to this guideline/rule, of course.  On the low end of the spectrum, The Final Nine and The Phoenix Initiative were both done inside of a month for each.  By contrast, Descent was only completed after two years of on-again, off-again work.  The previous record for a project worked straight through was Suspiria, which was nine months of solid work from start to finish.

Unfortunately, there is also a dark side to this body of work.  Not every project that I've sat down to tackle has been shepherded through to completion.  In fact, closer review reveals the failure rate is nearly as high as the success rate.  Leaving out the two most recent projects that I have "paused mightily" in the pursuit of (those two novels being Chances Are and Dead of Winter, and I include them in this category because I do have concrete plans to finish them), the final body count shows that thirteen novels have keeled over and died at some point in the creative process.

Of course, not all literary corpses are created equal.  A quick review of the WRITING folder in the hard drive shows that there are two different versions of a novel titled Lottery Odds to be seen; one of them was abandonded after only two chapters, the other reached almost 40,000 words before it bit the dust.  This book was later completed on the third try, and I am very happy with the results.  One that was not was the apocalyptic-themed college disaster novel The Light at The End, which also staggered through two attempts before quietly relinquishing the dance floor.

The INCOMPLETE folder is a mixed bag of projects.  There are two sci-fi novels there, one a straight SF intergalactic space battle titled The Xieven Scenario, which went about 30,000 words, and then there's a more ambitious project called Sacrifice which cracked 40,000 words before it also went the way of the dodo bird.  There's also the survival-horror novel Black Sunshine, the race-for-the-bottom sports-themed football novel Lost Sundays, and an inside look at independent filmmaking at its swinest courtesy of Westbound Sign.  The only common thread they all share is that for one reason or another, they didn't make it to the finish line.

What I'd like to do during National Novel Writing Month this year is to complete one of these projects, or at least add a good deal of meat on the skeleton I currently have.  I'm not sure which one of them I will do it with (early returns are leaning toward getting the rest of the way done with Chances Are and Dead of Winter), but I'd like to be able to, if nothing else, give someone a decent burial even if it isn't in the cards to have the novel turn out the way I'd originally hoped.

Good thoughts to you and yours.

On Monday I fired up the old submission machine, aka my trusty Alienware laptop, and sent off some query letters/proposals for both Lottery Odds and Salvation.  I was very happy as I did this; there's always that little thrill as you send something off, knowing that this could be the one that finally bears fruit.  I considered them carefully, these places I was going to attempt to entrust my writing to, and then hit the SEND button before going back to work with a very self-satisfied feeling.

Today, I couldn't tell you where those torpedoes were launched toward.  And believe it or not, this is a very good thing.

I'm not going to go back over the stat list of authors who were shot down time after time after time before they finally managed to strike gold, because I think that as a smart reader, you're already aware that there's a hell of a lot more to getting a book published than simply writing one.  Hell, that's the easy part.  That's the fun part.  That's the one that it's been my pleasure to do over and over again... but for every happy Yin you tango with in this business, there's a hideous Yang lurking around the corner that you're going to have to cut a rug with as well.

Ideally, what you want to do is set up your submission process as something that is as mechanical as assembling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (and with the same amount of emotion, if you can arrange it).  Your cover letter, plot summary and however many pages that is wanted to be seen in a proposal (usually the first 30 pages or first three chapters) should be already laid out, neatly formatted, and all that is required is a flurry of copy and paste into your email.  Once you find a likely landing spot for your manuscript, it shouldn't take any longer than three minutes from when you first begin your email to when you hit SEND.  Another document I have found helpful is a list of places that you have already submitted to, so you don't screw up and spend a lot of time waiting to hear back from a place that shot you down six months ago.  Believe me, as time goes on, you'll appreciate this handy hit-list of previous failures to launch.

Okay, so you've submitted.  Have a drink, you've earned it, and raise that glass high before draining it.

And at that point, once the drink has been polished off, you should then completely forget about what you just did.

The response time from an agent or publisher can be anywhere from two days to two months, and the last thing you want to do is have that knowledge in the forefront of your brain.  There are exceptions to every rule of course; most notably, I'll never forget the time I submitted to an agent, began researching where I would have my next send-off go to... and got my rejection nine minutes after sending it off.  I hadn't even gotten to the next name on my hit list yet, and it was already DOA for the previous effort.  With the spread of email slowly but steadily driving a stake through the heart of the traditional pen-and-paper submission, the turnaround time has gotten a whole lot less for responses.

