Grab your ass, folks. I quit smoking. This is day one of "no cigarettes for Daddy", and it's been a doozy. What keeps me from flying off the handle? That small, flesh-colored patch on my arm delivering a constant stream of nicotine to my blood.
CRAP PILE MONTH has already resulted in one "gem", or rather a kernel of corn. Polished up (sorta) and sent off "Poppa Bear", a literary piece with a hopeless sort of dark ending to it (it made my wife ask what the hell was wrong with me). Johnny America got back to me in three days, sending a response that read:
"A good read, but just not right for us. Please remember us in the future."
That's not exact, but the gist. It was short and sweet, but obviously personal, so I view it as a good sign. Anytime a personal rejection has no real...well...criticism, I take heart.
CRAP PILE MONTH is continuing, but at the same time I'm working on a possible submission for the Necrotic Tissue Malpractice anthology. It concerns Medicare Providers and insurance companies. I'm enjoying it, working on it after work and some turd-polishing.
Yes, I really am that crude without a cigarette between my lips.
Anyhow, off to put my daughter to bed, get a bath, and change out this nicotine patch before bed. Christ, I want a cigarette BAD!
Peace (but not for me),
J.C. Tabler
Showing posts with label rewriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rewriting. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
And it's done
Because I knew I would never get it finished otherwise, I found a quiet spot today to finish the Grinder story. Revised, slapped the title "Beautiful Little Rubies" on it, and sent it out to The Black Garden (no linkage this time, see a couple posts down).
Now, to sleep and then to get up tomorrow and start work on this Mythos piece.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Now, to sleep and then to get up tomorrow and start work on this Mythos piece.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Haunting Melody
I can't stop listening to Cole Porter.
Anyhow, started, edited, and finished up a piece for submission to the Northen Haunts thing today. Nothing great, though I did have to call my brother-in-law to get a little bit of advice on naming and old newspaper names up in his area. While my wife chatted for two hours, I typed, trimmed, edited, trimmed, typed, trimmed, reread, titled, and did a word count check on the piece. The first draft weighed in at a little over 1,000 words. The final draft sent out? Well..
...It was 666 words. Exactly.
I swear it wasn't intentional...
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Anyhow, started, edited, and finished up a piece for submission to the Northen Haunts thing today. Nothing great, though I did have to call my brother-in-law to get a little bit of advice on naming and old newspaper names up in his area. While my wife chatted for two hours, I typed, trimmed, edited, trimmed, typed, trimmed, reread, titled, and did a word count check on the piece. The first draft weighed in at a little over 1,000 words. The final draft sent out? Well..
...It was 666 words. Exactly.
I swear it wasn't intentional...
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Run for the Roses
So it's almost Derby here in Louisville, Kentucky, and while the horses dance in their stalls the jackasses wander the streets clad in garish suits of expensive cut, fueled by bourbon and boorish manners. My reaction has been to write, again, though I'm not making much headway.
Still waiting on rejections. In the meantime, I pounded out a short rough of another story that needs some expanding, but not too much. I'll most likely work on that for the next couple days, fleshing it a little more and smoothing out some rough spots. There's no excuse for me rushing through the first draft, other than I was on a roll when I started writing it, and wanted to get at least the major plot points down while the idea was fresh. A few extra paragraphs, some trimming of the fat and some rewording, and that'll be all she wrote on it. We'll see if it turns out as well as I think it will.
Job interview on the phone went well yesterday. They're passing my resume on up the ladder to see if they want to call me in for a face-to-face interview concerning the job. AFL-CIO accepted me for their second round of interview/training in June if I want to go. However, none of it is happening fast enough. Last week's illness has caused a major hit to the pocketbook, and rent is due tomorrow, so we're scraping and crying as that $1500.00 may be a few more days (or weeks. I hate office politics) in getting to my bank account. So we've got to come up with the rent, then another $200.00 to keep the power on. We'll live, we have so far. It's just tight around the house while I'm looking for work. But I'm not complaining. I've got neighbors, friends, and family willing to lend us a little cash if we need to, but I hate taking money even if I need it. I've placed a moratorium on Ebay, to the point that it is no longer accessible on our computer. I'm trying...just trying...to keep my head afloat for another week or two here.
