Those Wheels Keep on Turning

Today I received a confirmation email for my story submission with "that anthology" I've mentioned on these here blog spots and it was very exciting to see my name in the list of "contributing authors". Squeal! I now have a confirmed date so I feel like I can share some firm details with you; the anthology is published by Sirens Call Publications, and is entitled "Twisted Realities: Of Myth and Monstrosity", with a release date of May 26th for both eBook and paperback versions. Double squeal!

I still can't quite believe I'm going to be published - in a paying medium no less - but I'm keen to work on that success and look for the "next thing". I've never been a believer in sitting on laurels; if nothing else the same view gets a bit dull after a while. To that end I've been playing with short story ideas, which has in turn slowed down novel writing. But it's turning out to be a good thing. Why? Because I'm seeing faults with my novel that I would never have seen without working on this short story for Sirens Call. Their editor was super and gave really helpful feedback in the copy-edits. If I'm honest I think I learnt more from those few pages of notes than I've learnt from writing 100,000 words of the novel. As a result I bought myself a proper moleskin notebook and have recorded tonnes of improvements I can make. Rather than depress me, I'm finding it's energising me to keep going - the results are going to be worth it.

So the plan at the moment is; keep on trucking with the novel - I believe I've got a cool story there and the characters won't leave me alone now so I don't have a choice. While doing that I'm going to aim to have another short story finished in the next two months and submit it to paying magazines/e-zines. It's amazing how many are out there if you look around enough - and they don't all pay in badger breath! Some give you actual money! The latest I've found is Lightspeed Magazine, who have open submissions for short fiction, at 5 cents a word - so I may work on something for them, assuming my ideas are in the right genre. I'm also planning on rejigging these blog pages - I feel that there's too much going on and it needs to reflect, well, me a bit more. No date on that but it will happen. You have been warned...

In other news, I've just finished yet another genius eBook of writing advice from the swearing, ranting, and inebriated Chuck Wendig. I will be reviewing it here in due course but have to say it was rather good, and fired off a few of my synapses to keep me on this crazy writer path I find myself on. I also watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (ugh... don't expect a review. It was bad enough having to watch it once without having to think about it in detail), and the first series of Game of Thrones. Which I will be reviewing. Because it was stupendous. So much so I'm going to end this post with a picture of Karl Drogo. Because I can never get enough Karl Drogo.

Peace out.

If I had to marry a barbarian, this is one I wouldn't mind so much.