The important thing to remember is that in no way should you ever (and when I say ever, brother, I mean EV-ER) look at the place you just submitted to and say the following to yourself, empty drink in hand: "Yeah, this is a perfect match.  This is great!  I'm right up their alley... why, by this time tomorrow, it might be all signed, sealed and delivered!"

You may indeed be a perfect match.  Lord knows I've thought that dozens of times.  It means nothing.  Until you get the response, it's all blue-skying the agreeable fantasies you've harbored for so long, and there's absolutely no point in getting your hopes up just to get your teeth kicked in.  Yeah, the agent you just submitted to reps four of your favorite authors, and you've patterned your life after their teachings.  But honestly, how many times has somebody pressed a book into your hands that they know you're just going to absolutely love and it was only a big ball of okay?  Or worse?  Or maybe it was a little bit better but honestly, it didn't make your soul sing and if you're staring at this screen right now with a very sinking feeling in your gut, congratulations.

This is what you're up against.  That feeling.  That feeling that's finer than most and rarer than hen's teeth.  So while the screws turn and the gears grind away, for your own sanity and peace of mind, find something else to occupy your time with other than the thoughts of about how by this time next year, you'll be having martinis with your favorite authors at a mixer sponsored by the agency you just submitted to.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.  You'll be a lot happier in the long run.

Apparently not.

All right, quick rundown.  I promise I will do a more in-depth entry in the future about the things I am going to quickly go through, but for the moment, here's what's been going on in my corner of the Net.

1)  Roller Derby.  I'm really enjoying it, even though it is kicking my ass something fierce.  I've noticed body changes happening already, and I am really enjoying the camaraderie that exists among the followers.  If you have Netflix, I highly recommend checking out the (sadly only one) season of Rollergirls they have available, and also giving a whirl to the movie Whip It.  Both good projects, both very enjoyable.  If I can stop getting injured seemignly every other session I'll be doing a lot better, but for now, things are all right.

2)  Writing.  I submitted Lottery Odds to five different places today, and found another slot to send Salvation off to.  To be brutally honest, it's becoming harder and harder to find places to send my burgeoning urban fantasy epic to, because, as of this writing, I have been turned down by thirty (and when I say thirty, what I mean is FUCKING THIRTY) places in my quest to get it a print home.  There's a lot more ports of call that I can tour with my high-school-reunion romance, but I am beginning to run low on possibly launching pads for Salvation.  More on this anon.

3)  Work.  Meh.  It's the day job.  Less said about it the better.

4)  Music.  I haven't touched my guitar in months, sad to say.  Between roller derby, writing, submitting and day job, not to mention keeping up on being a good husband, something had to give and regrettably that has been music.  I'm hoping to get back to it at some point... I just have absolutely no idea what that point might be.

That's all for the moment.  Good thoughts to you and yours.

Over the course of my writing career, I have reinvented myself a number of times; the trick has been being able to do so without losing the essentiality of what it is that I write about.  You can be in different arenas, but there is a very natural tendency to bend one's voice in order to make what you're writing about fit in the new genre that you are trying out, which is a very difficult trick to master.

When I first started writing seriously in high school, back in 1988 or so, I was influenced by Stephen King, S.E. Hinton and Clive Barker, with a few other authors thrown in for good measure.  My productions reflected these influences, probably too much so for the bounds of good taste.  Sadly, at the time I was doing those stories there was no such thing as a market for young adult horror novels... although a couple years after I first started cutting my combat teeth, R.L. Stine came along with his hugely successful Goosebumps series of novels and proved that perhaps there was a market for these sorts of stories after all.  Not, however, the sort of stuff that I was writing.  Early efforts on my plate such as Evillive and "The Prisoner" were pitch-black gorefests that contained enough of a body count to turn away any possible interest, even if they hadn't been wildly overwritten (and they were; upon further review, "trunk stories" is really a kindness).  Young adult horror novels, I soon discovered, were only commercially viable if they weren't really horrific.