Alright, complaints done. I'll be writing tonight, then starting in on a little bit of planning for anohter short story, another horror piece, that sorta leaped into my mind the other day. Needs some serious developing, but I know there's a story behind that image. Peace, J.C. Tabler
Edit 13:19 05/01/08
Going through a website or two of abandoned hotel photos, I found this picture. I don't know why, but there's something inherently creepy about this image. Especially that chair. Hence the reason that it has kicked the horror portion of my mind open again, and started sprinkling story dust. Yes, although I mainly enjoy listening to music while writing, today I think a story idea has started with this one picture.
Steal it, and I swear I'll kill you. It's just too bad this sucker is too late for Voices.
Still waiting on rejections. In the meantime, I pounded out a short rough of another story that needs some expanding, but not too much. I'll most likely work on that for the next couple days, fleshing it a little more and smoothing out some rough spots. There's no excuse for me rushing through the first draft, other than I was on a roll when I started writing it, and wanted to get at least the major plot points down while the idea was fresh. A few extra paragraphs, some trimming of the fat and some rewording, and that'll be all she wrote on it. We'll see if it turns out as well as I think it will.
Job interview on the phone went well yesterday. They're passing my resume on up the ladder to see if they want to call me in for a face-to-face interview concerning the job. AFL-CIO accepted me for their second round of interview/training in June if I want to go. However, none of it is happening fast enough. Last week's illness has caused a major hit to the pocketbook, and rent is due tomorrow, so we're scraping and crying as that $1500.00 may be a few more days (or weeks. I hate office politics) in getting to my bank account. So we've got to come up with the rent, then another $200.00 to keep the power on. We'll live, we have so far. It's just tight around the house while I'm looking for work. But I'm not complaining. I've got neighbors, friends, and family willing to lend us a little cash if we need to, but I hate taking money even if I need it. I've placed a moratorium on Ebay, to the point that it is no longer accessible on our computer. I'm trying...just trying...to keep my head afloat for another week or two here.
Alright, complaints done. I'll be writing tonight, then starting in on a little bit of planning for anohter short story, another horror piece, that sorta leaped into my mind the other day. Needs some serious developing, but I know there's a story behind that image. Peace, J.C. Tabler
Edit 13:19 05/01/08
Going through a website or two of abandoned hotel photos, I found this picture. I don't know why, but there's something inherently creepy about this image. Especially that chair. Hence the reason that it has kicked the horror portion of my mind open again, and started sprinkling story dust. Yes, although I mainly enjoy listening to music while writing, today I think a story idea has started with this one picture.
Steal it, and I swear I'll kill you. It's just too bad this sucker is too late for Voices.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Another Doldrum Day
You have to love Kentucky. One week it gets cold, then chilly, then you walk outside and it's 80 degrees in the bright sunshine, humidity has started to come into play, and you sweat like a stuck pig. I think when we eventually move I'll go somewhere with a more tolerable climate. Like Hell.
Started on another bit of work last night, actually on three different stories. Starting on one about an old lady who refuses to leave her land, a bit about a liar who traps himself, and a strange bit that features Papa Ghede, the Voodoo spirit/god of the dead. I don't know which one will take precedence, but they've all started to develop pretty well so we'll just have to see. Rewrote "The Tribe of Harry" after getting a pleasant rejection letter back from 94Creations for it that insisted it was "just not what they're looking for". Put it in the second person, made it a bit more...oh...blunt on some things, removed a little of the subtlety that both helps and hinders the work. Already resubmitted it, both to a "pie in the sky" market and a down to earth choice that is much more likely.
