The Stone Age Gap is Live!

It is with *tremendous* pleasure that I announce my story, THE STONE AGE GAP, is up and live over at the StarShip Sofa podcast! (The story starts at 6:25.)

StarShipSofa is a wonderful podcast, the sci-fi branch of the District of Wonders, and I'm so honored to be part of their family!

As with many of my stories, this one is told in the context of a fictionalized version of my real-life family, The Perezes. 

This story is one of the only - if not *the* only - piece of true science fiction I've ever done, everything else I write being fantasy or horror. This piece was written in 2013 and inspired by two things: one, at that time the Juban Princeline was 5 and going through his robot phase. He told me he wanted to marry a robot when he grew up. I got to thinking about that and wondered if that will be the new prejudice for my generation as we age. (The daughter-in-law in the story is not an actual robot, by the way, just artificially "enhanced.") Back then I was also fighting a lot with the Princeling, and it broke my heart to think about what would happen in the future if we became so annoyed with each other that we barely spoke anymore.

The second inspiration is my hubby and how he's always talking about wanting to be uploaded to some digital consciousness before he dies. That sounds like my personal idea of Hell, but hubby is very serious about what happens to our mortality as technology speeds up and thinks that a global digital consciousness is the way of the future.

All of the story is about the perpetual feeling of falling behind as progress moves exponentially faster forward, and how we all cope with it both as individuals and as a society.

It's been one of my dreams as a writer for many years now to hear one of my stories be narrated. I think that K.G. Anderson does an amazing job here, and I'm eternally grateful to StarShipSofa for taking a chance on me. And, of course, I just love hearing my name pronounced in Tony C. Smith's Scottish accent!

Enjoy!

New Story Up at Grievous Angel!

My flash horror story, I FORGOT TO LOCK THE DOOR, is now live over at the marvelous Grievous Angel Magazine!

This story was written towards the end of the summer in 2015, just a few months after we moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs. We knew nothing about our new town before moving here, except that the few people we met who'd heard of it said it was great for families. Low crime rate, excellent schools, people moved here just to raise their kids. Sounds good, right?

But we didn't really know anyone in the town when we moved. The kids were not going to camp. We didn't have a babysitter. No daycare. Because our former landlord screwed us over, we could not afford to join the town's community pool. So that meant a summer of just me and the kids finding things to do for nine weeks. We discovered a nearby skate park and my older son picked up skate boarding. We joined the nearby science center. I let the kids ride their bikes in the street. I set up kiddie pools in the backyard. None of this kept my kids amused for very long, and by the time the first day of school arrived in September I wept with relief.

I had this idea that when we moved in, suddenly families with kids would pour out of their houses on our street and my kids would be outside playing all day every day all summer long, but instead we met almost no one.

Things have changed, certainly. We have friends in town, the kids have plenty of play dates, we have babysitters, we've joined the community pool in the summer, and we know which camps the kids like. Our summers are now full of friends, camp, vacations, and spending long afternoons socializing poolside. But that first summer is burned into our psyches: long, empty days full of quiet and boredom. And that's where this story comes from.

Two New Acceptances!

I apologize for the delayed announcement, but my short story ATHEISTS IN THE CEMETERY, is now available as part of Burial Day Books' latest anthology, GOTHIC BLUE BOOKS IV: THE FOLKLORE EDITION! 

Buy the book in e-book or paperback on Amazon.com, here.

Also, my short story TINY LIGHTS (formerly known as THE HEALER, formerly known as DEATH OF THE GOOD DOCTOR), has just been accepted by Fiction Vortex for either their November 2014 or December 2014 issue!

TINY LIGHTS has been out on submission for nearly two years, with sixteen rejections before this acceptance. It's had plenty of positive feedback from editors all over the genre fiction marketplace, but no love until now. I've always known it's a good story, and now my little baby finally has a home. Which just proves: determination is a writer's best friend. Believe in yourself. Remember that the only way to never get published is to quit. 

Red velvet cake on me, everyone! Party time!

WIP Wednesday

A fellow author I follow, Tami Veldura, started holding herself accountable for her writing progress by posting a "WIP Wednesday." In that spirit, here is an update on my writing projects:

BLOODSISTERS
I have slowed down the query process on BLOODSISTERS, for various reasons. It's not in a drawer yet, but I will probably not send out any new queries at this point.


