What I Should Be Doing...

What I should be doing is starting work on either a proposal (of a darker variety) for my editor or beginning the sequel to ALMOST TO DIE FOR. Instead, I've been goofing around on a short story.

Remember how I said that it's a bad idea to write to market? But that I also understand the impulse because I tend to get caught up in anthology descriptions? Well, I was looking for a home for a short story of mine that I wrote some years ago at Ralan.com, and as I often do, I started wandering through their anthology section. I came across a bunch that totally caught my eye and flared up my imagination. One is looking for stories about prostitutes, another wants stories about being the last [fill-in-the-blank] on earth, and yet a third is looking for space opera. So, I said to myself, hey! What about a story about the last gigolo in space??

So I started it, but I'm terrible at short stories.

I think all the things that make me pretty good at writing novels make me fairly awful at short stories. I tend to start with a simple idea and before I know it six or seven threads have spun out. A short story should really focus on one or two, I think, to be successful. (Although, honestly, what would I know?)

I'm about two thousand words into this short story ("Cold Chrome") and it's already spinning out of my control. But I'm going to keep writing on it until I stop having fun... or Monday comes, whichever happens first. (Monday is my deadline to get back on track with all my writing work, as Mason is finally back in school.)

Tonight, I'll be at MarsCON starting at 6:00pm. See all you local folks there!

Getting Desperate

Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I was hit by a craving. Was it for chocolate? No. Was it for Doritos? No. Was it for a trashy novel? No.

All I wanted to do was write.

But, alas, Mason is still off school for another couple of days. And, wouldn't you know it, my usually fairly self-sufficent child had one of those days when he really just wanted to hang with his ima. I held off until late night, and then... had no energy. I wrote a paragraph and then completely pooped out.

Luckily, I still kind of have the itch this morning, and Mason has decided to watch TV. So, without further ado, I'm off to scratch, as it were!

What I Did On Winter Vacation

This is Mason peeking out of the gigantic snow fort we built in our backyard over Mason's winter intersession break. (For those of you just tuning in, my son goes to a year round school, and doesn't have traditional summer vacation, but, instead, gets months off in different times of the year [inclucing summer, just not all three months.])

Garnet in Paperback?

I'm not sure how official this is, but I just heard from my editor that the Garnet Lacey books have been "bought" in-house by Berkley Sensation for release in a mass-market paperback edition. I guess the tentative date for the first book to hit the shelf is December of 2011.

I have no idea if they'll have new cover art or what, but I think this is pretty awesome news. I'm a big fan of the paperback size books, myself, so yay!

Also, I've run out of newbie questions to answer. Anyone out there have any questions you'll like me to answer? The more the better! Otherwise I'm going to have to make some questions up....