Arrant Nonsense

is live! My story, "Showing Faeries for Fun and Profit," is in there.

Go! Buy! Read!

Dudes, look at that cover!

Yeah. Have some Cowboy!Sleeping Beauty.

I fired again, more steady this time, and a splash of crimson exploded from his chest. The fire guttered out, and he slumped in his saddle, his lips moving. I couldn't quite hear what he said, but he fell to the ground in a boneless heap, and his compadres left on the run. Jock tail-wagged back to me, well-pleased with his day's work.

I jumped out of my saddle and trotted over to the rustler. Bright blood stained his lips, and his expression was unbelieving. "You..." he rasped. He was dying. Can't say I was either surprised or upset.

"Told you. We don't take kindly to rustlers in these parts."

"Sleep...forever. And may all your dreams...be terrifying." He exhaled one last time, and I thought something insubstantial and shrieking rose from his body and flew away.

"Well, what the hell," I muttered.

"Sam! Sam!" A tiny winged form hovered in front of my nose. Daneen. "We have to get you home. Right now!"

"Why? What's the matter?"

"That was a death curse! You must get home before the sun goes down. I might be able to--" She stopped and gulped. "But not out here. I'm a house fairy--my powers outdoors are weak."

"A death...what?" Events were catching up with me, and the shakes suddenly gripped me like an ague. The rustler had shot fire at me with his bare hands. Daneen was one thing; I was used to her. This was quite different.

The good news is that it's entirely possible that my Writing Buddy gave me something to hang my hat on last night. The bad news is that I'm not sure I can do the idea justice. I guess we'll see. I cracked a thousand words on it yesterday.

And, with abject apologies to John Denver:

Rejections...in my email...make me eat worms
Rejections...in my inbox...make me sigh
Rejections...almost always...look so ugly
Rejections...almost always...make me cry.

I know, I know. Cry moar, grow a thicker skin, yadda yadda. Is okay. Really. I flipped it to a (new) place that pays more. We shall see.

Two-day turnaround, not bad. I've flipped it already, so go, me? Also, they said they were looking forward to more subs from me, so that's something.

Have a couple more icons (ETA: NOT related to the rejection. Oh dear, I hope that wasn't misconstrued):



I've been thinking about subbing the "urge to bitchslap" one for my Schlock icon, but I hate to lose the Schlock icon and the keywords would make it so every post I've put the Schlock icon on would revert to my default. I could go to a Plus Account to get more icons, but ads are ugly and I don't want to inflict them on others who don't use the same shiny Adblock I do in Firefox. And I'm too cheap to buy a Paid Account. And I've always said "No ads, ever, here," but...extra icons! They're shiny!

Woe.

However, in other news, I thought of a couple more things to stick in the not!kkbb/im novelthing, a couple of nice character moments for not!Harry, and I'm on page 94/161 of the current editing pass, so...win?

I just got an email from Joni Labaqui at Writers of the Future.

The Faerie Show Fic has garnered yet another Honorable Mention. Keep in mind that this is the story I subbed because my record-keeping apparently went out the window, so it was subbed twice in a row. And received an Honorable Mention then too.

At least their judging is consistent? And this makes six. I'm not sure I should actually count this one, because two for the same story is... yeah.

And there's a friend of mine on one of the Honorable Mentions list. I...should touch bases with him. I wonder what I did with his card. Also, it seems to me that I should know one of the guys on the Finalist list, but I can't put a face to the name. Maybe I've just seen the name on the WotF blog before.

And now I guess I'm free to sub it elsewhere. *eyes list* Already have something at the next two places on it, but the third one is open...

Guess I should, you know, format it properly first.

Wait, no. NO GUESSING.

A personal note from KD Wentworth on my Writers of the Future entry from the fourth quarter saying "Clever and well-written" is a good thing. Yes. Yes, it is.

Just because this is something like my seventh Honorable Mention is nothing to get depressed about. There's something to be said for being a bridesmaid all the time (never the Maid of Honor, no, and certainly never the bride). It means I don't suck. It means there's something there.

