Music to write by: “Dig“ by Incubus

I’m gonna start with a little me in this post (we all love me, right? right?) before I get to the stuff that’s gonna benefit you. Be patient, thronging millions, and we’ll get to wait times presently.

Today I received a rejection from Sword & Sorceress for my story “The Giant of Arimethia” in a stunning 1 day. I really applaud editor Elisabeth Waters for wading through the slush pile so quickly (though in all fairness she probably read the first few paragraphs, realized it was an action story, and rejected it).

The truth is, I knew that my story would be rejected because I’d purchased and read through Sword & Sorceress Vol. 21, and it was woefully short of action stories. Not that this is a bad thing… some (but not all) of the stories were pretty well done. Why did I submit? Because the worst that could happen was that I would get a polite rejection note. No skin off my back. Keep that in mind when you sub your stuff. Rejection doesn’t hurt. But I’m getting sidetracked.

Long wait times do suck. I’ve had a story at Neo-Opsis for nearly a year now, and they don’t allow sim subs which means it’s been off the market that long. How can you avoid waits like this? You can check out the Black Hole.

The Black Hole is a writer-built way of tracking which markets take how long to respond to your sub. When writer receives an accept/reject from a market, they report how long it took to the Black Hole, and the results get tallied up and averaged. Here are some wait times for magazines that you want to get published in:

And so on. Keep in mind, the lower numbers are liable to be the pros. Since the Black Hole is writer-built, it’s important that you submit your info to this site. The more statistics they have, the more accurate they’re liable to be.

Duotrope also keeps stats, but I’ll be blogging about them in a later post.

Until then! TTFN!

Hello all,

Music to write by: “Civil War“ by Guns N’ Roses

Welcome to your Writers of the Future (Wotf) Spectacular!

What is Wotf? It is simply one of the most pretigious short fiction writing contests of any genre anywhere. At Norweson recently James C Glass said that after he won the contest (1990), he was the “flavour of the month. Everyone wanted a story from [him]“. It’s a huge career booster, and the value of the prizes (cash and otherwise) isn’t anything to sneer at either.

So, what is this intention of this blog post? Well, like almost everything in this blog, it’s to put the tools to succeed into your hands. I haven’t won WotF. I’m not an expert, nor will I claim anywhere in this article that I know how to win. What this blog will do is point you in the direction of the experts and provide you with resources you might not have been aware of (and won’t show up right away on a Google search). Rather than focusing on the rules of the contest, I’d like to start with an excerpt of an interview with Dan Wolverton, the head judge.

How are manuscripts handled?

There’s a contest administrator who receives all the manuscripts. The administrator makes sure all the stories are anonymous (no names on manuscripts, etc.) then sends the stories to me. I pick out the ones that will be the finalists. Usually about six to ten stories. Then I return them to the administrator who sends the finalist stories to the other judges. They determine who gets first, second and third place.

Any other comments you’d like to make?

The “Writers of the Future” contest has prizes as well as money for publication. Each quarterly contest has three prizes. $1000 for first place, $750 for second, $500 for third. Each year, there’s a grand prize winner selected from the four quarterly first place winner. That person gets an additional $4000.

Then, the winning stories are bought for the anthology. The twelve winners get 20 cents a word up to $1000.

Finalists get 15 cents a word up to $500. Around three finalists get their stories published in the anthology each year, in addition to the winners. So, if you make grand prize winner, you could earn around $6000. It’s about the highest paying market in the field. It should be the first place writers look at.

In addition to the money, if your story is published in the anthology, you get to attend a writing workshop.A lot of writers come each year who are close to breaking into the pro market. The workshop helps them figure out what they need to do and where they need to go.

If you win (or are even a published finalist), you get to attend a Writer’s Workshop hosted by some of the top writers in the field, including Orson Scott Card, K.D.Wentworth, Tim Powers, Kevin J. Anderson, and more. Luc Reid, a winner in 2003 has a great description at his experience at the writer’s workshop as well as some good advice on how to win the contest from a writer that’s actually won it! His article can be found here.

Amy Casil Sterling won third place in the contest in 1999. She wrote an essay on her journey to the winners podium which is highly suggested reading. Her article definitely implies that winning the contest requires a lot of work, top notch craftsmanship, and a little luck. Many people (myself included) enter the contest quarter after quarter until they win. In the author bios of last year’s volume I noticed that one writer had entered 27 times before they won. For the math challenged, that’s an entry a quarter for 7 years.

One final tool that you can use to gain insight about the contest is the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest Blog run by John Goodwin at Galaxy Press. It’s updated almost daily and is one of the locations where winners are announced.

Of course, the best advice on how to win is to read the anthologies. I said this before: a great way to sell to an editor is to read the stuff they publish and then write a story you’ll know they’ll like. So good luck with the contest! I submit every quarter, so if you’re reading this, we’ll probably be crossing swords in the slush pile. En guarde!