Waiting on rejections from the following:
"Linguistic Prescription" - ASIM
"Demon Whiskey" - Harvest Hill
"Fragile Obsession" - Ghost in the Machine
"Dead Air" - Aberrant Dreams
"Weekend Trip" - Unspeakable Horrors
"Colburn Men" - McSweeney's Quarterly
"No Tell Motel" - Voices
"Tribe of Harry" - The New Yorker (I just couldn't help myself. I want a rejection from the New Yorker to frame, damn it!)
Soon as those rejections come in, I'll be hopping ready to get started on finding homes for these wayward pieces, or tossing them in the kindling pile, as is appropriate when I read back through them. Hoping to finish three-five stories in the month of May, and get some more work done on "The Long One". I'm not exactly prolific, mainly because I have a habit of getting distracted by other things for a day or two, and falling off track. In June I'm going back through my Disk of Beginnings, where stories that only made it two to three pages before another idea knocked them out of the running. I'll spend most of June figuring out which ones, if any, I can get back to work on.
It's a hard knock life, that's for sure, but hey. I chose it, right?
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Started on another bit of work last night, actually on three different stories. Starting on one about an old lady who refuses to leave her land, a bit about a liar who traps himself, and a strange bit that features Papa Ghede, the Voodoo spirit/god of the dead. I don't know which one will take precedence, but they've all started to develop pretty well so we'll just have to see. Rewrote "The Tribe of Harry" after getting a pleasant rejection letter back from 94Creations for it that insisted it was "just not what they're looking for". Put it in the second person, made it a bit more...oh...blunt on some things, removed a little of the subtlety that both helps and hinders the work. Already resubmitted it, both to a "pie in the sky" market and a down to earth choice that is much more likely.
Waiting on rejections from the following:
"Linguistic Prescription" - ASIM
"Demon Whiskey" - Harvest Hill
"Fragile Obsession" - Ghost in the Machine
"Dead Air" - Aberrant Dreams
"Weekend Trip" - Unspeakable Horrors
"Colburn Men" - McSweeney's Quarterly
"No Tell Motel" - Voices
"Tribe of Harry" - The New Yorker (I just couldn't help myself. I want a rejection from the New Yorker to frame, damn it!)
Soon as those rejections come in, I'll be hopping ready to get started on finding homes for these wayward pieces, or tossing them in the kindling pile, as is appropriate when I read back through them. Hoping to finish three-five stories in the month of May, and get some more work done on "The Long One". I'm not exactly prolific, mainly because I have a habit of getting distracted by other things for a day or two, and falling off track. In June I'm going back through my Disk of Beginnings, where stories that only made it two to three pages before another idea knocked them out of the running. I'll spend most of June figuring out which ones, if any, I can get back to work on.
It's a hard knock life, that's for sure, but hey. I chose it, right?
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Friday, April 18, 2008
Shake N' Bake
So my wife woke up this morning to find the house shaking on its foundation, windows rattling, the sugar glider going insane, dogs barking, cats meowing, and our fish swimming erratically. She then assumed she was crazy, and went back to sleep. I never once cracked my eyes open.
In short, we had an earthquake this morning that I was completely unaware of until waking up and checking the news hours after the fact.
In other news, my Ghost in the Machine submission is done with the first revision. I more or less slathered it in black ink, took out a good bit of fluff and unnecessary lines, switched things around, and added a few sentences. Later today I'll sit down with the printed draft and my laptop and start revising, then pass it off to my still-confused better half for a read. Because I don't trust her opinion (she married me, she must feel obligated to lie on occasion), I'll then send it off to some of my regular guys to look over and get suggestions. As always, by the time I get their suggested changes I'll have done the second revision, tidied it up, and sent it out.
Not much more is going on. Game night tonight with another couple we know, then tomorrow I'm assisting my father in laying down sob and clearing some of his property. Still looking for work, have an interview with the AFL-CIO on Wednesday for a union organizing position.