THE HEALER
Out for submission to an anthology.

KNIGHTLY TALES FOR A RAINY DAY
Out for submission to a contest.

ATHEISTS IN THE CEMETERY
Out for submission to a contest.

THE STONE AGE GAP
Out for submission to a pro market.

THEN AND NOW
Searching for a submission market.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
Searching for a submission market.


THE HOLLOW QUEEN
My biggest work to date is now at 107K words. My original goal was 120K, which -- using the Stephen King-approved method of paring down 10% of your wc in revisions -- I intended to revise to between 105 and 110K before querying it next year. That goal, unfortunately, had to be adjusted to 110K, with a revised draft goal of between 95 and 100K.

The reason for this was pacing. For most of the novel, I feel the pacing is fine. I have good lead-ups, plenty of foreshadowing, and lots of character and setting development. After I hit the 100K mark, though, I felt the action needed to be sped up -- but I ran out of smaller plot points that would lead up to my big, climactic finale. At some point while writing yesterday I realized I was stalling. I had to get to the point. My characters were where they needed to be; what needed to be revealed had been revealed; all that was left was the big showdown. And so, rather than keeping myself chained to a word count that no longer felt realistic, I cut it down to 110K, and with that, I should have a complete first draft by the end of tomorrow.

I'll take a one week break before jumping right into revisions: I've already made notes as I've gone along so I know the major changes I need to do, and I've promised my critique partners they'll have a draft by Labor Day. My goal is to have a query-worthy draft by spring 2015.


How about you? How are your writing projects coming along?

Crikey!

Crikey, it's been a long time since my last update!

I say "crikey" because of my current Anglophile phase. It started when I saw STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS and said, "Who is that beautiful man playing super baddie Khan?" and went home to watch the entire first season of SHERLOCK by myself, and in doing so, gave my heart over to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Big Ben. Best name for a clock, ever. *giggle giggle*

It's continuing on with my completely bizarre and out-of-nowhere obsession with the Royal Baby. I left MSNBC on mute all day during Kate's labor, and I'm not entirely sure why. (My friend in London, Sir Brit, thinks its because Americans secretly want to be British subjects again. I laughed, but a disturbing amount of my friends seem to be OK with that idea.)

Anyway. England, and whatnot.

In the past few weeks we've moved a few blocks from our former home (or "flat") to a new one with gorgeous views of New York Harbor, my older son has finished with preschool and started summer camp, and my little one is finally in more daycare, which means after nearly a month of being forced away from my writing I am finally back. I'm not going to lie: it was hard, emotionally so, not getting to work on any of my short stories or novel for a month. Every day I felt like something was missing from my life, and the first day back when I opened my manuscript and jumped in was like a long, deep breath.

But I wasn't idle during that month. I still submitted my short stories to markets and queried agents. No rest for the writing!

The bad news is I've had no bites on either front yet, though every day I become more optimistic that my stories are that much closer to finding their homes and my manuscript is that much closer to finding its champion. The good news is that when I revise my novel now I really feel like I'm reading something I love. And isn't that the whole point of writing? To write the story you want to read?

Ah, the little one is eating Veggie Sticks off the floor. Must dash. Ta, then. Cheerio, loves.

My Writing "Holy Grail"

Since I discovered it in 2000, I've not only loved the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction, but it's been a goal of mine to get published in it's lofty pages.

A tough goal, for sure, but one I think worth pursuing. It's my own personal Holy Grail. More than getting a novel published, more than getting published anywhere else, I simply must get into F&SF someday, even if that day is years and years from now.

Back in 2000 when I was young and fresh and didn't know much about the craft of writing and getting published -- I only knew that I loved writing stories -- I sent a lot of really bad work to F&SF. Really bad. I'm amazed I got any response at all, much less the kind, personalized rejections I received.

Then life happened and I stopped writing short stories for a while, and then I stopped working on my novel for a while.

Now I'm back, and I'm a little more seasoned. I've been in critique groups and have partners and mentors helping me with the mechanics of putting a quality story together through tight, thoughtful prose. (At least, I like to think so.)

So I keep going. Keep typing. Keep making stories happen, one word at a time.

It may take my entire lifetime, but I will get a story in that magazine. I owe it to a wide-eyed, naive young 20something writer, full of hope and pride and short on common sense, to see this done.