'Menial' Promotions are a go-go!

'Menial: Skilled Labor in SF' from Crossed Genres Publications comes out on January 21st, 2013, and promotion has begun.

I'm excited to see it's been getting signal boosted from some significant geek and publishing sites, like SFSignal, i09, and Tor.com.

If you're the reviewer-y type, ARCs are now available. Contact details are available here.

There's currently a Good Reads giveaway available for three ARC copies, ending December 18th. Check out the details here. And if you're considering entering the giveaway, come on over to my Good Reads page and friend or fan me.

Huzzah!

I can haz excite! Table of contents and cover art for "Menial: Skilled Labor in SF"

It's a reveal...that I'm a little late on. And I better leave out the good ol' Commonwealth 'u' in labo(u)r. But here 'tis! It's the ToC and cover art for "Menial: Skilled Labor in SF", edited by Kelly Jennings and Shay Darrach, due out January 21st, 2013, from Crossed Genres Publication.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
AJ Fitzwater -  “Diamond in the Rough”
M. Bennardo – “Thirty-Four Dollars”
Sean Jones – “A Tale of a Fast Horse”
Barbara Krasnoff – “The Didibug Pin”
Camille Alexa – “Sarah 87″
A.D. Spencer – “Carnivores”
Andrew C. Releford - “Urban Renewal”
Matthew Cherry – “Storage”
Angeli Primlani – “Snowball the Rabbit Was Dead”
Jasmine M. Templet – “Leviathan”
Margaret M. Gilman – “All in a Day’s Work”
Kevin Bennett – “The Belt”
Jude-Marie Green – “Far, Far From Land”
Clifford Royal Johns – “Big Steel In The Sky”
Sophie Constable – “Air Supply”
Dany G. Zuwen – “The Heart of the Union”
Sabrina Vourvoulias – “Ember”

Why yes, that is my story the first in the book. Hee!

ETA: 
- I'm super excited to see that i09 has seen fit to give the anthology a plug! Thanks to Charlie Jane Anders.
- SFSignal have also got in on the act with a plug too.

Crunching Numbers

Numbers annoy and disturb me: the numbers of rejections I've had; the numbers of words people can write (almost every day); final word counts in someone else's WiP. I know I shouldn't let them bother me, but some days when I feel like I'm not doing enough to forward my writing career they get to me.

I've stopped counting numbers of anything other than numbers of submissions and acceptances, so a realization that popped up the other night surprised me.

I prepped and submitted my 40th and 41st story manuscripts earlier this week. My average story word count is around 4000. There have been some longer, some shorter, and of course plenty of stories I haven't finished or never sent out to the traps.

But lets just say amoungst all that I've written, conservatively, about 160 000 words. Being generous, with those unfinished WiPs, maybe it's closer to 180 000.

That's two books worth. Or a really big doorstop.

I had to think on that for a moment. For all my struggles, procrastinations, and anguish over other people bashing out oodles of words, a book or two a year, I've written the equivalent of maybe two books worth of words in the last two and a half years. They're not all good words, or in any sort of linear (quality and quantity) fashion, but not all first drafts of books are amazing either.

And then I stopped to think again: out of those 41 stories I have seen fit to submit (and admittedly trunked a few), I've sold 14. That's a success rate of 34%. THIRTY FOUR PERCENT. Sure, only 2% of that success has been a pro sale, but damn...do I undersell and underrate my ability to produce.

I'm doing okay. I can do better, but I'm definitely doing more okay than I thought.

patience, mah minion...1 day this will all be ours

Struggling

I never thought my first pro sale would be The Start Of All Things Amazing, but geez have I hit the wall this last month.

Good old Imposter Syndrome, how ya doing? Haven't heard from you in a while. And Magpie Syndrome, you've decided to turn up too? Oh, and a big dollop of creamy Procrastination, how you doin'? Chuck in a big helping of gaming FOMO and yay, my life is complete - on a collision course for not a heck of a lot of work getting done.

I'm a recidivist non-planner. Plans scream Work. Work screams Unfun. But writing is fun, right? RIGHT? Well, it's supposed to be. Maybe it's that old theocratic holdover drummed into me that hard work isn't supposed to be fun. I always said as a kid "When I grow up, I'm only ever going to do something for fun!" Why, hello Day Job and Mortgage, how's that working out for you?

So now, the only time I can have Fun is my off hours, and if writing seems like Work hedging in on my Fun Time...oh man, I know, this round-about thinking is killing my creativity.

So what to do? I need discipline, a plan. Haha yeah, here we go on the suck vortex again. We're going under again, cap'n! She's gonna blow!

So come on Pickles, it's time to Get Serious. It's time to stop half-arseing this and pretending what little I'm doing is enough. It's time to dedicate a plan to paper. It's time to turn off the games and turn on your brain.

Engage, Number One!

HALP!!!