I got married Friday. What's new in your world?
With twins on the way we decided that marital bliss in June wouldn't be a good idea, so Friday we gathered our things and got hitched on short notice. This makes certain that I can lie to my children about one mroe thing, namely whether or not we were married when they were conceived. I'll be more than happy to tell them that they were just born early. As I plan on fibbing to my children about many, many things over the years, it shouldn't matter too much. At least not as much as when I tell them Abraham Lincoln was the man who invented the penny.
Today I've puttered around since getting up at 5:30 in the morning, eating a bowl of cereal and catching up on all of the news I've missed in the past week. Did you know there was a shooting in Illinois? No lie, I had no clue until this morning. I've been understandably distracted by other things over the past week, so now that we've started to fall into line it makes more sense.
The "novel" got stuck on the backburner when I started a freewrite the other day, then had an idea for a short story I want to finish well before Derby this year.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Showing posts with label fiancee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiancee. Show all posts
Monday, February 18, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
So I've been absent
It doesn't matter. Nobody really reads this anyhow.
Alright, so we're on the cusp of me getting the rejection from Intergalactic Medicine Show, which should be showing up any day now. In addition, I have a crap story submitted to McSweeney's in a fit of drunken pride, a story out for consideration with Aberrant Dreams, and a fourth just sent out to garner a rejection from Modern Drunkard. Duotrope is the scourge of editors where I am concerned.
The writing has taken a back seat in the last week, primarily because we've been dealing with the baby stuff. Among this was today's experience, where I found out that we're having twins. As I stated to the doctor, I'm screwed. Seriously, I'm an underpaid, oddjob working writer who hasn't sold anything since a low low low paying piece in December. I have no job after June. I need to find something with health insurance and a good pay, as well as finding a new place to live after the kiddos are born.
In other words, I'm back to freaking out. Seriously freaking out. I mean like crying in the corner freaking out.
Short stories are on the backburner right now. I've started a second piece in the "A Question of Freedom" universe that may stretch out to become a novel. I don't know yet. All I know is I'm around 6,000 words in, and it hasn't yet gotten to the main portion of the plot that will serve as the catalyst for the characters and the climax. We'll see what happens, but until I get 50 pages in (if it lasts that long) I don't want to start on any stories that may distract me too much. Starting in March I'm going to work on a few short story ideas that are bumping around, but now isn't the best time to start them. Too much going on for me to stay concentrating on several balls at once.
I'll post more tomorrow after I get a little writing done. I'd like to, if this does go novel length, do a journal on my daily writing struggles. Because of my family, school, and work obligations, my target word count per day is 1,000 to 2,000. Sometimes less, sometimes more. We'll see, right?
So that's the news from Louisville. Now, I'm heading off to bed.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Alright, so we're on the cusp of me getting the rejection from Intergalactic Medicine Show, which should be showing up any day now. In addition, I have a crap story submitted to McSweeney's in a fit of drunken pride, a story out for consideration with Aberrant Dreams, and a fourth just sent out to garner a rejection from Modern Drunkard. Duotrope is the scourge of editors where I am concerned.
The writing has taken a back seat in the last week, primarily because we've been dealing with the baby stuff. Among this was today's experience, where I found out that we're having twins. As I stated to the doctor, I'm screwed. Seriously, I'm an underpaid, oddjob working writer who hasn't sold anything since a low low low paying piece in December. I have no job after June. I need to find something with health insurance and a good pay, as well as finding a new place to live after the kiddos are born.
In other words, I'm back to freaking out. Seriously freaking out. I mean like crying in the corner freaking out.
Short stories are on the backburner right now. I've started a second piece in the "A Question of Freedom" universe that may stretch out to become a novel. I don't know yet. All I know is I'm around 6,000 words in, and it hasn't yet gotten to the main portion of the plot that will serve as the catalyst for the characters and the climax. We'll see what happens, but until I get 50 pages in (if it lasts that long) I don't want to start on any stories that may distract me too much. Starting in March I'm going to work on a few short story ideas that are bumping around, but now isn't the best time to start them. Too much going on for me to stay concentrating on several balls at once.
I'll post more tomorrow after I get a little writing done. I'd like to, if this does go novel length, do a journal on my daily writing struggles. Because of my family, school, and work obligations, my target word count per day is 1,000 to 2,000. Sometimes less, sometimes more. We'll see, right?
