Welcome to my LiveJournal. I'm a science fiction writer with a growing collection of published short stories, and my collection Unwelcome Bodies is currently available from Apex Publications. It includes, among other stories, "Captive Girl," which was a 2007 Nebula finalist and which made the 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. I started this journal to have a place to talk about writing and the writing life, although you'll probably notice various digressions into belly dance and politics.

Please note that anonymous comments that aren't signed will be deleted.

I've been really bad about posting updates here. I've gotten used to the quick and lazy style of Facebook updates, alas. LiveJournal takes more effort. So here, in no particular order, are some updates.

-I'm currently 3/4 of the way through stealthmuffin's next novel MS. It's definitely a worthy successor to the first two books in the series, and it's been an incredibly quick read. I think I'll be able to finish it tomorrow, at which point, I'll be able to clear my head and switch back over to my own stuff. I really want to get this revision of Chameleon off of my plate, as hopeless as I think it is to try to sell it. Getting rid of it will be a huge weight off of my shoulders. And if my agent likes it and starts shopping it around, it'll be nice to have a piece in circulation that I'm not particularly attached to (unlike Machine, which every major SF publisher has already turned down, save one). Then I'll finally be able to turn to something else. Probably shorts, I think. I could really use a nice short or two under my belt. Hell, I might even try to revise the derivative piece of crap I had the writing group look at a couple of months ago.

- Speaking of shorts, I got a lovely piece of fan mail from Janis Ian today about "Captive Girl." Holy fucking shit -- a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter sent me fan mail. And speaking of writing new shorts, it's time to finally write a story that tops "Captive Girl," because as much as I appreciate all the attention that it's gotten and is still continuing to get, I'd really like to not feel like a lyric from "How Do You Sleep?" -- you know, the one that goes: "The only thing you done was yesterday, And since you're gone you're just another day." I can hear Lennon croon that line in my ear every time I get a new bit of praise for that old story.

- I've finally seen photos of my performance from the show up in Haverhill a couple of weekends ago, and I need to work on my game face. I thought I was projecting that I was feeling confident and pleased with myself, but in every picture, my expression is completely blank. Well, it's a step up from projecting fear, I suppose.

- In upcoming performance news, Kate and I are dancing this upcoming Sunday at Raks Spooki in Arlington. The line-up really kicks ass. I'm still flabbergasted we'll be up there alongside all those other amazing dancers. Kate and I taped our rehearsal on Sunday, and we're both very happy with how the dance is looking, so while I'm nervous for Sunday, I'm not anxious, if that makes any sense. I must remember the lesson of the game face for Sunday! Yes, we're allowed to look blank and haunted in our first dance, but damn it, I am going to project enjoyment for the second one!

- And we're also beginning to choreograph our dance for the December Za-Beth show. My hope is to be done with the rough draft choreo by this Saturday. It'll do us some good to do speed choreography, followed by speed-learning. We've tended to take months on choreo in the past, and if we're going to get anywhere as dancers, we really need to speed that up.

I think that's it.

My agent reports that Machine has been submitted to six publishers, with another four to come soon :)

The contract is signed, so I can now officially say that I have a literary agent. He's Seth Fishman of Sterling Lord Literistic. Interestingly, he represents short fiction as well as novels, so whenever I write something that could conceivably have a shot in a mainstream short fiction market, I'll be handing it to him. I'll still be taking care of the shorts that I send out to the genre ghetto.

Time for the end-of-year roundup that everyone's doing. Let's see how my year shook out:

Books released: 1
Major award nominations received: 1
Major awards won: 0
Stories written: 9
Stories put into circulation: 6
New stories sold: 4
Reprint sales: 4 (1 in English, 1 in Hebrew, 2 in Swedish)

Plus, I seem to have finally landed an agent, which certainly changes my goals for 2009. Nothing's signed yet, but it will be soon, and as soon as it's official, I'll share the details publicly. I'd been planning on refocusing on short work and sticking novels on the back burner this year, but it looks like I'll be reversing that now. I'm currently in the process of doing a pencil edit on Machine with the aim of tightening it and adding more conflict*. Next on the list will be polishing up Chameleon. Then, I'll dive back into the rough draft of Emasculata. This gives my agent two completed manuscripts to shop around in fairly short order, which hopefully means I'll get a little more time to finish up the third than I would otherwise.

