Paid by the Weird

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Antimatter Press, long deadline

Local Magic

This is your opportunity to add a little magic to the past. Tell me the tale of a real place, in a real time, but with a fantastical science element.

The story must feature a real geographic feature, a building, a street. It doesn’t have to exist now, but it has to have really existed. A lake? A saloon? An alley?

Stories we will be including in this anthology should include:

1 part Magic

Your choice of wizards, artifacts, monsters or the like.

1 part Science

The magic component above is fueled by Science!

1 part Local History

Set your story in a real place that you know well. The location is not just window dressing. The location should be integral to your story. Culture and geography and real world history have conspired to create events that could have occurred no where else.

Email submissions to: antimatter.subs@gmail.com

Subject ATTN: LOCAL MAGIC

Word count: short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words, novelettes of 7,500-10,000 words.

Pay: 2c/word or a percentage of net sales.

Your story should arrive in Microsoft Word and be formatted in the industry standard (or come so close that no one will notice: i.e. Times New Roman or Courier, double-spaced).

Deadline is January 15, 2014.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Lumen, novel blitz

Blurb:

Estranged from the rest of the world are people who possess great power, and it was through the Luminaries that their ability to manipulate and manifest energy exists.

Daniel is going through his final transition and with that, comes greater power. Although not everything runs so smoothly, and after a near-death experience, Daniel is admitted into the island's only private school, a privilege he is not allowed to forget. While trying to fit in he opens mysteries and troubles beyond the life he came from, and they threaten everything and everyone he once believed in.

It’s evolve or die.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13219801-lumen

http://www.amazon.com/Lumen-ebook

And don't forget to head over to the event on Facebook for the book release!
Link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1374352692785255/

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Wednesday Writer Calls, More Sips

Torquere Sips Line

NOVEMBER - THANKFUL SIPS

We should all stop and be thankful for something. Whether it's the big things -- like love and family -- or the little things -- like flavored lube -- or simply the HOT things, we want to know! For our Thankful sips, we're looking for fully realized, romantic LGBT stories about love during Thanksgiving holidays. Make us laugh or cry, surprise us and make us glow with happy endings! Length is 3000-8000 words.

Please send your submissions to submissions@torquerepress.com with Thankful in the subject field. Please see our general submissions guidelines for formatting etc. Deadline for submission is September 1, 2013.

DECEMBER - ALL I WANT SIPS

All I want for Christmas (or Hanukah or Yule) is you. Or you and you… Who doesn’t want to be with someone they love for the holidays? For our All I Want sips, we’re looking for fully realized, romantic LGBT stories about love at the holidays. Make us laugh or cry, surprise us and make us glow with happy endings! Length is 3000-8000 words.

Please send your submissions to submissions@torquerepress.com with All I Want in the subject field. Please see our general submissions guidelines for formatting etc. Deadline for submission is September 15, 2013.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Guest Post, Cindy J. Smith

Let's say hi to Cindy, my first poet...

What are your greatest challenges in your writing career?

My biggest challenge is actually sharing my poems. It is something I never thought I would do. They are all a part of me and I find it hard to believe anyone is interested in reading them.

When did you find out that you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you to put pen to paper?

I have written verse as far back as I can remember. I loved adding to the silly songs my sister's taught me, and songs are just poems put to music.
Anyone who learned to read with "Dick and Jane" books can understand the freedom I found in writing in rhyme like Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose!

I wrote what I thought about everything. It was my way of dealing with things. I was strictly raised: 1) The real Golden Rule is a law!, 2) If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, and 3) Thinking is as big a sin as doing. Because of these rules, I kept all my writing hidden, sisters are great blackmailers!

How much of your life and the people you know end up in your work?

Just about every poem I have written is based on my life in some way. I have either felt, done or observed it all.

Tell us about a real person who has had a lot of input to your work, someone who inspired you or encouraged you, or even discouraged you and you have to prove them wrong.