So that's the news from Louisville. Now, I'm heading off to bed.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT, SHE'S PREGNANT!
We think. She'll be going in this week for the blood test. This bumps the wedding date up considerably, as you may guess.
I'm still in shock, so I'll say I sent "The Tribe of Harry" out to garner its lumps in the rejection field today, and then started work on another story set in the same America as "A Question of Freedom".
Now, to go freak out some more.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
We think. She'll be going in this week for the blood test. This bumps the wedding date up considerably, as you may guess.
I'm still in shock, so I'll say I sent "The Tribe of Harry" out to garner its lumps in the rejection field today, and then started work on another story set in the same America as "A Question of Freedom".
Now, to go freak out some more.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Withering on the vine
Well, I came off of my "break" today.
The first week of classes is over, with only one miss due to some car trouble Friday morning, and I have a decent idea of what is expected. Let me start by saying I screwed up and bad. I was expecting a few bunny courses for my last semester of higher learning, and instead signed myself up for some reading/work intensive courses. I would like to say now, though, that I am not a quitter, and therefore refuse to drop any of them. Nothing good comes without a little work, and if I work hard I learn. Besides, I have to say that I am interested in each topic I signed up for, and am more than willing to learn something new from them all even if it does bite into my personal time a bit.
Tonight I came home after dinner with my folks, where Desi and I spent a couple hours discussing wedding plans with my mother, to work on a creative writing prompt and get a little course reading done. The writing prompt was going to be 500 words based on a phrase he gave us, and I figured that I would start that, get it done, and then return to my blissful ignorance for the next week before actually sitting down and starting on the next story I'd send out for publication. A half-hour later, I realized that the prompt was the swift kick in the ass I needed to finally start work on the father/son story I had wandering about the back of my head. So I can say I fell off the writing wagon and have now added working on a story to my list of January stresses.
I'm going to stay on top of this one, as I'd like to have the first draft done by the end of the month.
I have another submission floating around out there, a piece of very short fiction (2,000 words) called "The Ignoble Birth of Tucker Talbott". I submitted it with The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, a non-paying e-market. The story itself isn't very good in my opinion, so I won't be heartbroken if it doesn't get accepted. I wrote it while half-drunk on a bottle of Australian Port in the "house from hell" that Desi and I lived in before moving into our apartment. While I would like to see it on a site with some readership, I can live just as well with getting a rejection and slamming it up here or over on my Author's Den website.
Still waiting to hear back on the King Arthur story. I haven't been rejected out of hand yet, so I'm hoping for at least a personal rejection letter from them. The zombie story hasn't been out long enough to hope for a personal rejection. I sorta want to get them back so I can do another rewrite and send them out to the small game markets, but patience, right? Right.
Finally saw The World According to Garp the other night. Freakin' hilarious. Loved every second of it.
If you're reading this and you haven't gotten over to Allegory Ezine yet to read "A Question of Freedom", do it. Then tell your friends, or at least post a scathing review of it.
Until Next Time,
J.C. Tabler
The first week of classes is over, with only one miss due to some car trouble Friday morning, and I have a decent idea of what is expected. Let me start by saying I screwed up and bad. I was expecting a few bunny courses for my last semester of higher learning, and instead signed myself up for some reading/work intensive courses. I would like to say now, though, that I am not a quitter, and therefore refuse to drop any of them. Nothing good comes without a little work, and if I work hard I learn. Besides, I have to say that I am interested in each topic I signed up for, and am more than willing to learn something new from them all even if it does bite into my personal time a bit.
Tonight I came home after dinner with my folks, where Desi and I spent a couple hours discussing wedding plans with my mother, to work on a creative writing prompt and get a little course reading done. The writing prompt was going to be 500 words based on a phrase he gave us, and I figured that I would start that, get it done, and then return to my blissful ignorance for the next week before actually sitting down and starting on the next story I'd send out for publication. A half-hour later, I realized that the prompt was the swift kick in the ass I needed to finally start work on the father/son story I had wandering about the back of my head. So I can say I fell off the writing wagon and have now added working on a story to my list of January stresses.
I'm going to stay on top of this one, as I'd like to have the first draft done by the end of the month.