But at the same time, I don't want to abandon shorts. I guess we'll see how my time shakes out. I'm not going to give up either my day job or bellydancing**, and I'm not interested in kissing my television goodbye completely, even though I know I'm going to have to be more merciless about giving up mediocre shows (farewell, Heroes!) and more picky about letting new ones into my life (tough luck, Dollhouse!). I'll make it work. I know I can.

* The protagonist's support network is too supportive. This is a problem I often have with my writing. I've been getting better about telling myself to remove helpful characters from my work, but apparently I hadn't yet learned that out back when I wrote that novel. It's also something I tend to notice in revisions. My most recent short had a very helpful character show up and explain things to the protagonist. Once I realized what I had done, I changed her radically in revisions to be more of an antagonist.

** Between the desk job and writing, I spend an awful lot of time sitting on my ass. I firmly believe that it's important for writers to have hobbies that get them up off of their asses. And I really like the parallelism of doing something to master my body while simultaneously doing something to master my mind. And did I mention all the pretty costumes?

Another agent has said "no thanks" to Machine, this time from the partial. She wasn't able to connect with the main character and said that the writing felt flat to her. Considering how many other people have said no to this novel before her, she's probably dead-on in her assessment.

I suspect it's time to retire this novel to the drawer as well. I mean, yes, the full MS is theoretically on one agent's desk and one editor's desk, but I will be extremely surprised at this point if either of them read it, what with all the time that's passed since they've received their copies.

I'm still waiting to hear back on the requested sample chapters I sent to an agent a month ago, and I figured I might as well drop an email to the agent who's had my full MS for over a year now. I made sure to put the "Nebula" word in there, because the worst it can do is continue to get my MS overlooked.

Of course, the question of whether I want an agent who's left my MS sitting for over a year is an entirely different one, but it's better to have options than to have none.

Still nothing from the anthology editor, but some Googling of the title reveals two people blogging about getting acceptance letters for it a couple of weeks ago. I've queried the editor, but I suspect it's time to start lining up the next markets I'm going to send it to. (See my next entry for an update.)

Still nothing from the agent who asked for my partial. Peeking at her blog, I see she says she's running behind, but I'm not sure how far behind that might be. Still, I suspect it's too soon to query.

We did floor work in bellydance class tonight and the tops of my feet hurt. Not my knees (although they are a little achy), but the tops of my feet. Somehow, I need to toughen them up without making them look horrid for the upcoming sandal season. Either that, or I need to avoid floor work (which I'm seriously considering doing--with my knees, I'm rather limited in what I can do down there).

Haven't written anything in a while. This is starting to annoy me. I've still got to finish my short story for this month. That's the rule -- one a month this year. So I spent twenty minutes at lunch scribbling out notes for one of my WIPs and for another short story idea that came to me during a panel on Sunday. Nothing's getting written tonight, because I have belly dance class, but I have the house to myself tomorrow night, so I'll have no excuse not to get something done then.

Still waiting on the Nebula ballot, the anthology, and the sample chapters. Waiting is fun.

1) The beautiful bellydance skirt I ordered. It is just as pretty as I'd hoped. The only downside is that the fabric appears to snag if you even look at it funny. I'll pick up a few plain hip scarfs to wear between it and my jingly belts. It goes perfectly with the top I wore in last spring's recital, as well as my plain black one. It does not appear to go with any of the looks on my dance bra, but that's okay.