Yes. This is a good thing, and I will embrace it. *nods firmly*

Now, I guess I can either go back to the Anvil of BadWrong (and keep traumatizing myself), or start back on something that I might be able to actually sell somewhere down the road...

That today was September 30.

And thus the deadline for this quarter's Writers of the Future.

For which I hadn't prepared anything because I'm still waiting to hear back from that one market for the not!Iron Man story, and I wanted to send WotF that because it's one of three on the list that actually pays any-damn-thing for something that length.

Understand that my local post office closes at 6:30. This gave me an hour and a half to print something out that looked halfway decent and get it there.

Which I managed to do. I handwrote the return addresses on the envelopes while it was printing, because it was quicker and also saved me a buttload of aggravation, the way my printer acts with labels.

So. The Faerie Show Fic is off to Writers of the Future. Wish me luck...

I just printed out the Faerie Show Fic, my cover letter, and the labels for the envelopes. I'm going to ship it off to F&SF.

All the printing went off without a hitch.

This makes me vaguely suspicious.

It's probably just that the Printing Elves know that I'm going to have to dig money for postage out of my Change Elephant. Maybe they figure that this is enough humiliation for me.

And thus I bring you...

PICSPAM.

First, we went to the Layton Marsh Preserve, where we saw...eh, not much, actually. A Bullock's Oriole when we first went in, and then it was pretty high and dry, bird-wise. Or anything-wise. Saw some eggs that had hatched, one of which was pretty big. We surmised that it belonged to a Great Blue Heron.

Then we attempted to wander down to the Farmington Wetlands place, but couldn't find it. They're doing construction in the area, and so it's all messed up. However, we found a little pond thingy next to a landfill that looked promising, so we got out and walked around it.

We saw pelicans, avocets, a cormorant, turkey vultures, a great blue heron, barn swallows, seagulls, mallards, geese, and a garter snake. The avocets appeared to be nesting, and one of them got kind of agitated as we went by, flapping its wings and trying to draw us away. That was neat; we've only seen avocets being avocets before, not engaging in actual behavior. I'm still unsure as to whether it was being "I'm big and threatening" or "My wing's broke--chase me!"

The cormorant was weird too. He was hanging out with the pelicans. He'd go underwater (presumably to fish), and then pop up among the pelicans. The pelicans were all "That's a funny-looking kid," which, if you've seen their kids? Is pretty comical.

( Fourteen under the cut... )

In other news, I'm going to call the Faerie Show Fic done and start shipping it around. Yayness.

Faerie Show Fic, Mark III, has begun. I've swapped it into first person. And discovered something interesting along the way.

My protagonist shows faeries. This is her life, her hobby, what she enjoys doing most of all in the world.

And therefore, a lot of the stuff that she tells us about the Faerie Show Scene is in present tense. Because this is ongoing stuff. This is "how we do things."

And I'm hoping it doesn't look like random tense swaps in the middle of the story. Susan Conant does this to good effect (her protagonist, Holly Winter, shows dogs in much the same way Emily shows faeries), but I'm not sure I can get away with it.

I guess I'll put it away, go to bed, and look at it again in the morning. However, as it sits right now? I like it better in first person. It's tighter, somehow, and more personal. This is always a good thing.

into some semblance of what passes for "obedience" around here.

And now I have to decide if I want to swap the whole thing into first person.

*headdesks*

I'm a glutton for punishment, aren't I?

In other news, I just visited my local zoo's reciprocity list, and discovered that it now sucks like a Hoover. Instead of a nice alphabetical list you can consult at a glance, it's got a map of the US, and you have to click on each individual state to get to the zoos in that state...and there's still no linkage to those zoos.

You know, instead of making a TOY like that, they should have just gone through the list and given us links. Do the people who design these things ever actually use them? I'm sure someone had a blast coding the page, but it's not exactly user-friendly and it's now a pain in the ass.

ARGH.

ETA: I shot off an email to them about this. Because, really.