Blah blah fabulous new shoes blah

Just so you know where the title comes from... this is one of my daughter's favorite books. And one of our favorite books to read to her.

There's a bunch of suggestions as to what the child is grumpy about... did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? Did you stub your toe?

And our favorite; did you have to go over to some adults' house where everything was weird and fragile and you couldn't touch anything and the adults all sat around talking about BORING stuff?

In the background picture, you see a bunch of adult torsos and legs (for some reason, kids in stories never seem to look UP) and conversation bubbles which say things like "blah blah furnace filter blah" "blah kidney stones blah blah" "blah blah fabulous new shoes BLAH."

My husband and I have used that phrase "blah blah fabulous new shoes BLAH!" for several years now, usually meaning "we talked about something that was dull" to describe parties, office problems, neighbor problems... For example: "Well, the UBC had a meeting to discuss the CAR and the ISP issue, blah blah fabulous new shoes blah." (No, as a note, I don't understand any of that, either. Something I think the husband doesn't actually understand any of it either, and neither does anyone else, they're just all involved in a massive game of blind man's bluff.)

Which is basically my long-winded way of saying there's not really a theme to today's entry, I'm just babbling. Blah blah furnace filter blah!

I finally got paid for Golden Moment. I know, I know, it's terrible gauche to talk about money, but still... getting a check for the work. BIG DEAL! That's a thing off my list. I am now officially a paid writer. (I've had a few other things published in small literary magazines that I was "paid" in contributor's copies... some of which I never actually GOT, mind you...) So that was exciting. Now, admittedly, selling short stories is the writer's equivalent of working an internship. You're not really getting paid. Not really.

Given the amount of work I put into Golden Moment; probably 8-10 hours of actually writing, an hour or so reading edits and crits, another 3 hours making those changes... I'm making ish about minimum wage. Which wouldn't be terrible if I was doing 10-12 hours a WEEK, but those hours were spread out over a few months. Not to mention the several months of stalking my inbox, but technically speaking, that was my off-time.

Which is not a bad thing, mind. I'm just saying, no one is going to get rich writing short stories unless they are incredibly prolific and in high demand.

What publishing shorts is for is getting your name out there. Getting experience writing in your chosen genre. Hopefully getting some fans. Making sure the publishers know that you've done your time in the trenches. And that someone else has taken a risk on your work, so maybe they can, too.

Like I said, I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this year. And I'm trying to decide what I want to work on. Right now, the two samples I posted (here and here) are the two things screaming loudest in my head to work on. Wormwood Trade a little louder than Blood Sight. I have almost a full head-worked outline for Wormwood Trade (if I can figure out how to show you my notes, I will, because some of it is pretty interesting from a technical perspective, but I don't have a scanner anymore, so... ) altho my characters are still a little hesitant to develop. I have characters for Blood Sight and a couple of key scenes that I want to hit, but no actual story-map.

Yes, I actually make story maps. I think that Hollywood does these too, where they sort of sketch up stick figures and write little dialogue bits next to them, or descriptions, and they move through the story LONG before the script is finalized, the parts are cast, or any of the special effects are developed. I thought it was a good idea, and I do the same thing. Altho I frequently write my scenes on post-it notes and move them around on the "map" as I work through the idea.

Which is to say right now Wormwood trade looks like this: girl and boy follow these GPS turn by turn instructions, which lead them from Point A to Point G and they go to B C D E and F in between. I just have no real idea who Girl and Boy are, as people. They may very well not go anywhere I want them to.

And Blood Sight looks more like this: Marcus and Rachel start here... somewhere they end up in Bad Guy's dungeon... and they have a friend, Raphael, who is an angel. There's a conspiracy and I think the head warlock is leading it? ...and I have no idea where they're going? Do we know where the fuck the hotel is? Why can't we get back on the interstate from Witchduck Road? We don't know where we're gooooooing... (this bad road trip memory brought to you by SciCon '92, VaBeach.)

I was also debating a bit, and writing a bit, about the werewolf urban supernatural romance (which would sequel Blood Sight) and while I did some research today about eliminating heat signatures and sniper rifles (I wonder if I'm on the FBI watch list yet...) I just couldn't seem to get the story flowing, thus you are not seeing it here...

So... my choices right now are:

Blood Sight: An urban supernatural romance. A very old vampire, Marcus, and a woman with the Sight, Rachel. There's a conspiracy to murder her because her abilities. She's not even aware of the extent of Power the Sight grants her. Not only does she get glimpses of the future, but she is also immune to most warlock and vampire abilities; since she Sees things As They Are, she's not vulnerable to the glamour that vampires and some other creatures use to hide themselves from mortals, beguile them, or otherwise harm them. Rachel has a twin brother, Noah, who's a warlock and may or may NOT be involved in the conspiracy to murder his own sister. (Don't ask me, I don't know!)

Or

Wormwood Trade: Steampunk time-travel romance: The Wormwood Trade is a pirate operation; using forbidden technology they travel between parallel universes, each one similar to, but not exactly like, their own. They can move items and people from one dimension to another. For a price. When a noble loses his only child to war, he pays the exorbitant costs to have an almost mirror image of her taken from a universe where she did NOT die... but when the mirror is discovered by her fiancee, who knows she died six years ago, what will happen? Is she an acceptable substitute, or have the years they've been apart (for him) changed him too much? Can she love the man he is now, or will she continue to pine for the man he was before suffering so much grief and loss?

Any opinions?