Well, it's here. Awards season is upon us, or at least nominations season for the upcoming awards season.
As always, publishing as Jennifer R. Donohue. I am also now eligible for the John W. Campbell award.
My short stories:
"A Thing With Feathers" was published in Mythic Delirium
"Surveillance Fatigue" was published in Escape Pod
"Bread and Milk" was published in Under the Full Moon's Light
"The Glint of Light on Broken Glass" is in Truancy 5
My novella "Run With the Hunted" is available in paperback and on many digital platforms.
Showing posts with label mythic delirium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythic delirium. Show all posts
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
What happened in February?
Happy March! We got about a foot of snow to welcome the month with! Wouldn't it be nice if that didn't happen? I got a snow day, anyway.
My story "A Thing With Feathers" that I talked about in my January post is now live on the Mythic Delirium website!
ALSO! A.C. Wise reviewed "A Thing With Feathers" in her "Words for Thought" column posted by Apex Magazine , and I think wrote some very good and thoughtful things on the piece. I appreciate both her review and the understanding of my story that she possesses!
In other fiction news, the acceptance that I mentioned is my story "Surveillance Fatigue", which is currently scheduled to go live at Escape Pod on April 12! It will be available there in both text and audio, so if listening to stories isn't your jam, you can still take it in.
I wrote one short story in February, tried furiously to finish it for the Sword & Sonnet deadline so I could sub a second story, and then realized, first, that it was 1500 words too long and there wasn't any way I was going to cut it down in time and second, it kind of didn't fit the theme anymore anyway? So I only subbed one story to that anthology, which was rejected, but sent on to the next market! So we march on ever hopeful, etc.
Fireside Magazine is opening for submissions in April, from April 23-April 27 (and with a limit of 4k words!), and I know what I'm going to send them.
Interestingly, "too long" is not a story problem I tend to have. Many (most?) of my shorts are between 1500 and 3k words, with some reaching upwards of that, at 5k, and a couple of random novellas. It does make submissions interesting, though, if your story is too long for one venue and too short for another one. Submission guidelines are an important thing to pay attention to, friends!
My story "A Thing With Feathers" that I talked about in my January post is now live on the Mythic Delirium website!
ALSO! A.C. Wise reviewed "A Thing With Feathers" in her "Words for Thought" column posted by Apex Magazine , and I think wrote some very good and thoughtful things on the piece. I appreciate both her review and the understanding of my story that she possesses!
In other fiction news, the acceptance that I mentioned is my story "Surveillance Fatigue", which is currently scheduled to go live at Escape Pod on April 12! It will be available there in both text and audio, so if listening to stories isn't your jam, you can still take it in.
I wrote one short story in February, tried furiously to finish it for the Sword & Sonnet deadline so I could sub a second story, and then realized, first, that it was 1500 words too long and there wasn't any way I was going to cut it down in time and second, it kind of didn't fit the theme anymore anyway? So I only subbed one story to that anthology, which was rejected, but sent on to the next market! So we march on ever hopeful, etc.
Fireside Magazine is opening for submissions in April, from April 23-April 27 (and with a limit of 4k words!), and I know what I'm going to send them.
Interestingly, "too long" is not a story problem I tend to have. Many (most?) of my shorts are between 1500 and 3k words, with some reaching upwards of that, at 5k, and a couple of random novellas. It does make submissions interesting, though, if your story is too long for one venue and too short for another one. Submission guidelines are an important thing to pay attention to, friends!
Monday, February 5, 2018
Writing in January (lots of deadlines!)
It's February already (or finally, depending on how your January went!)
My short story "A Thing With Feathers" is live on Mythic Delirium's website! You can also get the entire issue on Amazon or Weightless Books if that's more your style (no physical magazine, alas).
I finished three stories in January. One of them was something I'd started last year and messed around with a lot, trying to figure out point of view (first? close third? omniscient?) and tense (past? present?) and finally I was able to bring it home. The other two I wrote for submission calls, and have already been rejected for those anthologies. On one hand, that's a letdown. On the other hand, I really like it when responses are prompt. It means I'm not waiting for months. It means I can send another story. Or write another story, depending on how specific what they want is (Sword & Sonnet is pretty specific).
I also got an acceptance in January! They'd held the story for awhile, and also kindly let me send an updated version of it (of course I figured out a better way to end it after submission) and I'm very excited to announce this one when I'm able! I think projected publication date is April, so stay tuned, space cowboys.
Some recommended listening when you read "A Thing With Feathers" (I wrote the story before I ever heard this song or heard of Meg Myers, but it's a good fit!)
