Out of pocket

I’ll be skipping my regularly scheduled blog post today because I’m attending a wastewater convention in Hot Springs .

While taking a break at lunch I figured out a much better 25 word pitch for Symbiosis and I can’t wait for my turn to roll around again.

While on that same break I had a great business idea. I’ll roll it around a while to figure out the best way to implement it. Then we’ll see whether or not it was really any good. If it works it’ll allow me to actually make a living doing these things I love to do so much (writing, blogging, social networking).

The main goal for this week once my daily schedule returns to normal is to get back to waking up/going to sleep early, and edit 5 pages per day in Symbiosis.

Sunday Musings

I had things planned to talk about today, but I didn’t write them down. Of course they’re forgotten now. If I intend to remember anything at all I have to write it down. Even if I never look at the note, if I wrote it, I’ll remember it. My memory is strange that way.

So I guess I’ll just share pics from my road trip today, a pleasant chore I’m doing for the day job. I had to come to Hot Springs, Arkansas for a wastewater convention tomorrow.

The drive here was nice, but I don’t use a gps so it got a little irritating when the old-style directions I printed off the Google maps routed me to turn at a no left turn intersection. Which is something I’ve noticed that gps’s seem to want to do to me all the time, so not a lot of difference there.

However, I bet a gps would have let me know that ‘Hot Springs Village’ is not the same place as ‘Hot Springs’. I spent a good bit of time driving around somewhere that was not where I intended to be. But I was early, so no big loss. The scenery was pretty anyway.

Then the hotel (I was fairly convinced was the right hotel) said that I didn’t have a reservation. I felt a little bit of despair creeping in on that note. I called the list of hotels it could have been and none of them had me, and none of them had openings. All were booked because of this convention. Apparently wastewater is a big deal and a lot of people come to this event.

Finally went back inside to the original hotel and asked the clerk to check again. Sure enough. I’m there. Finally settled that issue and then went downtown to look for coffee and take a few pictures. I waited to late to find coffee though and now I have a headache that one cup didn’t remedy.

Here are a few snapshots taken with my phone. The better pics are on my camera but the software to manipulate them is on my home computer, so these will have to do for now.

I have my laptop, my hard drive with all the files on it, and I should be able to get some quality editing time in tonight. Tomorrow I will try to be interested in the other wastewater stuff, but for the rest of today I’m free to do whatever I feel like doing.

Here's one of the bath houses across the street from the coffee shop. There were several of them. It was so hot outside today I can't imagine spending time in a steamy bath, though.

A church with interesting architecture.

The view from my room on the 14th floor of the Austin Hotel. I like that I can see my car in the parking garage.

And for supper I had to go out to find something to eat. The hotel restaurant was closed and all I saw in town open were bar/grills and I really didn’t want to go alone to a bar. Eventually I found a latino (Equadorian) restaurant named Rolando’s. They served the best taquito’s I’ve ever eaten. The salsa was also delicious. Serving sizes were giant. Definitely recommend you go there if you find yourself in Hot Springs. And when Rob comes home on break, I think we’ll head back out there just so he can try it too.

100-words Flash Friday, Whoo-hooo! Go Fictioneers!

My 100 words appear to have very little to do with the prompt, but there’s an indirect relationship (even if evident only to me). The barbed wire reminded me bulls, which reminded me of some of the back-story of the main character in Symbiosis, Ki. In this scene she realizes that the man questioning her knows her very long history. For this snippet  to have the greatest meaning when you read it, it’ll help if you brush up a little on a sort of ritual from the ancient  Minoan culture .

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Here’s how it works: My story is here (if the word ‘here’ and ‘comment’ isn’t highlighted or underlined in your browser to let you know… those words are links. Click either one to get to the story page, which is where all the action is taking place.)  When you comment, post a link to yours. Then comment and add your link to the other Fictioneer’s stories.

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We have more members than ever before, so it is taking longer than Friday evening to get through them all. Sometimes it is taking me days! I start with the first commenters first and move down the list as quickly as I can. If the day job is hectic, it’ll take me longer.

And we’re off to write, link and read stories!