Undaunted, I pushed on.  In college (naturally) I went through a "slice of life" writing period for several serious attempts, or what I like to call "my Richard Linklater period."  Linklater is the writer/director of such independent classics as Before Sunrise, Slacker, SubUrbia and my own personal favorite in his catalog, Dazed & Confused.  A literary agent I wrote to during this time period to possibly rep my dark soap opera Violet World told me that what I was currently writing was "contemporary literary fiction," and although he declined to represent me, he was very decent in his rejection and I walked away from the experience feeling a little better about what I was doing.

Once I was gone from Chico--and the less said about that decidedly dark time in my life, the better--I switched back to horror and banged out Nightfall, then planted the seeds for what would later become the Ring of Fire series.  I dabbled in science-fiction over the years, first with The Xieven Scenario, then more ambitiously (albeit unsuccessfully) with Sacrifice, then finally managed to shepherd a project in that genre to completion with The Phoenix Initiative.

Throughout this entire time, I also left behind me a collection of essays, bad poetry and screenplays, most of which that were not much more than signposts in the darkness (a version of "This Is Where Jesse Is Now").  Some of them were published, either in the pages of Synthesis magazine or in the CSUC Orion; most simply went into storage with a small smile.

The upshot is, throughout the years, I never stopped submitting.

Now, we've got some interesting news.

I'm in the initial phases of negotiating to bring The Phoenix Initiative to a much wider audience than it has previously enjoyed.  E-book, e-book with enhanced content, printed copy... merchandising?  Yeah, we might have some of that as well.

I'll keep you posted on what's to come.  It's been a great ride, and thanks for being here with me.

About a month and a half since I made my last public update.  Yeeeeesh.  Okay, what's been going on since then?

1)  Kneeling Before Zod.  I have been submitting, and submitting, and submitting again.  The two main horses are (of course) Salvation and Lottery Odds, and I have been flogging those two literary equines for everything they are worth.  I'm going to do a bit of a rewrite on my credits section, listing some of the titles of stories I have had published in the past, but other than that it's business as usual on that front.  I don't think it helps a bit that I'm trying to do this in the middle of a giant economic dump and the publishing industry seeing people like Border's go out of business, but it is what it is.  Life is a matter of timing, as I have said a million times, and I can't just sit on my hands because things are a little wonky right now.

2)  Home Improvement.  We have finally finished the bathroom, and goddamn, I love how it looks.  It's like peeing in the middle of a Japanese garden.  We've also gotten our dining room painted and part of the living room done as well, cream walls with deep garnet red accenting.  It looks much better than the white accenting and pale blue walls and ceiling that it was previously, and I have to give much of the credit to Lady Jade for doing such a great job or not only executing, but planning as well.

3)  Operation Healthy.  In recent years, I have... oh, fuck it, there's no polite way to say this so I'm going to just come right out and say it.  I fell off the wagon, health-wise.  I became fat.  I got myself up to a poundage level that I was not okay with, as is explained more in-depth in this audio bit by comedian Louis CK, and decided a couple months ago that I was going to do something about it.  I have been walking like a fiend, getting in rollerskating sessions when I can, and since my wife is going to try out for the Sac City Rollers (our local roller derby squad), the least I could do is support her.  And since that means I'll be going to every match, why not try out to be a much-reviled zebra, the referees that call fouls in the matches?  Yes, I may be a roller derby ref.  I'm going to try, at least, so wish me luck.  And hey, I've lost almost 25 pounds and my wife says my ass looks much better, so go me!

4)  Schedule Bounces.  In the past six weeks, I have had three different regular runs, including a few days on the dreaded extra board at the bus company.  The less said about my recent time on time off adventures, the better.

5)  Writing 101.  Yes, I have been working on new material.  Remember how I said that I had a few projects in mind?  Well, I went with Zero, the second-least-likely candidate of the bunch.  So here's the Progress Bar of Doom, sparkling and new:

6174 / 90000 words. 7% done!

I'll try to be better about updating in the future.

The shot clock has expired on Lottery Odds, so after some Googling, it has been sent out once again.

As you were.

We're watching Black Swan, and I just submitted on Salvation again.  This will be lucky #21.

My will is iron.

Make it 20 rejections for Salvation.

I'm going to the A's vs. Orioles game.  I'll submit again when I get back.

As you were.

Moreso than being a batter in Major League Baseball, writing is a business of astonishing failure before success is found.  Consider the following examples...

