The WAL

So for my first post in a week, I’m not going to write about the disappointing election result or the pathetic voter turnout or the or anything political at all.  I’m still contemplating, though I’ll happily discuss anything political if anyone wants to drop me a line.  And if I owe you a message, I’m going to plead life and not having been connected much in the last week.  It’s on the way.

No, this post is another dreaded writing update for today is a special occasion!  I received my first rejection letter today, though letter stretches the point a bit.  Heard back from the editor of “The World Is Dead”, the anthology I submitted my first ever zombie story to at the end of August.  I’m honestly not that surprised by the rejection (never expect to get published) because while I do think it’s a good story (I wrote it after all), I don’t know that it’s really horrific enough for a horror anthology.  My first readers really enjoyed it, but one of them made the observation that it was kind of twilight-zoney, sort of.  A definite compliment, but it means I should look for somewhere else to send it, and I will.

Still two stories waiting for responses with two waiting on market research and two more waiting for commentary from first readers.  A couple of anthology deadlines coming up, too.  As for the novel, well, I have managed some progress there.

Yes, I’ve exceeded the 50k goal and with 8 and a bit scenes left to write, I’m tracking at 59-60k.  The Halloween goal doesn’t look as realistic as it once did, but I’m okay with that.  After Heroes Inc is done, I’m going to take a break on the novels for a bit.  Yes, I know I’ve said that I intend to do some heavy editing on one of them before Christmas, but I’ve got twenty-ish stories that have at least a first draft complete (plus one in progress and four more plotted) and I want to get more of those into the wild.  I am working on plotting a new fantasy novel - I think I mentioned that a while back - but the story already feels too big to be contained in one book.  Might have the word trilogy associated with it and that scares me a little.  It’s tough enough to hold a narrative across a short 60k novel.  Across three books?  Serious continuity policing will be involved.