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Tweet your link and add the #FridayFictioneers hashtag so we can easily find you and if you @madison_woods in your tweet, I’ll RT.

I’m always open to constructive criticism if you see mistakes or ways to improve upon what I’ve done. This is a learning exercise for me. However, not everyone feels that way, so if you don’t see an invitation to critique on their post, don’t do it. A lot of people just want and need encouragement!

We gather every Friday here to post a very short story. It’s a great way to showcase your voice, but to do it in 100 word is almost an extreme challenge. It forces you to choose strong verbs and concise phrases.

Hop on board and post one of yours or visit ours, or do both.

Vote for it: Would You Buy it?

Welcome to my blog’s sacrificial altar Thursday feature where we ruthlessly slaughter share and vote on our 25 word blurbs – those words that we hope will prompt the editor or agent to ask for a partial.

Care to take a stab?

So this is how it works. Read the pitch/blurb below and then vote as to whether you’d buy the book if those 25 words were all you had to go on. In reality, as a reader, you’d look at the cover art and browse through the pages before deciding, but for the purpose of this exercise, the decision (or non-decision) has to be based on these 25 words.

If you have constructive crit to offer, do so in the comment section.

A caveat.

Don’t vote ‘No’ because you don’t read or want to read the genre. If the genre is a negative bias for you, please refrain from voting unless you are able to be objective about the quality of the blurb.

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Vote for it:

Title: Jack Be Nimble Author: Dee Lanna

Genre: Urban Fantasy

A supernatural cleaner finds one big mess when the cops and the mob battle over one lone wolf. Who’s actually dirty? That’s anyone’s bet.

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What about you?

If you want to put your 25 words to the test, email me your pitch/blurb (25 words or less) at the addy over there on my right hand side-bar.

Be forewarned. 25 word summaries are difficult! I struggled with mine for days. Okay. I’ll be honest. I’ve struggled with mine for a while now…months, even. But I think I finally have one that’ll work and when there’s a lull in the pitches I’ll throw mine out there to be slaughtered, too.  Did that. It was shameful. But I learned a lot and I’m going to try it again after every one has had time to forget how awful the first one was. If you’ve made changes to yours, you’re welcome to run yours through again too.

You’ll be welcome to run yours again later when everyone in queue is done, and you’ll especially want to do this if you’ve made changes. Plus, as the campaign runs for while, word will spread and we’ll get more views and votes.

At the end of the week I’ll email you with the results.

The poll will stay active indefinitely, so if you want to direct people to your link to cast their votes, you’re free to do so.

If you need some ideas on how to distill your large blurb down to 25 words, here’s a great link from David B. Coe (fantasy author published by Tor): http://www.magicalwords.net/david-b-coe/on-writing-and-publishing-refining-your-elevator-pitch/ He took pitches one day and gave feedback to a bunch of us.

Conlangers Join Friday Fictioneers!

My name is Danny Bowman, and I usually live over at glossarch.wordpress.com but Madison’s having me write a post on her site describing an experiment we’re doing with Friday Fictioneers.   Yesterday I realized I knew a group of people who would probably enjoy it a lot-the members of the CONLANG (Constructed Languages) mailing group.

What is a constructed language, you ask? It is simply a language consciously designed by individual people as opposed to evolving naturally. Some well known examples include Tolkien’s languages, Klingon, and more recently, Na’vi and Dothraki. Other examples include Esperanto, Lojban, and Interlingua.

However, there are thousands of lesser known constructed languages. Some are built to test philosophical principles, some are developed as facilitators of world communication, some explore alternate histories, and many are simply meant as a work of art. My own constructed language, Angosey, falls under this last category.

I emailed Madison yesterday and asked if she’d be up for having me post a link to Friday Fictioneers on the CONLANG mailing list as a translation challenge for the members. The idea would be for them to compose a short story in their language(s) and post it on Madison’s site (with an English translation, of course!). Madison agreed that it would be an interesting experiment, and it will be neat to see if some of them end up posting.

So if you see anyone posting under titles with the tagline of CL or CONLANG, you’ll know who they are and what they’re up to!

