News and Updates

If you haven't heard by now, Miss Snark is retiring from blogging. It seriously sucks, but I don't blame her. She's done a lot of work - battling ignorance and evil wherever she found it - but it has got to be a drain on her. I can't imagine putting up with the tons of emails, the occasional snerty commenter, the weight of thousands of wannabe writers looking at you for advice. Whatever she does in the future, I hope she excels. (I'm sure she will. Whoever she is, she's one sharp gal.)

On another front, BookEnds is doing their Query Critique. Very helpful stuff from these extremely bright gals. (I'd link directly to the posts, but they don't seem to have them all in one place. Just scroll down, and you'll find them.)

Jennie Crusie over at Argh Ink has an excellent post on How to Start a Writing Group. Her suggestions for critique questions, though, would also be helpful during the editing process. Questions we should all be asking ourselves about our writing. And her suggested questions for synopsis critique are very helpful for anyone laboring over writing their own synopsis.

Oh, and we have a new member in the Novel Race - Home Thoughts Weekly. Welcome to the race.

Now for the update portion:

I got some words out on AWJ. While it doesn't sound like a big deal, I haven't written any new words on it since the middle of April. I can't believe I was a toad for almost a month. I should be horse-whipped (with a real horse).

I got back to querying this week. I sent out five queries to respectable agents, and within 24 hours, got back one rejection. We'll see if I ever hear back from the other four - since they were all equeries and I'm collecting a large number of what we call 'non-responders'. Strangely, the agent who rejected me within 24 hours was a member of that group when I queried him for Spectacle. Dare I hope that his taking a moment to respond this time means Caldera sparked him a wee bit more than Spectacle? Be still my heart.

I sent two short stories out in submission this past week. Haudego went to Abyss & Apex Speculative Fiction, and Fire was entered in the Pagan Fiction contest. A&ASF has a two-month response time (their website says one month, but their auto-response said two) so I should be hearing something by the end of the summer. The Pagan Fiction contest wrote me a note back saying they were passing the story on to the judges, and the winners will be announced in February 2008. I guess that means Fire is shelved for now. By that time I'll probably forget I even entered the contest and if I win, it will be a total surprise to me.

How are things in your world?