Back to the grindstone,
J.C. Tabler
In short, we had an earthquake this morning that I was completely unaware of until waking up and checking the news hours after the fact.
In other news, my Ghost in the Machine submission is done with the first revision. I more or less slathered it in black ink, took out a good bit of fluff and unnecessary lines, switched things around, and added a few sentences. Later today I'll sit down with the printed draft and my laptop and start revising, then pass it off to my still-confused better half for a read. Because I don't trust her opinion (she married me, she must feel obligated to lie on occasion), I'll then send it off to some of my regular guys to look over and get suggestions. As always, by the time I get their suggested changes I'll have done the second revision, tidied it up, and sent it out.
Not much more is going on. Game night tonight with another couple we know, then tomorrow I'm assisting my father in laying down sob and clearing some of his property. Still looking for work, have an interview with the AFL-CIO on Wednesday for a union organizing position.
Back to the grindstone,
J.C. Tabler
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Great Big Gobs of Greasy, Grimey..
You know the rest. Been a hectic couple of days. There's some infighting going on in the family, but that' not unusual. We're all a little off our rockers over here.
This weekend is Thunder Over Louisville, the first one that I've lived downtown for. It is a little disconcerting, to be truthful. I'm already searching for things to do this weekend that will get me out of downtown and away from the traffic. I could always just pack up the wife and laptop and head out to Ray and Angie's on Saturday, as they plan on having some sort of get together. I think it's a spectacular idea, as long as I have no plans to return home until around two in the morning due to all the road closures that'll be happening.
Got a rejection back for my "cheeky" zombie dialogue today, the same one that got sent back from Bits of the Dead. I had resubmitted it to The Town Drunk, and got another "well-written, but not quite right for us" rejection. Not bad, though. I rarely get the "this is horrible" rejection letter, and most of the time get very polite, nice, and personal ones. I see it as a point of pride that I get more personal rejections than form, though it would be nice to occassionally get a personal acceptance, you know what I mean Vern?
Rewrote the "cheeky" piece, added about 500 words or so to lengthen it a bit and put some meat on the characters. It was originally a big bit of dialogue with a few speech tags, written to pump a nice and funny lil story into 500 words or less. Adding a little bit more, I wouldn't call it a story as much as just a nice little scene, and a decent enough chuckle from everyone. After pumping in those extra words, I did a couple revisions with my Blue Pen of Death, then sent it off to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to get the next in a series of rejections for it. Hey, if nothing else there's always The Rejected Quarterly after two more, right? Right.
Alright, at work, finishing up soon, then grabbing chow with my folks while the little lady is at work. Then, if it's not time to pick her up, I'll head home and get some story work done on the "Creepy Doll" story, which started going a different direction the other day and may turn out to be speculative fiction after all.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
This weekend is Thunder Over Louisville, the first one that I've lived downtown for. It is a little disconcerting, to be truthful. I'm already searching for things to do this weekend that will get me out of downtown and away from the traffic. I could always just pack up the wife and laptop and head out to Ray and Angie's on Saturday, as they plan on having some sort of get together. I think it's a spectacular idea, as long as I have no plans to return home until around two in the morning due to all the road closures that'll be happening.
Got a rejection back for my "cheeky" zombie dialogue today, the same one that got sent back from Bits of the Dead. I had resubmitted it to The Town Drunk, and got another "well-written, but not quite right for us" rejection. Not bad, though. I rarely get the "this is horrible" rejection letter, and most of the time get very polite, nice, and personal ones. I see it as a point of pride that I get more personal rejections than form, though it would be nice to occassionally get a personal acceptance, you know what I mean Vern?
Rewrote the "cheeky" piece, added about 500 words or so to lengthen it a bit and put some meat on the characters. It was originally a big bit of dialogue with a few speech tags, written to pump a nice and funny lil story into 500 words or less. Adding a little bit more, I wouldn't call it a story as much as just a nice little scene, and a decent enough chuckle from everyone. After pumping in those extra words, I did a couple revisions with my Blue Pen of Death, then sent it off to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to get the next in a series of rejections for it. Hey, if nothing else there's always The Rejected Quarterly after two more, right? Right.