Photo Prompt for 100-word Flash #FridayFictioneers

A couple of announcements this week. First, those of you who follow me on Facebook might begin to notice a trend…I’m going to start posting the photos there on Tuesday night if I have it picked out already by then. Sometimes that doesn’t happen until Wednesday morning.

Second, one of the new Fictioneers  wants to invite another type of writers to join us on Fridays. They create languages and I don’t know much about this but he will get a guest post up here in a little while (it’s scheduled for 0700) to tell us about it.

If any of them decide to post links in our stream they’ll tag it with “CL” at the end of their post title, so we’ll know it’s not our usual flash. Personally, I’m curious and can’t wait to see what it is they do. So watch this space for another post at 0700.

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Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Put your best efforts on display for 100 words (more or less) and hop on board so we can all see what you’ve written this Friday (come back to my blog and follow the links).

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For those of you who want to pre-load your posts, here’s the link to where my story will be: http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/flash-fiction/barbed-wire-and-bulls/. The page is there, the picture is there, the link is live. But there’s no story yet. I’ll add that Friday morning as usual. But this will allow those of you who have to be out of town, or for whatever reason want to get started early, to link to it so we can all find you more easily.

Why only 100 Words

100-words isn’t a *rule* and some of us write more than that. My goal is to have The Friday Fictioneers use 100-word stories as an exercise in choosing concise phrases and strong verbs. It’s an excellent way to show your stuff to the world without exposing too much. It’s okay if you use more words, but if it’s much more let us know in the comments so we’ll know how to allocate our time if we’re trying to read all the posts.

Put your best efforts on display for 100 words (more or less) and hop on board Friday with links back to your blog so we can all see what you’ve written. If you don’t have a blog of your own you are welcome to post your 100 words in the (Friday) story page. Go to the side-bar calendar and click on the current week’s Friday date. Then follow the link from there to the story page.

If you accidentally post your link here on this page today, you’ll miss out on a lot of the blog hopping because the action will be stemming from links on the story page.

How to become a Fictioneer

1. Write a 100-word story (more or less, and it’s okay if you didn’t use this picture for inspiration)
2. Post your story to your blog on Friday (or just link to it tomorrow if you wrote earlier)
3. If you’re a WordPress user, include “Friday Fictioneers” as one of your tags so you’ll show up on the tag search. 
4. Comment on my story Friday and post a link to your story.
5. Tweet your link and include the tag #FridayFictioneers if you’re on Twitter.
6. Visit and comment on all the other stories that link to my story. If the comment forms allow, leave your link on all your comments, so others can find you and us later on.
7. Check back often because participants post throughout the day.
8. Get psyched up to do this again next week

Keep in mind that sometimes I can’t read or comment until late in the day and throughout the weekend because of the day job on Friday.

You can click the “Flash Fiction” tab at the top to read a little more about Friday Fictioneers.

I hope to see your creativity shining tomorrow!

Tuesday and a secret

So I’ll take this unexpected blogging schedule break to tell you a secret.

This week’s photo prompt is going to be difficult for some of you. It’s difficult for me, too. If you panic when you see it, take a deep breath and look at other things in the picture – if the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to a story for you, consider the mood, the time of day, the feelings and just write from there. The story doesn’t have to be about the things you *see* with your eyes when you look at it. But that’s not the secret.

There’s a sneak preview to it on my FB page. That’s the secret. When I have the photo picked out early, from now on, I’ll use it for the header photo on my regular account and my page. If you have a FB account, you can find my link in the side-bar on this blog. I believe you can see the profile even if you don’t do the FB thing.

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No guest for today. I’ll have to do some more digging around the internet for future invitees, but I have the next few weeks lined up. If you know someone with an interesting story to tell or has a writerly, readerly business to promote, feel free to suggest a candidate.