My daughter, Jasmine. She loved my poetry and was constantly trying to get me to share it with everyone. She loved to challenge me by suggesting topics. I also enjoyed trying to write poems so she could see the world as I saw it. After she passed, I decided to publish to fulfill her dream of seeing my work in print.

What projects are you currently working on? Are you willing to share a small excerpt from a work in progress?

I will be releasing a second book of poems, They Won't Shut Up on July 13. It is being published by CH&BB and I am so excited! This is one of the poems in the collection:

RED TAILLIGHTS

As yelled arrows
Go find their marks
Love deep and strong
Seeps from our hearts

Sit on the porch
You pack the car
Wonder just how
We got this far

We tried so hard
To no avail
At "Love Always"
We have both failed

Saw it coming
I must admit
But, still believed
We would not quit

Clouds and my eyes
Mingle silent tears
Recall lost joy
Of these past years

It's for the best
We do agree
Vows once given
Not meant to be

Final goodbye
You turn and leave
I'm left alone
To think and grieve

Now all that's left
Of love so bright
Is fading gleam
Of red taillights

Is there a character or story that's stuck in your head and won't leave, from either your work or someone else's?

I have never been able to get Rime of the Ancient Mariner out of my head. That poem does something to me!

What writers or novels do you consider “must reads”?

Before I became acquainted with Indie authors, I would have answered this question Anne Rice and Stephen King. Now, I find that I am enthralled by all the different styles of writing I have been exposed to recently.

Talk to us about your domestic life; a favorite recipe, craft, your pets, children, house, or favorite set of socks.

Domestic life does not really exist for me at this time, I am rarely home. However my favorite recipe is City Chicken, it is a meal my mom used to make all the time and actually contains no chicken at all..

City Chicken

Roast Beef or Round Steak (I use round steak)
Roast Pork or pork tenderloin (I use tenderloin)
4 cubes of beef and chicken boullion
8 cups water (enough to cover meat, can use stock instead of boulion and water)
Bread crumbs
Eggs
Milk
butter
mushrooms (optional)

6 inch bamboo skewers

Cube beef and pork into 1 inch chunks. Alternate the chunks on the skewers to get tree of each on a skewer.

Whisk eggs and some milk to make a dip and dip the skewered meat coating fully.

Roll skewers in bread crumbs.

In frying pan, melt butter. Brown the breaded meat skewers.

When all is nicely browned, cover with water and add the boullion (or cover with combined beef and chicken stock).

Add sliced mushrooms.

Bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes.

You can thicken the gravy when it is done if you wish.

Serve over rice or noodles.

So, thanks to Cindy for being here today... I don't know about you, but that recipe sounds great! I will have to try it. It's really been great having a poet here. I work a lot with storytellers and the sorts of things that apply to them - character names, grammar issues, etc, don't really work too well for poets. I've never really attempted poetry, so this was fascinating. I hope you enjoyed having Cindy here with us today, and check out her work!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Submission for Male/Male

Call for Submissions

Take This Man

Editor: Neil Plakcy
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: December 1, 2013Payment: $60.00 per story, payable on publication, plus 1 copy of the book

The editor of Active Duty, Beach Bums and other anthologies seeks romantic erotica focused on male couples in committed relationships.

Many erotic stories focus on the thrill of first contact—but Take This Man will be different, looking at how much sexier an encounter can be when the two men involved have been together for long enough to make a commitment to each other. Formalized or not, the fact remains that when you know what turns your partner on, and vice versa, your encounters can be even hotter, especially when you factor in the emotional component.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Here, There, and Everywhere

Busy writer is busy!

But here's a round up of some of the guest blog spots I've done... I've got another one coming up on Friday, so really, I should start thinking about a topic, I know.

By the way, if you want to see what I'm up to Right Now, you can always follow me on Facebook... I post there fairly regularly.

In case you've missed them, however, let me give you sum-up of the guest posts I've been doing.