Alright, at work, finishing up soon, then grabbing chow with my folks while the little lady is at work. Then, if it's not time to pick her up, I'll head home and get some story work done on the "Creepy Doll" story, which started going a different direction the other day and may turn out to be speculative fiction after all.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Booga Booga Booga
Sitting at home watching From Hell after having dinner last night with a couple we know. Desi is at work, and I'm trying to figure out if I should go ahead and start on a story idea I have niggling around or hold off a while longer to let it develop or disappear.
Did the revisions on my submission for the Unspeakable Horrors anthology and sent that off the other day. Now we play the waiting game. Still toying around with a few other ideas for stories, mainly non-horror stuff, though there are a couple creepy images burned into my head that I can't manage to get rid of. Decided I'm going to have to do more time for revisions and rewrites from now on, since things have started calming down a bit at home and I can concentrate a little better on my work.
Job search is still going. Seems like all there is out there are commission-based sales jobs, things I don't need right now.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Did the revisions on my submission for the Unspeakable Horrors anthology and sent that off the other day. Now we play the waiting game. Still toying around with a few other ideas for stories, mainly non-horror stuff, though there are a couple creepy images burned into my head that I can't manage to get rid of. Decided I'm going to have to do more time for revisions and rewrites from now on, since things have started calming down a bit at home and I can concentrate a little better on my work.
Job search is still going. Seems like all there is out there are commission-based sales jobs, things I don't need right now.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Priming the pump
There're bits of the dead everywhere, and I'm not referring to last night's dinner. Though I wonder how long flesh keeps in the fridge...
Back on track, though, today I found out there's an anthology known as Bits of the Dead that's opened up for zombie flash fiction of no more than 500 words. 500 words, for me, is like twenty minutes of work. So I started on a story after attending a rally to lower college tuition (who am I kidding, I was there to avoid hearing about Africa in another course and to try and look socially aware). Twenty minutes later I had a 499 word piece finished, first draft, edit, rewrite, second draft, another edit, and sent off (though right after I submitted it I found one, count'em, one mistake in the final version and started kicking myself. It's a lot of dialogue, and a bit more light-hearted than I think they're looking for, but I like the way it turned out. I'll find a home for it even when I get the rejection slip back from them. There's just not enough good conversational humor about zombies out there today...
Speaking of zombies, we're at day 67 of the Aberrant Dreams wait for a response. I did get a confirmation that they received the work right after it was sent, but that apparently doesn't mean anything. I've been hearing some real horror stories about their response times, and a few folks have told me they just don't seemt o get back to writer's quickly, or have a habit of never getting submissions. I'll give it 40-60 more days, then I'm withdrawing "Dead Air" from them.
Shoved "THe Tribe of Harry" into a condensed form and handing it over to my writing class today. On Friday I'll be on here about getting ripped to shreds again, but hey. You live, you get critiqued, you get Luvs. Sorry, commercial moment there. Plus, April will be the last month you can read "A Question of Freedom" over at Allegory. C'mon show me some love and read the piece, then blast me out of the water for it.
Got another piece called "Stranger in a Strange Land" (yes, I know I stole the title. I don't think the dead men to use it before me will really mind.) in for submissions at Undergroundvoices.com.
Let's see how it goes, eh?
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Back on track, though, today I found out there's an anthology known as Bits of the Dead that's opened up for zombie flash fiction of no more than 500 words. 500 words, for me, is like twenty minutes of work. So I started on a story after attending a rally to lower college tuition (who am I kidding, I was there to avoid hearing about Africa in another course and to try and look socially aware). Twenty minutes later I had a 499 word piece finished, first draft, edit, rewrite, second draft, another edit, and sent off (though right after I submitted it I found one, count'em, one mistake in the final version and started kicking myself. It's a lot of dialogue, and a bit more light-hearted than I think they're looking for, but I like the way it turned out. I'll find a home for it even when I get the rejection slip back from them. There's just not enough good conversational humor about zombies out there today...