2) An email from an agent that I recently queried, asking for the first 50-60 pages of Machine (a page limit which let me send chapters 1-3 in their entireties). Wish my little sample chapters luck!

I've gotten too damned many agent rejections for Machine at this point for me to have any confidence in it anymore. For a long time, I've been sure it was the best thing I would ever write. And if that's true, then I guess there's no point in me writing any more novels. I'm a short story writer. Time to face facts.

Maybe this won't seem quite so bad come morning.

Another of my agent queries has resulted in nothing. Ah well.

Yet another agent rejection. It was just on a query, though.

1. Do cardio and practice bellydance isolations. Maybe also yoga. A healthy body helps with a healthy mind.

2. Spend one hour with "Brushstrokes" today. It can be an hour of reading, or it can be an hour of editing, or it can be an hour of staring at the screen with my eyes unfocused. But I will spend a full hour with it.

3. Officially abandon agent search. This has been the real soul-killer. If any of the agents who I've already queried get back to me asking to read more, I'll send them whatever they request, but I will not be querying any new agents.

Meanwhile, we're waiting to hear back from the landlord. I woke to a crashing sound at 5:00, but ignored it and went back to bed, thinking that a cat had just knocked over a chair. When I got out of bed at 8:00, I discovered a sodden ceiling tile on the floor just outside the bathroom. The bathroom floor was soaking wet, too. The hall ceiling is no longer leaking, and the bathroom vent is barely dripping anymore, so hopefully, the worst is over, but it would be awfully nice if the landlord would return my call.

I just got a rejection email in response to another of my "query the world" emails from last weekend.

Hrmph.

I'm rapidly running out of agents I'm comfortable querying.

I have now sent queries to any agent listed on P&E as either "recommended" or "highly recommended" that is interested in SF and that takes electronic queries (and who hasn't already rejected me). For those keeping count, that's a grand total of 12 queries, 6 of which I sent tonight. I'd been planning on waiting until the weekend to send them, but I didn't feel like writing tonight, and decided that this would be an acceptable substitute.

Tomorrow night, I have no excuse.

Another of the agents that I emailed over the weekend has said they're not interested in reading any of the MS. Yeah, I definitely need to get through another chunk of the alphabet this weekend.

Apparently, my first five pages weren't quite grabby enough for the agent to want to insert me into her already full roster of clients.

Ah well.

One of the agents I queried over the weekend just asked me to email her the first five pages of my MS.

Have already received one rejection from the six agent queries I sent out over the weekend. The agent is no longer taking on more SF/F clients. Fair enough.

Tried both of my new yoga DVDs over the weekend. The Just My Size one was fairly lame. The workout was very short and didn't involve much flexibility work at all, plus the program didn't flow from one move to the next, but instead had this stupid graphic they'd show between poses that did nothing but eat up time. The Yoga for the Rest of Us DVD was a little better, but again, wasn't rigorous enough for my tastes, and it spent a little too much time between poses (although not as much as the other one). I'll try JMS one more time, then probably give it away (it's perfect for someone who's never done yoga before). The jury's still out on YFTROU.

"Brushstrokes" is still barely revised. I couldn't work up the enthusiasm for revisions over the weekend. My brain kept rebelling and insisting that normal people got to relax over the weekend, so I should pretend to be normal for once. However, I know what I need to do to the part I rewrote to make it have more punch, so that's a step in the right direction. It'll involve changing the lead character somewhat, but that's a good thing.

And I didn't get in enough bellydance practice on my class's week off. When I tried to practice on Saturday, it went spectacularly badly. My body just did not want to cooperate. Whee.

Okay, time to get dressed and brush the snow off of my car.

Started revising "Brushstrokes," wasn't happy with the result. Felt grumpy, so I set it aside and went through "B" and "C" and sent out a couple more emails. Am now poking at "Brushstrokes" some more to see if I can fix the new beginning I've written. May give up and go on to "D" and "E".