Robert M. Pirsig was turned down a mind-numbing 121 times before Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was finally published.  Beatrix Potter was forced to self-publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit before it went on to be a much-beloved children's book, a copy of which sits in my own library.  Frank Herbert's classic Dune, widely regarded as the greatest science fiction novel ever written, struggled for years to find a home.  And Madame L'Engle's classic young adult novel A Wrinkle In Time was shot down 29 times before going on to be read by tens of millions of children.

So what does this mean?  Easy.  I got shot down again, and I'm trying like hell to salve my ego.

I've known dozens of writers over the course of my life, and only a small percentage of them suck in a deep breath and try their hand at the submission process.  I'm not saying this to ding the ones that don't; the fear involved in the concept of dropping something in the mail or hitting SEND on that exploratory e-mail is a daunting type that not many people get the chance to experience for themselves.  It's great fun to create, to slam through a novel for the first time and come out the other end scratched, a little dinged up but alive in a way that few will ever know.  And then when it's time to put your feet on the road and try to get it shared with the world... your hands shake.  The spit in your mouth dries up.  You start thinking about any other thing you can do in order to put this distasteful errand off.

In order to succeed, you have to run the risk of failure.  I have failed with Salvation nineteen times, now.  I submitted again tonight, of course; this will in all likelihood push it up to twenty rejections when it's all said and done.

My will is iron.  I believe in myself.

And nineteen times later, it still hurts to fail.

Rejected again on Salvation.  The next time I send it out will make twenty submissions of this novel.

Twenty.

Fucking.

Submissions.

You cannot break me.  My will is iron.

So a month ago I finally laid Descent to rest, and it felt good.  It felt like it was time for a writing-related vacation, and I have definitely been enjoying my time away from the keyboard.  Now my fingers are starting to twitch again.

The question is easy: what next?  In addition to two novels who could stand to benefit from some inflating (The Final Nine and The Phoenix Initiative), I also have four candidates that have been clamoring for attention, with varying intensities, for some time now.  Since I don't really have anything else to blog about at the moment, here's each of them in turn.

CANDIDATE #1:  Chances Are, modern romance/contemporary fiction.

Where We Stand:  About 30,000 words done.

The Skinny:  I recently came up with a way to expound upon the basic plot of the novel, which means that I'm not stuck with one main character dictating the entire ebb and flow of the book.  Basically, I was able to come up with two subplots and that'll do just fine for completing the book within the 80-100,000 word mark that is asked for by publishers in this genre.  I am looking forward to finally putting this one to rest (I started it back in early 2010), so there is a good chance that if it's not the first one started, it'll be quite soon.  Plus it's the sequel to Lottery Odds, which would enhance the saleability of that title.  The only problem I foresee is some messy re-writing of certain parts that I have already done, mainly trying to get some of the brittle humor quality out of the manuscript and replace it with something that is not quite so cat-on-the-edge.

Likelihood Of Being Next:  Decent.

CANDIDATE #2:  Zero, modern urban fantasy.

Where We Stand:  No words done.  Some basic plotting has been achieved.

The Skinny:  Given the fact that I have been shopping Salvation so tirelessly (it's the number one book in the query hopper at all times), logic dictates that I should have all my ducks in a row should a publisher or agent come a-calling.  Descent is now finished, and that only leaves one title left in the series.  The logic is flawless; what isn't flawless is the path ahead.  It's the last book in the series, so I need to wrap up a lot of loose ends (while still leaving some open for the next generation of books) and it needs to be a white-knuckle ride... something which has not been my specialty in the past.  The prospect of doing 90,000 words in rocket-sled fashion is a daunting one, so I'll probably let this one simmer a little while longer before taking that fabled deep breath and diving in.

Likelihood Of Being Next:  Not so good.  Maybe after I complete another project.

CANDIDATE #3:  Dead of Winter, modern urban fantasy.

Where We Stand:  50,075 words completed.  All scenes have been plotted.

The Skinny:  Um, hello?  Remember me, your 2009 NaNoWriMo effort that you were going so strong on until you flipped your lid?  The reason why I have such exacting statistics and a frame of reference for this book is because as soon as I was past the finish line of 50,000 words, I stopped working on it... completely.  No editing has been done.  The last four scenes are still diagrammed and ready to be written.  The reason why I stopped working on it was simple: it was a dark as hell project (featuring serial murder, demonic possession and grotesque personal injury, among other things), and the brittle frame of mind I was in didn't really allow for me to work on something like that.  I'm in a much better place now, and I'd really like to close the book--so to speak--on Dead of Winter.