Speaking of zombies, we're at day 67 of the Aberrant Dreams wait for a response. I did get a confirmation that they received the work right after it was sent, but that apparently doesn't mean anything. I've been hearing some real horror stories about their response times, and a few folks have told me they just don't seemt o get back to writer's quickly, or have a habit of never getting submissions. I'll give it 40-60 more days, then I'm withdrawing "Dead Air" from them.
Shoved "THe Tribe of Harry" into a condensed form and handing it over to my writing class today. On Friday I'll be on here about getting ripped to shreds again, but hey. You live, you get critiqued, you get Luvs. Sorry, commercial moment there. Plus, April will be the last month you can read "A Question of Freedom" over at Allegory. C'mon show me some love and read the piece, then blast me out of the water for it.
Got another piece called "Stranger in a Strange Land" (yes, I know I stole the title. I don't think the dead men to use it before me will really mind.) in for submissions at Undergroundvoices.com.
Let's see how it goes, eh?
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
Friday, February 15, 2008
A Dream of Selling
"A Dream of England" came home today with a polite form rejection from Intergalactic Medicine Show. In response, I'm going to look at it and see if I need to do another rewrite, then submit it to a small game market.
More later, kinda busy right now.
More later, kinda busy right now.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Being Constructive
So the weekend has been a lot of tears in our household. To lose a cat, especially one like Zed-Head, after only a year...it seems too soon for us. Desi is slowly coming to terms with it, though this is a big blow. Zetti's brother died in the summer of 2007 in a farm accident, when one of the vehicles hit the poor Kitty. She was torn up about that. She's heartbroken about this.
We buried him yesterday morning on a piece of lan at my parent's place, under a nice old tree. I couldn't help but crack a joke, one of my ways of dealing with grief. I looked at her and said "I know what yer thinkin', but dun do it. What ya put in the ground up thar ain't always what comes out." She laughed, I laughed, and then we both cried and buried our cat.
Today I took advantage of the quiet house (Des is at work) to finish "The Tribe of Harry", a short fiction piece I started work on last week. First person perspective with a lot of dialogue, easy on the narrative descriptions. It's a new form for me, as I tend to overload the descriptions and let the dialogue tell the character's past instead of the current story. Coming in at just over 11 pages, typed, non-SMF, it seemed like a fun enough first draft to me. I've sent it off to my regular gang of proofreaders and my upstairs editor to lambast. Once they're done, I'll rewrite it.
I'll keep this pretty short, as I have to go pick up Des in a moment. I'll be rewriting and submitting "The Tribe of Harry" this week after I get back the comments for it. That's just about all I have today.
To anyone reading this, bet on the Pats.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
We buried him yesterday morning on a piece of lan at my parent's place, under a nice old tree. I couldn't help but crack a joke, one of my ways of dealing with grief. I looked at her and said "I know what yer thinkin', but dun do it. What ya put in the ground up thar ain't always what comes out." She laughed, I laughed, and then we both cried and buried our cat.
Today I took advantage of the quiet house (Des is at work) to finish "The Tribe of Harry", a short fiction piece I started work on last week. First person perspective with a lot of dialogue, easy on the narrative descriptions. It's a new form for me, as I tend to overload the descriptions and let the dialogue tell the character's past instead of the current story. Coming in at just over 11 pages, typed, non-SMF, it seemed like a fun enough first draft to me. I've sent it off to my regular gang of proofreaders and my upstairs editor to lambast. Once they're done, I'll rewrite it.
I'll keep this pretty short, as I have to go pick up Des in a moment. I'll be rewriting and submitting "The Tribe of Harry" this week after I get back the comments for it. That's just about all I have today.
To anyone reading this, bet on the Pats.
Peace,
J.C. Tabler
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