I have another submission floating around out there, a piece of very short fiction (2,000 words) called "The Ignoble Birth of Tucker Talbott". I submitted it with The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, a non-paying e-market. The story itself isn't very good in my opinion, so I won't be heartbroken if it doesn't get accepted. I wrote it while half-drunk on a bottle of Australian Port in the "house from hell" that Desi and I lived in before moving into our apartment. While I would like to see it on a site with some readership, I can live just as well with getting a rejection and slamming it up here or over on my Author's Den website.
Still waiting to hear back on the King Arthur story. I haven't been rejected out of hand yet, so I'm hoping for at least a personal rejection letter from them. The zombie story hasn't been out long enough to hope for a personal rejection. I sorta want to get them back so I can do another rewrite and send them out to the small game markets, but patience, right? Right.
Finally saw The World According to Garp the other night. Freakin' hilarious. Loved every second of it.
If you're reading this and you haven't gotten over to Allegory Ezine yet to read "A Question of Freedom", do it. Then tell your friends, or at least post a scathing review of it.
Until Next Time,
J.C. Tabler
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Zombies on the Internet!
Well, I finished the edit on the Zombie story last night around one in the morning and crawled into bed to sleep like the dead (I know, bad pun) until around 7:30 this morning. After a few minutes of looking around Duotrope, I found a market. So, long story short, I've sent the zombie story out to get its first round of rejections before aiming my crosshairs a little lower and shooting for small game.
I should mention that I've got another story out and about, waiting on the rejection slip from that one to come over the internet postal service that is Gmail. This one is a cheap King Arthur piece that my mother loves, so I feel an obligation to try and sell it if at all possible. I wrote it for a class a while back, and did a few rewrites over the past couple months. It got sent off to garner a rejection from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in November, so we're still playing the waiting game. Of course, their standard response time is 90 or so days, so I've still got a month or so before I can print out the rejection, put it in a pile with the others, and start shopping that story around again.
This weekend I plan on sitting down to work on the ghost story. Hopefully everything will go according to plan, and I'll actually get some work done on it, at least enough to have a few pages typed up so I can gear up to really start working. At the same time I'm going to try and go for something that isn't spec. fict. for once. There's been a story rambling around in the back of my head about that ever popular topic, fathers and sons. I'm going to work on that on the days I get blocked on the ghost story.
On a slightly more personal note, our cat is now "the fearless hunter". We have a few mice in our apartment, not due to slovenly housekeeping because Desi is a fanatic about that sort of thing. No, our mice are the result of living in an old building in an older neighborhood, in the apartment that was occupied by a bachelor bartender for 7 years before we moved in and took a solid week to clean before we dared to bring anything inside. These mice apparently have a nest right outside our bedroom window, which has an old AC unit in it that Desi refuses to let me take out. She won't let me take it out of the window because I would have to put it in the bedroom closet, and she insists (I swear I'm not making this up) that doing so would take away all the space she needs for her shoes.
The result of this is that the mice are entering through a small gap between the window and the AC unit, where they artfully ignore the traps I have set along the wall on that side of the bedroom. The cat goes wild and wants in the room, and he has now taken out 3 of the rodents. The extremely expensive, rodent-like animal that my fiancee purchased now lives in mortal fear of the cat, staring out from the bars of his cage and begging us to protect him. The cat is amazingly proud of himself. I feel like an idiot for spending 15 dollars on mousetraps.
Well, that's all for now. I'll post a little on Friday or Saturday, whichever day I start on the ghost story.
Take'er Easy,
J.C. Tabler
I should mention that I've got another story out and about, waiting on the rejection slip from that one to come over the internet postal service that is Gmail. This one is a cheap King Arthur piece that my mother loves, so I feel an obligation to try and sell it if at all possible. I wrote it for a class a while back, and did a few rewrites over the past couple months. It got sent off to garner a rejection from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in November, so we're still playing the waiting game. Of course, their standard response time is 90 or so days, so I've still got a month or so before I can print out the rejection, put it in a pile with the others, and start shopping that story around again.
This weekend I plan on sitting down to work on the ghost story. Hopefully everything will go according to plan, and I'll actually get some work done on it, at least enough to have a few pages typed up so I can gear up to really start working. At the same time I'm going to try and go for something that isn't spec. fict. for once. There's been a story rambling around in the back of my head about that ever popular topic, fathers and sons. I'm going to work on that on the days I get blocked on the ghost story.