Likelihood Of Being Next:  High.  There's only four or five more chapters to be written, and I already know what they need to contain.  Logic might say that I should tackle Zero next, but what remains to be done for Dead of Winter could be blown out in a week.  I should really make this one next if for no other reason than to hang another completed trophy head on my metaphorical wall.

CANDIDATE #4:  Red Shift, science fiction.

Where We Stand:  The first two scenes are diagrammed, and I know what the major and minor plotlines are going to be.  The devil, however, is in the details, and I don't have many of those.  Not too many at all.

The Skinny:  This sequel to 2006's The Phoenix Initiative features the same cast of characters as before, meaning I don't have to come up with new ones beyond four or five noobs.  I have been wanting to do this one for quite a while and over time things have slowly come together... the problem is, much like with Zero, I've set the bar pretty high on this one and I'm a little afraid of fucking it up without more careful planning.  Offsetting this is the coolness of the opening scene, which I have been wanting to write since the moment I thought of it.  I have the feeling that much like id Software's cavalcade of titles such as Doom and Quake, this one will be ready when it's ready, and not before.

Likelihood Of Being Next:  Unfortunately, very low.  This looks more like a 2012 project, truth be told.

So that's where I stand, writing-wise.  Thoughts, catcalls, raspberries?

Lottery Odds was rejected today, so of course it has now been sent back out during he same 24 hour cycle.  A couple years ago, I would not have been able to do this.  2009 (especially the last couple months) was crappy in a lot of ways, but one good thing that came of it was that I was able to get past the mental block I had concerning the submission process.

Please don't misinterpret what I'm about to say as tooting my own horn.  However, I don't know how many writers I have come across who can do barely more than dip a toe in the water when it comes the process of sending out material, much less full-on psychopaths like myself who as soon as the barrel crashes into the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall, grab another one and head for the top of Niagra Falls to do it all over again right away.  My friend Jennifer is consistently amazed by my persistence, but really, it's just something that's teeth-grindingly necessary if I want to achieve this goal.

I will tell one thing, though.  I'm never going to feel bad about any money I someday earn off this endeavor, not after all the kicks in the teeth I have received while charting this course.  Even if someday I get an absurd amount of money for what amounts to little more than busy work, I will look at it as interest paid for the all the years that I didn't make anything off this career choice.

Submissions have been made for both Lottery Odds and Salvation.

That is all.

Okay, it's been some time since I finished off Descent and had a couple celebratory cocktails.  Here's the post-mortem.

From start to finish, the novel took a little over two years to finish.  Le sigh.  That's not so good, but a lot of that bad feeling goes up in smoke when one considers the fact that I lost almost a complete year on writing and writing-related activities due to horrible anxiety and depression that went from about mid-November of 2009 to October of 2010.  I'm not kidding when I say that, either.  As a matter of fact, "Death Tide" was the first thing I was able to shepherd to completion during that time period; I also wrote nine chapters on Chances Are, but that's grist for another time.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel pretty fortunate to have been able to get the novel done at all, so I guess in the end, the glacially long time frame it took is simply par for the course.

Thematically, Descent is a pretty dark book.  Since the Ring of Fire series is a designed six-book arc, I guess this novel was my own version of The Empire Strikes Back.  From the outset, I wanted the heels to carry the day in this book, and they certainly did.  I wanted it to be a moral-heavy story with a lot of opportunities to step back and forth across that terminator between light and darkness, and that's exactly what happened.  I won't be surprised a bit if people come away from this novel with a bad taste in their mouth concerning Kyle Lynch and the state of his soul, and it's a very delicate line to walk.

What I'm worried about is the novel will come off a little too cold for people to grasp onto.  The problem with making things dark is that it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for tenderness and such; Descent features no sex scene, although it is alluded to a couple times.  Not that I have any desire to write supernatural pornography, but this might be something that has to be added on draft two.  In this book sex actually takes on a darker tone, something more of a result of pure need rather than a desire to reconnect with one's beloved.

At the bottom of things, it has to be quite simply stated that there's a lot of ugliness in Descent.  My hope is that somebody who has followed along through the first four novels will find their way through the minefield of this one... and see the story for what it is.

Necessary.