My short story "A Thing With Feathers" is live on Mythic Delirium's website! You can also get the entire issue on Amazon or Weightless Books if that's more your style (no physical magazine, alas).
I finished three stories in January. One of them was something I'd started last year and messed around with a lot, trying to figure out point of view (first? close third? omniscient?) and tense (past? present?) and finally I was able to bring it home. The other two I wrote for submission calls, and have already been rejected for those anthologies. On one hand, that's a letdown. On the other hand, I really like it when responses are prompt. It means I'm not waiting for months. It means I can send another story. Or write another story, depending on how specific what they want is (Sword & Sonnet is pretty specific).
I also got an acceptance in January! They'd held the story for awhile, and also kindly let me send an updated version of it (of course I figured out a better way to end it after submission) and I'm very excited to announce this one when I'm able! I think projected publication date is April, so stay tuned, space cowboys.
Some recommended listening when you read "A Thing With Feathers" (I wrote the story before I ever heard this song or heard of Meg Myers, but it's a good fit!)
Sunday, December 31, 2017
The (Writing) year in Review
It's New Year's Eve, I should probably do this right?
I once again met, and exceeded, my goal of completing a piece of writing each month, which makes me think maybe I should add to my writing resolutions in some way. Maybe go for two? (and give myself a pass on that in NaNoWriMo months?)
I completed 22 things this year. Two of them were book two and three in the trilogy that Learn to Howl begins, so now I just need to go through Learn to Howl (at least) once more with feeling™, and then make it publication ready. I've made a significant change in the setting, from Somewhere in North Carolina to, instead, Somewhere in the Pine Barrens. Story wise, it still fits/works/makes sense, and from an author standpoint it makes sense because, y'know, I'm from New Jersey. I'm not from the Pine Barrens, but *spoilers* there's only so long the characters stay there. So I'm looking forward to that.
Some of the stories I've counted as completed this year are pretty comprehensive rewrites of stories I wrote prior to this year, and it's given them good new life, so I've got high hopes for their submissions success in the coming days.
Some people on Twitter are talking about like, their total wordcounts and stuff, but I don't typically worry about that unless it comes to submissions (whether a story is too short or too long) or novels (where there is a generally accepted length for a genre). So I'm not going to go open all 22 of those files and tally it up because, well, I don't want to. It's a lot. It's at least 150k because of three months of NaNoWriMo, and then the other additional stories.
Which brings us to my submissions (and rejections) and publications!
I had three stories accepted this year. First was Daddy's Girl in Syntax & Salt, which is also on the Nebula Reading List (the actual Nebula Ballot will be released I'm not sure when, and the actual voting is from March 1-March 30). The second story was "Aground, Upon the Sand", also in Syntax & Salt, winning their Fall Flash Fiction contest!
And hey you should go read Syntax & Salt, who in the coming years have a plan to do things like improve the rates they pay their authors, have an editor dedicated to making sure their authors stories are nominated for awards, that kind of awesome thing.
My third story acceptance is "A Thing With Feathers", coming out literally tomorrow (January 1!) in issue 4.3 of Mythic Delirium. The whole issue is available for Kindle here for $2.99, but if you don't want to do that, my particular story will be on their website in February.
In total, I submitted 173 pieces in 2017. Of those, there are still 19 submissions I'm still waiting on (even though 1 of them will probably not reply, if other writers' experiences are anything to go on). I received 106 form rejections and 53 personal rejections, which is almost three times the amount of personals I've received in prior years.
So next year, I hope to get more acceptances, publish my werewolf trilogy, and write at least as much as I did this year! I might also get that Patreon started (though I guess with the recent Patreon drama I'm glad I held off on that a bit?) If you'd be interested in being one of my patrons and maybe have any kind of specific "gee I'd really love it if Jen did X and I'd totally pay a dollar or whatever a month for it" let me know!
I once again met, and exceeded, my goal of completing a piece of writing each month, which makes me think maybe I should add to my writing resolutions in some way. Maybe go for two? (and give myself a pass on that in NaNoWriMo months?)
I completed 22 things this year. Two of them were book two and three in the trilogy that Learn to Howl begins, so now I just need to go through Learn to Howl (at least) once more with feeling™, and then make it publication ready. I've made a significant change in the setting, from Somewhere in North Carolina to, instead, Somewhere in the Pine Barrens. Story wise, it still fits/works/makes sense, and from an author standpoint it makes sense because, y'know, I'm from New Jersey. I'm not from the Pine Barrens, but *spoilers* there's only so long the characters stay there. So I'm looking forward to that.
