Welcome to 2020!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a safe and happy holiday, and that you have a good and prosperous year ahead of you!

2019 was a pretty darn good publishing year for me. I tweeted about it, but I'm happy to recount here!

I submitted stories 162 times and received 11 acceptances! 11!!!

109 of my rejections were forms, 39 were personals, and I still have 18 stories pending.

I had 4 original short stories printed: "For Whatever We Lose", "The Pearls That Were His Eyes", "Fundamentals of Search and Rescue", and "One Hundred Years".

In addition, 2019 was certainly the Year of the Reprint!

"Sugar and Spice" and "Daddy's Girl" were both reprinted in audio format. "The Wave", from my Patreon, was reprinted in actual print.

I wrote 4 short stories, and started far more (at least a few of which are pushing the boundary of what 'short story' means and are edging more into novella and novelette territory, which is great, because there are so many places to send those pieces [Narrator: there are not.]) I wrote 1 novella, Run With the Hunted 2: Ctrl Alt Delete. I wrote 1 novel, which I will be querying, after people read it, I polish it, more people read it, and I polish it more.  Oh and after I write a query letter and a synopsis.

I feel like when I was querying The Last Song, far fewer agents wanted a synopsis up front. I don't know if this is because many agents are using Querymanager now, or if in general it's just a better strategy for them. and I knew I'd have to write a synopsis, I just didn't think it'd be immediately.

October report and NaNoWriMo doubts

All right, so October didn't really go as planned.

I mean, it kind of did. I sent out 21 submissions, 2 of which were queries for The Last Song. That's good progress, right? I've gotten 12 rejections back already, many of which came in the last week or so. 2 were personal, 10 were form.

But. In the middle of October, my organs staged a revolt (I am now acutely aware of where my kidneys are) and I'm still getting back on the horse from that. I haven't been reading anything, just watching stuff on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Other than yesterday's workshop, I haven't written a damn thing three weeks. So. It would seem NaNoWriMo isn't going to happen for me this year. Which is okay. I think I'm still pretty numbed from being sick and wanting to sleep all the time (okay, I still kind of want to sleep all the time).

My life isn't creatively bereft, anyway. We've got a lot of gaming going on still (I only missed a couple sessions of our assorted Pathfinder games through my sickness), including a new Shadowrun story in which I'm playing a decker (though not the same decker depicted in this post). It's probably the party role I've enjoyed best, though I did really like my brief stint as the Face (which is the person who arranges jobs and payments, does the risky purchasing, liasons with contacts, etc.)

oh, the synopsis

I'm working on my synopsis for The Last Song, and I stumbled upon this lovely picture. It's beautiful and says everything I need it to. The trick is making people forget this is how things end (provided they know/recognize the myth to begin with). At least one of my readers was, in fact, "fooled" 'til the last line.