First, at the Smokin' Hot Fireman blog, I did an article about my grandfather, who was a volunteer EMT and my experiences seeing a house fire right up close.

He [my grandfather] had his definite ideas about things; everyone should know how to swim, how to drive a boat, a tractor, and a stick-shift. You should know how to perform CPR, change a flat tire, and be able to cook a meal, clean up, and how to build a fire. You should stand up straight, read often, and be able to tell a potato plant from a weed. You should be able to sew on a button and how to drive a nail. You should always read the instructions. You should know how to bait your own hook, catch fish, and clean them. And it didn’t matter to him if you were a boy or a girl.

The grand-kids, and there were a gaggle of us, half girls, half boys, called him Poppy.

When he wasn’t farming or swimming, fishing or reading novels, he was a volunteer EMT. Halfway down the stairs, there was a two-way scanner. Middle of the day or middle of dinner or middle of the night, the scanner would make a warbling alert tones and the dispatcher would come on. “Local Peru, local Peru, we have a building fire at…” and Poppy would be out the door, hat in hand. His car—a very normal-looking car in all other ways—had a magnetic fire bubble he would slap onto the roof, plug into the cigarette lighter, and whoop away down the road.

(The grand-kids all loved to fuss about who got to reset the scanner after a call—since if you didn’t remember to press the button, we wouldn’t hear the next call. And woe betide the kid who punched the reset button before the dispatcher was finished with her information. Why yes, yes I did do that, once. Once.)

I stopped by Victoria Blisse's blog a few weeks back, talking about the first time I ever saw a naked man. All things considered, my weird obsession with music might come from this particular event, as well.

Young African-American men would come to wash their cars, listen to their street-music, drink beer out of squat mikey bottles, and socialize with their friends. There was a wide chain-link fence around the wash, and then a very steep hill into my backyard, but this didn’t keep out the noise, the empty bottles, or the young men who needed to take a piss.

As a twelve-year-old girl who honestly hated both types of music available from our local radio station (you had your country AND your western!) I was enthralled. They played motown. And reggae. And rap. And R&B. Music I’d never heard before. No Tiffany or New Kids on the Block, or Duran Duran for them! There was one guy – I never knew his name, but I always knew his car, a 1977 El Camino, dark blue with a light blue stripe – and he played Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.

I would lay on the picnic table in our back yard, hands laced behind my head, staring up at the spangled patterns of sunlight through the pink and white petals of the crab apple tree, and just listen.

One hot summer day, I’m out there, a bottle of lemonade that my mom had left in the freezer for me gently melting, pooling condensation against my stomach, when someone crashed through the bushes of the embankment.

And then later, I told the second story at Sarah Jayne Carr's blog. Because you know, if there was a first time for seeing a naked man, the second time could only get more interesting...

So, once a year, I'd spend several weeks at rehearsals, making costumes, learning stage makeup and generally hanging out with other theater geeks. (The rest of the year I hung out with the band geeks, about half of whom were the same people.) One evening, we're hanging out in costumes getting ready to do production photos and a dress-rehearsal. The "professional" photographer is late, so we're all in the green room (which wasn't actually green) or spilled out into the hallway, bullshitting and carefully drinking Dr. Pepper through a straw so we don't mess up our lipstick.

Have you ever stuck a straw in a can of Dr. Pepper? It does not want to be there - the straw, I mean - and will keep sliding upward out of your can. If you're not paying attention, the straw will pop completely out of the can and splatter droplets of soda everywhere.

We're theater geeks. And high school students. And if there's ever been a more concentrated group of dirty minded individuals... wait, scratch that. I've been part of more dirty minded groups...

But we are making bad jokes and generally being obscene....

Finally, yesterday I had a guest slot on Elizabeth A. Lance's blog talking about this, that, and the other. She's a lot of fun to work with and kept asking more and more questions and for more and more information, which was lots of fun to do a really interactive interview. Also, I love all the little cute pictures she picked to represent my interests and quirky habits.

