Annie Bellet

Because we know how much the internet loves lists.  Sorry, no bullets.

First, got another nice rejection.  I entered into my tracking sheet and then for fun counted up the number of rejections and looked at how many are form and how many came with a note.  I have 15 rejections so far for short stories.  6 are form letter, 1 is a negative comment, and 8 are ‘positive’ rejections (good writing, well received, send more, that sort of comment).  So the positive rejections out number the negative or form letter ones.  Apparently this is a good thing and a sign of tremendous progress.  I’m just keeping my head down and figuring out where to send what next.  15 down, 485 rejections left to go!

On to the lists!

Things in progress:

Chwedl: 61,000 words so far, but I’ve hit a snag since I realized I needed to go back and add an entire thread of motivation to make the actions of my main char in the events ahead far more plausible.  I aim to have the draft of this done by mid September.

Casimir Hypogean: rewrite is sitting at about 9k I think.  This is what I’ll get to before the end of this year.  I aim to write the two sequels next year as soon as I’m done with the rewrite.  I thought long and hard about bothering to write sequels to an unsold book (conventional wisdom says don’t!), but I think I’m going to ignore that wisdom this time.  I’m unpublished, which means I don’t exactly have deadlines on other things at the moment, plus given an optimistic publishing time-frame, say this book was picked up for publication and then they wanted the sequels written.  It could be anywhere from 3-6 years from finishing the first before I’d even begin a sequel.  That’s too long for me, right now.  I have the story and world firmly in mind and while the first book works fine as a stand-alone, the second two are definitely tied together and I want them to work well as a unit.  Even if I spend another year writing these three books, I’ll still have learned something about writing (and writing a series) whether they sell or not.  So that’s my justification.

Steampunk detective novel:  started doing some research for the setting of the first one.  It’ll likely be a year before I start writing it, but I do love me some research.

Romance novel that has hijacked my brains:  I might start this just to see where it goes.  Series romance is only 70k words generally, so maybe I can tinker with it in my “spare” writing time.  I certainly love to read romances, so maybe I’ll try writing one.  This one involves a girl with a beautiful singing voice and a violent past and of course a handsome composer/violinist, an opera house, and dark secrets.  (No masked men living underneath the opera house, sorry…)

Werewolves in Space: now a novella!  I had the idea at Worldcon to turn this into a novella sort of prequel to a later novel.  I’ve actually cut the werewolf and love story from the plot.  I wasn’t sure this novel ever had enough plot to really sustain 100k words, so I think this will be a good compromise.  Now I just have to keep it under 17k words.

Short stories:  I have so many percolating in my brains at the moment, I’m going to have to write one a week just to clear my plate.  I’m hoping I can revive Monday Short Story Day starting next Monday.  Sampling of stories includes: Rusalka story, ‘glitter kitten’, ‘shrub daughter’, ‘I, vermin’, jellyfish in space, ‘sparks’, time traveling thief, ‘Tesla’s Daughter’, world as we know it ends (telemarketer) story, ‘The insanity of Mr Leads’, ‘Maskmaker’, and Bloodgood’s cat origin mystery story.  My notes make more sense than this list, somewhat.

On the plus side, I now have 9 short stories out making the rounds, which isn’t bad considering back in Feb when I started I only had two.

Time to prioritize and write like a madwoman.  It’s funny, before Worldcon I never considered myself that prolific, but I think I’m right in the middle as far as I can tell from the sampling I got there about other people’s work habits.  The last six weeks have been a total momentum killer, however.  Between Worldcon, Flu, Alaska, and moving, I’ve gotten almost nothing done (1 short story written, 2 revised, only about half a chapter on Chwedl).  Time to get back in the habit of the everyday and get some projects finished.  I’m giving myself a mini-deadline on the Werewolves in Space novella because I’d like to have it done in time for this quarter of WoTF contest.

So that’s the report for August 2009.  We’ll see where I’m at in December or there abouts.