On a slightly more personal note, our cat is now "the fearless hunter". We have a few mice in our apartment, not due to slovenly housekeeping because Desi is a fanatic about that sort of thing. No, our mice are the result of living in an old building in an older neighborhood, in the apartment that was occupied by a bachelor bartender for 7 years before we moved in and took a solid week to clean before we dared to bring anything inside. These mice apparently have a nest right outside our bedroom window, which has an old AC unit in it that Desi refuses to let me take out. She won't let me take it out of the window because I would have to put it in the bedroom closet, and she insists (I swear I'm not making this up) that doing so would take away all the space she needs for her shoes.
The result of this is that the mice are entering through a small gap between the window and the AC unit, where they artfully ignore the traps I have set along the wall on that side of the bedroom. The cat goes wild and wants in the room, and he has now taken out 3 of the rodents. The extremely expensive, rodent-like animal that my fiancee purchased now lives in mortal fear of the cat, staring out from the bars of his cage and begging us to protect him. The cat is amazingly proud of himself. I feel like an idiot for spending 15 dollars on mousetraps.
Well, that's all for now. I'll post a little on Friday or Saturday, whichever day I start on the ghost story.
Take'er Easy,
J.C. Tabler
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Bye Bye, Bunny
The zombie story is finished. That's not the purpose for this post, though. The purpose for this post is we've decided to give away our pet rabbit.
Personally, I'm a dog person. I've always been a dog person. I enjoy an animal that is stupid enough to be happy to see me. So when we got stuck with a rabbit by an old friend and his wife, I wasn't exactly jumping with joy. It's a sweet creature, but the fact is that all of our pets aren't really our pets. instead, these animals are more or less completely my fiancee's. The downside is that, while she enjoys HAVING the animals, she doesn't truly have the time to care for them all.
On top of this, I recently got the approval to get a puppy. I like puppies. I'm getting a damn puppy. She can keep the finicky cat, I want a dog that will eat my leftovers and be more than happy with a belly rub and a game of catch. Plus, at least dogs are loyal.
The decision, then, was to send our rabbit, Commodore Lord High Flopsy of Her Royal Majesty's Navy, Duke of Exeter, Savior of the South Seas Colonies, on a trip. He is embarking on a journey up one flight of stairs to become the pet of the couple up there, our good friends. Right now they're out buying bunny stuff with my fiancee, I'm watching WonderShowzen, and I'm about to fix a pork roast for my dinner while the vegetarian half of our relationship is gone.
Long story short, she'll mope for a day or two, then go back to normal.
Take'er Easy,
J.C. Tabler
Personally, I'm a dog person. I've always been a dog person. I enjoy an animal that is stupid enough to be happy to see me. So when we got stuck with a rabbit by an old friend and his wife, I wasn't exactly jumping with joy. It's a sweet creature, but the fact is that all of our pets aren't really our pets. instead, these animals are more or less completely my fiancee's. The downside is that, while she enjoys HAVING the animals, she doesn't truly have the time to care for them all.
On top of this, I recently got the approval to get a puppy. I like puppies. I'm getting a damn puppy. She can keep the finicky cat, I want a dog that will eat my leftovers and be more than happy with a belly rub and a game of catch. Plus, at least dogs are loyal.
The decision, then, was to send our rabbit, Commodore Lord High Flopsy of Her Royal Majesty's Navy, Duke of Exeter, Savior of the South Seas Colonies, on a trip. He is embarking on a journey up one flight of stairs to become the pet of the couple up there, our good friends. Right now they're out buying bunny stuff with my fiancee, I'm watching WonderShowzen, and I'm about to fix a pork roast for my dinner while the vegetarian half of our relationship is gone.
Long story short, she'll mope for a day or two, then go back to normal.
Take'er Easy,
J.C. Tabler
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Here we go
Yes, here we go. Another day, another dollar. That is, if you believe a dollar to include sitting shirtless on the couch while watching childrens' saturday morning television. I spent half the morning with a Dust Buster in hand, trying to get the house in shape for when my fiancee arrives home. Considering that the majority of the time she's been gone has been spent trying to get a couple stories further along that I put on the backburner at the beginning of November, that basically means I haven't done much of anything in the way of cleaning since she left. I admit it, I am an unforgivable slob when it comes to housekeeping.