Do you play games? If so what kind? If not, why the heck not?

Would you like my geek resume? I play Star Wars; The Old Republic as my current MMO, but have also played Warcraft, Everquest, City of Villains, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Rifts, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Asheron's Call, Guild Wars...

I also play paper and dice RPGs; including Shadowrun, 7th Sea, AD&D, Vampire, Heroes Unlimited, GURPS, Serenity RPG, various d20 games.

I used to play Collectible Card Games until I came to the realization that my friends were all terrible losers and worse winners and I wasn't having fun, but I do like things like Cards Against Humanity and Fluxx. I'm also a mean cribbage player.

(I also might possibly have a really bad Candy Crush Saga problem)

So, that's what I've been up to. I've also gotten two (2) short stories out and available; Synchronous Rotations from Torquere, and my story, Big Trucks, is out in Smokin' Hot Firemen. As always, my complete library of publications and buy links is here (because I am uber-lazy and I don't want to look all those links up. Again.)

In the meanwhile, I've written most of a New Adult, m/m novel, started a short story, finished WRITING (but not selecting or editing) the short-story collection I'm putting together with my best friend and fellow author Elizabeth L. Brooks, talked to one of my new favorite authors, V.L. Locey about writing the forward for that collection (tentatively titled Promptly Hot.), let some deadlines for short stories pass me by, talked with a company about my urban supernatural romance novel published, and freaked out about various home-disasters (annoying backed up sink is annoying) and national media events, spent some time with good friends, and generally went about pretending that I have a life that isn't entirely conducted inside my head.

Also, apparently I have just a few contributor copies laying around...

And I thought I might give some of them away.

Comment here, or post to my facebook wall between now and July 30th with which book(s) you want: available are Ladies of Steampunk magazine, vol 1, 2 copies of Steamlust, 1 copy of Coming Together: Hungry for Love, 1 copy of Smokin' Hot Firemen (I know there are two copies in the picture, but I mixed the books up before I took the picture and put 2 copies of Duty & Desire on my brag-shelf. This has since been fixed.), 2 copies of Duty & Desire (see above notation), one copy of Lustfully Ever After, and one copy of Cupid's Chokehold.

I'll draw three winners on July 31st and let those winners know on this blog, via email, and on Facebook.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Guest Writer Elodie Parks

Hi Lynn, Thank you for inviting me to the blog.

What are your greatest challenges in your writing career?

Finding time to write, and unfortunately that’s getting worse. Marketing takes up so much time now that I find it depressing.

When did you find out that you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you to put pen to paper?

I started writing when I was seventeen. I never did anything like submitting to publishers etc. until I was about twenty-five and then queried to no avail. My books had “too much sex in them” (smiles), which I found weird as a rejection reason, because I was reading Christine Feehan at the time and well…….. she has some gorgeous, paranormal sizzlers out there. I started writing again seriously a couple of years ago because I had so many stories in my head.

I write romance, contemporary, and erotic with a twist of mystery, suspense, or the paranormal, now and then. I like to make the story unusual in some way, by a quirk in the tale.

People and emotions inspire me to write. The complexity of life spurs me to write. I see emotions in people around me all the time, and often they remain unspoken. I think we don’t share ourselves enough, and are encouraged to hide our true selves. People and their situations inspire me. Meeting people and watching them battle with the love or lack of it in their lives.

Lots of my characters have some foundation from real people who have passed through my life. They are composites of those glimpses of people and my imagination.

I find the world harsh. There’s not enough love in it. Lots of people never find love. I write contemporary love stories with happy endings to spread a little lightness around. I always have graphic love scenes in the close to real life stories, because I like to show the reader how the characters feel about each other deep down. The way they make love always shows their hopes and feelings.

I hope that my books do give the reader a lift and a sense of love.

Of your published works, do you have a favorite? Why?

I guess right now it has to be The Winter Girl. I really enjoyed writing it. The characters became so real to me and the twist in the story is such fun, along with the love scenes. Yes, I’m in love with Starr Forrester.