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I’ve been editing and researching some details in Symbiosis this morning about the island of Thera. It disappeared in a volcanic explosion about 3500 years ago and quite possibly is the origin of the Atlantis theories. It’s also the first safe haven Ki knew after she was rescued from the destruction Neti wrought on the temple where she was born. Seems that destruction followed her wherever she went from there…so it’s probably a good thing she doesn’t stay in one place too long anymore. There’s only one place safe for her to go and only one person who knows she needs to be there. Now if he could just convince her to agree…

Writerly Goal Check

Not much on the goal list for this week. I’m still editing Symbiosis, have a new prologue in place and have gotten good feedback that it is indeed the direction I needed to go.

The main thing I want to pay attention to this week is sleep. I have not been getting to bed early enough to keep my goal of getting up early a manageable thing. I do okay all week but on the weekends I sleep in (if you consider 0700 to be sleeping in) and then on Monday I snooze through my wake-up goal.

Weekly Goals

• Go to bed by 2130
• Wake up at 0430
• edit at least 2 pages per day on Symbiosis

Annual Goals

• Finish polishing Symbiosis so I can send it on it’s way to the next phase of life
• Begin readings at a public venue for our local Friday Fictioneers
• learn to convert to ebook format
• Compile all the flash I’ve written so far into a collection for Kindle

Sunday Musings – Sneak peek at new Symbiosis prologue

Prologues

Some people love them, others hate ‘em. Personally, I like them when they’re well done and serve a purpose. So I decided that’s what my story needed and I used the photo prompt from Wednesday to get it started. It seems many of the Fictioneers were motivated to more than one story with that photo!

Part of this post was released yesterday accidentally while I was still getting the chapters cleaned up. Sorry if you tried to visit and couldn’t. Even more sorry if you did visit during the interim before I realized what I had done – those words were pretty raw and I didn’t intend to make it live until today after I’d done more work on them.

For the curious, about five and a half pages (the prologue and part of Chapter 1) are posted here.

You’ll need the password to enter. Email me at password@ancientearthwisdom.com to get the password. It’s the same as the others were, if you remember those, but the email is set up on auto-responder so you won’t have to wait on me to answer. It’ll just fire it right back at you within a few seconds.

No poll this time. It is whatever genre it is and I’m done with that struggle, but if you would leave comments on that page with your opinions (about genre or suggestions for trouble spots) I’d welcome them. My first-pass critical reader eyes belong to my fiance’. He’s probably not going to be able to mark this up for a while, but in the meantime I’m going to sneak it past him and let you have a look anyway …

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Since I ran my own pitch Thursday I have come away with tremendous respect for those of you who have already done that. Whew – that was intense! I learned so much and appreciate all of your comments. I’ve put myself back on the calendar to run a revised one through. If you’ve already gone and want to go again, let me know. (Yes, I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, but my God it was eye-opening and important to hear what you had to say.)

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Not much else going on. I managed to get some tomatoes and bell peppers planted in my garden and the hollyhocks will bloom this year.

Anything new with you?

100-words Flash Friday, Whoo-hooo! Go Fictioneers!

Here’s my 100 words. It’s a different 100 words than the ones I used to rewrite the opening of my wip, so that makes twice that I’ve been able to use this particular prompt.

Now it’s time to post your 100 words!
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Here’s how it works: My story is here (if the word ‘here’ and ‘comment’ isn’t highlighted or underlined in your browser to let you know… those words are links. Click either one to get to the story page, which is where all the action is taking place.)  When you comment, post a link to yours. Then comment and add your link to the other Fictioneer’s stories.

***

We have more members than ever before, so it is taking longer than Friday evening to get through them all. Sometimes it is taking me days! I start with the first commenters first and move down the list as quickly as I can. If the day job is hectic, it’ll take me longer.

And we’re off to write, link and read stories!

Tweet your link, too, and add the #FridayFictioneers hashtag so we can easily find you and if you @madison_woods in your tweet, I’ll RT.

I’m always open to constructive criticism if you see mistakes or ways to improve upon what I’ve done. This is a learning exercise for me. However, not everyone feels that way, so if you don’t see an invitation to critique on their post, don’t do it. A lot of people just want and need encouragement!

We gather every Friday here to post a very short story. It’s a great way to showcase your voice, but to do it in 100 word is almost an extreme challenge. It forces you to choose strong verbs and concise phrases.

Hop on board and post one of yours or visit ours, or do both.