Tags: Writers of the Future

And you’d know that were you a duck and in the old Lapp Demesne (I was going to say “Lapp Lair”, but so help me, the aliteration was simply too much for 6 o’clock in the morning).

I’ve been desperately revising that Sword & Sorcery tale I’ve been working on for A New Century of Sword and Sorcery edited by Mike Turner. Finished the first draft on Monday, and as any good writer will tell you, it’s far from done. April 15th looms, and while the blog is the third love of my life, writing is the second (the first, of course, is the g/f. Cheap brownie points, honey?), so right now writing wins out.

I’m putting together a post about Writers of the Future, a contest which you should definitely not miss, so keep your eyes glued to this blog. Hell, don’t even close your browser window until you see it (okay, you are allowed to hit the refresh button. Once.).

Music to Write By will be back tomorrow! Until then!

Hello everyone,

Music to write by: “Love Like Winter“ by AFI

So I promised to share my first experience with NorWesCon and I’ve held off long enough! First thing’s first: why did I decide to go to a con? Was it just for fun, or was it something more sinister? If you picked B), well, you know me too well.

Cons are an excellent and cheap way to advance your career. Cons are huge events where everyone with the faintest interest in SF/F for miles around congregates (usually dressed in some outlandish outfit). The career building part usually happens upstairs in the “panels”.

A panel consists of industry professionals and an audience that have gathered together to talk about a specific subject. Examples of the panels I attended were “Is The Short Story Dead?”, “Getting that novel finished”, and “Humour in Horror”, but there were some weird ones too like “Alien Sex” and “Goth Style - Affordable Elegance”. Panels are a great way to meet other professionals and ask them pertinent questions. For me, it was also reassuring. Many of the writers on these panels were less far along than I am.

If you really want a career boost, get yourself invited to participate on one of the panels. Don’t think your resume is up to snuff? On one panel I attended, not one panelist had sold a novel! Some had self-published, others had one short story to their credit (and had written unsold novels), but it appears that the main qualification to serve is that you be breathing.

My intention was to go to a Con and “scope it out” so that I’d know what to expect when I had a book under my belt, and maybe to participate on a panel at VCon. On a side note, if it seems like everything I do has the ulterior motive of promoting my writing career, it does. Welcome to my conniving little mind, eh?

Anyways, some of the highlights of attending the Con were, in rapid fire:

-I briefly got to meet author Michael Ehart. He was really friendly and a fun presence to have on the panels. If you have a chance to read him, I’d recommend it. Some top-notch genre horror.

-While strolling through the parking lot at the DoubleTree hotel, I noticed a vanity license plate that said “GENRE”. Clever.

-The costumes were awesome, especially the guy (or gal) that was dressed as a full on Manticore. The costume must have cost a cool grand, but it was worth it… he/she had a full crowd trailing in their wake.

-On the way down to Seatac, I spotted this little gem on the I-5

Yes, it’s the Seafair Pirates’ truck, the Moby Duck! It was a funny coincedence considering I’d just placed a story in Sails & Sorcery and have another one in the slush at Black Sails. I laughed my head off at the “buxom pirates babes” that were toasting all the other cars from the “deck” and took it as a good omen.

All-in-all, it was my first con so I was a little doe-eyed, and I’ll probably be sharing more of my experiences there in a later post, but for now I gotta take off. The g/f is coming back from her vacation and *blush* well… I have to put the finishing touches on a charcoal portrait I put together for her. You know what they say, “Happy wife, happy life” and I do so enjoy making her smile!

Hello again,

Music to write by: “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols

A question came up in one of the panels at NorWesCon on the weekend. An audience member wanted to know how many submissions Asimov got every month, and I, your loyal correspondent happened to have read the stats on SFReader. I’ve reprinted some of the more important markets here, but a more detailed list can be found in the original article.

Weird Tales 180 - 360
Brutarian 200
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 200
Realms of Fantasy 200
Strange Horizons 200
Talebones 200
Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine 200 - 400
Cemetery Dance 300
The Pedestal Magazine 500
Absolute Magnitude 500
(The Magazine of) Fantasy & Science Fiction 600
Analog 800
Asimov’s Science Fiction 800 - 850

850 a month. That’s kind of discouraging. But never fear! 90% of the stories are of the same quality as The Eye of Argon. The text of that literary gem can be found here. As an added benefit, some magazines like to run a piece by a new writer every once in a while, after all, a lot of great writers had their first big breakthrough in the pages of some of these magazines.

So, now that I’ve shown you the statistics, ignore them. They don’t apply to you. Start at the top and work your way down, sooner or later you’ll get lucky!

EDIT: If you think those stats are bad, I’m told Writers of the Future gets over 1800 entries a quarter!

2ND EDIT: Check out this post from an actual editor at TOR: slushkiller