Some of the stories I've counted as completed this year are pretty comprehensive rewrites of stories I wrote prior to this year, and it's given them good new life, so I've got high hopes for their submissions success in the coming days.
Some people on Twitter are talking about like, their total wordcounts and stuff, but I don't typically worry about that unless it comes to submissions (whether a story is too short or too long) or novels (where there is a generally accepted length for a genre). So I'm not going to go open all 22 of those files and tally it up because, well, I don't want to. It's a lot. It's at least 150k because of three months of NaNoWriMo, and then the other additional stories.
Which brings us to my submissions (and rejections) and publications!
I had three stories accepted this year. First was Daddy's Girl in Syntax & Salt, which is also on the Nebula Reading List (the actual Nebula Ballot will be released I'm not sure when, and the actual voting is from March 1-March 30). The second story was "Aground, Upon the Sand", also in Syntax & Salt, winning their Fall Flash Fiction contest!
And hey you should go read Syntax & Salt, who in the coming years have a plan to do things like improve the rates they pay their authors, have an editor dedicated to making sure their authors stories are nominated for awards, that kind of awesome thing.
My third story acceptance is "A Thing With Feathers", coming out literally tomorrow (January 1!) in issue 4.3 of Mythic Delirium. The whole issue is available for Kindle here for $2.99, but if you don't want to do that, my particular story will be on their website in February.
In total, I submitted 173 pieces in 2017. Of those, there are still 19 submissions I'm still waiting on (even though 1 of them will probably not reply, if other writers' experiences are anything to go on). I received 106 form rejections and 53 personal rejections, which is almost three times the amount of personals I've received in prior years.
So next year, I hope to get more acceptances, publish my werewolf trilogy, and write at least as much as I did this year! I might also get that Patreon started (though I guess with the recent Patreon drama I'm glad I held off on that a bit?) If you'd be interested in being one of my patrons and maybe have any kind of specific "gee I'd really love it if Jen did X and I'd totally pay a dollar or whatever a month for it" let me know!
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
July 2017 goals roundup and Another Story Acceptance!
First thing's first: I got another story acceptance! My short story "A Thing With Feathers" will be published in Mythic Delirum. I don't know when/what issue yet, so I'll keep you posted, but (obviously) I am super excited about this. A lot of amazing writers have been in their pages, including their most recent issue, which features JANE YOLEN, Mari Ness, Sandra Odell, Jennifer Crow (and many more).
I still have 14 other stories on submission (Well, 13, one is simultaneously submitted) and getting an acceptance has of course given me renewed hopes for those. Though I've said this before on Twitter (and maybe here too, I can't remember), I have to assume each time I send a story out that the answer will be yes. Otherwise, I would get far too discouraged and not send any out at all. So that's 14 potential "yeses" (well 13, as flattering as it would be to have two markets fight over one of my stories I think it would be very bad form on my part). I don't even know what I'd do if everything came back 'yes'. Fly apart with joy, I guess? With how many submissions I've sent out this year, and how I've been perpetually submitting in such volume, I probably won't separately do a month of "submit a story every day" in October as I have for the past couple of years. Part of the goal of that was to consistently be getting my stories into slush piles, and especially this year, I haven't slacked off on that.
But July, July was an interesting writing month. I rewrote not one but two short stories in July. And yes, I did in fact finish editing down The Last Song, fulfilling my CampNaNoWriMo goal. Now I need to write it back up again! And THEN I can query with it anew.
I still have 14 other stories on submission (Well, 13, one is simultaneously submitted) and getting an acceptance has of course given me renewed hopes for those. Though I've said this before on Twitter (and maybe here too, I can't remember), I have to assume each time I send a story out that the answer will be yes. Otherwise, I would get far too discouraged and not send any out at all. So that's 14 potential "yeses" (well 13, as flattering as it would be to have two markets fight over one of my stories I think it would be very bad form on my part). I don't even know what I'd do if everything came back 'yes'. Fly apart with joy, I guess? With how many submissions I've sent out this year, and how I've been perpetually submitting in such volume, I probably won't separately do a month of "submit a story every day" in October as I have for the past couple of years. Part of the goal of that was to consistently be getting my stories into slush piles, and especially this year, I haven't slacked off on that.
But July, July was an interesting writing month. I rewrote not one but two short stories in July. And yes, I did in fact finish editing down The Last Song, fulfilling my CampNaNoWriMo goal. Now I need to write it back up again! And THEN I can query with it anew.
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