How do you decide on character names?

Names are weird for me. The characters names have to be right, and then they become real and start appearing. It’s a mix of them telling me and me picking.

What projects are you currently working on? Are you willing to share a small excerpt from a work in progress?

I’m editing my next book for Hot Ink Press. It’s contracted but I like to do a super clean edit. Titled The Old Star, it’s a slightly darker erotic romance than The Winter Girl.

Here’s an excerpt.

Cathy shook her head clearing her thoughts. She felt sure she’d seen paper at these windows when she was standing in the back garden looking up.

Suddenly she realized someone was there at the far end. It was a man in jeans and a T-shirt and he was painting the window frame. Cathy froze. She wasn’t supposed to come up here, but surely she ought to be informed if anyone was in the building. When she moved in, her client information would need the strictest privacy and security.

The man turned around and Cathy’s heart flipped. He was quite simply the most attractive man she had ever seen. He walked halfway down the room and stopped.

“Who are you?” His voice was low, husky, and as attractive as he was.

Cathy’s mouth was dry from fear and her instant reaction to this man.

“I’ve just rented the place. I’m sorry I know this floor is off limits, but the front door was open and I thought…” She improvised what was a lie in reality.

The man approached her and her words trailed away as she took in the sight of him.

He was tall and muscular. His T-shirt wasn’t tight but showed his body to be hard, and Cathy had the most astonishing urge to go to him, and run her hands up underneath it to feel his skin. His hair was dark and untidy in a way that was endearing to her. His eyes were a shade of dark blue she hadn’t seen before. He couldn’t be called handsome because that just wouldn’t do him justice. He was strikingly attractive. The shape of his face, jaw, nose, all added up to make a sight Cathy registered as dreamy. He was a hunk, gorgeous, sexy, and desirable.

He stood at arm’s length with the paintbrush in his hand. Cathy gazed at him and he smiled. It was a lovely smile and disarmed Cathy even further. She began to back away. The man shook his head.

“It’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m surprised to see you, but this is good. I didn’t know the place had been rented out.” His eyes held a curious expression. Cathy instinctively knew something about what he said wasn’t quite true, but he wasn’t angry, and he smiled again.

Cathy smiled back.

“Cathy Faraday and you are?” ‘He’s probably some tradesman the owner has employed and neglected to tell Alfred about.’

“Owen Sheringham.” He gave her a look that said this was all he was telling her. The look had authority, and Cathy suddenly thought he could be the owner of the building.

She nodded and backed away a little. Glancing behind her, she gestured to the door she had entered and noticed that there were three doors. They were at intervals in the same wall and Cathy stared at them.

Owen followed her gaze and waited.

Cathy became aware of his waiting. It was tangible. She gestured again at the door she felt sure she had entered by because it was at the end of the room near the big back windows.

“I’ll get going and let you go back to work. I only dropped by, and need to go back to my office.” She heard her voice waver, and it was all she could do to keep herself from turning and running. She reached the door and yanked it open, not realizing it had closed behind her.

Owen called out. “Come and see me tomorrow?”

Cathy only glimpsed his face as she fled through the door. He looked vulnerable and sad.

She let go of the carved bone handle and saw that she had closed the door. For two minutes she stood there shaking, and searching the wall for any evidence of the doors that were on the other side of it. The landing wasn’t long enough to have the three doors lead out to it. ‘Perhaps they’re decoration.’

Cathy shook herself and quietly went down the stairs. Apart from finding Owen Sheringham devastatingly attractive, to the point where she felt sadness that he wasn’t hers, there was something spooky about what had just happened.

What's your writing routine?

I don’t have one. I just run at one of my laptops when I have time to write and write, sometimes all night….

Is there a character or story that's stuck in your head and won't leave, from either your work or someone else's?

From my own work, the whole lot are (laughs) and the ones I am currently writing.

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