So why should I make a blog? I had one years ago where I thoroughly embarrassed myself by posting things under an alias that got discovered and revealed some rather unflattering things I had written while sure that there was nobody who actually read a thing I did. Well, the main reason is that, although I hate technology with every single bone in my body and consider myself lucky to know how tooperate the microwave, I have latched on to the importance of this "viral marketing" crap. So here we go with a view into my not-so-twisted and completely unimportant life.
I, first off, am a writer. I'm not a particularly good writer, and call myself a hack. The extent of my published portfolio includes a piece I wrote for the KHSAA coaching magazine back in high school about the emotions of a graduating football player as concerns leaving his team. There are a few freelance articles out there somewhere with my name or one of my early pen names on them, although they didn't pay much and that pursuit was shoved to the side when I decided to go back to college. Also, and I'm not going into depth here, there was a time period I wrote porn stories in order to make the utility payments. I'm not proud of that time, even if it does make a good bar story.
Porn, and I say this knowing full well that there is a term called erotica, has a formula to it. My formula was A meets B, and proceeds to do C,D, and/or E if legal in most of the 50 states. "A" could be anything from a naughty schoolgirl to a sweaty football player, with "B" being anything from the uptight English teacher to the neighbor's unattended horse. Yes, there was some twisted stuff back in those stories, but the fact is they produced a very small payment that kept my power on and kept me swinning in Cheetos and Woodchuck for a little while longer than I should have.
Now I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma. See, I sold my first true fiction piece to Allegory Ezine. The piece, entitled "A Question of Freedom" was the result of several years of thinking and a niggling idea that is still developing into what I hope will be a much longer story that explains that world a little better. Ever since that sale, I've really started banging away again, some of it crap and some of it good, but what the hell. By the way, it should be up on that site on January 1, 2008.
I better run and shower, then go pick up my woman at the airport. She may be shorter than five-second fuse, but she will undoubtedly kill me if I make her wait any longer at the airport than is absolutely necessary.
I guess next time I'll talk a little bit about "A Question of Freedom". I'll try to hold off on posting until after the story has been up, though.
And, to be honest, I'm not going anywhere.
Be fruits and don't multiply,
J.C. Tabler
So why should I make a blog? I had one years ago where I thoroughly embarrassed myself by posting things under an alias that got discovered and revealed some rather unflattering things I had written while sure that there was nobody who actually read a thing I did. Well, the main reason is that, although I hate technology with every single bone in my body and consider myself lucky to know how tooperate the microwave, I have latched on to the importance of this "viral marketing" crap. So here we go with a view into my not-so-twisted and completely unimportant life.
I, first off, am a writer. I'm not a particularly good writer, and call myself a hack. The extent of my published portfolio includes a piece I wrote for the KHSAA coaching magazine back in high school about the emotions of a graduating football player as concerns leaving his team. There are a few freelance articles out there somewhere with my name or one of my early pen names on them, although they didn't pay much and that pursuit was shoved to the side when I decided to go back to college. Also, and I'm not going into depth here, there was a time period I wrote porn stories in order to make the utility payments. I'm not proud of that time, even if it does make a good bar story.
Porn, and I say this knowing full well that there is a term called erotica, has a formula to it. My formula was A meets B, and proceeds to do C,D, and/or E if legal in most of the 50 states. "A" could be anything from a naughty schoolgirl to a sweaty football player, with "B" being anything from the uptight English teacher to the neighbor's unattended horse. Yes, there was some twisted stuff back in those stories, but the fact is they produced a very small payment that kept my power on and kept me swinning in Cheetos and Woodchuck for a little while longer than I should have.
Now I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma. See, I sold my first true fiction piece to Allegory Ezine. The piece, entitled "A Question of Freedom" was the result of several years of thinking and a niggling idea that is still developing into what I hope will be a much longer story that explains that world a little better. Ever since that sale, I've really started banging away again, some of it crap and some of it good, but what the hell. By the way, it should be up on that site on January 1, 2008.
I better run and shower, then go pick up my woman at the airport. She may be shorter than five-second fuse, but she will undoubtedly kill me if I make her wait any longer at the airport than is absolutely necessary.
I guess next time I'll talk a little bit about "A Question of Freedom". I'll try to hold off on posting until after the story has been up, though.
And, to be honest, I'm not going anywhere.
Be fruits and don't multiply,
J.C. Tabler
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