Writing

So I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in the NYCMid­night Flash Fic­tion Con­test, and I’ve just received the judges’ feed­back on my first piece, “The Overnight Shift”.

What the judges liked about your story

Excep­tion­al­ly clever blend of mod­ern urban ele­ments with fan­ta­sy. Robert is such a lik­able char­ac­ter that by the end I don’t even mind his decep­tive treach­ery. The twist is fun­ny, unex­pect­ed, and thor­ough­ly enjoyable.…

Humor­ous dia­logue, espe­cial­ly with the demon and the human. The imagery of the cof­fee was vis­cer­al and imaginative.…

I liked how you incor­po­rat­ed dia­logue in your sto­ry. Your char­ac­ters’ per­son­al­i­ties shone through with the dialogue.…

What the judges feel needs work

The cen­tau­r’s speech is some­what out of place. He seems like a bit of an arche­type, more archa­ic than the oth­er crea­tures, espe­cial­ly against the rest of the fan­ta­sy races who seem well-inte­grat­ed. His use of “art thou” is an exam­ple of when his speech seems par­tic­u­lar­ly out of place. If this char­ac­ter is meant to be dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers in terms of his inte­gra­tion, the read­er may need more cues to read him this way.…

There’s a lot of intro­duc­tion of char­ac­ters that don’t feel like they are nec­es­sary to the sto­ry. Also because of the anachro­nis­tic ele­ments (men­tion­ing Wikipedia and Poke­mon Go), I’m hav­ing trou­ble get­ting a sense of place and how rules work in this fan­ta­sy world. Also…why are they let­ting faun chil­dren play in a garbage dump? If that’s okay, why are there 3 of them on duty? If you’re going to have relaxed work­ers, you must have a con­trast­ing mil­i­tant one, so we under­stand the rules. Also, more show­ing, less telling. We should see the rain­bow, not hear about it.…

Make sure that each inter­ac­tion between your char­ac­ters is mean­ing­ful. With short sto­ries, every word counts. Each scene has to con­nect to each oth­er some­how, or at least move the sto­ry forward.…

I’m glad they enjoyed it. I’ll cer­tain­ly take their cri­tiques into con­sid­er­a­tion as I pol­ish it up for submission…

The Sun­burst Awards short­list has been announced. My sto­ry “Per­son to Per­son” did­n’t make the cut.

I’m dis­ap­point­ed, of course, but I can’t say I’m sur­prised. I was up against some very good writers.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the nom­i­nees, and good luck!

Here is a list of men’s names that appar­ent­ly “need sav­ing from extinc­tion”. Have at it!

Toron­to author Angela Mis­ri came to town on the TD Book Tour. She writes Sher­lock Holmes pas­tich­es, star­ring young detec­tive Por­tia Adams.

I was invit­ed by fel­low Bran­don author Craig Rus­sell to a meet ‘n’ greet with Angela, and so, with about ten oth­er local authors and artists, I heard about grow­ing up a writer in a fam­i­ly that expect­ed you to become a doc­tor or an engi­neer. (“Here is the plan. You will become a doc­tor, and you will write med­ical textbooks.”)

Some of the wis­dom I picked up:

• For every rejec­tion let­ter, send out two new queries. Turn a neg­a­tive into a positive.
• Get an agent.
• Do your research.
• Bet­ter still, have oth­er peo­ple do your research.

She has a very good tech­nique for get­ting peo­ple to help with her research: If a fan informs her that she’s let an error slip through (e.g., “Por­tia would­n’t wear trousers in the 1930s”), she’ll send that fan advance copies of the next nov­el, and ask that they tell her where she may have gone wrong. As she says, these peo­ple are the ones you want to keep happy.

Also, I now have a signed first edi­tion of Jew­el of the Thames, first of the Por­tia Adams mysteries.

Here in Cana­da, the Por­tia Adams nov­els are mar­ket­ed as Young Adult fic­tion, but in the USA they are appar­ent­ly on the grown-up shelves. I found this to be an echo of advice I received years ago from anoth­er Man­i­to­ba author/editor, Ani­ta Daher: “Write your sto­ry. Let the mar­ket­ing peo­ple wor­ry about where to shelve it.”

I just sent back the con­tract, “signed” elec­tron­i­cal­ly, so I guess I can say this now:

Six of my very short sto­ries (ones writ­ten ini­tial­ly on the now-defunct Ficlets.com) are going to be pub­lished in the inau­gur­al issue of Word-o-Mat. They’ll be print­ed on pages small enough to fit in a cig­a­rette box, and sold from a repur­posed vend­ing machine in Malmö, Swe­den. (Also you’ll be able to buy copies online.)

The sto­ries they’ll be pub­lish­ing are:

1. The Wait
2. Eat­ing Every­thing There Ever Was
3. The Inver­sion
4. The Trick
5. Danc­ing
6. The End of All Things

Check them out. They’re a fledg­ling mar­ket with an intrigu­ing gimmick.

Update: My copy of Vol­ume 1 has arrived.